We stayed on the “El,” what they call the slidewalks, past several intersections. We left the pedestrian traffic and tufts of juveniles behind. A Hilton went by and, with an arch look, I asked Moon’s back, “Not staying here?” He turned, fixed those vertical irises on mine for the briefest moment, then turned his back on me again. Good old Moon!
Moon slipped a couple strips with me close on his heels and we headed toward one of those production facilities the townsfolk built with their water credits. The looming structure grew in the distance and soon took up the entire horizon.
The seedy buildings nearby were stark contrast to the crystal diode glitz we’d just endured. Flaking paint, windows askew and/or patched with cardboard, red brickwork in need of pointing, could be seen afflicting many of the three and four story structures; some were boarded up. It was obviously a very old, maybe even original, part of Igcenzio. Moon slipped the strips down to the street.
A short slideramp took us down to the tunnel-like “UnderEl,” at one time the street, now primarily used for simple bulk physical transport. LED panels, some flickering, others just dead, valiantly fought the overall gloom with varying degrees of success. Overhead the slidewalks made a shushing, continuous susurrus.
Moon walked to the corner and took a left. “Where in hell are we going,” I asked, “this can’t be right.” He stopped and did one of those over the shoulder glances again. Then he went to the nearest door of a particularly decrepit structure and knocked.
Starc, his nearly seven foot, fire plug body looming in the semi darkness inside, answered the door. “Starc!” I cried with a big grin. Starc’s brow furrowed and he hushed me with a finger to his lips. “In, quick,” he said with a little jerk of his head. We entered quickly.
Lights were low inside and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Moon kept walking into the building, I guess his eyes adjusted faster than mine. Starc closed the door behind us and I turned to my friend, full of questions. “Good to see you, too” he said. “C’mon.”
He led the way in the same general direction Moon had gone. Around a corner there was a rickety elevator just leveling up to the floor. Moon was waiting there and the three of us got on. “Moon here has been a fount of information, you know,” I said. “I couldn’t get him to shut up.”
“Good old Moon,” Starc said with a wide grin.
Moon almost smiled. It probably would have broken his face. He did move his lips to say, “Good old Moon.”
I had to laugh in spite of trying mightily to suppress it. If it wasn’t for Moon none of us would be present in this reality. “Home at last,” I said.
Starc waved at a sensor on the elevator control panel. His microchip implant, tucked in between the radius and ulna of his right forearm, relayed the coded data that started the elevator. Now, I’ve been in a large variety of gravitational circumstances in my life but when the elevator drops it still gives me a weird feeling in my stomach. And we were dropping fast—too fast to just be going to the basement. I looked at Starc.
“Bout half a mile to go,” he said with a smile.
The terracotta red walls whipped by, blurred by the speed of our descent. Starc just smiled that dimply smile and, his hands clasped behind his back, balanced on the balls of his feet, up and down. Finally the door opened.
We entered onto a plasmetal catwalk on a short wall and about two thirds of the way up from the floor of a stupendous rectangularish cavern. Light from Mini Suns mounted high above on the ceiling illuminated a maze of pipes of all sizes and configurations and toothy shadows added to the jumbled confusion. Some of the gargantuan pipes transected the cavern at various levels, smaller ones twined together in groups and ran off in every direction. Down near the other end one of the really big ones made an upward 90 degree bend and disappeared through a monolithic bracket in the ceiling. Tracks and cartage, storage bins and quiet, dead furnaces could be seen far below.
Starc, smoothing his pencil thin Clark Gable mustache with index and thumb, let me gawk for a few moments then he said, “This used to be a processing plant for water transfer.” He put his hands on the guardrail and looked out over the complex. “When the original settlers here sold the ocean water they only sold the water. They used plants like this one to extract everything else. The whole operation was quite profitable, you know.” He turned, “Come on,” he said, “there’s more.”
