Every in Between

EVERY IN BETWEEN

ERZEBET YELLOWBOY

This one is for Alice.

Copyright © 2013 b Erzebet YellowBoy.

Cover design by Sherin Nicole.

Illustration by Donald Phan.

Photograph by Alex Buts.

Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

ISBN: 978-1-60701-506-2

Masque Books

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Masque Books is an imprint of Prime Books

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No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

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Chapter 1

The only way out of my city is by way of the Biship—that’s what they told us, anyway—and it has been the only way out since the War ended, long before I was born. I used to watch it launch like an old-time rocket, with smoke belching out from underneath and gears cranking overhead. It exits through a portal in the ceiling. I never could see what was beyond the portal when it opened. It was too far above us.

But if it weren’t for the Biship, I probably wouldn’t have believed in the other cities. Who would want more? Mine was bad enough.

I loved it when the Biship landed. The hiss of pressurized air would fill the base as its door slid slowly open, as though to tease me and draw out my impatience. A boarding attendant would appear. The attendants could have been clones for all I cared. I was only interested in the travelers who came out of the Biship. I wanted to know how they lived in their cities, and if they had orphans there like me. I had to use my imagination, of course. You can’t tell what goes on in a place just by looking at its people.

It was a mystery to me, how the Biship flew. It still is, but I’m not obsessed with it anymore. Mathematicians and physicists are the city’s most revered citizens. They are the only ones able to calculate the distance between cities, or the arc the Biship follows as it travels from one city to another. I don’t have a head for numbers. My unit mother gave up on me at the times tables, but that’s okay. I know I’m not very smart. I’m stuck on the ground and always will be. Dumb orphans don’t get to fly.

The city is strict. Only males can be mathematicians and physicists, so I couldn’t be one of them anyway, even if I was smart. It’s the natural order of things, the authorities say. This is the first lesson: we each have our place. I would never have been allowed to design new Biships. I probably would have been a breeder, if I hadn’t run away. Two kids, and then the long sleep for me. I was my biomother’s second. That’s how I got my name. You are everything I ever wished for, my biomother said when she had me, or at least that’s what it says in my records. The nurse recorded my name as Every. That was the best moment of my life. Pity I can’t remember it.

I don’t know whether or not I’ve ever seen a mathematician. I used to guess at the occupations of the Biship’s passengers. It was a little game I played when I hid in the base. The Biship door would open, and out would pour all of these people. There, that one is a teacher. Look at her strong face and large hands. And him, he works in a cubicle, pushing buttons and making calls. Long fingers, bewildered look on his face, like he’s never been away from his desk. You can’t blame me for making things up. It was the only time I ever saw people. Only orphans haunt the streets. No one else in the city goes outside. There really isn’t an outside. Wherever we go, we’re in the city. Ceiling above, floor below, walls around.

I don’t miss my unit mother, nor should I. Family units like mine are a last resort. We have no real attachment to each other. It’s just another role someone has to fill. Unit mother, unit father—they could have been anyone. I had a unit sister, too. I do miss her. She and I had one thing in common. Both of us were unfit for initial placement. Most kids get slotted into a role as soon as they are born. We are genetically predisposed to be good at certain things, and I guess the biologists know us better in utero than we can ever know ourselves. They must not know everything, though, because sometimes a kid comes along who doesn’t fit and then . . . 

I guess a unit family is better than the long sleep. The authorities think a family unit will cure us, as though being unfit is a disease. Mine never did cure me. I ran before they had a chance.

There aren’t very many orphans in the city. I’m lucky I survived so long, out there on my own. Although I caught glimpses of a few, I only ever met one other. She probably saved my life, though I doubt she meant to.

I was asleep under a dumpster behind the base, shortly after I left my unit. What are you doing? Her voice was hard. She scared me awake.

Sleeping, I told her.

She laughed at me. Dumb brat, the patrol will catch you if you sleep here.

I had no idea what she was talking about.

What will they do to me?

Rip you limb from limb and eat you for breakfast!

You can imagine how that made me feel. I told her, No, they won’t. I’ll get out of the city. They’ll never find me out there.

She said what everyone else had always said when I talked about leaving the city. You can’t get out and you know it.

I didn’t know it, that’s the thing. I used to torture my unit mother with questions. As soon as I learned there were other cities—enclosed ones, like mine—I figured there must be something out there between the cities. My unit mother told me a hundred times, There is nothing, Every. There is nothing between the cities. Attend to your lessons.

I didn’t believe her. How do we know there’s nothing if we’ve never been there? I drove her a little crazy, I think, arguing with irrefutable facts. And why should anyone think there was anything between the cities? Not even the best scientists go out beyond the wall. But I’d gotten it into my head that there had to be something. No one could convince me otherwise. This is why I left my family unit. I wanted an answer they couldn’t give me. They were probably glad to see me gone.

I lived for twenty-one years inside the city. We had two automated seasons: one warm, one cool. We didn’t need seasons, but the records say there used to be four of them, so someone, at some point, must have decided we should have seasons, too. We had days and nights, also regulated. The lights went on at six o’clock sharp and out at ten. Eight hours for sleeping, and one for eating at midday. The rest of the time, we worked. Or, in my case, studied. All kids have lessons, even those of us in family units. When we reach our eighteenth year, we’re supposed to join the workforce. If unit kids like me haven’t been placed by then, we get the long sleep. I left my unit at the end of my seventeenth year and made the streets my home.

For three years, the streets were as good to me as streets can be. I was hungry, but I rarely starved. I became familiar with the back paths and sewers, the towers and low housing, the tunnels, and the secret places. Between buildings is a lot like between cities, landscapes defined by nothing. The streets are perpetually empty, except for when the patrol is on the march. They are paved with syncrete, a nasty black substance so thick there is no end to it. I know, because once I found a patch where it was crumbling. I dug until my hands bled, but the only thing I found was more syncrete. In those days, I almost did come to believe there was nothing else except the city. It was only the Biship that proved me wrong.

My unit sister, Minet, couldn’t understand why I asked so many questions. I always wondered why she didn’t. She was fifteen years old when I left our family unit. Unlike me, she belongs in the city. She’ll be going into placement this year. She is brilliant. She’ll be a metallurgist, in a research lab somewhere. She’s also got something called albinism. She was fitted with lenses that made her eyes look black. Without them, she could hardly see. She was only stuck with a family unit because she needed medical supervision. Normally, we don’t keep people with impairments, but Minet was too smart for the long sleep. I got stuck there because no one knew what else to do with me.

It’s all in my records. We’re allowed to see our own records as part of our lessons. It’s supposed to help us understand how we all have a place. Honestly, it just made me angry. I think I’ve always known there would be no place for me. Try to be more like Minet, my unit mother used to say. It was no good. I was nothing like Minet. I just couldn’t be. I am Every, and I have found the way in between.

I’m still shocked I found a way out of the city. I’d love to go back and tell Minet, There really is something between the cities. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. But even if I could go back, I wouldn’t know how to describe the vast something I’m looking at now.

I am crouched beside the wall that encloses the city. I’ll have to move soon; I can’t stay here forever, and I won’t go back. If it hadn’t been for yesterday’s patrol, I never would have found this crumbling tunnel in the city’s wall. Yesterday was actually a pretty good day—until the patrol nearly caught me. I found a jacket in a dumpster. It has a hole in the back and one of the sleeves is torn, but it fits and that’s more than I hoped