Page 45 of Green City Wars

She sounds like she understands—not just saying it to salve his conscience but because she’s living an adventure now, she who mostly only gets to record them. And it may kill her. She might not be okay. He might not be able to see her right. The rats patched her up but they’d probably have put on white coats and told her to avoid any strenuous activity for a while. Like escaping. She can’t fly, and she walks funny, off at an angle, one leg weaker than the other. She was shot. For him. And now he’s dragged her off her hospital bed because he didn’t want her to be used against him. It’s not a good feeling, being Skotch at this moment. Feeling that web of connection and obligation, tug and pull, that he was never by nature supposed to have.

His Strain has a reputation for dishonesty, roguishness, sharp dealing. He can only imagine how much easier that would make everything, if it were actually true. Who the hell has a use for a faithful raccoon?

“So this is how it’s going to be,” he tells her. “Because I can get you somewhere you can get some medicine, get some care. Get word to your human, your employer.” And is he worried, that faceless giant who only exists to Skotch because of what Lulu’s said about him? Or is he already flicking through the pigeon fancier’s catalogues or however the hell else he managed to get hold of a personal Gehirner emissary? Hard to imagine anything so vast and distant actually shedding a tear at the fall of a single bird.

Except there is one human who does. “Saint Frances,” Skotch says. “She’ll do you right. She’ll sort you out. I’ll get you to her.”

Lulu’s head bobs, twice, three times. It’s not a nod, just a pigeon trying to see the world properly. “Skotch,” she says, “the rats said this is Rootspace One.”

“They did say that, yes,” he agrees.

“The Chapel is all the way across the city,” she notes. “I mean, it wouldn’t be an issue, but…” She shifts the broken wing, but only slightly. Across the city just became a way bigger obstacle to her than it used to be.

“There must be a cart heading that way, or…” He looks up at the bat, because there’s an entire nocturnal airborne guild that ferries stuff across the rooftops at night. Couriers, wireless engineers, package delivery. They have drones and microdirigibles and all sorts, he’s heard. Maybe a little light bribery, that last ampoule …

The bat is looking right back at him when he looks up. Don’t let anyone tell you they’re blind. Der Fledermaus is giving him the eyeball, sure enough. A couple of the rats are, too, now that Skotch glances around. In the bat’s ear, a tiny tinny voice squeaks and shrills.

“I reckon we’ve used up our welcome,” Skotch says. “You ready to take a walk?”

“Always,” Lulu says, though it takes her a moment to catch her balance when she tries. They get out of the space as quickly as possible, and Skotch looks for the underground goods train to take them outwards. Finds a loading point soon enough, where a bunch of animals are waiting. More rats, a couple of badgers wearing vests festooned with bulging pockets, a tiny, huge-eyed monkey-looking thing half lost in a woollen jumper, talking enthusiastically to an axolotl in a poncho using an argot Skotch doesn’t know. The sight of them, a pair of prosperous foreign Gehirner here on some kind of exchange of business, makes him think of Shojen and the HengZeico embassy. I’ll get Lulu safe, and then I’ll go there. If there’s any safe and neutral ground …

“Skotch,” Lulu says, “I hate to say but I think we might be attracting some attention.”

He looks up, and a half-dozen of the nearby Gehirner look away. And sure, a raccoon and a lame pigeon, not something you see every day, but that’s not the vibe he’s getting from the situation.

This is still Ratlabs turf. He doesn’t reckon they do things the jackboots-and-stormtroopers way, maybe, but if they put the word out on a couple of fugitives, people will listen. Probably the word’s already got back to Rootspace One that their two lost guests haven’t gone far.

“Move,” he decides, and the pair of them break away just as the automatic goods transport shunts into view. And what was the plan? Would it just not have left, or would it have been diverted to some convenient siding where a Ratlabs crew would be waiting with dart guns and nets? Skotch has no intention of finding out, except that the other thing he also doesn’t have is a backup plan. They can’t walk all the way to the Chapel. Even Skotch would find that an epic trek, and Lulu … wouldn’t make it. Of that he is sure. So, what’s Plan B?

“I think I’ve screwed up,” he tells Lulu. They retreat from the platform, and then they retreat again, forced out to the fringes of all the places a Gehirner can be around here. Until they’re right up at the edge, pressed against a grating. On the other side of which is … the place they don’t go. The human world. Feet passing by on streets that a night shift of rats—or maybe roaches—scoured of litter and grime. The shade of the green buildings, cooling and pleasant. The sound of big, slow voices speaking real human languages, the exemplars that the argots are just boiled-down forms of. Skotch hears his breath ragged in his ears.

“How’re you doing, Lulu?” he asks her.

“Swell, Skotch. I’m good, I’m fine. I’m, you know, it’s exciting. I’ve never done this. I’ll have so much to tell him, when I get back. Only…” And she doesn’t say the next words, because if she asks him, I am going to get back, aren’t I? that might compel him to answer her, and maybe she doesn’t want to hear the honest truth right about then.

She’s huddled into herself, feathers plushed out for warmth but still shivering. The sight of her moves something in his gut, like a wire. Anxieties his neurology never evolved for.

“Okay, so,” he says. “I’ve got a plan then.”

Her head bobs, maybe a nod, maybe not. And it’s her fault, in a way. On his own he’d never dare this, but if things go dreadfully wrong then it’s on his head, not hers. That ring about her leg might just mean she makes it home anyway.

It’s not much of a ray of sunshine but it’s all he’s got.

There are humans out there, going about their big, ponderous business. And sometimes humans, too, need to get across the city. There are no private vehicles allowed on the streets of central Neuwien, not even the electrics that took over decades ago, after someone finally worked out a long-life green battery. Instead, there’s a whole aboveground network of trams that means a human can just hop on, hop off, go anywhere within city limits. There are whole Gehirner guilds devoted to keeping the system running, Skotch knows. He’s had some contacts amongst them, which means he has a little understanding of how the autonomous carriages are designed.

“We’re going to break Rule One,” he tells Lulu. “But real quiet like. And hope nobody notices.”

There’s a hatch, underneath the tram carriages. Maintenance access only. It’s where the Gehirner get in, the works shift that goes over every one of them every two days at the depot. Because it’s a big part of Rule One that human life in the green cities is seamless. Step on, step off. Nobody wants a tram breaking down, or an annoying groan of machinery, or the lights flickering even once.

But in the works of a moving tram is not a safe place to be. Skotch remembers the warnings, from his contact at the depot. More than one Gehirner hitchhiker has gotten themselves fried. There’s only one safe place to be, while the carriages are gliding about their railed business across the city.

It’s where the humans are.

There’s another hatch. It leads up from the works straight into the interior of the carriage. It’s used by the cleaning crews at the depot. It’s intended to be opened only when the conveyance is properly unoccupied and off its route, for obvious reasons.

All regular Gehirner transport out of the Ratlabs’ territory are going to be watched, maybe even controlled, by the calculating eyes of the rats. But the human tram network is something they won’t fool with. For exactly the same obvious reasons that Skotch shouldn’t fool with them.

Skotch’s life has pushed him beyond the territory of “obvious reasons.” He finds a road hatch—again, for nocturnal cleaning, as discreet as possible, and waits until he hears the soft hum of an electric carriage pause above him to let humans on and off.