The woman at the desk was what’s known as a Riveter, titled after that broad who looked tough in all the old posters they’ve reprinted and posted to encourage the citizens to believe in the strength of the City that surrounds them.A strength that survives even after they took away the mechanism for the people to grow beyond the manual labor that Rosie was the cause celebre for.
Still, the Riveter took heart in her namesake. She ran the planes. She made them come and let them go as she saw fit. If she didn’t want you to ride, you walked across the great and burning Desert and brambles cut your feet, for that was all that can be found in the lost and wild lands between Cities. They had taken so much away that the four tiny planes and a pair of runways under her control provided for a significant amount of cache. And, this, the Riveter refused to forget.
It was late in the afternoon, the light worth remarking on as it pressed itself through the walnut slat shades. It was nearly the hour for the Riveter to make her rounds, review the accounts one last time before closing her business for the day. Before she could return to her bungalow, far away from the bleat of the hangar, and receive the relative luxury of a good meal and a bottle of wine that her success affords her, there is, of course, the matter of the Traveler.
She adjusted her silvery fascinator on her peroxide bob, peeled off and put her white gloves in her snap-latched purse and leaned over the desk from her perch on a high winged-back chair.
“It’s been a bad year for your kind,” she opined and peered at him. “And you don’t know that men in this City light ladies’ cigarettes to say that they’ll listen to them, if only for the time it takes to let the ashes fall into an ashtray.”
She gestured at the shallow, grey smoked glass bowl sitting in front of her. For the Riveter, that little knick-knack, the only one in the spartan room, is beautiful. Though only because that beauty is serviceable.
He said nothing, and didn’t pull a pack from his pants pocket the way she’d hoped. Instead, he just stared at her, in that ravenous way of theirs, a way she’d seen up close only once before.
Breaking the painful silence, she snapped open the purse again and pulls a little cigarette and lighter from some secret compartment, and lit it herself with a knowing, blase click. As she inhaled, she considered that his exhaustion and despair left him vulnerable in a way she was not entirely prepared for.
The Traveler had come wearing a curious suit. A grey sort of green, it was stressed and strained at all its seams, caked in reddish dirt. He’d come through the Wild Lands, that much was clear. The suit jacket was gone now, stored in a locker along with the usual miscellany they turned up with, none of it sensible. His white dress shirt sleeves had been rolled up to his elbows to confirm he was not trafficking weapons. She’d heard stories.
For better or worse, it also gave her a view to what had been done to him. Some of his wounds looked new, no doubt from an over-eager security team that found little enough to secure while the City’s police pursued their invisible justices with overwhelming authority. Travellers had been arriving, as far as Sgt. Deckard would report, at a slightly high rate than might be expected. Forced out from the Porcelain City, they were risking their lives to come here. Some of the bruises appeared less recent, but still raw, including a stinging zipper of a cut running deep along his forearm.
Crawling beneath the fence was reckless, stupid…hopeless per the posters. Almost, if the Riveter were the sort of woman to be so swayed, a bit brave.
It was only that they sent her a photograph and dossier that she alone knew him for what he was. And it was only, perhaps, that these long, weatherless days had been driving her to distraction that she called for him to be brought to her office before they they turned him over to the Police. He was a gaunt, unhappy character. In truth, he looked like most of her employees. Except, of course, for the tattoo his kind wore in hopes one of her kind might recognize it before they were captured. A bird in blue ink right above his collarbone called him Traveler, that and the tears pearling along the brick-red rims of his eyes. Nobody else bothered with crying these days; nobody found it worth the strain.
“Oh, don’t cry now.” Through pursed lips, she murmured mostly to herself she mused, “How strange that men may cry if they find themselves so far from home, so at the mercy of a woman who has little reason to offer succor but for mercy.”
“You know what I want. What I need.” The words came out of the Traveller’s rusty throat like nails cast into a spittoon. Each one shot forth with such venom it arrived in her mind as though it had been loaded in a gun. She did know.
She smiled, though not sweetly. “I know what the Tribune writes, same as everyone else in the City. I know that you all arrive out of the clear sky, burrow your way into the Secured Zone to slither amongst us, and make your demands until you disappear, leaving behind a trail of dead bodies in your wake.”
“More will die if I don’t get out of here. Maybe y…” He pulled at the bonds that held him firmly to the metal chair to no avail. The Security team had bound him there and she had no fear of his escape.
There’s planes,” she interrupted, almost idly, as if it was something to mention while stirring your tea, “from here to there. If that’s what you want. Those I say can be gotten for pennies, for cheap thrills, when the cards are played right.”
The Traveler takes a breath and nods, those tears just about gone to the end of his chin and dead.
“How did you know to come here? Did that compatriot of yours send word, suggest I had some sympathy to your cause?”
“You read your Trib. That Traveller is dead. Dead not twenty-four hours after escaping your security officers. The City Police are thorough.”
She had heard. She heard everything worthy of note that happens in the City one way or another, but it was odd to see the corners of his eyes in anguish as he spoke. A personal pain, a personal loss. Wheresoever they came from, his kind did not have numbers to spare.
“They are that. And yet here you are.”
“You asked your butchers to bring me here. That’s how this happened.”
“No, something went wrong, and yet, not wrong enough to give up your trail to the Police. There’s something of a skill there.” He clammed up again, but did not break his stare. He did not fear her; he didn’t know enough yet about the way things ran to be anything more than wary. His rage was still within reach, but he sat motionless, save for a constant, silent appraisal of her words, expressions, the unspoken language of her body.
A long, leaden pause.
She sighed, filing and sorting facts in her head. It was the Riveter to know truths before she was told them. He was excessively full up on truth, which always complicated matters.
“I will tell you then, what I told your friend.” He listened against his will.
“From here to there is easy,” The Riveter offered, as a ring of smoke made an axis or a nimbus around his heavy head. “From now to then’s…another matter.” She tap, tap, tapped the cigarette. The churn of the typewriters in the pen of offices outside the glass window behind her stopped. Curiosity would be the end of them. She banged her fist once the desk that separates them. The cloud of white noise resumed, but quieter, and less frantic, more orchestrated.
She stood up straight, circled lightly, and let herself land on the other side of the isthmus of mahogany, narrowing the space between them. He croaked, his face contorting in pain as the words slipped out between teeth and lip.
“Now…”
“Now. The deal was made, we shook hands and everything. Your Traveler lost and I had arranged a single, roundtrip fare, with recompense to arrive to me upon his safe return. That was what he left my office with.”
“That’s the truth? Nobody’s found his money. How do I know you aren’t just feeding me a line?” His eyebrows raised and he would have crossed his arms had he been able.
“How do I know there was any money to begin with? Not beyond the paltry leather pouch he offered. I told him that I had no use for raw minerals, but he refused to barter with his watch. Still, a desperate man can ply a soul in all manner of ways and now that I’ve learned this lesson, I really don’t think you’re in much of a position to argue.” She crossed her fishnetted legs at the knee, sitting atop the desk with a skirt that revealed a few inches more of her thighs than was proper. A few yards more if you consulted the Moral Authorities. She had no clear idea what the Traveller thought, but she had his attention. “But. That’s how it was and I expected you all to be looking in other directions to make your miracles and leave me the hell out of it. And yet, not three months later, we find a saboteur in the hangar.”
More silence. She puffed her cigarrette. If she had desired to see him confess, it was not forthcoming.
Quieting her voice, she began again. “I want to know what this is all about, what is worth five dead Citizens. And then we’ll see what our deal shall be.”
“Deals…” He shook his head, muttering to himself, perhaps reconciling himself. “I need a flight. They say you’re the lady to talk to.”
He was not joking, but she laughed, having heard that once or twice before, though never from a Traveler.
“At the moment, the yellow-grey is all my birds, all my sky. Still, I need to pay these folks. Not all of them are android and they have to eat, just like you and me. Well, I assume you eat.”
“I need what you offered before. A roundtrip ticket on the red-eye. Just one, just me. And a full forty-eight hours before I go, before anyone knows anything about anything.”
“No. As I explained, I need payment upfront. The Security can fend off the Police inside this compound, but outside of it, I have no say in how far your leash can take you.”
“I have nothing now. If you know anything about us, you know that I have nothing.”
Trusting that was true, she pulled a key from her pocket and looked at him as she clicked the locks that held his manacles in place. He rubbed the skin at his wrists while she continued.
“No, you sir, you don’t look like you’re up for much, certainly not enough even to cover the fuel. So you’ll have to find a way. Maybe ask the Mayor. He thinks he runs things, and we let him think it because someone has to pull the sun aloft and someone has to butter the bread. Maybe he can swing you a ticket. But how do I pay him, you ask? Quite a fix, I say, I’m not sure what he’ll want. Some letters delivered, some men boxed up tight in a freezer. But it’s better than what I’ll ask.” She leaned against the beveled edge, to take the weight off her heels. “It’d be easier for you to give.” A plane taking off screamed over all the noise and she shuddered despite being accustomed.
But it wasn’t the noise that made her jump, it was the Traveler’s worn and callused hand that the Riveter felt even through the industrial nylons.
He whispered with the rusty voice. He was without a doubt. “The Mayor can go to hell. Let me pay your price.”
“At least you know,” She said, flooded with a strange sense of relief as she slid backwards on the desk knocking aside the blotter and ashtray, sending the whole works askew, “how to get from here to there.”
“Don’t even need a plane,” the Traveler replied, somewhat less exhausted as her powers silently, subtly, powered on with only a slight mechanical whir to inform her.
His face was not handsome, but worth remarking on. Earnest, sincere, a beauty that is serviceable even through the bruises and the bloodshot. He smiled with a thick lip that had been bitten dry. She felt it with her own, until till they shared the red between them.
“I don’t want here and there, though. I need now and then.” He whispered into her ear.
She pressed the lighter into his hand, fumbled for another cigarette, and leaned in, waiting for a spark.
