“C’mon,” Frankie told Mission. “Walk me.”
The two old friends headed down the main hall toward the bright aura of distant grow lights. The smells were intoxicating and familiar. Mission wondered what those same smells meant to Frankie, who had grown up six levels down near the fetid stink of the water plant. Perhaps this reeked to him the way the plant did to Mission. Perhaps the water plant brought back fond memories, instead.
“Things are going nuts around here,” Frankie whispered once they were away from the gates.
Mission nodded. “Yeah, I saw a few more stalls had sprouted up. More of them every day, huh?”
Frankie held Mission’s arm and slowed their pace so they’d have more time to talk. There was the smell of fresh bread from one of the offices. It was too far from the bakery for warm bread, but such was the new way of things. Probably ground the flour somewhere deep in the farms.
“You’ve seen what they’re doing up in the cafe, right?” Frankie asked.
“I took a load up that way a few weeks ago,” Mission said. He tucked his thumbs under his shoulder straps and wiggled the heavy pump higher onto his hips. “I saw they were building something by the wallscreens. Didn’t see what.”
“They’re starting sprouts up there,” Frankie said. “Corn, too, supposedly.” They stopped by the public restrooms. The sound of a loud flush on the other side of the wall flicked a switch inside Mission’s bladder and made him need to go.
“I guess that’ll mean fewer runs for us between here and there,” Mission said, thinking like a porter. He tapped the wall with the toe of his boot. “Roker’ll be pissed when he hears.”
Frankie bit his lip and narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, but wasn’t Roker the one who started growin’ his own beans down in Dispatch?”
Mission wiggled his shoulders. His arms were going numb. He wasn’t used to standing still with a load—he was used to moving. “That’s different,” he argued. He tried to remember why it was different. “That’s for climbing food.”
Frankie shook his head. “Yeah, but ain’t that hypercritical of him?”
“You mean hypocritical?”
“Whatever, man. All I’m saying is everyone has an excuse. We’re doing it because they’re doing it and someone else started it. So what if we’re doing it a little more than they are? That’s the attitude, man. But then we get in a twist when the next group does it a little more. It’s like a ratchet, the way these things work.”
Mission glanced down the hall toward the glow of distant lights. “I dunno,” he said. “The mayor seems to be letting things slide lately.”
Frankie laughed. “You really think the mayor’s in charge? The mayor’s scared, man. Scared and old.” Frankie glanced back down the hall to make sure nobody was coming. The nervousness and paranoia had been in him since his youth. It’d been amusing when he was younger; now it was sad and a little worrisome. “You remember when we talked about being in charge one day?” Frankie asked. “How things would be different?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Mission said. “By the time we’re in charge, we’ll be old like them and won’t care anymore. And then our kids can hate us for pulling the same crap.”
Frankie laughed, and the tension in his wiry frame seemed to subside. “I bet you’re right.”
“Yeah, well, I need to go before my arms fall off.” He shrugged the pump higher up his back.
Frankie slapped his shoulder. “Yeah. Good seeing you, man.”
“Same.” Mission nodded and turned to go.
“Oh, hey, Mish.”
He stopped and looked back.
“You gonna see the Crow anytime soon?”
“I’ll pass that way tomorrow,” he said, assuming he’d live through the night.
Frankie smiled. “Tell her I said hey, wouldja?”
“I will,” Mission promised.
One more name to add to the list. If only he could charge his friends for all the messages he ran for them, he’d have way more than the three-hundred eighty-four chits already saved up. Half a chit for every hello he passed to the Crow, and he’d have his own apartment by now. He wouldn’t need to stay in the waystations. He could ask Jenine to marry him. But messages from friends weighed far less than dark thoughts, so Mission didn’t mind them taking up space. They crowded out the other. And Lord knew, Mission hauled his fair share of the heavier kind.
•3•
It would’ve made more sense and been kinder on Mission’s back to drop off the pump before visiting his father, but the whole point of hauling it up was so his old man would see him with the load. And so he headed into the planting halls and toward the same growing station his grandfather had worked and supposedly his great-grandfather, too. Past the beans and the blueberry vines, beyond the squash and the lurking potatoes. In a spot of corn that looked ready for harvest, he found his old man on his hands and knees looking how Mission would always remember him. With a small spade working the soil, his hands picked at weeds like a habit, the way a girl might curl her fingers in her hair over and over without even knowing she was doing it.