Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (64 page)

Mark was pacing the small room. “I like where
this is going. A lot. My friends would be totally psyched for
something this weird and risky.”

“
We could have gifts,” said
Manassa. “I can grab leftover stuff from the boutique.”

“
And sex toys!” Ione added.
“We’ve got loads of manufacturing overruns!”

“
Which is perfect for what’s
gonna be goin’ down,” Emma grinned. “And me and Dean can get the
best swill.”

“
Gotta have that!” Ione
cheered, clinking bottles with her.

“
Lotta work though,” Dean
considered. “Who knows what the place is like inside? Have to do
some recon. Sneak in and look around.”

“
There’s plenty of mannermen
lurking in the area,” Manassa warned, daring them to admit fear.
“It’s right next to the park, after all.”

Mark emptied his bottle and slammed it on the
counter with tipsy bravado. “Fuck’em!”

“
I’ll come up with some new
music,” Dean promised. “The sleaziest grooves you can bounce out of
a kit.”

“
We can try some of the
crazy ideas you’ve been going on about,” Emma realized. “No Dowser
around to set the rules.”

They fell silent for a moment, contemplating
the glory.

“
Well?” Ione faced them
squarely.

“
I’m in,” Mark declared. “We
gotta do this. I need it.”

“
Me too,” Dean
concurred.

“
I have the perfect dress in
mind,” Manassa lilted.

Emma gleefully regarded her friends. “I don’t
have anywhere to be till tomorrow evening. We can start planning
now.”

And they did, drinking and scheming far into
the night.

Ione wiped a few beads of rain from her brow
and restlessly studied the moonlit cloudscape.

It had been sprinkling intermittently all day
long, and the possibility of getting drenched was a real flaw in
their plan for the evening. She absently cursed Mark’s boozy
machismo earlier that day, and her complicity in the result.

She was parked near the abandoned garment
warehouse they had chosen for their party, stationed such that she
had a good view of the structure without being obviously
interested. It was the middle of the night, and the streets around
her were almost barren of pedestrians. Traffic was minimal.

A hulking mannerman exited the misted
interior of the park to her left, brushed a little moisture from
the square shoulders of his crimson suit, slowly scanned the
environs, lingering on Ione for a moment, then strode off in a
direction that took him away from her position. Ione released an
unconsciously pent breath and settled back on the seat. This was
the third one she had seen, and she looked down, reflexively
verified the appropriateness of her full-length black and grey
dress. It was totally uncharacteristic of her style, conservative
to the point of dowdiness—but exactly the sort of thing mannermen
approved of on a woman. They had all agreed to adorn themselves in
unfamiliar attire on the theory that their enemies observed just
the transitory qualities of appearance, and therefore wouldn’t
connect their presence in the neighborhood from night to night.
This notion had directed their choice of transportation as well.
None of them were willing to risk being spotted in their own
cars.

But rather than borrow vehicles from their
friends—who might be unfairly associated with their risky
activities—Ione had convinced the others it would be more efficient
to go straight to the source. Her status with the Gnomon allowed
her to evaluate any vehicle he manufactured, and she and Mark had
spent the evening doing just that.

“
Get ready,” she said,
preparing to jump off the elevator as the production lot pulled
into view. Mark took her hand and they landed elegantly on the
floor where new automobiles were staged. A doorman nodded politely
to Ione.

“
We can try
anything?
” Mark
questioned, surveying countless sedans, convertibles, trucks and
vans, some of exceptionally high-status requirement They strolled
among the possibilities for a little, debating the virtues of
concealment versus speed.

“
I think we should grab this
thing,” Ione decided, gesturing to a purple van glinting with
chrome hardware. “All the space we need, and no one would
ever
connect it to us if
something went wrong.”

Mark seemed curiously distracted for some
reason. “Yeah… maybe. But there’s just one problem,” he admitted,
taking a swig from a pure stillwater flask.

“
What?”

“
Just before we got to this
floor we passed the one with gnomecycles. And it had a test
track.”

“
Oh. Okay. You wanna go
look?” she offered, estimating the time remaining before they were
due back at Manassa’s loft. Mark grinned.

They were shortly immersed in the world of
two-wheeled transport. Mark stepped down the line of new cycles,
which were ordered by size.

“
Look at this one,” Ione
chuckled, kicking the rear tire of a machine with dramatically
elevated handlebars. The gnome compactly arranged under the seat
was packaged by lustrous blue fairing that cleverly reprised its
kneeling posture. A bright tag pointed to the carefully hidden
finger hole that released the wheel lock. “Mark?” He was staring
down the line. Ione followed him to a pair of cycles at the
end.

“
Oh, Mark…” she sighed.
“No.”

“
Oh, Ione
yes
,” he sighed, unlocked
one and climbed on the gargantuan machine. Its rear tire was as
thick as his brawny thigh, and the gnome installed under the
three-rider seat had a dangerously capable air, seemed like
something that belonged in a truck.

“
We’re already dealing with
a lot of variables…”

He snickered. “Rendering one more
comparatively insignificant. Logically.”

Ione had observed that Mark usually invoked
the term “logic” when he was drastically abusing the concept.

He reached down and slapped a nipple. The
cycle jumped slightly. Nudging the kickstand back, his right foot
rose to the short-radius cranks and initiated a careful rotation to
put the machine in motion, establishing enough lateral balance to
get his other foot in play.

The gnomecycle prowled away from its place in
the line. Mark turned onto the test track and an instant later the
whole level resounded with the shriek of rubber as the gnome
delivered a colossal quantity of torque to launch the machine up on
one wheel.

“
Hoooyeahhh!” Mark
triumphantly roared, hurtling around the track in manly
exhilaration, and Ione succumbed to a sinking realization they
would be leaving with the thing. She glanced over to the remaining
unit in the lineup, guessing she was one of the rare women big
enough to command its mass. It couldn’t hurt to find
out…

They gathered at Manassa’s loft for their
final strategy meeting as the sun set on the valley and its
inhabitants. Her bar counter was occupied by a bricolage model of
the warehouse and its environs constructed mostly of bottlecaps,
which were produced by the dox and trix when they met to plan and
prepare and stage tipsy forays by moonlight for drive-by
intelligence.

The thrill of risky ambitions and the journey
of pursuing them had brought Ione and Emma closer than they had
been since their time in the Lap. On their last visit to Manassa’s
clothing boutique they had made love in the dressing room with an
urgency that left them both shy and giggling afterward. With Emma’s
arms around her waist, the burly mass of the cycle between her
thighs and danger in the air, Ione was happy on her own terms for
the first time in the metropolis. They had already informed
countless people when the party would take place, though not where
it would be held.

Now they were undertaking what was
potentially the riskiest part of the whole undertaking; finding a
way into the warehouse and surveying the interior. After some
last-moment alterations to the plan, they had dressed as agreed and
dispersed to the street. Manassa walked around the perimeter of the
park, which she often did anyway, and the others arrived at
different times on the gnomecycles. Dean had gone with Mark, Emma
with Ione.

Ione was pelted by a few worryingly thick
droplets, and she wondered if the weather would hold much longer.
Most days there was some precipitation, which was the reason
gnomecycles weren’t that popular in the first place.

Had they found a way in? Ione and Mark were
on lookout while the others tried to locate one of the
lock-releases hidden on every dwelling unit or building. The
warehouse was large enough to have several, but only patient
exploration would identify one, and they had to avoid notice while
they were about it. If there was trouble Ione and Mark would swoop
in on the cycles, grab the others and flee. That was the plan,
anyway.

Ione heard a soft noise from the sidewalk and
turned, expecting to see a late-night reveler. She almost yelped at
the mannerman staring back.

He was tall like them all, as big as Mark or
Dean, and stolidly impersonal added to that. His eyes carefully
scanned Ione top to bottom, seeking any defect of presentation,
memorizing her dress, her shoes and accouterments and the huge
machine she straddled as her pulse hammered in fear. Then he turned
away without a word, crossed the street and disappeared into the
forest. She exhaled slowly, glanced behind her to verify she was
alone.

Ione wondered as many times before who the
mannermen reported to. As far as she knew, every denizen of the
City ultimately belonged to the hierarchy of either the Gnomon or
Dowser. But the mannermen could not be readily connected to those
organizations, seemed to promote an almost antithetical philosophy
in their unflinching enforcement of dress codes. Manassa had
referred to a shadowy figure called the Merkin that held sway in
the “tent” she reported to for training, but the building really
seemed little more than a warehouse, and no one Ione questioned had
heard of the man. Few people came and went from this “tent”, and
Ione thought it unlikely that anyone with the authority of a judge
operated from within, despite Manassa’s puzzling insistence that it
housed many busily populated levels and a huge theater, all reached
by a hydraulic tube accessed on the lowest floor. The “tent”
comprised five stories at the most—it wasn’t much larger than the
warehouse they were canvassing now—but she claimed it took a long
time to make the ascent to the top using the flooded tunnel. It
made no sense.

She returned to the problem of the missing
power. Her experience in the Gnomon’s service had confirmed the
suspicion that he didn’t actively cooperate with the Dowser.
Everything was done through intermediaries functioning at the
boundary of their organizations. The rivalry seemed absolute; each
man was convinced he had founded the City! So how did they sidestep
the majority-rule mechanism that legitimized the notion of
individual equality anchoring their civilization?

Ione blinked, let the mystery slip away. She
had more important things to worry about, like partying with her
friends in dangerous places.

Which suddenly seemed more likely to happen.
Ione stared at the near side of the garment warehouse, unseen by
the glow gnome hanging further down the street and blotted in
darkness.

Yes! Someone was waving a flag.

Ione hastily verified there was no one
lurking behind her, then drew a foot up to the cranks and got the
gnomecycle moving silently down the road. She angled up onto a
grassy escarpment bounding the foundation and wheeled over to meet
Dean.

“
We’re in,” he whispered.
She could feel his tension, the excitement of reaching a major
goal, and grinned back uneasily. Mark rolled over to them a moment
later and Dean ushered them through a service entrance wide enough
to pass the cycles without difficulty, then shut and barred the
door behind them.

“
Look at this place,” Mark
gaped. Manassa was positioning a glow gnome, thumbed it on to issue
a reddish light about the big, atrium-like staging area they had
entered. A series of heavy girders spanned the ceiling, dangling
big canvas baskets by chains. Over to the right a huge sliding door
allowed trucks to enter directly. The three floors surrounding the
atrium were jammed with racks of apparel haphazardly ranging away
into darkness.

Ione stared onto a silent domain of laughably
outmoded clothing.

“
I never really knew what
happened to all the stuff we used to wear,” Dean mused, pensively
twirling a drumstick. “Guess it had to go somewhere.”

“
It’s weird… Gives me a sort
of vertigo just looking at it,” Ione murmured, touched by a hollow
sentiment she diagnosed as sadness a moment later. “But first
things first,” she charged, shaking off the effect. “Let’s make
sure we’re safe.”

They split up to examine the warehouse floor
by floor, wall by wall, cataloging all possible entrances—which
were helpfully minimal in number due to the fact it functioned as a
storage facility. Every breach was verified to be securely locked
from within, not merely rigged to a hidden catch like their point
of entry.

Ione wound up in the basement, where the
disheveled orderliness of racked and baled clothing on the higher
levels gave way to a chaos of unsorted garb piled up to her waist.
She could barely see by the thirdhand light issuing down a wide
ramp, and a dank odor permeated the level.