Authors: Andrew Vachss
Tags: #Collections & Anthologies, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction, #Suspense, #Thrillers, #General
Image of the Charter sliding through darkness toward the sound of a child sobbing. A man is standing, a knotted cord of some kind in his hand, lashing down
.
THE MAN WITH THE WHIP
You like
that
, you little—?
The Charter looms out of the shadows, a black-bladed knife in his hand
.
FADE OUT
FADE IN
CHARTER
(V/O)
That first time, I thought I could stop the crying by taking the heart that was closed. If I took the heart, the crying would stop.
Image of the Conveyor pulling to a stop. SANITATION is marked on its front. It stops, robotic arms lift the body of the man the Charter had stabbed. It moves silently away
.
CHARTER
(V/O)
But I could never be sure. Not certain-sure.
IMAGE:
A group of people all wearing white jumpsuits enter the area where the Charter killed the man with the whip. They grab the crying child and carry him to a conveyor. A train marked
HydroFarm
stops. The creatures in the white jumpsuits toss the child inside
.
IMAGE:
The Charter, standing invisibly in a tunnel, using an infrared scope to scan the HydroFarm
.
CHARTER
(V/O)
At first, I couldn’t see the baby. The HydroFarm is too big, and he’d be too young to work, anyway. Then I spotted him. One of the Enforcers was holding him. But he was still crying. I don’t know if he ever stopped.
CUT TO:
The Charter standing outside a room, listening to a child cry. Inside, a woman is screaming a torrent of verbal abuse. The Charter settles in to wait
.
BACK IN TO:
Same exact spot. The Charter ghosts his way into the room. When he comes back out, he is carrying a female child
.
CUT TO:
Interior of the Charter’s cave. He is cuddling the child. They are both asleep
.
CUT TO:
Shot of the Charter talking to the child. She is animated; no longer crying
.
CUT TO:
The Charter is back outside the room where he took the child. This time; his knife is unsheathed
.
FADE OUT
FADE IN
Distinct sense that time has passed
A tunnel full of children. The older ones are caring for the younger ones. Some are grave, some are cheerful. None are frightened
.
A different Charter approaches (this tells us that the tunnel itself is in the Uncharted Zone). The new Charter is still some distance away when a squeaking sound fills the tunnel. Mutated rats, the size of dogs
.
CHARTER
(V/O)
Charters are supposed to stay out until they find a new tunnel. Sometimes, they’re gone for fifty cycles, even more. But I always take them early, just past the perimeter. If they don’t come back, the Rulers are never surprised: Zone Rats are dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as the Traxyls who feed on them.
Charters are supposed to always leave a trail behind them. That way, if they don’t come back, the next Charter can find the body … and pick up where the last one left off. That’s why I always make sure to change their markings after I kill them.
CUT TO:
Children feeding a mixed pack of vicious-looking dogs. They treat the dogs like puppies, and the dogs frolic like puppies, too
.
A rat-squeak is heard. The ears on several of the dogs shoot up. The entire pack charges out of the tunnel, as purposeful as a guided missile
.
CHARTER
(V/O)
The Rulers don’t have this tunnel on any of their charts. One of the little girls I took called it the Tunnel of Love. Now we all call it that.
When the first children get old enough, I will teach them to do what I do. Some will be Charters,
but Charters for
us
, not the Rulers. Some will be Enforcers, but Enforcers for
us
, not the Rulers.
There will always be children who belong with us.
They will all have jobs. Not jobs the Rulers make children do, jobs they want to do. Having a job makes you feel good. Even the dogs know this.
If we live, someday there will be many of us. But if the Rulers find us before we are ready, they will make everything we build disappear.
That’s why I have to make this record.
ANDROGYNOUS INDIVIDUAL
(speaking from the podium)
By this we learn that the only true records are
tested
accounts. Truth may be written. Truth may be spoken. Just as lies may be written or spoken. The only test for truth is not what is written, or what is said. The test is what has been
done
.
FADE TO BLACK
FADE IN:
INT: The Gathering Hall
A couple stands at the podium; both Native American in appearance. The man is wearing black-lensed goggles; the woman is facially scarred, but with clear eyes. Blue eyes
.
COUPLE AT PODIUM
(woman speaking, man nodding as she does)
Shall it be Axel, then?
They step aside as an extremely muscular man strides purposefully to the podium. His head is shaven, nose crooked, face a roadmap of battle scars. When we close in on his hands gripping the podium, we see the first two knuckles of each hand are raised and are a bluish color
.
AXEL
(facing the audience as if ready for battle)
The Book of Obligations takes many, many spans to learn. Not all those who enter the school remain. Those who do are tested. I stand here now with the pride of one who has been granted the honor of carrying the burden of truth.
FADE OUT as Axel begins to speak
FADE IN ON VOICE (speaker not visible: voice of an older teen, speaking in that half-knowledgeable, half-superior air of an adolescent speaking to a younger boy, just on the cusp of puberty)
NARRATOR
You have to know how things work if you want to survive here. There’s the Rules; and there’s the Truth. You need to know both. And how to tell them apart.
Everybody writes on the walls, but only the Book Boys have this special blue paint. Whatever they write doesn’t always stay up on the walls, but their messages can’t really be removed, because everybody in Underground knows: If it’s written in Blue, it must be True.
The Guardians protect the Book Boys. Anyone can write on the walls, but there’s two things you can’t ever do: you can’t mess up what the
Book Boys write, and you can’t sign their tag to anything you write yourself.
COME UP ON:
A group of young people, all dressed for combat, but not in the matching uniforms favored by crews. They are making their way through a tunnel
.
NARRATOR
(V/O, depicting what he speaks)
The Guardians are a mixed crew. Most crews have only boys or girls. Some of them allow only one skin/shade band—the Turf crews are the strictest about that. The Guardians don’t care about stuff like that, but, remember, they’re still a crew, so they can’t punish you the way the Rulers can. The Guardians can’t send you to the HydroFarm. They can’t send you Outside, either.
But if you mess up what the Book Boys write, they
will
hurt you.
CUT TO:
A pair of Dancing Girls, standing on either side of a Book Boys message:
TAKING EARS WON’T KILL YOUR FEARS
The girls each pull out a can of black spray paint and begin to black out the blue writing
.
The Guardians descend on them, mercilessly. When they walk away, the two Dancing Girls are lying on the ground, bloody and beaten
.
NARRATOR
And if you claim a Book Boys tag …
CUT TO:
A youth is spraying
MUSIC BOYS RULE!
in blue. His work is skillful: not perfect, but a close imitation of the distinct Book Boys script
.
One of the Guardians steps away from the pack. She aims a small crossbow. The arrow hits the Music Boy in the back of his neck. Another Guardian runs close and swings a heavy machete, neatly decapitating the Music Boy
.
They leave the Music Boy’s dead body beneath what he wrote—a message of their own
.
NARRATOR
What the Guardians do is against the Rules. They get caught at it, too. Every once in a while, you see it on the Info-Board. That’s where they announce the Crimes and Punishments.
Everybody knows the Crimes.
Everybody knows the Punishments.
But nobody knows who the Guardians are.
CUT TO:
A Guardian being subjected to electric shock torture. She is strapped to a gurney, convulsing. A hooded man comes into view
.
HOODED MAN
All you have to do is tell us. You’re going to tell us anyway—why go through all this pain?
GUARDIAN GIRL
You don’t know what pain is, you little maggot. But you will soon. When the Book Boys write
your
name on the walls, you’ll see—
The Hooded Man recoils just as another jolt hits the Guardian Girl … killing her
.
FADE TO BLACK
OPEN TO A LARGE MESSAGE FROM THE BOOK BOYS
LM24-GG77-6A29
TUNNEL 29
BLOCK 7
CAVE 4
PAN DOWN TO: The supine body of a man, pinned to the ground by a heavy steel spike driven through his body, obviously by the sledge hammer propped against the wall. A black hood lies just past his fingertips
.
NARRATOR
Nobody knows why they’re called the Book Boys—everybody knows some of them are girls. But not
which
girls, of course. The Book Boys are invisible. They write the truth, so they have to be everywhere the truth is.
Whispers say the Rulers sent so many of them Outside that there’s a whole colony of Book Boys there.
That could be true. The Book Boys write about Outside sometimes; maybe that’s where they get it from.
There’s no way to know.
CUT TO:
Various shots of different crews spraying on the walls. The usual gang-turf graffiti
.
NARRATOR
Lots of turf crews write on the walls, but nobody pays attention. Like when they claim a Tunnel … as if anyone could own a Tunnel except the Rulers! Well, maybe in the Uncharted Zone, but who would ever know
that
?
Turf crew names are just stupid. They don’t tell you anything about them, the way other crew names do. Like the Golden Dragons. What does that tell you? It doesn’t mean they’re all skin/shade band 70, like gold. And everyone knows giant lizards can only live Outside anyway, where there is light coming down on you even without the generators. At least that’s the way it was before the Terror. That’s what the Book Boys say.
The Turf crews fight each other, too. That’s
all
they do. You can watch it happening. Not the fighting, the score: you read it on the walls. One Turf crew will write that they own something. Another crew will cross out what they wrote. That goes on for a while, one crew slashing over what another crew writes. On and on. Until, finally, one crew writes something and it stays there. That means they won.
But nothing like that ever stays too long.
People say the Turf crews did the same thing before the Terror.
CUT TO:
Two turf crews moving toward each other, in classic rumble style
.
NARRATOR
But that’s too stupid to believe. I mean, why would they kill each other over something they could never really own? That’s as stupid as them saying they own a Tunnel.
You learn the Big Rules first. Because if you break one of the Big Rules, you go to the HydroFarm … if you’re lucky.
There are other Rules too. So many Rules, you could never learn them all. You’re supposed to ask if you don’t know. You can’t ask the Rulers—nobody has ever seen one of them. But in every Tunnel there are little pockets all along the walls. Just little indentations, not deep enough to be caves.
SHOW:
Inside one of those indentations. It has no door, and contains nothing but a murkily viewed person seated behind a desk, which stands between the person and whoever enters. A flat screen sits on the desk, facing the person behind it
.
A teenager with a shaved head steps into the indentation, his muscular upper body covered only by a lilac-colored vest. A small tattoo of some kind is visible on the back of his neck
.
TEENAGER
Is there a Rule about lifting weights?
PERSON BEHIND DESK
(taps some keys, looks at the screen)
No.
(He hands the teenager a piece of paper.)
Sign at the bottom. Your index number, not your
name. This signifies that you asked a Rules Question, and the answer was given to you.
The Teenager signs
.
PERSON BEHIND DESK
Give me your card. You get two credits for asking a Rules Question. Not Open Credits—you have to say what you want them for before they’re loaded into your card.
TEENAGER
The Sex Tunnel.
NARRATOR
The people who explain the Rules to you are called Bureaucrats. There are lots of them. They come in every skin/shade, but they all look alike. I mean, they don’t all have the same faces, but all their faces have the same look.
I once asked a Bureaucrat about the reason for a certain Rule. He told me that was against the Rules, asking for reasons. But he gave me the two credits after I signed the paper, because even though I didn’t ask a Rules question, I got a Rules answer.