So Moves The Blossoming Mountain

Extract from ‘The Mani Wars of Antiquity’, Chapter 7: Undertows

The great thread of slums that fester beneath almost all of the floating cities are formed when the Upperworlds are wrenched up and out of the ground. Often flanked by sunken cliffs that rise up to meet the underside of the hovering domes above them, these unfortunate Undertows see little natural sunlight and are sunken, vice-riddled places. Where fizzing coal plant quarters belch pollution across some of these opaque favelas, others are illuminated almost entirely by torchlight. But what sticks with you, above all, is the sharp and fetid stench of their filthy, rancid streets and the cut-purse mentality of its many thousand whore-born children.

The orphan boy Harry Petrucci whistled down a dilapidated side-street. He held a slice of salt-dough wrapped in old newspaper in one hand, and a tin can of ale in the other. It sloshed around slightly as he stepped over the grimy detritus that lined the cracking firestone pavement.

Walking eagerly, skipping every other step, the bustling chorus of the busy strip to his right grew louder, fill- ing him with a stifled excitement. Turning toward the dim light at the nearest corner and jumping over a mysterious stain on the pavement, he emerged into Corso Nero - central artery of The Undertow. Its wide road stretched out ahead, and the amalgamated orange luminescence of torchlight and neon beamed up and out as the rusting food stalls of the central periphery whooshed with occasional flames, spitting hot fat into the street and filling the air with the fierce married spices of Southern cuisine.

He weaved his way through groupings of little makeshift chairs and tables, brushing past four pot-bellied Southerners who gambled as they ate and swore jovially in his native dialect. Above them all, imperious, hung the darkling inverted dome of the hovering city’s underside. It had just begun to glimmer with artificial stars made by small lights built into the vast sloping facade, and they glistened authentically as the giant bel- ly of the Upperworld sloped away to meet the shadowy cliffs that rose up behind the Undertow’s uneven skyline.

He walked along the street and headed for the orphan stoop, a while down the road. Beside him, carry-chairs with bodyguards grunted along the road, and here and there long metal machinas juddered slowly past. He looked back at it and admired its tawdry splendour, before turning twice into quieter side-streets full of kiwi stalls and herbalists.

Soon the smell of the dump grew stronger. Turning twice again, he dodged through a little residential piazza where young children hid from one another, laughing among the hanging linens and silk-cloth lines that crossed the square. Turning into Urchin Street and slipping on some rancid juice, he looked up. Ahead of him, twenty boys, maybe more, sat around in a semi-circle amidst the muck and litter. They were listening intently to a slightly older boy, Mallone O'Keefe, who looked up from where he was standing and smiled:

‘Harry! Alright mate?’ He held a hand up.

Harry smiled and greeted his friends and showed off his ale before taking a seat on a grimy rubbish pale. Mallone followed him with his eyes and drew breath.

‘Alright, Harry?’ Mallone was the oldest; His eyes were sharp and bright blue. Tall and lithe, the impression of a beard was beginning to take hold on his chin, and he wore a tattered hat. He was holding court passion- ately, as ever.

‘So I was saying. This well-to-do woman comes in the hotel on Monday, right...and she’s there with this girl...’ he stopped briefly as the urchins on the stoop nudged one another suggestively, ‘And let me tell you, this girl, beautiful. This one, she was summin' else. Rich as fish can be in The Undertow, you know, from one of the factory dads outside the boxer quarters I reckon. Maybe even...’ He pointed above him at the un- derside of the dome, which was turning deep indigo now as evening descended in full.

‘An Upworlder?’ One of the smaller boys half-stood up in disbelief.

Mallone paused for effect and smiled: ‘Blue eyes, boys.’ The stoop gasped and mouthed ‘wow’ to one anoth- er. Blue eyes? They’d only ever heard of such a thing. Mallone nodded to himself and took a sip of his ale, before wiping his lips on a sleeve: ‘So anyway...so this older woman, pretty well-to-do as I say, fussy and... hurryin’ about...so she comes in the hotel and goes to the barman, that twat, asking for prices on a party, right? I didn’t hear much as I was cleanin up the floor. As fuckin’ always...’

The boys tittered sympathetically. Almost all of them worked as cleaners or dish-hands in brothels posturing as hotels. Harry watched them all quietly, an air of frustration overcoming him. How easily they were taken in by these tall tales every week.

‘So I was cleaning up this muck’, Mallone continued, ‘And I hear more. They say they want to speak to the manager. So out comes Il Coglione.’

The stoop erupted into cheers of derision. Mallone had known it was coming, as it did every week, the irre- pressible running joke, and as always he adopted his impersonation of his manager, stiffening his upper lip and chin, narrowing an eye meretriciously and striding forcefully back and forth. The stoop was chanting ‘Il Coglione’ loudly in unison, clinking their tin cans and guzzling, ’And he walks up to this rich bitch and he says ‘So how can I help this oh so beautiful one?’’ And I thought, ‘You Jabroney!’

The stoop exploded again into humour and chanting, one young boy spitting his beer onto the street with laughter before Mallone appealed playfully for silence.

‘Anyway, anyway. Yeah, so I’m cleaning and I’m listening and I hear them talk about a party. And they sit in one of the booths and get champagne ordered over and now I can’t hear them, right? So what do I do?’ Mal- lone held his hands out to the entranced faces on the stoop.

‘So I creep up to the opening. I creep right up there.’ He gestured out to the boys, his hands alive: ‘And they’re making plans for a party in the hotel. And they talk about it, and this woman, this woman IS rich. I’m listening there and they talk about acrobats and fire-eaters, music, and a free bar, free food! All the while this beautiful girl sits there, says nothin. Just listens with her arms crossed. Moody girl.’ He stopped briefly, al- most thoughtfully, smiling to himself, before snapping his head back to the group: ‘So I listen some more and they agree and they shake hands. And they set a date. It’s a birthday party. For the girl. And you know when it is?'

The boys on the stoop waited eagerly for the answer as Mallone jabbed a finger at the ground and smiled: ‘Tonight.’ The boys looked at one another and then back at Mallone. His face had changed. He was serious. ‘Who’s comin’?’

He looked out at the boys on the stoop, who raised their eyebrows, their eyes darting from side to side in bewilderment. Harry looked out at the sea of confused faces, his face a similar countenance of vexation, and spoke up: ’Won’t you get sacked if they find you there?’

‘I don’t work there no more.’ Mallone said, turning to him and glaring intently. The stoop gasped. Harry’s eyes widened.

‘What?’

‘I don’t work there no more.’ Mallone repeated, proudly.

‘Why?’

‘I quit.’ The stoop gasped into silence. Harry’s eyes narrowed.

‘No you didn’t.’ Harry said, looking away: ‘Not possible. No you didn’t.’ He half-laughed to himself. ‘Yeah I did!’ Mallone asserted. This was getting aggressive.

Harry was unmoved, and his eyes creased in circumspection. ‘Why?’ He asked.

‘Because Il Coglione is a coglione.’

Silence. Nobody in the history of the stoop had ever, EVER quit. This was no joke.

‘So you movin back to the dump shacks? Here?’ Harry gestured out to the crude metal shanty houses stacked atop of one-another. Behind them, silhouetted by the neon light of a brothel, stood mounds of garbage: dis- carded clothing, trinkets, and towering heaps of putrid food.

‘I ain’t thinkin’ about that right now.’ Mallone waved away the investigation with a cavalier hand and turned to the other boys on the stoop:

‘Come on lads, there’ll be girls in there. Nothing like the girls in the brothels, nothing like ‘em! I’ve seen them, dressed in these blues and yellows, they’re like the birds on the plains in summer...I want...they’re beautiful.’ He looked up at the twinkling dome above him, sequestering into impressions of the night sky as the distant lights on its underside shone clearer, whiter against the twilight. He snapped his head back down and pointed a finger at the urchins: ‘Now look, you can sit here saving up to fuck the prozzies if you really want, and do it on a bed soaked in piss to the sound of the aerodome, but I’m not having that. There’s girls there. Top drawer girls.’

Harry pressed his inspection.

‘Mally, I never heard of an urchin quitting. Ever.’

Mallone sighed in frustration and half-turned to Harry: ‘So I’m the first! Fuckin hell, Harry!’

‘What did you do?’

‘I quit.’ Mallone said, firmly. ‘Look, if you don’t fucking believe me, don’t fucking come. Alright?'

Mallone turned to the other boys and continued his argument. Harry shook his head slightly, and took a swig of Eastern moonshine. It scratched his throat. He took a bite of the salt-dough to cover the taste, when a piece of gristle crunched in his teeth and he winced. Picking it out, he grimaced, still listening as Mallone painted a world of opulent delights and exotic women. He spoke up:

‘Mally, I never said I wasn’t up for it, but I need to know what you did if I’m gonna come. If you tried to steal or got caught scammin...’

‘Look alright.’ He turned to face Harry: ‘I don’t even know what I did. I pissed off Gloriana and she flipped out, scratching at the door and shouting about her kid. And she wouldn’t shut up. Days of it. They said she wouldn’t stop, that I had to go because the customers could hear. And I said ‘just fucking chuck her out the door, she’s fucking nuts anyway.’’

The stoop laughed nervously. Gloriana the wretched dish-hand was well known from Mallone’s weekly sto- ries.

‘How’d you piss her off?’ Harry asked, inspecting his salt-dough and picking out mysterious lumps, flicking them aside with disgust. His capricious, occasional disinterest in Mallone’s stories made him unpopular with other urchins on the stoop, eager to enter the romantic world he painted to escape where they lived and worked. Mallone wafted a hand up into the sky in dismissal.

‘She was banging on about her fucking son again. It was pissing the customers off so I screamed at her to shut it. Down the laundry shaft.’ Mallone shifted his feet anxiously then caught Harry’s eye after speaking. The other boys on the stoop were tittering into their opaque bottles of alcohol; the story wasn’t finished.

‘Then she flipped out. Screamin’ my name, chuckin plates. It’s a good fuckin thing they lock the door to the dishands, she was goin’ mental. ‘MALLONE! MALLONE!’ Wouldn’t shut up.’

‘And so they sacked you?’

‘After a few days of it. I said ‘Why don’t you get rid of the nutcase?’ and Il Coglione just said I knew why that couldn’t happen.’

‘You said you quit.’ Harry said, catching Mallone’s eyes and stopping him dead. A silence loomed over the stoop. A lot of the boys now looked back at Mallone, who was clenching his fists. His knuckles were turning white.

‘So I was sacked. Alright?’ He turned to Harry: ‘Alright!?’

‘That changes it a bit, mate.’

‘Oh yeah? Does it!?’

‘Of course it does. You’re pissed off at them so you wanna go back, show ‘em you’re...’

‘Watch your tone, Hazza.’ Mallone snapped: ‘I got sacked. That’s that.’

‘I don’t buy it, Mally. You got sacked for shoutin’ at Gloriana? You told us you done that hundreds of times.’

Mallone was heaving. His breath was quick and his eyes fierce, holding Harry’s gaze. Harry looked up and held his head back; he hadn’t noticed the rage his friend was in.

‘I...’ Harry trailed off as Mallone took out a cigarette and a fractured old lighter from the same packet. He stared at Harry intently as he smoked, his hands almost shaking, as Harry nodded to himself. He knew the sign, knew what the cigarette meant. The entire stoop was silent .

‘Ok. I buy it.’, Harry said: ‘What happened, mate?’

Mallone waited a few moments and breathed in heavily, before blowing smoke out at the dome above him. He cracked his neck to one side and closed his eyes, opening them with renewed vigour, though a resigna- tion flavoured his explanation: ‘I dunno what was different this time. But she flipped the fuck out, mate. Started screaming. Seemed like she knew whenever I turned up for a shift. She was mental, scratching the door, smashing plates an’ all that. Fuckin crazy.’

Harry’s look was one of vexation initially, before the rest of the stoop turned to look at him. He sighed as he looked over at Mallone, whose demeanour appealed to him to stop what he was doing and play along. The cigarette was always a symbol of that. He sighed.

‘Makes sense, mate. So this party, then? In the hotel? How you plan on getting in?'

Mallone smiled and used his cigarette to point at Harry, his theatrical persona returning: ‘The kitchens.’

At this, one of the other boys, Reggie, a leaner, somewhat muscular boy with dirt on the side of his face from a day shovelling rocks in the mines, an Easterner with fractured Alatempo, spoke up: ‘In’t Gloriana in de kitchen?’ He said: ‘You say she work near de kitchen!’

Mallone tutted: ‘Psscht! I don’t plan to just stroll in there, Reg!’

Murmurs greeted this; the stoop was awash with indecision and discomfort. Mallone often had good ideas to make extra money on the side, and he was the undisputed superior to a pack of boys who had learned the hard way to do as they were told, but the prospect of being caught, arrested, sacked from their various jobs - laborious and unsafe as many of them were - was not appealing. Moreover, and most terrifying of all: they’d be drafted to the prison ships.

‘But...we look wrong...’ Reggie continued: ‘How we gunna fit in wit de upworlder bois?’

Mallone smiled: ‘Little Pete.’

‘Who?’ Reggie echoed.

‘Little Pete...Old friend. Works in a tailors now. They took him on cos of his size.’ Mallone said, squatting onto his haunches occasionally as some of the other boys began to talk among themselves. There was a rab- ble for some time as Mallone looked over to Harry for help. Harry sighed.

‘So he’s bringing suits I guess.’ Harry began, his tone flat, wafting a hand lazily at Mallone to continue.

‘Yeah, fella’s got us some suits!’ Mallone said, triumphantly.

‘And why’s that, Mallone?’ Harry asked. He had retreated into himself and was thoughtfully enduring the harsh flavours of his moonshine; barely putting in the effort required to ask the questions Mallone needed. Mallone put the cigarette out.

‘Because he owes me.’ Mallone continued: ‘Remember he got caught stealin? Remember that story?’

‘I remember the story where you put money you stole in his pocket to avoid getting caught.’ Harry mumbled to himself quietly.

Nobody heard him. Mallone continued to tell them about how Pete was bringing suits; he grinned and some of the other boys laughed. His smile was broad and kind, though a subtle lining of devilry usually flavoured it. Mallone’s charisma was difficult to resist when he was in the right mood.

‘So he owes me.’ Mallone said, turning and pacing, still gesticulating: ‘Bringing the suits tonight. So...’ He looked out at the urchins on the stoop. Many were finishing their sourdoughs. Their heads were down. Eyes avoided Mallone’s gaze, and a leaden silence reigned as a stray gust of wind uplifted the corners of tattered newspapers, sodden with rotten oils.

‘Come on, lads!’ Mallone implored, a clear longing to soar above the drudgery and poverty evident in his pleading. Nothing. His shoulders fell and he looked down to the floor, when suddenly a voice down the end of the alleyway made him look up.

‘Mally? It’s Little Pete!’

Mallone turned and his expression seemed to switch almost instantly to one of relief and anticipation.

‘Pete! Come down!’

The teenager ran over to them - a huge young man with soft features; kind green eyes and curls of brown hair. His cheeks were red and he ran awkwardly down the street, almost tripping, before arriving in front of them.

‘Alright lads!’ He gasped, panting heavily.

One of the urchins on the stoop snickered as Pete lumbered toward them, scoffing at the giant’s odd gait and baby face, and a few others laughed. Mallone turned and glared at the urchins fiercely. They shrank and looked away, as Mallone kept his eyes on him and a brief silence emerged: the silence of a scolding. Satis- fied, Mallone turned his head slowly back to Pete, his austere expression shifting to something kinder.

‘Pete!’ He laughed: ‘How’s it goin? You got the suits, then?’ Mallone asked, pointing to the paper bags he carried.

‘Yeah.’ He said, putting them down and panting slightly: ‘It was...a nightmare...gettin ‘em here...’

Mallone walked towards him: ‘Great work, mate. Great work.’ He began rummaging through the bags and lifted out a blazers - a navy blue summer jacket, cheap, but not tawdry. ‘Look at that! Class!’ He held it up to the urchins on the stoop, many of whom shifted anxiously.

‘Don’t take them out like that.’ Pete said, grabbing the blazer from him and stuffing it back into the bag: ‘Anyone sees me with these, I’m sacked.’ He rose with the bags at his feet and smiled.

‘How many you got?’ Mallone said.

‘Four. Maybe five if we...well...no, four. Who’s comin?’ Pete was stuffing the suit jacket back into its bag, ripping it slightly.

Harry came over to the Mallone as the rest of the urchins milled uneasily behind them all. He said nothing, ushering Mallone away from the colossal Little Pete, who had begun to walk over to where the urchins sat. They parted for him, more out of fear he may stumble into them than respect. Mallone nodded, and he and Harry turned a corner into a shady alleyway, moving out of earshot of the stoop. Halfway down Mallone stopped and glowered.

‘What?’ He said.

‘This is the truth? It’s not some scam?’ Harry’s whispers were rasped.

‘Yup.’ Mallone took out a cigarette was an air of nonchalance, leaned on the wall, and put it behind his ears.

He crossed his arms and took Harry’s gaze once more. Harry’s eyes were admonishing.

‘You gotta get here earlier, Hazza. I gotta tell you about these plans before the rest so we can figure out the sell.’

‘I can’t get here earlier, Mally. And, leveller Mally, this plan? You’re actually goin’ in? What are you gonna steal?’ He was whispering slightly to avoid anyone else hearing.

Mallone smiled back at him and winked: ‘The girl.’

Harry sighed: ‘You’re lyin’. About somethin'.’

Mallone said nothing for a time. He started to speak and then stopped, and he looked up and down at Harry, away, back toward the stoop. He shifted his feet and rocked to and fro.

‘You’re lyin.’ Harry repeated: ‘I ain’t like those other lads, Mally. Don’t lie to me.’

‘Fuck you, Petrucci. When the fuck have I ever lied to you? When?’ Mallone stared him in the eye. Harry couldn't meet his gaze, his eyes fixed on the floor.

‘You’re risking everythin, Mally. We get caught, you know what happens. Just so you can get a girl?’ Harry sighed. ‘I dunno what’s goin’ on with you today. You get sacked... if you even got sacked...’

‘I did.’ Mallone said: ‘I did get sacked, Hazza. I got no job now.’

‘But you lied about it. Said you quit. You lie about it to me...then this plan...’ He turned to Mallone: ‘Look, if it’s a quick one-nighter you’re after here Mally, there’s safer ways to get ‘em...’

‘Yeah? The marked ones from the brothels? The ones with their faces burned or their eyes poked out?’ He shook his head: ‘Sorry mate, fuck that.’

‘Not just them. We could...’

‘How old are you now, Harry?’ Mallone asked, taking the cigarette from his ear and lighting it.

‘I...’ Harry looked down again and his brow furrowed, as Mallone blew out a plume of smoke and coughed slightly: ‘I was 13 when I had papers.’

‘15, 16. Somethin' like that. And all the choice we have is the marked girls or the whores.’ Mallone stopped leaning on the wall as Harry’s head was still trained on the ground, deep in thought.

‘Look.’ He started, moving closer to Harry and putting an arm on his shoulder, turning him to face the en- trance to the alleyway they had just entered: ‘Those boys on the stoop, the other urchins. They’re done. Fucked. I can’t help ‘em if they don’t wanna be helped.’ Suddenly, a distant creak from behind them saw an older man come out of a door down the street.

‘Now.’ Mallone said, putting his arm around Harry’s shoulder and turning him around to look further downthe alleyway: ‘My fuckin point exactly. See that bloke there?’

Harry turned and saw an old man setting up a stool to sit on, surrounded by the inner tubing of bicycle wheels. He was old; so old his eyes were heavy and thin, and his clothes were dirty. Mallone continued.

‘So I get here one day, ‘bout two, three weeks ago, before you boys. Tyre’s gone on my bike, so I go over to him and plead my case; say I’m an orphan, got no money - true at the time, I should say - that without my bike I can’t work. Gave it everythin, which as you know...’ Mallone brought out a lighter and lit his cig- arette: ‘Is a lot.’

‘So I finished talking and he insisted on money. We haggled, and I got him down to half price, and he starts fixing it and tells me his life story. Says he went to half price cos he was an orphan, that he’d worked at that bike shop over there for 50 years.’ Mallone pointed over to the bike shop where the old man was working. His withered face seemed to stop suddenly, to squint over at them, until he went back to preparing his stall.

Mallone turned to Harry: ‘He’s almost blind now. I asked him: ‘Your wife?’ ‘Never had the money for that’, he said.’ Mallone breathed smoke out of his mouth and leaned his head back on the dirty blackened wall of the alleyway: ‘Said he’d spent each day workin’ there. Never been out of the quarter, let alone the fucking edge of the city. Said he used the whores sometimes, saving for months.’ Mallone threw the cigarette on the floor and looking up at Harry: ‘For months.’ He emphasised.

Harry glanced over again at the old man, who himself was smoking the remnant of a cigarette butt and look- ing up into the sky at the flickering pseudo-stars twinkling on the dome above them.

‘Now then.’ Mallone said: ‘That’ll be our boys on the stoop in 50 years. Here comes his boss, look.’ Mallone jerked his head up slightly at the shop.

The old man’s boss arrived through the burgeoning night-fog that plagued the evening streets of the Under- tow. A younger man, fatter, with the light skin and tacky suit of an Eastern businessman, he immediately started shouting at the old man; pointing to the cigarette and hurling muffled insults in the rocky dialects of the Eastern patois. Buckling hurriedly, the old man threw his cigarette away, fell to his knees and put his hands together. After a moment, the boss mouthed something too quiet to hear, shaking his head, before heading into the shop and slamming the door. The old man shivered back to his feet, his shoulders down and his hat in his hands. Slowly, with a sort of taught resignation, he sat back down behind the dusty tyre tubes, the false smile on his face the only thing that stood between him and tears.

‘Thanks for your fucking life, mate.’ Mallone said: ‘What do you get in return? A bollocking. Well, fuck that, Harry. I’d rather Aeronaughts than that.’

Harry turned back to Mallone and looked past him to the wall.

‘Harry, you’re clever enough to know a scam when you see one. And this one’s bein’ played on you.’

Harry said nothing, his fists clenched at the sort of injustice he was a routine victim of. Mallone let him go and continued, walking ahead and pointing up at a towering building in the distance, illuminated by electric lights along its edges. ‘Hazza, The girl I talked about earlier is real. I saw her. And not only that, there’ll be people there with influence. Can get us out of here, if we play our cards right.’

Harry was still lost in thought, but this final sentence seemed to bring him round. He caught Mallone’s gaze.

‘Alright.’ Harry began, still sombre: ‘I’ll go. To keep you out of the shit, at least.’

‘Aha! Harry, my boy!’

Mallone grabbed Harry by the head and ruffled his hair.

‘You have earned a toke on my cigarette, my friend.’ Mallone held out his cigarette to Harry, smiling, as Harry smiled back, when suddenly he stopped.

‘Give us a whole one and I’ll figure it all out for you.’ He said, sighing.

‘Now here’s a boy who knows how to get it!’ Mallone answered, removing an old packet he used for cig- arette butts, and any full ones he was able to trade, before offering Harry its contents. Harry withdrew a full cigarette, slightly flattened, and lit it.

‘You enjoy that.’ Mallone said, half-turning the corner to the stoop: ‘I’m gonna go preach Upworld to the damned.’ And with that, he slipped away. Harry turned and watched the old man rocking back and forth on a plastic stool, now and then running his hands over his head anxiously. Behind him, the lights of the electric quarter were beginning to turn on. The hotel Mallone used to work at glowed resplendent in the distance as Harry threw his cigarette to the floor, stared up at the phoney stars, and sighed.