The man said hello back, with only a faint note of a question. Then he said, “You’re Rector, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“Been out cold for the last day or so, haven’t you?”
“I have.”
“Huh,” he said, and approached the same cabinets that Rector had so freshly raided. “I heard about your hair. Hard to miss a boy like you.”
“So I’m told.”
“I’m Jeremiah, but half the folks down here just call me Swakhammer,” he informed Rector, not looking at him. He was too busy rummaging, hunting for something in particular. Still facedown in the storage, he added, “The nurse who’s been looking after you—that’s my daughter.”
Rector said, “Ah. Yes. She seems to have done a bang-up job.”
“She always does. So, what about you?” Swakhammer turned around with a paper-wrapped piece of something smelly in his hands. Peeling the old newsprint aside, he revealed a slab of smoked salmon that Rector wished to God he’d seen first, because it’d be camped out in his stomach by now if he had.
“What about me?”
“Are you roaming around in the Vaults all by your lonesome?”
“For the moment,” Rector confirmed. “I’ve only been up a little while. I don’t guess you know where Huey or Zeke might be, do you?”
“Both of them are up at the fort, I think. Huey flies with the Naamah Darling more often than not, and Zeke is trying to learn something from the captain—or trying to keep from learning anything, I can’t tell which.” He bit off a hunk of fish, and held the rest by its wrapping. As he chewed, he leaned back against the counter and spoke around the mouthful. “You want me to take you up there? Or do you know the way?”
Somewhat relaxed by Swakhammer’s attitude, if not his appearance, Rector said, “That’d be fine, if you don’t mind showing me. I’ve only been there once, and I wasn’t half awake yet.”
“All right, then. Hey, that’s a real nice satchel you got there.”
Oh yes. Huey had said something about it being one of Swakhammer’s. “I understand it’s one of yours,” he said—might as well play it straight, for there was no arguing now. “I appreciate you letting me hang on to it. Or … Huey said you wouldn’t mind.”
“Yeah, I don’t care. Got a bunch of them. Scavenged them out of an old army post years ago. Can’t say enough for the Union’s craftsmanship; they sure do make good bags. I think those things would survive … well, shit. They survive in here, don’t they? That’s a recommendation for ’em. They ought to advertise it. They’d sell ’em by the pound. Come on, I’ll take you back to the fort.”
Rector hoped that the man with a cane would take an easier path than the nimble Houjin, and he was glad to see that Swakhammer did indeed skip the stairs when possible. “We’re going to go the easy way. I don’t feel like stomping over every hill and through every holler. Got myself tore up last year, and sometimes I think this leg will never heal all the way.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Wasn’t your fault. Anyhow, put on your mask, and I’ll put on mine. I say that to warn you: Mine is a real humdinger.”
As Rector extracted his own gear, he watched Swakhammer pull a huge contraption off a sling over his shoulder. It looked too big to be a mask, but wasn’t; and it didn’t look like a mask at first glance, but it was.
“Humdinger,” Rector echoed with a whistle. “Where’d you get that thing?”
Swakhammer shrugged himself into the mask. The contraption fell over his head, and its edges settled on his shoulders. With the adjustment of a few straps and buckles it was affixed firmly, if weirdly.
“How do I look?” he asked. Every word sounded like it came through a tin can on a string.
“Like…” Rector struggled for words. “Like a horse that someone put in a suit of armor. Sort of.”
Swakhammer laughed, which was also rendered into a metallic sound that came from far away.
“Good enough. I’ve heard ‘clockwork warthog’ more than once, but ‘horse’ is a first. This thing was made by Minnericht, rest his soul … or don’t, I don’t care. But I keep it around because I can breathe real good in it. Masks run small on a man with a neck like mine.”
Privately, Rector thought that Swakhammer had no neck at all. It was as if he’d been carved from a brick, all one set of lines.
“I wish we didn’t have to wear them down under here. Didn’t used to. But since the cave-ins, we’ve gotta do it just to be safe.”
As they walked together, Rector thought this might be a good time to put his salesman skills to work. Or were they detecting skills? He liked the idea of being a detective better. He wasn’t talking people into buying anything; he was asking for information, not money. And in his limited experience, people parted with information a whole lot easier.
“Mr. Swakhammer,” he broached. “How long do you think it’ll be until the underground’s safe for breathing again?”
“That partly depends on Yaozu and his men at the Station, and the Chinamen, too. I think we probably need them more than they need us, ’cause they got plenty of men and we don’t. But these shoring rigs”—he pointed at the ceiling, which sagged ominously despite a set of planks that had been braced to hold it—“they’re not worth a damn. Once those engineering fellows finish up in Chinatown—they’re fixing their own blocks first, you know how it goes—they’ll bring the equipment up here and we can buttress our ceiling all proper-like.”
“Equipment?”
“Mostly leftovers from when the Station was built. They’ve got steam-powered machines they’ve refitted to haul, lift, and brace. We couldn’t do it with sweat and elbow grease alone—not unless we had about a thousand more of us than we’ve got. The Chinamen got digging machines over there, too. I don’t understand it myself, but Huey was telling me that sometimes you gotta dig holes in order to fix holes. I just leave that sort of thinking to him.”
“He’s a smart one, that Huey.”
“I didn’t used to care for that kid, or any of the Chinatown folks. But after I got blown up last year, Doctor Wong put me back together. Now my daughter works with him, and she says he’s all right and I have to keep an open mind. So there you go. You can tell her when you see her that I’m keeping an open mind.”
Rector nodded and kept the easy pace set by the big man with the cane. They ducked beneath low-hanging boards and clumps of bricks that had once been arched, and stepped on hollow walkways made of planks where such walkways were available.
And before he could decide what to ask next, Swakhammer said almost softly—or so Rector thought, given the buzzing quality of his words—“I hope we get it fixed up soon. I want it to be safe. For Mercy, if not for me. I mean, if she’s going to be damn fool enough to stay here.”
Sensing an opening, Rector pounced. “Yaozu told me he’s working on it.”
Swakhammer drew up short, then continued. “That’s right, Zeke said he’d called for you, and you’d gone out to the Station. How’d that go, anyhow?”
“Not bad. Mostly he wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to make no trouble.”
“You got a reputation for doing that?”
“No sir, I don’t.
“Got a reputation for fibbing out loud, I bet.”
“Aw, that’s not called for,” Rector protested weakly. “I’m a salesman, is all.”
“Same thing.”
“No sir, it isn’t.”
Swakhammer made a sound that could’ve been a laugh, and pointed the way up a corridor. “Not much farther.”
Rector was glad he’d let it go. “Good. I’m still a little on the feeble side, myself. I don’t suppose there’s an easier way up topside…?” he broached.
“Sure, if you want to get eaten by rotters.” But something about the way he said it was uncertain.
“Ain’t seen hardly any rotters,” Rector pressed. “I heard there was scads of ’em here, but Yaozu said there aren’t as many as there used to be.”
Swakhammer stopped, and although nothing of his face could be seen inside that amazing mask, his posture suggested that he was thinking about this. “There’s truth to that. At first I figured it was my imagination, but now I’m not so sure. It’s the order of the day, though—things disappearing. People disappearing.”
“I don’t understand…?”
“Mercy will tell you all about it. It’s not a coincidence, not anymore.” Swakhammer shook his head, as if this was a subject he’d rather not consider. So he said, “It’s not just the rotters. The population up there”—he gestured with his hands as though he was feeling around for the right thing to say—“It’s changing. The rotters are disappearing, but there are more birds, and the rats are coming back.”
Rector shuddered. “Rotter rats and birds?”
“No, not exactly. The air’s different for them, I don’t know why. It makes them sick, real sick—like mad dogs. But it doesn’t kill them. It doesn’t leave them roaming brainless and dead.” He shifted his shoulders and resumed course, waving for Rector to come along. “I don’t know how they’re getting in.”
“What if they’re getting inside the same way the rotters are getting outside?”
“Who said rotters were getting outside?” Swakhammer asked quickly. Even through the mask, reading between the mechanical lines of his speech, Rector thought he sounded entirely too innocent.
“Nobody. I just thought, if there were fewer rotters, they must be going someplace. And like you said, there’s no place for them to go. Except out.”