by Sara Genge
Much like his early twentieth-century namesake, an odd little boy living in the same desolate future as the author’s 2009 tale “Shoes to Run” decides that he, too, may never grow up.
When the nanners wake, so does Malick. He feels rather than sees them, filling the space around him, feeding stuff into his head. It’s taken him years to realize that only he can hear their voice different inside his skull. Most of the time they behave, letting him keep his own train of thought. But the nanners always have something to say, always, always, chit-chat. They call it education. Some days, he hates them.
He’s hungry so he pulls the cord that opens up the rat cages. He hears the patter of tiny claws above his head and the screeches of the first explorers to reach the outside. A few will try to hold back but they’re greedy and hungry. Those in front get pushed out by the flood from behind. Poor paws on burning black-stone. The nanners correct him,
“It’s called concrete.”
The nanobots are particular about how he thinks about things. They also hate it when he calls them nanners, so, of course, that’s what Malick does.
Through the air-hole comes the scent of burnt fur.
“Buen dinner,” Nelly says, and nods for emphasis. She’s small but smart. Even though she can’t see in the dark, she understands that Malick can.
The nanners zoom around and talk. They tell him about how the children’s maze used to be a playground in an amusement park, whatever that is. When the city locked itself up and let the outskirts fade, the maze was buried in mud and garbage drifting here from the trash-tubes. Big people don’t fit inside the maze and Malick is glad: life would be unbearable if the big-hungries shared the children’s space.
“Got to be careful, no getting greedy,” Malick says. They must give the rats a chance to make babies. Greedy today, hungry tomorrow.
The screeching stops and Malick braves the heat near the air-hole to let his nanners taste the night. The sooner they emerge, the more rats they will nab before the other children leave the maze. But even his nanners can’t take the full blast of daylight, and Nelly has no nanners. If he opens the tube too soon, she’ll roast.
When the nanners think it’s safe, the children scamper out into the glaring dusk, hopping like mice, avoiding the patches of black-stone coated with rubber where the rats have stuck and died.
Nelly spits on a rock and giggles at the sizzle. Then, she jumps ahead to spot rats for Malick who can, with nanner-coated fingers, pick them up by the tail and brush his hands down their bodies to get rid of the fuzz. They gobble one, two, four rats each before the sound of rolling pebbles tells them that the big-hungries are digging themselves out. The big-hungries live in deeper, spacier pits, but they always want what can be had near the surface. Malick scrambles to pick up the best rats and hurls them into the children’s maze, where the big-hungries don’t fit.
They dance around on a full stomach. Now they can play! They find milk cartons with Malick’s face on them. But no matter how hard they look, they never find one with Nelly’s face.
“Nelly!” come the voices. She spins around midair like a bumblebee.
“Nelly! Come feed your family. Are we clan? Nelly!”
Nelly dashes off towards the whiny voices of the big-hungries of her clan.
“Don’t let them get greedy!” Malick shouts. Nelly always gives the Rodriguez clan too much. “Save some rats,” he whispers as he skulks away.
“Come, Malick. Hunter! Come join us. Nelly speaks well of you,” they shout.
“Si, ven,” Nelly says. “Son mi clan.”
“Your clan!” Malick shouts. Not his. There’s a ripple of laughter around the group.
Down south a fire lights up: the Rochets have raided the tunnels of the Stuarts again and are showing everyone that, today, they have trash to burn.
“Malick, don’t be tonto,” Nelly tiptoes toward him. “Come on, they’re buenos. Come.” He allows her to lead him to them by the hand. “Dolores, Pedro, Maria, Nestor.” She points them out. “Nestor is my husband,” she whispers. “We were born married.”
“We’ll live together when you’re old enough.” Nestor throws Nelly up into the air. She squeals and he catches her and puts her down. She’s laughing so hard she has to sit. Nestor is old, at least thirteen, about five years too old to fit in the maze and harvest rats with the children.
“Stay with us tonight,” Dolores says. “Nelly told us what you can do.”
Nelly’s mother looms above. Her face is too dark even for Malick to see.
“Does he understand anything we say?” Nestor whispers. “He seems . . . slow.”
“He does too understand!” Nelly says.
“Are you sure, pequeña? Es un salvaje.”
Nelly’s face goes red and her fists curl. From experience, Malick knows she’s thinking of a clever retort. But she doesn’t shout at Nestor like she would at Malick. She kicks the ground and sobs. Dolores brings her close.
“Shh, Nestor,” Dolores says. “Don’t tease.”
“I mean it. Are we even sure it’s a he?”
Nelly cries louder and Malick sends his nanners at Nestor, to teach him. The big-hungries can’t see in the dark, but they can hear the buzz and cackle. The nanners nibble at Nestor’s toes. Nestor drops to the ground and comes back up with a metal bar.
Malick rolls away. In his panic, he calls his nanners back.
“Calm down!” Dolores says. “Por Dios, Nestor, controlate.” Nelly snickers and stops crying. The big-hungries settle down and Dolores kneels next to Malick.
“Here, toma agua.” A full bottle of water. For free. Nestor hunches at the edge of the group, shooting Malick angry looks. Malick takes the water and runs.
Other voices call to him, call him hunter! Invite him to their clans. Children are prized because they can fit in the mazes where all the rats live and Malick is always small, forever special. He ignores them.
He has no clan since the trash-tube spit him out. So the nanners say. They say:
“YOU BELONG TO NO ONE AND YOU CAN ONLY TRUST US.”
* * * *
The trash-tube is the only connection between the Waste and the city and the nanners grow pesky near it, but the rats need food. Sometimes, the nanners are whiny and demanding like big-hungries. But Malick isn’t afraid of nanners, at least not so much that he’d rather go hungry.
He goes to wait for the next burp from the big shiny trash-tube.
“CITY, CITY, CITY,” the nanners sing. Their need for home is shrill. He sways in time with their song but resists their wheedling. The plastic canvas spread on the ground around the trash-tube shows Malick his own face. Far away, he hears a high-pitched whine. The nanners scream with anticipation and Malick cocks his head.
“THAT DOPPLER EFFECT MEANS IT’S COMING CLOSER,” the nanners explain.
The compressed trash decelerates onto the drop spot. The jaws of the trash-tube open with a hiss and the stale draft from inside stirs the plastic so that Malick’s face ripples and disappears.
City nanners puff out. They recognize Malick and attach themselves to his body with the strength of a boy who has found a hatch just before dawn. He becomes darker as grey nanners pile upon grey. They’re more insistent than Malick’s regular nanners: their programming is new. They’re naive, fresh, they still believe they can convince him to go back to the city. He knows better: he’s Malick! Nanners are too tiny to boss him around.
They scream a lot, but as long as he can hear them and do nothing, he’s fine.
He’s scareder of the trash-tubes than of any big-hungry, but Malick’s no coward, so he jumps inside the jaws before the trash cube is released and rides out on top.
“SILICON! CRUSHED ROSES! TOOTHPASTE! DIAPERS! FOOD! ORGANIC!” The nanners hum. “CITY! CITY! PARIS! HOME! BELONG! CITY! CITY!”
Malick dances on the cube. The nanners point his mind at the trash-tube and further away, at the blanket of light in the distance.
“PARIS. HOME! HOME! GO! CITY! CITY!” The nanners flood his mind with images that they tell him to find appealing, promise foods he’s never heard of, clothes like only big-hungries wear.
He gathers the organic stuff and the toothpaste, which the rats can eat. The nanners better not forget who’s in charge.
“You, kid, got rats?”
Malick jumps down from the cube, away from the big-hungry. He knows this one: a loner. Dangerous.
He scampers into the darkness until he can see the big-hungry silhouetted against the blue light from the trash-tube. Malick likes this game: it’s called I-can-see-you-but-you-can’t-see-me.
“Mean no harm, kid. S’ok. Got food for tonight.” The big-hungry points at the dead birds strung across his waist. They smell rotten, delicious, and Malick is jealous.
“Come here. Want some? Trade for rats, no?”
It’s too good an offer to pass up.
Malick whistles okay.
“One rat, one bird,” he says.
“Two rats, one bird,” the man says.
Malick grunts but lets the big-hungry lead the way back to the maze. The nanners long to stay near the trash-tube, they want him to go inside, get eaten up by the tube and by the city, but Malick is tough. He’s stronger than them. And the scent of pigeon helps him concentrate. Food he can understand. City, he can’t.
“She’s pretty at night, eh? The city.” The man looks up at Paris. Big-hungries without clans are like that, they talk to fill the spaces in the air. “Used to live there, once. Kicked me out, too. Had no right. How was I to know those offshore assets were illegal? We’d been doing it for years! Just earning a living. Not my fault the money disappeared. They took my nanobots away!” The big-hungry’s chin trembles in the blue light. “Where did you get yours? Been a while since I’ve seen more than a hint of a haze, if you catch my drift.” He sways from side to side, like Malick, and Malick believes he too must be talking to nanners. At least, what he says sounds like nanner-talk, full of city words. Nonsense. But he cannot see grey on the man, and that confuses him.
“Candy, swimming, toys,” he mutters to keep the man company. As long as they’re playing the silly word game. . . . “Summer, party, birthday, ball!” He jumps into the air. “Ball! Ball! Ball!”
“They kick you out too? What’d you do? No, you’re too small to have done much harm. The city does not hurt children.”
“They do too,” Malick whispers. He doesn’t know where that comes from but he knows it’s true. He feels a scare about to hit and doesn’t have time to prepare. Suddenly, it’s rage all over. His face burns and his arms fly out. The nanners sense his weakness and start shouting, promising, and threatening, all at once.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” he hollers. “You too!” He tells the big-hungry. “Go away or I kick and I bite. Go away or my clan gets you. Go away!”
“Calm down kid,” the big-hungry says, “Meant nothing by it. Come on, don’t be angry. Hey! Are you the kid on the milk cartons? They’ve been looking for you for years! Children don’t get lost in Paris, they’re so civilized. They take care of their own—except for you, I guess. You’re a mystery. If we both went back, maybe they’d let me . . .” His eyes do what the eyes of stupid people do when they have an idea. Stupid people have so few ideas that their faces show them all. Smart people have a thousand ideas a second, so their faces have practice hiding them.
Malick has a thousand ideas a second. His face is flat.
“Here, have some pigeon,” the big-hungry says. He steps toward Malick. Mistake. Malick goes for the face. The big-hungry backs off, stumbles in the dark and falls. He grabs Malick’s arms, but the nanners make them slippery. Malick presses his tiny fingers into the big-hungry’s eyeballs. The man roars and hits Malick on the chest. Malick flies. The hard landing makes the rage go away and shuts the nanners up.
“Excuse me.” Malick blushes and sprints off.
“BAD MANNERS,” the nanners chide. “JUST BECAUSE THE BIG-HUNGRY WANTED TO TAKE YOU BACK IS NO REASON TO ALMOST BLIND HIM. IT’S NOT PLAYING FAIR.”
Malick is so ashamed.
The nanners renew their attack, howling for home.
“SAFETY, FLOWERS, SCHOOL, FRIENDS.” They are so tiresome.
Malick stops running and pants, doubled-up. He hates them! It’s all their fault. He stops feeling sorry for the big-hungry and stomps back home.
“Nelly, Nelly, Nelly,” he says with each stomp. Those are Malick’s words, not the nanners’. Those are words he understands.
* * * *
Nelly has given the night’s catch to her clan. Malick curses outside of the circle of shadows. The big-hungries have their own critters down there. For all he cares they can eat them raw.
Dolores leaves the circle and walks slowly toward Malick, keeping her arms spread out away from her body so that he can see them and know she has nothing to hide.
“I’ve heard talk about you. You used to live further east, didn’t you? Is there another food giver over there? Any clans?” Dolores asks.
Malick keeps at a distance, remembering how it felt when the big-hungry hit him on the chest. If he had a clan the loner would already be dead. He could never again talk to Malick about the city, never again make him feel bad. Never help the nanners against him.
“There’s another trash-tube,” Malick says.
“Oh, are those his made-up words, Nelly?” Nestor says.
“Not made up,” Nelly says and winks at Malick in the dark. Nestor can’t see that.
“Don’t mind them, answer Dolores’s question, kid. How many clans? How many men in each?” That’s Pedro, Dolores’s husband.
Malick wonders whether to answer. If the clan goes east, they’ll take Nelly, at least for one night. If the raid is successful they’ll sleep in their enemies’ pits and make their way back the next night with food. But if they lose...
Pedro dangles a hard brown stick in front of Malick. Taken from the trash. But Malick knows better than to risk losing Nelly over a candy bar.
Then he has an idea. “If I tell you, I go with you. I become Rodriguez!”
The big-hungries laugh.
“Look at him, what a bargainer.”
“Wants to be strong-clanned!”
“Rodriguez! Rodriguez! Rodriguez!”
“He’s a good hunter. I say let him stay.”
Pedro nods. “If you want to hunt and fight, you can come.”
Malick grabs the candy bar (let them think he cares) and holds up two fingers, then four, then six. Two clans, four fighters in one, six in the other.
“Good boy!” A hand slams into his back and guides him to the huddle of clan. There are eight Rodriguez men and six women. They mutter and make plans. Malick drifts off, but keeps an ear on the conversation. They believe they can take the two eastern clans, no problem. Malick smiles.
Maybe the Rodriguez will win and get good trash and Malick will be one of them. That would be good. But maybe they’ll lose and Nelly will stay with Malick. He knows cracks they could hide in during the day. He could keep her safe one day, or many. And maybe Nestor could die. That would be better.
* * * *
“You are married,” Malick says.
Nelly scuttles to him in the dark as the maze warms up. “Don’t be greedy.” Malick feels her push through his nanner cloud until she touches his skin-under-the-skin. She’s still small. She won’t become a big-hungry just yet, won’t be Nestor’s just yet; so he shares with her, bringing nanners up from his mouth and body in fistfuls, spreading them on her skin to keep her cool.
Tell nanners to stick and they’ll stick, ‘least for a while.
She lies down behind him and wraps her arms around his neck. As his brain shuts off, the nanners hum slower. They sound stronger in his dreams.
“Keep me small,” he asks. Small enough to fit inside the maze. He doesn’t want to grow up ever.
“AS WE’VE BEEN DOING FOR YEARS?”
“I’m in charge. I’m Malick! You do as I say.”
“YOUR BRAIN IS TOO SMALL. TOO MANY MEMORIES, SO MUCH FORGOTTEN...”
“Go away.” Malick says. He’s in charge and forgetting is nice. The Waste is the same, day after day, there’s nothing to remember here except Nelly, and he can’t forget her if he sees her every day, right? And the city was the same, day after day, except the day the captain came. It would be good to forget that day: the smell of him, the smell of the city suddenly full of men who smelled like the captain.
“YOU COULD RETURN. GO TO THE POLICE: THEY’D KEEP YOU SAFE.”
“No! Keep me small.” The captain told him he’d kill him if he went to the police. But the solution is simple: he won’t go back to the city. Ever.
The reluctant nanners scuttle to do his bidding.
“Malick Pan, Malick Pan, always young,” they tease.
Nelly mutters in her sleep and Malick wakes. “And Nelly too, keep her small for me,” he whispers.
Tell nanners to stick...
Nelly turns in her sleep. She hasn’t grown any in the past year but nobody’s complaining: she’s a good hunter for her clan.
* * * *
The clan walks quietly, saving the war cries for later, but Malick tastes their excitement, hears the pause of each skipped heartbeat, the cackle of tension on matted hair. In his head, the Rodriguez clan hums like its own group of nanners—and his nanners are almost silent by comparison.
They move slowly by starlight, lifting feet to avoid breaking toes.
Hum, hum, hum, hear the loud silence of the Rodriguez clan!
Malick can’t tell who made the song, him or the nanners, but he loves it and loves this war game.
They walk ten miles before the light of the other trash-tube makes them drop to the ground. The pebbles are smaller here and Malick sniffs the rubble and burnt kikuyu grass for scents of his old home. The trash-tube grinds open and a gust of wind blows a handful of chits their way. They settle around Malick, slight and fluorescent, reflecting the tube light in shades of purple and grey.
“THEY USED TO BE MONEY,” the nanners tell him, “NOW THEY’RE WORTH NOTHING,” and they go on and on about ECONOMIC TRENDS and POLITICAL POWER SHIFTS. Malick isn’t listening.
Further ahead, big-hungries move against the light. They’re skinny and Malick fears they’ll be no match for the Rodriguez. He doesn’t want them to win, but he wants them to fight back. That way maybe something can happen to Nestor.
The clan creeps in and watches the enemy converging around the trash-tubes.
Pedro gives the signal, a rat-screech, and the biggest fighters go down with stones, from a distance. Then the war cries start. Everyone who can shout shouts, and everything that can screech screeches, even the rats in and out of their tunnels, even the women, clawing, even the leaves rubbing against Malick’s nanners as they zip by.
Malick grabs Nelly and dives for one of his old hiding spots. They pant in the darkness, listening to the fight above. There are sounds of pain, some they recognize. Nelly whimpers and Malick holds her, as much for comfort as to keep her from darting out to join the battle.
His nanners try to keep him informed but they’re covering too much ground. A Smith is down, then a Garcia. A Rodriguez is wounded, and a woman, clan unknown, is taken and dragged to a tunnel below.
Sudden silence, and Malick can almost sense all the thinking in the air. The clans have pulled back. Have the Rodriguez won, lost, or are they just regrouping? Malick’s nanners fly far, so many gaps in his net...
“Here you are.” The door is removed and Nestor’s arm enters the hidey-hole. Malick backs off but the arm grabs his ankle.
“Nelly?” Nestor asks.
“I’m here,” Nelly says from behind Malick.
“Estas bien?”
“Si.”
“Como te este tratando ese idiota?”
“He’s treating me good, and idiota your mother!” Nelly whispers.
Nestor laughs and his voice breaks. He’s silent for a few seconds. He sounds embarrassed.
“Come out, Nelly, come fight at your husband’s side.”
“Mother said not to be alone with you for another two years.”
“Dolores is busy now.”
Behind Malick, Nelly shrinks back into the plastic tube.
“Come out, Nelly,” Nestor sing-songs. “I’ll tell you that story about the big-hungry who wanted to eat me. I’ll tell you about the things I found in the food-giver the other day. I’ll give you the conch.”
“The one with the red marking?”
“Yes, Nelly, the one with the red spiral across it. I have more pretty things, do you want them?” Nestor’s other hand gropes the inside of the maze, finding Malick’s other foot, his knees, his thighs.
Nelly nudges Malick to get outside.
“No!” Malick kicks Nestor’s arms. Nestor grunts low in his throat and rams his head through the opening, getting most of his shoulders inside. Malick keeps kicking but he can’t turn around to use his fingers on Nestor’s eyes.
“Oh, that’s you. I knew you were a savage,” Nestor says. He grabs Malick’s ankles until they hurt and holds him down against the plastic. “Now, be a good . . . thing . . . and let my wife come out.”
“I’m not a thing,” Malick says.
“Well, you sure aren’t a boy. You were small when I was smaller than Nelly. You never grew up. Tell me, what are you doing to my wife in the kid-mazes in the dark? You may fool the others, but you don’t fool me.”
“I’m a kid.”
“Then I can hurt you like I can hurt a little boy.”
He twists the ankle and Malick screams.
“I’m a boy! I decided not to grow up.” Malick says. Nestor’s hands on his legs feel familiar. He lies there, sweating, heart beating out of his small chest, thinking. There are flashes of memories that he can almost grasp, an escape from a bad place.
And then he knows. It’s Nestor he’s been running from all along. Maybe not this Nestor, but one of the other Nestors of the world. There’s not just one captain but a whole slew of them, with dozens of lost children who need a leader. . . . But that’s a game. He must think of real stuff to survive.
“You had no right,” Nestor mutters. “They all think you’re such a great hunter. . . . I was a great hunter in my time, but I grew up. As everyone should. Now I’ll make babies and they’ll hunt rats. You had no right to stay small.”
“You want to make Nelly grow up too soon. I just made me stay small. I didn’t hurt nobody.”
“Nelly, come out to me, I won’t hurt you,” Nestor whispers.
Nelly turns around in the tunnel until she’s head-to-head with Malick. She trembles all over and Malick senses that she’s on the verge of knowing, like Malick was, just at the edge of understanding that what the captain wanted was wrong. Malick did understand, but too late.
Malick remembers diving into the trash-tubes after the captain got him, too ashamed to tell anyone, too ashamed to go back home.
But that’s a memory, one of those city things that the nanners throw at him. It won’t help him now.
“Don’t go, Nelly,” he whispers.
Malick’s ankle cracks. He screams.
“Stop! Now! Stop!” Nelly yells. She’s as loud and as fearsome as a bumblebee. Sometimes, it sucks to be small.
“Come out, Nelly. You need to grow up.”
That’s what the captain said. Now you’re all grown up.
Kill him, Malick thinks to his nanners. Crawl into his mouth and stop him breathing, tickle his lungs and make them bleed. The nanners gather on Malick’s stomach. They form a ball and start rolling over Malick’s body, gathering more and more of themselves into something bigger and smarter.
Without them on his skin, Malick feels the full bite of night and shivers like he’s never done before.
“Not big enough, not big enough,” the nanners hum.
Around and around they spin.
“STILL NOT BIG, A LITTLE MORE, A LITTLE MORE.”
What’s wrong? What are you doing? Malick thinks at them.
“WE CAN SMOTHER HIM, BUT IF WE CREEP INTO HIS NOSTRILS LITTLE BY LITTLE, HE’LL JUST COUGH US UP IN BITS AT A TIME. HE’LL BE ANGRY AND HE WON’T BE DEAD. WE NEED TO PRY HIS JAWS OPEN, GO IN TOGETHER. BUT HE’S A MAN, WE NEED TO BE SO STRONG. WE NEED TO BE BIG.”
Round and round. Rolling, rolling. Malick’s skin-without-nanner-skin presses into Nelly behind him. She hugs him tight.
Outside, people start screaming. Malick has no nanners to spare and he hears it all with his own ears only. Without the nanners, he feels small and weak.
“BIGGER, BIGGER.”
The last nanners crawl out of his ears and nostrils and join the others.
“NOT BIG ENOUGH. WE ARE NOT BIG ENOUGH.” The nanners cry in defeat.
“Go for the eyes,” Malick says.
“What are you talking about, you stupid . . .” Nestor says.
The ball lifts off and slams into Nestor’s face. The ball glows. Nestor’s scream is a terrible thing. The scream cuts through the sound of fighting and does things to Malick’s insides. Next, Nestor gurgles as the nanners use the chance to creep into his mouth. His arms thrash and Malick cries out from the pain in his legs.
Nestor is still.
The children gather their breath for a second and then Nelly retreats to give Malick space to turn around. The fighting is still going strong. By touch, Malick finds Nestor’s body and dislodges it from the opening of the hidey-hole.
When they step outside, Nestor’s hollowed sockets glare up at them. Malick shivers and places two chits to cover the holes. He’s glad it’s a moonless night.
* * * *
Malick sits away from the clan, naked and lame. Without the nanners to assist him, he can hardly see in the dark. The stars are bright, but there is no moon and the little light coming from the trash-tube and the city in the distance only lets him guess at the shapes around him.
Nelly has gone running to Dolores but he knows she won’t tattle. She’ll say Nestor was killed by a stray Garcia. The clan will know he’s disappeared but they need not know anything else.
Something hums to his right. It’s a sound he almost recognizes. He cocks his head. Without the nanners everything in him is slow and stupid.
The nanner ball glows gray and drifts in front of Malick.
“You’re back,” he whispers. He doesn’t think they can hear his thoughts any more.
“Yes.” It comes as sound, actual sound that Malick hears with his real ears. The ball starts spinning. Malick laughs and tries to get up to play but the pain stops him.
“Come back,” he says. He needs his nanner-skin more than he needs a new friend. The ball hums and Malick wonders whether it’s making up its mind.
“We are no longer just nanners, Malick. We’re bigger now. We’ve grown up. We were made to help you. We were sent out of the city to find you and bring you back. Nobody understood why you left: Paris treats its infants well.
“But we found you were the only one out here who could control us. We could not convince you to come back. How we ached! How we hurt! Have you no pity for our programming? We have failed but now it doesn’t matter. We no longer do your bidding.”
“What are you?”
“You can call us Tinkerbell. It’s appropriate.” The nanners chortle and zip off into the night leaving Malick alone.
* * * *
Nelly comes to him again that night and Malick finds one of his old hidey-holes by touch. He doesn’t know how Nelly manages without nanner-sight. There are stones everywhere, everywhere cracks. Dolores has splinted his ankle, but there was that look in her eyes, like she didn’t think he’d survive the injury.
“You can come back with us,” Nelly whispers.
“They don’t want me.”
“No, but they promised to take you, and the other clans don’t know about your nanners. They still think you’re strong! ‘Sides, I’m a good hunter too, I can keep the clan fat on rats until your leg heals and you learn how to walk in the dark. A promise is a promise.”
“Maybe.” It comes out flat. “Or maybe I could go into the trash-tubes like the nanners said. I was running from the captain but it turns out there are captains everywhere, not just in the city. Might as well go back if the Waste isn’t safe.”
“The tubes eat people.” Nelly speaks with conviction.
Malick grunts acknowledgement. He’s sure she’s right but at this point he’d rather be eaten than slowly fade in the dark.
“Stay with me,” Nelly whispers. That clinches it for him.
That night, he dreams of lost children. Maybe he can find them. Maybe he can make a city of hurt children who will never have to fear another captain.
In his dream, he’s Malick Pan and he can do whatever he wants. In his dream, he feeds Nestor to the rats. But when he wakes up he’s just Malick. Half-blind and lame. And there’s only Nelly beside him.
* * * *
A long time later, Nelly sits next to him. He can’t remember how many nights it’s been.
Everything is always a long time in the dark.
“Dolores has married me again,” she whispers.
Malick bunches up his fists in anger.
“Can’t she learn?” All those big-hungries, hungry for children, hungry to make children grow up too fast. Can’t they wait? The kids will all be big-hungries in the end, so why the hurry? And Dolores was supposed to be one of the good ones.
“She was going to wait, but that Stuart man brought his potato alcohol...”
“And she sold you again...”
“He’s so old, and his breath smells. But maybe I won’t have to kiss him. At least he says he’ll wait until I grow up.”
“Like Nestor did.”
Nelly starts sobbing.
Malick puts his arms around her. “We’ll see who grows up. We’ll see.”
And so it’s time to talk to Tinkerbell again. Malick takes a deep breath. She’ll see who’s boss.
* * * *
“So, you’ve come to us again.” Tinkerbell tries to sound hurt, but Malick can tell she’s preening from the attention.
“I need your help, Nelly needs your help.”
“Nelly, Nelly, Nelly, always Nelly. It’s been Nelly from the beginning. What about me? You never thought about me the way you thought about Nelly,” Tinkerbell says.
Malick doesn’t know what to say. Nelly is people. Tinkerbell . . . well, Tinkerbell isn’t.
“You could keep her small,” Malick suggests.
“Yes, but why would I want to do that?”
Malick huffs and sits down on his big swollen foot. He picks up pebbles and chucks them at Tinkerbell. She spins around but some of them get her and she makes hurt-noises.
“See?” Malick says, “That’s what it feels like. Pain. That’s what you get when you’re smart enough to feel. Pain. Pain. Pain.”
“Stop!”
Malick looks up. He can hardly see Tinkerbell in the dark but he knows she can see him. She might react to the poor sad little boy eyes, even if she’s only a grey nanner ball.
“Okay, okay, okay! I’ll make her small. I’ll crawl into her brain and keep her small. Whatever. Even though she’s stupid. But Malick, all I ever wanted was to bring you back to the city. I was made for that. All you poor lost children...”
“Are there more of us?” He imagined there were, but now he knows! It’s the only good thing that’s happened to him since Nestor.
Tinkerbell shrugs her amorphous grey shoulders. “Some, who cares? I’m here for you. But, Malick, you have to go back to the city. If you want Nelly to stay small, to be a hunter forever, I have to see you go back.”
“Deal. You keep her small and safe from all the captains and I’ll go back inside the trash-tube,” Malick says. A promise is a promise but he’s been careful with the wording: he’s sure he has a lot of wriggle room in that one.
* * * *
The next day, he slips an orange conch into Nelly’s hand and limps toward the blue trash-tube light.
“Wait!” she shouts.
He doesn’t stop. Tinkerbell is already drifting into Nelly’s ears, keeping her side of the bargain. Nelly will stay small forever; she won’t need Malick. And she has Dolores, even though Dolores is stupid sometimes. She has clan. Malick is only a lame blind boy.
And anything is better than the dark.
The metal jaws open and out pops the trash cube. Malick clambers over it to get inside the mouth before the opening closes. There’s a grey haze in there and he knows these are thousands of teeny-tiny beings exchanging data bytes. These are smaller than his old nanners: even before they became Tinkerbell, they’d had to grow to be smart and keep up with Malick. He wants to listen to their conversation like he used to. He sighs like he’s seen Nelly do, imitating her mother. Some things can’t be, but at least in here there is light.
He crawls in without thinking too much. If he thinks about it his body won’t obey.
The jaws close and the blue light dims. He hears a hiss and the haze around him clears. It’s as if the air and the nanners were going somewhere else. He feels faint and realizes he’s panting.
Air! He grasps at his throat, which won’t obey.
Just like those silly nanners. Nobody obeys him any more.
A grey haze surrounds him and creeps into his ears.
“HELLO.”
“New nanners!”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, NEW? WE’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU FOR AGES, MALICK. BE A GOOD BOY AND COME BACK HOME.”
They obviously haven’t talked with Tinkerbell.
“I’m dying,” he says.
“OH, THAT’S BAD, SORRY.”
They sound newborn, confused. He doubts they can help him.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees a rat-tail disappearing into a—is that a hatch?
He crawls toward it—rats always know a way out—and digs his fingers into the cracks. The safeties go off and the hatch opens. He crawls into a smaller tunnel that’s full of air, and light.
“SERVICE TUBES,” the nanners humm. “IF YOU HAD TOLD US THAT YOU WANTED AIR...”
Malick shrugs them off. New nanners are always kind of stupid.
He hears the sound of the next trash burp.
“IT TAKES LESS ENERGY TO ACCELERATE IT IN A SEMI-VACUUM.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters. That’s nanners for you, always talking data. But at least the new nanners converge on top of his ankle and he feels the throbbing stop.
Malick can see his own hands in the blue emergency light. The pins in his lungs are fading. He smiles. For now he’s alive and he is going toward the city. There’s nowhere else to go and maybe he can find the lost children along the way. About growing up—he’ll have to see about that. He is Malick! He has a thousand ideas a second. These nanners are new, and stupid, not like Tinkerbell. He’s sure he can convince them to keep him small. m Copyright © 2010 Sara Genge