Something More Than Night by Ian Tregillis Page A

engine, wafting from a remediation mound on the second level of the terraces. And just as easily as she could smell the microscopic flakes of rust deposited by a damaged tiller blade in the zen-garden undulations of freshly raked tillage, she could eavesdrop on the argument unfolding behind closed doors and windows in a house a hundred yards behind her, hear the electric hum of a thousand vehicles, the clicking of steel rails beneath another tram.
    … men kneeling, wearing purple gloves, picking flecks of bone and meat from the bloodstained snow …
    Molly shuddered. She shook herself, forcing the unwanted recollection aside. Just as abruptly, the wind died. It left a layer of grit on her skin, fine enough to fill the ridges of her fingerprints, like soft house dust.
    Ria’s passion dwelled in this muddy pit. Ria herself wouldn’t be far. The co-op had taken over the old pavilion on the northeast edge of the lake, where the dock had been. The pavilion looked like a Midwestern interpretation of a hacienda, with tall arches of smooth white stucco roofed in red clay tiles. Molly remembered how Ria talked about it after her co-op bought the property and entered the boarded building for the first time. It had served as public restrooms for visitors to the lake, as well as an ice-cream stand, a restaurant, and a rental office for bicycles, canoes, and pontoon boats. But that had all come to a halt long before they were born. According to Ria it had been just a dilapidated shithole. The local neighborhood association had wanted to tear it down to drive off the squatters. But Ria’s passion had won the day.
    Wheelbarrows and the strides of countless work boots had swept away the wild grasses to leave a dusty gray path like a bathtub ring around the lip of the crater. Molly followed it to the pavilion. The dirt held a thousand partial impressions of footsteps and tires and, here and there, cigarette butts. They made her think of Bayliss. She concentrated on the pavilion before she got angry again.
    The low murmur of tired voices came to her from inside. “Shit,” said one of them, “I’m exhausted.”
    Another cold gust whistled through the hollow spot where Molly had kept her self-confidence. Ria’s voice.
    Without remembering the intervening steps, Molly found herself loitering just outside the pavilion. A man and a woman came out together, their dirt-streaked flesh smelling of sweat and loam and satisfaction. They startled Molly. She jumped.
    “Hi,” she said. They didn’t respond.
    Just like the cop. Just like Martin.
    Not a ghost, thought Molly, concentrating. Not now. She focused on what it had been like to be real, to be seen, to be felt, to be a presence in the world. To make eye contact with another human being. Easy. Natural. Even babies could do it, right?
    She went inside. The de facto office was a long, narrow, windowless space illuminated by the yellow-green corpse light of biochemical glow strips. It had probably been the kitchen where high school students had cooked hamburgers and hot dogs, once upon a time. A corrugated metal shutter in the wall had been welded shut and painted over with a decent approximation of a Klimt. A warped door had been laid across stacks of cinder blocks to form a desk.
    Ria sat on it. Her toes just touched the floor. Her unlaced work boots lay in a heap beside the desk, stinking. She had her eyes closed and her fingers laced behind her neck. A woman in French braids sat on a lawn chair beside the door. She looked equally tired.
    “Ria.” It came out as a cough. Molly cleared her throat and tried again. “Hi, Ria.”
    Ria opened her eyes. Molly gasped.
    “Ria! You can see me?” she asked.
    A frown furrowed Ria’s brow. She stopped kneading her neck. Her expression was cloudy.
    “You see me, don’t you?”
    The woman on the lawn chair exhaled heavily. Impatiently. Her eyes were closed, too. Rivulets of sweat cleaned paths through the grit on her sunburned neck.
    “I know