Prologue

We were waiting, patient and resilient, lined alongside the platform of the N train.

It was a hobby, this business of waiting, a widespread hobby of the unwilling and the impatient. But we were patient, we were calm. We had learned what it was to wait, and we were obedient, having learned the beauty that comes of silence.

Over the tunnel cities of the trains, the world was desolate, and so we did not venture. Within the dripping hollows belowground, we were safe. We did not fear the dark things of the night, because they could not touch us through rock and cement. We did not fear the terrorists, or the bombers, or the warmongers, because they did not want our space, hidden and ugly and squat. We did not fear the soldiers, with their biochips, because we knew that the chips did not get signal underground, and the organized destruction of platoons would become rambling chaos in moments.

We were safe.

The N train pulled over the tracks with a sorrowful hiss and clunk. In our long, ordered column, we descended through the doors, choosing seats for ourselves, and bars, and waited for the lurch of motion that signaled homecoming.

The N train was an important interconnecting transport that led between the Warrens, allowing for communication and travel in the underground. It wove in a small circle, stopping at the Inner Warrens, and then it drove out along the Dashkins to the Outer Warrens, also situated in a large circle, around the Inner ones, like the spokes of a large wheel.

The Inner Warrens, or the Alphabet Soup as we sometimes called them, flashed by us for almost half an hour before the train made that sharp upwards curve to signal that we were headed out.

The Warrens had been created in a series of hollowed caverns, through drilling, support and a lot of very clever engineering. They were ugly little pods that seemed suspended, arrogant and metallic, in the midst of a world filled with rock. Each pod was layered within, for craftsmen, tradesmen, rulers and children. There were no poor people in the underground, because everyone learned how to be useful, and everyone shared with everyone else. If you could sweep a street, then the doctors had to help you, because you kept their streets clean.

There were also no families in the Warrens, at least not the kind of families that people had on the surface. Up there, we were told, people would give birth and keep their children to themselves, and fight over children, and over each other. Families were a sort of inbred way to ensure attachments among the upworlders, and attachments, we knew, were as much a cause for wars and suffering as money was.

We were rotated through the Warrens, each child individually, to ensure that children did not become close. You could not have a best friend, because everyone was your friend. You could not have enemies, because everyone was your friend. You could not like one person more than another, because all people were equal.

We were evaluated and taught according to our natural abilities. Individuality still existed, but we were a people, not a group of people. We functioned together, as seamless pieces of a larger machine, the machine of the underground. Rulers and craftsmen grew up together and dined together. Whatever your job, you were important. Each job was necessary; each job was a part of the whole. Without even the lowliest garbage collector, we might crash down into the same chaos as the surface.

---

I was six the first time I ever saw one of the Rabbits.

They were drawn along in a wary line, huddled near one another with darting eyes that peered at the surface world in horror and shied from the sunlight. They were children, I could see, because they were small, but they were not children, not like me, because they did not play, or giggle, or whisper. They did not talk at all. They did not even smile.

For a little while, I snuck along behind them, dancing around at the end of their line to try and provoke a reaction. But they remained immune to my goofy charms, not even turning back to glance at me.

They were so odd, lined up like little ducks, all wearing the funny gray jumpsuits that the Rabbits wore, but in kid sizes. I wondered if their parents would be angry to see them up here, and then I wondered if they had parents. I myself was among a couple of kids in my class at school who had the barcode tattoos of the Gene Labs. Mostly they had things like large blue eyes or pretty smiles. One or two looked perfectly ordinary. Some were cured of diseases that would have killed them as babies. Some, like me, were smarter or faster or stronger than normal kids. But all of us at least had pretend parents, who took care of us and fed us and tucked us in at night.

I imitated their funny little duck-walk, sticking my arms out to the sides and then flailing them as I pretended to fall over. I landed in a puddle, and my impact splashed some mud across the shoes of one of the little girls there.

She stared down at me for a moment, with exotic almond eyes that were pure green, so strange that I instinctively searched her hand for the telltale tats, but she had none. By her height, I guessed she was about four, younger and smaller than me, but her little face was so very serious, so cold, that she looked like an adult.

I shrank back slightly, unwilling to admit that I was afraid of a girl but intimidated nonetheless.

The odd tourmaline eyes remained on me, though the line had begun to move forward. She was the last one, the smallest, and continued to peer at me as if I were some kind of strange bug that she had never seen before. Nervously, I got to my feet, never breaking eye contact, because I was afraid to do it. I felt some kind of spell around us, keeping us together, some kind of spell that her eyes had made. Unable to break free of it, I remained anxiously in place, watching her for some kind of cue.

“Upworlder,” she said, staring at me.

Her voice was very soft; it made me think of a baby doll, delicate and easily broken. I blinked, and realized that she was frightened. She did not understand the surface world, just as I did not understand the underworld. We could call each other Rabbits and Upworlders and Terrorist Scum, but in the end, we were just people staring at each other across a wall, both scared, both children.

I shook my head, still looking at her. Pointing to my chest, I said, “Stephen.”

She blinked. “S-Stephen?”

I nodded, and smiled at her a little. She stared at my teeth, which were in that falling-out-and-growing-back process that made my mouth uneven and jagged. “What’s your name?” I asked her.

She shook her head and I frowned. Didn’t she know what a name was?

The line was moving away. She glanced aside sadly, and saw the line, and then she hurried after it, frightened. I watched, in the alleyway, as she scurried along.

Just when she reached her place, at the very end, she turned. I saw her vivid eyes, such a bright spring color that didn’t match my world.

I was six, but I never forgot the cherubic face or the green eyes or the fragile little voice.