North Nast was the unwashed armpit of the Cities of Nast. Populated entirely by women and slugs who were unfit for social interaction, discontents, malcontents, the insane, the unwelcoming, the unjust, and the uncaring. It only existed because the Council, in its wisdom, did not wish to put people to death unless their crime was severe, and because there were always going to be a certain number of incorrigibles who did not respond to the CARE of the Council, nor to the medicines that were known to bring most malcontents up to an acceptable baseline of mental health that allowed for their continued membership in the Community. It was the place where some people, however regrettably, had to be kept.
Or, at least, that was the North Nast that Ern had been led to expect from his cores in school.
Since his time as an outlaw, and with Doc, and his experiences in Marino, Ern had grown a theoretical distrust of the things he’d learned in school. But such lessons are not easily un-learned, as he discovered to his shock upon reaching North Nast.
It was, in fact, a city much like Central, but with more colors and looser tongues. There was self-evidently more misery. The underground tunnels (which were actually used by the populace as a way to avoid having to go out into the hostile mists, and not by the local criminal organizations as was the case in Central) were populated by sparse clusters of vagrants, most of whom seemed unable to speak intelligibly. In his first few days there, Ern was accosted—physically—at least a dozen times by women who were convinced he was a long-lost son, or brother, or lover, or (in one instance) all three, which he found so confusing that he almost didn’t notice what it implied.
Molly was no help. Here, she wasn’t a woman of note, she was just another transportee, having to make her way without the network connections she’d had back in Central. Besides, she was too busy standing vigil over Hoyle to do much of anything.
She had, at least, secured a room in a boarding warren for Hoyle to convalesce in. How she’d done it, Ern hadn’t been able to worm out of her—he got the sense that there was something about it she wasn’t entirely proud of—but it was a safe place for Hoyle to heal.
If he ever did heal.
At least Ern was allowed to sleep bundled in with the family in makeshift beds on the floor around Hoyle’s futon. During the days, he took his turns watching over Hoyle whilst Molly went out to find and hook into the local illicit literature networks, usually taking Holly with her. When he wasn’t on watch, he ventured forth to find out what this new world had to offer.
He had hoped to find a way to communicate with Central, perhaps to get word of what was happening with his mother. If he could get in touch with Jeryl...
But he found himself blocked at every turn by the nature of the city itself. Most of the things it had to offer were things he had no categories for at all. It was as if the entire city were a vicious but startlingly polite version of the Central underworld. There was graffiti everywhere, but most of it was quite inoffensive, and even beautiful. Imagined pastoral scenes, erotic encounters somehow rendered in a demure style, and bright, abstract splashes and slashes of color and primitive-looking figures around every corner. The darker parts of the tunnels were spangled with glow-in-the-dark spirals and swoops, giving Ern the impression of passing through an endless, yet painless, concussion.
He might have spent weeks wandering through the strange and seemingly endless art galleries had it not been for the other things. Like the madwomen. Or that he couldn’t help attracting the wrong kind of attention everywhere he walked. A young man just coming into flower was an enviable commodity in a city filled with women enduring forced separation from any male companionship whatsoever—not that this would have occurred to Ern. Besides his basic (and cultivated) ignorance in the romantic arts, he had also grown up in a world where the sexes did not interact in adulthood except when specifically tasked to do so. Women who were so inclined—or who did not wish to attract attention—sought out one another. Those who were not so inclined made do without, so far as he knew. It didn’t occur to him that they might go topside and consort with the Former transportees.