Eventually, the crowded buildings around the waterfront gave way to docks and marinas for a variety of ships; all clearly industrial or commercial, with large logos plastered against the worn and dirty sides. Often, between the docks, they’d see modular houses set up on the waterfront; the ancient ones that were mostly plastic and all tiny. The residents had expanded some of the houses here and there with old shipping crates that were carefully attached to the sides. Many of the houses had areas added on that went into the water. Some were half submerged.
“People can’t live here.” DH muttered.
“They do.” TO said as they caught sight of two young, octopus-like children who were playing in the iridescent water while their mother worked to link shells together with clear wire, creating something like what Lendulin had been wearing when they first met; a chain-mail-like dress made of fragments of shells.
The mother glanced up at DH and TO as they passed, then did a double take as she took in their tall forms, their wings, and their legs. She quickly snapped something to her children, which at first TO didn’t understand. The translator that Buteo had suggested to them back at the party kicked in and translated for them.
“Quick. Inside. Dangerous people.”
The children looked up at TO and DH, looked at their legs, and jumped into the water next to a submerged shipping crate attached to the side of a tiny modular home. The mother stayed where she was, working and eying them carefully.
“... Do you think she knows we’re synths?” DH asked, reverting to synth speak.
“No.” TO said, “I just think she’s just afraid of us. Of people with legs. Like Lendulin was.”
They walked down the path that their communicator instructed, eventually walking down a narrow flight of stairs and closer to the water's surface, where a narrow ledge led them to a tunnel that twisted back under the city.
“At least it’s not so bright.” DH said as they took off their sunglasses. “I think there're lights further down; it looks like a maintenance tunnel of some sort.” They sniffed, and wrinkled their snout, “Still stinks in here though.”
“Maybe this brings water to the river in the residential district?” TO said, though even they knew that the water would have to go through a lot of purification processes before it could be clean enough for that. Though the water here seemed to be a little cleaner than it was right at the shoreline, the surface still had its oily, iridescent gleam.
They only had to walk a little further before TO’s communicator told them they had arrived, stopping them in front of an old metal door in the stone wall. Clearly, there had once been a sign attached to the door, but someone had removed it, leaving the number seven scratched into the metal in its place. TO checked their communicator again. Lendulin told them that their address wasn’t official, but if they got lost, they just had to ask for directions to ‘Eponnomos canal’ and look for number seven. There had been no signs at the entrance to this place, but ‘canal’ implied a waterway, and the door had a seven scratched into it.
They felt for the multi-gun hidden under their shirt. It hadn’t escaped them that this could be a set-up, and that someone might attempt to capture them here.
If it came to it, they were ready to fight.
They knocked on the door, their fist rapping at the metal and creating an echo that was so much louder than they expected, and which hurt their ears. A moment later, the door opened for them, revealing not Lendulin, but Petra.
“Hi!” she said as she moved aside to let them in. “You’re a little late; I was thinking maybe I should call, or just go looking for you.”
She led them inside a simple enough room, one where the water from outside ran through an intake valve along one wall, taking up about a quarter of the space. The rest of the room was large enough, but lendulin had sectioned parts off with pieces of tarp hung up neatly across the room.
“OH! They’re here!” They heard Lendulin say from the other side of the tarp. There was a splash, and a moment later she swam up alongside the edge of the water, resting her arms up on the stone floor as she looked up at them with a big smile, “I worried you’d change your mind about visiting!”
Petra closed the door behind them, leaning against it with a smirk. “Honestly, I thought you’d bail once you got within smelling distance of the sea. You made it all the way in here without needing to be rescued and without giving up.” She gave a brief smile, “Respect.”
Lendulin laughed, “Pearla knew you’d come though.” She said, “Right Pea-” She stopped and looked towards the tarp, “Pearla? You ok?”
“Yeah.. yes, just coming out now.” she said, and a moment later she emerged from a part in the tarps.
TO couldn’t help the way their ears perked up, and they even forced a smile. This was perfect; they thought that they’d have to impress her friends before they got to speak to Pearla herself but here she was! Maybe this wouldn’t be as much trouble as they thought it might be! “Nice to see you again, Miss Pearla.” TO said.
“Right... Same to you.”
Petra brought a few old, mismatched stools over to a table in the center of the room; the ‘table’ was actually a giant old plastic spool used for industrial lengths of wire, which someone had saved and repurposed.
“We brought food.” DH said, reaching into their bag. This had been TO’s idea, as they had been worried about being fed bugs again and wanted to bring something a little more palatable.
“Oh, you didn’t have to do that.” Lendulin said.
“But I’m damn glad you did.” Petra said as she sniffed their air, “Imported meats; Goat, I think? Flame-cooked, braised in-” She paused, sniffing again, “Unsure. Some kind of fruit maybe.”
DH blinked as they pulled out the plain white box, staring at Petra, “How did you know?”
“I’m a carnivore. I’m great at sniffing out different meats.” She said with a grin, “It’s been so long since I’ve had anything but insects and seafood.”
TO shuddered, remembering the awful insects on sticks. “Why though?” They muttered.
“Uh, it’s cheap?” She smirked and gestured to the seat, “Go on, sit down.” She looked at Lendulin. “Want me to make tea?”
“Please, it’d keep me from having to get out of the water.”
They sat down at the table, joined by Pearla, who was looking anywhere but at them.
“I mentioned to Pearla that you two were coming over to ask some questions.” Lendulin said, “She wanted to join in.”
“Y-Yeah.” She said, finally looking up, “She said that you wanted to talk about the uh- issues facing the legless and stuff.”
“Something like that.” TO said, leaning forward and giving her an even stare. She looked away, her tail coiling about herself, her purple tinged skin going pale.
“My first question; what is this place?” DH said, looking about the room, “It doesn’t look like it was intended to be a residence; there're no windows, no rooms-”
“They’re new to the planet, and they’re from… you know, the richer folks.” Petra said. She set an old portable cooker on top of a counter made from old plastic pallets. “They wouldn’t have any reason to know about this place.”
“Eponnomos Canal.” Lendulin said, lifting herself up a little out of the water, “It’s an old word meaning ‘sewer’”
“... So we’re in a sewer?” DH said, their ears flicking down.
“An old one.” Petra said, “It’s not used as a sewer anymore; it’s converted at the far end as an intake valve for water purification. You know, all those fancy machines that King Dick-”
“Petra!” Pearla said, the last of the color going from her face as she clutched at her arms.
“They’ve heard me say that before.” Petra said as she set an old kettle on the cooker. She turned around and leaned against the makeshift counter as she spoke, “Here’s a problem for you to consider; the water around the island sucks, and all the resources that King Dick gave the asshole politicians to clean shit up were used to make a lovely water purification system for water going to the center of the island.”
“Well... why not live there?” TO asked, “Instead of here?”
Lendulin laughed this time. “You kidding?” She said, “I can hardly afford this place-”
“Wait.” DH said, “this is an old sewer. This room is… what- an old storage room?”
“Old intake room for filtering.”
“And you PAY for this?” DH’s ears were out in shock and surprise. “Someone rents this out?”
“Impossible.” TO said as they looked about, “These rooms don’t nearly meet the basic housing requirements-”
“Ah, that’s the trick.” Lendulin said, “They’re not rented out as residential complexes, they’re rented out as storage rooms.”
“... So all the other rooms around are storage?” DH asked.
Lendulin smirked, “I’ve never seen anyone actually use these rooms for storage.” She nodded to Petra, “She lives a few rooms down. Petra, have you ever seen someone use these places for storage?”
“Just tell people where I live why don’t you!” Petra snapped. Her outburst was clearly unexpected, as Lendulin let go of the ledge and floated away from her.
“... Sorry? I didn’t think-”
“Pearla has been tense lately.” Petra said as she set the cups of tea - strong and black and smelling slightly of mint- before each of them before she sat down, “She’s probably worried her housing situation will get back to her super secret partner-”
Pearla took the cup, and took a long drink before she spoke again, her voice tense, her words deliberate, “Nobody uses these places as storage.” She said, “Nobody. I’ve lived here a long time, and I’ve never seen anyone use them for storage.”
“Anyone who could afford a storage area wouldn’t come here for it.” Petra said.
“Yeah. And it’s all super sneaky. It’s almost impressive how they do it,” Lendulin said. “I went to the housing commission and said I was looking to rent a place. They asked for my budget and said they had nothing that would accommodate me that was in my budget. All they had in my price range was actually a storage room with an intake ditch. Very sly, you know?” She shrugged. “So I rented a storage room and turned it into an apartment. They don't ask questions, they don’t have any obligations to keep this place to residential standards, and they get money.”
“Didn’t you say you were Venturi’s assistant?” DH asked, “I mean, you have a job-”
Pearla narrowed her eyes, her hands clutching at her cup, “He’s an ass.” She muttered.
“He’s my employer.” Lendulin said with a sigh, “And you know I need the work.”
“You could do better.”
“No, I couldn’t. You know that.” She looked back to TO and DH. “I do. And I make enough to rent, say, a small house on the edge of the residential district, but not one that accommodates me.” She let her tail flick out of the water just slightly. “All the houses next to the water have higher prices. They’re bigger, fancier, and even if I could buy one of those outright, I’d need to change it so that it would be comfortable. I’d need... well, I’d need a house that’s basically half submerged.”
“And they don’t have them?” TO asked, “if there’s a population of semi-aquatic-”
“No demand. There’s very few semi-aquatic, legless people who could afford a riverfront house.” Petra said, leaning forward and resting her head in her hands, “That’s the magic trick here, you see?” She grinned, “the various housing commissions must provide housing affordable for those at the galactic minimum income. That’s done, but those houses don’t have accommodations for most legless people.” She gestured to Pearla, “Pearla could go there, she’s fine on land-”
“I’d prefer to be near the water.” She said, her eyes darting about.
“But she can’t get work that would pay her enough to rent a place in the residential district.”
“I’m perfectly happy with my current job.” Pearla said, “I help people.”
“Wait.” TO said, “Don’t you have a job? Any job should pay enough to-”
“I work at a not-for profit.” She said, “They don’t have to pay me anything, but they do what they can to make sure I have a roof over my head.”
“If you want to apply for a position, most places will ask you for your home address.” Lendulin said, “As you saw, this place isn’t an actual residential address. If we were to put, say, 7 Eponnomos Canal in an application system, it’s going to give us an error.”
“There are no residential houses in the Outer Ring.” Petra said, “So doing that blocks anyone who lives out here from working at a job outside the Outer Ring itself.”
This wasn’t right, and it made little sense, “But.. the government rents these places out-”
“As storage, not as residents.”
“But they know people are renting them as -”
“Not on paper they don’t.” Petra said.
“So to answer your question.” Lendulin said, “I’m lucky; I have a job, so I can afford a lot of stuff to make this place comfortable. I can’t afford a luxury house on the riverfront in the residential district, along with all the modifications I’d need to live in it.”
“And Pearla was born here.” Petra said, “Her parents lived here, and she rented their place after they died. She doesn’t have an address, and can’t get work outside of the Outer Ring.”
“I’m so sorry.” Lendulin said, laughing, “You wanted to see how your business could help us. You can't really do anything about the housing issues for us here.”
“No, they can’t, can’t they?” Pearla said, making eye contact once more and staring at them over her teacup.
This wasn’t right. There were rules in place to keep this kind of stuff from happening, to make sure that all the citizens of King Decon’s galaxy could be safe and comfortable. But of course, the rules were vague, just like Ark-1 had said, to keep the people in power happy.
Did this make the people in power happy?
TO took another drink of their tea, staring at the table as they did. They thought about GiDi, who was so certain that there had to be an actual reason the insurgency existed, and why they acted as they did.
Here’s your reason, GiDi. Part of it, at least.
