4: Population Control
To Lissa’s surprise, Benny behaved himself for most of the outing. They bounced between a handful of the larger, more welcoming clubs on the outskirts of Lakeview, doing the back-and-forth with humans playing hard to get, and he kept within her line of sight and obeyed her subtle signals when she wanted him to back off. Inexperience was the biggest danger of a young vampire new on the town; being too eager, taking too much, scaring the humans or, in particularly unlucky cases, getting one killed. It’d be a long time before Benny would be allowed out alone, and in the meantime it was up to people like her to make sure he didn’t cause a diplomatic incident or get slaughtered by an army of children. He made the job easy for her, not letting his excitement lure him away from her or force her to have to drag him off anyone.
Which is why it took her totally by surprise when he ditched her on the way home, of all places.
Mindful of the easily startled humans all around her, Lissa smothered her impatient growl and scanned the crowds. She was standing outside a train station, about halfway between their last club and the gate to the Scarlet City, and the sun would start rising in less than an hour. She didn’t have time for this. She wasn’t going to let the sun burn years off her life for the sake of some impulsive baby brat.
“Lissa!” came Benny’s breathless voice behind her, and she spun, reflexively flashing her teeth at him. Benny barely flinched at this, but the humans around them shrank back; Lissa reminded herself that they were aboveground.
“Where were you? Let’s go!”
“I’m here, I’m here.” He hurried after her, all eager pep in his bouncing steps, and Lissa tried to remember what it was like to be young and aboveground with fangs for the first time. “I just wanted to see the train station.”
“Why?” Surely he didn’t want to leave town. Travel for a vampire was a logistical nightmare, requiring weeks of careful planning and organisation with human escorts to avoid the toxic touch of the sun. “It’s just a train station.”
“I wanted to see if it was the same.”
This answer was so out of the sky that Lissa almost stopped walking for a moment. “The same?”
“The bars have all changed.” Benny’s face twisted into a scowl. “Fashions change and stuff, I suppose. The human decorations and music and fashions and people are all… different.”
Right, right. Only fifty years underground, Lissa reminded herself. This place probably still reminded him of a time when it was home. Lissa didn’t remember how long it took for her memories to fade, for the surface to be an alien place to her, but it was surely longer than fifty years. “And the train station?”
“Pretty much how I remember it.” His expression brightened. “Let me show you – ”
“No time. We have to beat the sun.”
“There’s still ages before – ”
Lissa darted at him and wrapped her hand around his. The humans around them didn’t clock the threat, but Benny did; to surround another’s flesh with your own, to engulf them within you, was as instinctive a dominance signal to a vampire as displaying an open palm was placation to a human. Wrapping her fingers around his, she might as well have wrapped her mouth around his throat, and he reacted accordingly, instantly shrinking back, meek.
“The sun,” Lissa hissed, quietly enough to not startle the humans, “is not a joke. Tell me, little one, what happens to light that passes through as much blackwater-contaminated air as the light from space does?”
“It destroys the Progenitors’ gift,” he said meekly.
“Cooks it right out of your skin, it does. The sky out here is a threat, do you understand? Even here, above that,” she said, gesturing to the heavy cloud cover above the glass roof of the city, “sit stars, little needles of poison that a suddenly cleared sky would wash you in, and the very, very cautious, those who don’t want to risk lessening their thousands of years by any measure, avoid even that. It is reckless enough for us to be out under the threat of starlight. Only utter fools willing to measure their life in a couple of centuries would venture under a moon. And the sun? The sun, racing to the horizon as we speak? No level of cloud cover will protect you from the sun, understand? Start walking around in sunlight and you’ll rot to nothing within a few decades. Your life would already be more than halfway over. Is a tour of an old train station worth that to you?”
“N-no.”
“Then let’s get home.” She released his hand and kept walking, and he followed without complaint.
Getting into the Scarlet City was always easier than getting out of it. Everyone wanted to be underground before the sun was up; the gate guards just checked to make sure the people coming home weren’t stupid humans trying to have the most dangerous adventure of their lives and brushed them right on in. This time, the process was even more halfhearted than usual, as the guards seemed distracted by some sort of news broadcast on the giant information screens behind them. Lissa’s heart sank as she recognised the figure on the front steps of the Capitol Building. Taira.
“We are pleased to announce,” Lissa’s sister called from the screens with a joyful and confident smile like she wasn’t flirting with the concept of apocalypse, “that our petition for a population increase has made it through Council and been approved. The Scarlet City will soon be home to more vampires than ever before, and thanks to the unprecedented level of support from our enthusiastic citizens, the voices of the youth are dominating the selection process for the first time. If you’re looking to bring a new vampire into this world, check the conditions – regardless of your wealth, political stature, or the prestige of your bloodline, you might be eligible!
“It is worth noting that there are some unusual conditions to this round of population increase. You should think of this as a pilot study, with the option of increasing eligibility in the future. Due to some slight demographic imbalances, this first round will be focused on increasing the Type A population exclusively. Thank you.”
The line entering the city stopped moving as the crowd erupted in a mixture of surprise, joy, confusion and outrage. Lissa stared blankly at a screen now playing some music video, mulling over the announcement, trying to figure out how she’d misunderstood it. Because she must have misunderstood. There was no way that Taira had said that they were going to dramatically increase the ‘Pay population and the ‘Pay population alone. There was no way that the government had reached that decision. It didn’t make sense.
“Hey,” someone said to her, “aren’t you that woman who was just on – ”
“She’s my sister,” Lissa snapped, and headed for the Central Line. She had to talk to Taira about this, get her to explain. You couldn’t increase one type demographic like that. The balance of the city was a precarious peace held between Bees and Taipays, and their relatively equal power and population kept it that way. There were Bees and Taipays in balance, and there were a smaller but influential number of Abbies, about half as many as the other two groups, and that ratio was sacred – start messing with the populations and you started messing with the required territory sized and blood supply needs and voting power and soon enough, everything would crumble. It didn’t take much to turn vampires to conflict; they weren’t a naturally peaceful sort of people. The only way things worked were if the three groups were carefully balanced to keep each other in check.
Well, four groups. There were Zeroes too, Lissa supposed.
Taira’s address wasn’t really a secret, but she wasn’t influential enough for it to be widely known – or at least, she hadn’t been until this week. It would very likely become widely known soon enough, if she was the face of this absurd move. But for now, Lissa was able to approach her apartment without having to move through any mobs or security, and wasn’t surprised to find that she was indeed home – a broadcast like that had probably been recorded in advance and not aired until she was safely home. There were limits to what even Taira would say to a mob in person.
She answered the door, flashed Lissa a bright smile, and waved her in. “Liss! I’ve seen you more in the past couple of days than in the past few months!”
“Don’t uproot our society with a nonsensical announcement every time you want to see me,” Lissa replied, ducking into the apartment and closing the door quickly as if she expected a mob to follow her in, “we won’t survive too many more of those. What the fuck is going on?”
“So you heard the announcement. Wine?”
“Don’t play games,” Lissa said, pushing past her sister and pouring her own wine. “What the fuck was that?”
“I just announced the final decision.”
“The final decision? Tai, it’s one thing to openly flaunt the will of the elders and make a power play for control of the city – utterly insane in its own right, by the way – but this? There’s no way that everyone agreed to this. Are you blackmailing the entire government or something?”
“It’s a sensible move forward – ”
“No! It’s not!” Lissa gulped her wine, pausing her argument a moment to savour its familiar taste. Not the wine itself (she’d never been much of a wine person), but the water content. The uncontaminated water of Lakeview always sat odd on her tongue, and after a night of drinking in human clubs, the taste of blackwater was a relief. “I don’t understand, Tai. I don’t understand how flooding this city with ‘Pays is supposed to help anyone except the ‘Pays. Please, help me understand!”
“It’s alright. I know this seems like a big move, but it’s going to work out. I told you I’d protect you, and I meant it.”
“Is this someone else’s plan? Are you being blackmailed?”
“Oh, no. I’m doing this because I believe in it.”
“Did you get paid off, then? Who’s backing this increase?”
“Herron Studios.”
“The most successful Taipay-owned company in Scarlet City? They seriously did just buy you? I thought you were better than that.”
“It’s more complicated than that. I know what I’m doing.”
“I don’t think you do! I know you’re used to feeling invincible, oh high-and-mighty Abby; I know you think that our petty squabbles can’t hurt you, but I assure you that if you upset the balance between Bees and ‘Pays then it won’t be just my kind who suffer! If you flood this place with ‘Pays then it will reach the Abbies, and you won’t be any more safe than – ”
Something flickered in Taira’s expression. She hid it almost immediately, expert politician that she was, but Lissa knew her sister. Lissa caught it.
“Oh,” Lissa breathed. “Is that the plan, then?”
“You don’t need to worry about it,” Taira said.
“I don’t need to worry about it? You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“I’m not sure you do! But I do understand the situation correctly, yes? This is another wing of your anti-traditionalist campaign, taking power from the elders. You’re not just going for the elders. You’re trying to topple the Abbies. Is that right? It’s not about ‘Pays versus Bees; that’s the distraction, because that’s what everyone’s used to. Zeroes are powerless and Abbies are secure in their power so everyone’s always focused on the middle balance, so you’re upsetting that one, is that right? And expecting pushback from the Bees, is that right? If you get this increase through, there will be overwhelming demand from the Bees for a similar concession, and you’ll be ‘forced’ to acquiesce next round. It’ll be viewed as some failed campaign from corrupt politicians bought by a Taipay company, righteously thwarted by pushback from the Bees, but we’re not the target, are we? You’re trying to leave the Abbies out of the whole population increase. You’re trying to reduce Abby numbers.”
“We make up twelve per cent of the city’s population, and effectively control the city,” Taira said. “Isn’t that absurd? I went out there and announced this outrageous plan and there’ll be political pushback, maybe even rioting, but no one will dare touch me. My kind will keep doing what we want. Now, I won’t pretend I’m opposed to that – it’s only natural for the strongest and the best to rise to the top of a society. But we’re not governing a society of just Abbies. We need other voices in government, we need more disparate control, more concerns and opinions to be heard from more types of people. And to do that, we need more people who aren’t Abbies. If we were just, let’s say, five per cent of the population, it wouldn’t matter how much stronger or better we were. Sheer numbers would build a more equitable society, and it would do so without depriving any living Abby of anything we currently have.”
“You’d have to more than double the population to get the Abbies to five per cent. I doubt we’re increasing the population that much.”
“Not yet. But human food production increases as the blackwater decreases, and that means more humans, and that means the world can support more vampires to decrease the contamination even faster. The population increase is exponential, and we live very long lives. When the population down here is doubled, we’ll all be thankful we took this route.”
“We only live long lives if we don’t get ourselves killed. The elders will already kill you if you don’t back down. Now you want to make enemies with all the other Abbies, as well? They’ll kill you when they catch you, and I’ll be out of family.”
“Well, then.” Taira raised her wine glass in a toast, and sipped it. “I’ll just have to make sure they never catch me, won’t I?”
Derin Edala 