Page 33 of The Towering Sky
“We have to run a field study examining social mores in a crowded location,” Rylin tried to explain. “The mall seemed like the easiest place.”
“Social mores? What does that even mean?”
“Behavioral norms. The things people do automatically, subconsciously, because that’s how everyone else does it.”
“Mm-hmm.” Chrissa refrained from commenting on the fact that Rylin was going to the mall—on a weekend—with her ex-boyfriend.
Rylin felt plenty guilty without Chrissa’s help. She couldn’t stop wondering if it was wrong of her to have hidden this from Hiral.
She hadmeantto tell Hiral that Cord was her lab partner; she really had. Last night, when Hiral came with her to Lux’s birthday party, she had planned on telling him. But she kept putting it off. By the time they were walking home, holding hands, eating doughnuts from their favorite late-night food cart, she’d decided against it. Between her schoolwork and his work schedule—he was on the late shift again, which ran into the early hours of the morning—she barely saw Hiral these days. Why ruin a perfectly good night by bringing up her ex-boyfriend?
Besides, she and Cord were actually starting to get along during psych class, to relax back into something that resembled friendship, at least within school bounds. It wasn’t romantic, Rylin kept telling herself.
And the more time that went by without her mentioning it to Hiral, the less it seemed like a big deal.
After all, she was keeping a much bigger secret from Hiral: allthe drama over the Mariel investigation. Mariel had known that Rylin stole drugs. If that secret somehow came to light through the police investigation, it wouldn’t take long for the cops to realize that Hiral had been involved too. He was the one who’d sold the drugs for her.
Hiral had worked so hard to put all of that behind him, and Rylin had no desire for it to resurface now. She knew it wasn’t easy—god, even last night she’d seen their old friend V approach Hiral at Lux’s party, throwing an arm easily around Hiral’s shoulders as he whispered something. Probably offering him a hit of his latest drug. But Hiral just shook his head, ignoring him.
When she arrived at the main entrance of the mid-Manhattan Mall, a teeming monstrosity that spanned the entire 500th floor, Rylin was startled to find Cord already waiting for her. He was standing near the doors, his arms crossed, wearing an oversized sweatshirt, mesh athletic shorts, and rubber flip-flops.
“What on earth are you dressed as, a basketball team’s waterboy?”
Cord gave a bright, unselfconscious laugh. “Is it too much? I raided Brice’s closet. I didn’t want to look absurd.”
“Then you’ve failed miserably.”He would have looked perfectly fine in his usual T-shirt and dark jeans, Rylin thought, confused. It took a moment before she realized why he’d wanted to dress up—or rather, dress exaggeratedly down. “Is this your first time going this far downTower?”
“Absolutely not. I’ve been to Central Park lots of times.”
Rylin blinked to hide her consternation, though she should have guessed. Even when they were together, Cord had never come down to her apartment. Their entire relationship had begun, thrived, and ended within the confines of his 969th-floor apartment.
“I’m happy to buy something else, if you’re embarrassed to bewith me,” Cord offered. “You look nice, though.”
Rylin laughed. “That’s just because this is the first time in months that you’re seeing me in something that isn’t a school uniform,” she pointed out.
Cord gave a puzzled frown, as if he hadn’t quite thought of that, and didn’t especially like the realization.
They swept through the main double doors into a department store, and Rylin was immediately assaulted by the sensory overload within. There was just somuchof everything—stacks of black cyra tops, row upon row of upcycled denim, not to mention the soaring walls lined with women’s shoes. There were stilettos and slingbacks and boots, some color-shifting to match your outfit, others self-repairing so they never showed a scuff mark. Most were lined with the new piezoelectric carbon soles, which converted the mechanical energy of walking back to electricity and fed it directly into the Tower’s main grid.
Chrissa had been right: The mall was overcrowded today. The breathless conversations of the other shoppers washed over Rylin as if she’d been in an echo chamber. Adverts instantly popped up on her contacts—Jeans just 35ND for one day only!orDon’t forget to vote in the municipal election this week!She quickly disabled the contacts, slightly relieved by the newfound clarity of her vision. She’d had them for a year now, since she started at Berkeley, but she still wasn’t used to how crowded they got in public places.
“I think I should buy you this.” Cord held up a soft green tank top that saidCAN’T I JUST WATCH THE SCHOOL VIDS FROM MY BED?
“I don’t think it matches the school uniform,” Rylin jested, though she hadn’t missed the fact that Cord offered to buy it for her, rather than suggesting she buy it for herself. And did he even understand what the shirt meant? He’d probably neverwatched a school vid in his life. Up at Berkeley, the courses were taught exclusively by live professors.
They headed through the department store’s far doors and into the mall proper, toward the massive bank of elevator pods at the center of its cathedral-like interior. The elevator pods looked like nothing so much as a strand of delicate opaque pearls, constantly detaching and reattaching as they moved throughout the mall along their fiber-cable necklaces. They would float up, sporadically stopping and starting as new people got on or off, and then finally drift back to earth.
Elevator pod technology was nothing new. It had been invented before hovercrafts sometime in the last century and wasn’t useful on any kind of large scale, certainly not for the Tower itself. But in self-contained spaces like malls or airports, it was still the cheapest and most effective way to move people short distances.
“Ready?” Cord asked, starting toward the nearest station.
Because of the way the tech worked, pulling them along on that nanofiber, the pods themselves only opened from one end. And for some reason that Rylin had never paused to question, everyone always entered the pod and then turned around to face the entrance, waiting expectantly for the sliding panels to open again.
For their experiment, Cord and Rylin were going to board a crowded car and then face the back instead of the front, to see how people reacted. It had been Rylin’s idea, actually. She liked to think that it was brilliant in its simplicity.
The moment they stepped onto the station, the smartmatter beneath their feet registered their weight and summoned a pod. Cord tapped at the screen to mark their destination as the highest level of the mall, a full thirty floors above them. Then they both stepped inside.
Rylin started to turn unthinkingly toward the curved flexiglass door. As the pod clicked shut and jerked into the air, the surface of the mall fell away before them, making the shoppers look like a swarm of ants.
