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“She said there must be only one.”
"One what?" Stock said. The neighbor shrugged again.
Stock stood on his chair, but those in front had done the same. He strained on tip-toe and dodged his head from side to side. Something, she said something about...was it ‘rabbits’? What's a 'rabbit'? His neighbor tugged the sleeve of his tunic.
"It's one for two." he said. "One for a couple."
"One for a couple?" asked Stock. "One what?"
"One baby." said his neighbor. "Only one or they kill you."
"One baby?" Stock sat down disappointed. "Who wants even one stupid baby, anyway?"
A rush of air, sounded like static, a hissing noise growing gradually louder and louder. It's incessant tone breaking up into multiple babbles, a thousand people all talking at once. And pressure, he was crushed in on all sides, elbows and knees clashing into him from in front, from behind. He was on Baker's Concourse, still in the Hirise but thirty levels lower than the place he grew up. He was being swept along in a river of people, fighting to get to the right side. The momentum of the crowd would carry him past his exit if he couldn't find a way to get over.
He stumbled, tripped by something lying on the plastic flooring worn mirror-smooth by generations of the daily crush on Baker's Concourse. He glanced down quickly to see what he'd hit, but could barely make it out through the legs of the pushing citizens before he was swept past the obstacle. He thought it may have been a hand, someone who'd fallen perhaps. He reached his exit and put it out of his mind. Nothing to be done about it, on Baker's Concourse you just have to keep up...
A book, now. An old, old book. The paper kind and full of pictures. He'd been scrambling with his friends, he was a kid again, climbing the water reclamation pipes in one of the maintenance sections. It was cramped and some of the pipes were hot, grab the wrong one and you'd know about it. Fall, even and die.
He'd found an alcove where some of the insulation had been torn away, scavengers risking their necks for a bit of extra warmth in the winter. A plastic box was stuffed into the back. Junk mostly, some old rags and an open food packet, long past eating. But at the bottom was a treasure. A book, like the ones great-granddad Stock had told about long ago, before the Mercymen had come with their needles.