Spectre of War

by Kin S. Law

  The papers went in vacuum tubes that sucked the letters off through the building. The last she put into an envelope with a strongly worded letter, and sent it to the Mail Room for sending out to their contractor. A deficit of this magnitude will not be tolerated, your rate will drop accordingly, yada yada yada. Her inbox had the usual mix of interdepartmental memos, but someone had failed to screen her mail properly and there were three hate letters mixed in with the rest. Winnie sighed when she peeled the first open: an angry tirade from a subcontractor on the lack of contracts being dished out, and claims of legal violation. That was why they had made it to her desk, the legal ramifications. Even though Winnie knew these were likely futile claims, she still had to file the letters with Legal, and that meant a mountain of paperwork. She decided to put on B.O.E’s latest album, Ramona, and got out her angriest pen. The experimental industrial sound was different, but that was what Winnie loved about B.O.E. Always on the outside, looking in to the mainstream.

  Toward afternoon, Winnie checked in with the Telegraph Room. The client had checked in not two hours ago and would arrive in the morning, bang on time. There was a sense of nervousness that lived in the office but did not affect the dock loaders. The loaders and machinists who knew how the sausage was made treated it no differently from another job.

  But everything about the client scared them, and management didn’t go into the work floor unless absolutely necessary. In the hall, Winnie ran into the foreman, Semyon Gorvinsky, who was the sort of stuff they made drill sergeants, sous chefs, and copilots out of. He seemed hectic, but confident they would meet the schedule. They were starting the barrels on the preliminary processing now. As Winnie bid Semyon a good day, she noted the brown hand sticking out of a grinder apparatus in one of the work rooms. That would not do—Semyon needed to fix those latch covers.

  The Telegraph Room was near the first-floor coffee shop. Winnie decided to stop by for her afternoon brew. Inside, the sunset was a dusky fog against the plate glass and redbrick. Whitewashed walls soared up to the industrial ceiling, the same one that hung over Ubique’s work floor and the loading platforms. Rising high into the space were the large bean gravitators, filters, and cold-brew coils for the custom espresso machine. High ceilings helped to disperse the jets of steam that vented out over the wooden bench seats of the café. Plumbing parts held most of the furniture together, and the baristas were impeccable in vests and manicured beards.

  The café was the height of Shipster Crap trendiness. Really, it wasn’t so much a place to have coffee as an appropriate place for Winnie to be seen. Even the name of the coffee house was textbook aesthetic: Sixty-Four Roasters. The number suggested an allusion to a time or an address that only meant something to the proprietor, and “roasters” separated it from the commonplace cafes where coffee came out of a tin. The implied exclusivity of fresh beans roasted on site and ground to order lent it an air of authenticity. In truth the owner of this café was in part Ubique, and there was nothing personal about the place. The plumbing fixtures came by the foot, an exact replica of the coffee shop at their tower offices in San Francisco. There were carefully engineered differences, of course; the wood had been reclaimed from an old, derelict coach building manufactory, for example. Different Yonder artifacts lived here, anchors and other trinkets on the walls. But that veneer covered up the drip-perfect consistent coffee, the souvenir carry cups, and the tea sandwiches made in manufactories a lot like the Ubique hopper room. Needless to say, Winnie stayed away from the sandwiches, but even the coffee came in pre-roasted bags that attached to the measurement fixtures in the grinders. Ubique did not trust the baristas to spoon out a measure of coffee. Even the clientele looked the same, all in slick pencil skirts, Shipster fashion top hats and faux dirigible breeches. In the coffee house, there were two things worth having besides the coffee: people Winnie needed to know, and people who had something to trade. People came to a corporate coffee house to figure out which of the others were prey and which were predator. She hadn’t become senior executive of Human Resources (distinct from the senior executive of Staffing, who handled employees) by chance. She had traded in favors, clandestine contacts, and, yes, sexual arrangements to get this far. That was the nature of the game, and Winnie was very good at playing. So Link could have his café racer haunts, but Winnie had Sixty-Four Roasters, which kept food on the table and Winnie in baristas in the back room.

  Her cappuccino was ready.

  Winnie let the barista come over and put it on her tiny reclaimed-wood table. The foam filled the warmed cup from brim to soup-bowl-sized brim. Perfection. The barista had drawn picture-perfect cam and cog latte art into the top. As the barista left, Winnie remarked on the taut, perfect buttocks on him. Not John, but someone named Logan, who was new. Winnie took a seat where she could see the whole café. She had outgrown the customers who frequented Sixty-Four, but that was why she came to watch them. The view from the top was… in a word, exquisite.

  Really, that was the only reason why she stood a chance when the terrorists burst through the front door.

  Winnie was sitting with her back to the wall, and in a corner, when the bullets came through the front of the café. They perforated the pair of power women who had immediately grabbed the seat in the front when they came in, so the floor-to-ceiling windows lit them in the best possible afternoon light. Now the gunshots lit them up in shades of bright crimson, the dots splashing across the tops of their lattes and ruining the cute kittens laboriously dripped into the foam.

  For a moment Winnie froze, stock-still, as the bodies lay on the broken glass and blood began to pool. The world felt as it had been taken from her and violently shaken, then returned. In shock she turned at a small sound, to find there had been somebody walking through the hall opposite the window and had been wounded in the crossfire. It was the same place Winnie herself had come from: one of two entrances to the café. It led back to her offices at one end and the rail yard on the other. Slumped to the floor, the hurt man twitched for a few seconds, then was perfectly still.

  “Nobody move!” said someone gruff who clambered in through the smashed window. He was enormous, just big enough to scrape both sides of the window as he came in, and he had a Collier eight-shot pistol in one hand and a sawed-off shotgun in the other.

  “Or these women get it? You dolt,” said the second figure, who appeared to be a woman. For a moment Winnie was confused by the lack of pencil skirt and heels that didn’t prop her two inches higher. But then the utilitarian leather and riding chaps resolved into the shape of a well-squared woman with a rifle held in both hands and thick, shaded goggles obscuring the top half of her face.

  A third man came in through the front door and stood off to a corner. With his tall hat, the coat sweeping his heels, and the enormous crossbow, he looked a little bit like a witch hunter from Protestant New England. This man had a pretty yellow handkerchief tied round his face, but that did nothing to soften the terror of his deep voice as he spoke loudly and clearly into the room.

  “Women and children on the floor. We just want Winnifred Lee-Smith!” said the Crossbow Man. When nobody moved, he raised his crossbow and laid a stream of quarrels into the custom gravitator, sending glass and coffee raining down on everyone. “Now!”

  So they did—what else could they do? The women slid off the perilously rickety café chairs and the men stood on shaking legs, remained standing, or pissed themselves. But Winnie, as she pressed her face to the perfectly clean, meticulously chosen, hexagon tiles of the café floor, counted on two things that might possibly, just possibly, get her through this.

  One: she hadn’t seen anybody who knew her from work. Everybody here was on Ubique’s second shift or from the other company that leased offices in the building.

  Two: these terrorists thought Winnifred was a man’s name.

  The terrorists spread out to three corners of the café, kicking over tables and poking people with their weapons. Shotgun reached the spot closest to Winnif
red and began aiming his guns at the various café customers. His shoes smelled terrible. Like breakfast and old blood, which was probably exactly what it was. She sensed from their movements that they were accustomed to combat.

  Think, Winnie, think! She told herself. Who had military training and bore a grudge with her? Of course; the laid-off subcontractors!

  Meanwhile, Rifle and Crossbow had respectively taken up positions behind tables near the door and window, evidently prepared to deal with the next eventuality—the police officers who arrived, their klaxons screaming in their steaming chaser engines. Red and blue lights lit up the immaculate whitewashed walls.

  “Come out with your hands up!” cried one of them. “Police!”

  “No!” cried Rifle, who set up a shot using a reclaimed naval pump condiments table as a steady tripod. She squeezed, and people screamed when the shot rang like a bell through the cafe.

  “What do you want?” cried the same officer, unseen outside the café. Evidently Rifle had hit a soft spot. For good measure, Crossbow stepped up and unloaded an entire drum of quarrels through the window, a hail of barbs plunked like piano keys against the chasers and the street outside. The weapon hissed as its steam canister vented gas. Crossbow reloaded casually from a bandolier under his coat.

  “He’s got a point,” said Rifle, not moving from her spot. “How do we know we have Winnifred Lee-Smith here? We don’t know what he looks like.”

  “Doggonit, you told just about everyone here we don’t!” said Shotgun. He picked up a half-empty latte, drained it, made a face, and smashed the cup inches from Winnifred’s nose.

  “We will know soon enough. Our contact said he always takes his coffee here at four in the afternoon, just before a delivery,” said Crossbow. “Let’s give our man some time to show himself.”

  The rat bastard! Was it John the barista? Any of her baristas. Or her superior? Was it Melinda from Accounting? Oooo, Winnie had just known Melinda was after her job! Really the sniping wasn’t anything bitter or conniving. Mostly Winnie was trying to distract herself from the skirt-soiling terror that threatened to shake her to pieces. But after a minute passed, then five, then ten minutes of nobody doing much of anything except rounding up the men near the window as human shields and waving some guns about, Winnie relaxed as much as she was going to. They wouldn’t figure out who she was any time soon. Winnie could wait them out until the authorities decided to storm the place.

  It was Shotgun who grew impatient with proceedings and barked hoarsely into the tense atmosphere.

  “This waiting is hard on my bad knee. Do we really need this Winnifred?”

  “That’s the signature on the checks. And on the forms that laid us off, numbskull,” said Rifle. She had left the gun propped on the condiment table and found a mostly-untouched free trade macchiato to sip while she watched the street outside.

  “We get him,” said Crossbow as he paced smoothly around the café, “and we get to Ubique. We hold their top man hostage and we demand the payment of our proper wages.”

  These simpletons! thought Winnie. Ubique wouldn’t give two damns about one of their mid-tier managers set up in Red Hook She didn’t think those Cali suits knew where that was in Brooklyn. Winnie had been setting herself up for a headquarters position in San Francisco when she took the special client’s job.

  “If it makes you feel better,” said Rifle, “hold each man by gunpoint and ask them if they’re Winnifred. We’re only dragging this out so Ubique can get a negotiator down here.”

  “That sounds like a hoot,” said Shotgun. Without further ado he fired, making one of the hostage’s knees into hamburger. “Whoa Nelly. I forgot to ask.”

  “You splendid, murderous bastard,” said Crossbow as a scream cut through the air. “That’s rock salt. That’s why the darkies down Colorado way are so scared of you.”

  The man writhed on the floor, clutching at his ruined knee. His mouth gaped in a silent scream. Winnie covered her mouth as the blood crept by her. Oh Goddess of Mercy, she thought, and clutched at the jade pendant at her neck. If Shotgun found out Winnie was Chinese, what would he do? Some small part of her was quivering in shame, too. That man had gotten hurt because of her.

  No. Because of the Shotgun man. Slippery Slope.

  “Stings,” commiserated Rifle, though it sounded like professional detachment. Winnie knew it when she heard it.

  “Let that be a lesson to you all. If you are Winnifred, best speak up now, or my associate here will do much the same to you,” said Crossbow. “We’ve time to burn and ammo in the plenty, but when the negotiator arrives we want our bargaining chip.”

  Winnie felt her blood run cold as the various menfolk began to plead or whine, insisting they weren’t Winnifred Lee-Smith. Some of them showed identification cards, and those that had photograms of themselves were shooed to the floor with the women. Eventually only Joshua and Logan, the baristas, were left along with two other men. Evidently Sixty-Four Roasters did not issue photogram identification.

  “Well, that cuts it down to three. Go on, get,” said Rifle.

  For a moment nobody moved, but then Logan, the dusky barista with the fine behind, stepped out of the line. He made for the door, but Crossbow dropped a hand on his shoulder.

  “And you’re sure you don’t know what he looks like?”

  “Maybe we missed him. Maybe this little pissant lied to us,” said Rifle.

  “I’m… I’m sure! I just heard a few of the workers complain about the speed-up, and joke about pissing in Lee-Smith’s coffee,” stuttered Logan. “I just wanted to make a fast buck.”

  “Really? You didn’t just screw us?” said Shotgun. He walked over, squatted, and pressed his pistol to Logan’s kneecap.

  “Oh my God! I saw Joshua make that vegan latte crap! He’s here! He’s here!” screeched Logan.

  “Can’t beat the coffee test,” said Rifle. “He’s here.”

  “Good work,” said Crossbow.

  “Go on, get,” added Shotgun, prodding Logan’s back with his shotgun.

  Crossbow let him go, but when Logan got to the window there were a couple of ringing shots from the police outside. Logan put his hands up, and his pants went dark. At first Winnie though he had soiled himself, but then he crumpled, and his front was red with bullet holes.

  “Christ, we were releasing a hostage!” screamed Crossbow into the night.

  “Sorry!” said somebody on the other side, and there was the sound of a slap.

  “Goddamn it!” said Crossbow.

  “Watch your tongue. There are ladies present,” said Shotgun.

  “Hey, you curse around me all the time!” said Rifle. There was an easy camaraderie that was hard to hate, despite the red stains pooling around Logan’s body.

  While this was happening, Winnie was inching towards the door. Her small frame and dull, professional clothes made it easy to slip under the tables unnoticed, but she still had to be careful to move very slowly, lest the terrorists notice. The blood that was splattered from the window formed trails of droplets across her path, like lava that she carefully avoided. Once she heard Logan talking about her vegan latte, she began to crawl double-quick, trying to make it out before Joshua could point the finger. Seeing the perspiration on his face as he tried not to glance toward her, Winnie wondered if she could have given in to his more pressing needs in that stock room. She hoped it was incentive enough for Joshua not to give her up to the terrorists, but it was a little too late now to go on her knees and open wide.

  She was quite close to the door leading back to her office. If she could get to it she could go into the street away from the shattered window. Which way was better? The office would have her vacuum mail to send for help, and a solid steel rail yard door. But her sedan was parked not three spaces down the line, and the attendant would have plugged it into the steam, ready for her regular work hours to end. Across the way, there was another woman who had reached a similar position to the one she had—except she was bru
shing the table’s legs, and the coffee cups on top of it were rattling loudly. Winnie held her finger to her mouth, glaring across the way until the panicked woman stopped moving, her mouth open in terror. Winnie nodded, and made a gesture she hoped translated to the woman as “Wait!”

  “All right, Joshua,” said Crossbow. Winnie froze. “Your associate just gave away the game. Winnifred Lee-Smith is here now. We want the lying bastard. Which one of these suits is him?!”

  Shotgun clocked Joshua across the face with the butt of his gun, for good measure.

  “Winnifred? I barely know him,” said Joshua when he recovered, rubbing his jaw. He was visibly sweating, but thank the heavens, he had caught on to the terrorists’ mistake. “I just make his coffee.”

  “But you did make it, so he’s here now.”

  “No, I sent it up to his office. He’s probably gone now, with all the noise you made and the police here,” lied Joshua.

  “Liar,” said Rifle. She reached over from her reclining position and casually flicked Joshua in his groin, through his apron. The touch was like a firecracker, and the barista jumped a foot in the air. His freeman skin turned the hue of ash over his usual coffee-bean brown. But now Winnie knew they could tell when he was lying, so she pulled her heels up, ready to make a run for the door.

  “Christ!” said Joshua. “Okay, okay. Winnifred isn’t a man.” Damn!

  “No? It’s a woman?” said Rifle, amazed.

  “Yes, yes. It’s the woman under the table,” he said.

  Winnie sighed. That was how much a roll in the hay bought her, she supposed. She couldn’t blame Joshua. After all, Winnie would have sold him out in an instant, if the situation were reversed. Winnie had had a dozen like him and one night of jungle fever was no comparison with the rest of her life. Footsteps thundered across the café, shaking the tiles.

  But to her surprise, Shotgun did not flip over her table—he grabbed the other one across the way, dragging the woman there to her feet.