A Threat Among the Stars

by Mark Henwick

  Looking for work. It’s what everyone in the line has been saying.

  I’m staring at the man’s gloved hands, which are holding my ID. He hasn’t got a scanner, which is good. Xing’s counterfeit ID passes any human examination, but if the details were transmitted back to the government databases, ‘Maria Orita’ might come back with a query. It depends what Xing has been able to do about planting the information in Newyan’s InfoHub while I’ve been walking across the sierras.

  He reaches out and pushes my head up so he can see my face.

  My heart skips. He hasn’t done that with others.

  “Not much work about,” he says.

  “I have to try. There must be something.”

  A second man joins him, a hulking man, old scars stretched across his face, running past the corner of his right eye.

  “We got work for you,” the man with the scars says.

  I do not want to work for them. I just want to get past, but offers of work need to be questioned. Anyone as desperate as the people in this line would ask.

  “What work?” I say.

  “Look after our barracks,” says Scarface. “Clean. Cook. Keep us happy.”

  “Good rations. Warm room. A bed,” Neck-tattoo adds. “You’ll be safe.”

  I know what they’re offering, and safe would only mean safe from others, not from them. They’re preying on women who are desperate. I wouldn’t be the first in their barracks, and that makes me wonder what happened to the last.

  At that moment, I want to kill them and some of it must show on my face.

  “Hey, what’s your problem?” Neck-tattoo shoves me. “Too good to work?”

  The line behind me cringes away.

  I look down at the ground, stomach churning, furious at myself. What did I expect?

  I have to make something up on the spot.

  “I can’t leave my sister,” I say.

  “Where is she? Out there?”

  “Uh... no. She stayed inside last night,” I said. If they think my sister is outside and go looking, people may point to Talan and Kat. But the homeless are driven out every evening. What can I make up? “She told me she had some work. I’m going to meet her.”

  “All night work, hey?” They laugh.

  I look down, biting my lip.

  “Maybe we need two sluts to look after us, Sarge,” Neck-tattoo says. “Her sister sounds more fun than this sulky bitch.”

  Scarface reaches out and takes my ID from Neck-tattoo. “Go find your sister and turn up at the Nightwatch barracks on Calera and Navarre. Tell them the Sarge sent you.”

  “I need my ID.”

  “You don’t need it to find your sister. Move.”

  He gestures impatiently and turns to the next in line.

  Neck-tattoo shoves me away.

  Without ID, I can’t enter public buildings. And I won’t be able to get back out. When they clear the streets in the evening, the police will pick me up and jail me. Or hand me across to the Nightwatch.

  I can’t even communicate with Talan.

  I’m in Cabezón, but it’s already a disaster.

  Chapter 37

  Sánchez

  The sunlight is pale in the grand, high office of the Bureau of Justice, Ministro Sánchez’s office.

  “We’re in it up to our necks,” he says.

  The gauze curtain is fully across the great window, and he stands looking through it as he speaks. The plaza far below and all the figures in it are indistinct, as if wreathed in mist.

  When he’d first taken the post as minister, he’d enjoyed watching the people in the plaza from this vantage point. They were his people, the people to whom he’d sworn to deliver justice and equality.

  He doesn’t enjoy watching them any more.

  How has it come to this?

  Alfonso Elizondo, Ministro of the Bureau of Trade, replies to Sánchez’s spoken comment. “Yes. All in it together. But however many things have gone wrong, they’re not our fault. We’ve carried out our instructions. To the letter.” The man’s voice wobbles, like his cheeks. “And... and we need to continue. We have to. To fail now would end with destroying every justifiable aim we were seeking to achieve.”

  To fail now would end with us hanged as murderers and traitors, Fabio Sánchez thinks, but keeps his silence.

  They are all there, the second circle of the movement as they think of themselves. And they are all teetering on the edge of the abyss. They have woken the bear and they have to keep feeding it, or be consumed themselves.

  For the best of reasons...

  He remembers Loiola’s first subtle sounding, here, right in this office. Sánchez had sat behind his new, enormous desk, knowing himself to be the very picture of the young idealist lawyer, frankly stunned by the rate of his ascent to the position of Ministro for the Bureau of Justice and in awe of Loiola, the leader of the Newyan Equality Party and long-time Ministro of the Bureau of Foreign Affairs.

  The aims had seemed so right... had been so right. To redress the unequal balance of power between the exhausted, historical rights of the Founders and the people of Newyan.

  And step by bloody step, every single step somehow justified and necessitated by the one before, has led to this.

  How did we become this?

  Loiola of Foreign Affairs, Berges at Internal Security and Primer Ministro Eneko are the first circle of the movement, here on Newyan. The Hajnal, as Loiola calls the movement now; a word meaning ‘dawn’ that the pan-system organization adopted from ill-fated Tavoli. A sign, Sánchez thinks, that they’ve taken too much from others, that they’ve strayed from their path. Even Loiola and Eneko have been changed by what the Hajnal has had them do.

  Sánchez remembers Loiola’s passion: the simmering, volcanic emotions that threatened to spill out at any moment; the blazing eyes, and especially the rhetoric, like an incandescent flood of words that swept Sánchez away and recruited him into the movement.

  And now? Loiola is a grey man, seemingly devoid of real emotion, with eyes like ice.

  Primer Ministro Eneko as well. When Sánchez had joined the government, Eneko had played the amiable, bumbling image of everyone’s favorite, elderly uncle, transforming himself on the podium when he made his speeches. In private, he’d been sharp and focused, second only to Loiola in commitment to the movement. Now, like Loiola, he too seems devoid of emotion. He gives speeches in the way he always did, he rouses people, but for Sánchez, it’s as if Eneko doesn’t really believe it any more.

  Berges? Berges had always been like she is. A neat, sparse, angry woman. Empty eyes and no soul. Frightening. From their first meeting, Sánchez suspected she was a sociopath, and nothing has happened to convince him otherwise.

  Loiola and Eneko had both changed at the same time. It was that visit, deeper into the Margin worlds, a few years ago now. They’d come back, their commitment to the movement redoubled, their arguments strengthened, their timetables shortened—we must progress quicker, so we can support the struggle of the movement in places that are even worse than Newyan. Everywhere, the people are crying out for justice.

  But what Sánchez remembers most is their passion had been replaced by cold determination and frightening ruthlessness, and that it was at that time that the necessary steps became so precipitate.

  So bloody.

  How has it come to this? he thinks again.

  And as if in answer to his thoughts, Edith Zavala, Ministro of the Bureau of Industry, begins to lay the current decision out again for them, speaking in her careful phrasing.

  “It’s not our fault the movement failed on Kernow, and the Terran marines are occupying Tavoli. We are only responsible for Newyan. Regardless of that, we brought forward the plan to apply for membership of the Inner Worlds, to replace the advantage the movement lost on Kernow. That was against the advice of this committee. And we were right. We’ve gone too far, too fast. It’s led to increased exposure and reliance on our uncertain contacts within the Terran Counc
il.”

  “And increased expenses,” Cézar Carranza, Ministro of the Bureau of Finance, mutters.

  “None of this would have been a problem,” Zavala continues, “without the sequence precipitated by the customs cutter Duhalde firing on the Shohwa—”

  “To try to prevent the escape of Aguirre. An action demanded by Berges herself,” Carmen Goya, Ministro of the Bureau of Defense, breaks in.

  “Which we did not succeed in preventing,” Zavala points out. “All of which now leads, step by unavoidable step, to the Bureau of Justice agreeing to hear a claim by Xian which we know is some kind of Trojan horse to expose the movement while we are vulnerable.”

  “And which claim I was unable to refuse because we have no food,” Sánchez finishes. “Without the Xian relief supplies, people will starve in their thousands. Put the deaths to one side for a moment, and think only of the political situation. Imagine, if you would, what that would do to our bid for membership of the Inner Worlds.”

  Elizondo turns to the last man, the junior member of the group. They call him Ministro of Food and Agriculture, but such is the turmoil that he hasn’t been confirmed in his position. He is actually still the Subsecretario. His name is Mattia Yarritu, and he doesn’t speak at these meetings unless asked a direct question.

  “Are you sure that there is nothing else?” Elizondo says. “No last, emergency reserves?”

  Yarritu licks his lips and blinks. He shifts in his chair. “There are estimated to be fifteen days’ supplies for Iruña and more for essential personnel, all held in secured warehouses in the Hecho district, and controlled by the Presidential Guard under Ministro Berges. The remainder has been dispatched to regional capitals and is estimated to be sufficient for a week, with strict rationing, for those cities and immediate surroundings. A week could get us to the arrival of the Xian emergency supplies. However, that estimate of a week is dependent on the actions which have been proposed to us today. Without those actions, the supplies will last no more than four days.”

  They are all aware of the crisis, as continually reported to them over the last few months. The production from the confiscated estates has collapsed. The plan to sweep aside the remnants of the Founders’ privileges and all their collaborators has backfired spectacularly. The former Ministro of Food and Agriculture, who assured them the situation would right itself, is being held in the cells beneath the Bureau of Internal Security for his failure to accurately predict what would happen. None of them present today mention him. It is as if he no longer exists.

  Now they have to face the truth: not enough food has been produced. Not enough has been bought from planets with surplus. Reserves have disappeared. The trade embargo has bitten deep enough that there is no way to replenish stocks through purchases.

  It is only spring, and the first harvests are months away, and assume competence of the estates’ new owners that none here are confident about. Coastal cities such as Valdivia and Iruña have the potential for supplementing food sources from fishing, but not enough to feed the whole country. More remote towns and villages are understood to be self-sufficient; however, they are under-reporting for fear of falling foul of the Anti-Hoarding Laws.

  Even before the Xian embargo, which stopped the majority of the traders and frightened away the rest, the supply of essential food to Newyan was in an alarming state. Now it’s an urgent crisis.

  The people in this office and their families are part of the ‘essential personnel’ that Yarritu mentioned. They have their food supply guaranteed. The troops and police maintaining order are essential as well. Iruña itself is fairly safe. It is the world beyond which is on the point of implosion.

  “Subsecretario Yarritu and I have another meeting scheduled with the Xian delegation,” Sánchez says. “But the relief ships are on their way; they cannot traverse Chang space any quicker.” He turns from the window to address them directly. “We need that week.”

  They all know, if the food runs out, there will be riots. Not only will thousands die, but there will be delays to delivering the relief supplies while the situation is brought back under control. Thousands more will die during that delay.

  If they can just survive this brief interval until the Xian relief arrives, Loiola has assured them, the Hajnal movement on other worlds will have time to respond. More supplies will come, with troops to deliver them, and maintain order.

  Then, by summer, everything will be fixed. The Commission of Enquiry will lift the embargo. The Terran Council will approve the formal application for Newyan to join the Inner Worlds. Commissioners Taha and Ivakin will find no fault in emergency procedures forced upon the government.

  Loiola has his eyes only on that great strategic prize, joining the Inner Worlds, so it’s up to the second circle to implement the steps to get there, the first of which is to stretch the food out for one week in the provincial capitals.

  And to choose a scapegoat for anything that goes wrong.

  There will always be scapegoats for ‘misguided, unauthorized’ decisions, Sánchez thinks. Just like the unfortunate captain of the Duhalde. It is never allowed to be the movement’s fault.

  Aloud, he says: “Ministro Loiola has made his strong suggestion.” He emphasizes ‘strong’. “To rationalize the distribution process and ameliorate shortages in the provincial capitals, all criminals and people caught without their mandated documentation will be shipped by rail to Xorio, where camps are to be prepared to receive them.”

  Xorio is a bleak railway junction. Nothing but a tangle of tracks and some sheds on the rocky plateau inland of Iruña. Its only function is to be the central point for the railway network which connects to every provincial capital.

  Camps will not be ready, let alone supplies. The numbers will overwhelm the railway system. People will be held in railway trucks. It’ll be impossible to provide water, let alone food.

  “They’ll die,” Carranza mutters unnecessarily.

  The others turn to look at him, and he says nothing more.

  It is not a good idea to be less than supportive of strong suggestions from the inner circle. Not even when the majority of people without mandated documentation are guilty of no more than having lived and worked on estates without a need for the government’s new documentation. Not even that they have no documentation because the government cannot produce it. Not even that they will be murdering the very people that Newyan needs to return to the estates to get them working again.

  “Given that it’s primarily a transport problem,” Sánchez says into the tense silence, “Loiola suggested the Ministro of Transport be given the lead on this project.”

  Sánchez doesn’t know what the Ministro of Transport has done to bring himself to Loiola’s attention. Perhaps he was insufficiently supportive of a ‘strong’ suggestion.

  The Ministro of Transport is not part of the movement, and therefore expendable.

  He can see relief on the faces of the others here, quickly hidden; they all feared being given this project.

  Just as they all fear speaking against it, in case they themselves become the person handed responsibility for the next strong suggestion.

  The vote is passed unanimously.

  The directives are sent out to every provincial capital. All criminals and any people caught without ID are to be transported immediately by rail to a secure central holding facility in Xorio.

  Chapter 38

  Zara

  One step at a time.

  I’m in Cabezón, so I better do what I set out to do. I’ll think about getting back out later.

  It’s not a huge city. It takes me only twenty minutes to walk across it to the station. I had intended to use the library for comms, but I’d need an ID to get in, as I would for any government building with comms access. The station is my best alternative. The Rangers had warned us that travel on the railway was restricted, but stations on Newyan always have free short-range connections to the travel section of the InfoHub. Not quite the facilities I
wanted, but good enough under the circumstances, if I’m careful.

  The station is popular, but not because people are travelling. There are signs everywhere warning that all personal travel on the railways is halted during the emergency to allow for shipment of food. Some of the signs are defaced, because most of those shipments haven’t arrived.

  No, the station is popular because it’s warm and people can get off the street where there are constant police patrols. And maybe a train carrying food supplies will pull in. Hope has not died.

  The crowding helps by hiding me. I slink along until I find a spot behind some seats where I can crouch down and work with my pad. The crowd swirls aimlessly. There’s a hum of quiet conversation, which is better than the despairing silence outside the barriers.

  The important thing is that no one is interested in me.

  I log on to the InfoHub, to be immediately greeted by notices that I cannot book travel from Cabezón. There are some travel forums, but I notice that they’re all local, for travel within the city itself. The InfoHub is being chopped up, isolating each community.

  No matter. I have tools installed on my pad by Hwa.

  The barriers are better than anticipated. It takes the tools about ten minutes to burrow through and even then, I get a warning that they cannot re-route via any intermediate servers. If my messages get through, and someone looks, my location will be revealed.

  This isn’t ideal, but I need to find out what’s happening in Iruña and Hwa needs to know what’s happening to me.

  I manage to log onto a bulletin board that I identified to Hwa for us to message each other. We’re lucky it’s still up. It’s one of the broking systems, where people and companies can bid for travel deals. The site is not busy and my message is going to stand out.

  I submit it anyway, to the personal messages section, using the informal code Hwa and I agreed on.

  Great journey! Got what we wanted!

  Stuck here at the moment with a cousin.