Ankhshesh drained his cup and waggled it at an aide to signal he wanted more. As the soldier refilled it from a skin flask, Apheru nodded toward the messenger where he hurried across the compound, scuffing clouds of dust with each footfall. The sweat glistened on his face in the heat, making clear his ride had begun at dawn. Without a word, he pulled the rolled parchment from his shoulder bag and handed it to Apheru.
“The Princess commands your presence?” Ankhshesh asked with a grin.
Apheru shook his head.
“It’s from the General.”
Ankhshesh waved the messenger away as Apheru finished reading the dispatch.
“Gather your things, Ankhshesh; we leave for Nekhbet’s camp within the hour.”
Their horses, well rested and groomed, seemed to understand the urgency as they raced along the valley floor in the rising heat, stopping only twice to rest and water. They made the distance in three hours, pulling up suddenly near the great commander’s vast tents at the edge of a modest palm grove. He motioned them inside without a word and went quickly to the business at hand.
“Our advance columns have been halted in two places only a day’s ride to the north,” he began, indicating the army’s position with the charred stick from a dead campfire for a pointer. Apheru frowned at the crude map, traced with powdery oxide on a length of parchment.
“Halted by whom, General?”
“We suspected mercenary Nubians in the employ of tribal chiefs, but several prisoners taken and interrogated during the night revealed a large contingent of raiders from Sidon and Kadesh. They seem to believe Pharaoh’s desire to mount a voyage to God’s Land would somehow cause her to ignore their activities. Now, as we prepare to move on Canaan, these creatures understand great Pharaoh will not stand by and allow their crimes. They also know garrisons will certainly be required to secure new trade routes.”
“Garrisons that wouldn’t tolerate these raids,” Ankhshesh observed.
“Precisely,” Nekhbet replied.
“How did a band of scavengers come to know about Pharaoh’s plans to journey southward to Punt?” Apheru asked suddenly. “The information is not yet known by most.”
Nekhbet smiled.
“My question as well, Captain; there are clearly some among us who have found fortune in spilling secrets into the ears of outsiders.”
“What are your orders, General?”
“Tomorrow, you will prepare a detachment to find and punish these thieves and put an end to their constant harassment of our foraging parties. I am putting you at the disposal of the scout column commander; he will give you the details you need.”
“And then?”
“Deal with these animals, and when you return, I will discuss the steps we must take to root out and deliver to Pharaoh those traitors who have let slip her intentions; there must be swift and merciless action to discourage this sort of thing.”
“As you command.”
They turned to go, but Nekhbet held Apheru.
“Captain, I wish to speak with you on other matters.”
“I’ll see to our quarters for the night,” said Ankhshesh discretely as he disappeared through the tent flap.
“General?” Apheru said as the old man motioned him to sit.
“This place you come from, it must be more distant than any other.”
“Yes.”
“Farther even than beyond the great sea?”
“Much farther, sir.”
“You know I am a tutor and advisor for the education of Princess Neferure?”
“Of course, General.”
“She is troubled, Apheru. When I visit at Ma’at, she presses me for knowledge, as she should, but the Princess worries because your own visits have lessened in the last weeks; she fears your love for her may have begun to ebb.”
“That could never happen, General; she alone commands my heart.”
“And I have said the same, yet she cannot quiet her fears another has gained your attention. What is worse, Thutmose’s presence is made more frequently now, and new rumblings from the shadows at court suggest you are shrinking from this because you fear a confrontation with her cousin. Is this true?”
“No, General, it is not. The Princess is dearer to me than any other, and I have no fear of Thutmose; he is simply taking advantage of my absence to poison her thoughts against me.”
“But why do your people in that distant place demand so much of you? Can they not see your duty to Pharaoh rises above all else?”
Apheru stood and walked to a table, gathering a handful of dates. Suddenly, and without warning, he heard a strange sound from beyond the tent. Chirping, like a flock of birds waking at dawn seemed odd and out of place. He looked first at Nekhbet, but the old man seemed oblivious to its unnatural sound.
“Apheru, are you well?”
Still he couldn’t move or speak. As though gripped by a paralysis—a disease of the mind, perhaps—Apheru only stared with dead, lifeless eyes. The general moved to call for his physician, but the dark closed in on Apheru until the echoes returned and his vision began to blur.
Ricky gasped and leaned forward in the cocoon, gripping the seat beneath him to gain leverage. He was sweating heavily, struggling against disorienting confusion in the silent darkness. On the small status display above, a blinking red indicator showed an interruption of his session due to ‘insufficient payment’. He fought the rage welling up inside, kicking at the access hatch to make it open faster. When he reached the lobby moments later, Ricky glared at Justman.
“What the hell’s going on?”
Justman looked at a display that monitored time and fidelity of each simulation running at any moment in the theater’s gallery.
“I’m sorry, Slider; your time ran out early because the account shows a zero balance and the system shut itself down.”
“Bullshit! You said I still had seven hours coming to me before the advance kicks in!”
“Well, that was before, see? The account had to be drawn down to meet the new minimum.”
“I paid for those hours!”
“We had to!” Justman protested. “Boris called just now and he’s making us square the accounts against the new totals immediately!”
Ricky’s face reddened still more.
“I can’t get that kind of money right now!”
“Sure, Slider, I know how it goes, but there was no other choice; Boris isn’t gonna let anyone go without paying the increase and taxes, so they made us lock out your simulation.”
“Fuck you, Ellis!”
Ricky grabbed his bag from where it leaned against his ankle, turning quickly for the door. His head swirled with anger as he crossed Reese Street and went swiftly toward the transit station. He knew what Justman’s words would mean; until he could find the staggering payment and deliver it to the theater, he would be barred from seeing her again. Even worse, it was inevitable that Bartel would appear at his door, demanding payment for the advance hours he knew Ricky could never make.
Again he fought against the frustration and torment, knowing his own hand was in it; he hadn’t drawn back from his need for Starlight (and Neferure) long before the compulsion became more than a simple diversion. Ricky felt himself sinking; there was no chance of generating that kind of money from his normal trades. As he walked, he looked through the bars fixed to each shop window, suddenly regretting his lack of skills the break-in boys learned when they still ran in gangs through the factory housing blocks. Vinnie knew how, but his time in the punishment cylinders cured him of the urge; there was little chance for Ricky to learn the art of burglary before they came to take his possessions and hand him over to the MPE cops.
He thought again of his mother’s settlement; Helene was frugal and wouldn’t touch the money as it was. Instead, she would leave it safely inside the factory’s employee pay and banking system like most others, knowing it would be needed when her retirement days finally arrived. There had to be another way, but Ricky’s though
ts were shattered back to reality when he turned down the alley to his flat and found Bartel leaning against the door.
Junkyard paced in and out of the shadows where the streetlights sent their anemic glow along barren walls. Bartel offered a second or two of sarcastic applause.
“Here he is, Junkyard; right on time!”
Ricky felt the sudden, grinding panic beginning to grow. Had they heard from Ellis, he wondered? Perhaps they monitored client usage at Reese Street from a remote system. Either way, he knew why they had come; Boris undoubtedly told Bartel of Ricky’s difficulties and sent them to heap on the pressure.
“What is it now?”
“Maybe you ain’t gettin’ enough business from them Uppers these days,” Bartel answered.
“What do you care?”
“I only say so because we hear about your accounts, Slider. You ain’t gonna get no more time with that sim girlie until you settle up, now are you?”
“I don’t need to be reminded,” Ricky said, looking only at Junkyard.
“No, I guess you don’t. But the problem is still hanging around, ain’t it?” Bartel replied with a slow shake of his head. Ricky could smell the grease from Bartel’s dinner, still lingering in the sparse growth of his beard when the little enforcer laughed suddenly.
“Come on, Slider! You got yourself in deep this time, but maybe we can help you out, know what I mean?”
“You want to help me?” Ricky answered with a sneer.
“Sure, sure! That’s what we do, me and Junkyard—we help people when they get to troubles.”
“I don’t want anything you’d call help, Vaclav, thanks anyway.”
Junkyard had waited long enough.
“Maybe you need to see what happens when we ain’t helpin’, you little bastard!”
Bartel moved forward and held up his hands.
“Slider, you got this all wrong, see? We ain’t here to shove you around or nothin’, but you listen for a while and maybe we find the way out for you. Boris, he don’t like hearing you get so far down the gutters; he know you got the way to find things. The other bosses, they don’t care, but Boris, he likes to keep his customers nice and safe, see?”
“Safe?” Ricky countered. “He jerked the prices, on top of the damn taxes the city’s calling in! How is that keeping customers safe?”
“You got to understand, Slider! The big boys up in the clouds, they don’t give him no choice! See, they send down the word that Starlight ain’t gettin’ by without more tax money, so what else can he do? He tells the managers what all them heavies tell him, know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, but I still don’t have that kind of money and Boris knows it; that’s why I got screwed in the first place!”
Junkyard’s patience was all but gone.
“Nobody made you take out them advance hours, fucker; don’t cry about it to us because you’re in over your head!”
Bartel waited, just for a moment. Junkyard’s words were true enough, but letting Ricky hear them delivered with the right amount of dispassion would push him further into isolation and closer to the desperate corner they so carefully built for him. At last, Bartel made his play.
“Look, Slider, you don’t gotta go this way. Maybe we can work something out.”
Ricky frowned with suspicion.
“I’m listening.”
Bartel turned Ricky gently to walk beside him as a well-intentioned friend, even if both knew he was not.
“Boris, he got to pay them taxes, see? He ain’t got no way out of that. But the price hike and the advance, well…that’s something he might could ease back if you was to make another arrangement, know what I mean?”
“What kind of arrangement?”
“You could find another way to get them tokens, maybe; something else besides hustling, right?”
“I don’t have any other way!”
“No? Well, that’s a pity; Boris, he thinks maybe you got a few things you hide away somewheres. Maybe you keeping the really good stuff in a safe place, you know, just in case a big catastrophe comes along, right? You’re a smart boy, Slider; you could keep a bit in reserve!”
Ricky thought at once of the stolen loot inside the warehouse, now useless under the threat of exposure when Courtnall and Espinoza walked free. He looked away.
“I don’t have anything like that, Vaclav; I’m down to my last hundred tokens.”
“Okay, Slider, I understand. But maybe you could get help from somewheres else, eh?”
“I don’t know how I’d do that.”
“Well, you could get a loan. You know all them Uppers; they could split off some tokens and help you out, right?”
“They would never do that and you know it.”
“Not even your old pal Fellsbach? He got plenty of dough!”
“Elden is retired, Vaclav; he doesn’t make much money anymore.”
“Okay, then how about the money you mama get when she goes down hard in the plant? They say she got something from the managers, so maybe she can front you a little, eh?”
Ricky’s face ran red as the guilt and regret pushed their way out once more, framed in the face of Litzi’s disgust.
“I can’t ask her for that,” he said softly, wincing at his own hypocrisy.
“No? Hmmm…you ain’t got a lot of other choices after all, do you?”
“I already told you that.”
“Okay, Slider, you try and think of something else. We got to go up and see Boris tonight; maybe he knows a way.”
“I don’t think it would make any difference,” Ricky replied at once.
“Wait, okay? Boris, he ain’t unreasonable, and maybe you can work off the debt some other way.”
“I don’t want to bother him.”
“It ain’t no bother, Slider! Boris got contacts, see? I talk to him once, okay?”
“Boris doesn’t forgive debts, Vaclav; everyone knows that.”
“Sure, sure, but there’s lot of ways to pay, know what I mean?”
“Such as?”
“Well, maybe you could help him with a problem he got. That would make it easy for him to help you, right?”
“What problems could Boris have?”
“It’s a little awkward saying, but, Boris, he got his eye on somebody.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“Boris keeps with a lot of big-shot friends, and they all got somebody to show around, see? Problem is, Boris ain’t got nobody like that just now—nobody special.”
“Show around?”
“Yeah, you know—a nice girl he takes to parties sometimes. Maybe she spend a few weeks and let him play around a bit, understand?”
Ricky knew what Bartel meant.
“Yeah, I understand.”
“But he got one special girlie in mind, see, and she ain’t so easy to convince, so…”
“Boris wants me to get him a street hole?”
“No! No, it’s not like that, Slider. No, he wants this girl for special, not just to take home and screw, okay?”
Bartel’s tone had changed.
“What are you asking me to do, Vaclav?”
Bartel paused, looking over a shoulder before he spoke as if taking Ricky into a carefully guarded confidence.
“Boris, he notice you sister, Litzi, and…”
Ricky stepped back a few paces, shaking his head quickly. At last, he understood the price increase and a tax hike that likely existed nowhere but inside Konstantinou’s mind.
“Not a chance in hell—she’s not part of this!”
“Come on, Slider! Boris don’t want to do none of that bad stuff with her; he just want to meet her and make her feel nice and welcome, know what I mean?”
“Then why doesn’t he ask her himself?”
“Well, he don’t think she gonna come around so easy, see? He think maybe she’s afraid or something; maybe she don’t trust him, right?”
“I don’t trust him, either; w
hat makes Boris think Litzi will be any different?”
“You could talk to her, maybe; she listen to her brother, right? You have a nice chat and tell her it’s okay, then Boris, he show how grateful he is and bam—no more debt!”
“Forget it, Vaclav; I’m not about to hand my little sister over to Boris or anyone else!”
Bartel said nothing at first, but a nod toward Junkyard was the signal a brutal thug was waiting for. He moved close, towering above as he spoke down with the malevolent voice that terrified so many.
“You’ll tell her, boy, or we got somethin’ for you a lot worse, understand?”
“Like what?” Ricky demanded, suddenly pushed beyond himself by the desperation and hopelessness crashing in around him. “If you call in the debt to MPE, they’ll hand me over to one of the work leagues and Boris won’t get even half the money!”
Junkyard leaned closer still, smiling at what Ricky couldn’t have known.
“Boris already talked to them MPE assholes and they ain’t comin’ down here to arrest you unless he files a complaint. You owe too much to work off in a sweatshop, so the cops said it’s okay for him to decide how he gets his money back, see?”
Ricky felt the color drain from his face; he knew what Junkyard’s threat implied. Those whose debt load had reached unsustainable levels were forced into labor contracts held by a dozen agencies maintained by the Novum City Commission. The practice amounted to indentured servitude, but an alarming increase in work league rosters spoke loudly of the hopelessness awaiting a Starlight subscriber unable to pay for the hours. The work itself was always manual and conducted in the vile, sweltering underground where no one went voluntarily. Cheap labor meant lower operating costs and few wasted their time worrying about addicts who deserved the misery. Now, described in the meanness of Junkyard’s words, even that option had been removed.
“That’s right, you smart-ass prick; Boris gets to decide what happens! Either you pay up, or get that bitch to agree. If you don’t…”
Bartel watched closely as the message became clear in Ricky’s mind.
“Look, Slider, be reasonable, okay? Boris ain’t gonna do nothin’ bad, but Litzi maybe won’t go for it unless you tell her she got to, right?”
When the River Ran Dry Page 8