“After that, it all fizzled out. The police tracked down the girl but could never tie her to anything. The recording company spread bribes throughout the justice and political systems to cover up the scandal, which would not have worked in a less corrupt region. They profited hugely, but briefly, from increased sales of his music.
“I was oblivious to all the tawdry details. For me, as a kid, he had lived the dream. I wanted more than ever to be a spacer and doubled down on my studies. Screw the plain and boring girls in my school, I want a harem of super-babes, just like Ignacio.
“Pedro’s gang was becoming more profitable but was having trouble handling the money. The local capo wanted me to join, badly. Even as a kid, I had learned more about how to handle money than most of the rest of the gang, so they wanted me to manage their accounts. Pedro was being fast tracked to become a capo in his own right but was still a few years from the experience needed for such responsibility. Diego had joined the gang but was still too young to see much action. I hovered, undecided.
“In the end, I remained close friends with Diego and Pedro, but did not join the chickens. Afterwards, I could rationalize the decision. I could not face disappointing my parents, my dojo, my school, and my town. I was slowly becoming aware that spacers, with the possible exception of Jose Miller, were held to a higher standard of integrity than was required for thugs in a gang. I did not actually want to kill anyone or die young. But what stopped me was not shame, not ambition, and not fear, it was love.
“Love is a funny word and almost never means what we think it does. Children love their parents, and the parents love their children, fiercely and protectively. But there is a necessary element of control in parental love, which the child will reject at puberty. Filial love always includes filial rebellion.
“Diego’s father was named Pedro and had wanted his eldest son to inherit his name, his dreams and his honour. Unfortunately, Pedro Junior had been a lonely child until he found companionship amongst the kid brothers of the gang. His mother and father were horrified by this accidental friendship and desperately tried to discourage him, but Pedro became stubbornly independent. He loved his parents but loved his friends more. When Diego got big enough, brotherly love and filial rebellion sucked him in as well, to the despair of his parents. Now, love for my friends was calling me as well.
“I loved my Mom and Dad as strongly as anyone, and I knew how much they had sacrificed for my sake. Dad showed up for my football games, school plays and demonstration matches at the dojo, even if he had to lose a day’s pay to do it. Once he was fired and spent two indignant weeks railing about abusive employers before he found another job with a more tolerant boss. He never once complained about my interference with his employment.
“Mom fought the school board and the city on my behalf. She lacked the education to run for office herself, but became a master of guerrilla politics, which I found fascinating and uproariously funny. After school while I did my homework, she would recount the latest escapade and we would laugh together at the foolishness of mankind. She sanitized the stories, of course, but they were a shared treasure.
“Pedro and Diego talked a lot about honour and respect, but my Sensei taught me the deeper meaning of an honour that no one else could see, and the true nature of respect that you could give but never receive. He taught me how to stand solidly within myself and let the craziness of the world carry itself to destruction. I wanted Diego and Pedro to be my friends, and for Mom, Dad and my Sensei to be proud of me. He taught me there was nothing incompatible about those goals, although I was never sure he intended the lesson I was learning.
“When it came my turn to rebel, I announced to Mom and Dad I was going to become a spacer. Mom was appalled, Dad horrified. They had heard about the drugs, about perverted sex orgies, about atheism, about pirates, about early death from radiation, about horrible accidents where people’s lungs boiled out of their mouths in the hard vacuum. Mom wept that I would leave the Earth to live on another world; they would never see me again. Dad was dry-eyed but wanted to cry too.
“It did not help when I tried to reassure them that my real goal was to get rich and famous like Ignacio. They hated the man’s music, despised his lifestyle, and knew more than they would tell me about his death. For me, it was the perfect rebel cause, better than joining a gang. They consoled themselves that I was in grade five. It was a phase, a passing fancy that would fade within the year. Besides, to become a spacer I would have to go to university, and we could never afford such an expense.
“Part of the reason they were confident I would be distracted from my crazy spacer dream was that the town was starting to boom. The manufacturing plant had cleared its debt and hired a second shift of workers. The enrichment program was drawing in poor but bright kids from other schools in the district and even from other nearby districts. Diego and Pedro remained my closest friends, but I was surrounded by other fun kids who liked the same things I did. People moved into the neighbourhood just to enrol their children in our school. Property values rose, small stores moved in, and new homes were built on what had been vacant lots. Our neighbourhood was becoming lively, respectable, even fashionable in some parts. They were sure I would find local employment and a nice girlfriend, leading into a respectable life as a man about the town.
“Alas, the new money also fed into the drug trade, and the violence in the streets grew worse. Wrestling matches and knife fights were replaced by shoot-outs. Every week saw new killings. The new residents appealed to the region to improve the police service, to supplement our tiny police force with real detectives to investigate the more serious crimes. The city did hire more cops, and the region arranged a few detectives to be added to the force, but never enough to quell the fighting.
“Then one night the vipers and the thunderbirds decided to exterminate the chickens. I got a call from Diego after midnight, warning that the vipers were breaking into their house. I could hear the shooting over the phone. I ran to my parent’s room screaming that the vipers were murdering Diego’s family and that we had to leave immediately. Mom and Dad knew about Diego’s connection to the chicken gang and believed me, but wanted to lock the doors and call the police. A burst of gunshots in the street convinced them to escape first and call the police from a neighbour’s house. We fled out the back in our night clothes, climbed over the fence and were running up the alley when they firebombed our house. We saw the flames as we rounded the corner and never went back.
“The only adult we trusted who lived nearby was one of my teachers, who lived a few blocks away. She kept her house locked all night because of the gangs. She recognized me through the peephole in the door and let us in. She would not let us stay, nor even call the police from her house, for fear the gangs would come for her as well. Instead, she gave us clothes from her own closet and drove us to the nearest police station. She was so scared by the continuous gunfire that she dropped us a block from the station and drove out of town, taking nothing but her purse and the clothes she was wearing. I discovered later that she had gone to hide with relatives in another city. It was probably just as well, because later that night her house was firebombed as well.
“We walked into the police station, a terrified family wearing clothes meant for an older woman, to find the place in an uproar. The desk sergeant shouted that there was a gang war burning the city down, and he had better things to do than talk to a bunch of bums.
“I snapped back that I had been one of the gang members until they murdered my friend Diego and burned our home. I wanted to give state’s evidence against the thugs. Mom’s horrified gasp caught the sergeant’s attention. He led us back to a real detective, who had just come on duty and had not yet been dispatched to one of the many crime scenes.
“He was new to the city and had chosen to live nearby because the school had an enrichment program for his kids. I told him my name and that I believed the vipers were killing my friend Diego and his family, gave him their address. Bec
ause he had researched the school, he knew who I was, and maybe listened to me more than he would to another kid with such a story. As I started to give more detail about the vipers, he told me to wait a moment and went across the hall. He came back with a lawyerly looking man, who told us that a squad of police was being dispatched to Diego’s house. He added that we should enter the witness protection program. The lawyer took Mom and Dad across the hall to start the paperwork, while I began to give the detective my story.
“My memory was good and, for a kid my age, I knew a lot about banking, investments, money laundering, and gangland espionage. I said nothing about the chickens, of course, but for the vipers and the thunderbirds I could supply names, dates, who had shot who and why, account numbers, who ran the local rackets, and sometimes even where they hid when things got hot.
“Mom told me later that she had never in her life been as terrified as she was that night, hearing how deeply I had been drawn into vicious criminal activities. It seared my parents very souls to learn how little they understood about the son they had worked so hard to raise. Even I began to realize how deeply I had betrayed them.
“I had betrayed myself, as well. To any member of the rival gangs, it would not matter that I had never formally joined the chickens. Even the rest of the chickens would have seen me as a mortal threat if they had understood how much I knew of their operation.
“I talked long enough that they gave us a place to sleep at the back of the station. When we woke up the next morning, they gave us breakfast and new clothes that fit, after which I continued my deposition. Eventually I ran down. By that time, it was mid-day. The gang war to exterminate the chickens had turned into a war between the gangs and the police. The mayor had declared an emergency and called the regional government for military intervention. By evening, the regional militia had shown up with tanks and armour, carrying guns that no gang could ever match. It was still a hard fight to bring order back to the city.
“I was the only one of the chickens left alive. Many years later I found the police report about the rescue of Diego’s mother and the interrogation of the men who had murdered the rest of the family.
“Diego and his family had been driven into their courtyard, stripped naked and bound. The thugs smashed their furniture and used it to build a bonfire. They burned their clothes in the fire, started drinking the wine his family kept in their basement, and began interrogating the new capo who had given their gang so much trouble. They seemed to think they had all night, with the police tied up chasing the shooters and firebombers.
“However, the gangsters who captured them were not locals and did not know them personally. When they found there were two Pedro’s in the family they assumed the capo had to be Pedro Senior and that his son Pedro Junior was just a warrior. They hated Pedro Junior because he had fought like seven wildcats, killing one of the attackers outright and severely wounding two or three others. Even Diego had fought ferociously against experienced killers with twice his mass. Trying to force his father to reveal gang secrets, they killed Pedro first, cutting open his belly, castrating him, and finally peeling off his face in front of everyone. Diego was next. They had been told that Diego was a whiz kid, good with numbers, so they cut off all his fingers, gouged out his tongue, then sliced his throat. His little sister was gang raped and burned alive on the bonfire. They began torturing his mother while they held a knife to his father’s throat. When the police swarmed over the fence, the thugs cut his father’s throat and tried to shoot his mother. Two police died and three were injured taking the house, but Diego’s mother was rescued.”
I broke off the story to breathe deeply for a few minutes, trying to recapture my calm. The report had made horrible reading, with confession after confession confirming the worst nightmares of human depravity, all burned into my memory where I could never erase them. I desperately wished that I had never gone looking for it.
There were some parts of that story I would never say out loud. As the Student, as the Spacer, and as the Cripple, I had returned again and again to that horrible night, trying to understand why it had happened. Much of what I had found I could never speak about to anyone else, because it would identify the events too closely and imperil anyone who might fall under the Martian Fatwa.
As a kid, I had not known about the corporate support for the gangs, nothing about the hostile takeover of one of the big three companies by the other two. I had not known that the so-called gang war was planned and financed by the two winning corporations, with the knowledge and support of their senior executives. I had not known that the corporations had hired professional soldiers from the militia of a hostile neighbouring region. Our local police were not fighting gang members but commandos in disguise. That was why the casualties were so high, why the executions were so brutal.
Later, of course, the news broke and everyone in our profession would recognize the gang war that had exposed political corruption in three global mega-corporations, would remember that it had led to a war between two regional governments that was only resolved when the TDF stepped in with overwhelming firepower. The political scandal ran all the way into the Terrestrial Council, where two ministers had been forced to resign after it was discovered that they had known about the corruption but had looked the other way to show that they were friendly to profitable businesses.
I could not mention any of that.
When I could breathe evenly again, I finished the story. “Within days we had left town and were well hidden in the witness protection program, far away across the world. I never again idolized the thugs I had admired, was never willing to take so-called recreational drugs. The worst part was that Mom and Dad never trusted me again. Without their enthusiastic support, it was hard to resume my studies, harder still to qualify for an enriched program in a new region, speaking a new language. But I was determined more than ever to become a spacer, to overcome any difficulty set in my path, to leave the Earth if I had to, taking Mom and Dad with me if I could.
“With new names, new ID, and cosmetic surgery to disguise our features, life was hard but I had a fresh start. It was the first of many times I would change who I was, the last day I could ever be a Kid.”
The room was quiet for a while after I stopped. Sergei finally said, “Remind me not to invite you to any cocktail parties. No one is going to top that story, and none of us would want to. How much was true?”
“Enough was true, and I beg that you not try to find the rest. With the Martian Fatwa, anyone who was ever nice to me may be executed as a Ghost Follower.”
2357-03-06 04:30
Shuttle Down
Chandrapati interrupted, “Excuse me, but I have just been notified that the shuttle to the Earth has been approved, and I am on it. I asked for a new ID, but I do not expect it to come through till I am on the ground, so it will be interesting to see if I have any trouble leaving from the Deng when I am still nominally in a coma on the Khrushchev. I will tell you my new name when I get my death notice.”
He gathered up the few belongings he had brought onto the Mao, then went around to say goodbye to everyone. Marin seemed particularly affected, and I began to feel that I had neglected my team too much over the past few days. I really wished we had been given the time to know each other better.
He came over to me and while wishing us well and promising to set up a base for future operations, added, “Be more careful with your stories, less explicit about the details of the last night. I am pretty sure I recognize the event where the testimony of an anonymous child about a gang fight broke open the criminal connections of three global corporations. The resulting war between two neighbouring regional governments made it a required study for new agents in LE. There are very few children who could give such testimony. Katerina and Evgenia must have recognized it as well. Still, I was counting the number of times a gentle nudge one way or the other could have changed the way the story played out, starting with two friends helping each other in a kindergarten
scrap.”
I nodded, “Twelve times a day, you can change the world for someone, sometimes for everyone. Thank you, Chandrapati. I will be more careful. We will see you when we get to the Earth.”
He headed out of the room we had started to call home, towards our one functioning transport. Morris informed us that one transport would be sufficient because there was only room on the shuttle for Chandrapati and three of the ministers. They would be accompanied on the shuttle by the few delegates who had arrived from the ESK before the Manila Bay exploded.
Chandrapati gave us another report as he passed through the LE office, mentioning our recommendation that the young couple who had started doing their own healings deserved a medal. They thanked him for the suggestion, but Station Security had beat us to the punch and were preparing medals for them and three other groups who had independently started similar initiatives.
He added that the station was still a bit of a shambles, and that several senior officers in LE were on extended sick leave, receiving psychiatric care. Support for the Imperium seemed to have evaporated, and nobody was willing to discuss what had happened to their senior officers. More importantly, LE had begun designing its own set of comm filters, which they offered to share with us when they had been properly tested.
Leilani mentioned that she had received a report from CI. They had identified the company that originally manufactured the glue bugs. Their ostensible purpose was to plug leaks in pipelines and other constricted passages. They had a rudimentary control system that allowed the operator to control where they went and when they became active. They had just enough on-board smarts to recognize that a strong pressure gradient marked the location of a leak and was a good place to glue themselves to a wall.
Lord Banshee- Fugitive Page 3