Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

  “Just sit nice and quiet,” suggested LaSalle, standing over him while Oliver and the other raided the larder once more.

  Two more quick trips and the larder was empty. LaSalle wrapped some twine around the victim’s wrists and ankles and left him in the middle of his living room floor. An instant later, the men were gone. From where he was, the bound man heard the door slam shut and the auto pull away, but for many minutes he remained unmoving save for his uncontrollable shaking.

  ***

  The office of the Chief of Transportation of Arcarius was between Gerald’s cubicle and the computer room. Since Gerald’s office currently had no electricity, he and nearly everyone else at the Bureau of Transportation were forced to do all computer work in short shifts in a designated room. Between putting his name on the waiting list, checking to see how much longer he had to wait and actually using the room, he had been past Leland Maddox’s office a score of times. The door was shut for the entire early part of the day, which was not usual. Just as Gerald’s first shift was about to end and he was walking by the office yet again, he saw the door was open and a group of three officials dressed smartly in suits were standing there, concluding some final obligatory remarks before leaving. Leland, the droopy features of his face sagging more than usual, stood in his doorway when they left, his left hand scratching the top of his bald head, the right hand plunged deep into the pockets of his trousers which sagged underneath his generous paunch. When he saw Gerald, his features momentarily brightened before returning to their gentle, lazy wilt. He stuffed his left hand into his pocket and said in a voice that somehow was a perfect fit for his face, “It’s worse than usual today. Much worse.”

  He turned to go back in his office and Gerald repressed a sigh. He would be expected to follow.

  “You can leave the door open,” said Leland as he unhurriedly sat down at his desk.

  Gerald stood with his folders in hand, fighting the urge to fidget. Leland let out a long-suffering sigh.

  “I just feel,” he began with the tone of voice one uses with a psychiatrist, “like whenever they have something that needs done, they bring it to us. It’s always something. You don’t have to wait for permission, Gerald. Have a seat.”

  “Actually, I reserved some time in the computer room and I was just hurrying down there—”

  “Oh, heck. You can use my computer,” said Leland, reaching over to turn it on.

  “Your computer works?”

  “Oh, yeah. I had to give my room some power when the men came from Rendral.”

  “Rendral?”

  Leland did not immediately respond to the question. Once his computer was turned on, he stood up, hands back in his pockets, and nodded at the chair. Setting his folders on the desk in front of him, Gerald took the seat and logged on while the inevitable monologue came.

  “So today is going to be a particularly difficult one,” resumed the boss over the clicking of Gerald’s typing. He lugubriously paced around the room, sometimes talking towards Gerald, sometimes towards a wall. “I don’t even know where to begin. They’re going to go ahead and build another underground tunnel from Avon to Arcarius.”

  This made Gerald pause. “When do they start?”

  “Now.”

  “What!? During the winter!?”

  Leland shrugged, clearly pleased to share his misery with someone. “They want to get a steady stream of raw materials from the island for the war effort.”

  “I thought they decided it was too expensive, that they would just ship the materials by boat over the channel.”

  “Well, they’ve changed their minds. They talked about the – how did they put it? – sporadic boat schedule.”

  Gerald accepted the information and was ready to move on. He began to type again, but Leland was not finished.

  “They want a direct line to Avon. The line is going to be used just for shipping raw materials as soon as they are mined. And they want it done yesterday. They were quite adamant about the need for a smooth train schedule. I must say: I got the distinct impression they were implying some criticism, which is more than I should have to bear. Big shots from Rendral haven’t spent a day of their lives in the Transportation Bureau. I’d like to see them try to make sense of things from this end.”

  Gerald made sure to intersperse some “hmm’s” and “aah’s” while Leland spoke.

  “Anyway, the line is going to be built. They want it finished six months from now.”

  “Six months?”

  “Yes indeed. Six months. This is going to mean no end of work for me. Not that I mind doing it; I try to make things work just like anybody. I just know this means I am going to have the bulk of the work put on my shoulders.” Gerald continued typing and Leland paused for a moment to watch him. “They’re sending the seasonal workers back in.”

  “When?”

  “Now. They want to build up the stock of raw materials while the underchannel line is being built. They’ll ship what they can oversea and in the other line, but they apparently believe we’ll be able to ship faster than they can mine, which is my assessment as well. Of course, this is supposed to be our slow season…” Gerald continued typing. “And then there’s the bad news.” Leland paused for effect but was disappointed in Gerald’s lack of reaction. Frowning, he said, “This rebel group has attacked the Northern Line.”

  Gerald stopped typing again, this time his body frozen stock-still.

  “Who knows when the repairs will be made,” said Leland, pacing again and with more satisfaction. “They bombed it pretty good. Of course, this means who knows how many extra hours making changes in the schedule. Who understands these idiots? I’ll tell you right now, there’s more than a couple fools out there with enough orneriness to want to make everything harder on everybody else. I don’t know what they think they’re accomplishing. Just means more work. Especially for me.”

  “When did they bomb it?”

  “Just now. About two hours ago. It will have to be fixed before any materials can be shipped. I suppose they’ll just bomb another section later. Who knows how we’ll be able to protect so many miles of railway…”

  Gerald leaned back in his chair, his task only partly finished. “Leland, I think we should consider turning computer power on for the whole building.”

  ***

  The apartment buildings near the center of the city, where the winter remnant of Arcarius’ population were moved, blocked the early morning light from reaching the shabby and icy streets below. The buildings themselves were in little better shape than the streets, with cracked and crumbling façades, boarded windows and warped wooden roofs. Into this quiet slum an auto entered, spewing steamy exhaust from its rear and quietly rumbling. The auto had a large trunk and when it stopped, several figures exited and one opened it. They hurriedly unloaded several crates and set them in the middle of the street, a task that took them all of twenty seconds. Lastly, a parchment was nailed to the top of the pile, a parchment with a short note and a yellow A in a yellow circle at the top.

  Before anyone noticed, they were back in the auto. A window opened and a horn emerged, letting out an earsplitting blast before the vehicle was around the corner. A few moments later, windows opened and curious citizens stuck out their heads and found the pile in the street.

  ***

  Stephanie hesitated for just a second as she crouched next to her comrades in the dark and damp cold of the stairwell. She watched her breath leave as a cloud to dissipate farther out, mingling invisible with the exhalations of the dozen other men and women under her command. She heard the muffled hum of machinery behind the wall on the floor just above her. Gripping her pistol tightly in both gloved hands, she met the gaze of her second-in-command and nodded. Her second returned the nod and waved forward two men with a small battering ram. They came from farther below, raced past the officers, and charged at a rickety old wooden door that collapsed under the first blow. Stephanie and company were moving before the first shouts were
heard. The men with the battering ram moved aside and ten armed and armored Guardsmen flowed into the room, pointing guns and yelling orders.

  Stephanie entered to see the tail end of a mad scramble and a piling of bodies. Six Guardsmen were subduing three resistors amid yelling and cursing. Two others were retrieving a fourth rebel from where he had tried to jump out a back window. The last two were moving through the apartment searching for others. In the back corner, the printing press was still humming. Stephanie casually stepped through the pile of bodies and picked up a freshly printed pamphlet. There was a large circled yellow A at the top, followed by some incendiary rhetoric about the abuses of the State. The fresh ink smudged under her gloved thumb. Glancing over it just once, she crumpled it in her hand and tossed it on the floor.

  “Just the four of them, sir,” said an officer, returning to the front room, and Stephanie acknowledged him with a nod.

  The four rebels were cuffed and laid out, bellies down on the bare wood floor. Several knees, hands and elbows pressed on them, keeping them restrained as they grunted and fidgeted. She moved to one and squatted down at his head.

  “Did you want to make a statement before we haul you off?” she asked, her voice low and hard.

  The man tried to spit at her, but from his position he only managed to drool on his own chin.

  “Get them out and ready for questioning.”

  The men were promptly lifted up and hauled away.

  “We’re going to leave a few men here and see if any other rebels show up,” said Stephanie.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Leave behind a force of six. Give them provisions for four days; we can’t risk relieving them. If they can arrest some more, all the better. If not…” She let the sentence die unfinished. Then, turning on her heel, she marched out of the room, ready to begin an interrogation.

  ***

  Because her face was covered by a woolen scarf, her head ducked down into her coat’s collar and her hat pulled down nearly over her eyes, Katherine did not see the pile of crates in the middle of the street until she almost stepped on one of the broken slats. The hat muffled her hearing, but that she did not hear the throng of people picking through the wreckage was more likely due to her distracted thinking. She stopped mid-stride and looked up to briefly meet the gaze of an old man tossing aside planks to get at anything underneath. He glanced at her only momentarily before, uninterested, he returned to his scavenging.

  She was about to move on when she spied a canned good lying amid the wreckage. She was just bending down to pick it up when a child no more than ten cycles old darted in and snatched it up. She did not even look at Katherine before darting off as quickly as she descended on the can. Standing up straight to look around, Katherine saw a couple dozen people hurriedly returning to their homes, newly acquired groceries in hand.

  Curious, she picked through the wreckage, but there was only a parchment with an increasingly familiar logo. She snatched it and looked it over. The message was an attack on the State and an entreaty to support the rebellion. In the middle of famine, it declared, the rebellion supplied food when the State could not. The rebellion freed the innocents held in prison for taking the food they earned but which the State hoarded for itself.

  She dropped the parchment, resuming her march to the Science Institute, a march necessitated by the fact the Metro was no longer running. Her thoughts did not return to Flow Theory. Now it was the image of her youngest sibling filling her contemplations.

  ***

  The four detainees had been placed in separate holding cells with the traditional one-way mirror. Stephanie sat at a desk on the other side of the mirror facing all four prisoners, studying the initial reports. An overhead lamp illuminated the desktop, and a soft glow came out of the holding cells themselves, but the long hallway to either side was quite dark. She heard Travis before he stepped into the sphere of light around her desk.

  “Are you conducting this alone?” he asked her, his thin mustache and hair freshly oiled, his uniform impeccably pressed and his black boots shining.

  “They’re being monitored on the closed circuit system.” She stood to greet her boss. He motioned for her to sit back down. “I want them to feel like they’re alone.”

  “When are you going in?”

  “In the next few minutes. They’ve been alone for almost a day with nothing but water and a little bread. We’ll see if they’re ready to cooperate.”

  Travis nodded, but by his vacant stare she knew something more was coming.

  “The State wants to open the mines for the winter,” he started, tracing a slow path around her desk to the other side.

  “Yes, sir. I’ve read about the war plans.”

  “Which means this rebellion needs to end before it spreads.”

  Stephanie snorted. “It’s not going to spread. The rebels are a few malcontents; real Aldrans obey the law. They would never—”

  “There have been food riots in other cities. Including Rendral itself. We’re stretched thin right now, with the war, the change-over of power, the new economic plan… don’t overestimate how law abiding Aldrans actually are. When your stomach’s empty laws mean little enough.” He paused a second, and then went on. “The rebels should be executed after questioning,” he declared, watching for Stephanie’s reaction. She said nothing. “Do you not agree?”

  “It’s a bit harsh,” she carefully ventured. “We’re at war with Kaldis. In other times something like this might be… not tolerated, but dealt with less severely. Kindness is not something we can allow ourselves right now, but execution might be… going too far.”

  “Perhaps,” said Travis, returning to the side he had come from, “but if the rebels are dead, then they’re not rebelling.”

  Stephanie made a face. “And if execution creates sympathy, new recruits might more than offset the losses.”

  “But I thought Aldrans were law-abiding.” A ghost of a smile touched the corners of his lips, but then his voice was serious again. “The rebels are Aldrans like anyone else, Officer Caldwell. They weren’t born with a rebel gene; they simply reached the limit of what they were willing to endure. And if they rebel, so can others. You are quite correct. The corpses we make may serve as fertilizer for a revolution.”

  Stephanie nodded slowly, her brow knit in an expression both curious and concerned. “Captain Travis, I’m not sure what your purpose is. I’ve been given orders to arrest citizens I hear saying what you just—”

  Travis tossed his head back and laughed. “Caldwell, you’re the most talented officer I’ve got. If you want to rise higher learn only to appear blindly loyal. Think realistically. You need to look Mayor Warwick right in the eye and tell him how insignificant the rebels are, and how easily they will be squashed. You can both laugh about it later when you’re alone. That’s how the game is played.”

  “I’m not playing a game,” she said after a deep breath. “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”

  Travis nodded. “So how are you going to get these men to talk?”

  “The same way I always do.”

  “Will that be enough?”

  “Let’s hope.”

  “And if it isn’t? How far are you prepared to go? They have information we have to have.”

  “Are you suggesting…?” There was no need to say the word itself. “I’m afraid that’s something I’m unwilling to do. Not to mention it’s illegal.”

  “Against the law.” Travis shook his head again. “It’s up to them, really. They have information that belongs to us. They will decide what treatment is appropriate by how cooperative they decide to be. The decision is not even ours to make. They are in control of how they are treated.”

  Stephanie did not know if it was the words themselves or the matter-of-fact tone in which they were delivered that made her hair stand up on end.

  Seeing her expression, Travis continued, “You’ve already half starved them, and they were about half starved when they got her
e. It’s the same sort of thing, just a bit more hands on.”

  “There’s a big difference.”

  “What’s the big difference?”

  She floundered for an explanation. “You know it when you see it.”

  Then Travis shrugged, making as if to leave her. “I can’t order you to do something like that. I just figured if you were dedicated to quashing this rebellion as soon as possible…”

  Stephanie swallowed and stood up almost at attention. “Captain Travis, I’ll find out what they know one way or another.”

  Looking back over his shoulder, Captain Travis nodded, his expression pleased. “There are high places in the ARO waiting for people like you, Stephanie. You just have to decide to go there.”

  ***

  The bureau’s official name was The Ministry of Information Collection and Synthesis. It was a newly created bureau that already had a colloquial moniker: The Snitch’s Office. Henry Miller had not often been in that part of town and could not say what the building was before, but it looked like a restaurant. He sat almost alone in the reception room for the better part of two hours, scuffing the heel of his boots on some developing holes in the carpet and waiting to be called. While wiggling his frail frame into every position of which he could conceive and still finding nothing to make him comfortable, he noticed a woman enter and with dismay saw her approach and finally sit down next to him. Henry regarded her in shock from his current distorted position.

  “The waiting room is almost entirely empty,” he said with no introduction.

  The woman glanced about the room with a bewildered expression and then nodded, confirming Henry’s analysis.

  He sat up straight. “They put all these chairs here so we don’t have to rub each other while we wait.”

  The woman just stared at Henry, her lips parted and her eyes wide. Henry growled a sigh and stood up to look for a different seat. Finding one suitably removed, he collapsed into it and resumed his quest for a more perfect position. When the receptionist finally called his name in a bored voice, he popped up and trotted towards her but abruptly changed course halfway when she pointed at the hallway to her right. He discovered a stern and stout woman of about five decades waiting for him.