by Allen Steele
Hawk unlocked his bicycle from where he’d parked it at an EMPLOYEES ONLY rack outside the main entrance. Mounting the saddle, he pedaled away from the terminal to join the stream of shag wagons, rickshaws, hoverbikes, and the occasional coupe moving down the gravel road leading into town. A loud clatter overhead, and he glanced up to see the arrival of the late-afternoon gyrobus from Liberty; if he remembered the launch schedule, it would be bringing in the crew of the Robert E. Lee, scheduled to depart from orbit tomorrow for its next biweekly flight to Earth. He’d heard that the gyros might soon be replaced with airships imported from Germany; he had little idea where Germany was, but if airships would help reduce the noise pollution over New Brighton, then he was all for it.
A two-mile ride, then he passed through the red Japanese gate marking the city limits. Immigrants from the Pacific Coalition had erected the torii a year earlier as their gift to the new world; traditionally found at the entrance to Shinto shrines, it was supposed to ward off demons, but so far as Hawk could tell, it hadn’t done much good. Most of New Brighton consisted of tenement houses built of cheap parasol wood harvested from Albion hill country. They’d originally been meant to serve as temporary shelter for immigrants making their way to Coyote since the opening of the starbridge. In that, at least, the intent had been benign. No one wanted a repeat of what had happened many years ago during the Union occupation, when thousands of settlers from the Western Hemisphere Union had been forced to live in the tents and shacks of Shuttlefield.
Yet temporary solutions often become permanent; not only had the tenements become a lasting fixture, but more were being built. The gravel road came to an end shortly after he passed through the torii, and Hawk was soon pedaling through narrow, packed-dirt streets past three-and four-story buildings so close together that children sometimes dared each other to jump out their windows and into those of their neighbors across the alley. Clotheslines formed a dense web between buildings, while ground-floor shops, bodegas, and cafes crowded one another for room. The evening was unseasonably warm for late winter, so men and women who’d just come home from work took advantage of it by sitting out on front steps, gossiping with friends and family. From hundreds of brick chimneys, the smoke of kitchen fires rose into the air, adding to the miasma that seemed to perpetually hover above the rooftops.
A right turn on Freedom Avenue, then left on Fortune Street, and a couple of blocks later Hawk rolled to a stop in front of his building. A handful of neighborhood kids were playing soccer in the middle of the street, under the watchful eye of their mothers as they cooked dinner in their apartments. No one paid attention to him as he climbed off his bike; stepping onto the concrete sidewalk, Hawk picked it up by its frame and carried it on his shoulder up the steps to the front door. He added it to the row of bikes chained to a rack inside the foyer, then climbed the staircase, its smudged plaster walls scrawled with graffiti in several languages. The multicultural nature of the residents was reflected by the voices he heard as he walked down the third-floor hall; from behind closed doors, he heard Anglo, Spanish, Korean, and Russian—sometimes in calm conversation, more often arguing, occasionally punctuated by the cries of hungry or frustrated babies. When he’d first moved in, the noise had kept him awake at night. Now it was simply a background hum that he barely noticed anymore.
Hawk’s apartment was a one-room flat in the southwest corner of the building, its windows overlooking both the street and the adjacent alley. Its furniture, sparse and utilitarian, had come with the place: a metal-frame bed with a cheap foam mattress; an unfinished faux-birch dresser; a small square table with a couple of chairs; a wood-pellet stove which supplied both heat and the means by which he cooked his meals, with a fire extinguisher clamped to the wall next to the chimney duct; a cabinet for food, cookware, and other belongings. The flat’s only luxury was that it had its own private bath, although the toilet seat was broken and the shower leaked; whenever the people in the apartment above relieved themselves, Hawk knew about it from the gurgle of flushed water rushing down exposed pipes running across his ceiling.
Hawk took off his uniform, placing his shirt and trousers on the kitchen sink so that he could wash them later. The control bracelet stayed in place, though, as did the inhibitor patch affixed to his rib cage beneath his left arm. His parole officer was due to visit him tomorrow after work; he’d change the patch then, once he’d made sure that Hawk hadn’t murdered anyone this week.
He changed into drawstring pants and a loose tunic, preferring to go barefoot unless it got cold. From the cabinet’s refrigerator box, he pulled out a jar of leftover turkey chili. Unscrewing its top, he took a quick sniff to make sure it hadn’t gone bad, then emptied the jar into an iron skillet. Dinner was eaten at his table as he watched the kids wind up their soccer game.
The last light of day was fading above the rooftops as Hawk sat at the table, plate and fork still in front of him, hands clasped together in his lap. His mind was a blank, filled only by the sounds that entered his range of hearing. Down in the alley, two men argued about which one of them had failed to close a Dumpster, thus allowing swampers to scatter garbage all over the place. Across the hall, the woman who was his closest neighbor opened her door, inviting a man who’d come to visit inside; Hawk hadn’t met her, but he suspected that she was a prostitute. Farther down the hall, a little girl was having a tantrum; her mother yelled at the child to shut up. And down on the front steps, another one of his neighbors strummed at his guitar, the evening breeze carrying his words to Hawk’s open window:
I am a man of constant sorrow,
I’ve seen trouble all my days;
I bid farewell to old Kentucky,
The place where I was born and raised…
Hawk didn’t know where Kentucky was, either, but he did remember another night, not so long ago, when he’d watched the sun go down upon the Black Mountains. Back when he’d been a free man and his life, hard as it might have been, had more meaning than it did now.
For six long years I’ve been in trouble,
No pleasure here on earth I found,
For in this world I’m bound to ramble,
I have no friends to help me now…
Unable to laugh, unwilling to cry, he sat at the window and watched as darkness once again settled upon the town.
A few hours later, he’d washed his uniform and laid it out to dry, Hawk was in bed, reading The Chronicles of Prince Rupurt by Leslie Gillis. Like everyone else born and raised on Coyote, he had been brought up with the novel, written under strange circumstances by a crewman aboard the Alabama; unlike others, though, Hawk hadn’t left it behind with adolescence, but often revisited the epic fantasy. Comfort food for the mind, yet—as many before him had noted—oddly resonant with the world in which he lived.
He’d just reached the scene where the exiled prince was bargaining with the merchant-king of Yawhana for the price of an enchanted sword when he heard a loud slam within the apartment across the hall, followed a moment later by the muffled sound of a woman crying out in pain.
Hawk looked up from his pad, listened more closely. His apartment was dark now that he’d turned off the ceiling panel, the only illumination coming from the pad’s screen. Another thud, a little louder; he couldn’t be sure, but it sounded as if someone had been thrown against the door. Then a man’s voice, unintelligible yet angry; an instant later, the sharp crash of breaking glass, followed again by a woman’s scream.
For a few seconds, he lay still in bed, not quite knowing what to do. Then the man yelled something obscene; another impact against the wall, and now he could hear the woman whimpering. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded as if she was begging for her assailant to stop, please stop…
Before he knew what he was doing, Hawk shoved aside the blanket and pushed himself out of bed. As usual, he wore only his briefs; he considered getting dressed, but when he heard something shatter as if it had been hurled across the room, he realized that there was no time for s
uch niceties. Someone was being hurt. He could pretend to ignore what was going on and wait for it to stop on its own, or…
The woman screamed again, and there was such pain in her voice that he grabbed his shirt and pulled it on, then unlatched his door and threw it open. Down the hall, some of his neighbors stood in the doorways of their own apartments. They’d heard the fight, too, and a few had dared to peek outside to see what was happening. But he knew that that was as far as they’d go; in the crowded tenements of New Brighton, the first rule of survival was mind your own business.
Apparently the maxim didn’t apply to him. Everyone looked his way, as if expecting him to do something. Hawk suddenly realized that he was wearing his uniform shirt. At this moment, he was the closest they had to a law-enforcement official. Even if someone had called the law—which was doubtful—the New Brighton proctors were notoriously slow about responding to domestic disturbances; it might be a while before someone showed up.
Another second or two of hesitation, then Hawk stepped across the hall. Raising a fist, he banged it against the door.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Is everyone…Are you okay in there?”
Silence, then a man’s voice: “Get the hell outta…!”
“Help!” A woman’s voice, shrill with terror. “Please, someone…!”
“Shut up!” The dull sound of flesh striking flesh, then something struck the door. The knob started to turn, and suddenly stopped. “Oh no, you don’t, bitch! You’re not getting away from…”
The woman shrieked, and Hawk grabbed the doorknob. The door was unlocked; he shoved it open and entered the one-room flat, which had been torn apart. The bed was disheveled, its sheets lying askew from a mattress that was half-off its frame; a chair lay on its side, and broken glass was scattered across the floor beneath the shelf from which it had fallen. An earthenware jug had been hurled against the wall, leaving a crater in the plaster; he caught the reek of the corn liquor it had once contained.
But the first thing that he saw was a naked man dragging a woman across the floor by a fistful of her long blond hair. She wore only a silk teddy; its front was ripped open, and what he first took to be an embroidered red rose was a smear of blood from where she’d been punched in the nose. She was reaching above her head, trying to pull her assailant’s hands away. He was older than Hawk, but no larger; with a shaved head and ugly goatee, his potbelly attested to too many nights spent at the tavern.
He looked up at Hawk, his eyes dark with fury, and in that instant, his face seemed to disappear, and Hawk saw someone else: his father, the nights he’d come home from the lumber mill and take out his frustrations on Hawk’s mother. A childhood memory he’d tried very hard to suppress, along with everything else he remembered about the old man. But in less than a second, the lessons learned during two and a half years of therapy were forgotten.
The bracelet beeped, announcing that its sensors had detected a sharp rise in the adrenaline and vasopressin levels of his bloodstream. A moment later, there was a sharp jab in the soft flesh beneath his left arm as the inhibitor patch, signaled by the bracelet, administered a dose of benzodiazepine. Hawk knew that it would be only seconds before the drug triggered the release of inhibitory neurotransmitters in his brain, slowing down his thoughts as well as his muscles. If he was going to act, it would have to be immediately.
“Get outta here!” Letting go of the woman, the man started toward him, right hand pulling back as a fist. “None of your goddamn…!”
The bearshine jug lay at his feet, unbroken despite being thrown against the wall. Hawk snatched it up and, curling his forefinger through its neck ring, swung it wildly at the stranger. To his amazement, the jug connected on the first try; it slammed into the side of the man’s face, and he yelled in pain as he lost his balance and fell against the bed. His right foot caught the edge of the sheets; he tripped and toppled over, his left hand clutching at the welt that had appeared on his cheek.
He was still trying to get up when Hawk kicked him in the stomach. An angry jolt in his big toe, and he knew at once that he’d jammed it. Yet the pain was dull; the benzodiazepine had kicked in, and already he was beginning to feel sluggish. Meanwhile, the bracelet continued to beep madly, as if scolding him for becoming violent without permission.
But the man was down. Right arm wrapped around his stomach, he whimpered as he crawled across the floor. Hawk was still trying to fight the drug when the woman managed to get to her feet. Cursing beneath her breath, she staggered over to her assailant and kicked him herself, this time in the ribs; he gasped and rolled over, and she mercilessly rammed her foot into his balls.
Hawk barely noticed any of this. Unable to focus, he lurched through the door, back out into the hall. Someone caught him as he fell, but he wasn’t fully aware of that either.
All he knew was that he’d failed.
He never really passed out, but lapsed into a lethargic stupor. Unable to stand on his own, he let one of his neighbors carry him back to his room, where he collapsed on the bed. Someone else came in to see if he was all right; he nodded, and the neighbor got him a glass of water, which he sipped before putting it on the floor. After a while they left him alone, closing the door behind them.
Across the hall, he could hear people moving about; his neighbors had turned their attention to the woman and were taking care of her as best they could while trying to figure out what to do with the injured man who’d attacked her. Their voices were soon joined by those of a couple of proctors who had finally showed up. Hawk listened as they questioned everyone they’d found at the scene; as to be expected, no one had actually seen anything, so the proctors had only one reliable witness, the victim herself. Although Hawk wanted to doze off, he knew what was going to happen next, so he forced himself to stay awake.
It wasn’t long until he heard a familiar voice. It spoke for a few minutes, quietly asking questions of the proctors. Then there was a knock at his door. Before he could answer, the door opened and Joe Bairns walked in. One look at Hawk, then he sadly shook his head.
“I thought I told you to stay out of trouble,” Bairns said.
“I tried…I did.” The benzodiazepine had largely worn off, but his tongue still felt thick. “The lady over there…”
“I know. I got that part of the story already.” Bairns shut the door, then walked over to the bed. “You okay? Sit up, let me take a look at you.”
Hawk rolled his legs over the side of the bed and rose to a sitting position. He was still too weak to stand up, but Bairns was being easy with him. For the last six months since he’d moved to New Brighton, the parole officer had been the closest Hawk had to a friend. Grey-haired and thickset, a plainclothes proctor on the verge of retirement, Joe had been assigned to his case by the magistrates who’d approved Hawk’s release from the farm. Although he’d never been unkind to Hawk, Bairns had made it clear that he was keeping him on a short leash.
That leash was the bracelet attached to Hawk’s wrist, which would automatically alert Bairns if the inhibitor patch was ever activated. Until that night, the bracelet had remained mute. Judging from the disappointment in Bairns’s eyes, Hawk realized that the parole officer had come to expect that he’d never hear it.
“I’m all right. Really.” Hawk had a hard time meeting Bairns’s gaze. “Joe, I’m sorry. But when I heard what was going on over there…”
“You just had to get involved.” Bairns bent over to gently open the left side of Hawk’s unbuttoned shirt. “You thought you were doing the right thing,” he said as he inspected the patch, “and maybe you were…but I’m going to have to report this, y’know. Just hope the maggies are in a forgiving mood.”
Hawk shook his head. “Joe, I’m telling you…if I hadn’t been there, she might’ve been killed. That guy…” He stopped. “Who was he, anyway?”
“A disappointed customer, or at least so I’ve been told.” Bairns touched a button on the patch, watched as a tiny diode flashed red. “I’m going to
have to give you a new one.” Hawk shrugged; the parole officer changed the patch during their weekly meetings, anyway, so its replacement would come only a day earlier than usual. “Actually, maybe we should thank you. Appears that she’s an unlicensed sex worker. Once she gets out of the hospital, she’s going to have to go to court.”
Hawk wasn’t surprised. It only confirmed what he’d already suspected. “Hardly seems fair. I mean, considering the way he knocked her around…”
“Believe me, her boyfriend got the worst of it. Hold still.” Bairns carefully peeled away the patch, and Hawk winced as it detached from the cannula that had been inserted into his brachial artery. “And once he’s out of the ER, he’s going to be charged with assault and battery, maybe attempted rape. So he’s in trouble even more than she is.”
“And what about me?”
Bairns didn’t respond. Instead, he made himself busy with the procedure Hawk underwent every week during their meetings. After checking the bracelet to make sure that Hawk hadn’t tampered with it, he pulled out his datapad and, after hardwiring it to the bracelet, entered the six-digit code that would reset it. Next came the replacement patch; the parole officer tore open its cellophane envelope, and after Hawk raised his left arm above his head, Bairns removed the adhesive backing and carefully put it in place just beneath the armpit. Once he was satisfied that it was securely fastened, Bairns located the activation tab and firmly pressed it with his forefinger. The diode blinked, signaling that the patch had been successfully mated with the cannula.
“I’m going to have to put this in my report,” he said at last. “Sorry, but that’s my job. But I’ll also make sure to say that there were mitigating circumstances. One of your neighbors was being attacked, and when you stepped in to save her, the other guy came at you.” He looked Hawk straight in the eye. “That is what happened, isn’t it? He threw the first punch?”