Survivors (Harmony Book 3)

by Margaret Ball

  This time Ashli announced, in the same cheerful tone she’d used to present patriotic hairstyles, that nanosludge would be temporarily rationed due to unusual demand. She faded again and was replaced by the image of a graying man seated at a conference table. “That’s old Jek!” Elmasri announced happily. “I keep telling him to get a better haircut, but he says he can’t be bothered.”

  This time Ruven was unconvinced by the implication of intimacy. He listened instead to “old Jek” reassuring viewers that there was absolutely no problem with the sludge production facilities; the only problem was that demand had skyrocketed due to greedy farmers withholding produce and creating shortages in the markets. Until more sludge vats could be brought online, citizens were restricted to one government issued bowl a day. There was more about how the one pint of sludge that the bowl held contained all the calories, proteins, vitamins and other nutrients needed by an adult male in good health, and then he switched back to castigating the up-river farmers.

  Anji Elmasri came in as the news program was ending. “Isn’t it terrible?” she said brightly.

  Ray grunted. “Somebody else can have my bowl of sludge. I wouldn’t touch the stuff.”

  “Oh, well, not that exactly, but…everything. There were twitchy choof addicts positively thronging the streets today. If we’re not allowed to use the flitter I shall be afraid to go out at all.”

  “The problem,” Ray Elmasri said in pedantic tones, “is that choof is a by-product of the sasena extraction process. Now that the price of sasena extract has fallen so much, the workers at the sasena cooperative are displaying their lack of public spirit by neglecting their work. No sasena extract, no choof.”

  “They all need re-education!” Anji exclaimed. “Ruven, when you go back to your collective I do hope you’ll explain that it’s their patriotic duty to meet the Central Committee’s quotas.”

  “I hope,” Ruven said somberly, “that when I return, it will because I’ve persuaded the Committee to set more realistic prices and quotas.”

  Not wishing to hear any more about the greed and laziness of the selfish farming collectives, he took his leave. Perhaps that girl at the party had been right after all and he needed a new approach. Everybody he’d managed to talk to so far had been armored against his arguments with the same deflections. “Yes, there may be some temporary hardships, but the collectives need to do their patriotic duty like everybody else,” was the most favorable response he’d received.

  Could he get her address from Liya DelPlato?

  ***

  By her next shopping day Jillian still hadn’t been called back to the studio, and she was getting worried. Trisha, by contrast, was almost bubbly. She still hadn’t found the confidence to go to the Ministry of Defence in person to ask after Tomas, but she had given haircuts to two more women in their apartment block. “They all said they couldn’t have gotten better cuts from their professional stylists!” Trisha told Jillian.

  “You’re providing a real service,” Jillian praised her. “So many women just don’t want to go out at all, what with personal flitters outlawed and nervous choofers coming out of the woodwork.” The choofers didn’t worry her as much as the rumors of riots and gang violence, but she didn’t want to frighten Trisha now, with the baby coming.

  And she was actually impressed when Trisha unveiled her new idea: she would put advertising signs on every level of their block, and actually get paid for cutting hair. “I can’t ask as much as a professional would,” she said, “but from what our neighbors said, they’ve been paying their stylists obscenely high fees. Nobody would have dared charge so much in our old neighborhood! I can ask half what they’ve been paying, and say I get five customers a day, that’ll be…” Trisha started counting on her fingers.

  “Trisha, that’s brilliant! Why don’t you start making your signs now, and I’ll distribute them when I get back from the market?” It would be better if Trisha actually started her home business before she started optimistically predicting her income; otherwise she might get discouraged even with a modest success.

  Waiting to hear from Galen or – less likely – from Tomas, Jillian had not left the apartment block since her last shopping day. The last of the summer’s stored heat was baking the city; it was pleasanter to sip cold kahve, watch a romantic holo, chat with Trisha. And Trisha bloomed with the extra attention.

  Today Jillian was dismayed to see how much uglier the mood of the city had become in just a few days. Had she really thought that the bad economy wouldn’t affect the circles she moved in? Vista View was about the best part of town short of the Hill, and today Vista View looked like one of those places where a woman didn’t want to walk alone. The streets were filthy and all but deserted. A desultory breeze sent used flimsies dancing along the gutter; a block later Jillian found the source of the flimsies, in a restaurant dumpster that had been overturned. Someone had gone to the trouble to spread out the disgusting contents and pick through them, but not to clean up afterwards.

  The restaurant was closed.

  The used flimsies were everywhere around the dumpster; twice Jillian was startled into thinking there was someone else on the street, only to realize she’d been fooled by one of the flimsies temporarily raised by a breeze.

  She couldn’t shake the creepy feeling that there were other people around, watching her. Hiding, and watching her. Perhaps it had been a mistake to conceal her identity with tightly braided hair, a loose dress, no makeup: the star Jillian Lisadel might safely walk where anonymous Jilli sensed undefined danger. But then, there was the crowd at the market to deal with, and she couldn’t compete for whatever food might be available today if she had to pose for holos and record messages. She stepped out a little more briskly. It wasn’t far to the market.

  Today a milling, angry crowd blocked her progress two full blocks from the market. “Where’s the end of the line?” she asked the nearest person.

  “Line? No more lines!” he snapped. “Yesterday my mother stood eight hours in line to buy one box of food. Today they just announced that the market would close at noon – long before any of us could hope to get in. I need bread, and milk for the baby and if they won’t sell it to us we’re just going to take what we need!”

  Jillian looked around for peace officers, but none were visible. An angry shout brought her attention back to the crowd; somebody was accusing a boy of trying to steal from him. “Stupid kid,” the man she’d been talking to commented. He ignored the three people methodically beating the boy. “Why didn’t he wait until after we get in, when people might have something worth stealing?”

  Several lean, ragged young men grabbed the abusers and started beating them in turn; the fight grew and swirled through the crowd, dragging people in like a deadly whirlpool. The man grabbed Jillian’s arms and swung her behind him, interposing his body between her and the explosive fight. “Go home! What were you thinking, coming here alone? It’s not safe.”

  “Why doesn’t somebody call the peace officers?”

  “Ha! They’re worse than the amateur robbers; day before yesterday one of their special riot squads held blasters on a line of peaceable citizens while they took their pick of what the market had. Didn’t bother paying for it either, did they?”

  Jillian was relieved to know the riot squads were still operating, and she didn’t believe this story for a minute. She felt sure that Tomas would never steal food from the people he was supposed to protect. But she wasn’t about to get into an argument with anybody.

  “My sister-in-law,” she said. “She’s pregnant – I have to get food.”

  “Tell the man who got her pregnant to fight his way through the crowds! You’ll never make it. Go. Home!”

  “What about you?”

  The man’s jaw set. “Told you. Milk for the baby. I’m staying.”

  “Then I’m staying too.”

  “Oh, for – Don’t expect me to look out for you!” He began shoving his way into the crowd. Many peopl
e were too disoriented from the sudden fight to keep their places. Jillian slithered along behind him, using his broad body as some protection. Suddenly she remembered following good old Greg just like this, cutting through the crowd in Liya’s living room, and choked with suppressed laughter. Here she was again, only nobody was likely to bring her a drink this time.

  They got to the front of the crowd before the market closed, but it did Jillian little good: there were none of the things Trisha needed, no eggs or fresh fruit, and precious little else. Her companion found a stack of powdered milk cans and grabbed her arm. “Since you’re still here, make yourself useful. Fill my shopping bags while I fend off the competition.” He ended the sentence with a right hook to the jaw of a citizen who was trying to get at the powdered milk, and a left-handed shot into the soft belly of another one.

  Jillian filled his two bags with cans until she thought the straps would break under any more weight. Then, almost automatically, she added two big cans of powdered milk to each of her own bags. At least she wouldn’t come home empty-handed.

  Getting out was easier than getting in, except for the problem of keeping their booty. The store clerks had prudently disappeared, so they weren’t delayed by trying to pay. Come to think of it, nobody had scanned her hand at the entrance, either. What would happen when people found out that the government couldn’t enforce the assigned shopping days? There’d be a crowd three times bigger next –

  Jillian left off thinking in order to aim a kick at the arm that was grabbing for one of her bags, and her foot landed solidly on the body attached to that arm. Or on some body, anyway. She regained her footing and stomped on the toes of someone crowding her on the left side.

  By the time she got to the outer fringes of the crowd, she had lost the ties that held her hair down and all but the handles of one shopping bag. She had a black eye, a bruised elbow, and the two cans of powdered milk in the other shopping bag. Her comrade-in-arms had disappeared; she hoped he had managed to get all of his milk home to that baby.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When Jillian got home, Trisha exclaimed over her appearance and then listened quietly to the story of the near-riot at the market. She didn’t complain that Jillian hadn’t gotten any of the things she wanted.

  There was a stack of completed placards on the table. Trisha picked up the top one, crossed out the last line and substituted another. “How does this look?” she asked Jillian, holding up the amended placard. It now read:

  TRISHA LISADEL

  HAIR STYLIST

  APARTMENT 10B

  WILL WORK FOR

  LESS THAN YOUR OLD STYLIST

  FOOD

  “I know it would look better if I flipped the cardboard over and wrote it new on the other side,” she apologized, “but I’m not sure how long this black marker will last, and…”

  “And who knows if we’ll be able to buy a replacement,” Jillian finished for her. She flopped down on the couch and ran fingers through her tangled hair. “I’ll tell you what it looks like, Trisha: it looks like one of us is adapting to this crisis better than the other. Do you know, until today I really thought we wouldn’t be affected, that I was important enough to be insulated from shortages and riots just like people like the DelPlatos? Today brought it home to me. I’m not a high Inner Circle member; I just play one on the holos.” She paused. “I wonder if I could persuade Galen to pay me in food when we start recording again? I bet he really is important enough to have access to the good markets.”

  “When do you think they’ll resume recording?”

  “It’ll have to be soon. Another week and we won’t have any more episodes to holocast. I expect the scriptwriters are working overtime right now, rewriting the rest of the season without Charley Lagos – either because he’s really disappeared, or because Galen put him in the hospital for taking off without notice.”

  Trisha giggled. “Come off it. I’ve met Galen. He wouldn’t hit anybody even if they contaminated his purple pants with bleach nanos!”

  Jillian had to admit that she couldn’t picture the tall, spare director with his flamboyant outfits actually attacking anyone with any weapon but his scathing tongue. “Well, he wouldn’t use his bare hands, of course. He might get unsightly bruises, or his knuckles might swell up so he couldn’t wear his favorite rings.”

  Trisha giggled again. “Murder on the Stage Set. I like it!” But she sobered quickly. “You know… Jilli… an awful lot of people really have disappeared. When I was doing Brena’s hair she told me that they’re terribly worried about her cousin. They haven’t heard from him in weeks, and he’s not at his apartment. He’s a teacher, so he lived – lives – in Glen Estates. They’ve temporarily closed the schools to save energy, so they can’t ask there. And Glen Estates is… not a great neighborhood, their crime problem has been getting worse. The kind of neighborhood,” she concluded quietly, “Tomas might get sent to.”

  Well, Tomas wouldn’t be in any danger there or elsewhere,” Jillian said with more confidence than she felt. “He’s tougher than you might think. The first year I was in secondary crêche, he got expelled from three different crêches for beating up the local bullies – not to mention making a special visit to my crêche to terrorize some guys who’d been giving me a hard time. I think that’s when he decided to become a peace officer.”

  “I know,” Trisha sighed. “It’s just that I’d like to know.” She rested both hands on her belly. She really was too far along to be going out in the city, especially these days. Jillian mentally cursed the Bureau for Security and their idiotic regulations.

  “Actually, I hope they don’t call me back for a few days.” Time to change the subject. “I might have to let Pol do one of his half-inch-thick makeup jobs on me to conceal this.” She touched her swollen eye. It felt as if it was becoming colorful. Not a great look for ‘Ditani Stavros.’

  “You know what?” Trisha said. “I think you ought to wait until that black eye fades before you go outside at all. And when you do, I think I should fix your hair like you wear it on the show, and you should wear a good dress. You may not be quite Inner Circle, but you’re a star and you should take advantage of it. I bet nobody would hit Jillian Lisadel in the eye.”

  “That’s… not a bad idea,” Jillian conceded. She was beginning to feel slightly off balance. She was used to supporting and calming a volatile child-wife. Trisha seemed to have grown up overnight. That was good, it was just a little… unexpected. And her sister-in-law really was adjusting faster than she was; Jillian kept expecting that the studio would call, that she’d step back into the charmed world of the stage sets and that life would return to normal. Trisha seemed to be preparing for long-lasting hard times. “I’d need my makeup from the studio, though. I’ll have to get that first. It shouldn’t be too dangerous; nobody’s rioting for better holodramas.”

  “Well, at least stay home until that eye fades.”

  “If I can. I might have to go back to work any day, though.” Too bad she couldn’t work from home, like Trisha. Although… She laughed. “I almost had the chance of a job I could do from home. Did I ever tell you about the big hayseed I met at Liya’s party?” She made the most of the story and got Trisha to laugh along with her. “And he’s from a farming cooperative; I bet I could have tutored him for food, those cooperatives always keep the best for their own people!”

  ***

  Jillian went to the studio the next day. It was unlocked, but seemed deserted. Galen came in while she was filling a bag with cosmetic sticks.

  “My dear Jilli!”

  “They’re my own property,” Jillian said defensively. “Remember? I bought them myself.”

  “Of course, of course. I didn’t mean that. My dear, what happened to you?” His long white fingers fluttered close to her bruised eye. The day’s collection of rings flashed in the studio light and made her eyes water.

  “Do you need the cosmetics to cover up what some lout of a ‘gentleman admirer’ has done to y
ou?” Galen would never use such a common word as ‘boyfriend.’ “Is there someone I should – er -admonish on your behalf?” He looked ruefully at his hands. “I fear I am no expert in the manly art, but feeling as I do that I stand in loco parentis – in the place of a parent – to my young actors…”

  “No need,” Jilli said.

  “I would do my best for you,” Galen said, sounding wounded.

  “No, no, I mean it’s nothing so dramatic. I got caught in a food riot, that’s all!”

  “How terrible! You shouldn’t take such risks. What if something serious happened to your face?”

  “Starving to death is pretty serious too. Not that it’ll come to that, but my sister-in-law is pregnant.”

  “All the more reason for you to stay out of bad neighborhoods.”

  Galen must definitely belong to the protected classes, if he didn’t realize that anywhere close to a community market was now a ‘bad neighborhood.’ Oh well, she’d only make him unhappy if she spelled out how bad things were on the streets. Jillian searched for a change of subject. “Did Charley ever explain to you why he didn’t show up that day? Do you think we’ll start recording again soon?”

  “No, and no,” Galen said. “The studio’s under energy restrictions; we could only record once a week, even if Charley were back with us. We’ll have to be extremely efficient when we resume recording. No flubbed lines, no starting over – why, it’ll be almost like live theatre, and an excellent learning experience for you young people who’ve never performed in the real world!”

  Unless Galen was closer to two hundred and seventy than to seventy, he hadn’t done live theatre either. Holos had put it out of business long before either of them had been born.

  “In the meantime,” he went on, “you’d be doing me a favor if you also took your costumes with you.”