by Adam Rakunas
“That happened to everyone.”
The man made a face. “Not like this. It was a new variety, started around Sag Pond and spread. Stuff grew faster than we could burn it out. We went to the Union for a carryover loan for fungicide, but we got denied.”
“Why?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. The man from the Union said we didn’t qualify, but that he’d make us an outside offer. He was starting up a new processing plant, and we’d get paid back in diesel and credit if we sold to him on the cheap.”
I looked at Banks, who said, “Is there such a thing?”
“No,” I said. “There hasn’t been a new cane processor in years.”
The thickset man shrugged. “That’s what I thought, too, until he takes me on a tour. New facility, right in the middle of all this run-down city. Right on the coast. Smelled horrible.”
“Sou’s Reach?” I said.
“Yeah, I guess. I spent most of my life in the kampong, don’t know much about the city.”
Banks and I exchanged glances. “This guy,” I said, “did he wear all white?”
The man nodded. “Smiled way too much. Whipped out this bigass contract and a stack of thousand-yuan notes. Down payment, he said.”
“What then?”
The man shrugged. “We keep it up all season. He buys our crops, pays us in cash. Never as much as we want, but enough to keep going, replant, get us on our feet. Then the goons showed up.”
“When?”
The man shrugged. “About a month ago. They make us work at hosepoint. Then they start taking us.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know. Everyone who goes with them doesn’t come back.”
I looked at Jilly. “You ever hear of anything like this?”
She nodded. “We got hit by black stripe a few weeks before I left for the city. No one ever made us a deal, but we heard about people disappearing. Thought it’d be better getting a job driving, you know?”
The man with the cigar nodded. “You got that right, kid. We’re the last ones on the collective, so they’re making us go.”
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Why you want to know?”
“Because I’m about to make a deal with you that you can take to the bank,” I said. “This deal will be so good that you can borrow against it for the rest of your life and have enough money to build irrigation canals that would make the Romans shit themselves.”
“Why should I trust another Ink?”
“You know another Ink who would be sitting in this shitty little space, letting you vent?” I said.
“I still have no way of believing you,” he said. “Not after the contract we signed.”
“You have it?”
“Of course,” he said, patting his pants pocket. “I figure I’d need something to wipe my ass with.”
“You mind if my attorney and I read them before that happens?”
He sucked on his teeth, then pulled a sheaf of papers from his pocket. They were long sheets covered in legalese and bar codes. I flipped through the first few pages, then flung it back at him. “What is this crap?” I said. “‘The parties of the ex partite particulars’? This is what you get when you give first years WalWa law students fistfuls of cranquilizers and a thesaurus.”
The man turned over the pages, then held a very large, very real Union chop in my face. That giant red fist punching out a planet might as well have been aiming for my own eye.
Next to the seal was a clause written in plain language: all Freeborn sugarcane grown on the Lively Wetlands Collective would be sold to Evanrute Saarien at twenty percent below market value in exchange for future profits, cane diesel futures and a whole lot of other crap Saarien could never deliver. “This is some bullshit,” I said.
“It was all we had,” said the Freeborn man, waving a hand over his face like he was wiping it clean. “We can’t trust any of you. All that ink, you look like a bunch of slobs.”
I smiled and said, “Big talk for someone who smells like a rat’s ass, which is more than I could give about what you think of our ink.”
He snorted. “You Union types, you give us shit deals, steal our children away to your city. What do you give about us Freeborn?”
“We made sure you had the chance to call yourselves that,” I said, pulling back my hair to show him a thin line on the back of my head. “You see that scar? I got that from a goon’s club because I had the nerve to protest their reneging on a supply deal in Ivory Bay. And I got this”–I rolled up my sleeve to show him two black spots on my forearm–“from an overamped taser because I wanted MacDonald Heavy to pony up their contractually obligated back pay to a bunch of dirt farmers in Palanquin. And this one”–I pulled my shirt collar aside to show him a puckered star on my shoulder–“was a rubber bullet fired at point blank range by my former employers because I didn’t want them raining garbage on Sou’s Reach, the one Ward on the entire planet that deserves to get garbage rained on it. I have been beat up, set on fire, spat on, shat on, all to make sure people like you”–and I jabbed him extra hard in the chest, which felt pretty damn nice, actually–“would have a choice. So don’t give me any of this ‘What have you done for me lately’ bullshit.”
The man nodded and rolled up the contract. “You’re a lot pushier than the guy in the suit.”
“You don’t get your way by being polite,” I said. “But you do get your way making deals with me. Now, you going to tell me your name?”
He squinted. “Marolo.”
“OK, Marolo,” I said. “I’m Padma Mehta, and this is Banks and Jilly, and here’s the deal. We’re going with you to Sou’s Reach, where we’ll figure out what’s happening. We’re going to get your people released, and we’re going to get you a shitload of back pay, and we’ll make sure this never happens again. I will put the entire Union and the Co-Op behind this promise, and you’ll never have to deal with that white-suited asshole ever again. That sound fair?”
“I’m gonna need something more than your word,” said Marolo. He rubbed his fingers together.
“What, you think I’m made of cash?” I said. “You think I can just peel off a few blue boys and that’ll do it?”
“I think you can make all kinds of deals and guarantees,” said Marolo. “I also think that if you’re out here, you’re in some kinda trouble, and that you need us to keep quiet.”
“I’m offering to help you,” I said.
“So was your man Saarien.”
I swallowed the bile back and said, “How much would it take to keep you quiet?”
Marolo looked around the bus and said, “Thirty thousand would cover our nut.”
“Thirty thousand would buy you a continent,” I said.
“We have families to feed, crops to regrow, and we aren’t getting any help from your Union,” said Marolo. “Thirty thousand would go a long way to help a lot of people and to make sure they were appropriately grateful.”
I ground my teeth. “You know I can’t make that deal while we’re here,” I said. “Unless you’ve got a Public terminal installed in your pocket.”
He held out his hand, then spat on it. “A Freeborn’s word is enough.”
I pulled Wash’s flask out of my pocket and showed it to Marolo. “You know, where I come from, we just share a drink. You know what this is?”
He unscrewed the lid and sniffed. Even in the dim light, I could see him flush. “It’s good, whatever it is.”
“That is thirty-year Old Windswept,” I said. “And I only share it with people I do deals with. Saarien ever share a drink with you?”
Marolo sniffed the rum again, then took a gentle sip. All the color rushed from his face, and he blew out a long, slow breath before handing the flask back to me. “Never,” he said. “But that’s still not enough.”
I didn’t have to blink up my balance to know how much this would hurt me. But I also didn’t have much choice. I held out my right hand and spat in it. “We
got a deal?”
Marolo nodded and shook my hand. “Now, you got more of that stuff?”
“Marolo, you stick with me, I’ll get you so much you could bathe in it.”
“All the same, I’d rather drink it.”
“Done.” I took a swig, only getting a taste of the rum before passing it back. The Fear was now wide awake, threatening to tear my brain apart. You really think six o’clock will help, even if you make it? it said.
I took another taste, then handed the flask to the next Freeborn.
An hour – and half the flask – later, the truck slowed, and the stink of rotting molasses seeped in. I pushed my way through the cane screen until I could see the rusty industrial ruins of Sou’s Reach roll by. It looked like we were moving into the heart of the refinery, but all the cane should have been dumped near its edges. I thought about sending a message to Soni, but I had no idea if it would get out with all the metal. Plus, once the police found me, it would get ugly, seeing how I’d jumped bail. Unless I could show them someone committing a much bigger, badder crime, the cops weren’t going to help.
The truck hissed to a stop, and Banks motioned for me. “We’re going to stand out from this crowd,” he said, pointing to his ink.
“Good point,” I said, reaching to the bottom of the truck and getting a handful of mud. I slapped it on his cheek, then on mine. “Better?”
“Now you look too filthy,” said Marolo. “We have some pride.”
Someone pulled the cane screen from the back of the truck, and a goon pointed his hose at us and said, “Out.” We obeyed, and I made sure to keep my head down as we followed the line of Freeborn into a squat, collapsing building that smelled like burning candy and cleaning solvent. My nose burned and my stomach flipped as we filed through the door, into the middle of what looked like Hell’s swimming pool. Giant pourform pools lined the room, all of them filled with hot, sticky molasses. Workers with no protective gear stirred with giant paddles, which only made the smell worse. Some of the Freeborn gagged as we were shoved past the pools and down a flight of metal steps into a dark, dank space with barely enough room for us. The floor shuddered, and my guts fell into my shoes as the wall in front of us began a slow, creaking slide open. Beyond it was more black, and the goons ushered us in at hosepoint. As the light faded, I stopped caring about waiting and called Soni, but there was no signal, and that scared the crap out of me. We were either way inside the refinery, or someone had ripped out every transceiver in the area.
The door behind us thudded shut, and another one in front of us opened with a well-lubricated whisper. The light was blinding, so we couldn’t see who ordered us to move. I found Banks and Jilly in the middle of the crowd, and we walked side-by-side into... a full-scale industrial cane refinery?
Everything that was in the plants at Beukes Point and Jotzi were here, but newer and shinier. I could see condensers the size of buses, coils big enough to wrap a dozen rugby players, and steel holding vats so big you could have used them as fuel canisters for starships. Hundreds and hundreds of people, all under the watch of a company of WalWa goons, ran about, taking measurements, adjusting equipment, and working on filling drum after drum with what looked like industrial molasses. The entire room had the sweet scent of boiling sugar and fermenting molasses, though the air was undercut with something harsh and sour, like an acetone spill.
The line rounded the stacks of molasses drums and ended in front of a woman in a green jumpsuit. She held an honest-to-God clipboard, something I hadn’t seen since I audited History of Management. I tried not to gawk at the antique as I shuffled my way toward her, but wound up gawking at her ink instead. It was some serious work: two Union fists smashing into a factory, a pair of winged seabirds flying off her temples, and a shark swimming down her nose. Impressive as hell, but there was something off about the ink, something I couldn’t place...
“You got any skills?” she said, tapping a pencil on the side of her clipboard.
Plenty, I thought, but none that wouldn’t give me away as Union. “I, uh, do a little bit of everything,” I said.
She pointed her pencil toward the bottling line. “You can work quality control. Next!”
“What do I do?” I said.
She tilted her head to the side, and the look on her face said that she didn’t give a shit. “You make sure the quality is controlled,” she said. “Next!”
“I do a little bit of everything, too,” said Banks.
“You can go to the boilers,” she said.
“But I’d like to control quality,” said Banks.
“Me, too,” said Jilly.
The woman snorted. “You don’t get to ask what you do, dirtheads,” she said. “You do what I say, and I say you’re going to stir molasses in the boiler.”
Banks gave her the Grin, and the woman stared at him for a few moments before tapping her pencil on the clipboard. “Fine. Get to the line.”
Banks took Jilly by the shoulders and walked past. I looked at the woman, who just pointed at Banks with her pencil. “You want to get paid, you follow him and work,” she said, then looked down the line of people. “Next!”
I just nodded and hurried after Banks and Jilly. “Christ, I don’t know what they taught you about mind control in law school, but you are giving me lessons the minute we get out of here.”
“I just smiled at her,” said Banks. “You can get anywhere with WalWa people if you smile right.”
“WalWa?” I said. “What makes you say that?”
“Her eye,” said Banks. “Every Union person I’ve met, even Saarien, has this spark in their eye. Maybe it’s from having their pai reburned, maybe it’s because they don’t have to start every day singing the WalWa corporate anthem, I don’t know. But I do know that that woman’s eye is cold and dead, just like every other WalWa person I’ve met.” He shrugged. “That, and her tattoo looks like someone drew it on her face with a felt marker.”
I stole another glance at her face, and it hit me. “You’re right,” I said. “Her ink’s all wrong.” I pointed at the fist on my cheek. “No one’s allowed to get more than one of these unless they’ve done something meritorious as hell, and the last time that happened was twenty years ago when Marjo Arhanga won a raise in shipping rates by pounding the hell out of an armored WalWa business platoon barehanded.”
“She looked old enough,” said Banks.
“But not male enough,” I said. “Marjo was a man. That woman”–I pointed a thumb over my shoulder–“is wearing ink she hasn’t earned.”
As we walked toward the spouts, I stole glances at every inked face along the way, and all of them had overdone tattoo work. Here was a woman with perfect porcelain skin, yet she had the anchor marks on her cheeks that someone gets after twenty years of service on the open water. There was a kid, barely out of puberty, and he had ink commemorating street battles that ended when he was still a fetus. All of them had the same dull eyes that I’d seen for years when I was in Service, all of them held clipboards, and all of them were yelling at the people on the floor to work harder.
The line sounded like a riot at a percussion convention: two-hundred-liter drums rattled down a chute, stopped under a nozzle long enough to get filled with a liquid that smelled like molasses mixed with cleaning fluid, then scuttered away to get capped and stacked, all done by hand. The people working the line swayed, like they were about to fall asleep on their feet. One of the overinked supervisors, a tiny girl whose face was so tattooed it looked purple, walked up to a woman slamming lids onto the drums and smacked a her with her clipboard. “You want to sleep?” she yelled over the din. “You can sleep when you’re done filling those pallets!”
The woman nodded, then went back to working the capper. She waited until the clipboard woman walked away, then slumped over again, her shoulders bouncing for a bit before she straightened up and grabbed another drum lid from the stack. She turned, and it was Jordan Blanton.
I stared, my stomach doing backfl
ips. I had to have been imagining it. But, no, it was Jordan, in the flesh, hammering lids onto molasses drums.
She wasn’t the only familiar face. There was Thor Becker. Nearby was Remy Galletain. All of Jordan’s supposedly dead crew were here, working the line. Good God, even Jimney Potts was there, pushing a broom. I had to have been hallucinating. My brain had now started falling apart. The Fear roared in triumph.
“I see them, too,” Banks said in my ear.
I swallowed, shook my head, and Jordan was still there, pounding down the lids. They were real. And so was the purple-faced girl, who saw me looking at her.
“You!” she shouted. “What are you standing here for?”
I shoved Banks into motion, but it was too late. She closed the distance in four quick steps.
“Well?” she yelled. She looked even younger up close, like she’d just been hatched out of a B-school. “What are you supposed to be doing?”
“We’re your new quality control,” Jilly yelled back.
The overinked girl glared at Jilly, then pointed at the rails. “Then get to work!” she screamed. “You want to get paid, you get to work!”
“You want to try smiling at her?” I yelled in Banks’s ear.
“Only if I can stay out of her reach,” he said as we bellied up to the line.
The Freeborn man to my side nodded and said, “Just make sure there’s nothing in the drums but molasses. You see anything floating, mark it with an X.” He held up a stick of chalk.
“How can you tell?” yelled Banks, peering into the drums; they held nothing but sweet-smelling murk. He knocked one, and something white floated to the surface, bobbling and turning.
It was a foot.
The Freeborn man made a giant X. “You can just tell,” he said. The blood rushed from Jilly’s face. Banks turned away and threw up.
I put a hand on Banks’s shoulder to help him keep his feet, and something hit me in the back of the head. I turned just in time to see a clipboard flying toward my nose. I saw stars for a second as the board whacked my face, but kept it together enough to swing back as hard as I could. I’d thrown better punches, but this one had the right speed and angle to connect with the purple-faced girl’s cheek. She yelped and bounced back into the line, knocking against the drums. Someone hit the emergency stop, and the racket came to a clattering halt.