Windswept

by Adam Rakunas

  “And I get to have a little drinkie before we go,” said Madolyn.

  “Plus, it will deal with our little contagion issue.”

  “What contagion issue?” I said.

  “The black stripe,” said Banks. It was the first thing he’d said since he’d come in contact with the twins. His voice was flat and dead, like someone had zapped his soul with a cattle prod.

  “It’s quite virulent, dear,” said Madolyn. “Imagine what would happen if it gets up the cable?”

  “The entire economy of Occupied Space would grind to a halt overnight,” said Gricelda. “Or, at least within a month. I haven’t run the numbers.”

  “Everyone needs cane,” said Madolyn. “And that’s why we have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  “The only way.”

  “The hot way.”

  “Holy shit,” I said. “You’re going to jump in orbit?”

  “Quite the quick study,” said Madolyn.

  “You’ll fry the whole planet!” I said. “The x-ray burst alone would kill everyone, and then all the aftereffects would set the atmosphere on fire!”

  “I’d hope so,” said Gricelda. “No idea how far Mr Bloombeck’s little creation has spread.”

  “Best for everyone, really,” said Madolyn.

  “The hell it is!” I said, clenching my fists. “Who do you think you are to decide that?”

  The twins looked at each other and giggled like little girls. “We’re your owners, dear,” said Gricelda. “All your talk about independence and solidarity and the Struggle–”

  “Oh, the bloody Struggle,” said Madolyn.

  “–it’s all for naught, because you will always need us,” said Gricelda. “Your little planet grows cane. The only way you get money is by growing cane. Your entire tiny economy is dedicated to growing and processing cane. Even the pittance you get from your rum, that comes from cane.” She shook her head. “If you have no cane, you have nothing we want. If you have nothing we want, you are nothing.”

  “Spoken like a true corporate citizen,” I said, then spat on the floor.

  “Well!” said Gricelda.

  “Loyalty is hard to find,” said Madolyn. “And it’s a shame that it’s so misplaced.”

  “We would have followed through on our offer, Miss Mehta,” said Gricelda. “Do you think your precious Union would have done the same?”

  “I’m not listening to any more of your bullshit,” I said, heading for the door.

  “Then maybe you’d like to listen to some of our truth,” said Gricelda. “Like about how Evanrute Saarien has sold out you, your Union, and your planet.”

  “And for such a tiny price,” said Madolyn.

  “Not even thirty pieces of silver,” said Gricelda.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Of course not,” said Gricelda, pointing at Banks. “But he does.”

  “That little pai of his, hoovering up information,” said Madolyn. “It’s amazing what people keep in their buffers.”

  “All of their dreams.”

  “All of their hopes.”

  “All of their sins,” said Gricelda.

  “We saw everything Mr Saarien saw,” said Madolyn. “Plus everything Mr Bloombeck saw.”

  “It was a lot we saw,” said Gricelda.

  I looked at them, sitting back in Bloombeck’s expensive chairs. They weren’t smiling.

  “What,” I said, “did you see?”

  “We saw Mr Saarien confront Mr Bloombeck,” said Madolyn.

  “What Mr Bloombeck did for black stripe, could he do for cane?” said Gricelda.

  “Which he did,” said Madolyn.

  “For quite a good price,” said Gricelda, picking up a surviving crystal mouse. It wore a lab coat and sat in front of an adorable scanning electron microscope.

  “After all, Mr Bloombeck was quite tired of the pocket change he made from his Contract position,” said Madolyn.

  “And who wouldn’t be?” said Gricelda. “A man of his education and experience, and he’s a swing-shift worker at the sewage plant.”

  “Not even management,” said Madolyn. “A crime for a man of his talents.”

  “He was a grifter and a thief and a small-time con artist,” I said. “You must have seen that, too.”

  “We choose to overlook people’s shortcomings if their talents are great,” said Gricelda.

  “Which is why we like you,” said Madolyn.

  “Mr Bloombeck wanted more in life, and Mr Saarien gave him an opportunity to get it,” said Gricelda. “Within the laboratory above, there are a dozen new varieties of sugarcane that can grow in hundreds of new environments. They are resistant to all known crop pests and infections. And they are all illegal as hell, because they will crowd out the current varieties grown throughout Occupied Space.”

  “The Big Three doesn’t like to mess around with a good thing,” said Madolyn.

  “And something that they can’t control?” said Gricelda.

  “Not a good thing at all.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Bloombeck and Saarien were in cahoots. I got that.”

  “Then you get the scope of the problem,” said Gricelda.

  “And you can see the scope of the solution.”

  “I can see that it can’t happen,” I said, heading for the door. There were two sharp bangs, and two holes appeared in the wall.

  I turned and saw Banks, holding up a smoking pistol. “Please don’t,” said Banks, his voice still and his eyes damp.

  “I have to,” I said. “I have to stop this from happening.”

  “So do I,” he said.

  “Then you’re going to have to make a choice,” I said, reaching for the door again. There were two more bangs, and the doorframe splintered. “Jesus!” I yelled, jumping back. “When did everyone say it was OK to start waving guns around my streets?”

  “Since we weren’t getting results,” said Madolyn.

  “And your streets?” said Gricelda. “That’s a bit presumptuous.”

  “And so is your offer,” I said. “I have worked too hard – we all have worked too hard to get some kind of solid footing after getting screwed over by the likes of you and your bosses, and I’m not going to help you do the same to everyone else on Santee. You’ll have to shoot me.”

  The sisters looked at each other, then shook their heads. “No, we won’t,” said Gricelda, snapping her fingers. Banks thumbed back the hammer on his pistol.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “My job,” said Banks, cocking the hammer and putting the gun to my head.

  “Mr Banks works for us, now and always,” said Madolyn.

  “And his work can get a little wet.”

  “Dirty.”

  “Messy.”

  “Bloody.”

  “Banks?” I said.

  “This is my job, Padma,” he said. “I’m supposed to make trouble.”

  “You can let go.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” I said. “You start over here. We all do. You don’t have to do this.”

  “I do.”

  “He does,” said Madolyn. “Because if he doesn’t, he knows we’ll make him do it.”

  “He is but a puppet, Ms. Mehta,” said Gricelda. “You all are.”

  “Then why don’t you just make me say yes?” I said.

  “Well, where’s the fun in that?” said Madolyn.

  Banks’s hand was solid as a rock. I hoped it would be shaking or jittering, but he kept his gun steady.

  “Well, come on, then,” I said, looking Banks right in the face. His eyes were glassy, but then they focused on mine. He sent me a message: duck.

  I hit the deck, and the flat exploded in song.

  Chapter 26

  Ah! Sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found thee

  Ah! at last I know the secret of it all

  All the longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning
<
br />   The idle hopes and joy and burning tears that fall...

  I looked up, and the sisters were shuffling around the flat, singing in a beautiful two-part harmony. I looked at Banks, who shot me a cockeyed grin as I got to my feet.

  “Did you do this?” I hissed.

  He nodded.

  “Then what was with the ducking?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve never used that backdoor on them, so I had no idea what would happen. They might have gone berserk or catatonic or, um, exploded.”

  “Backdoor?”

  He nodded. “It’s how we get into your heads. We have all kinds of backdoors built into everyone’s pai, and you can’t close them, no matter how many times you reburn someone’s firmware.” He looked at the sisters. “Even them. I was saving that trick for an emergency.”

  “I suppose this counts.” I punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t you ever point a gun at me again again.”

  He held up his right hand. “I promise. Shall we flee?”

  “Oh, we shall.” I grabbed Banks by the shoulders, hauled him toward the door and flung it open.

  “Wait,” said Banks, pointing a waving finger outside. I was too busy watching him to see where I was going, and my foot went right into the air, my leg and hip and the rest of me following it out the door into space. I got a hand in the doorway in time to stop from falling fifty meters to the canyons of cargo canisters below.

  Ages ago, I had mused that the natural state for a cargo can was to be in motion. They spent most of their lifespans hauled up and down lifters, zipping across star systems, moving from one loading depot to the next. The moments when they sat still and either disgorged their cargo or loaded up with new stuff were brief and infrequent. Even though this can had long served as a home, it was only right that it now moved and swayed underneath a crane. We were just new cargo.

  That didn’t keep me from being overwhelmed by the sheer chaos outside the door. It was deafening, the sound of overhead cranes hauling cans, the clanging of cans dropped on top of cans, the echoing, banging clash of cans and cans and cans. If I had screamed, I hadn’t heard myself. I just looked down and saw cans cans cans.

  Banks leaned over and grabbed my arm, and I swung the other one into the doorway. I kicked my legs to the side, trying to get myself back in. “Stop moving!” yelled Banks.

  “Pull harder!” I yelled back.

  “I can’t because you won’t stop moving!”

  The can shuddered and swayed, and Banks slid out of the door. I caught the seat of his pants, but he had too much momentum, and we fell. Lucky for us, the crane had moved us over a taller stack, so we only fell a few meters. It still hurt like hell when I hit steel and Banks hit me. I made sure I hadn’t broken anything other than my pride, though my leg still burned as I got to my feet.

  The stack with my old flat and Bloombeck’s lab and the unconscious Ghosts was tucked underneath a crane that crawled away on the trellis overhead. Within seconds, I had lost it in the anonymous ocean of cans. I looked around, trying to get my bearings. The coast was behind me, and the cable rose to the sky in front of me. “OK,” I said to Banks, “we’re on the outbound side of the island. Everything around is in the queue to go up the cable, and it looks like your pals are jumping to the head of the line.”

  “That means we’re screwed, right?” said Banks.

  “Not yet,” I said, looking over the edge and muttering prayers of thanks to the Interstellar Standards Organization for making sure every cargo can in Occupied Space had ladders bolted onto the same side. We clambered down to the ground and started to look for street signs.

  “Hey!” someone yelled, and I spun around, ready to run. A man on a recumbent trike pedaled toward us, waving his free hand and shouting, “Oy, you! Get out of my stacks!”

  “Up yours, and twice to your mother!” I yelled back out of reflex.

  The man stopped pedaling. “Padma?”

  It took me a moment to realize it was Wash. I gimped over and hugged him. “I am so glad you’re management.”

  He got off his bike and gave us the once-over. “You look like hell.”

  “Long story,” I said. “Why aren’t you shoreside? You shouldn’t be out here schlepping cans.”

  “We got a rush order,” said Wash, “and I wanted some experienced hands to cover it.”

  “Hope you’re giving yourself overtime.”

  “Triple time, baby,” he said, then nodded at Banks. “Are you stealing bodies now?”

  “You recognize my attorney, Mr Banks?”

  Wash’s eyes bugged. “Christ, Padma, what have you done to this man?”

  “Why does everyone assume this shit is my fault?” I said.

  “Past experience,” said Wash, putting himself between me and Banks and wrapping his arms around our shoulders. We limped deeper into the stacks.

  “You need a place to clean up?” said Wash.

  “I need a hardline to shore,” I said. “There is some major badness about to go down, and I need to put a stop on lifter traffic.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Wash. “We got so much going up that you’d think there was an evacuation.”

  “There might have to be,” said Banks, pointing at the cable.

  I may not have been able to make calls, but my pai could still zoom, and what I saw made my heart sink. The crawler platforms were loaded with cans and beginning their trip to orbit.

  Wash nodded. “You notice that? Hence the rush. We’re trying to get everything out of here to make room for these cans.”

  “What, they’re bringing in more?” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” said Wash. “How do you like that?”

  “I really don’t,” I said.

  “How long until they get topside?” asked Banks.

  Wash shrugged. “Depends on how much traffic’s already heading up there, what else is in the queue, how fast the upload and download crews are working. Thirty-five, maybe forty hours. They managed to get the crawlers to go faster.”

  Sure enough, the cables were humming louder than usual. I counted ten seconds between the cans crossing past each other, and some quick and sloppy math churned out a trip time more on the unsafe side of fast.

  “Can’t we, I dunno, stop the cables?” asked Banks.

  “You do an emergency stop while it’s loaded, the ribbons will tear themselves apart, especially when they’re moving this fast,” I said.

  “Why would you want to stop them, anyway?” said Wash. “Did you not hear me? Triple rates?”

  “It won’t matter,” I said, then gave Wash the executive summary of the past two days. His face grew darker as I told him about everything that had happened.

  “I’m not sure what part of that pisses me off more,” said Wash as we approached the can he used for an office.

  “Well, pick one and make the call,” I said.

  “I cannot wait to use all this in court,” he said as he threw the door open. There was a bang, and he fell back, a red stain blooming on his belly. I jumped to put pressure on his wound, and, out of the corner of my eye, saw something fly towards my face. I knocked the kick away, then lunged for my attacker, a goon wearing updated riot armor. This time, I went right for the throat, reaching under his helmet’s chin guard to dig my fingers into his windpipe. It was a good thing that someone dragged me off the goon, since I couldn’t see anything but red and wouldn’t have stopped until I’d torn his head clean off.

  I wrestled with the goons, and one of them popped me in the gut with a rifle stock and down I went. When I finally caught my breath, I looked up into the too-bright smile of Evanrute Saarien. The gun in his hand still smoked.

  “Sister Padma,” he said. “I am so glad to see you.”

  I spat in his face. Not a grand gesture, but what the hell.

  He reached into the pocket of his spotless white coat – how the hell did he keep it so clean? – and pulled out a handkerchief. He wiped away the spittle, then dropped the hanky on the ground. “I f
orgive you that, as I have been taught to forgive all who are part of the Struggle.”

  “Hope you can forgive this,” I said, then jumped up and kicked out. Saarien leaped back, but my boot made contact with his pants leg, leaving a beautiful black stain.

  He looked down at his soiled suit, then back at me with more hate than I have ever seen in a man’s eyes. He took a fast step toward me and grabbed my chin, squeezing my cheeks so hard I thought my teeth would pierce them.

  “You are an unbeliever, Sister Padma,” he said, doing his best to keep his voice level and failing. “You are an instrument of the great devil, of capital, of desire. You are lies, and untruths, and if it weren’t for the fact that I have sworn to stand by all my brothers and sisters in Solidarity, I would smite the sin out of you with my own loving hand.”

  “Do it,” I said. “Or would you rather watch one of your goons do it for you?”

  He let go of my face and nodded to the goons. They carted us into the office, one hauling Banks, another two carrying Wash. They threw us into chairs and zip-tied us in. One was nice enough to put a pressure bandage over Wash’s stomach. Saarien got on the phone and began a terse, hushed conversation.

  “You two OK?” I asked.

  “Dandy,” said Wash, sweat beading on his forehead.

  “Stellar,” said Banks through gritted teeth.

  “QUIET,” called Saarien, and he pointed at two goons. They wrapped filthy gags around our mouths.

  Idiots, I texted.

  Saarien snapped his fingers, and the goons put headphones on our ears. Blistering electrosmash blasted out of them, so loud that I could barely concentrate on Banks’s reply: this time, i mean it: i quit.

  me, too, texted Wash.

  Wimps, I sent, then tried for an outside line. Anyone able to call out?

  no, texted Wash.

  yes, answered Banks.

  Who?

  everyone on the island, replied Banks, but they’re all busy loading cans.

  Any police?

  no.

  You sure?

  do the cops haul cargo here?

  what is going on? texted Wash.

  Later, I replied. Banks, you see anyone who feels like management? Anyone looking at any equipment or monitors?