"Corporate research."
"Ah," he said again. He smiled beneficently at me and picked up a pack of Marlboros from his desk, offered one to me.
I took it and puffed it alight, and pretended to be calm. "I haven't seen an American cigarette my whole time in Paris."
"There are certain . . . advantages to serving in the Pro-Tem Authority." He took a deep drag. He smiled again at me. Fatherly. Man, he was good.
"Tell me, what is it that you are called upon to research, in your duties as a freelance corporate researcher?"
What the hell. It was bound to come out eventually. "I work in competitive intelligence."
"Ah," he said. "I see. Espionage."
"Not really."
He raised an eyebrow dubiously.
"I mean it. I don't crouch in bushes with a camera or tap phones. I analyze patterns."
"Yes? Patterns? Please, go on."
I'd polished this speech on a million uncomprehending relatives, so I switched to autopilot. "Say I manufacture soap. Say you're my competition. Your head office is in Koniz, and your manufacturing is outsourced to a subcontractor in Azerbaijan. I want to stay on top of what you do, so I spend a certain amount
of time every week looking at new listings in Koniz and its suburbs. I also check every change of address to Koniz. These names go into a pool that I cross-reference to the alumni registries of the top one hundred chemical engineering programs and the index of articles in chemical engineering trade journals. By keeping track of who you're hiring, and what their specialty is, I can keep an eye on what your upcoming projects are. When I see a load of new hires, I start paying very close attention, and then I branch out.
"Since you and I are in the same business, it wouldn't be extraordinary for me to call up your manufacturing subcontractor and ask them if they'd be interested in bidding on certain large jobs. I set these jobs up such that I can test the availability of each type of apparatus they use: dish detergent, hand soap, lotion, and so on. Likewise, I can invite your packaging suppliers and teamsters to bid on jobs.
"Once I determine that you are, for example, launching a line of laundry detergent in the next month or so, I am forearmed. I can go to the major retail outlets, offer them my competing laundry detergent below cost, on the condition that they sign a six-month exclusivity deal. A few weeks later, you roll out your new line but none of the retailers can put it on their shelves."
"Ah," the sergeant said. He stared pensively over my shoulder, out the door, where a queue of trustafarians waited in exhausted silence. "Ah," he said again. He turned to his clipboard, and I waited while his stylus scritched over its surface for several minutes. "You can take him now. Be gentle with him," he said in French. "Thank you, Monsieur Rosen. This has been educational."
Day 2: Bend Over and Say "Aaaah!"
They dumped me in a makeshift barracks, a locked office with four zonked-out trustafarians already sleeping on the industrial gray carpet. I rolled my jacket into a pillow, stuck my shoes underneath it, and eventually slept.
I was wakened by sleepy footfalls in the hallway, punctuated with the thudding steps of power-armor. I was waiting by the door when a frère in power-armor unlocked it and opened it.
He hit the spotlights on his shoulder and flooded the room with harsh light. I forced myself to keep my eyes open and stood still until my pupils adjusted. My roommates rolled over and groaned.
"Get up," Power-Armor said.
"Upyershithole," one of the trustafarians moaned. He pulled his jacket over his head. Power-Armor moved to him with mechanical swiftness, grabbed him by one shoulder, and hauled him upright. The trustafarian howled. "Motherfucker! I'll kick your ass! I'll sue your ass! Put me down!"
Power-Armor dropped him, then surveyed the others. They'd all struggled to their feet. The one with the potty mouth was rubbing his shoulder and glaring furiously.
"Vit'march," Power-Armor suggested, and followed us out into the corridor.
He wasn't kidding about the "vit" part, either. He moved us at a brisk trot up the stairs, easily pacing us. When I came to Paree, this office building had been a see-through, completely empty. A few years later, a developer had reclaimed it, renovated it, and gone bankrupt. Now it was finally tenanted. We finally emerged onto a roof easily six stories high, ringed with barbed wire, with a view of one of the cathedral domes and lots of crumbly little row houses. Other conscriptees were already on the roof, men and women, but I couldn't find Sissy.
Burly frères were in position around the roof, wearing sidearms. Some stood on cherry pickers raised several meters off the roof, with rifles on tripods. They swept the rooftop, then the street below, then the rooftop again. I wondered how they got the cherry pickers onto the roof in the first place, then spotted a cluster of powerarmored frères, and figured it out. These boys would just each take a corner and jump. Beats the hell out of block-and-tackle.
"You will queue up to receive temporary uniforms," one of the Power-Armors broadcasted. I was right at the front of the line. A frère sized me up and pulled the zips open on several duffels, then tossed me a shirt and a pair of pants.
I hurried down the queue to a table laden with heavy, worn combat boots. They stank of their previous owners, and evoked a little shudder from me.
"Jesus-shit, are we supposed to fucking wear these?" The voice had a familiar Yankee twang. I didn't need to turn around to see that it was my roommate, Potty-Mouth. He was carrying his uniform under one arm, and holding the other one at his side, painfully.
The smile vanished from the frère's face. He picked up the smelliest, most worn pair, and passed it to him. "Put these on, friend. Now." His voice was low and dangerous, and his accent made the words almost unintelligible.
"I am not gonna 'poot zees ahn,' you fucking frog shit. Put 'em on yourself," Potty-Mouth looked to be about twenty, maybe a year older than Sissy, and he had a bull's neck and thick, muscular arms, and gave off a road-rage vibe that I associate with steroidal athletes. He dropped the uniform and picked up one of the boots, and pitched it straight into the frère's face, with a whistling snap that sliced the air.
The frère plucked it from the sky with chemically enhanced reflexes and shot it right back at Potty-Mouth. It nailed him square in the forehead.
Potty's head snapped back hard, and I winced in sympathy as he crumpled to the ground. I stepped away, hoping to melt back into the crowd. The sergeant from the night before blocked my way, along with the frère who'd thrown the boot. "Get him out of the way, Monsieur Rosen," the sergeant said.
"We can't move him," I extemporized. "He might have a spinal injury. Please."
The sergeant's smile stayed fixed, but it grew hard, and a little cruel. "Monsieur Rosen, you are a new recruit. New recruits don't question orders." The frère who'd thrown the boot cracked his knuckles.
I grabbed Potty-Mouth under his dripping armpits and hauled him over the gravel, trying to support his head and biting back the urge to retch as his sweat poured over my hands. At this rate, I'd be out of steri-wipes in a very short time.
I wiped my hands off on his shirt and crouched next to him. The trustafarians, shivering in the cold, reluctantly removed their clothes and put them into rip-stop shopping bags with Exxon logos. Women frères did the girls – still no sign of Sissy – and men did the boys, all nice and above-board. A frère came over to us, dropped two bags, and said, "Strip." I started to protest, but caught the eye of the sergeant, standing by one of the cherry pickers.
Resignedly, I stripped off my clothes and bagged them, then bagged my uniform along with them, and sealed it shut.
"This one, too," the frère said, kicking Potty-Mouth in the ribs.
Potty-Mouth jerked and grunted. His jaw lolled open. I began to mechanically strip Potty-Mouth of his stinking neoprene and spandex muscle-wear. I was beyond caring about microbes at this point.
The frère watched me, grinning all the while. I wondered how I ended up babysitting this spoiled roid-head, an
d stared at my feet.
Four frères in power-armor sailed onto the roof from the road below, carrying an ambulance bus at the corners. They set it down, popped the doors, and a cadre of white-coated medics poured out. The one who impersonally groped my balls for hernias and stuck me with several none-too-sterile needles needed a shower, and his white coat could've used a cleaning, too. When he bent over to check out Potty-Mouth, his pocket bulged open and I saw a collection of miniature bottles of Johnnie Walker Red. He popped me in the shoulder with some kind of mutant staplegun that stung like filth. "What's wrong with this one?" he asked me, speaking for the first time.
"Maybe a concussion, maybe a spinal. I think his shoulder's dislocated."
The medic disappeared into the bus for a moment, then reemerged in a leaded apron and lugging a bulky apparatus. I realized with a start that it was a portable X-ray, and scrambled to get behind him. "No spinal, no concussion," he pronounced, after a long moment's staring into the apparatus's eyepiece.
"Okay," the medic said to himself, and made a tick on a wireless clipboard.
The medics bugged out the way they'd come in, and the frères withdrew, with rapid, military precision, up the cherry pickers.
I had a pretty good idea of what was coming next, but it still shocked a curse from my lips. The frères in the cherry pickers all harnessed up giant blowers and turned loose a stinging mist of sinus-burning disinfectant down on us. Trustafarians, male and female, screamed and ran for the barbed wire, then turned and ran back into the center. Above me, I heard the frères laughing. I stood my ground and let myself get soaked once, twice, a third time. I was about to make sure that Potty-Mouth was lying on his side when he groaned again and sat up. "Fuck!" he shouted.
He scrambled groggily to his feet, careered into me, righted himself, and wobbled uncertainly as the last of the spray settled over him. The disinfectant evaporated quickly, leaving my skin feeling tight and goose-pimply.
Potty-Mouth swung his head around with saurian sloth. He focused on me and grabbed my shoulder. "The fuck are you doing to me, fag?" His grip tightened, grinding my collarbone.
"Chill out," I said, placatingly. "We're in the same boat. We're drafted."
"Where are my clothes?"
"In that bag. We had to strip while they sprayed us. Look, could you let go of my shoulder?"
He did. "You may be drafted, bro, but not me. I'm leaving." He popped the seal on the bag and struggled into his civvies.
"Look, there's no percentage in this. Just keep calm, and let this thing sort itself out. You're gonna get yourself killed."
Potty-Mouth ignored me and took off toward the door we'd used to get onto the roof. He kicked it three times before it splintered and gave. I looked up at the frères in the cherry pickers. They were watching him calmly.
A small, wiry frère was waiting behind the door Potty-Mouth kicked in. He stepped out, grinning. Potty-Mouth threw a punch at the frère's solar plexus. The frère whoofed a little, but didn't lose his grin.
Potty-Mouth grappled with him, lifting the smaller man off his feet. The frère took the beating for what seemed like a long time, merely twisting to avoid the groin and face shots that PottyMouth aimed. The trustafarians on the roof were all silent, watching, shivering.
Finally, the frère had had enough. He broke free of PottyMouth's grip on his arms with ease, and as he dropped to the ground, smashed Potty-Mouth in both ears simultaneously. PottyMouth reeled, and the little frère aimed a series of hard, wickedfast blows at his ribs. I heard cracking.
Potty-Mouth started to fall, but the frère caught him, picked him up over his head, then piledrivered him into the gravel. He lay unmoving there, head at an angle that suggested he wouldn't be getting up any time soon.
The frères in the cherry pickers scrambled down. One of them slung Potty-Mouth over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carried him down the stairs. The little frère who'd killed him stepped back into the doorway, pulling the broken door shut behind him.
"Get dressed," broadcasted a Power-Armor.
They herded us back downstairs without a word. The crowd moved with utter docility, and I could see the logic of the proceedings. Terrified, blood-sugar bottomed out, thirsty, we were completely without fight.
On the third floor, the cubicles and desks had all been piled in a corner, making one big space. A few long tables were set up with industrial-size pots of something that steamed and smelled bland and uninspired. My mouth filled with saliva.
"Form an orderly queue," said the sergeant from the night before, who was waiting behind one of the pots with an apron over his uniform, a ladle in his hand.
He looked each trustafarian over carefully as they passed through the line, clutching large bowls that were efficiently filled with limp vegetables, lumpy potatoes, and a brown, greasy gravy. Each of us was issued a stale baguette and a cup of orange drink and sent away.
We seated ourselves on the floor and ate greedily off our laps. Here in the mess, the frères relaxed and allowed the men and women to mingle.
Friends found each other and shared long hugs, then ate in silence. I ate alone, back to a wall, and watched the others.
Once everyone had passed through the line, the sergeant began walking through the clusters, stooping to talk and joke. He touched people's shoulders, handed out cigarettes, and was generally endearing and charming.
He made his way over to me.
"Monsieur Rosen."
"Sergeant."
He sat down beside me. "How is the food?"
"Oh, very good," I said, without irony. "Would you like some baguette?"
"No thank you."
I tore off a hunk of bread and sopped up some gravy.
"It is a shame about your friend, on the roof."
I grunted. Potty-Mouth had been no friend of mine – and in a situation like this one, I knew, you have to be discriminate in apportioning your loyalty.
"Ah." He stared thoughtfully at the trustafarians. "You understand, though, why it had to be?"
"I suppose."
"Ah?"
"Well, once he was taken care of, the rest saw that there was no point in struggling."
"Yes, I suppose that was part of it. The other part is that there in no place in a war for disobedience."
War. Huh.
The sergeant read my face. "Oh yes, Monsieur Rosen. War. We're still fighting street-to-street in the northern suburbs, and some say that the Americans are pushing for a UN 'Peacekeeping' mission. They're calling it Operation Havana. I'm afraid that your government takes a dim view of our nationalizing their stores and offices."
"Not my government, Sergeant . . ."
"Abalain. François Abalain. I apologize, I had forgotten that you are a Canadian. Where did you say you live?"
"I have a flat on Rue Texas."
"Yes, yes. Far from the fighting. You and the other étrangers behave as though our struggle here were nothing but an uninteresting television program. It couldn't last. You had pitched your tents on the side of a smoking volcano, and the lava has reached you."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that our army needs support staff: cooks, mechanics' assistants, supply clerks, janitors, office staff. Every loyal Parisian is already giving everything he can afford to the Cause. It is time that you, who have enjoyed Paris's splendor in comfort and without cost, pay for your stay."
"Sergeant, no offense, but I have rent receipts in my filing cabinet. I pay for groceries. I am paying for my stay."
The sergeant lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. "Some bills can't be settled with money. When you fight for the freedom of the group, the group must pay for it."
"Freedom?"
"Ah." He looked out at the trustafarians, who were leaning against each other, eyes downcast, utterly dejected. "In the cause of freedom, it may be necessary to abridge the personal liberties of a few individuals. But this isn't slave labor: each of you will be paid in good Communard Francs, at the goin
g rate. It won't hurt these spoiled children to do some honest work."
I decided that if the chance ever came, I'd kill Sergeant François Abalain.
I swallowed my anger. "My cousin, a young girl named Sissy, she was taken last night. She was just passing through, and asked me to take her out to the club. My aunt must be crazy with worry."
The sergeant pulled his clipboard out of his coat pocket and snapped it open. He scratched on it. "What is her last name?"
"Black. S-I-S-S-Y B-L-A-C-K."
He scritched more and scowled at the display. He scritched again. "Monsieur Rosen, I'm very sorry, but there is no record of any Sissy Black here. Could she have given us a false name?"
I thought about it. I hadn't seen Sissy for ten years before she emailed me that she was coming to Paree. She'd always struck me as a very straight, sheltered kid, though I'd been forced to revise my opinion of her upwards after she gutted out that long bus ride. Still, I couldn't imagine her having the cunning to make up a name on the spot. "I don't think so. What does that mean?"
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