"You need to leave," the man with the microphone said, waving a hand in the general direction of the open garage doors. The police still congregated there, but no in a threatening manner. They stood in a large group, talking, sipping from water bottles, some with their hands in their pockets, their extensible clubs clipped to their belts.
Heads down, most of the men near Barrington trudged to the doorway. Others continued with their dumb stares directed at the glass-enclosed office. Outside the garage, a troop of Blues marched past, their satiny jumpsuits flashing in the afternoon sunlight, boots ringing against the cement walk, rail guns snug against their shoulders. A private security force named for the color of their uniform, the Blues trumped the municipal police by being armed with weapons more deadly than a wooden club or telescoping steel rod. Even at a low setting, rail guns could send a barbed pellet into a man's heart or brain.
Chanting erupted once more. Again, a troop of Blues rushed by in a flash, like a blast of frost or a sudden storm sweeping across the plaza.
Barrington looked around again, locked eyes with the man in the office waving his hand, the plastic microphone close to his lips, which moved but made no sound. He'd probably inadvertently muted himself and didn't know it. Reluctantly, because he'd liked the job he'd been given, had been doing it steadily since finishing tech-school, and because he didn't really know what he'd do next, Barrington wandered away from the three-wheeled vehicle he'd been testing. He stepped out of the garage, glanced at the knot of police off to one side, and walked onto the open plaza.
Nymphs and frogs and leaping fish decorated a stone fountain, the creatures caught in an unchanging activity, the animals forever with mouths open, the child-like females delivering water from forever upended pitchers. Where the water overflowed into the culvert surrounding the pool, silver and gold plastic buttons lay in heaps across the light-catching quartz bottom. An ever overflowing drain directed the flow to underground pumps, which, eventually, brought the water back into the fountain.
Barrington gazed at the water while Blues marched past, towards the sound of distant chanting. Tri-wheel motorbikes lined up, inches separating them, in a long line across the edge of the open plaza. Municipal police sat on their saddles, hands on the handlebars, visors down, their white helmets adorned with decals depicting their units, various emblems having to do with rank, and decorative seals attesting to individual achievements.
Workers emptied out of a nearby garage that served trucks and full-sized four-wheel-drive cars. Not just techies in white jumpsuits like Barrington's, but all the mechanics and the office personnel, some of the women from Administration, and even the those responsible for overseeing the mechanical workforce, the latter readily identified by their gray-black-striped overalls. Everyone milled about in a pulsating mass that contracted and expanded, like a beating heart.
Barrington guessed they had nowhere special to go. His fellow technicians stood in pairs or sets of three or four elsewhere on the open plaza. A few people shed their overalls, crumbled them into a ball and tossed them on the stone paving. Someone waved his in the air, holding the garment by its legs and whipping it above his head. Another trampled his. After shedding the outer wear, many stomped off, taking the steps to street level or following the wheelchair ramp or jumping from the upper ledge to the lower one and then to the street, each jump a jarring ten foot drop.
Barrington put his hands in his pockets. His fingers toyed with the loose screws and nuts and small screwdrivers he kept there in case he needed to secure a ground wire or bracket or other mechanical piece. He blushed, embarrassed by the fact that he'd left the garage with municipal property. But, he reminded himself, nobody had stopped him. They weren't sent to the locker room take off their overalls. The managers hadn't given anyone time. They just shooed them away, verbally pushed them out to the plaza.
Stumbling a bit on the ramp, Barrington followed the slight curve down to the street. A wheelie passed, the police driver going too fast for the ramp's grading. Overhead, a one-person quad-chopper hovered, and was soon joined by two more flyers. They formed a diamond and then sped off at high speed towards the cluster of municipal buildings on the other side of the plaza.
A crowd filled the tram platform. Not the usual patient and orderly queues, but clusters that flowed and ebbed and rumbled, their angry voices making a steady din. Thousands of suddenly unemployed men and women going home to uncertain futures. Barrington hung back. He cast his eyes around the plaza, wondering if he'd find a new job amid the stone-and-glass municipal skyscrapers and the corporate buildings.
A few people sat at the tables outside a cafe alongside the tram tracks, though the restaurant itself displayed a "closed" sign on its front door, and bars and chains covered the glass windows, protecting the establishment from damage. A squad of Blues invaded the outdoor seating area, forcing the men and women at the tables to their feet, scanning them, checking the readouts, pushing some out of the terrace and pulling others into a group kept at bay by guards armed with tranquilizer pistols.
When Barrington saw an armored bus pull up to the tram platform, with more of the hired police in blue jumpsuits emerging from the back, he turned to run. Danger sparked the air. He sensed, something wrong, just as he used to sense fights erupting at school, or sensed which streets might be dangerous to travel at night. Threats seemed to travel in the wind like flickering sparks along a frayed wire.
A one-person flyer descended in front of him. Out of the corners of his eye he saw a Blue. He looked sideways. Another Blue approached. Long dark hair bobbed up and down across narrow shoulders. The woman lifted a scanner. Barrington blinked. She closed on him, scanner directed at his eyes.
"You're off-limits," she said.
"I just -- " Barrington swallowed the rest of his words, his throat dry; a hollow feeling in his stomach made him weak. He pointed in the direction of the municipal garage. Nearby, Blues pulled people from the tram platform and into waiting buses.
"You're not authorized to be in the city," the Blue said.
"I just got laid off."
The woman turned her reader screen to face him. Barrington looked at his picture with the red bar beneath it. A separate box listed his employment record, school statistics, and current housing status.
Barrington put his hands up. A feeble defense, he knew, but he didn't know what else to do.
"I've a grace period," he said. "Forty-five days."
"Not according to our records. You're done." The Blue raised her hand. Barrington started to run, but something struck at his ankles. He glimpse a spindly length of steel -- a telescoping baton -- that hit at his feet, tripping him. He sprawled on the ground, grabbed his legs and howled with pain. One of the Blues pulled his arms behind his back and clamped manacles on his wrists.
"What's the count?" one Blue asked.
"We're up to 27." A woman's voice. "Three more and we're done."
Chapter Two
Several lines of people ran from the roped-off tables, snaking back and forth inside guidelines strung from the posts in the ground. A lot of people sat on the ground, not in line. They sat with their legs crossed or outstretched, their hands on the bare ground. A couple of men and women with black armbands to distinguish them sauntered about, wooden clubs in their hands. When Barrington tumbled from the police van, and after staggering about for a minute, his blurred vision cleared. He stared at the large sign of hand-printed lettering running along the edge of the tables set up near the wire meshed fence.
"Legal Aid," the sign read.
More than a hundred -- probably two hundred -- people populated the snaking line, all of them waiting to speak to a lawyer. Barrington counted five tables, each with four legal aid workers. Students, he imagined. Versed well enough in the law to file a complaint or prepare a brief.
He got into line. He wondered how many of the huddled mass in this region between the tall fence and the city gate had been cheated, as he'd been. Fired this morning and immed
iately exiled. Without the customary 45 day grace period.
"You fired today, too?" he asked the man in front of him.
No answer. But two woman standing nearby nodded and one of them said, "There's more than a thousand of us, from what I heard the cops say. They cleared out an entire corporate center and then some."
Barrington nodded. Stunned again. Confusion overcoming him. Something he'd need to fight off, he told himself, and squeezed his eyes shut.
The grumbling from elsewhere in line got the attention of one of the black armband wearing proctors. He hurried over, hissed at the assembly and threw a hard glance at everyone.
A gate opened in the high cyclone fence. A large gate. Large enough for two trucks to pass side-by-side. A loudspeaker blast an announcement. The Ready Zone should now be cleared. Barrington looked around at the mass of men and women milling about in little groups. A few, heads down, headed for the gate. Others remained sitting on the ground. Those in line for legal aid remained in place. In the few minutes since he'd taken a place at the end of that line, more than a score more men and women lined up behind him.
The loudspeaker blasted another announcement. Legal assistance would be available outside the Ready Zone.
"It's imperative," the announcer said, "that this area be cleared as soon as possible."
"Because they got another thousand coming out this afternoon," someone quipped.
The line moved. It shuffled forward. The legal aid workers kept their heads down as they filled out online forms for those facing their tables. Two more vans pulled away from the city wall and parked on the edge of the Ready Zone. More exiles filed out, some dazed and stumbling, as Barrington had been. On the other side of the cyclone fence, knots of men and women holding various signs that Barrington couldn't make out because of the distance, milled around. Long gray tents dotted the open area. Scattered buildings stood beyond the tents. Old houses, Barrington assumed. Run down homes from the past, before Chicago became a walled-in city.
He assumed they were at the south gate. He'd been outside with Dell to visit her birth mother and that had been by way of the South Wall Viaduct, which led to sprawling housing complexes and fast moving highways. Here, a dismal landscape stretched from the cyclone fence and disappeared into a hazy fog. Chimneys belched black smoke. A dense gray cloud hovered at rooftop level. In the city-proper, rooftop scrubbers and groves of artificial trees cleaned the air; and the prohibition against coal-and-wood-burning furnaces kept pollution at bay. Outside -- as everything beyond the walls, beyond Chicago-proper was called -- lacked the laws and rules and chemical apparatus that dampened the fog.
Behind him, the ground opened with two trap doors sliding on their tracks to reveal a slanted runway. A grumbling noise followed, along with the thunder of boots striking hard cement; and two columns of city police in gray-and-black jumpsuits marched from each tunnel, with a rumbling truck on steel treads between each pair of columns. Squat water tanks sat in each truck bed, retained in place by wide leather straps. Coiled hoses snaked back and forth across the tanks' bodies.
The police pulled down their visors. Their white helmets gleamed, as did their plastic chest protectors. Most carried long steel clubs, the flexible kind that sent a shocking jolt when striking flesh. A few carried tranquilizer guns with long barrels.
Barrington took a deep breath, hoping to counteract the fear welling in his stomach, the dread that made his legs shake and turned his bowels to jelly. He grabbed one hand with his other hand to stop shivering. He'd never felt so afraid, so uncertain of what to do next. He looked around at the ragged line he'd joined and then at the end-to-end tables where the young legal aid workers sat.
One of the women sitting behind the table stood. She climbed onto the tabletop. Two men on either side steadied her while she made an announcement.
"We'll just take your iris print. We'll fill out your forms later."
"How do you get back in touch?" someone shouted.
"We have agents Outside."
Those waiting for aid grumbled amongst themselves. The woman atop the table lowered herself to her knees and, with the help of those supporting her, eased back to the ground. Aid workers waved others forward and the line surged, broke from the restraining ropes that kept it orderly though ragged, and swarmed the aid workers' tables.
The tankers lined up behind the clusters of people in the Ready Zone. Police at the wide gate leading Outside motioned the exiles towards them. Families took stuttering steps to keep together. None of the children cried, Barrington noted, and wondered why that observation seemed important.
He quieted his own fears, stifled the tears behind his eyes. He moved towards the legal aid workers. From what he overheard, everyone had the same complaint. They'd been released from their job only this morning. Why didn't they get the customary 45 day grace period before being exiled?
The sun stood overhead. Directly. Only noon? He pulled his All-Pod from his side pocket. No signal. How could he let Dell know what happened? There had to be a way to get a note to her.
A legal-aid worker held a notepad computer to his face. "Look directly at the red circle," he said.
"Can you get a message to my fiancée?"
"Look at the circle."
He did, and the young lawyer moved on to another exile.
Barrington staggered backwards, dizzy with looking around and not sure what to do next. The water tankers took up positions along the asphalt track at the edge of the open ground where the exiles had been herded. He'd seen these weapons in action during city riots. High pressure hoses -- two for each tanker -- poked out from the turrets. The police held their body-length shields close, truncheons shoulder high. Those with tranquilizer guns hefted their weapons to the ready position, butt off the ground, one hand across the trigger guard.
Again, the loudspeaker announcement: "Move to the Outside. Through the gate. This area must be cleared."
A young woman stood crying, hands clasped in front of her. Her high heels and short brown skirt marked her as an office worker. Long blonde hair fell across her frail shoulders. Her white blouse with its frilly collar set her apart from the many men and women dressed in more mundane garb.
Barrington approached the woman. "It's okay. Come on. I'll go out with you."
"It's not okay. Nothing's okay. I can't even get a message to my father to tell him what happened." She waved an All-Pod at him.
"Come on," he urged, a hand extended. But she slapped the offer aside and walked away, legs bending, her high heels digging into the ground. She pulled the shoes off her feet and carried them cradled in one arm.
Those close to the asphalt roadway backed off when one of the tankers sprayed them. Not a vicious water cannon spurt, not the kind that could pick them off their feet; rather, a gentle shower fell on them, the water arching from the mouth of the cannon. Meant as a warning, not as punishment. Not as a vicious weapon.
Two bent-over figures skulked alongside the tankers, far enough away from the police that they weren't noticed, except by a Barrington and a few others. He looked on, shocked by their audacity. Inwardly, he cheered them on when they skirted the tracked vehicles and slipped into one of the open tunnels. Moments later they emerged. They staggered, blood streaming from their heads, the backs of their denim work shirts ripped, shredded; vivid welts across their flesh testified to the results of steel cable whips.
Barrington moved with the crowd. Behind him, screams erupted. The water cannons let loose full force on the mob in the Ready Zone. Water struck the ground and huge geysers of loose rock and gravel and gritty soil sprang into the air. Water hit one man and sent him howling into the cyclone fence. The gate filled with the mass of people trying to escape. The thick gush of liquid didn't touch those moving out of the zone, moving Outside as they'd been told, as the loudspeaker demanded. Guards at the gate pulled and waved and pushed to keep the throng moving.
The girl in the short skirt staggered and fell, drenched. Her high-heeled shoes
flew out of her hands. Other shoes trampled them in the mud. She screamed. She clawed the soggy earth, churning mud with her fingers as she retrieved her shoes, as though they were too precious a possession to lose. Her skirt rode up her hips, leaving her in a embarrassing position, her panties soaked through, the edges curled into her body and exposing her buttocks.
Barrington picked her up, pulled down her skirt. He put an arm across her shoulders. He pushed her towards the main part of the crowd, the bulging mass trying to stuff itself through the open gate. He squeezed her soft shoulders when she resisted. He pulled her close enough that his body sheltered hers. Drops of water fell on them. Mere drops. Mere bits of liquid from the spray behind them, which had stopped being a punishing torrent and became only a mild reminder of what havoc the water cannon could wreak.
It felt odd to hold onto this frail young woman when he compared her to Dell's slender yet solid frame. Where Dell was dark, this girl was fair, with thin blonde tresses as opposed to Dell's thick brown hair. Where Dell's face often stared up at him wide-eyed, with fleshy lips and broad cheeks, this woman turned back to look at him with sharp features that snatched rather than absorbed, eyes that glared rather than studied.
He hurried her through the open gate, and then away from the mob before he or she tripped or found themselves crushed between the high cyclone fence and the mass of people. In the Ready Zone, the water cannons resumed their worst, soaking the recalcitrant few who'd fallen and refused to rise, refused to shuffle to safety on the other side of the fence, refused to give up. But then the police moved in, batons whirling, biting the resistors and, finally, sending the last of them Outside.
Triptych Page 3