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"A dormitory," Ginny said. "I haven't lived in a dorm since I was in school."
This added a wrinkle Potter didn't like. Where would they go if she didn't have this apartment?
"Lost your stopping off spot, huh?" she said, as though reading his mind. Potter looked away from her, perturbed that his eyes betrayed his thoughts, as did the sour look on his face.
"How long?" he said, the words coming on a whispered stream of air.
Ginny shrugged.
"You don't know?" he pressed.
"I'm hired. By the museum. I know that. Three days week, 4 hours a day. Which barely qualifies me for the dorm."
Potter sighed.
"I start in two weeks," Ginny said. "They've got some maintenance to do, and then there's this -- "
"Okay, okay."
"Maybe you can arrange something?" Ginny grinned, but Potter refused to respond to the twinkle in her green eyes. What did she expect from him? He'd done what he could. She handed him her All-Pod. "I got this weird text."
He took the device from her. A small model, it rested on the palm of his hand. He gripped it by its rubbery edges and looked at the message emblazoned across the center of the screen, the black letters crisp on a white background.
"Don't lose what you have. Respond," read the message.
Potter handed the All-Pod back to her. "Did you? Respond?"
Ginny shook her head. "I think it means I could keep this apartment."
"Or it's a scam."
"Do you want me to go to a dorm? Live at the museum?"
"Respond, then, Ginny. I don't know what you -- "
"Look into it, Kyle."
Potter sighed, but then forwarded the advertisement to his account so he could look into it later.
"I'm counting on you," Ginny said, her voice a whisper as she rose from her chair and pressed herself against him, until he wrapped his arms around her. "I don't want this to be our last time, you know."
Neither did Potter.
He tried to let Ginny's attentions soothe him, but he kept picturing her All-Pod screen and its enticing message. If there were some way she could keep the apartment ... The thought rolled around in his mind, along with the sad prospect of losing her completely. In a couple of weeks she could be stranded in a dormitory, and then, in three months, he could be Outside trying to find his way back in, with Lydia and Carol in tow.
When he left the apartment, with Ginny's scent clinging to his fingers, which he sniffed as a reminder of his green-eyed, blonde-haired lover, Potter tossed several future scenarios around in his mind. What if he followed up on the ad she'd shown him? What if he found a room near where she'd be working, a place where they could be alone when she had a break from work?
And then the biggest of the "what-ifs" stormed into his mind like a Fury intent on giving battle. What if he didn't find new work for himself? If he had to take Lydia and Carol underground, into the inner-city blocks of deteriorating apartment buildings and shadow-world commerce, how long could he last? How long before he was asked to show his work permit? How long before he went Outside?
Carol could be stopped and questioned. What would a twelve-year-old know about subterfuge? Lydia could be caught. Contract police patrolled the decrepit neighborhoods where illegal residents tried to hide. Paid for each culprit they turned in, they were a diligent enemy.
The companies that hired the contract cops might be a source of new work.
The idea brightened his outlook, spread across the pink blotches on his round face and gave new life to his tired gray eyes. Smiling now, he tapped the desk where the lobby guard sat and opened his hand in a "so-long" gesture. Just as he reached the doors, out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement.
Potter tensed, ready for a confrontation, not sure why there should be one, but letting muscle memory take control, hands becoming fists, body poised to ward off an attack.
"Did she show you my ad?"
Potter stopped in front of the double doors leading outside. He gave the speaker a once-over, trying to take in as much information as possible with just that one glance. A wiry man, bandied legs and boney wrists, the intruder didn't look formidable. His close-set dark eyes didn't dart about like he didn't know where to look. No, he stared straight ahead, his shaved scalp and thin beard seeming to be out of place, more like what Potter should expect to see on a squat, muscular man, not this short one.
"You sent the ad?" Potter asked.
"Why aren't you in uniform? You get caught in the layoffs?"
"I'm asking the questions."
"Crisp," the intruder said. "My name. Crisp."
"What about the ad? I saw it."
"You still sound like a cop, even if you aren't thumping a club against the palm of your hand."
Potter sucked in a long deep breath. He looked around the empty lobby. No one else occupied the chairs and benches set around a small central fountain. Crisp didn't have back-up.
"What's the deal with the ad?" Potter asked.
"Simple. I've got ways by which your mistress can keep what she's got. Don't matter what kind of job she works, whether she qualifies for the place or not. She keeps it."
Potter saw the bottom line looming. "How much?"
"Twelve hundred V-Rings. The place goes off-grid and it's hers." Crisp pulled a palm-sized All-Pod from the pocket of his suit coat. His white shirt shimmered in the harsh overhead light and the butt of a small pistol protruded from a holster strapped across his back. He tapped the screen a few times. Potter's All-Pod chimed, signaling a transmission.
Crisp grinned, revealing two rows of tiny white teeth, his top incisors pointy and longer than they should be, as though he'd sharpened them for the occasion. Which brought a smile to Potter's face. The guy was more comical than dangerous, in spite of that pistol hugging his ribs.
"My bona-fides," the wiry man said. "Check me out with Stern's people. They'll verify I'm legit. You pay me, you get what you paid for."
Although tempted to look at his All-Pod screen, Potter kept the device secure in his pants pocket. He shoved his thumbs into his waistband. He strummed the cloth weave of his belt with his fingers. Crisp didn't blink. He stared.
"I don't have that kind of money," Potter said, and pictured his reserve account as a stack of glistening gold rings stacked one atop another, close to the way his bank app's graphics depicted his account status. He had close to 300 V-Rings in reserve. Another 10 as ready-cash for spending. For the next 90 days he'd be paid a quarter of his salary as unemployment compensation, but his living expenses would have to be paid out of that, including rent now that he didn't hold a job.
"Get it," Crisp said. "Cash in your municipal script. Or your ogres."
Still not enough, Potter thought. "Maybe I can get 800."
Crisp laughed. "Maybe you can, but your girlfriend won't be keeping that apartment for 800." He departed, touching the plate in the wall to open the front doors.
Potter dropped a gummy pepper-upper onto his tongue. It didn't taste as sweet as usual. Nor was it bitter. He'd lost all taste, he thought. Ginny's lingering scent had lessened its intensity. Soon, Crisp disappeared from view. Down the steps, onto the wide sidewalk, across the street: the man's short thin body dissolving into the ether.
Standing on the steps, Potter closed his coat around himself and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He didn't look back into the lobby. Head bent, he hurried home, intent on walking so he could think his way out of his problems. No doubt, he'd lost Ginny now. No doubt, he'd be forced to move his wife and daughter from their comfortable house to less attractive quarters, perhaps amid the grimy buildings near the city wall. They'd go underground and hope not to get caught. There'd be some work -- illegitimate perhaps, but still work -- that he could do, earning ogres to pay his way.
But life wouldn't be as much fun in the future and that made him sad, so sad that tears welled in his eyes and he shook his head so he wouldn't shed them.
#
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br /> Day work.
None of the employment exchanges Potter perused on his All-Pod offered anything close to the kind of work he wanted, or could perform. He wasn't qualified as a technician, certainly couldn't succeed at office work for any of the corporate world's headquarters doing business in Chicago-proper. Some admin centers for handling people exiled to the Outside seemed promising, but he doubted they'd hire ex-cops.
But a small advertisement for day workers got his attention. It specifically wanted municipal police as well as private sector security personnel caught in the recent layoffs. For every day Potter worked, he'd get one more day added to the grace period awarded him as a result of losing his job. He'd also get paid, though not as much on a daily basis as what he usually earned. When he told Lydia, he got a cold stare that seemed to say, "It's still more than zero."
Hands in his pockets, Potter walked to a tram stop and headed for Center Station, a marble-paved plaza that was neither a station nor in the center of anything. It hugged the cyclone fencing along Chicago's southern border. A wide open court surround by tall, spindly buildings housing corporate offices, the site offered little protection from the wintry winds whipping the stones.
Tiny black dots circled in the sky, in stark contrast against the white clouds. A few dipped. Armed drones, Potter surmised from the elongated shape of those that came close enough to be seen in detail. Some of the eight-engine variety appeared, their propellers whirring, engines generating that distinct odor of ozone. Now and then, one or a pair or three of these eight-prop observation drones flew off, side-by-side or in a tight V formation, heading for other parts of the city.
In the plaza, long lines of people weaved their way from seven gray-striped black trailers parked in the street. Men and women snaked from the wooden steps leading to the trailer doors. They wove back and forth in the plaza inside cordoned-off sections, and then onto the sidewalk. Entrances to the office buildings remained clear. Whenever anyone strayed from the parked trailers, police in shiny black coats ordered them back.
Black coats? Potter observed. What cop-for-hire company did these guys represent?
The lines to the trailers didn't move. A megaphone-enhanced voice peppered the air with instructions, sending newcomers to one or another of the queues. Potter meandered into line behind two women with a single blanket draped across their bodies, their heads covered by individual red scarves. The long dresses they wore were tattered at the edges. They didn't look warm as they huddled close to one another. They shivered in unison when the wind picked up and swamped the end-of-summer Fall day.
Potter moved up when the line shifted forward. In a few minutes, he noticed men and women exiting from the trailers, some with heads down and hands in their pockets, shaking their heads or kicking at the asphalt, many of them mumbling. Guards herded them away. Others left the trailer with dark packages -- boots? hoods? shiny material? -- under one arm. They congregated on a wide lawn, again under the watchful eyes of the guards. There, they climbed into the shiny black jumpsuits they carried. A megaphone-voiced command sent them to a waiting bus.
Inside the trailer, Potter stepped to an open seat at a long table. He didn't wait to be directed to one or another of the chairs. He'd been a guard at these kinds of employment facilities. He knew what to expect. The woman across from him at the table took a iris scan from him. She checked her handheld computer, nodded several times, but didn't smile. A pasty complexion. Lines in her thin lips. He didn't find her attractive or appealing. Not even for a casual encounter.
"Got caught in the sweep?" she said, a question mark in her inflection. Then, before Potter could answer, she added, "One day's work. Pick up a suit."
"How much?"
"More than you'd earn by watching what's going on." She handed Potter a red chit. "Turn that in at the end of your shift. Show it to those guys." She pointed. "To get your stuff."
Potter went in the direction she indicated. A sullen older man in a cage at one corner of the stuffy trailer traded a glance with him. A mix of odors assailed Potter as he mingled with the other men and women holding round red chits in their hands. He recognized a few co-workers from before, but he neither nodded nor greeted them. They, in turn, ignored him as well.
The old man in the cage handed Potter a black jumpsuit. Made of shiny, thin material, it weighed little. Outside, on the grass, he slipped into it. No pockets. Velcro fasteners at the ankles and wrists made for a tight fit. He didn't put the hood over his head. He let it circle his wide neck like a protective collar. Someone handed him a helmet with a clear plastic visor and gently pushed on his shoulder, directing him to a fast-filling bus.
At least it would be police work, he thought. It made use of his talents. He smiled about that and settled into a seat by the window. More familiar faces appeared on the bus, but still no one greeted him and he greeted no one. He rode in silence, a silence oddly enhanced by the squeal of gears, the grinding noise of the bus' ancient innards not quite meshing. The vehicle rocked a bit, especially when it made turns.
Office buildings rose in the distance, far on the other side of the blocky apartment buildings. Bonfires burned at the street corners; a nearly destroyed three-wheeled police car blazed, as did an overturned bus. Emergency responders ferried the wounded to mobile hospitals propped up on struts and guarded by police with pop-pops, a short-range gun that sprayed sticky lozenges which delivered a mild electric shock on contact.
The bus stopped. An orderly procession of day-worker cops moved onto the street, half the passengers exited at the front, near the driver, and half at the exit doors in the midsection near the articulating rubber connectors that attached the two parts of the long vehicle and gave it the flexibility needed to navigate city streets.
Potter joined the hundreds of other temporary police, all of them veterans like himself, he supposed. They milled about, on the sidewalk, in the middle of the wide avenue, and on the steps of a nearby building with high faux-marble steps and fake granite columns. In the distance, chanting sparked the air, but the words were indistinct, too distant.
An officer, short arms pumping and head down, lifted a megaphone to his lips and made an announcement. He wore an Everyday, a uniform that was a cross from the jumpsuit meant for street duty and the spiffy dress outfit for parades and official duties. But his dark blue pants lacked crisp lines. Everything sagged on his slender frame. His tan shirt, stained in the back as well as down the front, showed rips at the cuffs, fraying at all its edges. Epaulets on his shoulders sported captain bars. To Potter, he looked like a typical old-timer manning a desk in some office, and now suddenly yanked back into combat.
The captain barked his orders, shouting even though he had a megaphone to amplify his voice. He ordered most of the new arrivals to his left, but sent some to his right. Sergeants helped separate the crowd of day-workers into orderly columns. Potter moved to one side, as directed, joining a group of four across and four deep. The rows grew in number as more men and women were added to the ranks.
Looking around, Potter saw that everyone was like himself in terms of build. Short heavyweights, with bulldog faces, most with close-cropped hair, but a few with bushy curls. Some of the women had shaved heads. Uniforms rustled, the ersatz-silk material shining in the midday sun.
A couple of sergeants dressed in their Every Days, which looked as worn as their captain's, passed out steel whips. Tipped with sharp razors shaped like a snake's tongue, the weapon wasn't one Potter had used before. But his past training came back to him as he hefted the handle. A flick of the wrist sent a long cable into the air, where the tongue-tip snapped at nothing. The same flick, with the whip aimed at an opponent, could leave a nasty cut or sever an ear or a finger or take out an eye.
"You're the bull squad," the captain said. The other teams of temporary cops marched away, three groups in columns of six, many rows deep.
Potter started moving when the sergeant in charge of this bull squad, so named because of the members' builds, jerk
ed forward, his feet remembering old marching orders. Heels pounded the paving in unison. They paraded down a side street. The chanting grew louder. It sounded familiar. A chant that unemployed workers always sang.
They wanted jobs. They demanded recourse. Justice.
A mob came into view. The other columns of police pressed the rioters on two sides. Soon, Potter knew, this opposing force of chanting men and women would break. They'd run. If they ran towards the bull squad, they'd be whipped and turned away.
Police work, Potter told himself, and got ready for the confrontation. He hadn't had to deal with riots like this in years. This wasn't duty he enjoyed. It was just duty. He followed orders, as did all the other black-draped temporary cops around him.
Chapter Six
The soft chime from the All-Pod reminded Potter that he still had a message from Ginny to decrypt and read. He'd been ignoring her. A few days earlier, when he saw her, she complained that he didn't do enough to help her.
"I've got what, Kyle?" she'd said, hands waving in the air, mouth twisted in a mix of a snarl and a cry. "What? Days? A week, maybe? They don't tell me anything. I'm evicted. Okay. When? I'm all on edge, Kyle."
Potter stood in the middle of her living room. She'd already piled clothes in boxes, as though preparing to leave her home for a new one. How she'd fit her possessions into the tiny cubicle she'd have in a dorm at that museum struck Potter as humorous.
"You said you'd help," she ranted.
He backed away from her, unable to protect himself from the verbal barrage. Now, at home, he glanced at his All-Pod's screen and thought of the green-eyed blonde he'd somehow acquired as a lover. Her devilish looks always intrigued him, challenged him. Thinking of her as he looked at the benign news article that served as an encrypted version of her latest email, he found Ginny to be a frightening witch.
Lydia appeared in the periphery of his vision. She'd once seen the nonsensical news on his All-Pod, made a remark about it, but didn't know what it meant. A plain, unsophisticated woman, Lydia lacked the astute perception that Potter thought he'd find challenging. Perhaps that's why he married her. What attracted him? He didn't remember. Too far in the past.
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