At least he hadn't come back to Chicago in the middle of the night, to a squall or a snow storm or driving rain. Spring would soon come, perhaps next month, in June. May already proved itself a miss in the weather lottery.
"Strike's on."
Jamerson looked sideways, and then turned to face the speaker, a portly man with a lined face, a brown coat wrapped around his body indicating that he belonged to the border police. One thing Jamerson had noted with sudden comprehension during his fact-finding trip to Greater Los Angeles was the uniformity of police attire throughout the state. Besides not having walls and separate living space for wage earners and non-earners, California's cities didn't divide their urban police into distinct categories. At least, they didn't tolerate the proliferation of uniforms and allegiances common to Chicago.
"Strike?" Jamerson said.
"Didn't hear me, kid? Strike. Yeah. Strike's on. Cabbies tried to get back their union. Just getting back from somewhere? Missed the riots, you lucky shit."
Though he didn't have to ask, the question sputtered from Jamerson's mouth anyway. "How do I --- ?" He waved at the near-empty pavement and adjacent street outside the airport terminal. The site that once teemed with travelers, at a time when common workers had the money to travel, take vacations, visit friends and relatives; now the airport served a small class of citizens. The poor took trains, though most never went anyplace too far from home, certainly no further than what light rail or a tram might take them.
"Whatcha think, kid?" The border cop pointed at a walkway leading to a set of stairs. "Up there. Takes you right into Chicago-proper."
"Baggage handlers aren't striking, too, are they?"
The cop laughed, his closet-set, dark eyes twinkling. "Worried about that? Don't be." He walked off, head shaking, thick arms at his sides and his hands hidden inside his large coat pockets. Jamerson took the cop's assurance for granted, though he knew different classes of workers sometimes banded together and if one staged a work stoppage the other mirrored it in sympathy.
A crowd filled the city-bound monorail station's platform, the eager ones leaning over the edge to peer up the gray metal track for signs of an oncoming train. Jamerson showed his All-Pod to the reader mounted on an articulating arm descending from the low ceiling. A click told him to keep walking. The turnstile moved easily as he pushed against it. Transit police in blue jumpsuits lounged nearby, some with their eyes on the passengers, others not paying attention.
Jamerson made a mental note to write a report on this. In California Free State, vigilance was rampant. No one in State Security or Urban Police lounged at their post. For that matter, strikes were rare, though tolerated with restraint when they occurred. His week out west had opened his eyes to what an urban planning department might do to make society better. What he learned gave him a lot of ideas. He wondered what his boss thought of it all. They'd taken separate planes home, which was a security measure dictated by policy, so he didn't have a chance to discuss the fact-finding mission.
A three car train pulled into the station. Jamerson headed for the last car, which would be equipped with private rooms, a luxury that his rank afforded him. The moment he stepped into the car's vestibule, a service bot clattered to life, its square head attached by a goose-neck extension to the side of the car. Jamerson waited to be scanned.
"All full," the bot said.
Jamerson glanced at the red lights glowing in the narrow corridor. Every private room: occupied. Made sense, he admitted. With a strike on, quite a few people were taking trains when they'd otherwise be in a taxi.
Behind him, other passengers streamed to his left, into the public cars. A few of the men shook their heads, annoyed, either because they had to squeeze past him in the vestibule or because they were also denied a private room.
"How long is this ride?" Jameson asked.
"All full," the bot responded.
Jamerson didn't laugh or smile. He didn't find the bot's limitations humorous. Turning, he walked through to the next car, crossed into the front car when he couldn't find a seat, and settled onto a bench with a lot of other passengers.
Humbling, he thought, and pictured Katie Shaw, his sometimes-companion, laughing at him. He'd describe this to her later, he thought. She'd agree: humbling.
He folded his arms across his chest, opened his legs a bit to force more room between himself and the men on either side, and decided he'd endure the ride with as much aplomb as possible. After all, he rode a maglev to and from his lakeside apartment building two days a week, but that train didn't have public seating, certainly no padded benches running down two sides of a car. The train that ran from New Union Station to the lakeside complex offered luxury as well as a very short -- less-than-fifteen minute -- ride.
The monorail glided into another station. The car filled with more travelers. The stink of sweat and stale breath and musty bodies dotted the air. Night shift workers, Jamerson surmised, and tried to determine the rank and occupation of his fellow travelers based on their clothing, separating those in uniform-like jumpsuits from those in heavy coats over work clothes from the better dressed like himself who'd been forced to take this mode of transportation.
A pair of policemen moved through the crowd. Municipal cops, judging from their silky blue jumpsuits and brimless round black hats. They seemed to be eyeing everyone, perhaps hunting a suspect. When they looked directly at him, Jamerson was tempted to flash his wristband ID at them. But maybe they suspected his rank. Their rugged faces masked their thoughts, but their gaze seeming to acknowledge Jamerson as someone important. In the loose hierarchy of city government, managers from the Office for Strategic Studies outranked common cops.
When the monorail pulled into New Union, the police pair filed out of the car along with everyone else; those who'd been standing in the car exited ahead of those who'd been sitting. The two cops, Jamerson decided, were just on their way to work. They didn't apprehend anyone, didn't follow anyone out of the car.
Inside the underground station, Jamerson walked to the maglev platform, his wristband ID getting him past the security-bot at the gate separating the black-and-white tiled public area from the private transport hub. Several transport lines converged at this part of the station. During the week, morning hours found the hub busy with commuters streaming in from outlying housing complexes. Jamerson fulfilled his two-day-a-week commitment every Monday and Tuesday, with two more days of his work week spent at home, in a virtual office. He'd be on-virtual tomorrow, Friday, even though he had that day off. His department head liked meetings immediately after a business trip.
Jamerson didn't mind. He'd just take the following Monday off. Maybe his adjusted schedule would mesh with Katie's and they'd have more than the usual Saturday to spend together.
As he waited to board the lakeside-bound maglev, he relaxed in a comfortable chair, one of several in a ring around a central holographic stage, which sat quiet and dark, as though the few other passengers in the area had come to a silent agreement not to disturb one another.
He checked his All-Pod for news. No riots. No mass layoffs in the past week. Nothing of note, except the coming election of a mayor and reps to the city council. No opposition to the Union Forever party had raised its head as yet, he imagined, because the news consisted of praise for the status-quo, with bright sounding articles concerning what pundits called "the leaning of our city government."
Jamerson tapped the small picture of Katie Shaw in his list of contacts. He waited while the ringtone sounded. Her picture pulsed, her round face fading out and then brightening, her dark eyes staring back at him.
And then the face faded out again. He called twice more, determined to make her answer.
"You're persistent," Katie said. "Do you realize it's three in the morning?"
"I just got back."
"Back from that mystery trip of yours?" Her face filled his screen. She looked as tired as she sounded, with dark splotches under her eyes, her face dull and wrin
kled, her pixie-cut hair flaring out around her ears.
"Guess you don't want to come over."
"I'll see you tomorrow," Katie said. "I'll call you. Okay?"
"Saturday," Jamerson said. "Or tomorrow night. I've got to go into the office."
Katie made a large "Oh" with her mouth. Then, with a smile, she lifted a hand and waved, "Goodbye."
Jamerson wondered what life would be like if he had Katie to greet when he came home. To have her to nuzzle and hold at the end of a trip. He wondered if he'd be able to keep from telling her where he went and what he did. If they were married, would the office give him permission to discuss his work with a wife?
#
Jamerson set his All-Pod to projection mode, placed it atop the glass-and-chrome coffee table, and sat back on the sofa that took up much of his living room. He waited for his co-workers to show up.
Tony Bandinni arrived first, his hologram materializing amid the speckles of dust hovering in a beam of sunshine that penetrated the room. Judging by the wavering background, Jamerson saw that Bandinni had gone into the office. He rubbed the end of his bulbous nose, making it redden, an effect that gave his sagging jowls and soft features the visage of a clown. No doubt, Bandinni took a lot of ribbing about his appearance when he was young. Now, at sixty-something and in charge of the department, nobody joked to his face.
"Waiting on two more," the meeting-bot purred, the voice a cross between sweet female and sweeter male.
Following the protocol set long before Jamerson joined the department, silence reigned during the wait period. A few moments passed, and then Oliver Griffin came to life on Bandinni's right. He stroked his long blonde hair, an affectation that Jamerson found disturbing. Griffin's chiseled features always seemed out of place. He had the face of someone who belonged somewhere other than the Office for Strategic Studies. Griffin didn't look smart, but Jamerson knew to be wary of him anyway, because looks could deceive.
Maddie McCall popped up just behind Bandinni. Slowly, her hologram moved to his left. With a white towel wrapped around her head, she looked like she'd just come from the shower. A pale blue terrycloth robe completed the effect, the fluffy material bunched around her neck, the color stark against her black skin. When she smiled, her dark eyes twinkled.
She broke the silence with, "How're my folks doing today?"
Bandinni muttered a reply. Griffin joined in with his own pleasantries. Jamerson grinned, but remained silent.
"You boys have fun out in the Free State?" McCall said.
"More fun than staying here," Griffin said. He'd let everyone know he didn't like being left behind, but Bandinni never took more than one other person from the department when he made these trips. There should always be staff on hand to run the standard computer simulations or juggle manpower requirements in an emergency.
Besides, Jamerson thought, Bandinni didn't like Oliver Griffin. There was something false about Griffin. The sleek way he walked and the way he held his head so he never looked directly at anyone put people off. Didn't he know this? Jamerson wondered. Or was Griffin too aloof to take notice? Too sure of himself to care.
Bandinni cleared his throat. He combed the thin moustache above his thick upper lip with the tip of a finger and launched into a speech about the west coast fact-finding jaunt.
To Jamerson, there hadn't been much "finding." He and Bandinni attended a conference put on by Greater LA's City Planning Commission and listened to presentations about effective management of physical assets, office workers, police, and casual laborers. None of what Jamerson heard while he sat in that darkened ballroom in the Los Angeles Grand Hotel applied to Chicago's problems. Military men and women on one panel spoke of new lightweight weapons based on electric propulsion technology similar to present-day rail guns. There was also talk of the space habitat, which was yet to be built and put into orbit. Nano engineering took up half a day, with live demonstrations of nano-mechs that could disperse in the bloodstream and reassemble as medicinal disbursement systems or long range beacons for tracking state enemies.
The real facts, the "finding" part of the trip, came when he and Bandinni mingled with men and women from other cities and discussed how they handled the homeless, the unemployed, the police. Casual conversation turned serious when they discussed computer simulations used to determine manpower needs, policy enforcement, and riot control.
Everyone Jamerson met from California Free State, especially those from the Oregon and Washington provinces, acted as though they faced no dire problems, that their lack of walls and fences to keep the homeless and chronically unemployed out of their cities gave them a strength that Greater New York, Chicago, and Miami Metro-Mega, and other urban centers in the U.S. lacked.
What Free State people didn't talk about was the way so many outcasts were drafted into their own Border Patrol and sent to fight the fanatics in the southwestern part of the continent, the contested lands where religious zealots of various stripe had carved out a state of their own. While the U.S. bombed and strafed from the air, used drones for targeted killings, it didn't commit ground troops in all-out war. Only California Free State had boots-on-the-ground.
"What can we learn from that?" Bandinni asked, looking in turn at each of the three people attending the meeting.
Jamerson knew the answer. Because he knew what Bandinni thought. Nothing the Free State did applied to the rest of the continent. They were loners. They went their own way when they seceded from the Union, backing up their demands with airpower and a formidable state militia. They still went their own way so far as the rest of the continent was concerned. California Free State's policies were more in line with the Pacific Rim Confederacy ruled by China than with anywhere else in the world, including the Hawaiian Republic and the Polynesian islands with which it loosely allied.
Bandinni continued to talk, to elaborate on what he found interesting at the conference, obviously not heeding the bored looks on his audience. Bored until he said, "As to the project." And he stopped, waiting for the apt attention this remark should ignite.
Jamerson perked up. Oliver Griffin pursed his lips, the only sign that he'd been listening, the rest of his granite-like body immobile, his hands in his lap.
McCall snorted and shook her head, her arms across her wide chest, the tops of her breasts bulging beneath her fluffy robe. "That project is the most asinine idea I've heard since coming to work here."
Bandinni snapped his eyes in her direction. "It comes down from the mayor's office, so get with the program or -- "
McCall waved him off in mid-sentence. "Yeah. I know. Get with it or get out. I still say, it's a bad idea."
Bandinni smiled. He rubbed his bulbous nose, making it redden again. "I heard nothing at the conference that addresses our project in any way."
Griffin's eyelids flickered. "You didn't tell anyone?"
"Of course not," Bandinni said. "But I listened. They -- the Free State -- has never done anything like what the mayor proposes."
Jamerson swallowed. He agreed with Maddie McCall, though he wouldn't say so, wouldn't admit it. The mayor wanted to use federal troops stationed north of the city at Fort Sheridan to wipe out the lakefront's private police and criminal gangs. According to the project summary, this would establish a new economic order for the exiles outside the walls, one in line with Chicago-proper's interests.
"Get back to work on the simulations. Run the scenarios. Different factors and different versions." Bandinni looked from one attendee to another, as though to elicit a nod or sound of consent.
"Right," Griffin said.
"McCall," Bandinni began, "get me an analysis report and the usual aggregate summations."
"Whatever. That all?" she asked, sounding as annoyed as she looked when she rolled her eyes. Jamerson wondered if she'd fill the report with a lot of nonsense and run-on sentences just to get Bandinni angry. She'd done that sort of thing before when she didn't like the assignment. This project probably topped her list.
"See everyone in the office next week," Bandinni said, and logged off. His image faded. McCall didn't speak. She blinked out, a thin line of white light appearing where her hologram had been. Then it, too, disappeared.
"You want something?" Jamerson said to Griffin. "Oliver? What do you want?"
"We should talk. Friendly talk. In person."
Jamerson nodded. Griffin didn't trust Meet-Me-Space. City Security could be listening and they wouldn't know it. Just to be certain nobody suspected him of sowing discontent in the department, Jamerson spoke up.
"I need to work on the project."
"Over the weekend?" Griffin laughed. "Meet me. You know where."
"Why?"
"Because I'm a friend and I want a drink." Griffin paused. "You can use a friend like me."
Jamerson knew he wouldn't get anything more out of Griffin. Not in this Meet-Me-Space session.
"Three this afternoon," Griffin said.
#
Jamerson expected to find a bicycle rickshaw outside New Union Station, but none stood at the side of the building where they usually awaited passengers. On strike in sympathy with the taxi drivers, he surmised, but didn't linger when he attracted the attention of two police dressed for riot control. Quickly, he left the sidewalk, ducked back into the station and took the underground passage to the Interchange, where several of the city's tram lines converged.
A small crowd jammed the above-ground platform, but everyone stood behind the blue line marking the dangerous edge. Two car trams rolled in from the left, numbers flashing in their windows to indicate which of the seven lines they'd travel to the city's outskirts. The light rail tracks, arranged like spokes of a wheel, radiated outwards, linking up with other tram lines which intersected the spokes like the rings of a spider's web. At the city wall, to which Jamerson headed, the trams met the 100 foot high monorail that ran along the perimeter of the city wall, which consisted of chain link fences, brick and cinderblock structures, and wide steel barriers pillars set so close together that only rats and feral cats and other small animals squeezed through.
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