"They're going to raid the place. Looking for illies." Griffin spat out the derogatory term, "illies," which he often used in reference to residents without residency permits.
"How do you know this?"
Griffin looked around the room, as though seeking confirmation that he wouldn't be overheard. For a moment, his stance and the looks he gave made Jamerson think it was all artificial, staged by Griffin to make himself more important. A cog in the machinery that ran the city government, he always appeared to want to be more, to be seen as more than just another office functionary.
"From friends," Griffin said. "Trapp's a friend. But you already realized that, didn't you?"
Jamerson froze, told himself not to nod, nor to shrug. Moments earlier, Griffin denied he knew Command Trapp very well. Then, for a fleeting moment, he pictured the two of them in an embrace, their tall and massive frames locked in some kind of love-fight of titans. He struggled to erase the image.
"Anything else I should know?" Jamerson said.
"Stick with me," Griffin said. "When I take over the department I'll need an assistant."
What about Bandinni? Jamerson wondered. Would he be sent to a retirement home? Or merely dismissed from service and turned into an "illie?"
"You'll have a friend in high places," Griffin said, and exited the office-cum-storage room, his long legs covering the distance to the open doorway in a matter of a few strides.
#
There hadn't been a massive layoff in more than two years, when five thousand-some city employees were dismissed in the same week. Many were immediately exiled, which Jamerson thought violated the Workers' Rights Contract, an ordinance enacted when the walls were first built and residency became a factor in employment. People could work and live anywhere, but they needed a permit to move in and out of the city with ease. And anyone above the age of twenty who didn't have a job or didn't have student-status or a visitor's visa could be escorted Outside, beyond the walls and fences.
Jamerson didn't know why new scenarios were needed to analyze the effect of a large layoff, especially since the focus would be on the private sector. How many prospective employees of small businesses, especially those employing people instead of service-bots, would be impacted by closing any of the city's factories, mills, assembly plants and other light industry that dominated Chicago-proper's far west side?
"You're still working!"
Jamerson offered Katie a smile in response to her complaint. Wednesday night and his official work day had come to an end hours earlier. Still, he couldn't shake off the idea that he had more to do, a reason to stay at his in-home computer, stay linked to his office. He had yet to assemble any of the scenarios he should run since given the assignment the day before. It came on the heels of the previous project's abrupt end, and Jamerson thought he'd been handed the job as an afterthought, Bandinni's way of saying, "You usually do a good job, so get a handle on this one."
He read too much into everything, he told himself. He looked across the room at Katie standing in his living room, her robe open in the front, water from the shower dripping from her hair.
"Are we going?" she asked.
"I don't know," he answered, deliberately drawing out the sound of each word, taking his time to reply so he could think. Last week, Griffin had warned him about police raids in the Grand Bazaar, an underground market frequented by people who lacked the credentials to be in the city.
"We'll get a hookie," Katie said, a tease in her voice. "Velvet and a smell-good."
Jamerson grinned, tempted by her promise of sex in a velvet lined booth rented for the purpose. Supposedly, the walls, the bed -- everything -- vibrated and the participants bounced on currents of air. Not the type of entertainment found in the Towers Complex. Not exactly illegal. Slightly illicit, though Jamerson couldn't identify why. The idea of curling up with Katie in a small enclosure that rocked and swayed and bathed them with sweet-smelling air seemed both surreal and vulgar.
"I want to try it," she said. "We can get a J-Vape, too."
"I hear," Jamerson said, feeling awkward about speaking of his concerns, "that -- "
"I know. You told me. They might raid the place. Hey! We've got jobs. We're good. There's no law against slum-bumming."
"And the J-Vape?" he said, referring to the cannabis-laced vapor pipe.
"Kinda legal, kinda not," Katie said with a smile. "It's the bazaar. No one cares."
Jamerson felt himself tugged along, an invisible tendril reaching from her hand to his body. She disappeared from the room, but returned, dressed in an ankle-length formless dress, a straw hat with a narrow brim on her head. He changed as well, donning bell-bottom jeans with patches -- curly flowers and crescent moons and red oblongs. His linen shirt, with cotton fringes hanging from the shoulders, draped the webbed belt encircling his middle.
In the building's lobby, they joined Katie's friends. Other young men and women milled around, a few at the curved bar fronting the fake view of a glistening lake, others standing over a holo-projector showing a repeating clip from a recent show depicting life in ancient Rome.
Outside, the same small bus, and same driver, waited. Laughing, trading grins and hugs and hand-squeezes, they poured into the vehicle. Katie dragged Jamerson by the hand to the back and pushed him into a seat. She flopped down beside him. As the bus pulled away, its electric engines purring, someone called for an old-Chicago scene on the tinted windows. Others took up the cry and soon a picture of Chicago with horse-and-buggies, women in hoop skirts and men with top hats came into view. Jamerson looked ahead to the windshield, where he watched twilight die and night take over.
The bus navigated onto the narrow roadway running atop the maglev tunnel. Katie avoided the train, avoided public transit unless absolutely necessary. She took taxis. She arranged for this hired bus. Jamerson wondered if she'd been this picky about travel when she grew up in a gray-brick section of the city. Maybe this was backlash against how she'd been raised and what she'd been forced to endure.
"We're overcrowded again," someone announced.
"You got ogres?" Katie asked.
Jamerson pulled two Mylar strips from his pants pocket. All he had left of the fifteen ogres he'd purchased from Oliver Brand's contact at The People's bar.
The bus swayed as it traveled the highway's automated lane, which required the driver to keep a finger or two on the steering wheel. The pleasant scene in the windows played out, but the world outside -- the real scenery -- contrasted so sharply with the fantasy of old Chicago that Jamerson felt irked. Disgusted. Ahead lay a razor-wire topped steel mesh fences, stone walls angled forward to prevent scaling, guard towers with search lights, sensors on tall poles and roaming robots and hovering drones.
The bus left the automatic lane. The driver hunched over the steering wheel. Now he drove. He maneuvered onto an access road that led into an enclosed area not far from where the maglev tunnel went under the city wall. The electrical engines whined. Jamerson felt the vehicle decelerate.
They stopped at an inspection station.
"How much we got?" someone asked, referring to the straw hat that had been passed around for a collection of ogres. The tint on the windows returned, the scene of olden times dissolving.
Police boarded the bus. Border patrol again, Jamerson thought. Brown pants and brown coats. But then someone in civilian clothes followed them aboard. Some other branch of security? He couldn't tell without seeing a uniform. A woman in light colored slacks and loosely fitted vest, a small round cap on her head, no hair on her scalp, accompanied the border cops.
"You're overcrowded," one of the police said.
"How much?" the driver asked.
"Not this time," the bald woman said. She counted, her extended finger wagging at seat after seat. "You got fifteen. You're allowed ten."
Jamerson looked around. Fifteen represented two more than last time. Who were the new friends? Besides himself.
"Five off and you can go," one of the
uniformed police said.
"No bribes tonight," the woman said. "We're doing a clean-up." She laughed. A bark of a laugh. A snide look to her narrow face, her close-together eyes beaming, as though she liked inconveniencing people.
"We'll go." Katie jumped to her feet and pulled Jamerson to his. They left the bus and hurried into the reception area, where other travelers stood or sat, a few of them at a concession stand. Outside, on the city-side, pedicabs and three-wheeled taxis waited for passengers.
"Must be getting paid by transit tonight," someone remarked.
Jamerson looked around at the three other people who'd joined himself and Katie. He knew one of them, a neuter named Dillon who liked to be referred to as "it," not he or she. Tall and heavyset, Dillon dressed in non-descript clothes that bore no sexual identity. Jamerson never saw him -- it -- show any sign of affection to anyone of either sex.
The other two, a young couple that clung to one another, looked like high school students. Officially, someone had to have signed a chaperone contract with their parents. Jamerson guessed Katie taken on the chore. He suspected it made her feel more adult, more like a responsible party.
The young pair sat on a hard bench, its gray metal seat with several rows of small holes, its back curved, ending with curled scroll meant to be decorative. Katie stood near them, whispering, as though to reassure the girl that everything was okay, that this kind of thing was normal.
"Transit," Dillon remarked, repeating a remark Jamerson had heard seconds earlier. Now he attributed the sentiment to someone. Perhaps it was right. Transit companies needed passengers and if the police let overcrowded private cars and buses pass with a token fine or bribe, then what happened to the waiting pedicabs and taxis?
He guessed they didn't always wait at checkpoints. Not many people voluntarily got out of their vehicles to register for a city cab.
A bored border cop, her hair tied in a bun at the back of her head, scanned for iris prints, matched them to their All-Pods, and gave them an electronic seal on the backs of their hands that served as a pass to be in the city in case a police squad stopped them in a random search. Their clothes marked them as visitors, Jamerson surmised. City people never dressed for slum-bumming. Those living in the depressed parts of Chicago-proper looked the part. They didn't need to pretend to anything.
Jamerson followed Katie, Dillon, and the two youngsters out of the waiting area, out to a cement walkway leading from the checkpoint. Private cars and hired taxis crowded the two open lanes across a barrier. The traffic wound its way into an enclosed area where border police registered people leaving the walled city.
Katie waved everyone in the direction she wanted to go. They bypassed waiting pedicabs and the small taxi-trikes, as the three-wheelers were called. They climbed a short staircase to an upper level of the plaza, and then up another set of stairs to a platform for the tram that ran to the center of town.
"Use your All-Pod for all of us," Katie said. Jamerson felt obliged to comply. He registered passage for five, collecting the electronic tokens that he'd later deposit with the conductor.
"Where're we going?" he asked Katie.
"Center Plaza. There's a cafe near there. I've always wanted to see it."
"What about the bazaar?"
Dillon chimed in with, "Come on, Katie. You said we'd go to the bazaar. Let's do that."
"We're so close to that cafe," Katie whined. "We'll do that first. Then the bazaar. They've got robo-animals. Like you're eating in the jungle. It'll be fun."
"You don't want to eat, do you?" Jamerson said, suddenly catching on to Katie's intent.
"She grinned in response.
The tram slowed at the platform and Jamerson hopped aboard, taking a position in the middle where he could stand and hang onto an upright pole. A service-bot conductor rolled towards where the five huddled at the pole, each of them hanging on by one or two hands. Jamerson flashed his All-Pod at the bot, which squeaked in response and then rolled on to another passenger. So very efficient, Jamerson thought. No need to explain anything. No need to speak. Why did Katie and her friends dislike the bots so much?
The tram pulled into the above-ground station in the middle of Center Plaza. The tall office plaza where Jamerson worked two days a week showed scattered white lights that marked a window of an office where someone continued to labor at their job as the nighttime hours wore on. In the basements, he knew, where windows didn't exist, light was constant and hundreds of young clerks put in extended hours. Junior and sub-junior personnel labored for hours on end in a bid to land a permanent position. Jamerson had been one of them not more than six years earlier. For every ten graduates hired by the Municipal Authority, six remained employed after the first three months. Four remained after the first year. The rest found jobs in the private sector or went underground or accepted exile.
Katie led the way across the quiet plaza. Drones buzzed overhead. Police idled by a curb, near a steep inclined pedestrian walkway to the underground garage where private cars were kept. Katie strode ahead of everyone, making her friends follow.
Dillon trudged on, massive head lowered, thick arms pumping, thicker legs moving quickly to keep up while Katie skipped, her arms waving back and forth, up and down, like a child.
Holding hands, the two youngest of Katie's friends followed at a quick pace. Jamerson held back, let Katie's lead extend further, until she seemed to be so far ahead that she ambled alone, disconnected from everyone else.
A walkway surrounded a deep hollow in the ground, the walk's floor made of spongy material that felt good against the soles of Jamerson's pointy-toed boots. It put a spring to his step. Overhead, far above everyone's head, stretched an arched canopy of plastic white flowers and green plastic vines, amid colorful lights, some of which --- the white ones -- twinkled like fake stars.
Below Jamerson, small round chairs and delicate wire-frame chairs stood scattered about. Entrances to the below-ground area intersected the spongy walkway. Police milled around outside the rim of the hollow, a few of them at three-wheeler vehicles. Others on motorcycles. A variety of uniforms, Jamerson noticed. No border guards, but plenty of traffic cops in blue-striped dark trousers that reflected the light and gave them an eerie presence. Others wore jumpsuits. Red uniforms. Green. Private guards, he surmised. A few drones flew overhead, some dipping to within a few feet above his head.
An open-air market spread across the plaza, away from the restaurant that occupied the hole in the ground. The aroma of spiced beef, cider laced with sweeteners, roasting vegetables and other food stuffs rose from below like a cloud. Chatter, too, drifted from below, as did the squeaks and squeals of the robotic animals that moved through the restaurant, taking up space in the narrow aisles between the tables.
Exotic creatures based on wild beasts, some of them miniaturized like the elephants and rhinos carrying trays strapped to their backs, meandered about, as though in no particular hurry and with no particular destination. Jamerson guessed that to be a ruse, a deliberate deception. Each robotic animal -- the hyenas and the lions and tigers, the bears and the foxes -- moved to a defined destination, a table where the diners scooped the food off the trays onto their individual plates.
Katie and her friends huddled at an entrance to the restaurant, with Dillon leaning against the steel railing protecting people from accidentally tumbling down the sides. The two young members of her small coterie knelt by Katie. She seemed to be giving out directions. When Jamerson approached, she glanced at him, her round face beaming. Dark circles with white thunderbolts decorated her cheeks. A flush filled her neck. In the dull light, Jamerson looked down the front of her shapeless dress and saw red blotches as far as the rounded tops of her breasts.
"Coming?" she said.
Jamerson stepped closer. "This isn't a good idea."
"Here's the plan," she continued, as though Jamerson had nodded with enthusiasm. "We stream down the stairs, each one of us at a different staircase."
One o
f the youngsters spoke up. "Can we just stay together?"
"Okay." Katie looked to Dillon, who nodded approval.
"There're private cops all around," Jamerson warned. "And some city type security I don't recognize." His mind flashed on the men and women in short green jackets, shiny black boots and small caps with polished visors. He'd caught sight of them with his periphery vision when he hurried to catch up to Katie. At first, he thought they were private guards, but then he saw the long barrels of their pistols. He couldn't tell if the weapons were gunpowder types or mag-pulse types, but he knew, mall guards and private security didn't carry such weapons.
"We're suppose to be slum-bumming," Jamerson stressed. "Let's get over to the bazaar and -- " He reached for Katie.
She shook off his attempt to take hold of her hand.
"I never did this before," one of the youngsters said. It was the girl. Her voice shook.
"Excited?" Katie asked.
The girl nodded.
"Was this what you wanted to do all along?" Jamerson demanded. "Or do you always carry around those tattoos so the scanners can't get a clear picture?"
"It's an opportunity," Katie said. "You don't have to help. If you're scared, you can just stay there." She pointed at the entrance to a games arcade on the other side of the restaurant. Fast-tempo music drifted from that direction. Loud music, judging by the distance it had to travel and still be audible.
"I'm not scared," Jamerson said. A lie. He trembled inside. Too many cops. Of all kinds. Center Plaza always warranted this kind of security to guard against theft and fights and whatever mayhem people like Katie might have in mind. What she and her friends carried out was no more than a prank aimed at disrupting the smooth operations of restaurants and cafes and anywhere else where robots served in place of people. They never hurt anyone, except perhaps a bystander who got in the way.
Katie put on glasses to thwart the iris scanners. Dillon wore a pair, too. The youngsters pulled similar devices from their pockets.
"Turn off your All-Pods," Katie said. "So they can't pick up your signal."
Triptych Page 19