by Ian Whates
Casimir suggested items from the menu, and the elderly waitron, whose stolid, disapproving old face suggested he had seen many like Casimir come and go over the long years, suggested others. Sula followed one of Casimir’s suggestions, and found her ostrich steak tender and full of savour, and the krek-tubers, mashed with bits of truffle, slightly oily but full of complex flavours that lingered long on her palate.
Casimir and Julien ordered elaborate drinks, a variety of starters, and a broad selection of desserts, and competed with each other for throwing money away. Half of what they ordered was never eaten or drunk. Julien was exuberant and brash, and Casimir displayed sparks of sardonic wit. Veronika popped her wide eyes open like a perpetually astonished child and giggled a great deal.
From the restaurant they motored to a club, a place atop a tall building in Grandview, the neighbourhood where Sula had once lived until she had to blow up her apartment with a group of Naxid police inside. The broad granite dome of the Great Refuge, the highest point of the High City, brooded down on them through the tall glass walls above the bar. Casimir and Julien flung more money away on drinks and tips to waitrons, bartenders and musicians. If the Naxid occupation was hurting their business, it wasn’t showing.
Sula knew she was supposed to be impressed by this. But even years ago, when she was Lamey’s girl, she hadn’t been impressed by the money that he and his crowd threw away. She knew too well where the money came from.
She was more impressed by Casimir once he took her onto the dance floor. His long-fingered hands embraced her gently, but behind the gentleness she sensed the solidity of muscle and bone and mass, the calculation of his mind. His attention in the dance was entirely on her, his sombre dark eyes intense as they gazed into her face while his body reacted to her weight and motion.
This one thinks! she thought in surprise.
That might make things easy or make them hard. At any rate it made the calculation more difficult.
“Where are you from?” he asked her after they’d sat down. “How come I haven’t seen you before?” Julien and Veronika were still on the dance floor, Veronika swirling with expert grace around Julien’s clumsy enthusiasm.
“I lived on the ring,” Sula said. “Before they blew it up.”
“What did you do there?”
She looked at him and felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. “I was a maths teacher,” she said, a story that might account for some of her odd store of knowledge.
His eyes widened. “Give me a math problem and try me,” Sula urged, but he didn’t reply. She began to develop the feeling her phony occupation might have shocked him.
“When I was in school,” he said, “I didn’t have math teachers like you.”
“You didn’t think teachers went to clubs?” Sula said.
A slow thought crossed his face. He leaned closer, and his eyes narrowed. “What I don’t understand,” he said, “is why, when you’re from the ring, you talk like you’ve spent your life in Riverside.”
Sula’s nerves sang a warning. She laughed. “Did I say I’ve spent my whole life on the ring?” she asked. “I don’t think so.”
“I could check your documents—” his eyes hardened, “—but of course you sell false documents, so that wouldn’t help.”
The tension between them was like a coiled serpent ready to strike. She raised an eyebrow. “You still think I’m a provocateur?” she asked. “I haven’t asked you to do a single illegal thing all night.”
One index finger tapped a slow rhythm on the matt surface of the table before them. “I think you’re dangerous,” he said.
Sula looked at him and held his gaze. “You’re right,” she said.
Casimir gave a huff of breath and drew back. Cushions of aesa leather received him. “Why don’t you drink?” he asked.
“I grew up around drunks,” she said. “I don’t want to be like that, not ever.”
Which was true, and perhaps Casimir sensed it, because he nodded. “And you lived in Riverside.”
“I lived in Zanshaa City till my parents were executed.”
His glance was sharp. “For what?”
She shrugged. “For lots of things, I guess. I was little, and I didn’t ask.”
He cast an uneasy look at the dancers. “My father was executed, too. Strangled.”
Sula nodded. “I thought you knew what I meant when I talked about derivoo.”
“I knew.” Eyes still scanning the dance floor. “But I still think derivoo’s depressing.”
She found a grin spreading across her face. “We should dance now.”
“Yes.” His grin answered hers. “We should.”
They danced till they were both breathless, and then Casimir moved the party to another club, in the Hotel of Many Blessings, where there was more dancing, more drinking, more money spread around. After which Casimir said they should take a breather, and he took them into an elevator lined with what looked like mother of pearl, and bade it rise to the penthouse.
The door opened to Casimir’s thumbprint. The room was swathed in shiny draperies, and the furniture was low and comfortable. A table was laid with a cold supper, meats and cheeses and flat wroncho bread, pickles, chutneys, elaborate tarts and cakes, and bottles lying in a tray of shaved ice. It had obviously been intended all along that the evening end here.
Sula put together an open-faced sandwich – nice Vigo plates, she noticed, a clean modern design – then began to rehearse her exit. Surely it was not coincidental that a pair of bedrooms were very handy.
I’ve got to work in the morning. It certainly sounded more plausible than: I’ve got to go organize a counter-rebellion.
Casimir put his walking stick in a rack that had probably been made for it specially and reached for a pair of small packages, each with glossy wrapping and a brilliant scarlet ribbon. He presented one each to Sula and Veronika.
“With thanks for a wonderful evening.”
The gift proved to be perfume, a crystal bottle containing Sengra, made with the musk of the rare and reclusive atauba tree-crawlers of Paycahp. The small vial in her hand might have set Casimir back twenty zeniths or more – probably more, since Sengra was exactly the sort of thing that wouldn’t be coming down from orbit for years, not with the ring gone.
Veronika opened her package and popped her eyes wide – that expression was going to look silly on her when she was fifty – and gave a squeal of delight. Sula opted for a more moderate response and kissed Casimir’s cheek.
There was the sting of stubble against her lips. He looked at her with calculation. There was a very male scent to him.
Sula was about to bring up the work she had to do in the morning when there was a chime from Casimir’s sleeve display. He gave a scowl of annoyance and answered.
“Casimir,” came a strange voice. “We’ve got a situation.”
“Wait,” Casimir said. He left the room and closed the door behind him. Sula munched a pickle while the others waited in silence.
Casimir returned with the scowl still firm on his face. He was without a trace of apology as he looked at Sula and Veronika and said, “Sorry, but the evening’s over. Something’s come up.”
Veronika pouted and reached for her jacket. Casimir reached for Sula’s arm to draw her to the door. She looked at him. “What’s just happened?”
Casimir gave her an impatient, insolent look – it was none of her business, after all – then thought better of it and shrugged. “Not what’s happened, but what’s going to happen in a few hours. The Naxids are declaring food rationing.”
“They’re what?” Sula’s first reaction was outrage. Casimir opened the door for her, and she hesitated there, thinking. Casimir quivered with impatience. “Congratulations,” she said finally. “The Naxids have just made you very rich.”
“I’ll call you,” he said.
“I’ll be rich, too,” Sula said. “Ration cards will cost you a hundred apiece.”
“A hundred?” For
a moment it was Casimir’s turn to be outraged.
“Think about it,” Sula said. “Think how much they’ll be worth to you.”
They held each other’s eyes for a moment, and then both broke into laughter. “We’ll talk price later,” Casimir said, and he hustled her into the vestibule along with Veronika, who showed Sula a five-zenith coin.
“Julien gave it to me for the cab,” she said triumphantly. “And we get to keep the change!”
“You’d better hope the cab has change for a fiver,” Sula said, and Veronika thought for a moment.
“We’ll get change in the lobby.”
A Daimong night clerk gave them change, and Veronika’s nose wrinkled at the clerk’s smell. On the way to her apartment Sula learned that Veronika was a former model and now an occasional club hostess.
“I’m an unemployed maths teacher,” Sula said.
Veronika’s eyes went wide. “Wow,” she said.
After letting Veronika off, Sula had the Torminel driver take her within two streets of the Riverside apartment, after which she walked the distance to the building by the light of the stars. Overhead the broken arcs of the ring were a line of black against the faintly glowing sky. Outside the apartment she gazed up for a long moment until she discerned the pale gleam of the white ceramic pot in the front window. It was in the position that meant “someone is in the apartment and it is safe”.
The lock on the building’s front door, the one that read her fingerprint, worked only erratically, but this time she caught it by surprise and the door opened. She went up the stair, then used her key on the apartment lock.
Macnamara was asleep on the couch, with a pair of pistols on the table in front of him, along with a grenade.
“Hi, Dad,” Sula said as he blinked awake. “Junior brought me home safe, just like he said he would.”
Macnamara looked embarrassed. Sula gave him a grin.
“What were you planning on doing with a grenade?” she asked.
Macnamara didn’t reply. Sula took off her jacket and called up the computer that resided in the desk. “I’ve got work to do,” Sula said. “You’d better get some sleep, because I’ve got a job for you first thing in the morning.”
“What’s that?” He rose from the couch, scratching his sleep-tousled hair.
“The market opens at 7.27, right?”
“Yes.”
Sula sat herself at the desk. “I need you to buy as much food as you can carry. Canned, dried, bottled, freeze-dried. Get the biggest sack of flour they have, and another sack of beans. Condensed milk would be good. Get Spence to help you carry it all.”
“What’s going on?” Macnamara was bewildered.
“Food rationing.”
“What?” Sula could hear the outrage in Macnamara’s voice as she called up a text program.
“Two reasons for it I can think of,” Sula said. “First, issuing everyone with a ration card will be a way of reprocessing every ID on the planet … help them weed out troublemakers and saboteurs. Second …” She held up one hand and made the universal gesture of tossing a coin in her palm. “Artificial scarcities are going to make some Naxids very, very rich.”
“Damn them,” Macnamara breathed.
“We’ll do very well,” Sula pointed out. “We’ll quadruple our prices on everything on the ration – you don’t suppose they’d be good enough to ration tobacco, do you? – and we’ll make a fortune.”
“Damn them,” Macnamara said again.
Sula gave him a pointed look. “Goodnight,” she said. “Dad.”
He flushed and shambled to bed. Sula turned to her work.
“What if they ration alcohol?” she said aloud as the thought struck her. There would be stills in half the bathrooms in Zanshaa, processing potatoes, taswa peels, apple cores, whatever they could find.
She accessed the Records Office computer – her back door was the legacy of an earlier job processing refugees from the ring, before she’d volunteered to get herself killed leading partisan forces – and checked the protocols for acquiring ration cards. Given her level of access, they should be easy enough to subvert.
And then she had another thought. Thus far her group had been selling her own property out of the back of a truck, a business that was irregular but legal. But once the ration came into effect, selling cocoa and coffee off the ration would be against the law. The team wouldn’t just be participating in informal economic activity; they’d be committing a crime.
People who committed crimes needed protection. Casimir was going to be more necessary than ever.
“Damn it,” she said.
Macnamara failed to procure a large stash of food. Police were already in force at the market, and foodsellers had been told not to sell large quantities. Macnamara wisely decided to avoid attracting attention and bought only quantities that might be considered reasonable for a family of three.
The announcement of rationing had been made while Sula slept and the food marts were packed. Tobacco had not been included, but Sula couldn’t hope for everything. Citizens were given twenty days to report to their local police station in order to apply for a ration card. The reason given by the government for the imposition of rationing was the destruction of the ring and the decline in food imports.
The news also announced that certain well-established Naxid clans, out of pure civic spirit, had agreed to spare the government the expense of public resources, and would instead use their own means to manage the planet’s food supplies. The Jagirin clan, whose head had been temporary interior minister during the changeover from the old government to the new, the Ummir clan, whose head happened to be the Minister of Police, the Ushgays, the Kulukrafs … people who, even if some of them hadn’t been with the rebellion from the beginning, clearly found it in their interest to support it now.
The Naxids, Sula thought, had just created a whole new class of target.
Naxids were placed in every police station to monitor the process of acquiring ration cards. The Naxids wore the black uniform of the Legion of Diligence, the organization that investigated crimes against the Praxis. All members of the Legion had been evacuated from Zanshaa before the arrival of the Naxid fleet, so apparently the new government had re-formed the Legion, probably with personnel from the Naxid police.
Another class of target, Sula thought.
* * *
A shimmering layer of afternoon heat stretched across the pavement like a layer of molasses, thick enough to distort the colourful canopies and displays of the Textile Market that set up in Sula’s street every five days. Early in the morning vendors motored up with their trailers or their three-wheelers with the sheds built onto the back, and at dawn hours the sheds opened, canopies went up, and the merchandise went on sale. After sunset, as the heat began to dissipate and the purple shadows crept between the stalls, the vendors would break down their displays and motor away, to set up the next day in another part of the city.
As Sula passed, vendors called her attention to cheap women’s clothing, baby clothes, shoes, stockings, scarves and inexpensive toys for children. There were bolts of fabric, foils of music and entertainment, sun lotion and sun hats, and items – unseasonable in the heat – alleged to be knitted from the fleece of Yormak cattle, and sold at a surprisingly low price.
Despite the heat the market was thronged. Tired and hot, Sula elbowed her way impatiently through the crowd to her doorstep. She entered the building, then heard the chime of a hand comm through her apartment door and made haste to enter. She snatched up the comm from the table and answered, panting.
Casimir surveyed her from the display. She could watch his eyes travel insolently over her image as far as the frame would permit.
“Too bad,” he said. “I was hoping to catch you in the bath again.”
“Better luck next time.” Sula switched on the room coolers and somewhere in the building a tired compressor wheezed, and faint currents of air began to stir. She dropped into a chair and, holdin
g the comm in one hand, began to loosen her boots with the other.
“I want to see you tonight,” Casimir said. “I’ll pick you up at 21.01, all right?”
“Why don’t I meet you at the club?”
“Nothing happens at the club that early.” He frowned. “Don’t you want me to know where you live?”
“I don’t have a place of my own,” Sula lied cheerfully. “I sort of bounce between friends.”
“Well.” Grudgingly. “I’ll see you at the club, then.”
She had time to bathe, get a bite to eat and work for a while on the accounts of her delivery company. Then she checked the Records Office computer for Casimir’s friend Julien, and discovered that he was the son of Sergius Bakshi.
Sergius was someone she’d heard of as the head of the Riverside Clique. She hadn’t realized that he’d cheated the executioner long enough to have a grown son.
Sula left the apartment, negotiated the crowds at the Textile Market, then ducked down a sunblasted side street, trying to keep on the shady side. The heat still took her breath away. She made another turn, then entered the delightfully cool air of a block-shaped storage building built in the shadow of the even larger Riverside Crematorium. She showed her false ID to the Cree at the desk, then took the elevator upstairs and opened one of Team 491’s storage caches. There she opened one of the cases, withdrew a small item and pocketed it.
Casimir waited by his car in front of the Cat Street Club with an impatient scowl on his face and his walking stick in his hand. He wore a soft white shirt covered with minutely stitched braid. As she appeared, he stabbed the door button and the glossy apricotcoloured door rolled up into the car roof. “I hate being kept waiting,” he growled in his deep voice, and took her arm roughly to stuff her into the passenger compartment.
This too, Sula remembered, was what it was like to be a clique member’s girlfriend.
She settled herself on apricot-coloured plush across from Julien and Veronika, the latter in fluttery garb and a cloud of Sengra. Casimir thudded into the seat next to her and rolled down the door.