by Jason Hutt
***
Hannah jogged down the corridor of Evergreen Station weaving through some worried looking parents.
“Sorry,” she yelled as she narrowly avoided knocking a little girl over.
“Watch it!” The mother yelled.
“I know. Sorry!” Hannah yelled back without stopping. Max had given her thirty minutes to do anything she needed before they left again; she didn’t have time to stop and apologize.
As she ran through the living areas, she saw families settling in. In one room she passed, a middle-aged man taught a group of kids in a makeshift classroom. In another, a group of kids were using some holoprojectors to watch an old movie. Hannah deftly weaved through a spirited game of freeze tag. She smiled; people were adapting, living. She finally arrived in the former hotel concierge’s office with gasping breaths.
Victor started a bit as she burst into the office.
“Sorry, Victor,” she said.
“You’re going to give me a heart attack, Hannah. What are you doing here? I thought Max was setting out immediately.”
“He is. We are. I need something from you first.”
Victor sat heavily into the cushy, faux leather chair behind the transparent slab that was his desk.
“What do you need?”
Hannah hesitated.
“Time’s a wastin’,” Victor said with a poorly imitated twang.
“Ten years ago, when the Republic raided Dust,” Hannah said, “There were hundreds of people who didn’t evacuate, including dozens of kids like me. Illegal clones.”
“Don’t ask me this, Hannah.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
They stared at each other in silence, but Hannah wasn’t about to give in. Victor leaned forward and started rubbing his temples. “Many of the kids, the ones too young to really know what was going on, were placed in foster families and re-integrated into Republic society.”
“What about the older kids?”
“They were sent to some sort of re-education camp, spent most of their time as wards of the state until they were old enough to strike out on their own.”
“Surely you tried to keep up with some of them.”
“Hannah, don’t do this to yourself.”
“Victor, I need to find them. Please, give me whatever information you have. Names, contact numbers, anything.”
Victor just sat there, staring at her. Any good humor in his expression had drained away, instead he looked every bit the pale, withered old man.
“Victor, please. Put aside your loyalty to Max for just one minute…”
“This isn’t about Max. Put aside your hatred of him for one damn minute and recognize that not all decisions are driven by the relationship between you two.”
“There is no relationship between us,” Hannah said.
Victor rolled his eyes.
“Then what is it, Victor?”
He shook his head and sighed. “I’m worried that you’re not going to find what you’re looking for, Hannah. I know what you want and I know why you want them. Max told me.” He hesitated, daring her to make a remark.
Hannah stayed silent and just folded her arms across her chest.
“You’re going to go out there, you’re going to try and get ahold of some of these people, and all you’re going to find is bitter disappointment. They won’t fight your war for you.”
Hannah’s teeth pressed firmly together.
“Let them make that decision,” she said.
“You may think this is in your best interests, but it’s not. There’s only trouble through this wormhole.”
“Then I’ll just have to look for them through other channels,” she said. Hannah turned to leave.
“What are you going to do? Just pop into a library and search? That’ll just help the Republic find you quicker,” Victor said.
Hannah whirled back around and slammed her hands on the desk.
“Then give me the information!”
Victor stared at her for another moment.
Hannah didn’t back away.
“You’re as stubborn as your father,” Victor said with a shake of his head. He started going through files on his wrist computer. “I’ll send you everything I’ve got. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Hannah let out a long slow breath; she could feel the heat leaving her cheeks. “Thank you, Victor.”
“Be careful, Hannah. These people, even the ones you called friends, will be different than what you remembered. Ten years is a long time.”
“I will be. I promise.”
Hannah turned to leave.
“He cares about you, you know,” Victor called out.
“I know,” Hannah said, not turning back, “But it doesn’t change the past.”
“Nothing can,” Victor said, “But you still have to accept it. You have to move on.”
Hannah kept walking.
***
Maria yawned as her aircar approached the Capitol. She took a long, slow sip of coffee as the vehicle sped over the crowds of people who had gathered to see if any paying work was available that day. A small trickle of people boarded transports, headed towards whatever odd job they could find. The aircar passed through the city’s environmental field and the crowd of desperate people disappeared from view. Maria slowly rolled her neck, trying to clear the cobwebs as she adjusted back to Earth time.
The aircar settled onto the Senate landing platform and Maria stepped out as winds whipped around her. She pulled her jacket close and trotted toward the door, fall seemed to be coming early. A shiver ran down her spine as she entered the still air of the security threshold. She stepped onto the white-painted feet on the floor and stood still. After two seconds, she heard a pleasant chime.
Moments later, Maria settled into her desk chair and called up the day’s schedule. She would have to leave early to finish packing for the trip to Demeter. Her desk chimed, a call was coming in. The caller information wasn’t displayed.
“Find out who it is,” Maria said. She heard a chime in acknowledgement.
A moment later, her assistant responded, “His name is Roger Shaw.”
Maria furrowed her brow. “I don’t know him. What’s it about?”
“He is the father of Eleanor Shaw.”
“Well then, by all means, patch him through, and let the Senator Effren and the others know I’ll be a bit late.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The space beyond the other side of Maria’s desk shimmered and then resolved into the projection of a disheveled man slumped into a stained and tattered lounge chair. Roger Shaw sat there, picking at a spot on his hairline, as he stared at some unseen point on the other end of the projection. A flashing indicator on Maria’s desk showed that the call was real-time; this was not a recording. Roger was fairly close by.
“Hello, Mr. Shaw,” Maria said, “I must say this is quite a surprise.”
Shaw picked his head up at the sound of her voice. He stared, mouth agape. “Senator...hello, madam Senator.” His words were slurred and his head bobbed as he forced out each word. “I didn’t think I’d actually get you.”
“Well, you certainly have my attention. Why did you call?”
“You need to let my daughter go,” he said, looking at her with tear-filled eyes, “Please, you need to let her go.”
“I can’t do that, Mister Shaw. Even if I wanted to, and I don’t, that’s not within my purview. Let me be clear about it though, I have no reason to want to see her let go.”
“She’s just a little girl. Please, I can’t…lose her. You of all people should understand. You’ve been through this.”
Maria nodded. “I have. I lost my son because of the choices he made and because of the people he chose to associate with, so I do fully appreciate what you are going through and why I am willing to even entertain this conversation. You’ve got a hard road ahead, Mr. Shaw, and you have nothing
but my sympathy.”
“Please…I’ve already lost my wife, her mother.”
“We all lose people, Mr. Shaw. We don’t all contribute to a child trafficking operation over ten years. That’s hardly something that can be overlooked.”
“She wasn’t hurting anyone…”
“This is not a victimless crime. She enabled the wanton abuse of the Family Planning Act. Every mouth that she helped feed was a drain on the resources of society as a whole. How many people have suffered because of the actions of your daughter? How many legitimate children have gone without food or shelter? How many other children died because of her actions?”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“I disagree, Mr. Shaw. Vehemently.”
Silence. Maria watched as tears fell down the man’s face. He wiped them away with the back of one of his hands.
“Is this really why you called me here?”
He nodded without looking up at her.
“Then I guess we’re done here.” Maria started to stand up.
“This is bullshit,” Roger said, “I will find you. I will hunt you down and take from you what you’re taking from my daughter. Do you hear me? I will kill you!”
Roger stood and launched the empty bottle he held in her direction. As it reached the edge of the desk the bottle disappeared. Maria could hear it chatter against a wall.
“Death threats against a senator when your daughter has been caught in a child-trafficking operation are hardly the most intelligent course of action, Mr. Shaw. It was already a bit of a stretch of the imagination to believe that you didn’t know what she was doing.”
Shaw stood opposite her, his chest heaving. From Shaw’s end of the projection, Maria heard a knock.
“I believe that is probably Sector Security. They would like to have a word with you.”
Shaw screamed in her face, a feral, frustrated roar that was cut off with a strangled grunt as a sector security agent slammed into his midsection and tackled him to the floor. Maria killed the connection.
Less than half an hour later, Maria sat down heavily in the chair at the end of the table in a sparsely furnished conference room in the basement of the Capitol building, the official conference room of the Outer Colonies Caucus.
Samir Effren didn’t give her any time to catch her breath. “About time you showed up. I hope you enjoyed your little jaunt across the Solar System. If you’re done sight-seeing, perhaps now we can get back to the business of figuring out how to keep our colonies viable.”
“Samir, you’re such an asshole,” the Senator from Valhalla said, seated opposite Effren at the table.
Effren waved him off. “I’m too old to pussy-foot around the issue.”
“Maria,” Yesu Temujin interrupted. The older woman was looking at Maria with a familiar look of uncomfortable pity, it was a look that drove Maria to avoid her older colleague as much as possible. “Were you able to get anywhere with Graham?”
“No,” Maria conceded, “I have a meeting this afternoon to press him.”
Effren shook his head. “This is a waste of time. We all know you went to Ceres to have a look at that girl. We’re not idiots. Graham’s playing you. He’s got you on the end of a string and he’s holding what you want just out of reach. Probably having a good old laugh as he watches you dance.”
“Enough, Samir,” Yesu said.
“Look, I’m leaving for Demeter tomorrow,” Maria said, “But I won’t be leaving without some promise of aid. We’ll draft up the package and push it through in a vote tomorrow morning. If Hunter wants our support in getting the FPA revisions to the floor, he’ll have to go along with this.”
“I believe it when I see it,” Effren said.
“Just shut up, already,” Marcel Reese bellowed. He was a heavy-set, dark-skinned young man whose voice was two octaves too high. He was no friend of Maria’s or anyone else’s for that matter.
Maria met Effren’s skeptical gaze and the two of them stared at each other in silence. Someone coughed as the silence drew on. Senator Garrido, a frail looking old woman who should have had ‘insert bribe here’ embroidered over her inside jacket packet, leaned toward Effren and whispered something to him. Effren smiled and whispered something back.
“If you’re done with your little side meeting, Samir,” Maria said, “I think we should draft this relief bill. Or would you and your cohorts like to leave this room and go draft your own? I’m sure you won’t have any trouble rounding up support.”
His smile faded. Maria sat with her head resting on her folded hands. She let the moment of silence pass. Many of the other Senators around the table started fidgeting.
“Like it or not,” Maria said, “We need each other. So let’s get back to business, shall we?”
A minor headache and a few pain relievers later and Maria was smiling politely at Senator Graham’s robotic aide as she entered his office. She felt like she was moving at about half speed.
“Grab a drink,” Graham called out, “You look like you could use it.”
“No,” Maria said, “I’ll take some coffee though.”
“Right away, ma’am,” Hunter’s assistant replied.
Hunter sat at his desk, looking through his files. His brow furrowed as he concentrated on whatever it was he was looking at. A half empty glass of scotch sat next to his right hand. The aide handed Maria a fresh cup of coffee that immediately warmed Maria’s hands. She breathed in deep, and the rich aroma from her cup triggered something in her mind. Hunter looked up at her and smiled.
“Long day on the farm?” Hunter asked.
She smiled as she sat in the chair opposite him. “It’s been an interesting day.”
“I learned long ago that interesting is just a code word for crap heaped on top of crap that’s been left to bake in the hot sun and then shoveled all over the living room floor. Interesting.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“I heard you got a call from Shaw’s father.”
“I did. He was begging for the release of his daughter.”
“See that. Pretty soon the whole lot of them will be begging for mercy. We’ve got ‘em by the short hairs, Maria. Tomorrow, I want to get the FPA revisions out of committee. Vote to bring it to the floor. Time to kill this hog.”
Maria took a sip of her coffee then she looked Hunter in the eye. “I can’t do that, Hunter. If you want my vote, we need to get an emergency relief package through first.”
Hunter just stared at her, snifter in one hand, glass in the other. “Oh, come on now, Maria. We don’t have time for this kind of distraction. We have to strike while the iron is hot.”
“I know, which is why you should get this relief bill through quickly. If you endorse it, we’ll have enough votes to pass.”
“Maria, this isn’t something we can just rush through.”
“We’ve done it a dozen times or more in the last year.”
“And every time the number of supporting votes drops by a couple.”
“Look,” Maria said, “No more stonewalling. Do this and I’ll vote to move the FPA out of committee. I leave for Demeter tomorrow afternoon. If we don’t get this relief bill through in the morning, I leave and you don’t get your vote.”
“God damn it, Maria,” Graham said. He filled the glass and took a sip. He winced after the drink and rubbed his forehead.
“Headache?”
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. Hunter shook his head. “We’ve known each other for a long time; been working with each other for the last five years. You’re in a great position now, but don’t overplay your hand.”
Maria smirked and looked out Hunter’s office window into the brightly lit night. She could see no stars, only the lights from the array of buildings that surrounded the Capitol and the faint golden shimmer of the environmental field that filtered out all of the cities’ emissions.
“Maria, I’m running for president next year. When I do that, you’ll become cha
ir of the Health and Human Services Committee. You’ll have the opportunity to put in place all the controls for the outer colonies that you want, within reason of course.”
“Of course,” Maria said.
“Look, this act is going to put me over the top,” Graham said, leaning forward, “I can secure the financial support of every major donor on Earth, Mars, Eden, Prime, and a dozen other worlds if we get this pushed through. I need your support on this.”
“Not without something from you. I thought we had a deal on this?”
Hunter sighed. “There’s a movement afoot to put a moratorium on relief packages for a year. People don’t want to throw good money after bad. They’re tired of throwing it into a pit where it will never return from.”
“This is bullshit, Hunter. This is not what we agreed to. You expect me to support you and go crawling back to Demeter empty-handed.”
“Of course not,” he said. He winced again and brought his hand to his forehead.
“Are you okay, Hunter?”
He reached into the drawer next to him and pulled out a small patch which he stuck to his forearm.
“Sorry,” he said, “These headaches are getting harder to control.”
She raised her eyebrows in question.
He sighed. “I have a tumor. The doctors found it a month ago.”
“Why haven’t you had it removed? I’m sure they could have it out within the week.”
Graham shook his head. “I’d just be at risk to get another one. I’m going to keep getting them for as long as I have this brain.”
She looked at him wide-eyed. “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”
Graham nodded. “They’re already growing the replacement. It’ll be ready in two weeks.”
“Wow. I…I don’t know what to say.”
“I go under the knife as soon as we get this into law. I need to get this done now, Maria.”
“How do you think people will react? To the surgery, I mean.”
“I’ve been promised complete discretion. Polling shows that some groups view it very negatively, especially religious groups. The Conglomerate’s promised me that nobody will ever know. I’ll be out for about three weeks and I’ve already got over a dozen interviews recorded on the passage of the FPA that’ll make it look like I never took any time off.”