by Adam Rakunas
“Ly Huang,” I called over the wall of goons. “I know Saarien’s talking about a cane strike. You know that’s going to screw things up for a whole lot of people, right?”
I could hear Ly Huang clear her throat. “When anything happens to disturb profits, what do the capitalists do? They go on strike, don’t they? They withdraw their finances from that particular mill. They close it down because there are no profits to be made there. They don’t care what becomes of the working class. But the working class, on the other hand, has always been taught to take care of the capitalist’s interest in the property.”
I ground my teeth. “Ly Huang, you may have had a tough life on the kampong, but you do not get to quote Big Bill Haywood back at me. Not until you’ve gone through half the shit I did to make sure that people like you could get things like schools, money, and healthcare.”
She laughed. “Oh, right. I forgot. You and all the other big Union heroes got your heads caved in when you squared off against the Big Three. You did your marches, sang your songs, inked your faces to show everyone what you did to protect the workers of Occupied Space.”
“Just because you weren’t there doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” I said.
“None of that has made my life better. It hasn’t made my mom’s lungs any better. It hasn’t kept people from begging in the streets for scraps.”
“And if you start this strike, it’s going to get worse. Please trust me on this.”
“Why should I do that?”
“Because I’ve been through two strikes, and Saarien hasn’t. He stayed holed up in Sou’s Reach. Once you start a strike, things get ugly fast. The food’s going to run out, and then the rum’s going to run out, and then everyone will be at each other’s throats. There’s still time to talk and cool things down.”
I heard quick steps as Ly Huang walked back. She climbed onto the goons’ backs and looked down at me. “Actually, the word went out ten minutes ago. The bit about raising our fists? That was the signal. Strike Committees everywhere are seizing control and telling the people the truth. Your Union has failed again, and, when we’re done and get what we want, you’re going to wish you’d turned things over to us earlier.” She hopped off the goons and left.
A few moments later, Odd poked his head around the male goon’s biceps. “You sure you don’t want soup?”
I struggled against the goons, but they held their ground, which held me in place. “Odd, can you help me? Can you get your… friends to let me go?”
“Sorry, Padma, but I never studied Command Presence.” His eyes unfocused for a moment. “Hey, did you go to B-School? Didn’t you study it?”
“Yes, but I can’t really do it when I’m being crushed!”
“Oh. Yeah. That’s probably tough.” Odd sat down on the table and picked up a bowl of soup. He knocked his spoon around for a moment. “She is right, you know.”
I stopped wriggling. “What?”
Odd nodded to himself as he spooned soup and watched it fall back into the bowl. “You are an exploiter. Not that you’re a bad person! But you do use people. And you’re not really nice about it.”
I jumped at him, but the goons pushed back. My ass had now fallen asleep from getting shoved into the table’s edge.
Odd held out his hands. “Plus you’re really thin-skinned.”
I gave one more shove against the goons. “You really think that?”
“Yep.” Odd put the soup down and got up. “When I worked at the plant, I saw how you’d blow people off. They’d come to you for help, and you’d tell them you were busy but that you’d look into their problems. You never did. Everyone talked about it. People were glad when you took Bloombeck’s old Slot. Said you deserved it.”
The Fear chuckled. I kept my mouth shut.
“Now, I didn’t agree with that,” said Odd.
“You just said I was an exploiter.”
“Oh, I’m on board with that. But the part about working Bloombeck’s Slot? I respected you for that. Felt to me like you were doing penance. I’ve tried telling that to the others, but they just said it was high time you wallowed in shit like the rest of us.”
“Real short-term memories there.”
“I know, right?” Odd laughed. “And I’m the one with the neuron damage!”
I sighed. “For what it’s worth, Odd, they’re right. I did blow off people. I was so close to getting my payout, I lost track of my job. But that doesn’t excuse what’s about to happen.”
“I think it’s already happened, right?”
“Work with me, Odd. There is always time to get everyone talking. If the cane stops, so does the money. The money stops, it’s going to get bad fast.”
Odd pursed his lips. “Okay. I think you’re right. Let’s get you out of there.”
I struggled against the goons. “I still can’t get enough breath.”
He nodded. “That’s gonna be a problem. I was always impressed with the way you could change your voice when you were talking to goons. I remember that one time at Big Lily’s how you did the Command Presence thing on this one guy, and he had to stand on one foot for an hour. That was funny. Kinda cruel, but funny.”
The two goons stirred. Their eyes flicked toward each other. “Is that true?” rumbled Gwendolyn. Oh, shit, had they learned how to break their programming? Or were they just pissed off? They both pressed in closer. One of them poked me in the diaphragm.
I gasped and nodded.
Gwendolyn stepped back enough to allow my lungs to reinflate. I fell to my knees, gasping. She took a knee and put her face in front of mine. “You know, we can’t help how we are. All us goons. The Big Three modify our bodies when we go into Security Services. They change the cell structures of our muscles and bones, and we can’t shrink back. My bones are so dense I need to eat coral just for the calcium. Did you know that?”
My head spun. “I did not.”
“We need supplements that can’t be made here,” she said. “We have to scrounge to find what we need just to stay healthy, and the Temple provides that.”
The other goon, Kazys, crouched down next to his partner. “We’re not mindless, you know. I write monologues. About humanity’s relationship with nature. I was going to perform tonight at the Novice Theater Group, but I had to come here to work.”
“That was you?”
He perked up. “You heard of me?”
“I heard you’re good,” I gasped.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“My point,” said Gwendolyn, “is that we were supposed to be welcomed as members of the Union, but we’re not. We’re thought of as less than human, as these mindless machines that respond to people’s voices.” She touched my ink. “I’m sure the Big Three hurt you somehow. I can promise they hurt us, too. It would be nice if someone acknowledged that.”
I looked at these two people and thought of the times I’ve faced off with lines of WalWa goons. They wore armor that made them look like metal rhinos, all sliding plates and sharp points. They didn’t need weapons; one punch would be enough to break ribs and burst organs. Every time some former goon would come into Brushhead looking for work, I would always send them to the shipbreaking yards or the heavy industrial parts of town. I had no need for brute force in my plant.
I nodded. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I certainly did not think you or anyone like you were capable of getting hurt. That was wrong of me.”
Gwendolyn. “I accept your apology.”
“Now, may I please go and stop this strike?”
“No,” said Kazys. “We’ve got orders to keep you here for the next forty-eight hours. Also, if you try Command Presence on us, I’m going to put my hand over your mouth.” He held up his hand; it was big enough to cover my entire face.
“Okay,” I said. I sat on the floor. “Can I get some of that soup now?”
Odd poured me a bowl. I threw it in the air. Both goons looked up, their mouths wide open. That gav
e me enough time to roll to my right and vault for the door. I slammed into it, and the door swung into an alley full of angry, chanting people. Some of them gave me hard stares. I didn’t take time to explain. The goons fought each other to get out the door. I climbed up and over the crowd, apologizing as I stepped on shoulders and heads all the way out of the alley.
When I got to the intersection of Lutyen and Kamakiri, a blast of arena-concert sound hit me. The street was wall-to-wall bodies, all of them holding signs and chanting “OUR WORK, OUR PAY! OUR PAIN, OUR CANE!” I saw Freeborn, Union, old, young, the whole city, the whole planet moving like the tide up the street. I scanned feeds on the Public and saw the same scene everywhere. Human cordons stopped the cane trucks and the airships. Crowds flooded the lifter control room and the cargo depots. The planet had stopped working.
Strike.
EIGHT
It took me two hours to return to Brushhead. I had to go on foot. The streets were jammed so tight with people that bicycles couldn’t even get about. I tried to take alleys and side streets, but they were also packed. Every time I blinked up a map, it looked like a rash. Everyone was out of their houses, out of their jobs, out of their churches, and into the streets. They were also moving opposite of where I wanted to go, which meant a lot of pushing and shoving and yelling at people to just stop for a minute and let me through, dammit.
So, I wasn’t really in the mood for any more bullshit when I entered my flat and found, yet again, Letty Smythe sitting in my chair. Jennifer the bodyguard stood at Letty’s shoulder. Letty had helped herself to the Beaulieu’s Blend (not, I noted, the Old Windswept; she may have had no problems breaking and entering into my home, but at least she respected me enough to keep away from the good booze). “This,” she said, holding her glass aloft, “is indeed a remarkable fuck-up.”
“Don’t you have a job to do, or an office to do it in?”
Letty shook her head and knocked back the rum. She slammed the glass on the table and reached for the bottle. It took her a few tries to get a grip, and even more to get the rum into the glass. “I’ll clean the table,” she said as she reached for the glass. “Later. You know.”
I shook my head and sat down. “Letty, I know I’m not privy to what goes on in our Union’s upper echelons, but, outside, it looks to me like the entire city is marching.”
She drank and nodded. “Excellent observation.”
“I was under the impression that Saarien’s movement was much, much smaller.”
Letty nodded. “Did I say that? I’m not quite sure.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t jammed my pai, we could go back over my buffer and confirm that.”
She snorted. “You’re still hung up on that? By the way, you look like hell.”
I put the bottle on the kitchen counter. “I’m going to take a shower. When I’m done, I expect you both to be out of here. And you can threaten me all you want, Letty. I’m too tired to care right now.”
I plodded into the bathroom and turned on the taps in the shower. A spurt of water shot out of the showerhead, followed by a few more convulsions. The plumbing groaned like a giant having an orgasm, and the water stopped. I twisted the taps, then tried the sink: nothing. I marched into the kitchen and turned on the faucet. It spat water, coughed, and did nothing more.
Letty had retrieved the bottle and settled back in the chair. “Trouble?”
“Did you do this?”
“Oh, no. That would be the strike.”
“Even at the water works?”
“Everywhere!” Letty waved her hands, and rum spilled out of her overfilled glass. “The entire planet has stopped, all thanks to Evanrute Saarien and his magical marching millions. They’re probably gonna burn stuff down, starting with my office.”
“Your office is made of solid pourform.”
“You know, that’s what all my advisors have said. They also told me that this unrest was limited to isolated pockets of Freeborn. Yet, there are many, many of our Union brethren in the streets, all of ’em chanting for a strike.” She shrugged. “I’m sure those fuckers will figure some way to burn the Union Hall to the ground. They’ve probably got some magical Greek Fire shit ready to roll as soon as I show up.”
“All the more reason for you not to be here. I happen to like my flat in its non-burned state.”
“But don’t you see that this is both our problems now?”
“Uh-uh. I’m not the Prez. I’m just a rank-and-file bozo. This is all on you. Not my circus, not my monkeys.” I opened the door and waved my hand into the hall with a flourish. “Thanks for visiting.”
“I will cancel your debt now. Right here.” Letty pounded the table, sending her glass bouncing to the floor. It shattered, and Jennifer dove to cover her. “What was that?” Letty said underneath her human shield.
“Go home, Letty. We both know that you can’t make any deals when you’re drunk.”
“The hell I can’t!” Letty shoved and slapped at Jennifer until her bodyguard moved aside. Letty wobbled to her feet and emptied her pockets on the table. Out came two multi-tools, a mini-torch, keys, breath mints, and six matchboxes. She made a show of opening the boxes and showing me their sparkling electronic innards before smashing them to pieces with her fist. Then she scooped them into a little pile and lit the torch.
I took a step forward. “Hey, don’t–”
Whoosh. The cardboard caught, and the stench of burning cane plastic and solder filled my flat. “Don’t worry, I got it,” Letty said as a bright spot of fire rose in the middle of my dining room table. She sprinkled the mints on top of the electronic funeral pyre, and the sugar burned a neon green.
And that’s when the rum ignited.
Letty yelped as the cone of blue flame spread over the tabletop. The rum had seeped into the table’s seams, down its legs, onto the floor. Within moments, a full-blown fire had broken out in my living room. I ran for the sink to get a glass of water, but only got a cough of air. I reached for the fire extinguisher next to my stove, but it was too late: Letty had grabbed the bottle of Beaulieu’s and poured it on the fire, forgetting that 140-proof rum has a tendency to burn when it touches an open flame. The ensuing fireball rolled up and out, catching the curtains and spreading to the ceiling.
“OUT!” Jennifer threw Letty over her shoulder and ran for the door. I pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher and sprayed down the table. The foam crackled as it hit the flames, but it wasn’t enough. The fire jumped to the highback chair. It rolled into my bedroom. I dropped the now-empty extinguisher and bolted for the door.
I hacked the rising smoke out of my lungs. All around me, people burst from their apartments holding spouses, children, aquariums. Swaroop Patil’s children clustered around his knees; I picked up the two closest to me and shouted for everyone to follow me out. When Swaroop didn’t move, I kicked him in the ass. He started and began cussing me out as I ran down the hallway to the fire door.
Down the rickety fire escape and onto the street we went. The building’s muster point was at the koa tree out front, and all our neighbors had gathered round in a sooty huddle. By the time we reached the tree, Swaroop had cooled down, though the fire hadn’t. Flames gushed from every window on every story. I handed Rohit and Aman back to Swaroop and blinked up a schematic of the building. Everyone trackable had gotten out. I sent texts to everyone who lived at 42 Samarkand, just to be sure.
The clang of bells cut through the noise of the crowd. A truck – not a fire truck, but a regular old MacDonald Heavy Hanuman Cargo Truck – nosed its way through the rubberneckers. A dozen people hopped out, all of them carrying axes and fire extinguishers. They wore heavy coats and work boots, the kind of gear you’d see on an airship ground crew. “Is everyone out?” asked one of them, a Freeborn man with tight cornrows and the most impressive mustache I had ever seen outside of a military history book.
“I think so,” I said.
He grunted. “Well, did you check?”
I gave him
a look. “I’m sorry. I was helping my neighbor with his kids as we fled for our lives. Who the hell are you, anyway? Where’s the fire department?”
“We are the fire department,” he said. “At least, until the pros can get here. The marchers have cut off access from the station, and we were nearby.”
I gave their tools – machetes and rakes – the once-over. “You guys are cane cutters?”
The man grinned, his mustache making his smile look even wider. “Best in the biz. We can clear a hectare, do a controlled burn, and have everything stacked, all before the dinner bell. We been busy doing mop-up burns for the black stripe, and we were nearby for a–”
A window blew out on the top floor, and a sooty face looked down. “HELP!”
It was Agamjot Patil, Swaroop’s youngest. Oh, crap, she must have gotten lost on the way out. I sized up Mustache Man; he was too short. Another cutter was more my size. “Give me your coat!”
“What?”
I grabbed at his coat and started peeling it off. “This is my building, and you don’t know the way up there.” I threw on the coat and checked its pockets. Cane crews had to carry breathing gear and portable heat shelters in case they got caught in the middle of a burn (even though burns were illegal and inefficient as hell, the regulations for their gear had stuck around). I pulled the respirator mask from one pocket and snapped it over my face. I pulled the shelter – a folded-up foil balloon – out of the coat’s other pocket. Mustache Man looked at me. “What are you waiting for?” I grabbed his fire extinguisher and ran to the front steps. Two blasts of foam in the door, the balloon over my head and shoulders, and I went in.
The mask wasn’t tight enough to stop the smoke from seeping in. The stench of burning fabric and smoldering caneplas burned the inside of my nose. I wanted to push the mask into my face, but one hand was keeping the shelter up while the other spurted at the flames. I heard the other cutters behind me, all of them coughing and joking about the heat. I turned and lifted the shelter high enough to make eye contact. Mustache Man and seven others stood there. “Stick close! Stairs are to the left!”