by Adam Rakunas
“Or it was,” said Tool Bag.
“Yeah,” said Two Anchors. “No doubt there.”
The Red Bus slowed as it approached North Terminal. The traffic was thick: Blues from San Monique, Greens from Hawthorne, Yellows from way the hell on the other side of the island. There were no police to direct traffic, just a lot of honking and jostling for position at the loading bays. Our bus hissed to a stop and the driver said, “You got five minutes to unload.”
“Or what?” I asked.
She looked up at the mirror and caught my eye. “Or you’ll be stuck in a bus. I’m taking this to the depot, and then I’m marching with everyone else.”
As we disembarked, people handed out signs saying STRIKE and NEW DEAL NOW. Some of them had steel Temple pins, and a few had added the supernova to their Union ink on their cheeks. I caught sight of Meiumi and her son before they were swept into the mass of bodies. Meiumi Greene. With an ‘e’. I hoped she would be okay.
I grabbed the first bike I could and rode straight to Brushhead, taking every side street and back alley that wasn’t filled with people. By the time I got to Budvar, I had to ditch the bike and walk. People jammed the streets, all of them bright and bubbly. Every café, bar, and strip club was open and full. I took off my coat and tied it around my waist, the heat of the morning and the crowd baking through my clothes. I saw strikers walk off the street and hand their signs to people blinking their way out of coffee shops. The slogans were all generic: SOLIDARITY and UNFAIR and STRIKE. None of the signs had demands. None of the people talked about demands. What the hell kind of strike was this?
Two hours and a twenty-yuan egg sandwich later, I arrived at the remains of my home. The building was now a charred shell. The roof and top two floors had collapsed. Blackened beams and studs leaned against each other. It looked like the skeleton of a whale that had fallen from the sky and auto-ignited on impact. Long tracks of dirt snaked up to the foundations.
Onanefe and his crew sat around their Hanuman, all of them sooty and bleary-eyed. They held bowls of noodles, but none of them ate. They just stared into the distance. I picked my way over the burnt remains of the building’s rose garden. “You guys okay?”
Onanefe groaned as he slid off the hood of the truck. “You missed a hell of a good time.”
“I was detained.”
“For a week?”
I shrugged. “Entropy happens. I see you saved the day here.”
Onanefe stretched, his neck popping as he twisted it from side to side. “I don’t think we ever worked like that. Cutting cane’s going to be a vacation.”
“Anyone else get hurt?”
He shook his head and brushed his mustache. Parts of it had singed away. “There were fires all over the neighborhood. Been busy for days.” He pointed at the building next to mine. “We had to work like hell making sure the fire didn’t spread. It just got hotter after you left, so we started a bucket brigade and brought dirt up top to tamp things down. It’s gonna take a while for the neighborhood garden to bounce back.”
“I think everyone will forgive you.” I held out a hand. “I never had a chance to introduce myself. Padma Mehta.”
His eyebrows shot up. For a moment, I thought he was going to start singing my theme song. Then his eyebrows came down, along with his expression. “You owe me fifty thousand yuan.”
“You’re kidding.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. The rest of the crew rose to their feet and huddled around him. “We never kid about wages. You own the Old Windswept distillery, yes?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “We own a plot out in Erendiz Flats. We raised heirloom cane, supplied a lot of distillers. I grew good stuff.”
I nodded to myself. “Okay. Where do I come into the picture?”
“About a year and a half ago, I got a massive order from Estella Tonggow. My entire stock for a year, exclusive. It was COD, which I never do, but Madame Tonggow’s reputation was impeccable. I signed, I delivered, and I never got the money.”
“Why?”
“Because she was dead.”
“Wait.” I tried to blink up all of my contracts from the distillery, but the Public just gave me the finger. “Dammit, I can’t connect right now. Look, I hope you can understand why this is a bit of a shock to me, right?”
He shrugged. “Whether it’s a shock or not makes no nevermind. What matters is that we get paid.”
“Then why didn’t you bring this to me?”
“I did,” said Onanefe. “Every month, I’d send letters by courier to your office. You want to tell me you’ve never seen them? I got the receipts in my kit bag.”
“Yes, because I haven’t,” I said. “My manager deals with all that.”
“And she wouldn’t think to say, ‘Hey, boss, you owe this guy fifty large’?”
“No, he sure as hell would. But since he hasn’t, that means I either have to fire him or–”
“You need to pay up!” yelled one of the cutters.
“We counted on that money!” yelled another.
“I need to pay for my husband’s meds!”
“I need to pay for fixing our compost digester!”
“I need to pay for my daughter’s gamelon lessons!”
The others looked at the last guy. “What?” he said. “Flora loves playing, and I don’t know how to teach her!”
Onanefe put his hands on his hips and squared off toward me. “That money was going to make a big difference in all our lives, Ms Mehta. But when we didn’t get paid, we had to hustle and start working other fields to cover our collective nut.”
“What do you want me to do about it, then?” I turned out my pockets, and held up the contents: fluff, a ticket stub from the Red Bus, and three two-yuan coins. “This is all I’ve got.”
Onanefe glanced at the detritus and sniffed. “What about the distillery?”
A chill raced up my neck. “What about it?”
He shrugged, and the edges of his mustache lifted up as he smiled. “Maybe we should look into garnishing your profits until we’re paid. I’m pretty sure the Strike Committee would be happy to add that to their list of demands.”
“Is there an actual list?” I said. “I’d love to see it.”
“You come with us, we’ll show it to you,” said Onanefe.
“Maybe you should bring a copy here,” I said, letting my weight sink into my shoes. I had no idea if these guys were going to try and take me, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared.
Onanefe held up his hands. “Hey, hey. Don’t get the wrong idea. We’re pissed, but we’re not like that.”
“Good to know.”
He laughed and slapped one of his crew on the shoulder. “You believe this? Lady, we just busted our picks to save this neighborhood, and we don’t even live here. You know, this is just like you Inks, thinking all us Freeborn are a bunch of savages.”
“I think you’re a bunch of people who are tired, angry, and outnumber me,” I said, not relaxing. “You’ll pardon me for being cautious.”
Onanefe’s face became a grim mask as he shook his head. “And people wonder why Freeborn don’t join up around Contract time. Okay, Ms Mehta, you win. I’ll get someone to find a printer and show you the invoices–”
And that’s when someone stabbed me in the shoulder.
TEN
Later, I would rewind my pai’s internal buffer and study the moment: Onanefe turning away, his crew looking at me in disgust, and that one guy stepping out of the crowd with a steak knife in his raised hand. I had never seen him before, a clean-cut Freeborn man in a yellow linen shirt and cargo pants. There was nothing about him that said I should have worried. Nothing except the knife, of course. He pushed aside one of the cutters and brought it down into my left shoulder.
In the moment itself, though, all I got was his scream, followed by blinding pain up and down my arm and back and, really, my entire body. I went down, and he came with me, his beet-red face in mine. “PARASIT
E! TRAITOR!” he roared, and then he disappeared as the cutters lifted him up and away.
I didn’t scream. It hurt too much to scream. I gave the knife one look – blood gushing out a hole in my shirt, the knife blade shining in the mid-morning sun – then turned away. I focused on breathing and not going into shock. Going into shock meant losing control, and that meant someone else could take another stab at me.
Someone put a kerchief on the wound. Calls went out for a doctor. I wondered who would show up. We had a fire and got cane cutters. Maybe this time I’d get a butcher. I felt the sudden craving for a tri-tip sandwich, then my head spun at the thought of doing anything other than not bleeding to death.
One of the cutters came back with two people holding kit bags and t-shirts from Santee General Hospital. They assessed my arm for a moment before one of them, a woman with a caduceus tattoo, said, “Seriously? You brought us here for this?”
That stopped the nausea. “What? Knife!”
“Pfft.” Medical Lady took a multi-tool from her pocket and opened the scissors. Three quick cuts, and she pulled my shirt off my shoulder. I looked at the wound just as she pulled a can from her bag and sprayed pink gel all over my shoulder.
“What’s thaAAAAAAAAA–!”
She slid the knife out of my shoulder. I didn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything, really. That still didn’t stop my brain from screaming Holy shit, she just pulled a knife out of your body!
“It’ll hurt like hell once the gel wears off, but you’ll be okay,” she said, dropping the knife into a caneplas bag.
“Thank you for not going on strike,” I said.
She made a face. “I’m marching like everyone else.”
“Yeah, but you still patched me up.”
“And you can expect one hell of a bill once the Public starts working again.” She blinked in my face.
“So it’s not just me? I haven’t been able to get on the Public all day.”
“The word is that everyone in IT is striking,” said Medical Man. “They shut down the servers because no one would be around to babysit them.”
Medical Lady snorted. “Just as well. My pai hasn’t been able to upload any patient data for months. Incompatible model with the latest patches. How the hell does anyone expect to get continued care?”
“Well, I’m good for it,” I said as they packed their bags. “Paying you, I mean.”
Medical Man shrugged. “That’s what the Medical Committee told us before they started holding up our reimbursements. You know how much CauterIce costs? That’s, like, sixty yuan alone on your shoulder.”
I looked at the pink goo. It had hardened and begun to flake away. The cut now looked like I’d just scraped my shoulder on a nail, not had a knife plunged into it.
“We’ve been dealing with dehydration all week,” said the woman. I really wished I could blink up her name, just so I wouldn’t have to keep thinking of her as Medical Lady. “At least salts are cheap. But if we start getting more knifings, we’re gonna be out of supplies pretty soon.”
“Is Santee General running that low?” I asked.
Medical Lady snorted. “Everyone’s running low. Haven’t you heard? Or have you been in a hole in the ground?”
I thought to tell her that, no, my distillery was actually quite comfortable, but held my tongue.
She shouldered her pack. “Before the strike started, we had enough to get us through the month. But that was a month of regular life. Things get uglier with strikes.”
“Then who’s supposed to be in charge of getting you what you need?”
Medical Man snorted. “The Medical Committee. But they have no money.” He nodded to me. “Don’t work that shoulder for a few days. The muscle needs time to knit itself back together.” They pushed their way back into the crowd.
Onanefe gave me a hand up. “That was a bit of good luck, finding the medicos.”
“They’re always handy to have around when some nut wants to stab you.” I gave my shoulder a tiny roll. The CauterIce had left my entire arm numb, so I felt nothing. I peeled off the bloodied remains of my shirt and buttoned up my jacket. I’d have to find a cooler replacement layer soon, or I’d turn into one of those dehydration victims Medical Lady talked about. “Where is he?”
Onanefe gestured toward the back of the cutters’ truck. “We got him here. Luccio used to farm pigs, so he’s got the guy trussed up nice. What do you want to do with him?”
“Talk with him. From a safe distance.”
My assailant lay in the truck bed, hog-tied on his belly, his head facing outward. His face was screwed up in a frown, and his eyes kept flickering from side-to-side.
I squatted in front of him. “Hi, there. People usually have a few drinks with me before they try and stab me. You want something?”
His lip quivered, and he looked me in the eye. “I wanted you out of my way.”
“I don’t even know you,” I said.
“You are in my way!” he shouted, jerking against the knots on his wrists and ankles. He flopped toward me, his teeth bared. “You are in my way!”
I slapped him.
He stopped moving and stared at me. “You hit me,” he said, all the fire out of his voice.
“And you stabbed me,” I said. “If you’re going to get worked up over a little slap, then you’re more messed up than I thought.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he said. “I’m doing the people’s work. I’m one of history’s select.”
I smiled, making my face as bright and open and gullible-looking as possible. “Selected by who?”
He grinned, showing me perfect teeth. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I sure would, seeing how it might keep you from getting tossed into the clink.”
He barked a laugh. “Who’s going to do it? The police? They’re with us. Besides, when they find out what I was doing, they’ll let me go. I’m a hero, me.”
“For stabbing innocent women?”
“You were in my way,” he said. “No one is innocent if they’re in my way. I am the fist of righteousness.”
“Even if that fist has a knife?”
He blew his tongue at me, and I walked back to Onanefe at the front of the truck. “Does anyone know this guy?”
They all shook their heads. “City’s getting super crowded with marchers,” said Onanefe. “I hear there are people sailing in.”
“From where?”
He shrugged. “Everywhere. It’s a planet-wide strike, you know? All those farms have a couple of dozen people, and there are, what, ten thousand farms across Santee?”
“So he could be from anywhere. Terrific.”
Onanefe rubbed his mustache. “I have the feeling he’s local. Ish. His accent isn’t sing-songy enough to come from the Western Chains, too harsh to come from the South Archipelago, and too flat to come from the North. His clothes are from a Big Three catalogue, not homespun. He’s seen a lot of sun, but his skin’s in pretty good condition. No scars, no ink. All of that tells me he’s a Freeborn kid from Santee City or its immediate surroundings.”
“You can tell all that from his voice, clothes, and skin?”
He nodded, then his face broke into a grin. “That, plus he dropped a wallet stuffed with receipts from a bakery in Globus Heights.” He pulled a battered leather wallet from his trousers and held it up. Dozens of bagasse-paper slips stuck out of its folds, little flags flapping in the breeze.
I rolled my eyes. “And here I thought you were going to crack this case wide open just through observation.”
He shrugged. “So I read a few detective novels. You get a lot of downtime in this line of work.”
“Did that wallet tell you this guy’s name?”
“It did not. Just that the dude loved him some proja.”
I took the wallet and sighed. “Well, it’s a start… Did you say proja?”
He nodded. “I’m not a fan, myself. A little too sweet. I like my cornbread crumbly.”
> I looked at the receipts. They were all from Lepa’s Bakery, where I had just met Odd Dupree before he took me to Saarien’s church. I rewound my buffer and saw it again: the knife, the anger, the screams of PARASITE! I rewound to just a few moments ago: I’m one of history’s select. I rewound even farther: Ly Huang’s smug face as she said, We are history’s select.
“Son of a bitch,” I said. I banged the hood of the truck. “SON OF A BITCH!”
“Hey, mind the wheels, please,” said Onanefe. “This truck is our calling card.”
“Sorry,” I said through gritted teeth. “I think I know where this schmuck came from.”
“Yeah?”
“You know the Temple of New Holy Light?”
Onanefe nodded. “I’m familiar with it.”
“The guy who runs it, the one who called for this strike? He tried to kill me once.”
Onanefe’s eyebrows shot up. “The skinny white guy? Bad teeth? Wears a white suit?”
I cocked my head. “You been there?”
He shook his head. “A couple of cousins got caught up two months ago. They were spongers, so I figured anything to get them out of the house, you know? That Temple’s been trying to scoop as many people as they could into their flock.” He sucked his teeth and spat. “I had to tell my cousins to stay in the city before they pulled their families’ work crews apart. What is it with bums and religion?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out,” I said, wiping sweat off my forehead. “Right after I get a new shirt.”
“I saw a place on Saroyan that’s still open,” said one of the cutters.
“What about Stabbing Boy?” said Onanefe. “You want we should find a cop?”
I winked at him. “That’ll do.”
I walked down Samarkand and got as far as the corner when I heard a scuffle of feet behind me. I turned, and Onanefe and the rest of the cutters bumped into each other as they came to a halt. All of them carried leather satchels, as if they were going to work.
“Help you guys with something?” I said.
“We’re going with,” said Onanefe. “If you don’t mind.” The cutters all nodded.
“I think I do,” I said, taking a few steps.