by Adam Rakunas
“Anything else I don’t need to know?”
“Only that you might be about to get what you wanted,” said Soni. “Look.”
The tuk-tuks had all cut their motors and their sound systems. The drivers got out and sat down next to their rides. And they started singing:
Sit down, just keep your seat
Sit down and rest your feet
Sit down, you got ’em beat
Sit down, sit down!
A chorus of voices rose from the side streets and joined the drivers for the next verse:
When the boss won’t talk go and take a walk – sit down, sit down!
When the boss sees that she’ll want a chat – sit down, sit down!
People streamed out of nowhere. They filled the streets right up to the edge of the Union Hall, and they sat down. Row after row of people, Union and Freeborn, all sitting down, all singing:
When they make a deal that’ll let them steal – sit down, sit down!
When they tell you lies and blind your eyes – sit down, sit down!
I pulled away from Sirikit and sat back down. Waves of people went back as far as I could see, all of them sitting down and singing. That song from Dead Earth had been inspired by a bunch of auto workers who had staged simultaneous sit-down strikes against their employer, some company whose corpse had been rolled into the Big Three centuries ago. They had held out against police and the state security agencies and the thugs their bosses had hired to break the strike. They kept their plants clean and organized, and they dealt with spies and dissension and all the other petty bullshit that happened when people got tired and hungry. In the end, they won, and their union organized every other auto plant in the country. Granted, that union got smashed to pieces forty years later, thanks to the rise of borderless corporatism, but what the hell. It was a good song.
I didn’t bother to count how many people showed up. It was more of a vote than I had hoped for. I looked back at the pile of foam where Letty had been. Three police had pulled her out and cuffed her. A fourth waved a red light stick in front of her face. Letty just sneered at them and yelled, “That won’t do any good. I already did it!”
I saw a flash and felt a boom, the low kind you get from a powerful explosion a long way away. Some of the crowd got to their feet and pointed northwest. I stood up and saw a thin line of black smoke rise above the rooftops.
“Shit,” said Sirikit. “We missed one. Where is that?”
I ran up the steps, my head swimming the whole way. At the top, I saw the smoke column curl, its underbelly lit by flashes of orange and red. The explosion had triggered a fire. What the hell was in that part of town? There weren’t any refineries, any machine shops, anything with a lot of fuel.
Or a lot of hydrocarbons.
Or a lot of cane.
I looked back at Letty, and my guts turned to ice. I ran down the steps and grabbed Sirikit’s arm. “We need to go,” I said. “Right now.”
“Where?”
“Tanque. The distillery.”
“But you don’t own it–”
“I don’t care! We need to go! Now!”
Sirikit didn’t hesitate. She walked to her tuk-tuk and shouted “MOVE!” The crowd parted like a well-lubed door, leaving us with a clear path up Solidarnoœæ. I jumped in behind Sirikit, and she floored it.
The seated crowd didn’t end as we tore away from the Hall. It branched off on every cross street we passed, all of these people sitting on the sidewalk or the street or their stoops or in front of their businesses. The workers who spun cable, the stevedores who unloaded canal boats, the drivers and cooks and strippers and priestesses, they were all outside, sitting down. I saw Freeborn faces next to Union faces, some of them angry, some of them weeping, all of them sitting.
“I know you’re not in the mood to hear this,” said Sirikit, “but it was really brave of you to say that in front of everyone. About the reason why you held on to the distillery.”
“There was nothing brave about it,” I said. “Letty wanted to use it as leverage, and the only way I could take away her power was to admit it myself. Everyone’s going to think I’m a drunk or a nutcase or both.”
“They’ll know you’re one of us,” said Sirikit. “You’re trying to get your shit together the best you can. We all are.”
“My best is a finger of rum and a candle.”
She shrugged. “Nobody’s perfect.”
A horn blatted behind us. I looked over my shoulder and saw a white Hanuman with ten people standing in the back. They waved and cheered. In the cab, Onanefe had his fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, and he gave me a curt nod. I nodded back.
More joined us: delivery lorries and tankers and a lumbering fire truck. By the time we left the city, we were at the head of a column of fifty vehicles. As we passed the goat farm, I saw nothing ahead but smoke and flame. Some of the windbeasts were on their sides, knocked over by the blast. The dust flew thick, mixing with the stench of burning metal. My right hand ached, and I realized it was because I had curled it into a fist so tight my nails had cut into my palm.
We slowed in front of the distillery. The air was full of the stench of ash and burnt caramel. A giant smoldering hole sat in front of the press house, and a slightly smaller hole had been blown through the wall. The curing house was nothing but a roaring fire. I had Sirikit make a circle around the place, but we were stopped by the flaming wreckage of the press. The giant cylinders had been blasted through the press house wall, and all the cane juice embedded in them had caught fire. They glowed a dull red.
Onanefe and his crew got to work, as did everyone else with firefighting experience. There wasn’t any risk to my neighbors, as the grasslands that surrounded the distillery were too green to catch fire. I just sat in Sirikit’s tuk-tuk and watched them work. As much as I wanted to run in and grab everything I could, I would only get in the way.
Within thirty minutes, the fire was out. Onanefe walked over, his clothes streaked black. “Not much left,” he said.
I sighed. “Fortunately, I now have that fifty thousand you say I owe you.”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry about that.”
“No, I pay my debts, even when I’m not sure they’re really mine.” I looked at the ruins. “The new owners are gonna be pissed. Whoever they are.”
He wiped his brow. “This is gonna take lawyers, isn’t it? Man, I hate dealing with them.”
“Me, too,” I said. “But if you find someone good, keep ’em. A good lawyer can save your life.”
I got out of the tuk-tuk and walked around, Sirikit and Onanefe trailing behind me. The buildings were gutted, and any machinery had turned to slag. Broken bottles crunched under our boots, and the ashes from labels floated in the air. “What the hell am I going to do now?” I said to no one in particular.
Onanefe held out a hand. “Come on. Come on out of this place. Come back to town. We have a lot of work to do, and people are going to count on you to show them the way.”
“That’s going to be a neat trick once my brain seizes up.” The Fear hissed in assent. I can’t wait.
“You talked to one doctor,” said Sirikit. “And you kept your treatment a secret. There are lots of other people to talk with, and you know they’ll all want to help. It’s what we do, right?”
“So you believed my bullshit, too?”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t bullshit. It was the truth. We’re all here on this rock, and we either help each other out or cut each other down. I’d rather help.”
“Us, too,” said Onanefe. “It’s going to be a hell of a lot of work, like you said, but it’s the best way forward.”
Sirikit held her hand out to me, and I reached for it. “Okay,” I said. “But first, I’m going to need a very, very stiff drink.”
TWENTY-FIVE
In my time as an organizer, I’d gone to plenty of meetings in the Prez’s office. It was on the fourth floor of the Hall, in a coral steel atrium in the middle o
f an ocean of desks and tables. The office’s positioning was symbolic and practical: the Prez had to be at the center of everything to make sense of what was going on. Someone had called it the Hurricane’s Eye fifty years ago, and the name stuck.
Glass art covered the walls of the Eye, collages of driftglass and hand-blown chimes and stuff that looked like it had staggered home from a really good party at a foundry. The head of the staffers, a loping man named Moritz Nguyễn, told me that it had all come from Letty’s predecessor, and that Letty hadn’t really done any decorating. “If you want to change anything, though,” said Moritz, holding his hands in front of his stomach. “Just say the word.”
“How about the desk?” I said.
The desk was a rickety thing, nothing more than an unfinished door perched on top of two sawhorses. The surface was sanded smooth but for two discolored indentations about half a meter apart, probably where past Prezes had rested their elbows. Two rusted wire baskets labeled IN and OUT sat on either end of the desk. The IN basket held a stack of yellowed paper ten centimeters high. The OUT basket was empty.
Moritz cleared his throat, which stretched his long face and made the quill inked on his cheek look like a mutant chicken leg. “You’re welcome to something else, of course, but it’s considered tradition to keep this desk here. The first Prez used it when the Union was formed, so…”
I picked up the top sheet of paper. It was a crop report from five years ago. I rooted to the bottom of the pile and found a request for reimbursement dated the day my grandfather had been born. “Why is this still here?” I said. “Hasn’t it been scanned and filed?”
Moritz nodded. “It’s meant to be a reminder of the responsibilities of the office, and how the Prez is supposed to consult with the past to point the way to the future.”
I dropped the paper. “You’re kidding, right?”
He made a face like he’d just swallowed a bug. “It’s, ah, tradition. Passed down with the office.”
“We’re going to burn it,” I said. “Please help me take all this out in the middle of the street so we can set fire to it.”
“Are you sure, Madame Presi–?”
“And please, do not call me that,” I said, giving Moritz the warmest smile I could muster. “I know it’s my job to make the decisions, but it’s a job, not a title. I’d like you to call me Padma. What would you like me to call you?”
He cleared his throat. “I suppose ‘Moritz’ will be fine. I’ll be sure to tell everyone else. Some of the older staffers might grumble, but…” He sighed. “What the hell. Those guys are assholes anyway.”
I nodded. “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”
It took two trips, one for the door and the second for the sawhorses and baskets. A dozen curious staffers followed onto the sidewalk at Koothrapalli to watch as Moritz and I took turns putting our boots through the door. It cracked and splintered nicely. People asked if they could help ball up paper for firestarters, and I was all too happy to let them. “Is there any more crap like this?” I said. “Useless stuff that we’re hanging on to because we’re supposed to? And I don’t mean art or history or anything like that. I’m talking receipts and broken shit.”
The staffers ran back into the Hall and reappeared within minutes holding busted machinery, moldy books, and stacks of paperwork. After Moritz assured me their contents were all accounted for on the Public, I helped people throw it on the pile. I pulled a lighter out of my pocket and set the pile ablaze.
Within fifteen minutes, it was all embers. We stomped on them until there was nothing but ash. A few squirts from fire extinguishers, and a hundred years of dead weight were flushed into the gutter. I blinked up the time: quarter to six. “Perfect way to wrap up a first day,” I said.
“Do you want a new desk?” said Moritz.
“No, I’m not going to be spending much time at the office,” I said. “We’ll host the initial meetings at the Hall, ’cause we’ve got enough room for everyone. But the next sessions are going to be out in the city and the kampong.”
“Really? Do they have the facilities?”
“We’ll have to string up some signal boosters for pai reception, but we need to do that anyway. Make sure you get permission from the landowners and pay them the same rate you would in town, got it?”
He nodded. “We have the funds, but it’ll take some lead-up time to get the equipment out there. Most of our line crews are busy doing firmware updates by hand.” He grunted. “There are a lot of backdoors to close.”
“Get as many people as you can spare, working in the kampong,” I said. “We’ve got a couple of weeks, but I’d rather not cut it too close. Take it out of the emergency overtime fund if you have to.”
He blanched. “There isn’t a lot left in there.”
“We’ll deal,” I said. “It’s not like we have much choice.” I held out my hand, and he shook it. “See you tomorrow. I got an appointment to keep.”
As I walked up Koothrapalli, I stretched and twisted. My back ached from sitting on the floor. For the past week, I’d been hosting the first sessions of what we simply called The Convention, and all of our meetings had been in the Hall. I had come up with the bright idea of having us all sit on cushions so we would all be on a truly level field. No one could sit next to someone they knew or were allied with, which made for an interesting game of Musical Cushions every time we convened. The plan had worked for the most part. We were all equally sore and grumpy, but we’d hammered out a hell of a lot of details. Plus, it had helped me avoid going up to the Hurricane’s Eye after everyone elected me President of the Convention.
I didn’t want the job. After Onanefe nominated me, I told him I didn’t want the job. After everyone there elected me, unanimously, I shouted I didn’t want the fucking job, to give it to anyone else. They pointed out that my not wanting the job made me perfect for it, and I told them all to go to hell. They just clapped and applauded themselves for sound democratic judgment, the bastards.
I turned down Kripner Lane, a neighborhood of pourform flats. This was one of the older neighborhoods, built around the time of the first Contract. The building materials were part of that bargain, the housing a step up from the cargo can hutongs. The flats had seen better days, and their water-stained façades looked like a bunch of sweaty old people huddling together after a long day’s work. Kids played in the street, drawing on the sidewalk or jumping in and out of the bomb crater. Some of them climbed up on the pile of rubble that had once been a building. Jeanine Doughtey, an airship engineer, had lived here, and she had held a stash for me. She and her family hadn’t been in their flat when the bomb went off, but some of their neighbors had. It would be months before Letty went to trial, and finding an impartial jury would probably be next to impossible. There was talk about doing the whole thing in the kampong since the people out there were the least affected, but that just set off a fresh round of arguing on the Public.
A giant sat on the steps of one of the buildings. He took up most of the stoop, his brows furrowed deep in thought. “You get those supplements?” I called up to Kazys.
He looked down at me. “They taste like chalk.”
“That’s because they are,” I said from the sidewalk. “Well, diatoms, mostly. But they’re supposed to be easier on your stomach.”
He grumbled. “They are, actually. Thanks.”
“Anything else you need right now?”
He grunted. “A flat where we both fit would be a nice start.”
“That’s gonna mean new construction.”
He grumbled.
I cleared my throat. “New construction means jobs, Kazys. Like for Class Two Mechanists.”
He cocked his head, then nodded. “I hear you.”
“Then make sure Gwendolyn hears you so everyone can hear her.” I walked up the steps and held out my hand. He took it and most of my forearm. “You working on anything new?”
He laughed. “An oral history of the strike. I’m go
ing to be fifty characters in fifty minutes.”
“I’d pay to see that.”
“You’re in there, of course.”
“Oh, God, why?”
“Because I need a musical interlude.” He cleared his throat and belted out the chorus to “Solidarity Forever.” I rolled my eyes. It was better than hearing “Sky Queen of Justice.” With any luck, I’d never hear that again. I hurried down the street.
Off Kripner, tucked behind a pocket park, there was a small, green rowhouse with a ground floor garage. The garage door was open, and the bright red tuk-tuk parked inside looked like an apple hiding inside a leafy tree. The tuk-tuk was up on blocks, and Sirikit was underneath, swearing at the transmission. “That doesn’t work,” I said from the doorway. “Abuse just begats more abuse.”
Sirikit sighed as she crawled out from underneath. She wore a filthy coverall, and lube streaked her face. “Can’t you get us all to switch to bicycles? They’re a lot easier to work on than these damn things.”
“And then I’d have every tuk-tuk driver in the city screaming for my head.”
“To hell with ’em,” she said, wiping her hands on a rag. “All they do is sit around, anyway. The exercise would be good for them.”
“That’s a hell of a way to talk about your fellow tradespeople.”
“Feel free to report me to my slavedriving boss. That kid’s gonna be the death of us, anyway, the way she makes everyone actually work for a living.” She set down the rag. “How are you doing?”
“Are you just being social, or are we starting early?”
She shrugged. “What do you think?”
I sighed. “This is the reason I avoided actual therapy all these years. The bottle never made me question what I was doing.”
“Until it did.”
“Ah, so we are starting early.”
“Not until I’ve gotten out of this.” She motioned to her work clothes. “Tough to focus when everything itches.”