by John Ringo
The choices facing her crucified Kafari. Jefferson needed her. Needed psychotronic engineers, and not just at the spaceport. If the changes to higher education’s curricula were an indicator, a whole new generation would grow up without the skills or knowledge necessary to produce more engineers of any sort.
Once in power, POPPA had launched a juggernaut of far-reaching changes in every conceivable portion of society. The Childhood Protection Act was just the tip of the iceberg. Environmental protection legislation was already crippling industry with clean-environment standards so stringent, heavy-industry manufacturing plants, industrial chemical production firms — including agricultural chemicals critical to producing Terran food crops in Jeffersonian soil — and even paper-production mills literally could not operate in compliance.
The financial penalties for failing to meet standards were so severe, whole industries were going bankrupt, trying to pay fines. Business leaders were filing aggressive lawsuits to challenge the lunacy, but the Senate and House of Law, urged on by the roar of the masses, just kept passing more of POPPA’s social, economic, and environmental agendas. The subsistence allowance was already higher than the average yearly wages of low-skill menial employment, just kept passing more of POPPA’s social, economic, and environmental agendas.
She focused on the crumpled piece of paper in Simon’s white-knuckled hand, with its social-engineering mandate, and realized with a sickening sensation that it was already too late to fight that particular legal battle. If she or anyone else tried to protest, they would lose their children. And their children, trapped in POPPA-run daycare centers and schools, faced a brainwashing campaign of terrifying proportions. How many others had received letters like hers? The number had to run into the millions, at a minimum. Economic woes and stunning tax increases had forced Jefferson’s middle-class families to become two-career couples, with spouses taking any job they could find, even menial labor, just to remain solvent. Those families couldn’t afford to lose a second income, not even to shelter their kids.
And now the Santorinis were holding a gun to parents’ heads. She should have seen it coming. It was a natural outgrowth of legislation that had outlawed home schooling, forcing parents to turn over their children to POPPA’s indoctrination machine. Now they’d widened their net to snare preschoolers, as well, giving them complete power over children at their most critical formative stage, inculcating belief patterns that would last a lifetime.
She wondered with a sickening lurch in her stomach how many of the business owners filing lawsuits to overturn POPPA legislation would find themselves embroiled in custody battles for their own children? On the grounds of “improper emotional support in the home"? She shut her eyes for a moment, but couldn’t blot out a mental picture of Jefferson’s future that was so ugly, her breath froze in her lungs. She didn’t know what to do. Literally didn’t know what to do.
“Kafari?”
She opened her eyes and met Simon’s gaze. His eyes were dark. Scared.
“I don’t know what to do, Simon,” she whispered, wrapping both arms around herself. “Jefferson needs psychotronic engineers—”
“Yalena needs her mother.”
“I know!” Even she could hear the anguish in her voice. “Even if I resign, we’ll gain only a couple of years. She’ll have to start kindergarten when she’s four, like it or not.”
“All the more reason to idiot-proof her now.”
“Can you idiot-proof a child whose teachers are part of the problem? Which they will be. The educational curriculum was practically the first thing they went after. My cousins are already fighting to undo the garbage their children are being taught, particularly the little ones, kindergarten and early primary grades. They come home from school and announce that anyone who picks up a gun — or even keeps one in the house — is a dangerous deviant. Farm kids are being told that killing anything, even agricultural pests, is tantamount to murder.
“Ask my cousin Onatah to show you the school book her little girl is using. Kandlyn’s only seven. She already thinks that everything alive has the absolute right to stay that way. Even microbes, for God’s sake. The older farm kids know enough from direct experience to realize how stupid that is, but the younger ones and practically all the city kids are gobbling that crap down like candy.”
A muscle jumped in Simon’s jaw. “You’re starting to see the enormity of this thing. There are a whole lot more children in cities and towns than there are on farms and ranches. A few years from now, nobody below the age of twenty will realize it is stupidity. That’s why I want you to leave, now. Before it’s too damned late.
Since you won’t do that, at least consider this. Jefferson’s need for psychotronic engineers won’t vanish just because you quit your job now. You’re one of the most employable people on Jefferson. We can make do with my salary for a couple of years. It’s sacrosanct and comes directly from the Brigade. If they try to revoke it, they’ll end up with a Concordiat naval cruiser in orbit, on-loading the three of us and Sonny, while Gifre Zeloc signs a repayment check bigger than they can afford to hand over. They know they can’t antagonize the Concordiat, no matter what their propaganda says to the contrary.
“Men like Gifre Zeloc and Cyril Coridan in the House of Law, women like Fyrene Brogan in the Senate are smart enough to know the difference between the swill they feed subsistence recipients and what they can actually do. You’ll notice that nobody’s come knocking at our door to demand that we actually shut Sonny down. Or that we ship him out on the next available transport. That would ring alarm bells all the way back to Brigade headquarters at Central Command.”
“But—”
“Kafari, please. We don’t need your salary. But we do need you, at home, until Yalena’s first day of school. Give Yalena those two years.”
He was right. Absolutely and utterly right. At least until Yalena was old enough to enter school. “All right,” she said, voice hushed. “I’ll give notice.”
The worst of the tension drained from her husband’s rigid stance. “Thank you.”
She just nodded. And hoped it was enough.
II
Kafari was fixing Yalena’s breakfast when someone knocked at the front door. Loudly. Startled, Kafari sloshed milk onto the counter. Nobody ever came to their house without calling ahead, first, to make sure Sonny wouldn’t shoot them as an intruder. Not even Kafari’s family. And with spring planting taking up everyone’s time, nobody in her family would be calling on them this early in the day, anyway. Simon, who had just strapped Yalena into the toddler seat, exchanged a startled glance with her.
“Who — ?” he began.
“Trouble, that’s who,” she muttered, wiping her hands on a towel and striding purposefully through the house.
She opened the door to find a tall woman with pinched nostrils and a prune-shaped mouth, whose socially correct skinny frame was all hard angles and jutting bones. She was staring down at Kafari from a pair of steel-rimmed glasses of the sort preferred by POPPA bureaucrats. It was part of their “we’re all just people” persona, which dictated that no one on the government payroll was better than anyone else and therefore should not look it.
With her was a hulking giant whose intelligence looked to be on the simian level, with muscles capable of breaking a small tree in half. He definitely did not subscribe to the “thin is in” mentality sweeping the civil service and entertainment industries. No, she realized abruptly, he’s the enforcer. Just what were they here to enforce, at seven a.m. on a Tuesday morning?
“Mrs. Khrustinova?” the woman asked, her voice as warm as a glacier.
“I’m Kafari Khrustinova. Who are you?”
“We,” she jerked her head in a gesture both abrupt and menacing, “are the child-protection team assigned to Yalena Khrustinova.”
“Child-protection team?”
“Trask, please note that Mrs. Khrustinova is apparently in need of mechanical augmentation, as her hearing is plainly su
bstandard, which directly jeopardizes the welfare of the child in her custody.”
“Now wait just a damned minute! I heard you, I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. What are you doing here? I’m a full-time mother. You don’t have jurisdiction.”
“Oh, yes we do,” the woman said, eyes and voice frosty and threatening. “Didn’t you read the notice sent to every parent on Jefferson last night?”
“What notice? What time, last night? Simon and I checked the messages just before bed and there wasn’t any notice.”
“And what time would that have been?”
“Ten-thirty.”
“Trask, please note that Mr. and Mrs. Khrustinov keep a two-year-old child awake far past the hour at which a child that age should be in bed.”
“That’s when Simon and I went to bed!” Kafari snapped. “Yalena was in bed by seven-thirty.”
“So you say.” The derision and disbelief beggared the limits of Kafari’s patience.
Simon spoke just behind her shoulder in a voice as cold and alien as the day of Abraham Lendan’s death. “Get off my property. Now.”
“Are you threatening me?” the woman snarled.
Kafari’s husband was holding Yalena on one hip. His smile was a lethal baring of fangs. “Oh, no. Not yet. If you refuse to leave, however, things could get very interesting. Somehow, I doubt the Brigade would take kindly to having an officer’s home invaded by petty officials attempting to enforce a dubious rule that I haven’t even seen, let alone determined the legality of. This house,” he added in a deceptively gentle voice, “is the property of the Concordiat. Its computer terminals are connected to military technology that is classified as sufficiently secret, no one on Jefferson has the clearance to access it. That includes any so-called home inspection team. You, dear lady, do not have a military clearance to come within a hundred meters of my computer terminal.
“If I were you, I would seriously reconsider the wisdom of trying to force the issue. I am a Bolo commander. In the building next door, a thirteen-thousand ton sentient war machine is listening to this conversation. That machine is judging how much of a threat you are to its commander. If that Bolo decides you are a threat to me, it will act. Probably before I can stop it. So have Trask, there, jot down this little note: the home-inspection provisions of the Child Protection Act do not — and never will — apply to this household. So kindly take your emaciated carcass and your large friend off the Concordiat’s property. Oh, one last thing. If you value your sorry little lives, do not attempt to snoop into the Bolo’s maintenance depot. I’d hate to have to clean up the mess if Sonny shoots you for trespassing into a Class One Alpha restricted military zone.”
The woman’s face went from paper-white to malevolent-red and her mouth opened and closed several times without sound. She finally snarled, “Trask! Please note that Mr. and Mrs. Khrustinov—”
“That’s Colonel Khrustinov, you insolent trollop!”
Kafari blanched. She’d never heard that tone in Simon’s voice.
The woman in their doorway actually recoiled a step. Then hissed, “Trask! Please note that Colonel Khrustinov and his wife maintain a lethal hazard that could kill their child at any moment—”
“Correction,” Simon snarled. “Sonny has standing orders never to fire at my wife or my child. Those orders do not apply to you. Get the hell off my front porch.”
He moved Kafari gently aside, then slammed the door and twisted the lock.
“Kafari. Take Yalena. And get your gun. Now. That lout looks stupid enough to try kicking the door in.”
She snatched Yalena and ran for the bedroom. Her daughter was whimpering, having caught the emotional whiplash from her parents and the intruders trying to force their way into the house. She heard the sound of the gun cabinet in the living room opening and closing, heard the snick of the safety on Simon’s sidearm as he prepared to do whatever became necessary. Kafari wrenched open the nightstand, shoved her thumb against the identi-plate, and clicked open the gun box inside. Kafari snatched up the pistol, barricading herself in the closet with Yalena.
“Shh,” she whispered, rocking the frightened toddler. “You’re just fine, baby.” She hummed a tune low enough to calm her daughter, without blocking the sounds from the living room. She could hear angry voices outside as the woman and her accomplice argued in strident tones. After several tense moments, she heard the snarl of a groundcar’s engine as it gunned its way down the driveway toward the street.
Simon appeared in the bedroom doorway, every muscle in his lean frame taut with battle tension. “They’re gone. For now.”
“And when they come back?” she whispered.
“They won’t come back. Not yet.”
“Not until they persuade the House of Law to pass an exception that covers us. Or get a presidential ruling from Gifre Zeloc that does the same thing. We have enough enemies to pass something like that in a heartbeat.” She added bitterly, “It might’ve been easier just to send her to their stinking daycare.”
“Liberty is never easy.”
“Yes,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “I know.”
Some of the grim tension relented. “I know you know. It’s one of the reasons I love you. You can stare something horrible in the eye and fight it to the death. And sometimes, that scares me senseless.”
He was staring, bleakly now, at Yalena, who was sitting in Kafari’s lap, playing with a strand of her hair. “Oh, Simon, what are we going to do?”
“Survive,” he said, voice harsh with strain. “And,” he added, forcing his voice into a more pleasant register, “eat breakfast. Nobody can fight a war effectively on an empty stomach.”
Kafari couldn’t help it. Her husband’s tone was so droll, his suggestion so eminently practical, tension leached out in a semihysterical bubble of laughter. “There speaks the seasoned veteran. All right, let’s go fry some eggs or something.”
He gave her a hand up and took charge of Yalena, handing over his gun — and handing her, as well, the responsibility for first-strike should those two goons decide to swing back for another go at it. Kafari slid her own gun into a capacious pocket, being careful to engage the safety first, and tucked Simon’s gun into a second pocket.
She paused long enough to call up their datanet account, where she found the notice in question. It had been sent at one-thirty a.m., a decidedly odd hour to be posting notices of this magnitude. It was short and pungent.
All parents are hereby notified that per administrative ruling 11249966-83e-1, the in-home inspections and daycare provisions mandated by the Childhood Protection Act have been expanded to cover every child on Jefferson, regardless of the employment status of the parents.
Somebody, Kafari realized with a cold chill, had been watching them. Closely enough to notice when she resigned her position at Port Abraham. Noticed and acted, with frightening speed. Had everyone else on Jefferson actually received this notice or had it been crafted especially for them, to force the issue of home inspections that POPPA clearly wanted to conduct in Simon’s quarters? Gaining access to their quarters must be high on somebody’s list of priorities. Simon’s enemies wanted either revenge or his military information, or both. In an equally plausible alternative, they might be trying to score a public relations coup by forcing the “hated foreign tyrant” to surrender custody of his child in obedience to the will of the people.
The speed at which the Santorinis engineered massive changes in public opinion continued to terrify Kafari. She printed the message and carried it into the kitchen, where Simon had already put Yalena back into the toddler seat and was busy at the stove with eggs and a frying pan.
He glanced at the message, grunted once, and shrugged. “They can try. Easy over or sunny-side up?”
Well, if Simon could set it aside for the moment, so could she. “Sunny sounds good to me.”
He smiled at the double-entendre contained in that answer. “Me, too.”
By the time she ha
d the ham and juice ready, the worst of the shakes had gone and the cold knot of fear in her middle had begun the thaw. They had gained a breathing space, for today, at least. For now, for this morning and this meal, she was at home with her husband and her daughter. She would allow nothing to intrude deeply enough to spoil the moment. Time enough for worry, tomorrow.
* * *
She called her boss at Port Abraham, the next morning, to ask if they might still have a slot for her. Al Simmons, the port’s harried director, lit up with relief. “You want to come back? Oh, thank God! Can you start today? Can you be here in an hour?”
Kafari, startled by the urgency in her former boss’ voice, said, “I need to enroll Yalena in daycare before I can start.”
“Do it today. Please,” he added.
What in the world had been happening at the spaceport — or on Ziva Two — that had Al so frantic? She cleaned up Yalena, putting her in a rough-and-tumble jumpsuit, and drove over to the daycare center on Nineveh Base. She felt like Daniel, walking into the lion’s den. The moment she opened the door, Kafari was engulfed by the sounds of happy, shrieking children at play. It was such a normal scene, her rigid defenses wobbled slightly. The group consisted of children between the ages of six months to six years, at a glance. Kafari was greeted by a young woman in what appeared to be the daycare center’s staff uniform, a bright yellow shirt with dark green slacks and a cheery smile.
“Hello! You must be Mrs. Khrustinova. And this is Yalena?” she asked with a radiant smile for Kafari’s daughter. “What a beautiful little girl you are! How old are you, Yalena?”
“Two,” she answered solemnly.
“My, such a big girl! Would you like to play? We have all kinds of fun things for you to do.”