by Moshe Ben-Or
Make it sound like Yosi Weismann? Too easy.
Sign with the right names and titles? No sweat.
Break into the plain-looking ring Leo wore on the middle finger of his left hand, that the uninitiated so often mistook for a cheap little bit of titanium of naught but sentimental value? Fool it? Fake the sig without it? Crack or duplicate the Freeman cypher?
Yeah, right. Good fucking luck. Start by inventing a bloody time machine, and going back six hundred years.
“Prince Leonidas Freeman, commanding?” chuckled the pilot wryly. “Figures.
“Leo Freeman, plug for every hole, hero for every occasion, all-round ladies’ man, chief troublemaker and master of mischief par excellence, all the way back to first grade.
“In water he does not sink, and in fire he does not burn. Nuclear fire included, apparently.
“Here we all were, giving you up for dead, and not only are you alive and well, but you’ve got yourself a fucking army. An army from scratch, on Paradise!
“I bet Sir Psycho comes in fucking handy down there. If there’s one thing that nutcase is good for, it’s killing anything that draws breath. That’s how he got to be a Sir in the first place. Your radical Reformer grandpa is one seriously old-fashioned dude, when it comes to some things.
“I should thank you, really. If you hadn’t put that damned lead slug through my chest, I would’ve been right down there, in San Cristobal, still trying to get Emma Levsson to grace me with her favor, or at least a passing glance, when the Cats nuked the fucking place to glass.”
Paradise was only eight minutes short of a standard 24-hour day. Yosi Weismann would have sent that message just before his local sunset. Praying for an answer, on this day above all days.
The Allmother was merciful indeed.
“Ship, send a response,” said the lieutenant as the jump drive spun up. “Your message received. Will advise higher. Gmar Hatimah Tovah, and May the Allmother Keep You.”
The transmit light blinked once, and Prizrak-17 slipped into subspace.
* * *
Isadora Marcos stepped off the shuttle. The clock above the bus stop shelter read 06:40, on the dot. The sign in front welcomed passerby to the Planetary Directorate of Mining and Heavy Industry. The arrow for the headquarters building pointed to the left. A brand-new nine-story tower, all plascrete and gleaming white tile. Before the war, there used to be a tennis court here, and a little quad with a café.
Isadora stepped out briskly. Heavy Industry began work promptly at seven. That Girl had started her first day on the job by arriving one minute thirty-six seconds late; and to the Director’s office, at that. Isadora had no idea which office she was going to, but it didn’t matter. There was no second chance to make a first impression. She still had last-minute preparations to complete.
“Pass?” asked the bored-looking Assistant Patrolman at the door.
“Director’s office. Ninth floor, take a right out the elevator,” he continued, handing back the little piece of waxed cardboard that had come with her transfer papers. His pass generator spat out a palm-sized polymer square.
They were advanced over here in Heavy Industry, thought Isadora. Power and Grid still had antique preprinted passes, with metal clips. These modern ones were much nicer. They stuck to your uniform, wherever you set them, and stayed put no matter what, until you wanted them off.
The pass was programmed as a red-bordered Official Business visitor’s tag. The kind they called a Stop Sign or, more crudely, the Fuck Off Badge. It had a grayed-out Heavy Industry logo on a white background. The bold print on the face said simply:
No Escolta Requerida
DIRECTOR
No Impidan
Isadora’s heart skipped a beat.
“Like That Girl,” she thought. Exactly like That Girl.
“Is there a bathroom?” she asked, trying to suppress a nervous swallow.
“In the lobby, take a left,” answered the guard, as he buzzed her in.
“Calm down, girl,” breathed Isadora to herself as she stared at the prettied-up nervous wreck in the bathroom mirror. “Calm. It’s not him. He’ll pick from within his Directorate, especially after last week’s fiasco. Hold a Sampler, or just try out prospects at his office, like everyone else.
“Fairy tales don’t come true, Cinderella. You’re not that pretty, or witty, or nice. You’re just an average girl, and not a very bright one at that.”
She wasn’t. She was downright stupid, truth be told. Or at least she had been, before Power Coil and Lora Duarte had set her straight.
But someone had noticed.
She had no idea who, or how. She’d never been here. No one from Heavy Industry had ever had her. But he had noticed, whoever he was. At the grocery store, maybe, or at the cafeteria. Or maybe on the shuttle. Maybe he’d walked past her bay at Power Coil, and saw the ownerless gold-tab junior in the back row and…
And what? Just like that? Not an invitation to a Sampler? What ownerless girl wouldn’t jump at a Sampler invitation, and an out-of-Directorate one at that? All right, so let’s say Doctor Pillár was strict about not letting outside girls into his Samplers. Lots of Directors were like that. Or maybe her man wanted a real sample, not just a Sampler. That happened a lot, too.
How about a word said to her on the shuttle or at the store? She would’ve come along. Of course she would have. What girl wouldn’t, if he had, say, techie TA or doctoral student tabs? She would’ve done everything and anything he wanted. Done her very best to please him, in the hope he’d take her in, even without a Pin.
Heck, if he’d walked by and noticed her at work, why not a request to borrow her for a few minutes and try her out in the storeroom? Floor managers lent girls all the time. She would have done her best there, too.
None of it made any sense.
Maybe her cell chief had talked to someone? Or the section leader, or the floor manager? They all had her regularly. Over any given four weeks, every one of them would take her at least once. But none of them seemed to like it all that much, truth be told. They just had her because she was around, for variety. And she didn’t really try, with them. None of them would Pin her, or ever take her in. Why should they, even if they got promoted multiple ranks all of a sudden? She was right there on their floor, and she was free for the taking.
It all seemed entirely unlikely.
There was that TA from last week… But all he’d done was unbutton a couple of buttons on her blouse before she went into the conference room to present the running revenue projections to the Deputy Director. She’d had hopes, but it seemed like he just wanted her cleavage to interest his boss more than her numbers.
It didn’t work.
Now she was really reaching. That TA didn’t even look at her during, much less have her stay after. He had plenty of time to do more than unbutton a couple of buttons when he’d taken her aside. She’d been so hopeful that she’d almost started crying from disappointment when he’d stopped at the first two. And it was a Power and Grid meeting, anyway. No one from Heavy Industry there.
Well, it didn’t matter how, or who, thought Isadora as she unpacked her little kit. Those two safety pins didn’t just materialize out of thin air inside the envelope, and neither did the terse two-line congratulations from the Director of Heavy Industry handwritten at the bottom of the registrar’s reassignment order.
She wouldn’t put it past her floor manager to slip a pair of safety pins into the envelope. He was that kind of asshole. But forging Doctor Pillár's signature…
The transfer form was an Official Document. People went to the public switching post for things like that. Besides, the envelope had been sealed, with Registrar tape over a Heavy Industry stamp. She’d been transferred overnight. The envelope had arrived late Saturday afternoon, completely out of the blue. This was no practical joke.
She hadn’t treated it like one, either. This was for real, she knew it was. No way was she screwing it up. That little kit had cost he
r a year’s pay on the black market. And then there’d been the scented soap, and the deep cleanser and the moisturizer and the shampoo and the conditioner and the wax strips, and the fee to the girl who did hair and nails on the side.
She’d sold her hose and her spare pair of stockings, emptied out her entire savings, and then she’d had to borrow from three other girls. The tiny vial of rose oil alone had cost two thousand pesos, and the lipstick had cost three and a half.
Nobody made makeup anymore. Or shampoo, or conditioner, or moisturizer, or scented body soap, or anything else every girl on the planet had taken for granted before the war. They didn’t even make tampons anymore, or disposable pads. Just reusable cloth ones, the kind you had to wash.
Perfume someone made, right here on campus. Agronomy or Chemistry, or maybe a bit of both. By hand, no doubt, and at risk of a public switching for diverting vital supplies.
It didn’t matter. She had to be perfect. Perfect.
Launder, press, adjust, shine. Rehearse. Wash, wax, shave, clip, pluck. Rehearse again. And again and again and again! Rise before dawn, wash one more time, get hair done, get nails done, didn’t matter what the other girl had charged to get up that early. It was all worth it!
One last rehearsal. Full-dress walkthrough. And out the door.
Best uniform, best nails, best hair, best skin. Best body, head to toe. No tiny detail left unattended. Best everything. Best performance. There would be no second chance. She had to show him.
He’d made the right choice. First glance, no Sampler, no tryout, not even a chance conversation, but he was still right. He was brilliant, he had perfect taste, his intuition didn’t fail him. She was the right choice. She’d prove it, from the very first second!
He was a TA, of course. Or else a grad student. Sometimes a grad student made Assistant Prof right off the bat.
Well, it didn’t matter what he was, before Saturday. This morning he’d be wearing one thick stripe, and looking to Pin a third girl. Her. Isadora Marcos. Finally, for the love of God! And at the Director’s office!
He was high up in the Directorate. He had to be, for Doctor Pillár to write out those two lines in his own hand.
All right, maybe not. Pillár was a savage, everyone said so, but he had order and discipline in his outfit. The place was a damned machine and so was he. He worked hundred-hour weeks, when he was taking it easy. Lived for months out of his aircar, flying from site to site, and still ran Heavy Industry with an iron fist. No detail escaped him. Nothing eluded his all-seeing eye. His aides literally dropped on their feet from exhaustion. He had them working in shifts, and still they could barely keep up with him. Lesser beings died from such schedules; but Pillár worked.
Men like that did things by the book.
You promoted a fellow in person, you shook his hand, you congratulated his new girl, watched him Pin her, everybody clapped, they went off for her Plunge. And then back to business!
There were factories to build and steel to pour! There were ores to mine and furnaces to feed! There was titanium to burn out of the rock, and aluminum to shock into existence!
The planet needed trucks and buses and tractors and dozers and construction bots; it needed aircars and airbuses and suborbitals and helicopters and tiltrotors and transport planes and spaceplanes and orbital barges; it needed locomotives and rail cars and trolleys and heavy rail and light track; it needed turbines and dams and transformers and new power lines; it needed new tenements for workers and new office towers for bosses; it needed guns and armored cars for cops and all kinds of other stuff, and it all took metal, metal, metal. Metal and ceramic and machines from Heavy Industry!
It didn’t matter if her man worked cheek by jowl with El Hefe or if he was shipping out this afternoon to crack the whip at some construction site halfway across the planet. If she was living in a tent or if she was living in an aircar, it didn’t matter. He was a new-minted Assistant Prof for sure, he’d had his choice of any ownerless girl on campus, and he’d picked her! For all her stupidity, finally she had her second chance!
What an utter moron she’d been, thought Isadora. Not all that long ago, at that. That’s why she’d missed the bus, the first time ‘round.
Too much baggage from the dead old world. All her life she’d gone with the flow, and it had always worked out fine. But never in her twenty years had the flow changed directions so abruptly.
And when it did, she’d listened to the wrong people. Her friends. The thought brought nothing but disdain now. What a pack of imbeciles!
They’d believed, you see. She’d gone along because it was popular and fashionable, but the likes of Ingrid and Lucia had actually believed in the nonsense. The Patriarchy was doomed to defeat, the genders were interchangeable, and Progress was inevitable. That’s what they’d been told all their lives, and that’s what they’d believed.
She’d believed nothing, either way. She’d never really thought about it. When she did, for a second, she knew that it was all a bunch of puffed-up dreck. All right, she didn’t know that. She wasn’t that bright. But she’d felt it, deep underneath. She’d give herself that much credit.
But it didn’t matter at the time. What mattered was falling in with the right crowd, getting through the right doors, and never stepping foot inside a barrio tenement, ever again. For the daughter of a taxi repairman and a maid, the rest was academic.
She’d gone along with Ingrid and Lucia for three years, waving signs and shouting slogans. It got her extra points with all the right professors on campus, and with Lucia’s mother. Another year, and it would have gotten her a good job. Señora Lopez had promised an internship to hire, seeing how well her summer stint at the legal firm had gone. She’d even styled herself a lesbian, and slept with Lucia once or twice. That’s what had gotten her the summer job.
She’d gotten so used to listening to them, thought Isadora, that she’d listened to them still, long after the flow had changed. More fool she.
It was the isolation, really. If the lot of them hadn’t spent thirty-two days in the basement of the Agronomy building, helping to tend Havenite mushrooms, she would’ve snapped out of it sooner. She would’ve seen the world changing. As it was, she hadn’t even bothered to inquire as to the source of the oily, pinkish-yellow liquid they’d poured into the drip irrigators that fed the stacks of fungal bed. Someone else had been set to feeding the corpses of dead Looters into the waste processor.
When she’d emerged from that basement at the close of the Siege, she’d been a time traveler. She’d watched the men marching back in from the Counterattack in their dusty uniforms, and she’d recoiled in horror from their eyes, and from the stench of sweat mixed with powder smoke and blood, and from the sight of their red-crusted bayonets. Frozen in the old world, like a fly trapped in amber, right along with all the other girls in Marty Milena’s little never-neverland kingdom. And that’s why she’d missed the bus.
While other, smarter girls had been busy securing their futures, she’d listened to the idiots clucking about women’s rights and patriarchal oppression, and psychopathic killers, and PTSD, and rape culture, and a world gone mad, and dignity, and the moral duty to resist. And she’d hidden away with the rest of the clueless morons, back in that basement. The fungal stacks didn’t get automated until mid-April. They’d all missed Pin Day, and then it was too late.
She’d understood her stupidity soon enough, thought Isadora. Other girls thought that ownerless techies were safe, but it wasn’t really true. Ownerless white-tab girls had it worst. Ownerless red-tab girls had it bad. For ownerless techie girls, the circle of those who could have you was smallest. The rules were tightest. Walking across campus was generally safe, at least before dark and in groups, although it was still wiser to tag along with a man. You were safe in your dorm, and you were safe in public. No one would just grab you by the arm and drag you off like an ownerless white-tabber, or barge into your room and start undressing you with nary a word exchanged. Sundays and
evenings most everyone had class, and you were all right there, too.
But you spent twelve hours a day, six days a week, at work. If you were a Survivor, you worked for six to eight hours, depending on what needed doing, you did additional on-the-job training in your specialty for three to five, and you had an hour for lunch. The A-tabbers mostly worked four to six hours a day, depending on their class schedule and their school. Much of it was OJT. The men had twelve hours of Drill on Saturdays, so Saturday was generally all right. But how it all played out Monday through Friday depended on location. Some places were nice. Some places weren’t so nice. And some places were bad. Power Coil was bad.
On her first day at work, she’d had a bruised cheek by seven oh five, and stripes on her rear by seven fifteen.
By lunch, she’d been bent over a desk twice, had her skirt up in front of the entire bay once, her lip was split, she had bruises from a rubber switch all the way down to the back of her knees and she wasn’t really sure which opening hurt more, her front or her back.
All she knew was that neither was virgin anymore, that they were both oozing blood into her panties, and that it would’ve all gone much quicker, with far less pain and humiliation, had she immediately and unquestioningly done what she was told. So much for her dignity and her moral duty to resist.
Nobody cared about her golden junior’s tabs. The managers were all tech men themselves, all Survivors, all upperclassmen and grad students who ranked her. While she’d spent her Siege pouring nutrient solution into drip irrigators and harvesting fungal mat, they’d spent theirs killing Looters. She was fair game to them.
Her floor manager had two hundred confirmed bayonet kills and raging PTSD. On the first day of the Siege, an ad-hoc company of plasma engineers went up on the Wall together. Thirty-two days later, among those hundred and twenty-seven men, he was the lone survivor. He had strict policies about ownerless girls. New ones got shown their place, first thing in the morning.