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Only one adult and one child of a card could wait in line, so the chore usually fell to the strongest unemployed member. Whoever did the shopping might have to carry out a two weeks’ supply of foodstuffs for eight people or more. Security protection was good in The Line, but spotty elsewhere, so there were actually two lines, one on one side of the street going in and one on the other going out.
Licensed vendors like David and Torvin worked The Line, selling to those who were afraid they wouldn’t get inside today, or who wanted a little something different to take home to the wots.
The man they called “the Poet” across the way worked his way up and down The Line each day, babbling of Ship and the return of Ship. He was careful not to speak against Flattery’s Voidship project. He had done that once, and come back a broken man. The Poet had not stood upright since, but walked in a shuffle, bent nearly double at the waist. David could hear him now, shouting after the tail-end of the mob:
“I have been to the mountaintop! Let freedom ring!”
“That one?” Torvin snorted, and started his nose bleeding again. “That one has been into the spore-dust once too often.”
David smiled at his friend. He and Torvin were nearly the same age, in their sixties, but he hadn’t known Torvin long. There was much he had never told him.
“I was taken once,” David whispered. “A security wanted cakes without a marker and I wouldn’t give them to him. I knew if I did he would be back every day. He bullied me. I would rather give them to the poor, so I did a foolish thing. I threw them into The Line, and there was a scramble. Well, I knew I would be arrested, but I forgot about the others. They rounded up everyone who had a cake without a punch on the card and took them in.”
Torvin’s face paled. “My friend, I didn’t know … what did they do to you?”
“They took me to a shed that had cubicles in it, separated by curtains. In each one they were doing something to someone. The screams were terrible, and the smell …”
David took a deep breath and let it out slow. The Poet was still gesturing and railing from his hatchway.
“He was there, in the cubicle next to me. He was an important man from down under who was the director of all of HoloVision. Flattery had taken over—I didn’t know that—and this man had commented on the air that Flattery wanted to brainwash the world.”
“A brave man,” Torvin said. He appraised the Poet in a new light.
“A fool,” David said. “He would’ve been better off to find a way to fight inside, or hidden out to do something like those Shadowbox people are doing. He must’ve known what would happen.”
David dusted off his threadbare trousers, put on his cap and leaned against the hatchway, his gaze very distant and his voice low.
“Well, I’ll tell you what happened to him. They put him in a metal barrel, bent over double, and tied a block of concrete to his testicles. There was no floor in the barrel, so he could move it around by shuffling, but he had to keep bent over, and his knees bent down, to keep the weight off his testicles. His hands were tied behind his back, and throughout the day they would beat the sides of the barrel with those sticks they carry.
“They seldom fed him, but when they did he had to take food and water from the floor, bent over like that, an animal inside the barrel. He was a learned man. I never heard him curse. He only prayed. He prayed to every god I’ve heard of, and many that I don’t know. They made him crazy to discredit him—who would believe a madman? Particularly a madman who eats bugs and scraps and sometimes dirt to stay alive.”
Torvin was quiet for many blinks, digesting what his friend had told him. The Poet continued his rant, and the few security patrolling nearby ignored him.
“My friend,” Torvin said, “what did they … were you … ?”
“They beat me,” David said. “It was nothing. I was in and out in a day for being insubordinate. I don’t think the captain cared much for the security guard who charged me. At any rate, he was never seen on this street again. Look, now. It is clear, and we should go sell what we can. I want to get home and check on my Annie. She worries about me in times like this.”
Both men strapped on their little folding tables that fit around their waists and hurriedly neatened their wares. As they stepped into the muddy street Torvin heard the Poet’s hoarse voice exhort him, “Brother, brother, let freedom ring!”
Chapter 16
Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master.
—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Vashon Literature Repository
Spider Nevi watched Rico pull the gangway up and onto the deck of the Flying Fish, then he manipulated the sensor for a close view of Rico’s back as he turned away.
“Lasgun there,” Nevi said, and tapped a finger against the screen. “Belt, middle of the back. Carries himself like a fighter.”
Nevi never once glanced at the security officer watching the screen at his side. As the Flying Fish departed moorage he switched to another sensor at the mouth of the harbor, one that confirmed Crista Galli’s presence on board.
At Nevi’s command, the sensor zoomed in on the cabin of the passing foil, revealing LaPush in the copilot’s seat and Crista Galli buckled in behind him. Ozette sat to her left, behind the pilot, and was speaking to her. Nevi recognized the pilot, Elvira, and cursed under his breath.
“If your security launch tries an intercept, it will be outclassed,” he said. “What then?”
“There will be a show of force,” Zentz said, “then a warning shot.”
“And then?”
Zentz cleared his throat, stroked the swollen area near the middle of his face that functioned as a nose.
“Shoot to disable.”
Nevi snorted at the ridiculousness of it. A laser cannon strike on a hydrogen-ram foil could ignite a fireball a thousand meters wide. He thought that a rather narrow definition of “disable.”
Zentz continued, flustered at Nevi’s silence.
“The Director declared a ‘state of security’ almost a year ago,” he said. “You know mandatory interception and search of all vessels, except company ferries, that enter Kalaloch…search of any air or ground craft entering or leaving the perimeter …”
Nevi let Zentz go on with his tedious recital.
Flattery’s precious Preserve was his nest
, and Nevi knew he would take no chances here. But Nevi was sure that any interception of the Flying Fish right now could easily be bungled into a disaster of the greatest proportions. Flattery had just called him to duty because Zentz had permitted such a bungle.
“We want Shadowbox and Crista Galli,” Nevi said. “To exterminate nerve runners you have to burn their nest. This foil, intact, will lead us there.”
Zentz, ramrod-stiff in his seat, cleared his dry throat and offered, “We suspect LaPush has been a Shadow commandant for about six years …”
“Your crew is not to interfere with this vessel,” Nevi ordered. He keyed in the security frequency on his console. “You can give the order right here.” He flipped a switch and looked Zentz in the eyes.
Zentz cleared his throat again, then leaned toward the microphone. “Zentz here. Thirty-four, disregard white class-three foil departing harbor.”
“Sir,” a young voice came back, “by the Director’s orders we’re to seize any vessels sighted but not searched.”
Zentz paused, and in that pause Nevi enjoyed the exquisite dilemma that was now added to the Security Chief’s fatigue. There was only one way out, one way to satisfy the by-the-book greenhorn officer, one way to keep the Director at bay.
“I searched it personally at dockside,” Zentz said. “We know what’s on board.”
Nevi switched off the connection, satisfied with the choice he’d made in Zentz. If it came right down to it, Zentz would be the perfect sacrifice in the holiest of games, survival.
“Young officers haven’t learned their priorities yet,” Zentz said, forcing a smile.
“They have only learned fear,” Nevi said. “They mature when they understand greed.”
Zentz rubbed at the back of his thick neck, only half-listening. He had spent the entire night interrogating two of his best guards as an example to the rest, and now that Nevi had ordered Crista Galli out of his grasp it looked as if he was going to have to go through it all again. From the moment he’d freed the foil, Zentz could feel a tightening at his collar that he didn’t like—it was a noose-like grip, unrelenting as baldness, cold.
