AllFreeNovel
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All’s I know is to be a servant. Before that a slave. I imagine myself sitting across from a big man in a suit at an interview like they show in the holos. He’d ask my skills and I’d tell him I know how to tend silkspiders to keep them free of beetles, and how to put them to nest at night. I know how to bribe mine tinpots, how to haggle down an ounce of sugar, how to listen to rumors so I don’t get stuck by a 121 gang.
“Ruster smarts, my goodlady,” he’d say. “But we don’t need that around here. Have you tried janitorial?”
—
The museum is fine and clean and cluttered. The Dawn of the Space Age wing is packed. Full of ancient spaceships donated by Regulus ag Sun himself. I have to push through a group of Grays and Blues to even glimpse half the relics. Through a crook in a woman’s elbow, I recognize the winged heel of the Silver’s company logo. The same that was on our tents and our food packets and our water purifier. The same as on the robots that replaced us in our own unprofitable mine.
The History of the Conquerors exhibit is closed; Warden barriers block it off. A flock of Coppers in front of me titter like jungle helions about there being some sort of terrible theft a few weeks back. Through a gap in the tarp that covers the front of the exhibit, I see several Greens are installing hardware in the floor as a crew of Oranges and Reds fix a marble arch where CONQUERORS has been burned over with COCK SUCKERS.
I smile to myself.
I skip the wing devoted to the Rising—little Conn and Barlow would have wailed in disappointment—and instead join the line for the Liberty Wing. There I find a room of concrete that stretches several stories high, narrowing at the top to let in a thin stream of light; a million Red Sigils litter the floor. Small as thumbs, made of flexible metal just like those on my own hands. Each taken from the mines that the Jackal of Mars liquidated. They call it the Hall of Screams.
It’s grotesque and cold and I want to flee it. But I stay. Of all the art here, this is the straightest in the eye you can look at the horror. A man barely older than me falls down weeping, clutching one of the Sigils. He’s alone, but Reds behind him kneel to comfort him till there’s a thick cluster around him and they’re all weeping and I’m wiping my own eyes and looking away, wondering if I should join, but feeling too awkward and too moved to actually do it. Where was this love in Camp 121?
A pair of towering Golds stand on the far side with their young son, watching the display. They’re a handsome couple. Their eyes somber, respectful. But I want to shout at them. Tell them to slag off. This belongs to us.
Then the iron tinkles as their son slips from his mother’s grasp and walks out onto the Sigils. His shoes rattle the Sigils together. The sound bounces against the concrete, rising level by level, the noise growing with each ricochet till it reaches the top of the room’s cold concrete throat.
The clustered Reds stop and stare.
Made nauseous and claustrophobic from the Hall of Screams, I push my way out of the crowd, trying to find a place to sit down and recover. All the coffee shops are filled, so I aim for a small park outside the museum. I squeeze between a slow-moving gaggle of airy Blues, past jabbering Greens, the Colors all clustered together on the broad white steps that lead up to the museum. Carefully, I brush past a dreadful Gold woman who is stopped in the middle of the walkway, talking on an internal chip. A Red with eccentric piercings bumps into me, eager to get ahead. “Sorry, love,” he mumbles, and carries on, sliding through the crowd, trailing smoke from his burner.
Someone shouts behind me on the stairs. I turn around to see the Gold woman wheeling about in a frenzy, her eyes scanning the crowd till they settle on me. She points a long, jeweled finger. “You.” I look behind me to see who she’s talking to. “Thief!” She pushes in my direction and I realize she’s coming right for me. The people around me lurch away. I have the urge to flee, but I stand rooted to the spot on the sidewalk. “Watchmen!” the towering woman shouts. “Watchmen! Where is it, you little ruster?” the woman sneers down at me. Easily a foot taller than me. A hundred pounds heavier. More, despite how thin she is. She looks like an emaciated gold salamander wrapped in a fur coat, but her large eyes glitter like two evil gems. “I know you took it.”
“I didn’t take shit,” I snap. She grabs my arm and yanks so hard I feel my shoulder grind in its socket. My feet come clear off the ground.
“We’ll see about that. Watchmen!”
“They’re coming,” someone says.
I look around in confusion and squirm sideways so that she loses hold of my rain-slicked jacket. “Don’t let her leave.” A female Green and an old Silver man step into my path. The Silver grabs me and holds my arm until two Watchmen push their way through the gathering crowd. Grays. A spike of fear goes through me. They wear blue cloth caps and gray uniforms with titanium badges with a blindfolded woman holding the star of the Republic. The younger of the two tells the bystanders to move along as the oldest cranes his neck to look up at the Gold, nodding respectfully. “Is there a problem, citizen?”
“This one’s a thief.”
He looks at me calmly. “What, her?”
“The little urchin stole my bracelet! Took it right off my wrist.”
My eyes widen. “Like hell I did.”
“I saw her try to get away,” the Silver declares. “I detained her till you arrived.”
“It was a diamond and lyrconium bracelet. Incredibly expensive. I was talking on my com and she pickpocketed me. Slippery little fingers.”
My tongue is struck dumb. “Hold your head still, citizen,” the older, fatter Watchman says. A clear optic falls over his left eye from the thin plastic headset he wears just beneath his blue beret. “Gotta scan you in.”
“But I didn’t do anything….”
“Then you’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Did either of you see this happen?” the younger Gray asks the Green and Silver.
“Saw the ruster bump into her.”
“No. Just heard the shout.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
