by Rachel Ford
On Theta, news of the political climate on Central was limited. But he’d heard whispers. He’d seen broadcasts that alluded to small pockets of unrest, areas of discontent roiled by political extremists. Still, he was surprised to see it; he’d assumed that it must be more limited, rarer. What, after all, could the people of Central have to complain about? Certainly, life was not always easy; but there was always opportunity. His parents were evidence of that, weren’t they? When there hadn’t been enough opportunity on Central, they’d been free to make their own; they had seized the day. They hadn’t complained. They hadn’t paraded through the capital demanding attention. They had seized the vertig beast by the horns, and made their own opportunities.
Brek realized he was frowning deeply at the group’s approach, and in particular the scrap of a man leading it. He was about Brek’s own age, he thought, but with a softer look; the kind of look that came with the warmth and security of living on Central.
“Fair wages now!” the man was crying into a bullhorn. “Dignity for all Tribari! We are people, not machines!” The ragtag band behind him were echoing his calls. Brek took a moment to survey the signs they carried.
Fair Wages
Safe Working Conditions
Free Water for All
Care for the Sick
He shook his head. Didn’t these people know anything? There was no profit without risk, there were no free lunches. If you wanted something, you had to work for it, you had to achieve it. “No wonder,” he thought of his parents, “they got the hell out of here.” Central was going soft.
“The Contributors take our waking hours, they take our health, they take our wealth, and then they leave us to die, broken and broke. No more!” The youth on the bullhorn was continuing, sizing up the crowd for support.
Brek saw a disgusted shake of the head from a cart vendor opposite him, and a few approving nodes among those seated near him. A well-dressed lady, sitting outside one of the more expensive cafes with an overdressed child, spat at the crowd. More than anything, though, he sensed a quiet fear. That surprised him. All around, from the shopkeepers to the street sweeper to the window shoppers, he saw downturned eyes, apprehensive postures, and stolen glances.
What, he wondered, were they afraid of? Had there been trouble with these protesters before? They seemed a band of harmless, albeit irreverent, waifs, and little else.
“They say labor is a commodity, but they get to set the price. And if we try to negotiate a better rate for our own time, our own lives – well, we all remember what happened to the Carter’s Guild, don’t we?” This was said toward the cart vendors. A few knowing nods answered. A few eyes returned fearfully to their wares. Brek wondered what this point of mutual knowledge between protesters and sellers might be; it was the first he’d heard of it. “No more. We have the right to organize! By law we have the liberty of speech and assembly, as much as the Contributors! We have the right to demand that our lives, our labor, our rights are respected.”
The well-dressed woman stood, seizing her child by the arm and yanking him to his feet. In his surprise, the boy upturned his seat, and it landed on the patio with a clatter. For a moment, all eyes turned in the direction of the noise. Brek saw an imposing lady, tall and dressed in Central’s finest. Her overcoat was inlaid with jewels, and the headpiece that held her fifteen braids was encrusted in shimmering gems. It was her eyes, more than anything else, though, that signaled her distance from the assemblage. Her pupils were narrow, the yellow of her irises having taken on a steely gray aspect. She seemed as aloof and cold as Red Theta at the moment. This was, he realized, more than just a wealthy matron and son. She was probably wife of one of the Contributors, and this boy a son.
The man behind the bullhorn seemed to arrive at the same conclusion, although his response was rather different than Brek’s. While the miner felt a vague apprehension clutch his breast, the protester allowed a crooked smile to creep across his features. “I think we’ve offended her ladyship there,” he prodded. “But if you think hearing about it is bad, Madam Contributor, imagine how much more distasteful it is to go to bed hungry every night; to lack clean water; to see your children starve a little more every day; to lose family for lack of medicine, because you can’t pay the entry fee for the hospitals.”
Brek frowned. Whatever their arguments, it seemed wrong to heckle a great lady. “Perhaps,” he rejoined, “your problems would be fewer if you got off your ass and worked a job.”
He didn’t particularly care for the attention of the crowd, but he tried to hide any discomfort, even as the yellow eyes of its leader found him. The young man held him in his gaze, scrutinizing him for a few moments; meanwhile, the lady, whoever she was, took the opportunity this distraction provided to drag her son toward a sideway, away from the crowd. “That, my friend, is easier to do when there are jobs.”
“There are always jobs,” Brek countered.
The yellow eyes surveyed him a second time. “You must be new to Central.”
Brek faltered. He wasn’t sure what gave him away, much less how it pertained to the conversation.
“There aren’t jobs here. Not anymore. Not since the farms introduced automation. Now there’s three hundred applicants for any job – from street sweep to apprentice dressmaker. And the jobs that still remain don’t pay enough for living. People are starving – dying.”
This was news to Brek. They’d seen a slight influx of immigrants on Theta, but nothing to indicate a situation like the one described. “Well,” he offered, “if that’s so, you’ll have to go elsewhere. To where the jobs are.”
“And where is that? Where, in all of blessed creation, are there jobs and living wages and basic rights for all of us?”
His followers so far had remained largely silent, but now a murmur of assent rose from them, grim and raw.
Brek had no answer. Theta always had openings, as age, poor health, and accidents claimed workers; but to support the kind of workforce this man was describing? Not if they opened a dozen new mining facilities. As far as the other planets and moons, he didn’t know. News was even more limited from there than it was from Central. “I’m sure there’s-”
His platitude was interrupted by one of the shopkeepers. “Enough. Get the hell out of here already. We don’t want your brand of trouble.”
“Aye,” another called. “We’ve worked hard for what we have. We don’t need parasites like you mucking shit up.”
A few cart vendors agreed. The rest returned to studying the various surfaces of their workspace, or the wares they sold day in and day out. From somewhere left of his view, an object – a piece of fruit, perhaps? A mug? – flew in front of Brek’s face, headed for the protesters. It missed his interlocutor by a hair, bloodying the face of a woman behind him.
It seemed the world moved from order to chaos in but a blink of an eye. Brek had barely understood the significance of the flying object, the cries of the injured protester, when his ears and eyes perceived commotion on all sides. Vendor, patron and protester alike fell into a frenzy. Men and women who had been hawking wares side by side a moment before turned to thrashing each other. Shoppers set aside their precious goods to bash the heads of strangers. Some seemed to take the side of the protesters, some their attackers, and some simply fell to smashing skulls.
Brek sat frozen in his seat for a moment, too stunned to react. Something – he wasn’t sure what – grazed his head, biting deep into the flesh of his brow, and the pain and blood drew him from his stupefaction. He had his ideas, certainly, about these protesters, and he had his ideas about responding – even to such distasteful characters – with violence. But none of that was relevant in the moment. He brushed an ample stream of blood out of his eye, blinking the thick blue liquid away. He had to get his bearings, to get out of here.
Brek Trigan was a respectable man, with a respectable life. He had no desire either to bash heads or have his own bashed; but more than that, oddly, the specter of career implicat
ions loomed large in his mind. Respectability was paramount to any organization, and a reputation as a troublemaker could retard the trajectory of anyone’s life. He needed to get out of here, sooner rather than later.
Pushing to his feet, fighting the fog that lingered in his head from the mystery blow, Brek reached for his bag of crisps.
They were gone. A haze of blue coated his right eye, casting strange shadows in his vision. He blinked furiously. But clearing his vision only confirmed what his hands had already told him.
The crisps had vanished. A quick gaze around revealed that the bag had not inadvertently slipped out of sight. It was good and truly gone. Someone, he realized, had robbed him. Perhaps the same someone who had struck him. Perhaps someone who had taken advantage of his dazed state.
He threw a furious glare at the crowd around him, hoping to see some hint of the thief. Bodies, clustered in piles here and there, were everywhere. The entire plaza was a blur of motion and sound, sprawling forms trampled underfoot and sprays of blood streaking the pavement.
A body slammed into him, and Brek turned, ready to take out his anger on his attacker. But he wasn’t being attacked; he’d simply been in the path of a heavy Tribari, on a downward descent. He was a middle-aged man, in what had been a presentable workman’s uniform. Now he was a mess of blood and torn fabric.
Brek watched him slump to the ground, and then looked back in the direction he’d come from. Whoever had rendered him into this state had vanished once more in the swirling mass of anger and violence. Brek felt a shiver pass up and down his spine. He wondered if the man at his feet, laying in an ever-widening pool of blue, was alive or dead. He wondered how someone could mete out such violence against a stranger, and then turn away as if it was nothing.
The crisps suddenly meant far less to him than getting out of this place. Extricating his feet from under the slumped and battered form, he sought an opening in the crowd, a means of escape. But the throng ebbed and flowed like a tide, filling voids as quickly as it formed them. The instant one body went down, or one combatant fled, another filled his place.
Brek gritted his teeth and turned toward a side alley. There were still people congregated in his way in this direction, but fewer than the main streets. If he moved with purpose, with determination, perhaps they wouldn’t give him much trouble. If not…well, if it came to fisticuffs, he’d do what he needed to do.
He’d taken no more than five steps when a wailing sound split the air. It was a strange, siren-like blast that he’d not heard before. But it seemed familiar to the dueling masses around him. Indeed, the effect of that noise on the crowd was something like ice cold water on flame: sputtering, tripping over themselves in haste, they dispersed in all directions.
But there was to be no flight today. Uniformed Protectors broke onto the scene, screaming orders and wielding submission prods with a vengeance against any who resisted. Brek understood the siren, now. The constabulary had been roused and sent to quell the violence.
He saw at least a dozen men in front of him, and judging by the screams behind imagined that they were surrounded. Something like panic welled in his chest. Brek Trigan was a law-abiding citizen. He’d not so much as raised a finger, much less struck a blow, during the scuffle. But these Protectors didn’t seem in the talkative mood; their blows were landing indiscriminately on rabble rousers and victims alike.
Following the pattern of a few forms near him, Brek fell to his knees, extending his hands above his head.
“Hands up!” the Protectors were yelling. “Don’t move. Keep your hands where we can see them!” They were, it seemed to Brek, riding over the crowd, a wave of avengers smashing anything in its path.
Being in that path, he could feel himself tremble. “I surrender. I’m not looking for trouble. I was just eating my lunch.” He tried to keep his voice calm as a Protector, face hidden under a gleaming helmet, streaked here and there with smears of blue, neared. “I’m not looking for any trouble. I was just eating my lunch.”
“Quiet!” the command came a second prior to the officer jabbing a submission prod between his ribs, and unleashing a shock of electricity so intense Brek would have sworn his skin was melting.
That precise thought, of his skin turning to liquid, was the last thing Brek Trigan remembered from the incident in the market. The next was waking up to pain.
Pain in his head. Pain in his side and chest. Pain in his limbs. He was lying face down on a flat surface, in a pool of blood. He blinked into the darkness, his eyes focusing – slowly, so very slowly. He was facing a block wall painted an old and grimy off-white. He rolled onto his back, groaning as he did so. His head swam and for a minute he thought he would lose consciousness again. The feeling passed, and he stared at the ceiling overhead. It was the same grim concrete block as the walls.
Brek pushed to his elbows, and then sat. The movement proved too much, and his stomach roiled. In a moment, his legs and the floor of his little enclosure were covered in stomach bile and the half-digested remains of the crisps and grapes he’d eaten earlier.
“Water,” he called. “Please, I need water.”
But no one answered. The minutes turned into an hour, and one hour into two, and then three. Brek’s mouth was dry like sand paper, and all he could taste was vomit. His stomach had finally settled, but he felt weak and lightheaded.
Finally, someone came to the door. It was a Protector, a prod and a gun holstered to his belt. Unlike the last officers he’d met, this one was not in riot gear. “On your feet.”
Brek stood, and the other man wrinkled his nose. “Fingers laced, hands behind your head. Turn around and face the wall.”
Again, the Machine Specialist complied. He heard the cell unlock with a beep. Then he heard the Protector’s footsteps approaching. “This is a mistake, sir,” he said. “I was just eating lunch.”
“Quiet,” the officer replied. “You can tell it to the Sergeant. Any weapons on your person?” A set of rough hands grabbed at his shoulders, and made their way down, from there, the length of his body.
“No sir.”
“Good. You can put your hands down, then. Come with me.”
Brek did as he was bid, and they left the cell. The Protector took him through a maze of halls and cells, until they arrived in a concrete room with a table in the center. Across from it, behind a panel of thick, protective glass, sat another officer – the sergeant, he assumed – and a man in the robes of a civil servant.
“Thank you, Protector Gis,” the latter spoke.
“Sir.” The officer behind Brek thumped his fist to his chest in a salute.
“Now,” the civilian continued, “I am Defender Nort. This is Sergeant Dru. What is your name, prisoner?”
Brek identified himself, saying, “There has been a mistake, sir. I was not involved in the disturbance.”
“That’s not what Protector Ridi’s report shows,” the defender sniffed.
“My protector says you resisted arrest,” Dru offered.
“No sir,” Brek protested. “I didn’t.”
“Are you calling Protector Ridi a liar?”
“Of course not, sir. Only that he has been mistaken. I didn’t resist, or cause trouble. I was just caught up in it. One minute I was eating lunch, the next someone had bashed me upside the head. And then there were protectors everywhere. But I swear, on my parents’ graves, I wasn’t looking for trouble.”
The public defender and the officer exchanged glances, then sighed. “I’ve heard the same story a dozen times today,” the former said. “Fortunately for you, Machine Specialist Brek, I actually believe you.”
“You do?” The young man was almost surprised to hear it. He’d begun to fear that he should be inextricably linked to the troublemakers.
“Your record is a good one, Specialist Trigan. You have no prior arrests, and a perfect work attendance. You have been promoted rapidly, and your site managers have only good things to say about you.”
“Yes sir.
”
Defender Nort shook his head. “It seems out of character for an upstanding young man such as yourself to get drawn in with anarchists.”
“I am not in with the anarchists,” Brek assured them. “I swear, sirs, I was truly in the square only to purchase and eat my lunch.”
“What brings you to Central, Specialist Trigan?”
“To Central?” The young man hadn’t anticipated this line of questioning, but he complied. He had nothing to hide, after all. “I am on leave. It is the planet of my parents’ origin.”
“Ah. So you were visiting family?”
“No sir. I have no family living.”
The officer frowned. “Then what would bring you back to the home planet of your family, if you have no family left?”
“I…I wanted to see it,” he replied honestly. “To pray in the Grand Temple, to walk the city streets.”
“Curious sentimentality,” Nort observed. “Still, nothing wrong with honoring the planet of one’s origins.”
“If that’s all it was,” the officer added.
“It was. I swear it.”
“So you had no designs of meeting with the anarchists?”
“No sir. Of course not.” The idea rather alarmed Trigan. How could he – a simple, hardworking man – be thought to be in league with such deviants?
“You have never met with or spoken to Grel Idan?”
“I do not know who Grel Idan is,” he answered. “So I think the answer must be no. Not knowingly, anyway.”
His interlocuters exchanged glances, and then the officer laughed. “You would have seen him, at least. He’s that scrap of a boy who started the riot.”
“Oh. Then I did exchange words with him in the market. I told him to get a job. But nothing more.”
Nort smiled. “Wasted breath, I’m afraid. Idan’s ilk would rather take than contribute. Still, I think I’ve got the answers I need, Specialist Trigan. Are you satisfied, Protector?”
