Apparent Catastrophe
Page 6
Walter lived in one of the lower security dormitories, on a level close to the surface. He found Spurs in the same facility, but four levels closer to the planet’s core, and under slightly tighter security. Walter had no clue as to what Spurs had done to earn the extra scrutiny, but the fact that the Collective’s proctors had him working in a kitchen washing pots and pans hinted they didn’t see him as much of a threat. It also indicated that his identity had gone undiscovered.
The Collective had segregated their prisoners, the only mixing between genders being on work details or in the dining halls. Children were housed with the women, and orphans were assigned to women who had no children of their own. The dining halls provided the only real chance for families to reconnect, and plenty of sobbing and tears marked the ends of those meetings. For prisoners with family, being denied a meal or sent to solitary confinement became even more of a punishment, and punished the family as well.
And then there is disassociation.
In Walter’s experience, only sex had more euphemisms for it than murder. Smoke, vape, scrag, off, erase and terminate came to mind without a moment’s serious thought. One thing remained true: the more clinical, cold and distant the term used, the more the speaker robbed the victims of their humanity. Disassociation was meant to punish the victim, but also told the survivors that the victim had selfishly diminished the whole community. The very act of disassociation became, then, a benefit to the community because it stopped the rot.
And, not unexpectedly, provided little comfort to the survivors.
Even before the concussive fog had fully lifted from his brain, Walter knew he had to escape. He had to get Spurs and Sophia. They had to get away from the camp and get off Maldives. While the Collective didn’t seem very well organized or terribly efficient, he expected their identities would collapse sooner rather than later. Once the Collective caught them, Walter had no doubt that Ivan’s life expectancy could be measured in days, and counted using only the fingers of one hand.
The afternoon educational sessions consisted largely of rote repetition exercises devoted to revolutionary sayings and ethical mantras. The prisoners endlessly repeated bits of wisdom like “The i in Collective is subordinate to the C, which stands for Community”—or whatever else the buzzword of the day was. Anyone whose attention flagged or whose enthusiasm was lacking in the eyes of the proctors faced discipline, which always began with being brought forward for a ritual self-denunciation.
More often than not, the educational sessions concluded with the prisoners being forced to watch holovid of the show trials for enemies of the state. After the third session watching a defendant stand in the dock while the prosecutor read out charges, Walter understood that each trial was a morality play. Each performance used the same script and just recast the defendant for the new matinee. The defendants would plead guilty, beg for mercy, and the court would sentence them to disassociation for their crimes.
Walter first made contact with Spurs in the dining hall kitchen, mopping up splashed water from the sink where Ivan scrubbed burned crust from pots. Once the staff got used to his presence, Walter would take his dinner in the kitchen. He’d sit back by the sink, hunched over his food, wary as a starving dog. Ivan’s clatter of pots and pans provided more than enough cover for their conversations.
Walter made a show of chewing with his mouth open. “Getting up top ain’t hard. College students here found a dozen ways. Just follow the empty beer cans.”
Ivan wiped forehead sweat away with his forearm. “Saw a third.”
“Oh?”
“Conason. Fed Suns citizen, was with the Lancers. Power armor, but worked security on a detail for me years ago.”
“He’s up here?”
“Every morning. Model prisoner.”
“Plant?”
“Nasty head scar.” Ivan rinsed a serving pan and set it in the drying rack. “Rumor is he got pulled from headquarters rubble and his brain is scrambled.”
“Not a recommendation for our escape team.”
“He’s as scrambled as you. He recognized me. Made a comment.”
“Okay, I’ll find him.” Walter had outlined to Ivan the need for a small team of folks who would escape together. If Conason was power armor, he’d have core infantry skills that would be incredibly useful. Walter wasn’t entirely certain he trusted Ivan’s skills at personality assessment, but the guy was worth looking at. The fact that they had to trust some folks in a situation where they shouldn’t trust anyone drove Walter up a wall.
Ivan had recommended one other person, and Walter had reached out, finding her in the camp’s industrial laundry. Ashleigh Knight went by Ash and, despite her circumstances, wore a big smile. Though easily described as petite, the ease with which she hauled around baskets of wet laundry left no doubt as to her physical strength. She also managed to make others feel good, as evidenced by how others on the work detail sought her approval and advice—including several of the proctors.
When he’d first approached her, her blue eyes had narrowed suspiciously, but she listened carefully as she processed the prisoners’ confiscated street clothes. Walter hadn’t revealed who he was, but said he was getting out as soon as he found a woman named Felicia Fisher. He hoped Ash could help locate her, maybe get her on the laundry detail.
Ash met his gaze without flinching. “The fact that you’re not telling me everything ought to make me more wary. But that also makes sense.”
Walter, employing his mop to obliterate a small pile of suds, shrugged.
“I’ll find her. And if it hovers, has tracks or tires, I can drive it.” She looked around at the rest of the workers. “Do I get a plus one?”
“If I find you something you can drive.”
“Fair enough.” Ash’s lips flattened into a straight line. “And if some proctor uniform bits or other things go missing . . .”
Walter nodded.
“Got it.” She started stuffing wet clothes into a big dryer. “I’ll get to work. Check back next week.”
Walter had located one more recruit for the group in one of the campus’ mechanical rooms. Raymond Angelis, a tall, dark-haired man, was working on a heat pump. HVAC wasn’t his specialty, but it didn’t matter—his ability to fix anything that worked with a motor or when hitched to a reactor made him a legend on Maldives. Walter’s Blackjack had a chronic problem with an arm actuator, and he’d been directed to Angelis almost immediately after making landfall. Within an hour Angelis had diagnosed the problem, and it only took him two more to fix it.
The Collective had scooped him up as a precaution. His ability to fix BattleMechs made him a valuable resource in a theatre where entropy was going to do as much damage as any battle. Walter had asked Angelis why the Collective didn’t have him fixing their ’Mechs. Angelis, who had not recognized Walter at first, said he couldn’t answer that question. “Maybe they decided that because I’d done work for pretty much everyone on Maldives I couldn’t be trusted. I don’t mind. There’s enough work to do here.”
At first Angelis had passed on joining the escape team, but then “Mop Boy” got sent to clean up an oil spill in a mechanical room. Walter hadn’t thought anything of it until he saw Angelis covered in oil. No way a man of his skills would have caused a leak like that. Walter made everything spic and span and Angelis informed him that he’d join the escape.
“Why?”
The quiet man’s face closed. “They had me ‘fixing’ things, taking off safeguards. They aren’t using them as intended. I don’t want to be part of that.” The pain in his voice communicated all that the words did not.
Walter was glad to have him. Part of Walter’s training had included Escape and Evasion. As far as escape was concerned, each effort required materiel and expertise collected and provided by as small a group as possible. Disguises and driving fell to Ash. Angelis h
ad knowledge of how the campus worked and local geographical information based on his being a native. Conason and Walter could both provide muscle and tactical leadership. Sophia and Ivan had local knowledge and would have sympathizers who might be able to provide transportation and sanctuary. Ivan could also secret away food, which would be very important if they wanted to go undetected. Heck, in this economy, a kilo of rice might as well be a kilo of platinum.
Still, Walter’s plan had serious deficiencies. Ash might be able to drive anything this side of a ’Mech, but Walter didn’t have access to anything for her to drive. Moreover, he had no intel on where they might find sanctuary. The fact was that remaining on Maldives really wasn’t an option, since Ivan and Sophia served as valuable political pawns. With them went a certain amount of legitimacy, and that legitimacy would be really useful to forces trying to control Maldives. Getting them off-world was the play, but getting access to a DropShip was another problem for which Walter had no solution.
The lack of real news also frustrated Walter. Rumors ran rampant through the camp, making a circuit and becoming more and more outrageous with each retelling. By the time Walter had gotten his wits back, the raid in which he’d been taken had become a pitched battle in a fierce thunderstorm, with the Collective’s ’Mechs striding over the battlefield like old gods smiting the unjust. The titanic battle was said to have broken the back of the resistance, yet the arrival of new captives and new rumors buried that notion.
The news provided in Collective broadcasts—or, at least, the mandatory screening of same during evening meals—suggested nothing but sunshine and bountiful harvests. More and more of those who remained outside the Collective were seeing the error of their ways and surrendering. Holovid that showed prisoners with their hands up being greeted with open arms, being bathed and clothed and fed, proved the Collective was winning. And, to the Collective’s credit, they actually shot new daily propaganda footage, instead of just rerunning the same scenes over and over again.
While those scenes didn’t fool Walter in the least, in his wanderings he noticed people who appeared to accept them as truth. He wanted to dismiss those individuals as being stupid, but he came to understand something more insidious was at work. The message offered in those holovids was of redemption. No matter what people had done to place themselves outside the Collective, they could be welcomed back in. For people who had lost all sense of identity, having had their lives severed at the point of the coup, joining the Collective and accepting their propaganda as truth created a new identity. It created a pathway to being made whole again and ending their current nightmare. It didn’t matter to them that it clearly was all fiction—since the scenes contradicted the very ordeals they’d undergone to land them in the camps. The ordeals had been part of their old lives. Now they had to live for the new reality.
As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t fault them for choosing to go along with their oppressors. Unlike him, most people never had been trained to fight. Resistance wasn’t in their coping toolbox. Most people went through their whole lives doing all they could to avoid conflict. So often in society, the person who fought back was the person who got punished. Silently enduring oppression was rewarded more than actively resisting it. Not only did people not know better, they actually thought passivity was the best strategy for dealing with persecution.
Walter might have given up all hope of being able to get any reliable information, save for one other universal truth: any closed power system quickly developed its own economy. The proctors might eat better food than the prisoners, but few of them ever got to eat as much as they wanted. And there was a reason why sex had more euphemisms than killing—popularity. Favors begat favors. Just by keeping his eyes and ears open, Walter was able to construct a mental map of the black market functioning within the camp—including the times when temptation drew a proctor away from their station, creating a lovely little hole in security.
Indulgences by proctors also provided ample opportunity for blackmail, which Walter fully intended to employ. He figured that was the most likely way he’d be able to arrange for transportation away from the site. Ditto identification cards and travel passes. He would have gladly killed to provide Ivan with fifteen minutes of access to the planet’s computer system, but getting that would require someone fairly high up making a really bad mistake.
The impossibility of orchestrating a successful escape threatened to overwhelm Walter. He had all the pieces identified, and was beginning to juggle a few of them. Getting them all into play, however, and keeping things going without a hitch gave Walter a sense of dread. Any one thing goes wrong, even a little bit, and it would all collapse. And the most common little bit would be a bullet flying straight.
Still, there were victories that did give him heart. He passed Ash in a corridor and she told him he’d be needed in the laundry following the afternoon lesson. He made his way there, lurking outside as the new shift wandered in. Ash passed him without notice or a word. And trailing behind her, her golden hair hidden beneath a scarf, came Sophia.
Walter smiled to himself. Finding her was a big hurdle to get over. I’ll just let her know Ivan is doing well and . . .
An angry command echoed through the corridor. “You, Mop Boy, get over here.”
That voice, I know it. Walter spun, fighting to keep his eyes dull and his reaction from his face. “Me, sir?”
“Yes, you.” Calvin Galarza, dressed in a high proctor’s uniform, waved him forward. “You’re coming with me.”
Chapter Eight
Golden Prosperity Reeducation Camp, Rivergaard
Maldives
30 November 3000
Walter kept his eyes vacant and his head down as he shuffled in the high proctor’s wake. He carried his mop as a soldier might carry a rifle. That Galarza didn’t have a pistol or even a baton, and that armed guards didn’t join them immediately, made Walter feel a bit better, but he couldn’t bring himself to imagine that Galarza had failed to recognize him.
And yet, Galarza walked along without so much as casting a glance behind himself. He didn’t appear to be completely carefree, but was no more anxious than anyone else trying to do a job in a timely manner. The only true irritation on display concerned waiting for the lift. Once inside, he used a card key and the elevator ascended rapidly from the dark underground to the heights of surface buildings.
The lift slowed and Galarza held a hand out. “Your mop.”
Walter shook his head. “My mop.”
The high proctor sighed. “You’ll get it back, Mop Boy.”
Walter reluctantly handed it over. “My mop.”
The lift stopped and the doors opened. Bright sunlight poured through soaring glass windows across a vast expanse of office suite. Walter raised a hand to shield his eyes. I’ve seen ’Mech hangars smaller than this office.
The silhouetted figure of a lean man standing behind a desk beckoned him forward. “Please, Mr. Wilson, join me.”
Walter hesitated, but Galarza prodded him with the mop. “Go. I’ll be back for you soon.”
Walter stumbled forward, then approached slowly. The lift doors clanged shut behind him. The office suite featured mostly glass and steel, with white marble flooring, some area carpets, and chromed, industrial furnishings. Wall displays housed a variety of plaques and trophies celebrating everything from athletic championships to academic excellence. It seemed obvious that the office had once belonged to the university’s president, or the head of a very important department.
The man behind the desk touched a finger to the desktop and the windows behind him darkened a bit. The man stood not quite as tall as Walter and had the slight sort of build that seemed at home on a campus. He’d shaved his head, but sported a gray beard that ran from sideburn to sideburn, along the jaw, without a mustache. The dark eyes and hawk’s-beak nose enhanced the man’s arrogant expression.
Walter looked side to side. “Nothing to clean here.”
“Please, do not feel required to continue this ridiculous subterfuge.” The man flashed a cold smile. “I know who you are. Who you truly are.”
Acid bubbled up into Walter’s throat. “I need my mop.”
“Oh, very good. This explains a great deal in your file. Will you force me to read it to you?”
“I am Mop Boy.”
“Tedious but, I suppose, necessary.” The man flicked a finger across the glass. “Wall-eye Wilson, poacher, small-time thief, a man with no scruples, no legitimate skills, with the sole redeeming characteristic of paternal sentiments directed toward your nephew. Please, do tell me this is just an uncle’s feelings for a nephew and not some fetishism born out of incest or something else distasteful.”
Walter raised his head, but said nothing.
“We picked you and your nephew up in one of our sweeps. He’s been quite productive in the kitchens. You, by feigning mental instability, have had to do nothing more than wander and occasionally clean up messes. Have I missed anything?”
Aside from who we really are and the whole planning-to-escape thing, nope. Walter let his Mop Boy persona drain away. “You said you had a use for me.”
“There he is, the opportunist—and the man bright enough to realize that I am a threat to his nephew as well as himself. So pleased to meet you.” The man extended a hand in Walter’s direction. “I am Commissar Ian Levine. I administer this camp.”
Walter shook the man’s hand. “Mop Boy.”
“Of course. Let me congratulate you. You have fooled many, but not me.” Levine waved Walter to a chair, then began to pace. “Before the change of regime, I worked here, at the university. I was in the psychology department. I espoused certain views which were used to deny me tenure, but I was brilliant enough that the university never let me go. And when I say brilliant, it was not just in my teaching and researching, but in the ways that I played faculty factions against each other to prevent my dismissal.”