Well, that was a bit dramatic, I thought. Given the speed of travel and communication, even the closest other planets of the Cottohazz wouldn’t hear about this dust-up for a week, and it might be a month or more before the news spread all the way to backwaters like Earth. Then maybe people would hold their breath, but whatever was going to happen would probably be over. Nobody contradicted Rimcaant though, and after a pause he went on.
“Interstellar commerce has been weakening for over five years. Capital formation has withered for three years. The continuing, ah, difficulties on K’Tok have contributed to Cottohazz-wide uncertainties. To that end, I am sure I speak for everyone here in thanking the Honorable e-Lotonaa for his fine work on K’Tok for the Cottohazz executive council.”
The’On nodded in acknowledgement but e-Bomaan, the Simki-Traak governor, made a disgusted sound.
“If the secret of the K’Tok and Peezgtaan ecoforms had not been revealed to the Humans,” he said, “we would have no trouble on K’Tok today.”
The’On tilted his head to the side and spread his hands. “Secrets are revealed,” he said. “Wishing it were otherwise accomplishes nothing. Revelation is the destiny of all secrets.”
“Not all secrets,” e-Bomaan said and exchanged a glance with the senior representative from AZ Kagataan, Simki-Traak’s biggest rival. The Kagataan governor narrowed his eyes and his ears tightened, as if in silent reproach. E-Bomaan colored slightly and shut up, leaning back in his chair.
Now that was pretty interesting. Those two trading houses were more powerful than most governments, and they did not play well together. Two years ago they had fought a war by proxy on K’Tok, a war Tweezaa, Marr, The’On and I had been caught in the middle of. AZ Kagataan came out a big loser. But they and Simki-Traak Trans-Stellar apparently still shared a secret, and if the shellacking Kagataan took in the war hadn’t been enough to make them want to spill the beans out of spite, it must be a real corker. Marr was a Simki-Traak governor, at least nominally, but I wondered if even she knew what that was all about.
“Capital formation,” Elaamu Gaant said from the other end of the table, making it sound like a curse. Everyone turned to him. “We formed the Group of Interest, this alliance of uneasy partners, to accomplish a goal of great ideological import, and now we talk of capital formation. What of the principles we share? Do we abandon them because of numbers posted in some money changer’s office?”
A stir ran through the Varoki on his side of the table, surprise turning to irritation, then hostility.
“We appreciate the assistance you provided as the, ah, go-between assembling the Group of Interest, Mr. Gaant—” Counselor Rimcaant began, but e-Bomaan cut him off.
“I knew it was a mistake allowing you to attend this meeting, Gaant,” he said. “Everything you planned has collapsed. You failed, do you understand? This is over your head now, and it is time to let those of us who understand what is at stake here make the best of the situation.”
Gaant laughed and stood up from his chair, but not in anger. E-Bomaan had just told him he had no further say in what went on, but Gaant looked to me like a guy who still had an ace up his sleeve.
“You have forgotten what is really at stake,” he answered, and then he turned to face me. “Sasha Naradnyo, the Honorable e-Bomaan called you a criminal earlier. All of them think of you that way. Do you have a criminal record?”
I looked at him for a moment, now completely confused as to what this had to do with anything. “Not exactly.”
E-Bomaan laughed, a nasty little bark, but Gaant ignored him. “What does that mean, please?”
“I was arrested for burglary but the charge was expunged when I volunteered for a hitch with the Co-Gozhak.”
“You fought in the Nishtaaka campaign, is that so?” Gaant asked, and when I nodded he went on. “So you have no criminal record, and according to the law itself you have met all your obligations to it. But these gentlemen all still consider you a criminal and I sense you do as well. Why?”
“Well, I guess it has something to do with once having made my living by stealing,” I answered, but Gaant cocked his head slightly to the side and smiled.
“I do not think so. The Honorable e-Bomaan and these others all steal, one way or another.”
I saw a number of Varoki shift in their chairs and ears twitch over that, anger or confusion flashing across their faces and skins.
“What does this have to do with these negotiations?” e-Bomaan demanded. The voice of Simki-Traak Trans-stellar now took on a harder edge.
“Everything,” Gaant answered, and then he turned back to me. “You see, Sasha, these honorables have a philosophy,” he said, gesturing to e-Bomaan and the others along his side of the table, “a philosophy which assures them that they are bound by no standard of conduct except gain, and of course following the strict letter of the law. Morality and ethics are irrelevant, so long as they follow the law.
“Their philosophy also tells them the best thing they can do for everyone on the planet is to devote their resources to removing any legal restraint on their actions, provided they follow the law as they do so. This they do by their support for wattaaks, such as the three you see here today, men who share their philosophy and work to implement it.
“They utilize the reduced restraints to extract more money from their customers, from their workers, and from the Cottohazz itself in the form of subsidies and reduced taxes. Their philosophy tells them the satisfaction of their unbridled greed is the means for everyone in the Cottohazz to prosper, even as they systematically impoverish them.
“Sasha, you are not a criminal because you stole. You are a criminal because you did not have a philosophy.”
“What is the meaning of this, Gaant?” e-Bomaan demanded, rising to his feet. I was wondering the same thing, not that I was complaining. “We did not come here to be insulted, or to listen to you flatter this murdering drug dealer.”
“No,” Gaant said, “you came here to reach an arrangement with the murdering drug dealer. In order to safeguard your own profits, you came here to trade away a part of the heritage which belongs to the entire Varokiim.
“For three hundred years you have stolen from the other races, and done so in the name of the Varokiim, and you could have done so for all eternity. Instead you stole so much from the others that they are bled dry, but the treasure must still flow, and so now you steal from the Varokiim themselves. When I was a child there were no slums between the arcs. Now you cannot see the ground for them, and most of the denizens of that place without hope are Varoki, not the other races. That is your legacy! But that stops here. It stops today.”
“What are you blathering…?” e-Bomaan started but then faltered. Everyone in the room froze for a moment. Gaant had made a signal to someone, a slight raising of his hand, and suddenly the soft background hum of the local jammer was gone from my ears. I immediately squinted up the access to our local float nexus in Praha-Riz and set up a full-feed recording of my audio and visual input, and locked a coded channel. I snapped to it before the bandwidth got swamped once everyone else in the room figured out what was happening. I must have beaten most of them to the draw because I got my channel up and running. From here on, everything that I saw and heard would be out there on the float memory, and as far as I knew, nobody was good enough to hunt down all those threads and erase them.
Since that was all done with eye movement and pressure, my mind and eyes weren’t on the room. As I looked up Gaant gestured again and the wide double doors to the conference room opened. First the jammers, then the door. Whatever cult Gaant was peddling with himself as a leader, obviously someone at the counseling house was on board.
The crowd we saw earlier in the atrium started shuffling in—hundreds of them, silent but curious. Some craned their necks, taking in the occupants of the room and the rich, elegant simplicity of its fixtures. Most of them watched Gaant the way I imagined people look at their messiah.
Chapter Seven<
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“Shit!” e-Bomaan shouted the English expletive in surprise and anger, which just goes to show he wasn’t as much of a traditionalist as Gaant. None of the other five races could swear like Humans, but Varoki weren’t above borrowing on occasion. This time I was inclined to agree with the sentiment. I started to reach instinctively for the gauss pistol under my jacket but stopped, because there wasn’t one there today.
This must have been the surprise Gaant bragged about earlier. For all these people to make it back to the conference room, they had to have gotten past the entrance security and then through the whole office complex. Since there was no sign of violence, and none of the crowd seemed worked up, somebody let them in—a fair number of somebodies, come to think of it, including Munies at the security station. Gaant had people in the Munies as well as the counseling house? This was a pretty elaborate operation, more than I’d credited him with.
I did a quick scan of the room—no way out. I felt sweat tickle my sides under my armpits. I only saw one possible refuge if things turned ugly, and it wasn’t much.
“Ah-Quan, corner to your left, get ready,” I said softly in Szawa, the Zaschaan trade language. Ah-Quan would understand but I was betting nobody else in the room would. I put my hands on The’On’s shoulders.
“If you want to trade away their heritage, you will not do so in darkness,” Gaant said to the men at the table, his voice rising in volume and taking on a more dramatic tone. This was probably his motivational speaker voice. He gestured toward the quiet crowd filling the room. “Conduct your dirty business with these people as witnesses, if you have the courage. Let them see the color of your souls!”
I think Gaant had a plan as to what came next. He must have. But no plan survives contact with stupidity, and there was plenty of that going around. One of the Varoki at the back table, one of the staffers, jumped to his feet and pulled a neuro-wand from his under his jacket. So much for no weapons on neutral ground, huh?
“Put that away you moron!” I shouted. As everyone turned to look at him, the guy hit Gaant with the wand. Gaant didn’t make a sound except for a sharp hiss of inhaled breath. His whole body spasmed as every nerve in it fired at once and then he seemed to fall in slow motion, the crowd gaping, someone at the table reaching out too late to catch him, until his head clipped the hard stone edge of the table and made a sound like a melon hitting pavement. He continued falling to the floor and then didn’t move.
My knees went weak. For what seemed like a very long time but could only have been a second or two nobody moved, nobody said anything. I didn’t breathe. I guess I feared—we all feared—the slightest act might break the spell and bring what came next. Then a collective gasp escaped from those at the head of the crowd as they surged forward and some knelt at Gaant’s side. Some screamed, some shouted questions from behind, others shouted back.
What happened?
The Guide is dead!
They killed the Guide!
“The corner! Move!” I screamed to ah-Quan.
More people surged through the doorway, jostling those in front. Some of those kneeling by Gaant got pushed over and cried out as the mob stepped on them, but a couple big guys managed to lift Gaant’s limp body up and over their heads, and soon the crowd passed it back, hand to hand, out of the room, his dripping blood anointing them.
Ah-Quan reached forward and grabbed Gaisaana-la by the shoulders of her suit, snatching her up and over the back of her chair by sheer brute strength, and then he plowed through the crowd starting to fill the space to our left. I didn’t get The’On up nearly as quickly and by the time we started after ah-Quan the crowd had closed in.
A female Varoki from the crowd lunged at the staffer with the neuro-wand and he hit her with it, then started trying to drive the crowd back with it, wanding everyone in the front rank, even though they couldn’t get away through the press of bodies behind them. Screams of pain and fear and rage. Bodies twitching and falling limp to the floor to be trampled by those behind. Then a growing rumbling chorus of hatred and pent-up rage as the crowd became a mob and then an avalanche under which the staffer with the wand just vanished.
E-Bomaan and the other Varoki across the table from us were all on their feet and pressed back against the stone surface by the pressure of the mob, now tearing and striking at them. The table tipped over on its side and then onto its top and both members of the mob and their targets tumbled over it, the wave of flesh behind them surging over them.
I backpedaled frantically, pulling The’On with me, but came up against the smooth, hard composite resin surface of the big window overlooking the river.
The’On started to drop down to the floor but I pulled him up.
“Stand up!” I shouted above the howl of the mob. I turned him so his right shoulder was against the window. “Cover your head! Shoulder against the window, not your chest or back. Otherwise you’ll suffocate!”
I saw the panic in his eyes fighting to take control but he nodded. I tried to partially cover him with my own body, my right shoulder under his left armpit, both our arms covering our heads, and then the mob hit us. Someone’s fist caught me a good one on the back of my skull that left me seeing flashes of light for a few seconds, but as the mob pressed on from behind, the ones in front lost the ability to do anything but try to stay upright. The pressure grew and in just a few seconds the Varoki pressing against us went from enraged enemies to terrified fellow victims.
A shrill cry of agony sounded to my immediate left and I turned my head. I was face-to-face with e-Bomaan, his chest flat against the window, eyes bulging as the air was forced from his lungs by the inexorable pressure of the mob. His eyes made contact with mine, filled not only with pain and fear, but shock bordering on disbelief. A few seconds ago he had been one of the richest and most powerful men in the Cottohazz, and now here he was, losing the fight for life. How had this happened? How was it even possible?
Another surge from behind, even stronger than before, hit us. E-Bomaan’s ribcage collapsed against the thick unyielding composite surface of the window, the bones popping and breaking one by one, and his last exhaled groan turned into bloody foam. I turned away, spitting his blood out, and then the surge caught me. For a moment it didn’t take my breath because of my position. Then my right shoulder came out of the socket and I screamed in pain as the mass of the crowd flattened me against the window.
With a loud, sharp crack the composite resin of the window finally gave way and I was instantly weightless, surrounded by other screaming, flailing bodies tumbling through the air.
Chapter Eight
Screams filled my ears until we hit the surface of the Wanu River, hit it hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs, almost hard enough to knock me out. Muffled and remote underwater sounds replaced bedlam. Groggy and disoriented, I wasn’t sure which direction was up until my feet sank into the weeds and bottom muck. My right arm was useless and I still had the front of The’On’s tunic crumpled in my left fist. He floated limp beside me. I couldn’t let go, he’d drown. I pushed off from the bottom and kicked with my feet as hard as I could. I didn’t seem to be making any progress. I started feeling dizzy from oxygen starvation, could hardly keep my straining lungs from sucking in the Wanu River, when the water around me got lighter and then I broke surface.
Air! I vacuumed in a big, shuddering lungful and my vision cleared, sound came back—people crying for help, screaming in pain and fear, splashing into the water. I looked around, oriented myself. We were close to the river bank, near the base of Praha-Riz, but the river was deep like a canal, so we’d had enough water under us to absorb our fall. Folks after us hadn’t been as lucky, and lots were still falling from the shattered windows, tumbling down like an organic waterfall to land with soft thuds among the heaps of still-twitching bodies along the river bank. Only the first of us had been thrown far enough out to reach deeper water and avoid being crushed by the bodies cascading down afterwards.
It was hard trea
ding water with just my legs, but I needed my one good arm to keep The’On’s head up. I wasn’t sure he was breathing but couldn’t do anything about it in the water so I started kicking us toward the bank. I hadn’t gone far when one of the Varoki pulling himself up out of the shallows noticed us.
“There, the Human! The one who killed the Guide!”
Killed Gaant! Me? Well, just about everyone who actually saw what happened was probably dead by now, so it made sense to just blame the closest Human. The Varoki groped in the shallow water and came up with a good sized rock, threw it but it fell several meters short. He started looking for another one and a couple of the dazed survivors on the bank started pointing and shouting as well, wading into the water toward us. I kicked harder, now pulling us away from the shore.
The river was too wide to swim this way. As it was I was already tiring and barely making headway, but I had to get away. Reason and calm words weren’t going to get me very far with the Varoki survivors on the bank. I stopped for a second and used my good hand to push the back of The’On’s collar into my mouth. I held it with my teeth and started kicking again and doing a half-assed back stroke with one arm. I made better progress but I could hardly keep my head above water and was having trouble breathing.
I got another twenty or thirty meters out but my breath came in ragged gasps and my legs were losing power. I needed to take a break, catch my breath, but couldn’t with The’On. I wasn’t sure I could make it back to shore even if the mob weren’t there, and I felt panic start to tighten my throat. I got a noseful of water by mistake and started choking. That’s when something hit me in the head from behind. Fortunately, it was a rescue float.
I let go of The’On’s collar, twisted around, and saw a commercial fishing boat about ten meters away, idling in the channel, with four Humans along the rail yelling in English to me. One of them held the line attached to the float. Problem: I was still coughing, still couldn’t manage to gulp down any air, and I’d pass out pretty soon unless I could. I wrapped my legs around The’On’s torso and grabbed for the float’s handholds with my good hand.
Come the Revolution - eARC Page 5
