by David Coy
“They’re hearing devices made by Siemens called AUD's. If I had a set of them, I think I could fix his hearing.”
“I know how to find those things if they’re on the planet,” Eddie said.
“You do?”
“All I have to do is get on a terminal for a minute. I can find them.”
“Just how’s that?” she puzzled.
“I know just about all there is to know about how stuff comes in, where it goes and who gets it. I was the lead on the first crew from Transportation.”
“You don’t say,” she said with a frown of appreciation.
“If they haven’t changed the system too much, I can locate ‘em for you. If it’s in a warehouse, I can tell you the container number and where it is. If it’s been delivered, I can tell you who’s got it and where they are.”
This was an unanticipated bit of luck. If what Eddie said were true, they could inventory the entire settlement. A portable terminal or pad could be a veritable shopping list for a bunch of thieves like them. All they needed was a pad and rights to the system. They had their pads. Even when useless, pads were something one never discarded. Donna’s was about six feet away, stuffed in a locker.
“Do you have the rights?” she asked.
“They’ve probably been suspended by now, but I know how to get them back.”
“You do?”
“Sure. It’s easy, especially on the trans system.”
“What’s in it for you?” she asked with a grin.
Eddie didn’t grin back, and Donna got the feeling she’d accidentally strummed a nerve. He stood there for a moment looking at the ground as if some ugly memory was taking shape just in front of his shoes.
“Nothin’,” he said finally. “I’ll do it for you for free.”
“Deal?”
“Deal.”
As if to seal it, Donna went right to the locker and fetched her pad and handed it to him.
“Do your stuff, then,” she challenged. “Show me what’s on this planet.”
“It’ll take a few minutes to queer the system so I can use it,” he said sheepishly.
“Take your time,” Donna said, stepping behind him so she could look over his shoulder.
Eddie turned the pad on, thumbed it, then keyed it. A few minutes later he was attached to the trans system.
“Very nice,” she said, looking over his shoulder.
“I’ve done this a few times.”
“Like riding a bike, huh?” she asked. The comment brought a brief smile of pride to his face.
“What’s the part name again?” he asked.
“A-U-D," she spelled out the name.
Eddie keyed it in. An instant later the system responded. “Two sets,” he said. “Both in container YTEG778 in Warehouse One.”
“How do we find the container?” she wanted to know. “The place is a mess.”
“It only looks like a mess. If you know how it’s organized, it’s not so hard. I can find it. What else do you need?”
She almost said, “Booking on a transport back to Earth," then remembered there was no Earth to return to; nothing you could live on anyway.
“Hmm . . . this is interesting. You really can find anything
we need—or want. All we have to do is steal it.”
That solemn look came over him like a cloud. “Yeah. All you have to do is steal it.”
“Can you tell what’s been ordered—what’s on the way? Just curious.”
He checked.
“There’s nothing in the queue. No shipments at all. It’s blank.”
“So that’s it then. John was right. It looks like nothing’s coming from Earth ever again.”
“Looks like it.”
“It seems they’ve brought everything worth bringing with them, anyway. Damn, they must be loaded. All that shit's just for them.”
She thought for a moment. Eddie watched her blue-brown eye flash as if there were a fire behind it.
“Eddie? How many occupants are there in the cloister?”
“You mean the Bondsmen’s place?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. I’d say maybe a thousand, maybe more.”
“And how many contractors now, do you think?”
“Two hundred. They sent some back, I heard.”
“That figures. So about twelve hundred reside on the planet. And what? Ten or twelve million metric tons of foodstuff, another ten million tons of just stuff—not including the heavy machinery?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
She thought some more.
“They could last a long, long time before they ever had to leave the cloister.”
She could see them now, peering out the windows, sanctimonious noses pressed flat against the glass, safe behind their sacred walls. Nice and cool. Plenty to eat. No bugs. No reason to go outside. Reading their Scripture. Eating. Praying. Eating.
She wondered who their leader or Grand Poobah or priest or whatever was now. She tried to remember who the last one was.
They seemed to change leadership quite regularly, if memory served her. She’d never looked too closely at their doctrine and had only a cloudy picture of it. It seemed to have lots of rituals, dogma and weird practices involving that plus-sign-thing in it. But a few things stood out in the fog in sharp relief. The stuff about procreation was one of them. She wondered if proliferation was still the Sacred Bond’s first call to duty. That tenet wasn’t too hard to understand. Offspring made the best, the easiest and longest-lasting converts. That’s why they made it a commandment, a responsibility, to breed. You could start children out at an early age and give them a lasting, lifetime dose of dogma. You could drip your theology into their veins for their entire lives. You could mold them like putty anyway you chose. They would be a continual source of labor and a bottomless repository for any doctrine you could dream up. Never questioning, rarely thinking. Believers—true believers, who in isolation, would spawn no counter-culture, no new or different ways of thinking. Their dogma would grow into the planet itself like an invasive plant, impossible to remove.
They would breed; breed while they could. Safe behind those sacred, plastic walls, they would pray, eat and breed.
“Call up all the medical supplies, do a query and use the sub-qualifiers pediatric or infant and show me a summary by part name.”
“Can you spell that first word for me?"
“You bet,” she said.
3
“We don’t work for Smith’s organization anymore,” Bill Habershaw said.
“That’s the part you don’t understand. He’s not in control.”
“The receipts for the paydowns come from his company.”
“I know, Joan. But it’s the Bondsmen who control everything. They’ve got everybody’s contracts now. There’s not a goddamned thing that gets done without the Bondsmen’s Council making the decision to do it.”
“I don’t know what it matters anyway,” she said, close to tears. “Why are we bothering to do anything for them. What’s the use? There’s no place to go after this. This is it. This is all we’ll ever get. There’s no place to go. Every other planet is dead. We’re trapped on this ball, and our contracts don’t mean shit.” He could forget about retiring on Cunningham. He could forget about retiring at all.
“I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to do,” she went on. “What are we supposed to do now?”
She buried her face in her hands and growled into them. “I’m so mad I could kill something. We need to call some kind of meeting—call up all the contractors or post a bulletin.”
“Hell with that!” he snapped back. “The Council would squash us like bugs if we went against them. You even start talking about calling a meeting, and they’ll find some reason to send you back to Earth—or something worse.”
“Oh, bullshit. They can’t stop us from talking.”
“Yes, they can. This isn’t the Commonwealth anymore, Joan. It’s The High
Council of The Sacred Bond of the Fervent Alliance. They’ve got just enough security and weapons to back up any goddamn thing they want to do. Don’t you go calling any goddamn meetings—you’ll get us both killed.”
“From what—a few lazy, do-nothing guards. Shit . . . ”
“They’ve got guns.”
“We can get guns.”
“How? Where?”
“I could find them on the manifest.”
“I doubt they’d show up.”
“They do. I’ve got one now.”
“What?” he asked, frowning, not believing what he was hearing.
“I’ve got a gun,” she said. “It came in a container addressed for one of Smith’s assistants, and I took it.”
“You stole it?”
“That’s right. And I’m keeping it.”
“What kind of gun?” he wanted to know.
“A little pistol.”
“A little pistol? A little pistol won’t do much good.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “I’ll tell you what, Bill, when you think of something, let me know. I’m out of ideas.”
Habershaw stared at the wall past her head, his mind swirling with frustration.
“I’ll talk to some of the guys,” he said finally. “Maybe we can get together with just a few—just to hash it out some.”
“Great,” she said.
“Go hash it out some.”
That pushed him over the edge.
“Why are you mad at me? What have I done? Shit!” he yelled, pushing up from the table. “You’re just making it worse!”
“Oh, sit down!”
“You sit down!”
“I am sitting down, asshole.”
Habershaw clamped his eyes closed hard and shook his head. This was ridiculous. “You’re impossible.”
“I want answers,” she said coolly. “I want to know what we’re going to do.”
“Joan, I don’t have the answers.”
“But you don’t even want to find them,” she said. “You don’t give a shit.”
She got up from the table and started to clear it. He just stared at her, waiting for her reaction.
This was typical of him, she thought. Bill Habershaw, the center of the universe—responsible for all things good and bad. And since he was responsible, the universe and all things in it must blame him when things don’t go right. All she wanted from him was some enthusiasm, some open anger about the situation—to beat on the table with her and get damned mad. She wanted him to be on her side.
“Look,” she said kindly, “it’s not your fault we’re in this mess. Just forget it, okay? I’m frustrated is all. I want to know what to do. I shouldn’t blame you for not having the answers. Let’s go to bed. Maybe tomorrow we can discuss it again; and between the two of us, we can think of something.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said spitefully.
“Yeah, sure,” she mocked.
* * *
That night they lay in bed, eyes closed, but wide awake. They lay and listened to the bugs banging into the sides of the shelter and buzzing against the screens. An especially big one hit like a rock, then they heard it buzzing in a stunned circle in the soft dirt, its wings sounding like a broken machine.
“That was a big one,” Joan said, using the opportunity to break the ice. She tried to put just a note of amusement into her voice but didn’t know if it worked.
“Yeah,” Bill kinda laughed back. “Sounded like a big black and orange one.”
“Yeah, but what kind of big black and orange one?” she asked with a crooked grin.
They chuckled a little.
They lapsed back into silence for a moment, and Joan heard him take a deep breath. That was a good sign.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Me, too,” she said.
“This is so fucked up . . . so fucked up.”
She felt his foot reach over and nudge hers. She patted his in
return with a sideways tap or two.
“I’m scared,” she said in a low tone. Her voice was almost a whisper.
“This is very serious,” he said. “The Council is in full control now. Smith’s not even on the Council. You’re right about our contracts. They don’t mean shit.”
“What are we supposed to do, Bill? My guys are all screwed up about it, too. They don’t even want to come to work. Even Mike. You know how even-tempered he is. He’s all messed up over this.”
With a rustle of sheets, she turned on her side to face him. Bill lay there with his hands folded, like a corpse, on his chest.
“You know what it’s like now?” she asked. “It’s like there’s two classes of people—the haves and the have-nots. Know what I mean? The Bondsmen have all the food and stuff, and the nice place to live, and we have shit—just this plastic shelter and just enough food to keep us alive. We’re slaves.”
“So what’s so different than it’s always been?” he grinned, with gallows humor. “We’ve always been slaves.”
“Well, the difference is that now it’s so goddamned clear cut, you know? Before it wasn’t so noticeable somehow. Of course, contractors never had jack shit, but everybody thought everybody else had jack shit, too, so it wasn’t so important, right? Now we find out that there’s this group of people with everything, and they’ve gotten that everything by our labor, not theirs—and our lords and masters are right here in plain view. Just right over there.” She pointed into the dark with an outstretched arm.
He drew a breath.
“That’s an old problem. Very old.”
“Yeah, but it’s one thing to read about it in history books and another to be living it, right? I mean, think about it. It’s like the Incas with Machu Picchu—just like that. The priests and shit get this incredible retreat where they can pray and screw and stuff. The whole place is built by slaves, but the slaves can’t even take a shit in it. All they can do is haul these rocks up a goddamned mountain for these bastards—on foot. If they don’t haul rocks, they get their wiry asses thrown off the mountain. This is just like that. Just the same.”
Deep breath. “It’s not that bad,” he said.
“It’s pretty bad.”
“Yeah, it’s bad.”
“So I say we storm the goddamned place and take it over,” she said. “What have we got to lose?”
“What are you talking about?” he said, his head turning slowly toward her.
“Revolution, Bill, revolution. We get some weapons and storm the place en masse. It could be over in minutes. It’s been done before. Vive les Contractors! Yeeha!”
“You’re full of shit,” he grinned.
“I know. But it’s fun to think about it.”
She turned on her back and mirroring Habershaw, folded her hands on her chest. They lay quietly for a long time, still awake, listening to the planet’s nightly cacophony. Images of fighting, killing and starvation played out in their heads to the rhythms of the jungle clicks, whistles and clattering wings.
“The little scene you described probably took place a thousand times recently,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess it did,” she said solemnly.
“No winners. All dead.”
“Yeah . . . ”
* * *
The next morning seemed hotter than usual. The sun smothered the landscape with its thick red arms. As she walked to the truck, Joan shunned its embrace with a scowl.
She wondered what she’d tell the guys today and decided that she had no idea. It all depended on the looks she got when she opened up the office. She was their leader and part of her job was to instill confidence. Some days she couldn’t do it. Today was one of those. Her dark thoughts and the heat conspired against her and broke her pleasant facade, cracked it open, and left the angst beneath it plainly visible. Maybe she could get it back in place before they detected how very wrong things were.
Mike and Peter were screwing around outside, just like always. She could see them poking and jostling at each other
, showing their true ages. Mike’s limp made him look especially vulnerable in the match, but he held his own. Some of the newer kids were there, too, watching the mock fray from container tops like bored imps.
She saw her chance and took it. Maybe she could defuse any thoughts of contracts and useless, profitless effort by throwing them off guard. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to deal with it for a while, not this morning, anyway.
“Hey!” she yelled. “What did I tell you about that kind of shit on the dock! Go out in the field and screw around if you feel like screwing around!”
“Sorry,” they both said almost in unison.
“That’s good. Be sorry,” she said opening up the office.
She called the whole crew in and jumped right into the day’s jobs without ceremony. If she acted pissed and rushed enough, she figured, they wouldn’t be able to ask her any questions about anything. She wouldn’t have to stumble over answers she didn’t have. When she was finished, she shooed them out like puppies. “Get to work,” she said. “Go on. Get to work.”
It had been months now since they first heard of the Collapse on Earth. It had taken awhile to get their minds back on level ground after the depths of fear, grief and horror they’d occupied over the news of it. Peter had been the hardest hit; he’d been extra close to his family.
They said there were survivors, but not many. Peter was sure his family members had perished. He couldn’t be truly sure like one could be sure of a thing one could see, but he had made up his mind, and it was his reality. It caused him a gnawing grief. She felt he was trying to face both his intense personal losses and the unimaginable, massive losses; working it out, perhaps just a little at a time.
Mike had no family that Joan knew of, except a brother he rarely mentioned. His father had died some time ago. Joan considered herself the closest thing to family that Mike had. She wasn’t supposed to have a favorite, but Mike was hers. He was a good worker, regular, and just a good kid. She would adopt him if she could, but that wasn’t necessary really. They were close enough, and she could keep a motherly eye on him without actually holding the official title.
