by S F Chapman
He sighed as he thought about his cherished young charge, “I'm afraid that she really needs a mother of some sort, or failing that, perhaps a surrogate older sister.”
“That has certainly occurred to me as well,” Zmuda replied with a catlike grin.
“I would like to return to some occasional investigative work at the Inquisitor's Office.” Ryo studied his old friend with the intuitive eye of a detective, something involving Dilma was lurking about just below the surface, “I'd love to have Jana Fesai take on my little buttercup, but things between us haven't progressed to anywhere near the level that Jana would be comfortable with having someone else's kid calling her mommy.”
“Perhaps,” Zmuda confessed, “I have a solution for you.”
“I thought that you might,” Ryo chuckled.
“For a week or so, I've had a new and very stealthy CRAMP agent trail a female student at Free City University that I believe would likely make a good nanny for Dilma.”
“Interesting.”
Zmuda produced a photo of a rumpled Rubenesque young woman, obviously snapped without her knowledge, “She's scrappy and streetwise but also has a particularly predominant empathy for the downtrodden,” he cackled a bit, “and she needs the money.”
Ryo studied the image, “She has the long braided hair and the rather revealing clothing of an Enlightenment Crusader.”
“Would that be a problem?” Zmuda frowned.
“No; after working with Jana's son last year to track down the missing antimatter, I've grown to greatly admire the efforts of the Crusaders.”
“Excellent; we will make the arrangements.” Zmuda pointed to Jasper; the big man nodded and silently hurried off.
Ryo watched the burly Australian depart, “I have a feeling that you sought me out for something more than a tour of your secret lab and a sentimental chat about a twelve-year-old.”
“Yes;” Zmuda confessed, “those have been amusing little distractions, but not the reason that I need your help.”
• • •
Hours later the spymaster concluded his long presentation to the semi-retired cop.
“I don't know how it all fits together yet,” Zmuda scowled, “but there is something very big and sinister going on somewhere out in the vastness of the North African desert.”
“This is spy work,” Ryo tapped at the topmost image on the thick stack. “What is my part in all of this?”
“Well;” Zmuda grinned, “about three weeks ago, the Prime Minister signed a secret directive known as Edict 343 which effectively commands all Free City Law Enforcement personal to cooperate unconditionally with the CRAMP in our efforts to destabilize the Warlords, end the repressive feudal system beyond the city limits and bring basic human rights to the masses spread across the Solar System.”
Ryo laughed, “Ending servitude, covert insurrection and giving back to the poor? I suppose that makes you something like Abraham Lincoln, Spartacus and Robin Hood in one portly middle-aged package.”
“Mmm; don't tell that to Jasper and Mixion, I'll never hear the end of it.”
Zmuda continued, “When in doubt while in the company of your colleagues in law enforcement; just smile and say '343.' The effect on those in the know is amazing.”
“I'm sure it is.” Ryo's eyebrows arched up, “So what is my part in this?”
Zmuda's grin faded, “It's deadly serious, I'm afraid. Chief Inspector Helga Bennet of the Free City Inquisitor's Office will call you back into service later today. A brutal crime wave has broken out in low Earth orbit and beyond that, so far, we've been able to keep secret. My source in Tunis is convinced that it ties together somehow with the North African desert quandary.”
“As a cop from Free City, I can't just go parading around the Sahara for no good reason,” Ryo pointed out. “I would have to be invited in by the EurAfrican authorities or the Warlord Syndicate, neither of which seems likely.”
“That's OK, my friend,” the spy master insisted, “we have a plan for the desert in the works right now.” He pointed skyward and smiled, “The Inquisitor's Office does have free jurisdiction in space.”
Ryo's shoulders slumped, “Please don't make me leave Dilma.”
“She'll be in good hands.”
8. News Item: Preliminary census data released
Dateline: 5th of August, 2446; Free City, Earth
The Free City Bureau of Statistics released a tentative tally of humankind late yesterday. The Bureau has struggled mightily for nearly ten years to fulfill the many requests for census information from both the Free City Prime Minister's Office and the Warlord Syndicate.
No accurate or concise accounting of our lowly species has been produced since the Human Census of 2140, which produced the staggering count of 15,258,195,387 just before the protracted slaughter of the Second Amero-Asian War.
The current estimate outlined in the Bureau of Statistics Daily Postings is just short of one billion at 992,231,613.
Bureau statisticians took great pains to note that the destruction last year of the crowded EurAfrican capital city of Arusha with an estimated population of 8,924,115 would have pushed the tally just over the one billion mark.
Human populations were last at this level in 1804, more than 640 years ago.
History Professor Swarna Jabuki at Free City University believes that human population numbers ebbed at a paltry 45 million several decades after the War. Jabuki suggests that the current brisk growth is mainly due to concerted efforts to produce clones mainly in EurAfrica, AmerAsia and Free City.
To the surprise of very few, our fair city is now ranked as the second most populous burg at 1,276,322. The number breaks down to 863,571 natural born, 373,545 sequential clones and 39,206 non-sequential and “other” clones. There are, of course, no serfs or slaves in Free City since the city charter deemed all such unfortunates to be free citizens in 2246.
Humankind's reigning metropolis for crowds is currently Tunis in EurAfrica at 1,513,783. The breakdown is as such: 1,098,751 serfs, 401,956 slaves, 9,036 Feudal or Slave Masters and 4,040 free “others.” EurAfrica does not keep statistics that detail natural births and clonings.
9. Reluctant restraint
Chief Inspector Helga Bennet glanced up as Ryo strolled into her office.
“Mr. Trop,” an uncommon smile darted across her craggy face, “apparently our mutual friend, Lieutenant Zmuda has convinced you of the atrociousness of recent developments.”
“Yes,” Ryo nodded glumly, “the African desert enigma is nearly unbelievable and would certainly be a tremendous step backwards for humanity, I'm afraid.”
She frowned for several seconds, “Fortunately that nettlesome matter is in the hands of the CRAMP and not the Inquisitor's Office.”
Helga produced three glossy color photos and spread them out amongst the clutter on her ancient desk.
Ryo winced at the bloody images.
“There has been a series of unsolved murders involving Space Debris Salvage operators.” She tapped on one especially gruesome photo, “This unfortunate trio was dismembered and scattered around the midget grappler tug Lady Luck in orbit around the Moon.”
Helga fingered a second image; “These gentlemen succumbed to blunt force trauma as the result of an ambush outside of a bar at Mariner's Station on Mars.”
Ryo studied the photos, “Why haven't I heard about these misdoings in the News?”
“We've managed to keep this crime wave secret,” she gathered up the pictures and slipped them back into her desk, “the Prime Minister himself clamped a gag order on the investigations at the urging of Zmuda.”
“Mmm, that is big.”
The steely old woman nodded, “There seems to be some tenuous evidence that this is somehow connected to what is transpiring in the Sahara.”
Ryo sighed, “And all of this led to the Prime Minister issuing Edict 343?”
She stared unnervingly at him for several seconds, “That is correct.”
His should
ers slumped under the weight of the recent revelations, “Alright; I'm back in.”
“I assumed that you would be,” Helga tapped out a line or two on her desktop interface. “You will meet a talented young friend and a prickly old Celtic gentleman tomorrow morning at 6 AM sharp in the Law Enforcement hanger at the Ballyshannon Space Port. You will likely be away from Free City for two or three days, plan accordingly.”
Ryo grimaced at the assignment.
“Edict 343 is in full effect for this investigation,” she forewarned him, “you may use whatever means necessary, legal or otherwise, lethal or benign, ethical or not to clear up this unfortunate matter. I assured the Prime Minister just this morning that I would trust no one but you for this unprecedented and risky assignment.”
He ruminated for a time on her dictate, “Will Dilma be in any danger?”
Helga twitched slightly at his question, “The CRAMP will apparently be looking after her.”
• • •
When he heard Commander Frédéric Rameau returning from the staff meeting down the hallway the mute slave abruptly stopped mopping the floor in the little office and withdrew with his cleaning supplies.
The slave warily glanced sideways as he left the room, Commander Rameau sneered back in contempt at the minor impertinence.
The tall, thin twenty-five year-old drudge lugged the mop and bucket to the janitor's closet and washed up. With the likely approval of the Building 17 Slave Master, he'd be done for the day.
Forty-five minutes later the slave trudged back into his tiny room in Domestic Servitude Housing Block 43. He busied himself for ten minutes or so tiding up his solitary quarters until he was certain that no one else was prowling about in the sparsely occupied building.
Great effort had been expended by many others to secretly place him into the position as the General Facilities slave for Rameau's office.
He pushed open the rickety wooden shutters. Just outside in the wide and dust-blown courtyard, hung on a long wire rope, were his recently hand-washed clothes.
The laundry belonging to several other slaves fluttered about on similar lines much further down the side of the wide building, but none possessed a clothesline that was quite like his.
As nearly everyone did in the dilapidated slave quarters, the man climbed through his window and stood in the courtyard to survey his desiccated garments. The baggy and ill-fitting pants and the tattered shirts were merely a disguise for the true purpose of his unusual clothesline.
Intentionally fastened upside-down at the very end where the line attached to the building at a fat ceramic insulator was a particularly ragged pair of pants. He slipped his thin fingers into the front left pocket and switched off the tiny device that had been painstakingly woven into the apparently worthless garment.
The clothesline strung across the courtyard in the Domestic Servitude Housing Block was in reality a secret and deceptively simple radio transmission antenna.
The slave reached up and unfastened the four clips that held his pants in place on the line. He stuffed the one clip that contained the thin transmission wire down into the leg of the pants before he removed the stiff, dry garb from the line. He gathered up his other items and returned to his room.
The man glanced down the hallway of the slave quarters before he sat on his cot with his “clean” clothes. He wasn't a slave and he certainly wasn't from this era, the man mused as he carefully reprogrammed the very simple transmitter in the pants pocket.
He'd been a Materials Engineering Doctoral Candidate at the University of Arizona in the fall of 2058, nearly four hundred years ago, when this strange turn of events had begun.
The “slave” methodically reset the transmitter and carefully tapped out the new twelve-character message in the long-forgotten cipher of the Southern New Mexico Regional variant of American Morse Code.
His grandmother had taught him the ancient telegraph code as a child one summer when he had complained of boredom during the long respite from school. It had been an idle curiosity then, now it might well be instrumental in the salvation of humanity.
In college an unusually insistent Genetics researcher had tracked him down and offered him a great deal of money to participate in a secret cloning experiment. He had reluctantly agreed and was sedated for the scanning process. He awoke 388 years later and 8,500 kilometers away with a new body in a clandestine lab at Free City University.
Now he was a spy.
The brownish tone of his skin and his profuse wavy black hair made him appear to be of Arabic descent when in reality he was Hispanic, a racial designation that no longer existed with the virtual extinction of humans in North America.
Lieutenant Zmuda had decided that his unusual speech patterns from the twenty-first century American Southwest would arouse the attention of the perpetually suspicious EurAfrican Military personnel. A long-acting paralyzing drug was injected into his vocal cords to render him speechless.
He'd then been “sold” several times by cooperative and well-bribed Slavers in Mogadishu to muddle his origins. Being from the twenty-first century meant that his DNA was untraceable which further clouded his past.
The mute slave wadded up the recently dried garments and plunged them into the cloudy water of his washtub. He then climbed through the window and rehung the damp clothes on the line. Just before he finished the task, he slipped his fingers again into the tattered pants pocket and restarted the transmitter.
The twelve-character message would take hours to send using the especially narrow bandwidth allowed by the unusually low radio frequency employed by the tiny transmitter.
If someone casually dialed a receiver to the rarely used band, the message would most likely be mistaken for naturally occurring interference.
He would let the transmitter loop the message continuously for three days; its receipt was absolutely vital.
Hopefully his counterpart across the Mediterranean narrows in Sicily would pick up the transmission and promptly forward the message to Zmuda.
Tomorrow as the “mute slave” he'd again snoop through Commander Rameau's office for more information.
• • •
She had a job!
Sabra MacFarland smiled as she bumped along in the city transport as she headed back to the dingy little apartment that she shared with her sister and three others.
Sabra hadn't particularly wanted the distraction of gainful employment, but the money and the opportunity had proven to be irresistible.
Her new employer had authorized an advance of five hundred Units for what seemed like a ridiculously easy job that she probably would have done for free.
As she stared out of the transport windows at the drizzly early evening city, Sabra fidgeted with the thick stack of credentials that her boss had given to her to authorize her employment.
Suddenly she had money and some real standing!
10. News Item: Final Bicentennial parade scheduled
Dateline: 6th of August, 2446; Free City, Earth
The Free City Bicentennial Committee announced that Sunday, the 26th of August, would be the date of the final parade through our fair city. Mayor Lily Borja encouraged all citizens to participate in the event either as participants or as spectators.
As with the mammoth opening day pageant, the parade will begin at 1 PM at the City Hall Plaza and meander down several streets past the University towards Roscommon Park. The event will culminate at the War Atrocities Monument with speeches and a fireworks show at 9 PM.
Anticipating a massive turnout for the historic event, the Prime Minister has declared the 26th of August to be an official holiday for all but the most vital workers.
Both the Free City University Student Union and the Enlightenment Crusade have urged their members to wear elaborate costumes. Several downtown businesses indicated that they would award prizes to marchers for creative or thought-provoking attire.
The Bicentennial Committee is projecting that the event will be the single l
argest gathering in city history.
11. The death ship
Ryo stared out of the curved cockpit window of the Low Earth Orbit Class Patrol ship.
The trio had been dispatched from the Law Enforcement hanger at Free City's Ballyshannon Space Port about three hours ago and since then had been chasing down the immense salvage vessel.
But the hoped-for rendezvous with the apparently abandoned ship was considerably behind schedule.
“I don't see it yet,” twenty-seven year-old Fiefdom Liaison Agent and recently certified Attack Craft Pilot Keira Norton scowled as she glanced between the wide sweep radar screen and the window.
Their timeworn passenger chortled at the young pilot's difficulties, “The Billikin is such a huge heap of rubbish that it will be hard to miss her, my dear.
Ryo smiled at the crusty ninety-seven year-old codger who sat behind them in the passenger's seat.
“Tell me Seamus, how many years were you the Engineer on the Billikin?”
“Oh, I don't know,” the rickety old man stroked his white whiskers in thought, “I reckon at least a half-century beginning way back in 2370. A few years after the ship's owners made Takahashi Captain, they finally released me from my servitude. Mmm; that was in 2422, so over fifty years.”
“That's quite a feat of endurance,” Keira commented. “Are you proud of the time that you spent on the Billikin?”
“Heaven's no, child!” the old man snorted.
“That ship is an infernal piece of dog crap held together mainly by scrap wire and substandard welds. The miserly owners and the greedy captain never spent a quarter Unit more than they had to on that floating junk pile.”
The straitlaced young woman blushed at the declaration by the salty spaceman.
• • •
Just as Seamus had said, Ryo wryly noted, the Billikin was indeed an immense floating scrap heap.
