Insurgents (Harmony Book 1)

by Margaret Ball

  “When the Central Committee hears of this –” Andrus began.

  Dayvson gave him a tight-lipped smile. “The Central Committee, Andrus, is half a continent and an ocean away, and I am right here. Furthermore, these hills are blocking our communications. With luck, we’ll take a high point from which we can at least communicate with the coast. If you are very lucky, you’ll still be with us when we reach that point.”

  And once he reports, I’ll be withdrawn in disgrace, to be replaced by some politically correct fool who will never find my Isovel. Should Andrus meet with a fatal accident on the march? Maybe the enemy snipers will take care of my problem.

  But he didn’t take the rebel propaganda lightly, no matter what he said to Andrus. As they rode forward, he glanced down at the flimsy. It began by twitting the grunts on their continuing mysterious losses, implied that the officers didn’t care how many of them died, and finally offered a grant of land to any soldier who defected to their side.

  Dayvson knew all too well that many of his draftees were the dregs of Harmony – lazy, poor, and ignorant. The Central Committee had begun by drafting the people that Harmony could well do without. How many of them would have their heads turned by the prospect of becoming landowners? Would they understand that owning land was not wealth, only a pathway to better circumstances through hard work?

  And Discord take it, how many of them would get that far and reason that they were working just that hard in the army with no prospect of anything but their monthly pay?

  He shook his head. He knew that everyone was better off under Harmony’s system of sharing, where no one starved and no one accumulated excess wealth, than under Esilia’s selfish system where the people who were successful thought themselves entitled to keep the fruits of that success. But then, he had the benefit of a university education. He wasn’t sure how he would explain the point to a grunt with limited horizons and little education.

  The real trouble, he decided, was that Governor Aberforss had spent a generation allowing the exiles so much autonomy that they’d been able to entrench their selfishness in the economy. If that man had been paying proper attention to the internal workings of the colony, this notion of private property would have been nipped in the bud.

  And he wouldn’t be worrying about their false ideas seducing his grunts.

  ***

  In Harmony City, the members of the Central Committee watched a depressing series of vids interspersed with a few even more depressing holos. The people weren’t rioting – quite – but they were taking to the streets in sullen crowds. Masked protestors had wrecked a recruiting center and draft office in the old city. Women with scarves tied around their heads and over their faces waved signs saying things like “FOOD IS BETTER THAN WAR” and “BRING BACK OUR SONS.”

  “Tell me these vids aren’t going out on the news channels,” the head of the committee grunted at the Minister for Truth.

  “Sir, we got these from the news channels. Naturally they turned them over to us immediately; they’ve no ambition to broadcast such seditious garbage.”

  “But did they keep copies for themselves?”

  “Everything the news channels broadcast has to be approved by my office,” the Minister for Truth reminded him, hoping the evasion wouldn’t be noticed. How was he to know what the newsers were hiding? A single three-inch data slip could hold everything they were watching and several hundred more hours of vids, and the slender black slips could be concealed anywhere.

  “Good. Tell them to run some lightweight holoseries – romance, comedy – and then repeat the public service announcements.” The Head sighed. “I wish Dayvson would transmit some holos of our victories over the traitor colonists. He does not seem to appreciate the importance of the right kind of news. The city never had this much trouble when we were showing how Governor Serman handled the rebels. Military, please convey our concerns to the general.“

  The new head of the newly created Bureau for Military Affairs said nervously, “Naturally we shall do so at our earliest opportunity, sir. At the moment General Dayvson is leading an expeditionary force against the rebels entrenched in the eastern mountains, and communications with that area are not reliable.”

  “Oh? Well, let’s hope he took some newsers to record his victories, then.” The bald head swiveled back to the Minister for Truth. “Tell the newsers to explain in their own words that we can’t afford to maintain the usual generous rations while we’re spending so much to support bringing the Colony back into line. I’ll write the text and send it out to them after this meeting. Security, what do you have to say for yourself?”

  The Acting Minister for Security surreptitiously wiped clammy hands on his trousers. His predecessor had been abruptly removed from office for failure to stop the sullen crowds from gathering in the streets, and he had no tools with which to do better.

  “All healthy peace officers under fifty are overseas, serving in the army. With what we’ve got left –“old guys and cripples” – we cannot support the kind of violent response that these dissidents deserve. I’ve instructed the remaining peace officers to keep their weapons holstered. They are attempting to use tanglesticks to stop the movement of the mob.” And it wasn’t working.

  “Perhaps you should be less merciful.”

  “We can’t kill the entire population of the city!”

  The Head fixed a baleful glare upon him. “Are you implying that the entire city is rising against us, Security?”

  “No, sir! But –”

  The Minister for Labor stirred. “The loss of so many working Citizens would be disastrous for our economy. I must respectfully petition that Security delete as few as possible. We’ll have to find some other way to whip them back into line.”

  “Unfortunate,” the Head mused, “that the threat of deportation is not currently available to us. They know we won’t deport traitors who would only join the rebels, and that’s emboldened them.” For some reason, playing on citizens’ fear of the unknown was more effective than killing dissidents outright.

  The Minister for Health coughed. “We may have come up with a solution for that problem, sir.”

  “What,” the Head said with a dry, rustling laugh, “you’ve discovered another continent where we can dump traitors?”

  Red spots appeared on her cheeks. “No, sir, but we may have an alternative to deportation. Recent medical treatments for the clinically insane have produced some interesting results. We have imported a new drug that changes brain activity to cut down violence.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “Used in isolation? None. But when it’s combined with some of our existing treatments, there are some interesting side effects. Subjects given Anti-V after a treatment of Truth-D and a sedative show greatly reduced brain activity not only in the areas responsible for violence, but also in volition and general memory. If I may demonstrate?” She produced a data slip.

  “By all means.” The Head glanced at the Visual Aids Operator, who removed the slip of recent street vids and substituted the one that the Minister for Health offered him.

  “As you see,” the minister said as a shambling creature in the vid obeyed commands to sit, stand, and jump, “the product is quite passive but responds well to simple orders. This is practically a miracle drug suite, sir! It can transform dissidents into useful, if low-level, workers. There should also be substantial cost savings, depending on how the Bureau for Labor decides to allocate the new workers; they need not be paid, and can subsist on sludge.”

  “And seeing the transformation of their former leaders should seriously discourage the other dissidents,” the Head concluded. “I like it, Health. But are you certain the effect is not reversible? A lot of the savings would be destroyed if we had to continue treating the subjects with an imported drug.”

  “Sir, initial tests indicate that large areas of the brain are simply destroyed.” The Minister for Health paused. “Unfortunately, since the subjects we were allot
ted for this test had been arrested for choofing, it’s possible that choof and other illegal drugs prepared the subjects’ brains for maximal response.”

  “Well, try it out on somebody who’s clean!” The Head tapped the table irritably. “What about Aberforss? He was already a problem even before this little rebellion started: clearly a dissident, but we can scarcely exile him to Esilia where he can make even more trouble. I’ll order his secure facility to release him to your experimental team. If this drug suite tames Aberforss, I’ll be impressed.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Yanni felt sure the Thing by the river wasn’t ghosts or sprites or ifreets. And even if it was, they were only disembodied spirits that a real man wouldn’t be afraid of. Now it was a matter of his personal honor to go back there.

  The boy hadn’t been supposed to get so close to the army’s line of march, but when had that ever stopped a boy from spying on soldiers? He’d spent the greater part of a day lying along a rock ledge, watching the entertaining confusion of the supply train, before his aunt heard him retailing the details to a clump of envious younger kids. She clouted him on the spot, and the next day dragged him by the ear to the village school. “And if you play truant again, it won’t be me, but your uncle Ektor you’ll be explaining yourself to!”

  Uncle Ektor had a heavy hand, and considered it part of his duty to his dead brother to thrash Yanni periodically on the grounds that he had undoubtedly done something to deserve it. Yanni sulked and brooded for an entire two days before the Night of the Screams.

  Most of the villagers claimed that they hadn’t heard a thing, they were far too tired after the day’s work to sit up late imagining things. But while they asserted this, they looked over their shoulders. The men clicked worry beads and the wives broke off pieces of the morning flatbread to lay on the black stone sacred to the old gods of the mountain, the ones who’d been displaced when deportees left the arid plains to build up into the hills.

  The children were more forthright, if no more truthful. No boy in the village would admit to having slept through the previous night. “Ghosts,” one of them boasted. “My cousin’s wife’s father walked for three nights after he died and he made noises just like that!”

  “Huh,” said another one. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. It was the White Woman, warning us that someone’s going to die.”

  “All night? Don’t be stupid. It was ifreets.”

  “No ifreets in the mountains…”

  “There are now. They prob’ly followed the army up from the flatlands.” The speaker saw Yanni’s lips twitch. “Don’t believe in ifreets, Yanni? What do you reckon it was, then, squealing and shrieking half the night in a dozen voices?”

  “I think…” That right there was where it became a matter of honor, when Yanni’s mouth outraced his brain. “I think I’m going back to the river road after school, to try and find out what really made those noises.” No! No! This is a very bad idea, his brain gibbered – too late.

  “Why put it off?”

  Yanni’s shoulders twitched. “Why invite Uncle Ektor to belt me again for skipping school? He does it often enough as it is.”

  That saved his honor for the time being, as two of the speculating boys were his cousins and agreed that a belting from Ektor was nothing to incur lightly.

  But then he had all day in school to think about it.

  “Don’t get caught out there after dark,” one of his cousins warned him when he started off for the river.

  “Why not? I’m not afraid of the dark, are you? Oh, I forgot. You believe in ghosts and the White Woman. You probably are afraid.”

  But Yanni’s steps were dragging as he made his way through the needle trees to the ledge where he’d built a screen of dead branches to hide him while he watched the soldiers. The closer he got, the worse he felt about it. Something smelled bad… And the fat, heavy blackflies were buzzing. He slapped one away from his face. Too bad it had stopped raining; they never came out when it was wet. One good thing about rain…

  His screen of branches looked pathetically bare; all the needles had fallen off the dead limbs. But maybe he wouldn’t need it. He didn’t hear anybody moving on the river road; he didn’t hear anything but the buzzing of the blackflies. Probably the supply train had finally gotten themselves organized and marched on into the high mountains. He would just take a look, then he could go back and tell his scaredy-cat cousins that there was nothing on the river road and certainly no sign of anything supernatural.

  Except… there was something. Not soldiers in their smartcloth grey and green uniforms that blended in with the rocks and trees; some red things, each standing next to a tree, each the height of a man, and he did not believe in ifreets. Even if there were pale strips of something flapping in the trees overhead. Paper, he told himself. Or rags. Not ifreet wings.

  Yanni clenched his teeth and walked to the far edge of the tree line, some twenty feet beyond his screened ledge, where he could see exactly what the red things were.

  Then he vomited on the carpet of needles for quite a long time, until he thought he could feel his empty stomach flapping against his backbone, and he wanted to rinse the sour taste out of his mouth but going to the river would mean going past… more of those…

  He ran back to the village, stuck his head under the spring that fell into a rock-walled basin and frantically gulped cold water, but it wanted to come right up again.

  “Boy! What are you doing, fouling our water? Get your scabby head out of there before I thrash you!”

  There was something almost comforting in the familiar threat; being beaten, however unpleasant, was part of ordinary life.

  And Uncle Ektor was not at all a bad person to grasp at when you were on the verge of disgracing yourself by shivering and crying. His uncle’s broad shoulder sheltered him until Yanni was able to stop gulping and tell what he’d found by the river.

  “They were men. I think. Harmonicas – soldiers – I think, but they weren’t wearing their uniforms any more. They were all red, and somebody had hung strips of their skin in the branches, and, and their eyes, and….”

  “Look at me, boy.”

  At the sight of his uncle’s face, taut and rigid with anger, Yanni thought that he was perhaps about to get the worst beating of his life.

  “You’re not making this up, are you?”

  Yanni shook his head. “I swear it’s true. I… I swear by the black stone. It must have been the Old Gods, people wouldn’t do all that to people, they’re angry because we came into their country…”

  Ektor shook him by the shoulders. “Stop babbling hysterical nonsense. It was my father’s grandfather built the first house here, I don’t think the Old Gods waited five generations and then avenged themselves on the wrong people. I suppose I’d better go and see for myself. You go home, and tell your aunt I said to give you some flatbread and cheese to replace the stuff you vomited up. Good sharp new cheese will take the taste out of your mouth.”

  In the end it was half the village men who went down to the river. Ektor had wanted to borrow the only holorecorder in the village, which was the schoolteacher’s treasure and delight. He wouldn’t lend out the recorder unless he got to come too, and the teacher’s brother went with the teacher, and so on until there was a virtual parade of scowling, black-mustachioed men marching towards the river valley. But Uncle Ektor went first.

  They sent two men back for shovels, and after that nobody returned until well after dark.

  Lying awake in the niche where he slept, just an extension of the outer wall really, Yanni heard his uncle talking to Aunt Meli. “Never seen anything like it… I hate the Harmonicas as much as anyone, but that wasn’t war; it was torture. Looks like Mavros Karamanlis’ work, remember that farmer in Davlis who wouldn’t contribute to his gang? Like that, but worse. This time there was a lot of… detailed work. Small knife. Done before they died, from all the blood.”

  “Panayamu.” There was a rustle of fabric; Aunt
Meli crossing herself three times. “So, he’s learned more evil.”

  Ektor sighed. “I’d heard that Angelos Angelu had joined up with him. Calls himself Angelos Thanatu now. He likes to use this little curved knife, you know?”

  “Well, what are you going to do about it?” Meli’s voice was sharp.

  “What can I do? They’re fighting the Harmonicas. You want to give in to the Harmonicas, be slaves to Harmony, see our boys raised as slaves?”

  “Better slaves than damned to eternity. Have you thought about what happens if we owe our independence to those like Mavros? He needs to be stopped now, before we fall from rebellion into civil war.”

  Ektor gave another heavy sigh. “You always could think and talk rings around me, Meli. But I can’t put Mavros Karamanlis out of business. And those who maybe could, are busy fighting Harmonicas themselves.”

  “Then send the holos to someone who can do it.” Meli paused. “Send them to the so-called governor. Stinking Billy’s almost as vicious as Mavros; he should be able to deal with them.”

  “Hmm.” Ektor scratched his chin. “No, I can’t communicate with Stinking Billy. That would be treason. But if I go visit your cousin Demitris… His place is practically out on the plains. Good communications with the capital. Encode the holos, send them in one short burst. Not to the governor. To the newser offices. If they all have the material, they’ll be falling over themselves to be the ones who get it out first. Then the Harmonicas will be forced to take notice.”