by Ben Chaney
Soon, Utu’s green island was a tiny patch in the haze. Jogun ran a giant circle around it across the rooftops, streets, and bridges. All of Rasalla spun around him.
He landed like a cat on the edge of the Temple roof, and stepped carefully into the swaying rows of spinach and kale. Yasin, Oki, Rusaam, and Kolpa waited at the end of the row, kneeling with heads bowed. Utu stood behind them smiling. He simply nodded.
“Those should do,” Utu said, “Now what?” Jogun flexed each muscle in his legs one after the other. He grabbed the steaming bowl of chicken broth. Chugged it.
“Now,” he said, clearing his throat, “Storehouses, safe houses, bunkers, dead drops, personal collections. Empty ‘em all. Weapons for anyone old enough and willing to hold ‘em. Same goes for supplies, so spread the word down in the Market. Bring all they can spare to the Pits.”
35
History
SATO AWOKE TO the feeling of falling. He gasped and shot glances around the room, scrambling through the foggy panic for a point of reference. The curving surface of his ashwood desk felt smooth and cold. A glass cup with a splash of bourbon backwash sat in front of a picture frame…Jada in her twenties, mid-swing on the Mesa Park swingsets. He squinted at the sunlight cascading through the thirty-foot-tall windows of his top floor executive office.
How long have I been out? Pre-lunch traffic drifted silently outside through the ivory pillars of the Center Ring. He leaned back in his leather chair and impulsively pressed his finger to his temple. The gold square under the skin of his forearm blinked three times then the Neural home-screen shimmered to life in front of him. He blinked at the familiar vibration behind his eyes.
“Good God...” he said, grabbing the side of his head. ‘Thirty-two New Messages’... The little envelope icon seemed to blink in sync with the pounding in his skull. He expanded his settings menu. Told his implants to dull the sensation.
Most of the messages complained at length about the same things they had for the last twenty-four hours: Helium-3 shipments have ceased, Virton is unresponsive, and supplies are running out. Fast. The super fuel could run the entire early twenty-first century United States for a year on a single shuttle load. Sedonia City torched through at least half that every day. Utopia on the outside. Insatiable monster inside. Or rather a swarm of locusts.
For the hundredth time, he hit the shortcut tab for Elias Finley’s direct line. The call tone beeped eight times then clicked over.
“Hello, Enota Sato, and thank you for calling Virton Energy Industries. How may I assist you today?” The clipped female speech of the AI answering program buzzed in Sato’s ear as it had the previous ninety-nine attempts. Sato hung up, snatched up the bourbon glass, and chucked it across the lavish office. It bounced once then skittered to a soundless, pathetic stop on the Sixteenth Century Spanish rug. Sato bit his teeth together until it hurt. Calmed.
Finley had always been ready with some sort of tailored political response. Didn’t matter how catastrophic the situation, the almighty Bottom Line kept the man in check. But now. To hear nothing at all. It had to mean the bastard was in the wind. That left only one other number to try.
“Call Janice Prescott,” Sato said, holding the command key. It rang the characteristic three times before her spider silk voice answered.
“Hello, Enota. Good news? —Christ...you look like hell,” she said, leaning forward in the video feed. A tickle on Sato’s scalp told him his thinning hair must be an abomination. He smoothed down the cow lick as best he could then straightened in his chair.
“Considering the Devil has skipped town on our deal and left me to manage Hell, I should think so,” Sato said.
“Yes. Finley. He’s emptied his accounts and fled the country. Wise, considering Virton Energy is ruined,” she said like it was gossip at a lunch meeting. Sato blinked.
“Ruined...” Sato’s heart flopped in his chest.
“Oh yes,” she said, “Themis is quite inoperable. Most of the staff dead, equipment destroyed or missing. Literally ruined.”
The news punched Sato in the throat.
“An attack. One of the hostile firms: Qin Industrial or the Alhaka Group,” said Sato. It had to be. Who else could? Prescott coughed a dry laugh.
“I’m afraid it was your little army of, shall we say, ‘civil servants.’ We’re not sure how they reversed Finley’s illegal mind-jacking operation, but they did, and they’re coming,” she said. Sato felt like his legs had been cut off underneath him.
“Oh, don’t look so terrified,” Janice scolded, “Something like this was always on the horizon and it fits the program, so you can rest assured that intervention will occur when it needs to. As for the fuel, our people have established a foothold and are restoring basic function to the Themis facility. It will be a while before it’s back to production strength again, but it’s at least a viable bargaining chip.”
The pieces of their plan floated in Sato’s awareness and settled into shape, but the blatant gaps defied him. He formed pointed questions, grasping for some semblance of control.
“When does Nobidyne take over?” he asked.
“Once their check clears, they should start retrofitting Themis within the week. We’ve purchased a quantity of product for immediate distribution, but Sato, there isn’t much and it isn’t cheap. Austerity measures and rationing will have to be put into effect,” Janice sighed, “Your constituents will have their lifeblood, but they’ll want their pound of flesh too. Yours, I’m afraid.”
You fucking bitch. The hangover made it hard to hide the shaking in his hands. He curled his fingers into fists.
“Austerity measures?! You know full well that there is more than enough available fuel—”
“No,” Janice said, sunken eyes glittering, “There is not. Not for this purpose. There will be no further debate on the subject.”
Sato fell silent, shamefully swallowing the unspeakable secret. But the blame...more unemployment, more food riots, ruinous fuel prices, another inevitable market crash, and a pack of angry T99’s whereabouts unknown...all on MY head? For all history? That he refused to swallow.
“I should have been kept in the loop, Janice. The City is breathing down my neck for a workable solution, and I have not given up on them! My head on a platter won’t fix this!”
“Oh, but it will, insofar as we need it to be fixed moving forward. This is too delicate a game to balk at strategic sacrifice. Personal sacrifice. It’s for the survival of humanity, Enota, you know that,” she nodded, drawing her thin lips in a matronly frown. Sato snapped.
“You mean ‘Stay of Execution,’ don’t you?”
“Wait right there!” her words whipped at him, “The bourbon is driving again and you’re headed for a cliff. You made a desperate call with the Raid and now that it’s backfired. It’s up to you to take the blows and beg for the people’s forgiveness. There is no other way forward.”
Sato felt the vice lock on his balls.
“Fine. I’ll draft my crucifixion speech at once,” Sato moved to hang up.
“One more thing before you go,” Janice said.
“More?!”
“Yes. More. The Rindal matter has continued long enough. Let’s be clear about something that has been, until now, implicit. Yours, Jada’s, and your extended family’s seats onboard the Narayana are officially contingent upon your success. Right here. Right now. Your last chance. Wrap this up, Sato, and chalk the rest to early retirement.” A twisted cousin of pity showed on Prescott’s waxen face. The video feed closed with a beep and his Neural displayed the message ‘Call Ended. Memory Block 081280_1130a: Deleted.’
Sato slumped back in his chair. The air in the office hovered, still as a sealed tomb. From the silence, a dead man’s words rang crystal clear in Sato’s memory. As though a program embedded deep within him had been set to go off at the precise moment. ‘They’ll come after you one day.’
A sickening chill ran up his spine. He clasped his hands together and sque
ezed as the voice of Alan Rindal set his guts on fire. Furious tears stung his eyes. I’m sorry Alan...I should have helped...really helped...should have listened. Not—
A bolt of lightning struck his brain. He swept his hand through the air to refresh the Neural home screen then hit the icon marked ‘History’. Before him, in a vast grid, lay folders for every year since he was implanted as a teen. He hadn’t touched the one folder in eighteen years, but never forgot its place on the grid. It was the recording. The one he’d brought to Prescott’s desk. The one that had buried Alan Rindal...and the family. Discovering the boy’s existence had been bittersweet.
Sato studied it, feeling his hand and arm tingle as they waited for him to give the order. He pressed and expanded the folder. Found the month, then the day, then the time. ‘Loading Memory Block 072262_645p.’ The task bar stuttered as it hunted for the data.
All at once, he was in the old kitchen of his executive block apartment, back on the lower Mesa. He was just a PRG lobbyist back then, working his way up the corporate ladder. Alan faced him with a pleading stare, leaning forward on the marble island. Rindal had been a hard man for years, masquerading as a lackey for the PRG. His thin, wiry-athletic frame never fit his clothes right, giving him the look of a college student wearing hand-me-downs. His wide eyes burned bright next to his light-brown complexion. The sharp jaw and cheekbones had a way of underscoring his fanaticism.
Sato shuddered inside his aloof observer brain. The ‘Play’ icon in his periphery blinked three times, froze, and faded away, breathing life into the remembered room.
“—can’t do this! They hold all the strings! You go in with a machete, and it all comes crashing down: you, me, everybody!” Sato heard and felt himself hiss in the whispers of a younger voice, yet could only watch the scene unfold like some shameful rerun.
“Are you really that blind? All of it is crashing down! The environment, industry, economy, society! The Narayana isn’t some ‘just-in-case’ backup plan; it’s the main event for these people! They spent the past fifty years squeezing every drop out of this planet so they can just cut and run and leave everybody else in the lurch!” Alan said, pushing himself from the island to pace the slate tile floor.
“You really should hear yourself right now,” Sato said, laughing, “You sound like some crazy-ass blogger with a doomsday conspiracy. They don’t want to abandon Earth; they’re working on the next logical step for all of us! Twelve billion people on the planet and counting...I’m glad someone is working on spreading us out a little!”
“Spreading us...” Rindal breathed a humorless laugh. “A fleet of fifty generational starships under secret construction worldwide. Trillions of credits bled from a suffering public in secret. And a war of attrition against the Slums waged to provide an Evil Enemy to blame. That sound like a group who holds humanity’s ‘best interests’ at heart? They built the Border twelve years ago to protect themselves. Not society, themselves. And they’re ramping up to do it again. There is no wall like Deep Space.”
Alan was right. No denying it. The powerful had deemed themselves worthy to survive and the rest undeserving. Triage of the Species. He wanted to tell Alan everything. The seats he had earned for himself, Jada, and her family. The agendas he had helped the Prescott Group draft into policy. Instead, Sato kept silent, waiting for his best friend to bury himself. For the greater good. Alan pressed on.
“If you help them with this...hell...even turn a blind eye and they’ll come after you, too one day. One day when it’s convenient for them, they’ll take you and everyone you love and toss your lives into the incinerator without a second thought. You are an asset, a tool with limited use. That’s how they see people, Enota. That’s how they own the world. I won’t just sit by and let my son grow up an unwitting slave.”
Sato looked down and away from Alan’s flashing glare. Inside his observing mind he did the same.
“Okay,” he heard himself begin the lie, “I hear you. What do you need from me?”
“Your voice. Everything you know about the back-room deals, cooked books, propaganda campaigns, and, of course, the convenient disappearances within the opposition. All of it in written in a sworn affidavit and mailed to my office,” Rindal said. Sato paused and rubbed his chin to make a show of the decision. Alan had a reputation for smelling lies.
“Then you’ll have it. But it will take more than the misgivings of an ex—collaborator to bring them down. You don’t have any proof. They’ll discredit me and shoot down my story befo—”
“I have blueprints, construction sites, and a current passenger manifest for the Narayana, leeched from the PRG’s internal files. Share-holders, bureaucrats, and other company men mixed with an as-yet uninformed contingent of doctors, scientists, and cultural figures. Unimpeachable,” Alan said.
“So why do you need my—”
“Your name is on the list. Harder to deny if it comes from you,” said Alan. That gave Sato pause. He knows? Why trust me? Alan seemed to read the question. “You’re my best friend, Enota. The brother I never had. I trust you. I need you. Humanity needs you.”
“I said ‘Okay,’ didn’t I? Where is this list?” asked Sato, realizing that he hadn’t even seen it. His observing self watched the next agonizing moments unfold.
“It’s safe,” said Alan.
“Safe?”
“Hidden.”
Stop playback and Close. Sato gave the internal command and Alan vanished along with that hideous kitchen, dumping Sato back in his stale three-hundredth-floor office. All these years he had wondered what ‘Hidden’ had meant. Now he had a pretty good idea.
“I’ll finish it,” he said with a knot in his throat, “I’ll find Aden and finish what you started and the whole fucking lot of it will come crashing down around them! Like it has to.” To hell with their ‘seats.’ He reached forward and held down the Neural command key.
“Call John Kabbard.”
36
Accomplice
LIANI HAD BEEN tossing and turning under her cotton sheets since dawn. She would burrow into one position, stay still with her eyes closed, and flip over ten minutes later. It had taken them until four in the morning to get settled, depositing the passed-out stranger on her floral print futon. Since then, her half-sleeping brain swam with paranoid dreams.
Rolling over again, she compulsively tapped her temple for the millionth time. ‘Net connection interrupted. Tower Signal lost.’ Her Neu Feed, news tickers, email, and UptOwn resource management game sat cached in the same state they had been for hours. Her pack of robo-dogs in her UptOwn villa were probably starving by now, tearing the penguin butlers apart. That actually upsets me. Serious ‘real-time withdrawal’ had officially set in.
“Unnngh! Hell with it,” Liani said. She swiped the Neural home screen closed and sat up. The heavy, black ring on her finger glinted through the slatted light of the blinds. She turned it on her finger. An RFID signal jammer. The reason she couldn’t connect, but also the only reason Kabbard wasn’t banging down her front door. It was one of three Corey had handed out in the van. Just whipped them out of his backpack like they wouldn’t get us all thrown in jail!
Although, it had been her idea to cross the line in the first place. For what, she still wasn’t sure. Her gut had said ‘sleep on it.’ But half-dreams of being paraded naked through Mesa Park en route to execution didn’t clarify much. Ass-naked except for my running shoes...screw you, subconsciousness. She swung her long, bare legs out of bed and began the hunt for a clean-ish pair of jeans.
Liani heard snoring as she peeked her head out into the tiny living room. Her special guest’s feet dangled motionless over the edge of the futon armrest and to the right, facing the front door, Corey sat slouched in the flimsy kitchen chair. His chin rested on his collar bone, and he held a curtain rod in his lap. Each time his chest rose it sounded like a motorcycle from one of those old action movies he’d insisted on lending to her.
“My hero,” she whispered w
ith a grin. The fossil fuel engine in Corey’s sinuses stalled as his eyes flickered open.
“Huh? What? Everything okay?” he asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes to scan the room.
“Down boy,” she teased, then yawned, “It’s been quiet all morning. Coffee?” Corey nodded and reflected the yawn as she turned into the kitchen. She picked up the coffee pot from the sink, sniffed it, and then shrugged. Stuck it in the maker.
“Uh oh,” Corey said from his chair. Liani tensed.
“What?!”
“Seems like your new friend left a chunky, blue puddle on your rug,” he said, snickering. Liani scurried out of the kitchen. The boy who’d called himself Aden had a thin line of drool running from his mouth to the sickly sweet mess on her microfiber carpet.
“Ahhhh, really? Really? So much for the members of the ruling elite,” said Liani, dipping back into the kitchen for a roll of paper towels.
“What do you mean, ‘ruling elite’?” Corey asked.
“Kid comes in last night and drops the better part of two G’s on drinks for the whole bar,” Liani said, “His chip came up Gold.”
“Could explain why Kabbard was after him...pissed off somebody up top. Probably a good thing I’m so ‘paranoid’ and had those rings handy.” Corey got up and squinted at Aden, “Dresses kinda weird for a Mesa Brat, doesn’t he?”
“I thought so, too,” Liani said, emerging with the paper towels and crossed to the futon, “No hex-mesh skinny pants or bad hair.” She knelt beside the puddle and dropped the whole wad on it. As it soaked, she studied her unconscious guest. This ‘Aden’ hardly had any body fat on him at all, drawing the lines of his tight, lanky muscles into sharp creases. His rough skin was slashed and pock-marked all over with dark, ashen scars. A big one on his shoulder. The ghostly forms of the Rasalla raid victims entered her mind. ‘Can you take me home,’ he’d said in the garage last night. Where’s home?
