by John Bowers
“What about you?”
“I walked around in a daze for the longest time, waiting for it, but nothing happened to me. Then my baby sister, the one who recorded all those letters I told you about…?”
The tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks, dripping off her chin. She sucked at the beer again, pain etched across her features.
“She was walking home from school with four other girls when two Sirians drove up in a car and jumped out. The girls scattered in five different directions; four of them got away.”
“But they caught your sister.”
She nodded. “They didn’t let her go for two days. She hasn’t been right in the head since then, and that was over two years ago.”
“How old was she?”
“Twelve.”
Erik scowled. “Goddess!”
“At least they didn’t kill her—thousands of girls her age have gone missing since the occupation began. It’s the occupation troops—most of them weren’t in the war, they came later to replace the ones who fought. A lot of them are older men, in their thirties and forties. The younger ones seem to prefer the middle-aged women.
“Anyway, it’s like living in a cage. We stand around in plain sight waiting for them to decide what to do with us. Maybe that’s how a beef cow feels, or a chicken—we’re just livestock. When will they come for us, what will they use us for? If you’re over forty you’re a prime candidate for the slave market. In the meantime you might be needed as a whore for the young troops. Oh, but while you’re waiting, go ahead and have a family, so we’ll have someone for the next generation to fuck after we’ve disposed of you.” She shivered. “Sorry if I sound morbid, but that’s how it feels.”
Erik placed a hand over hers. She looked up, suddenly vulnerable.
“I apologize for what I said the other night,” he told her. “I was out of line.”
She smiled and wiped her eyes, then laughed, embarrassed.
“It’s okay,” she said. “But thanks.”
“How did you end up working here?”
She sucked the cigarette and stubbed it out.
“I was recruited. Albert Kruzer, who owns the pub, is a friend of my dad’s. When he built the pub he managed to get lifetime slavery exemptions for the girls he hired. The only downside is that the girls have to be willing to fuck the customers. I’m not a religious freak and I wasn’t a virgin, so it didn’t matter.”
“What happens if the pub burns down?” Erik asked. “Is your exemption still good?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Why would you ask a question like that?”
He shrugged. “I was just wondering—what if you quit, or something happened so that you couldn’t work here anymore. Would the Sirians still honor the exemption?”
“As far as I know. Anyway, if something happened to the pub, Albert would just rebuild it. He’s making a mint off this place.”
“At these prices I’m not surprised.”
Sallje laughed. “Hey, it’s only soldiers’ money. They have nowhere else to spend it.”
“Veggieeee!”
Erik looked up to see Sgt. Jeff Kilburn grinning down at him. He gave the man a cautious smile. “How’s it going, Jeff?”
“It’s goin’ great. I just got off duty.” He slid onto the seat next to Sallje, who scooted over for him. “Looks like yew’re makin’ up with Sallje here,” he said. “I’m proud to see it. She might be a whore, but she’s my kinda whore.” He wrapped an arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “Right, Sallje?”
She responded with a kiss on the lips. “Tha’s right, Killer!”
“Is the Veggie treatin’ yew all right?”
“Yes he is.” Sallje smiled at Erik. “He even apologized for what he said the other night.”
Jeff Kilburn didn’t really care, but he lifted his beer glass in Erik’s direction.
“Outstanding! I’ll drink to that!”
As he tipped his mug, Sallje met Erik’s eyes once again. She smiled.
“Almost makes me wish I was a religious freak,” she said quietly.
Erik had another beer, smiling at Kilburn’s jokes, telling one of his own that Kilburn didn’t get. He even danced with Sallje, though the music made no sense to him and he couldn’t quite get the rhythm. Finally he glanced at his watch.
“I better get on home,” he told them. “Curfew in a half hour.”
“Fuck the curfew!” Kilburn said, now thoroughly drunk. “Yew are my guest!”
“Thanks, but the street patrols might not see it that way. I’d better not take the chance.”
“Well…when yew gonna come see us again?” Kilburn burped loudly.
“First chance I get. I had a good time tonight.” And you will both remember that I was here.
He slapped the sergeant on the shoulder, kissed Sallje on the cheek, and walked away from the table. He had to skirt the crowd to get to the door—a large group of soldiers were hogging the center of the room, arms around each other, singing drunkenly, swaying this way and that. Erik reached the exit and ducked into the men’s room to relieve his bladder.
The men’s room was a mess. Water beaded the mirror and puddled the floor, bits of paper were scattered all over, most of them soggy, a thoroughly septic atmosphere. Erik stepped in front of the urinal and tried not to touch anything. Back in one of the stalls someone was singing, loudly and off-key. The lyrics were so badly slurred that Erik couldn’t make them out, but the singer seemed to be trying to match the melody that filtered in from the main room.
Suddenly the singing stopped, and Erik heard a thump. Something hard and metallic slid across the tiled floor and came to a rest two feet from where he stood. He stared at it, electrified, and quickly zipped his pants. His heart thundered as he glanced at the door, then he knelt and looked under the stalls. A Confederate soldier lay on his side, pants down, bare-assed, snoring loudly. Completely unconscious. Erik hesitated only a second, then scooped up the metallic object and slid it inside his jacket, pinning it to his side with his left arm.
It was a bayonet.
Chapter 16
Monday, 24 February, 0200 (PCC) – Reina, Vega 3
Erik had dinner with Valyn at the University Café after work. The weekend storm had passed on and the ground had frozen, making footing treacherous and the snow crunchy. It was unseasonably cold for Reina, though not the coldest winter on record.
As always, the café’s interior was dim and cozy, comforting in view of the world outside its windows. Valyn looked stunning as always, her gleaming honey-blond hair brushed nearly to her waist. She was wearing a body-hugging dress that made her breasts bulge, and left very little to the imagination. It pained Erik that she had to dress like that, because she was a modest girl, but that was the law; in any case, she was a treat to his eyes.
“How’re things at work?” he asked as they dined on winter trout and steamed vegetables.
“Pretty routine,” she said. “No one has bothered me for several days.”
“That’s good to hear. “
“Colonel Royer is out of town. I expect I’ll be in trouble when he gets back.”
“Where did he go?”
“No idea. Jule told me he travels all over the planet. SE business, whatever that means.”
Erik took a bite of food and didn’t answer. He had an idea what it meant, but it wasn’t something he wanted to discuss.
“By the way,” Valyn said suddenly, meeting his eyes. “You remember I told you about Ingrid Klaussen?”
Erik nodded. “What about her?”
“Talk about a coincidence—the man who raped her was killed the other day.”
Erik frowned. “You knew who raped her?”
“Of course, everyone did. His name was Nils Jenssen.”
Erik nodded slowly. “I think I remember him. He lived not far from us.”
“I saw his name on a data merge this morning. He was found strangled in his bathtub.”
“Strangled?”
<
br /> “Yes. Someone tied his hands behind his back and strangled him with his own belt.”
Erik’s skin tingled, though he showed no emotion. “Any idea who did it?”
“No, the constabulary doesn’t have a clue.”
“They’ll probably get him,” he said. “Forensics and all that.”
“I don’t think so.” She sipped her tea. “He wasn’t anybody important. Murder gets ignored unless the victim is a Sirian.” She shivered. “Imagine! You can be murdered in your own home and nobody cares! Goddess, what will ever become of this civilization?”
Erik ate silently for a couple of minutes.
“Well,” he said finally, “if anyone has to be murdered, at least it was someone who deserved it.”
He let that hang, to gauge her reaction.
“I guess so,” she said. “Under the old law he would have been executed.”
“That’s what I mean. I guess you might call it justice delayed.”
Her eyes widened a fraction. “Do you think someone killed him because of Ingrid?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Unless it was a robbery.”
“The data didn’t say anything about a robbery.”
“Then I can’t imagine any other reason. If his hands were tied behind him it clearly wasn’t a suicide.”
“No, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe there is a goddess after all.”
Valyn laughed and slapped his arm. “Of course there is! Don’t be silly.”
Erik grinned and continued eating.
“If someone did kill Mr. Jenssen because of Ingrid, I wish they’d finish the job,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“There are a lot more out there like him. I see their names every day.”
“What are you talking about?”
She leaned forward confidentially.
“Erik, this city is full of serial rapists. Vegan men, most of them like Jenssen, who lost their wives to the slave trade. As far as I know, Ingrid is the only one Jenssen ever raped, but these other men are doing it all the time. They have hundreds of victims.”
Erik sat frowning, his food forgotten.
“The SE is tracking all this? How do they get the information?”
“I’m not sure. I think the rapists report it themselves.”
“Why? Why would anyone report on themselves for something like that?”
“Jule told me about this thing called ‘Sirianization’; it’s a program designed to undermine Vegan morals, to make Vegan men think and act like Sirians. When a woman is taken into slavery the SE tells her husband that he doesn’t need her, that any woman on Vega is his for the taking. Most men don’t fall for it, but some of them do. Apparently they ask these men to report their own rapes, so they can track how successful the program is.”
Erik closed his eyes briefly, feeling suddenly sick. The cancer was even worse than he thought.
“You saw names?”
“Several.”
“Anybody you know?”
“No, but I do remember one name.”
“Why do you remember it, if you didn’t know him?”
“I heard it before.”
Erik refilled her teacup from the pot at his elbow. He tried to keep his voice casual.
“Who is he?”
“Pierre Minore. He’s an attorney; before the war he was a high profile defense lawyer. He used to defend Sirian rapists against the death penalty. Now he’s doing the same thing his clients were doing.”
“How many victims?”
“I’m not sure. Thirty or forty.”
“Sophia!”
“I know. It’s terrible.”
* * *
“That’s pig shit, Steinbach!”
Erika Sebring glared down at the miserable little news director with fire blazing from her silver eyes. He gazed calmly back from the safety of his desk chair, his fingers steepled in front of him. In a chair to his right sat Viktor Lundgren, who had been news director before the surrender. To his right was the current news anchor, Kelly Nobel. They both looked a little wide-eyed at Erika’s defiance.
“‘Pig shit’?” Steinbach laughed. “Where did yew learn that? Vegans don’t say ‘pig shit’.”
“I spent the last five years learning a new language,” she told him. “Three of those years were on your fucking planet!”
Steinbach shrugged.
“Okay, call it pig shit if yew want, but that don’t change anything. The piece don’t air.”
“And why not? It’s a good piece! It’s legitimate news and it’s human interest.”
“I don’t think it’s human interest,” Kelly Nobel said brightly. “Our audience doesn’t—”
Erika spun and jabbed a finger at her.
“You shut up! When I want your advice I’ll beat it out of you.”
The anchor girl paled and swallowed hard, turning to Steinbach as if for protection. Erika swung back to her antagonist.
“Okay,” Steinbach said, sitting up in his chair. “Here it is—nobody gives a flying fuck about murder on Vega. Some guy gets throttled in his bathtub, so what. Nobody cares. People are a lot more interested in the price of groceries and who’s on the next Domestic Companionship list. Our job is to give them news that’s upbeat, to make them feel better.”
“Oh, for Sophia’s sake! The planet is being raped day by day and we’re supposed to make people feel better?”
“That’s right. There’s two things yew should understand if yew’re gonna continue to work here, Erika—there is no more ‘freedom of the press’, and the public does not have a ‘right to know’. The Confederacy makes the rules here. The Confederacy dictates what does and does not go on the air. For the time being this is still a captive society, and there’s no need to rub their noses in it. They need good news, not some depressing shit about a murder that nobody cares about anyway.”
“You want good news?” Erika retorted. “Okay, here’s the good news—the dead man is known to have raped a young priestess of Sophia and ended her career. Over half the people in this city are Sophia worshippers, so the fact that a priestess raper got his neck snapped should cheer a lot of them up.”
“The answer is no.”
Erika turned to her old boss. “Viktor?”
“Sounds like news to me,” Viktor said. “I would’ve run it in a heartbeat. Lead story.”
“And that’s why yew ain’t news director anymore,” Steinbach said with a grin, apparently not offended by Viktor’s opinion. He looked at Erika again. “Anything else?”
Fuming, Erika knew she was beaten, but wasn’t ready to accept it.
“Yeah. Who do you work for? Some SE bastard somewhere?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. But I’d be careful with the pronouns, if I was yew.”
“I want you to show him that piece and see what he says. Without telling him in advance that you turned it down.”
“Why? Yew don’t believe I’m tellin’ the truth?”
“I want to hear it with my own ears.”
“No point in that. I already know what he’ll say.”
“Humor me. If he turns it down, I’ll give it up.”
Steinbach stared at her a moment, then raised his hands in surrender.
“Okay. I’ll show it to him tomorrow.”
“And I’m going with you. To make sure you don’t fuck it up.”
Steinbach laughed again. “Okey-dokey, fine and dandy.”
Erika glared at him a moment longer, then heaved a sigh.
“I’m not surprised your ratings are in the sewer,” she said. “People want real news, not spoon-fed porridge.”
Steinbach stood up, beaming as if he’d won a victory. “Are we done here?”
“For now. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Erika turned to leave. Kelly and Viktor also rose and headed for the door.
“Kelly.” Steinbach motioned the anchor girl toward him with a nasty little grin. As the others exited th
e office she marched quickly around his desk. Steinbach kissed her, then she smiled, hefted her skirt, and bent over the desk.
* * *
Karl Norgaard was still up when Erik got home. He wasn’t a man given to much emotion, but his eyes softened when he saw his son. Having him home again, practically back from the dead, was one of the bright spots of his life, especially considering the disappointment Hans had brought.
“Cold out there?” he asked as Erik hung up his jacket.
“Freezing. I really need to get a heavier coat.”
“Sit down by the fire, warm yourself. There’s a bottle of Nektar in the kitchen if you want it.”
Erik shook his head and settled on the sofa.
“Thanks, but the fire will do for now.”
“How’s your girlfriend?”
“My girlfriend? You mean Valyn?”
His dad grinned. “Do you have two of them?”
“No. It’s just that…well, I don’t think of her that way.”
“You better start. She sure as hell thinks of you that way.”
Erik reddened slightly. He knew his dad was right. Valyn had already declared her love for him, and he didn’t want to hurt her. Maybe he should end it, but he didn’t want to. He enjoyed her company and she seemed to need his. It also didn’t hurt that she worked at SE headquarters. That might prove to be a nice benefit if he kept thinking the way he’d been thinking tonight.
“Dad,” he said suddenly, “whatever happened to your hunting rifle? It hung over the fireplace for years.”
Karl Norgaard snorted. “You kidding? The Sirians collected all weapons the minute they came in. They gave us thirty days to turn them in, and after that anybody caught with a weapon was in serious trouble. They catch you with a gun, they’ll take your wife, even if she has an exemption. No excuses, no appeals.”
Erik frowned. “So nobody in Reina has a gun?”
“Not anymore. Just the Confederates.” Karl stretched and shifted position. “Totalitarian systems always disarm the public. They have to—they can’t afford a popular uprising.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“From their point of view it does. It was the same way on Terra, before the Federation. Did you ever study Terran history?”
Erik shook his head. “I had a class on it in high school, but I found it boring.”
