Shifting Reality (ISF-Allion Book 1)

by Patty Jansen

  Wahid said his regular prayer of forgiveness—for using the plastic instead of real cloth to wrap the body, and for incinerating the body instead of burying it, and for using fake flowers.

  While the prayer was in progression, Ari sneaked into the room. He took up position next to the door, straightened his back and managed to carry off that look as if he’d stood there all along. At least his clothes were halfway respectable today and he wore no make-up.

  Melati met his eyes, but all she could read in them was I’m in time for the important part, aren’t I?

  His face was pale. The scratch on his cheek was red and looked painful. A red light flashed on the comm clipped to his belt. He put his hand to it, glanced at the screen, frowned and put it back.

  When Wahid finished his incantations, Uncle, Ari and one of Uncle’s cousins picked up the cloth-wrapped body by the corners and carried the it to the stretcher which two of the neighbours had placed there. Wahid covered Rina with a precious batiked cloth.

  Melati watched his hands, old and knotted. It was unfair. Melati liked the unassuming ways of Wahid, but why did he live so long while so many innocent young people died?

  Melati followed the stretcher out the door. Everyone studiously avoided the puddle of water that Auntie Dewi had thrown. They might openly scoff at her talk of spirits, but they observed her directives nonetheless, just in case.

  The Grimshaw enforcer was on her comm, possibly calling a cleaning crew. They didn’t like people throwing water around. Humidity messed up the biolab balance, they said.

  The parade got underway, with the stretcher in front, Wahid, Melati, Grandma and the aunties behind it, followed by the cousins and block association neighbours and then all the others: friends of the family, business owners in JeJe and hangers-on.

  The red light on Ari’s comm flashed again. Someone really wanted to contact him.

  The two soldiers rejoined Melati at a distance, and the single enforcer followed not far behind them.

  All along JeJe, people came out of doors and watched, silently when the bier passed, but it was an angry kind of silence. Ari held his free hand balled against his thigh. His comm now flashed with three messages. Melati checked over her shoulder to see if the soldiers were still following her—they were right behind her—and was dismayed with the size of the crowd. Hundreds of heads all along the curved passage. It looked like every one of the onlookers had come out of their shops and joined the procession. The sole enforcer had been joined by a few others, all with emotionless, observant faces, eyes constantly scanning the crowd and relaying the happenings to others via their comms.

  Harto was not far behind Grandma, flanked by two hypertechs with their buggy-eyed facemasks. Looking further back, she spotted at least three others.

  The procession went out of JeJe to the checkpoint, where the enforcers watched the oncoming procession with widening eyes. Wisely, they didn’t bother asking anyone for ID because a riot would have broken out if they had. Then into the low market hall, where the few remaining warung operators and the line of enforcers awaiting the refugee arrivals watched, into the passage towards the main hall. The column grew long and narrow where the enforcers had cordoned off half the passage width for the refugee arrivals.

  Across the cordon, small groups of people trudged in the other direction. Small people with black hair and barang-barang eyes. Pale skin and round faces. Families, older people, groups of younger men, all with the wiry build of miners. Many carried bags; some were injured. The glazed emotionless looks on their faces chilled Melati.

  Somewhere behind her, a male voice yelled, “Victory!”

  Some of the refugees looked up, black eyes searching the barang-barang crowd for the speaker. A young refugee man held out a balled fist and one of the hypertechs slapped it.

  There seemed to be some kind of meaning in that gesture, but Melati had no idea what it was.

  The station’s hall was full of people: enforcers, refugees sitting on the chairs in the cordoned-off area and spilling over onto the ground. StatOp officials sat behind a processing desk.

  ISF had increased the guard on the base entry point to two.

  There was also a new checkpoint in the entry into the C sector, the station’s administrative hub.

  The procession stopped there. One of the enforcers said something and one of the cousins at the front of the stretcher made a reply. Wahid went to the front of the line, and spoke to the enforcers. They checked screens; they made hand signals to a couple of colleagues further down the passage. One disappeared into a side door. People behind Melati started to fidget.

  “Why is it taking so long, lo?” Grandma muttered.

  Harto pushed himself past the stretcher-bearers and joined the discussion. With all the voices echoing in the hall, Melati couldn’t hear what was being said, but Wahid spoke to him several times while raising his finger, as if telling a child to be quiet.

  “They say they have orders to scan everyone and people without ID have to stay here,” Uncle said. He stood a bit closer to the checkpoint, holding his corner of the stretcher.

  “They can’t be serious,” Ari said, looking over his shoulder. “All these people? It’s a funeral procession.”

  But it wasn’t really, was it? A lot of people in the procession didn’t know Rina and were no friends of the Rudiyanto clan. Many of Ari’s sekong friends were in the crowd; they were marginally related even if Grandma didn’t like it. But there were also lots of hypertechs who definitely weren’t friends.

  Ari met Melati’s eyes. “I wish they got going. I know it’s a bad thing to say but this stretcher is quite heavy.”

  At the front, Harto shouted, “Whose fault is it that we don’t have ID? You charged too much for it, of course poor parents didn’t have their kids done.”

  Someone yelled from behind, “Stop arguing. We just want to get through.” This was a fellow sekong, tall and willowy with long hair and fake eyelashes. He wore tight pants, a bright pink blouse and big dangly earrings.

  Wahid put his finger to his lips.

  Harto said, “Why do we need ID to move within our own station anyway?”

  There were a lot of agreeing voices.

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Let us through!”

  “It’s a funeral, you morons.”

  Melati turned around. The hall was big enough to show the curve of the floor and she could see the entire floor from her position. A huge group of barang-barang spread out behind her. Enforcers watched from their posts guarding the refugees or behind their desks. The refugees watched from the cordoned-off area.

  One of them, a young man, raised a balled fist. A black-gloved fist went up in response somewhere at the back of the funeral procession.

  There was that sign again. It chilled her.

  She turned to Jao behind her and said to him in a low voice, in Standard, “I think it would be a good idea to order those enforcers to let the procession through.”

  “We don’t have that kind of power in the station. Bassanti—”

  “Will be even angrier if this gets out of hand,” Desi said, looking over her shoulder. “She’s right. There’s some subversive current going on here.”

  He scanned the crowd. A few barang-barang men shouted at the refugees. An enforcer was speaking into a comm. “Guess so.” He jerked his head and he and his partner moved towards the checkpoint.

  Desi spoke to the enforcers. She was taller than both of them. They argued about something. The enforcers’ faces were closed. One shook his head. Another was on his pocket comm.

  “This is ridiculous!” Harto yelled. He turned to Wahid. “And you are just standing by letting it happen. What are these guys paying you to keep quiet? Will you ever stand up for us?”

  God.

  Melati abandoned her position and pushed between the people in front of her. “Excuse me, excuse me.” She was so angry that she saw nothing other than Harto’s sneering face.

  “You!”

>   Harto turned around and raised his eyebrows. To speak to someone that directly was considered rude, especially by older people. But Melati didn’t care. Harto was the rudest, most horrible oaf she had ever come across. God forbid that he should win the election. He and Jocar Bassanti would be yelling at each other each meeting and nothing would ever be decided.

  She said, restraining her voice, “Wahid is our elder, and he deserves our respect. He is doing his best—”

  Harto laughed. “You call that his best—”

  “—while still keeping the peace. Do you know what happened in New Pyongyang? StatOp is not our enemy. An enemy many times more powerful is out there, an enemy who has been trying to infiltrate and divide us. They succeeded at New Pyongyang. That’s why all these refugees are here. Because people in the station fought each other.”

  “And we see how much you’ve been brainwashed. What do you know about this magical enemy? Allion, huh? Have you seen any proof that they even exist? How do you know that they haven’t been dreamt up by everyone to justify cracking down on us?”

  Melati almost hit him in his smug face. “Have you seen the news? Have you looked beyond the doors to the B sector lately? Do you know what is going on in the system? In New Pyongyang, or New Hyderabad?”

  He huffed. “That all comes through their news channels. They feed us what they want us to believe, just so that they can—”

  “Blame someone else for our predicament! That is our whole culture, isn’t it? We don’t get to fight in any wars, so the wars are made up just so that tier 1 can justify punishing us. We don’t have success, so it’s got to be someone else’s fault. We don’t have any money, so someone else is keeping us from jobs. We can’t get what we want right now, so we blame our representative on the council. How about we stop complaining and start taking responsibility for our own lives?”

  She had to stop because she was out of breath.

  Someone behind her clapped, and then another person joined in, and a third. And someone cheered.

  Harto glared at her, his arms crossed over his chest. Melati glared back until he averted his gaze to check something on his comm and looked up again with a calculating expression that said that he had figured out that she might challenge him. He knew that she would be popular.

  Out of all the things Harto might be, stupid wasn’t one. He knew to shut up while he was in front. He backed away.

  Anger made Melati feel hot. Once in power, this man would destroy what little Wahid had built up.

  Desi and Jao still negotiated with the enforcers.

  One of them protested. “We need to get authorisation from our supervisor—”

  “—who is going to tell you to let them through,” Desi said. “According to the manual of crowd control. I presume you took the course.”

  The enforcer looked like he was going to argue with her, but Melati stepped between them. “There is no need for accusations.”

  Desi backed off. The enforcer gave Melati a sharp look. You own those thugs?

  She spoke softly. “Just let the people through who need to go for the funeral. Everyone is angry enough about this murder already. You do not want a riot to break out.”

  The man glanced over the crowd in the hall, from the group of curious refugees gathered behind the rope to the hypertechs who stood at the back of the funeral procession. His face twitched. “All, right, but anyone who is not a relative will need to register.”

  It made sense, but it was going to make a lot of people unhappy.

  Wahid raised his voice and explained to the waiting people. “We’d want everyone to go through, but we want our station to be kept safe.”

  People behind Grandma hushed others, and silence spread out towards the back.

  “This young woman did not die because one of us was violent. She died because of people from off-station. We want the enforcers to catch those people. This is why they have checkpoints everywhere.”

  Someone yelled, “Let them give us passes to work!”

  “I’m discussing the matter of ID with the StatOp council, and there will be some sort of solution. Just not right now. For today, and in respect for the young woman and her family, I want everyone to remain calm. For now, the enforcers give their word that no relatives of the deceased will be arrested for not having ID. The enforcers will take your names and give you a temporary permit.”

  “Does that mean they’re going to stop making a fuss over last names?” someone behind Melati asked.

  Others laughed, but the situation was not that funny. One of the reasons that ID permits was a tricky situation was that some families stubbornly held to the old Javanese tradition of giving their children one name only. StatOp demanded a family name and didn’t understand why some families didn’t have one.

  Wahid’s plea defused the situation for now. A large group of people at the back of the procession dropped off—none that Melati knew or wanted at the funeral—while only friends and relatives presented for checking, and fortunately the Rudiyanto clan all had ID, and this prevented further arguments, including those over last names.

  Harto protested loudly that people weren’t even free to attend funerals anymore. “I won’t let StatOp get away with bullying us like this. If they can’t come, I won’t come either.” He stomped off. A couple of hypertechs went with him.

  Good riddance.

  Melati returned to her position behind the stretcher-bearers. In passing, she said to Ari, “No matter how much they have what you want, and how much money you have to give them, I want you to never, ever, buy anything from the hypertechs anymore. I don’t know what sort of God they believe in, but it’s not the same as ours.”

  “They don’t believe in any,” Ari’s sekong friend said. “Their god is money and power.”

  Another man clapped her on her shoulder. “You spoke well and in the honour of the deceased.”

  The enforcers opened the checkpoint and Wahid, Uncle and the other stretcher-bearers led the procession through.

  Melati was still shaking with anger. What was Harto thinking, using Rina as a way to score political points, embarrassing Wahid and her family? It was disgusting. If this went on, she would stand for the council, even if only to stop Harto getting the job, because that would be insufferable. And to think that he and Uncle used to be friends until recently.

  Urgh.

  The procession continued down the passage in subdued silence, through the double doors into the station’s funeral centre. A few paces inside the hall with its horrible flat white lighting and beige walls, the stretcher-bearers stopped. All the young cousins and other children lined up and, one by one, crawled underneath the bier.

  Melati had a flash of a memory of doing this herself at Pak’s funeral. She had been eleven. The children crawled under the stretcher to show that they were at peace about the death. After doing this, you were not allowed to cry anymore.

  Melati remembered arguing that she didn’t want to stop crying because that would mean that she’d forgotten Pak. She had screamed and cried in Uncle’s shirt, embarrassing him and Grandma, and all the older people had still talked about it years later. How could she be at peace, when the cloth over the stretcher hid no body? That was why Pak had a ghost: because he was not at peace. Ibu was one of the workers whose bodies had been found and she had a proper ceremony; but he was floating around with the debris of the crash as part of Sarasvati’s rings. Every time the station orbited, he would watch his home come past while drifting powerless amongst dirty chunks of ice. One day, a mining machine would harvest him by accident.

  Her eyes pricked. Why did she always think about these horrible things? Why was she always the odd one out, angry when she should be polite and crying inside while she should be at peace?

  Look at all those people standing there, their faces emotionless, as if Rina had meant nothing to them. How could they do that? Why was she broken, and embarrassing to her people?

  The line of children was gone, and now the s
tretcher-bearers moved forward. A sole attendant directed the stretcher to be placed on a platform at the far end of the room—headfirst.

  The men knew this already. They’d been here countless times before. Few people lived to Grandma’s age.

  The stretcher-bearers retreated. Ari stood next to Uncle. Auntie Gema held the bowl with tiny flowers made from foil which she scattered over the body.

  Wahid performed a chant and said a few words.

  Melati stood through it while barely noticing what went on. A war raged inside her: calm against burning anger. She and Ari were the only ones left of Uncle’s children. She had to break this curse on the Rudiyanto family.

  StatOp personnel had often told the people that they could watch the platform with the body disappear into the furnace, but the barang-barang never did. Wahid led the solemn procession back into the corridor.

  Sounds of shouting drifted from the main hall and when Melati and Uncle went through the checkpoint, they ran into a large group of people sitting on the floor. Many hypertechs and miners. All the people who had been refused entry to the C sector. Someone in the middle of the group had brought a holo-projector, displaying the text Freedom for all. A couple of enforcers hung around, looking unsure of what to do about this development. One was speaking rapidly into his pocket comm.

  Harto stood in the middle of the group, speaking to a hypertech.

  “Come, all,” Uncle said. “We have lost a precious young woman. Let us forget our differences for the time being. My house is open to all.”

  “We will come when they let us go freely within the station,” Harto said.

  Around Harto sat hypertechs and a lot of miners. Most of the latter sat together in groups, speaking in soft voices and casting occasional nervous glances at the enforcers.

  “This is a very ill-conceived action,” Wahid said.

  “We want the right to go wherever we want. We want this game to stop. We want something to be done. You’ve had your chance. For years, you have promised us better conditions, but they’ve only gotten worse. Now these men can’t work anymore, and their families suffer. We’ve had enough. We’ll sit here until something is done.”