Interesting, Sula thought, for Casimir to include another couple. Perhaps it was to put her at ease, to assure her that she wouldn't be at close quarters with some predator all night.
"Pleased to meet you," she said. "I'm Gredel."
Casimir gave two snaps of his fingers and a tiled panel slid open in the wall, revealing a well-equipped bar, bottles full of amber, green, and crimson liquids in curiously shaped bottles. "Shall we start with drinks before supper?" he asked.
"I don't drink," Sula said, "but the rest of you go ahead."
Casimir was brought up short on the way to the bar. "Is there anything else you'd like? Hashish or – "
"Sparkling water will be fine," Sula said.
Casimir hesitated again. "Right," he said finally, and handed her a cut-crystal glass that he'd filled from a silver spigot.
He mixed drinks for himself and the others, and everyone sat on the broad, oversoft chairs. Sula tried not to oversplay.
The discussion was about music, songwriters and musicians that Sula didn't know. Casimir told the room to play various audio selections. He liked his music jagged, with angry overtones.
"What do you like?" Julien asked Sula.
"Derivoo," she said.
Veronika gave a little giggle. Julien made a face. "Too intellectual for me," he said.
"It's not intellectual at all," Sula protested. "It's pure emotion."
"It's all about death," Veronika said.
"Why shouldn't it be?" Sula said. "Death is the universal constant. All people suffer and die. Derivoo doesn't try to hide that."
There was a moment of silence in which Sula realized that the inevitability of misery and death was perhaps not the most appropriate topic to bring up on first acquaintance with this group; and then she looked at Casimir and saw a glimmer of wicked amusement in his dark eyes. He seized his walking stick and rose.
"Let's go. Take your drinks if you haven't finished them."
Casimir's huge Victory limousine was shaped like a pumpkin seed and painted and upholstered in no less than eleven shades of apricot. The two Torminel guards sat in front, their huge, night-adapted eyes perfectly at home on the darkened streets. The restaurant was paneled in old, dark wood, the linen was crisp and close-woven, and the fixtures were brass that gleamed finely in the subdued light. Through an elaborate, carved wooden screen, Sula could see another dining room with a few Lai-own sitting in the special chairs that cradled their long breastbones.
Casimir suggested items from the menu, and the elderly waitron, whose stolid, disapproving old face suggested he had seen many like Casimir come and go over the long years, suggested others. Sula followed one of Casimir's suggestions, and found her ostrich steak tender and full of savor, and the krek-tubers, mashed with bits of truffle, slightly oily but full of complex flavors that lingered long on her palate.
Casimir and Julien ordered elaborate drinks, a variety of starters, and a broad selection of desserts, and competed with each other for throwing money away. Half of what they ordered was never eaten or drunk. Julien was exuberant and brash, and Casimir displayed sparks of sardonic wit. Veronika popped her wide eyes open like a perpetually astonished child and giggled a great deal.
From the restaurant they motored to a club, a place atop a tall building in Grandview, the neighborhood where Sula had once lived until she had to blow up her apartment with a group of Naxid police inside. The broad granite dome of the Great Refuge, the highest point of the High City, brooded down on them through the tall glass walls above the bar. Casimir and Julien flung more money away on drinks and tips to waitrons, bartenders, and musicians. If the Naxid occupation was hurting their business, it wasn't showing.
Sula knew she was supposed to be impressed by this. But even years ago, when she was Lamey's girl, she hadn't been impressed by the money that he and his crowd threw away. She knew too well where the money came from.
She was more impressed by Casimir once he took her onto the dance floor. His long-fingered hands embraced her gently, but behind the gentleness she sensed the solidity of muscle and bone and mass, the calculation of his mind. His attention in the dance was entirely on her, his somber dark eyes intense as they gazed into her face while his body reacted to her weight and motion.
_This one thinks! _she thought in surprise.
That might make things easy or make them hard. At any rate it made the calculation more difficult.
"Where are you from?" he asked her after they'd sat down. "How come I haven't seen you before?" Julien and Veronika were still on the dance floor, Veronika swirling with expert grace around Julien's clumsy enthusiasm.
"I lived on the ring," Sula said. "Before they blew it up."
"What did you do there?"
She looked at him and felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. "I was a math teacher," she said, a story that might account for some of her odd store of knowledge.
His eyes widened. "Give me a math problem and try me," Sula urged, but he didn't reply. She began to develop the feeling her phony occupation might have shocked him.
"When I was in school," he said, "I didn't have math teachers like you."
"You didn't think teachers go to clubs?" Sula said.
A slow thought crossed his face. He leaned closer, and his eyes narrowed. "What I don't understand," he said, "is why, when you're from the ring, you talk like you've spent your life in Riverside."
Sula's nerves sang a warning. She laughed. "Did I say I've spent my whole life on the ring?" she asked. "I don't think so."
"I could check your documents," his eyes hardening, "but of course you sell false documents, so that wouldn't help."
The tension between them was like a coiled serpent ready to strike. She raised an eyebrow. "You still think I'm a provocateur?" she asked. "I haven't asked you to do a single illegal thing all night."
One index finger tapped a slow rhythm on the matte surface of the table before them. "I think you're dangerous," he said.
Sula looked at him and held his gaze. "You're right," she said.
Casimir gave a huff of breath and drew back. Cushions of aesa leather received him. "Why don't you drink?" he asked.
"I grew up around drunks," she said. "I don't want to be like that, not ever."
Which was true, and perhaps Casimir sensed it, because he nodded. "And you lived in Riverside."
"I lived in Zanshaa City till my parents were executed."
His glance was sharp. "For what?"
She shrugged. "For lots of things, I guess. I was little, and I didn't ask."
He cast an uneasy look at the dancers. "My father was executed, too. Strangled."
Sula nodded. "I thought you knew what I meant when I talked about derivoo."
"I knew." Eyes still scanning the dance floor. "But I still think derivoo's depressing."
She found a grin spreading across her face. "We should dance now."
"Yes." His grin answered hers. "We should."
They danced till they were both breathless, and then Casimir moved the party to another club, in the Hotel of Many Blessings, where there was more dancing, more drinking, more money spread around. After which Casimir said they should take a breather, and he took them into an elevator lined with what looked like mother-of-pearl, and bade it rise to the penthouse.
The door opened to Casimir's thumbprint. The room was swathed in shiny draperies, and the furniture was low and comfortable. A table was laid with a cold supper, meats and cheeses and flat wroncho bread, pickles, chutneys, elaborate tarts and cakes, and bottles lying in a tray of shaved ice. It had obviously been intended all along that the evening end here.
Sula put together an open-faced sandwich – nice Vigo plates, she noticed, a clean modern design – then began to rehearse her exit. Surely it was not coincidental that a pair of bedrooms were very handy.
_I've got to work in the morning._ It certainly sounded more plausible than _I've got to go organize a counter-rebellion._
Casimir put h
is walking stick in a rack that had probably been made for it specially and reached for a pair of small packages, each with glossy wrapping and a brilliant scarlet ribbon. He presented one each to Sula and Veronika.
"With thanks for a wonderful evening."
The gift proved to be perfume, a crystal bottle containing Sengra, made with the musk of the rare and reclusive atauba tree-crawlers of Paycahp. The small vial in her hand might have set Casimir back twenty zeniths or more – probably more, since Sengra was exactly the sort of thing that wouldn't be coming down from orbit for years, not with the ring gone.
Veronika opened her package and popped her eyes wide – that gesture was going to look silly on her when she was fifty – and gave a squeal of delight. Sula opted for a more moderate response and kissed Casimir's cheek.
There was the sting of stubble against her lips. He looked at her with calculation. There was a very male scent to him.
Sula was about to bring up the work she had to do in the morning when there was a chime from Casimir's sleeve display. He gave a scowl of annoyance and answered.
"Casimir," came a strange voice. "We've got a situation."
"Wait," Casimir said. He left the room and closed the door behind him. Sula munched a pickle while the others waited in silence.
Casimir returned with the scowl still firm on his face. He was without a trace of apology as he looked at Sula and Veronika and said, "Sorry, but the evening's over. Something's come up."
Veronika pouted and reached for her jacket. Casimir reached for Sula's arm to draw her to the door. She looked at him. "What's just happened?"
Casimir gave her an impatient, insolent look – it was none of her business, after all – then thought better of it and shrugged. "Not what's happened, but what's going to happen in a few hours. The Naxids are declaring food rationing."
"They're what?" Sula's first reaction was outrage. Casimir opened the door for her, and she hesitated there, thinking. Casimir quivered with impatience. "Congratulations," she said finally. "The Naxids have just made you very rich."
"I'll call you," he said.
"I'll be rich, too," Sula said. "Ration cards will cost you a hundred apiece."
"A hundred?" For a moment it was Casimir's turn to be outraged.
"Think about it," Sula said. "Think how much they'll be worth to you."
They held each other's eyes for a moment, and then both broke into laughter. "We'll talk price later," Casimir said, and he hustled her into the vestibule along with Veronika, who showed Sula a five-zenith coin.
"Julien gave it to me for the cab," she said triumphantly. "And we get to keep the change!"
"You'd better hope the cab has change for a fiver," Sula said, and Veronika thought for a moment.
"We'll get change in the lobby."
A Daimong night clerk gave them change, and Veronika's nose wrinkled at the smell. On the way to her apartment Sula learned that Veronika was a former model and now an occasional club hostess.
"I'm an unemployed math teacher," Sula said.
Veronika's eyes went wide. "Wow," she said.
After letting Veronika off, Sula had the Torminel driver take her within two streets of the Riverside apartment, after which she walked the distance to the building by the light of the stars. Overhead the broken arcs of the ring were a line of black against the faintly glowing sky. Outside the apartment she gazed up for a long moment until she discerned the pale gleam of the white ceramic pot in the front window. It was in the position that meant "someone is in the apartment and it is safe."
The lock on the building's front door, the one that read her fingerprint, worked only erratically, but this time she caught it by surprise and the door opened. She went up the stair, then used her key on the apartment lock.
Macnamara was asleep on the couch, with a pair of pistols on the table in front of him, along with a grenade.
"Hi, dad," Sula said as he blinked awake. "Junior brought me home safe, just like he said he would."
Macnamara looked embarrassed. Sula gave him a grin.
"What were you planning on doing with a grenade?" she asked.
Macnamara didn't reply. Sula took off her jacket and called up the computer that resided in the desk. "I've got work to do," Sula said. "You'd better get some sleep, because I've got a job for you first thing in the morning."
"What's that?" He rose from the couch, scratching his sleep-tousled hair.
"The market opens at 07:27, right?"
"Yes."
Sula sat herself at the desk. "I need you to buy as much food as you can carry. Canned, dried, bottled, freeze-dried. Get the biggest sack of flour they have, and another sack of beans. Condensed milk would be good. Get Spence to help you carry it all."
"What's going on?" Macnamara was bewildered.
"Food rationing."
"What?" Sula could hear the outrage in Macnamara's voice as she called up a text program.
"Two reasons for it I can think of," Sula said. "First, issuing everyone with a ration card will be a way of re-processing every ID on the planet… help them weed out troublemakers and saboteurs. Second…" She held up one hand and made the universal gesture of tossing a coin in her palm. "Artificial scarcities are going to make some Naxids very, very rich."
"Damn them," Macnamara breathed.
"We'll do very well," Sula pointed out. "We'll quadruple our prices on everything on the ration – you don't suppose they'd be good enough to ration tobacco, would you? – and we'll make a fortune."
"Damn them," Macnamara said again.
Sula gave him a pointed look. "Good night," she said. "Dad."
He flushed and shambled to bed. Sula turned to her work.
"What if they ration alcohol?" she said aloud as the thought struck her. There would be stills in half the bathrooms in Zanshaa, processing potatoes, taswa peels, apple cores, whatever they could find.
She accessed the Records Office computer – her back door was the legacy of an earlier job processing refugees from the ring, before she'd volunteered to get herself killed leading partisan forces – and checked the protocols for acquiring ration cards. Given her level of access, they should be easy enough to subvert.
And then she had another thought. Thus far her group had been selling her own property out of the back of a truck, a business that was irregular but legal. But once the ration came into effect, selling cocoa and coffee off the ration would be against the law. The team wouldn't just be participating in informal economic activity, they'd be committing a crime._
People who committed crimes needed protection. Casimir was going to be more necessary than ever.
"Damn it," she said.
Macnamara failed to procure a large stash of food. Police were already in force at the market, and foodsellers had been told not to sell large quantities. Macnamara wisely decided to avoid attracting attention and bought only quantities that might be considered reasonable for a family of three.
The announcement of rationing had been made while Sula slept and the food marts were packed. Tobacco had not been included, but Sula couldn't hope for everything. Citizens were given twenty days to report to their local police station in order to apply for a ration card. The reason given by the government for the imposition of rationing was the destruction of the ring and the decline in food imports.
The news also announced that certain well-established Naxid clans, out of pure civic spirit, had agreed to spare the government expense, and would instead use their own means to manage the planet's food supplies. The Jagirin clan, whose head had been temporary interior minister during the changeover from the old government to the new, the Ummir clan, whose head happened to be the Minister of Police, the Ushgays, the Kulukrafs… people who, even if some of them hadn't been with the rebellion from the beginning, clearly found it in their interest to support it now.
The Naxids, Sula thought, had just created a whole new class of target.
Naxids were placed in every police station to monitor t
he process of acquiring ration cards, and the Naxids wore the black uniform of the Legion of Diligence, the organization that investigated crimes against the Praxis. All members of the Legion had been evacuated from Zanshaa before the arrival of the Naxid fleet, so apparently the new government had re-formed the Legion, probably with personnel from the Naxid police.
Another class of target, Sula thought.
A shimmering layer of afternoon heat stretched across the pavement like a layer of molasses, thick enough to distort the colorful canopies and displays of the Textile Market that set up in Sula's street every five days. Early in the morning, vendors motored up with their trailers or their three-wheelers with the sheds built onto the back, and at dawn hour the sheds opened, canopies went up, and the merchandise went on sale. After sunset, as the heat began to dissipate and the purple shadows crept between the stalls, the vendors would break down their displays and motor away, to set up the next day in another part of the city.
As Sula passed, vendors called her attention to cheap women's clothing, baby clothes, shoes, stockings, scarves, and inexpensive toys for children. There were bolts of fabric, foils of music and entertainment, sun lotion and sun hats, and items – unseasonable in the heat – alleged to be knit from the fleece of Yormak cattle, and sold at a surprisingly low price.
Despite the heat, the market was thronged. Tired and hot, Sula elbowed her way impatiently through the crowd to her doorstep. She entered the building, then heard the chime of a hand comm through her apartment door and made haste to enter. She snatched up the comm from the table and answered, panting.
Casimir surveyed her from the display. She could watch his eyes travel insolently over her image as far as the frame would permit.
"Too bad," he said. "I was hoping to catch you in the bath again."
"Better luck next time." Sula switched on the room coolers and somewhere in the building a tired compressor began to wheeze, and faint currents of air began to stir. She dropped into a chair, and holding the comm in one hand she began to loosen her boots with the other.
Solidarity (dread empire's fall) Page 2
