Up Against It

by M. J. Locke

  She spotted Tarts, the coffee shop, with its irresistible mingling of aromas: fresh bread, cookies and pastries, and coffee. Some of its patrons carried their purchases next door to Tarts, Too, the virtual bordello, which had patio seating in front of its plate-glass windows. In the glass-front walkways there paraded an assortment of escort sapients, of both sexes (and some made-up genders), as well as anthropomorphized beasts, fantasy creatures, and monsters; all naked or semi-naked; provocative, aggressive, or coy. The place was packed. Bizfolk and miners crowded around the entrance. A knot of protestors waved flags and signs around the fringes, mocking the customers; denouncing Tarts, Too’s use of sapients as sex toys. Next up was the flea market, with people’s life histories up for sale, and then came the fruit stalls, holding rows of crisp, succulent produce straight from the city’s Mrs. Veggie tanks. Selection was sparse today. The range of choices was going to get sparser before this crisis ended.

  Threading through all the usual market smells was the usual people-smell, only today it was stronger than usual.

  Treeway and faraway folk did not bathe nearly as often as city folk did. Water, like everything else but vacuum, was scarce in space. And when you spent a lot of time encased in body armor, wrangling rocks and big machines and jetting around out in the Big Empty, thousands or even millions of kilometers from the nearest shower stall, body odor and oily hair were, well, inescapable. During her rock-hopping days, Jane had been no different. You got used to it, and stopped noticing the stink. In fact, she recalled how Phocaean city-dwellers had stunk, to her nose, back when she had returned from the Circuit, with their natural scents masked by soaps, perfumes, shampoos, and spritzes.

  Here, today, the stink of humanity surrounded Jane again. But the store and people smells were underlain with a staleness, a hint of human excrescence, rotting food, machine oils, and mold. The humidity was higher than normal, too. She could tell by the damp feel of the air on her face and in her lungs, by the way the wisps of her hair, which ordinarily hung straight and heavy in this high-gee place, coiled stubbornly across her cheeks and forehead.

  The smell was death, hanging patiently around. Waiting for just one more thing to go wrong, that could not be fixed in time.

  In truth, she should be grateful to Benavidez. The last twelve years that she had run Phocaea’s systems, and in particular the last four days, they had lurched and dodged from one near-catastrophe to another. However gleeful her fellow citizens were, however certain they were that their problem was solved—and they were all around her now, celebrating at the news that the ice would soon be delivered—she knew better. She knew how easily things might have gone horribly wrong many times in the past, if the stars had been aligned and one single thing had changed. And she remembered Vesta. The next crisis might well be the last. She was relieved, when it came down to it, that she would not be the one making the decisions this time.

  After a while the stares got to be too much. After a third passerby in a block slammed into her, nearly knocking her over, Jane ducked down a narrow walkway, through a semi-private atrium into a narrow alley. Several bug-sized news-mites flanked her along the carefully flawed brick walls of this less inhabited alleyway. A mote cloud thickened as it drifted toward her. She had almost certainly been breathing some in—swallowed them, even. Maybe Downside viewers would get a good look at her lungs, her bloodstream, her stomach lining.

  She knew she was being irrational; they transmitted their signals by settling onto receptors set into the intake ducts. Anything she inhaled would simply be broken down by her normal body defenses just as dust, molds, and pollens were. It was silly to get bent about one product of bug-tech, and not everything. Assembler traces were everywhere: in their food, in their water, on every surface. If she had not experienced an allergic reaction by now, she probably never would. She leaned against the wall, breathing deeply, collecting her calm.

  Only two more days of this torment and then she would be free, relatively anonymous—she hoped—aboard the Martian cruiser Sisyphus. Nevertheless, she felt a powerful need to fumigate.

  She turned the corner, and emerged onto a less populated avenue. By law, the reporters’ mites couldn’t follow her into the law office, though they clustered in the entryway and would no doubt be there when she emerged. The “Stroider”-motes on the other hand could enter at least the lobby with her, and did.

  Sarah was ready to see her as soon as she arrived but Jane deferred, and waited in the lobby until the offline window. At precisely eleven, the motes began to dissipate. She gave it about sixty seconds, and then ran a signal tracer to verify that mote density had dropped to a sufficiently low level to assure privacy. The area was clean.

  Sarah stood as Jane entered. She was tall and lanky, nearly four decimeters taller than Jane, also in her middle years. Her hair was auburn streaked with white, and her cheeks were as ruddy with cold as the day they two had first met. Her face creased into a smile, and she came to take Jane’s hand. Old, dear friend.

  “It’s nice to have a little privacy.” Jane sank gratefully onto her couch. She felt safe for the first time in days.

  Sarah offered her sandwiches. Jane put her hand in her pocket, remembering the pills, but she couldn’t bear to put anything in her stomach just now. Later. She pushed the sandwiches aside.

  “Those goddamn motes. I thought I was going to choke on them. Can anything be done?”

  Sarah settled back in her chair. “Doubtful. You signed the contract just like everybody else, and you’ve benefited from the stipend. Free-speech protection laws tend to be weaker than contract law here. On Earth or the moon, most places, you’d be in better shape.”

  “Power makes the rules, in other words, and the weak go wanting.”

  Sarah chuckled. “You’re hardly powerless, my dear.”

  “I feel powerless enough.”

  Sarah gazed steadily at her, and she shrugged a grudging acquiescence.

  “Anyway,” Sarah said, “I don’t find your point valid on principle. All societies must find a way to deal with competing interests. There may well be times when you’ll be grateful for contract law provisions that—”

  “Goddammit, this is no time for philosophy. I have no privacy! I can’t be myself; I’m always ‘on.’ I’m an automaton for the cameras! It was bad enough before ‘Stroiders,’ but now, and with this disaster…” She slumped. “I’m so unspeakably sick of it.”

  Sarah’s expression softened. “Of course. I’ll put some interns to work and see what we can do.”

  “Actually, there’s not much point. I don’t plan to hang around.” Jane told her about Benavidez’s offer. Sarah’s eyes went wide and her lips thinned.

  “You accepted it? Without talking to me first?”

  Jane nodded. “It was take-it-or-leave-it. And I’m so sick of fighting.” She hunched over, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. “It’s been over forty years of this business. I’m exhausted. So tired of the maneuverings and the spinning. The backstabbing.”

  “You’ve always been able to handle the pressure before.”

  “People haven’t died before. Not like this.” She paused. “And there are aspects that haven’t come out in the news.”

  Sarah cocked her head. “Ah?”

  “The disaster was sabotage. We don’t have hard proof yet, but we know who is behind it.”

  “Ogilvie & Sons.”

  “Has to be. Benavidez thinks he can handle them. He’s in for an ugly shock. And it’s the people of Phocaea who will suffer. There was just no way I could have predicted all the variables that led to the sapient’s emergence.” It sounded like a whine, even to her own ears. But she needed to say it once. “No way anyone could. Not even Tania.”

  “Of course not. Jane, you mustn’t take the bad-sammies personally. This is not about you. Not really.”

  “I know. People are scared. They need somewhere to put the blame. They need a scapegoat. But it is personal, for me.” With a sigh, she str
aightened. “So, let’s talk strategy. What are my options?”

  “Since you’re leaving shortly, it sounds like our main priority is protecting you from the media and your political enemies while you make preparations to go.”

  They spent some time devising a legal strategy to give Jane some breathing room, and she had a lot of good ideas for countering the bad press. It was going to cost, though. She thought about their savings. Hugh was out of school and supporting himself, but Dominica still had five semesters to go. As an Upsider Downside, her tuition was breathtakingly expensive.

  Yes, Jane had been bought off with a lot of money. But none of that felt real. She half expected them to find a way to screw her out of it. And part of her did not even want it. She wanted to throw it back in Benavidez’s face. Much as she needed that money for her kids. And for Xuan’s family members still trapped Downside.

  Thinking about Xuan’s Downsider family reminded her of Dominica, which reminded her of the data lozenge Xuan had given her. Jane touched the pocket in which the lozenge rested. She should view her daughter’s bad news. There wasn’t much point in putting it off any longer.

  Sarah gave Jane a quiet corner of her office and busied herself with some legal research while Jane viewed the lozenge.

  Dominica’s face appeared. “Ma, Da. Sorry for the long delay.” She was looking down at her notes. Her face was stiff. “I’ve found Phan Huu-Thanh. As we feared, she’s been encrypted. She was processed in Edmonton and staged for a while there, but she’s been shipped to the new people heap they’re building on the moon. She was interred just two months ago.” Dominica knew, as did Jane, that there was no real chance to get at her now. Once people went in, they did not come out.

  Now Dominica looked up. She was Upsider to the core: concise, methodical, controlled, and serious. Her careful breathing told Jane what the effort to stay calm was costing her. Jane hurt with the need to tell her daughter that it wasn’t her fault Huu-Thanh was lost to them. Don’t lose heart, she thought. Don’t lose hope.

  “I haven’t been able to locate any of the children. I’ve spent the past month at Edmonton. Before that, Winnipeg.” Edmonton and Winnipeg housed two of the biggest refugee camps in southwest Canada. “No sign of them anywhere. I’m thinking Lanh must have been encrypted, too, but I can’t find confirmation. But the rest are still too young and have to be somewhere.” Prepubescents were too immature to encrypt. They might have been sold to the sex slavers, though. Or abandoned and left to die. Disposable humanity. Of less note than a used tissue. “It’s possible they are trying to enter Vietnam illegally, trying to reconnect with other branches of the family. A boat left Vancouver two months ago, heading for Manila. I’m headed there next. I have a few weeks before the semester starts to do more research.”

  Another hesitation. “I’ve found someone who knows how to work the system. He has a good rep, but he’s pricey. And I’m almost out of money. I’m going to need more soon. Another fifty thousand, if possible.”

  She finally looked up, with Xuan’s dark eyes and Jane’s own aquiline nose and wide, full mouth. Her face was shadowed by exhaustion and grief. “I’ll send another message next week. Love to you both.”

  Jane closed the missive and sat, remembering Huu-Thanh’s messages from the Canadian refugee camps years ago. There had been a handful, over the ten years they had spent trying to work through the bureaucratic entanglements to get her and her children out. Each had been so calm, so confident that the family would be able to help. Jane and Xuan were unimaginably wealthy, by Huu-Thanh’s standards.

  But in the background, in that last message inwave—what was it? two years ago, now? three?—Jane had seen despair in Huu-Thanh’s children’s faces, and sullen anger in the eyes of her eldest, Lanh. And now they had been scattered: human detritus caught up in the machineries of Earth’s socioeconomic engines, to be mulched and processed and molded into tools for the use of others.

  Rage filled Jane. She hated Downside. She hated their intolerance, their rigid hatred, their self-deception, their greed. The inhumanity of the crypts, the battling enclaves of power Down there, the religious intolerance that masked the politics and dirty dealings that went on behind the scenes. They had long since abandoned any semblance of democracy in the nations of America. It was all about power: money, control, and social status. Oh, she hated Earth.

  Sarah was watching her. “I have some work to wrap up, and then I’m free. If you don’t have plans for dinner later, I’ll take you out.”

  “Sure you want to be seen in public with me?”

  “‘Stroiders’ doesn’t go everywhere.”

  “What, we’re going to eat in a restroom?”

  Sarah merely smiled.

  24

  By the time Geoff and his companions disengaged from the treeways, the shiny blob Ouroboros hung in space, about two hundred kilometers distant. Beyond it, diamond-bright Saturn and two of its moons, as well as aquamarine Neptune, dominated the backdrop of stars. A third bright object elsewhere in the vast starry sky was probably the rocket tugs bringing the big new ice shipment.

  Geoff had heard about it in the news. The sight of the ice shipment sent tingles of relief along his back and arms so strong he shuddered, despite the too-warm confines of his suit. You grow up in space; you learn to ignore certain kinds of fear. You ignore the Big Empty surrounding you. Otherwise you’d never do anything but hide in a cubby and wait to die. But now, on the brink of Phocaea’s rescue, he realized just how frightened he had been. He drew a slow breath and thought again, sadly, of Carl.

  Ouroboros spun around its narrow axis, a barbell shape that slowly brightened and dimmed, like a giant beating heart, as it tumbled. He smiled at the familiar sight—and then frowned. Something was off. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something about the pattern of rotation seemed different.

  It might have just been hit by another big rock. A big enough stroid would change its contours or rotation, and it had certainly been clobbered many times before. Geoff shut off his rockets, to make it easier to zoom in, and Amaya and Kam passed him. He brought up his optical scope and focused on the big rock.

  There! Rising on the horizon, along the narrowest section of the stroid, he saw a shape that had not been there before. A bright shape. A geometric one. A ship had landed on Ouroboros.

  “What the hell?” He signaled Amaya and Kam, who were continuing to accelerate. “Shut off your rockets!”

  Their flames died instantly. “What is it?” Amaya asked.

  “Zoom on the rock. There’s a ship.”

  “Oh, bloody hell,” Kam said, after a pause. A brief silence followed as they all studied the shape that had not been there before. “Black marketers?”

  Nobody replied.

  “What are those numbers there, on the side?” Geoff asked. Kam had the best optics. “Can you read them?”

  “Hang on. Yeah. Think I’ve got it.” He fed the numbers to Geoff, who put in a call to Sean Moriarty. The Stores chief took several minutes to answer; meanwhile, they drifted toward Ouroboros on their bikes.

  “Moriarty here.”

  “Sir, it’s Geoff. Geoff Agre.”

  “I’m glad you called. The police are still waiting for you to go down to the precinct. They need you to give a statement about what happened last night with those black-market thugs.”

  Geoff had forgotten about that. “We will, sir, as soon as we get back into town. But that’s not why I called. My friends and I”—he cleared his throat—“we seem to have a problem.”

  “You seem to collect them.”

  “That’s what people tell me, sir.”

  Moriarty chuckled. Geoff hesitated. He did not want to remind anyone about his ice claim just now, but not doing so would be incredibly stupid.

  “Well, spit it out!” Moriarty said. “If you need my help, I’ll do what I can. If not, I have other things that need doing.”

  “Kam told you about my stroid. The one with the ice.”


  “I remember. What about it?”

  “Well, there are some people out here. A ship. I was afraid maybe it was the black marketers again.”

  “You’re out there right now?”

  “That’s right.”

  A brief silence. “OK. What do you see?”

  Geoff studied the image again. “A ship. Maybe a twelve-seater yacht. Maybe a shuttle. We’re not close enough to tell. It’s landed on my rock.”

  “Have you got the ship registry number?”

  “Yes.” Geoff fed it over the link.

  “OK, got it. Hold on. Where’s Mitchell? You, get Mitch Shibata,” he called to someone on his end. “Tell him I need him right now. Double time! Hang on, Geoff, I’m going to do some quick checks. Don’t go offline.”

  While they waited for Moriarty to get back, Kam linked the three of them up in wavespace, trained their three different perspectives on the shape, and plugged it into some app or another. The resulting magnified, three-dimensional image that hung in their shared wavespace was clearly a cargo ship. There was a marking in blue and gold—a corporate logo?—on the side.

  “I am pretty sure,” Kam said, flicking through the images in sequence to show them the movements of some spots near the ship, “that those little dark spots are people wandering around on the surface.”

  “Where are they with respect to the cave entrance?” Amaya asked.

  “Close. About fifteen meters, maybe. Near the storage tanks.”

  Which meant sneaking in would be difficult, if not impossible.