“Thank you,” Nicalla said bitterly.
“But we have to presume—as distasteful as this business is—we have to presume if he’s a tory spy, that he’s at least somewhat expecting to use the mushroom, right?” She looked over to Nicalla.
Nicalla nodded begrudgingly. “Yeah, the Circle Piondo cell had that one Alliance infiltrator who had a few mushroom fucks with a number of them, and they didn’t suspect her through all that. Only found her out when they were all connected at once during an after-mission celebration.”
“All of them at once was too intense, she dropped her guard,” Gabrána said.
“So, is that what we’ll do?” Fenito asked, taking off his coat and boots.
“Spirits, the lot of you,” Nicalla said. “No, it’s better if we all connect with him but . . . we push him, not rape him.”
Nicalla had a point. “We don’t need to be fucking to make the bonds,” Ajiñe said.
“But having all of us in the circuit, all pushing,” Gabrána said. “He might be able to hold back against one or two—especially within pleasure—but five? No way.”
“Thank you,” Nicalla said. “I’ll get our mushroom.” She went to the cabinets.
The door opened, and Mensi wheeled in the ’goiz 960. “He’s not awake yet?”
“You might have overdone spiking his carbon,” Ajiñe said. She pointed to the cycle and looked expectantly at Nicalla.
Nicalla came over and crouched next to it. “I mean, bear in mind, I only met the girl once with her cycle, and I’m not the gearfiend you are. But . . . yeah, that looks like her ride.”
“That is sketchy,” Mensi said. “Didn’t you say he just got out of Hanez?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“And this is his cycle?”
“Rode in on it with Partinez.”
Gabrána made a noise of disgust. Partinez was not her favorite person.
“Did you ask Partinez about it?”
“No, I didn’t want Renzi knowing we were looking at him at all.”
Mensi paced about Renzi. “When I got out of Hanez all I got were the clothes I had when I was pinched. No one I’ve known who got their freewalking ever got anything more. So how did he come out with a cycle?”
“I’m right, it’s suspect,” Ajiñe said. “I’ve never heard that.”
“And if we’re wrong?” Fenito asked. “If he’s not a tory, and he can ride like that? We need someone like him, especially with those new kids pinched.”
“Then let’s stop talking about it,” Nicalla said. She opened up a carbon bottle and spooned a few grams of their mushroom into it. Ajiñe never understood why Nicalla preferred to mix it into a carbon instead of taking it straight on her tongue, but it was fine. Nicalla took a swig out of the bottle and passed it around.
They all took a drink and joined hands, and let the moment take shape. Ajiñe was holding hands with Fenito and Gabrána, and soon her sense of self spread through their bodies, their heartbeats drumming in sync with her own. Then it went farther, into Mensi and Nicalla, including feeling Nic’s nervous breath, the hint of panic clawing up the back of her skull. She knew Nic was edoromé—she did not care for this connection or physical intimacy—but despite that, she felt the same love and kinship from Nic that the rest of them shared. Nic wasn’t less committed, she just didn’t enjoy this.
“Open his mouth,” Ajiñe said, taking the bottle. She poured the rest down Renzi’s throat while Gab held his mouth open. She ran a finger along his face, feeling that tingle of connection with him feeling herself through him.
Nic’s hand instinctively went to her own face. “Let’s get this done.”
“Right,” Ajiñe said. “Cover your faces, friends. Let’s wake him up.”
31
This was not how they recruited new members for their cell. If that was what they were going to do.
It was how they dealt with traitors and infiltrators. If that was what Renzi was.
He blinked and looked about groggily from the salt pop Gabrána put under his nose. She was now wearing a white skull spirit mask to hide her face, as were the rest of the group. Ajiñe didn’t put one on, she knew it didn’t matter. Renzi knew her, knew her face. No need to bother protecting herself. But her cell, her dear loves, they needed to stay protected.
Renzi took in his surroundings, and Ajiñe could feel his confusion. And . . . there was another emotion simmering underneath. She couldn’t quite get a taste of it. Not something he was hiding, but like it was buried.
Also, he was cold.
He looked down, regarding his naked body and shackled hands.
“You didn’t have to go to these lengths to get me naked, Miss Osceba,” he said slowly. “I mean, I was already amenable.”
“Hush up, son,” Gabrána said, running her finger along his bare arm. Pushing her sync up against him.
“What is this all about?” he asked.
“It’s about you, Llionorco,” Ajiñe said. “We’re not sure what to make of you.”
“What do you mean to make of me?”
“We’ve got the questions,” Fenito said, taking hold of Renzi’s wrist. Nicalla, standing behind Renzi’s chair, took hold of his head and kept him focused on Ajiñe.
“All right,” Renzi said. His confusion still ran hot, and that had an edge of fear to it. His heart hammered, his breath quickened, and Ajiñe’s own body matched the response. But now the undercurrent to his emotions became clear to her. It was an ocean of calm that held him together, cool and collected. “And we’re . . . we’re all on the same mushroom sync, aren’t we?”
“So we’ll feel you lying,” she said, kneeling down in front of him.
“We’ll all feel you,” Mensi said, kneeling next to her. The two of them gripped his leg. Now the circuit between them all was complete, like electricity flowing between them all, with Renzi as the resistor.
“I’m not sure what this is all about,” he said. “Are you mad I entered the race? That I almost beat you?”
“You know that’s not what this is about, Renzi,” she said. “But let’s start with the race. More specifically, your cycle.”
“What about it?”
“Where did you get it?” she asked.
“How did you get it?” Fenito asked.
“I—” There was a hint of hesitation through him. A flash of heat, sweat to his palms. Like he was about to lie, but then the calm washed through again. A decision. “It was from patrol impound.”
“So this isn’t your cycle,” Mensi said.
“No, but—” Renzi sighed. “Look, I went to Hanez on a trump up. Someone robbed a petrol shop, shot the clerk. The patrol grabbed me because I was a jifoz on a cycle dressed the same way, so they decided close enough. In a snap, I was pressed and plated and sentenced.”
Ajiñe looked to the others reading their eyes and their hearts. They felt what she did, that Renzi was telling something true. They all knew half a dozen people each who had been falsely arrested by tories who just hassled whichever jifoz they spotted first, who went to prison for things they didn’t do. It happened every damned day. “What does that have to do with this cycle?”
“Getting to it,” he said. “Some do-gooder rhique lawyer got her teeth in my case and proved that I was innocent.”
“How’d you get that?” Gabrána asked.
“She just decided to get into that fight. I mean, there are a few rhique who are decent folk.”
Ajiñe accepted that. She had heard of a few rhique—a few—doing things like that to prove the system wasn’t completely rigged against the undercastes. It was bunk, but it at least got a couple innocent people out of prison. Which surely made those rhique do-gooders feel happy about themselves. “You didn’t ask?”
“I said very little to her besides, ‘thank you, miss.’ Didn�
�t care why. She got me my walking papers and my property was supposed to be returned to me. As in my cycle.”
“That’s not your cycle,” Fenito reiterated. Despite that, they all could feel Renzi’s heart, his lungs, the emotions flashing through him. Annoyance, fear, discomfort. But not deception. If he was a tory, they would certainly feel him crackling against them, like they always did on the street.
“Because my cycle was already junked when I got out. Apparently that lawyer made a whole thing that they had to make good on that, that if they failed to do so, it broke faith with honest civilianry—it was above my head, frankly. So she got them to give me something—a cycle that had just showed up in impound to replace mine.”
“Do you know whose cycle that is?” Nicalla asked.
“Someone you know, I gather?” he asked. “I mean, it’s a great cycle, it stands out.”
“Not quite knew,” Ajiñe said. “But she was part of what we are. Part of something bigger.”
He raised an eyebrow. Curiosity surged through his mind. “Bigger how?”
“We’re asking the questions,” Gabrána said.
“Was she arrested for sedition or treason or something?” he asked.
Ajiñe stood up and looked him in the eyes. She was satisfied that he was telling the truth. There was no way, with all of them feeling him with the mushroom connections, he could have held it up. Certainly a straight-laced, linen-wearing tory, who never dared use the mushroom, wouldn’t be able to do it.
If he wasn’t an infiltrator, then she wanted him as an asset.
“Let me ask you, Renzi. You’ve been to prison. You got set up as an innocent man. So you know how little justice there is for the undercastes.”
“I do,” he said. “It was bad where I came from, and it’s worse here.”
“The girl who rode that cycle, she got arrested trying to do something about that. And now you’re here, with that cycle, and my spirits would all attest that you know how to ride.”
“I do,” he said.
“We have a need for someone like that.”
“Like what?”
“Someone with skills,” Gabrána said.
“And who wants to use them,” Mensi added.
“To break the choke the Unity and the Alliance has on us,” Fenito said.
“And give this country back to the people.”
That gave him pause. “And I can do all that by riding a cycle.”
“The way you ride?” Ajiñe asked. “Just maybe.”
He shook his head. “And that’s why you drugged me and shackled me naked to a chair?”
“We had to know if you were the real thing.”
“You can feel us back,” Gabrána said. “You know we mean it.”
“We’re very serious about this,” Ajiñe said. “The people in this room, but also so many more people in the movement. The question is, Renzi Llionorco, what do you want?”
He looked around at them all. “I think I want to take my clothes and cycle and go home. I . . . I’m not saying no, but . . . I need to really think about this.”
32
Dawn had fully broken into day by the time Ajiñe rode back to the family garage. Renzi had agreed to be blindfolded and kept tied up as they took him and his cycle away from the bomb-out. From a safe location in a different ruined neighborhood of Miahez, with everyone else gone, Ajiñe took off his blindfold and undid his shackles, and then rode back with him to Street Xaomico.
“Do you want to bring your cycle into the shop?” she asked him when they arrived.
“Seriously?” he asked.
“I made that offer before.”
“Before you drugged and shackled me.”
“Still stands.”
He scowled, but then nodded. “Not like I don’t need to fix those hoses and tune everything.”
“I’ll help you with that,” she said. “Whether or not you want in with what we’re doing.”
His expression softened. “I appreciate it.”
She led him over to the shop, which was surprisingly not open yet. Papa usually had the gate open and was busy working at this hour. Of course, she was usually around to get them all going and open things up at this hour. She unlocked the cast-iron gate and pulled it up, opening up the garage. Renzi wheeled his cycle into one of the work bays.
“Do you want to get started now?” she asked.
“I think we should both get some proper sleep,” he said. “Let’s say I come back at four on the naught?”
“Lovely,” she said. “See you then.”
He went off, and she went up the back stair to the fasai. He was right, she needed to get onto her bed, and for once she could sleep in it alone since Ziva would be up and about.
Ziva was, in fact, up and about, but sitting on the kitchen floor with Papa, both of them crying.
“Hey, hey,” she said, coming over and kneeling with them. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
Papa looked up and a sad smile came to his face. “You’re finally home, doqui. Did you have a good race? Did you win?”
“Yes, I won,” she said. “But what’s going on?”
“Just a sad old man,” he said. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
“Don’t do that, Papa,” Ziva said. “His rations have been cut down.”
“What?”
“They slashed his rations,” Ziva said. “Because he no longer has a child to support.”
“The shit is this?”
“He got a letter stating that since I’ve declared myself an adult”—because she had done her Spirit Dance—“I am no longer, legally, a child, and thus not for him to support.”
“That’s bullshit,” Ajiñe said. “So what about your rations?”
“I’m not yet entitled to my own,” Ziva said. “The office told me that a fifteen-year-old girl is not eligible for ration benefits because I’m not eligible for work credits.”
“That makes no sense,” Ajiñe said. “How can you be too young to work but no longer a child?”
“That’s what they said, I’m telling you.”
Ajiñe was of half a mind to kick in the doors of that office with a wrench in her hand and make them explain it to her. Not that it would help. It made no sense, but nothing the shit-mouthed ration offices did—or anything the Alliance overseers did—made any damnable sense. Yet another kick in the teeth to anyone born jifoz.
“We’re barely getting by on the rations we get,” Papa said. “But you girls shouldn’t worry. I will do what must be done.” He was always too proud, too ready to kill himself for their sake. He needed to know he wasn’t alone.
“No, Papa,” Ajiñe said, taking his hands. “We are all in this together. I’ve got coin right now, and I can get more, and we can make up some of the shortfall with that.”
“Coin can’t go that far,” he said. “And I don’t want you to do any—”
“Don’t worry about how I get it.”
He pulled himself to his feet. “It’s my place to worry. I am the parent here. You shouldn’t have to—”
“We’ll all get through this,” Ziva said. “I’ll go to Miss Dallatan. I’ll earn my—”
“I’ll talk to her,” Ajiñe said. The last thing she wanted was Ziva taking on underhanded jobs for Miss Dallatan. There would be enough trouble right now, especially since the Spirit Dance had gotten Ziva noticed. They would keep eyes on her, to trap her when she slipped. “I don’t want you doing—”
“I don’t like either of you—”
“You don’t have to protect me—”
“Stop!” Ajiñe shouted. “Papa, just keep running the shop. It will work out. Zi, I will talk to Miss Dallatan about helping get you a job that will earn you proper ration credit.”
“But—”
“At least
on paper. You’re going to want that.”
Ziva scowled. “Fine.”
“There’s a cycle down in the shop, it belongs to the Llionorco boy.”
“You talked to him?” Ziva asked. “He’s very pretty.”
“He is,” Papa said. “And that means trouble.”
“I’m the trouble, Papa,” Ajiñe said. “But he’s going to come work on the cycle with me around four sweep. I need to sleep, so one of you wake me at three sweep fifty.” She took coins and bills out of her pocket. “Meantime, buy some tacos from Lajina, some carbons and crisp from the carbon shop. We’ll figure out ration later.”
“What about fuel?” Papa asked.
“That I got covered. And I’ll be able to trade some for more grocer ration chits.” She kissed her father on the forehead. “We’ll get it done.”
“You do too much, doqui.”
“We all do,” she said. She peeled off her boots and went into the back. “Now let me sleep a bit.”
She dropped down on the bed and fell asleep hard, but then woke up just as fast two sweeps later. A sudden start from a dream where a young jifozi girl—a cycle cat in denim on a junkbash—screamed for her to help, but Ajiñe couldn’t hear her or reach her. It was far more intense of a dream than she usually had, vibrant and almost tangible, but she wasn’t sure what to make of it. Maybe she was thinking about what she was going to do about Ziva.
Shit. She’d go see Miss Dallatan.
She put on clean denim slacks—at least ones that didn’t stink of sweat and oil—and tied up the shirt to show off her bare stomach. Miss Dallatan liked that sort of thing. If she needed to mess around with the old lady a bit to get her help, that was fine. At least Miss Dallatan knew what she was doing.
She went down to the street and knocked on the gate, setting off all three of the dogs. She should have expected that. They started barking up a storm, which got Miss Dallatan, wrapped in just a woven blanket, out to the gate.
“Ajiñe,” she said, peering through her glasses. “You don’t usually come to me in the middle of the day. Something up?” She opened the gate, shooing the dogs back. “You’re looking prettier than usual, so you want something.”
The Velocity of Revolution Page 17
