Conventions of War def-3

by Walter Jon Williams

  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 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 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 enthusiastic clumsiness.

  “I lived on the ring,” Sula said. “Before they blew it up.”

  “What did you do there?”

  “I was a math teacher.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Give me a math problem and try me,” Sula urged, but he didn’t reply. She wondered if her phony occupation had shocked him.

  “When I was in school,” he said, “I didn’t have math teachers like you.”

  “You didn’t think teachers went to clubs?” she 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 he 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 thanI’ve got to go organize a counterrebellion.

  Casimir put his 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 open wide-that gesture was going to look silly on her when she was fifty, Sula thought-and gave a squeal of delight. She 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.

  She 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,” he said, 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. Without a trace of apology, 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?”

  He 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’rewhat?” Sula’s first reaction was outrage. Casimir opened the door for her, and she hesitated there, thinking. He 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,” she said. “Ration cards will cost you a hundred apiece.”

  “Ahundred?” 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, then both broke into laughter. “We’ll talk price later,” Casimir said, and 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 cabhas 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 his corpse scent. 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 again. “Wow,” she said.

  After letting Veronika off, Sula had the Torminel driver take her within two streets of the communal 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 curved 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 meantSomeone 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 agrenade?” she asked.

  He didn’t reply. Sula took off her jacket and called up the computer that resided in the desk. “I’ve got work to do,” she 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 0727, 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 his voice as she called up a text program.

  “Two reasons for it I can think of,” she said. “First, issuing everyone a ration card will be a way of reprocessing 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’lldo 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 rationtobacco, 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 rationalcohol?” 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.

  In the next few hours she roughed out an essay forResistance denouncing the food ration. Her previous job, before she’d volunteered to get herself killed with partisan forces, had been with the Logistics Consolidation Executive, which had been deeply involved with cataloging and deployment of resources. She knew that, as the Praxis demanded, the planet of Zanshaa was self-sufficient in foodstuffs, and that from the practical point of view of providing food to the population, the ration was nonsense. She quoted numerous statistics from memory, and was able to get the rest out of public data sources.

  By the time she finished, dawn was greening in the east. She took a shower to wash the tobacco smell out of her hair and collapsed into bed just as she heard Macnamara’s alarm go off.

  She rose after noon, the apartment already hot with the brilliant sun of summer. As she rubbed her swollen eyelids and blinked in the sunlight flooding the front room, she began to remember what it was like to be a clique member’s girlfriend.

  And then she had another thought. Thus far Action Team 491 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 acrime.

  People who committed crimes needed protection. Casimir was going to be more necessary than ever.

  “Damnit,” she said.

  SIXTEEN

  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 to any one person. He 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 reports announced that certain well-established Naxid clans, out of pure civic spirit, had agreed to spare the government any 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.

  Sula reworked herResistance essay to include a list of the cooperating clans, along with a suggestion that anyone working for the ration authority was a legitimate target of war.

  The Naxids, she thought, had just created a whole new class of target.

  Naxids were placed in every police station to monitor the 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 reformed the Legion, probably with personnel from the Naxid police.

  Anotherclass of target, Sula thought.

  She then sent out the usual fifty thousand copies through the Records Office broadcast node. The next few days were spent making deliveries, arguing with restaurant and club managers about her increased prices, and watching resentment build among the city’s population. Fury against the Naxids was now quite open, and even solid, prosperous citizens felt free to vent their rage publicly.

  She wondered how people like One-Step would fare at acquiring their ration card. What, for instance, would One-Step claim as an occupation?

  Sula kept a watch on the death certificates filed in the Records Office and discovered that a minor member of the Ushgay clan had died in a bomb explosion, and a Naxid police officer had been run over by his own car. The death certificate gave no indication how the officer had managed this, but she decided that the next number ofResistance would claim the incident as an action of the Lord Richard Li wing of the secret army.

  Sula bypassed the local police and the Legion of Diligence and acquired her team’s ration cards directly from the Records Office, splicing into the record the signatures and testaments of perfectly legitimate police officers and members of the Legion. She acquired a card for each of the team’s many backup identities and had each mailed to the communal Riverside apartment. She later changed the address in the records so it wouldn’t seem odd that so many people were sharing the same address.

  She
also acquired a card in the name of Michael Saltillo, the identity she’d established for Casimir. It might come in handy at some point.

  Three days after the announcement about rationing, Sula was making deliveries in the High City, and called Sidney. He said that progress had been made and invited her to visit the shop.

  Because she didn’t know Sidney well enough to assess whether it was safe, she left Spence and Macnamara in the truck, parked inconspicuously down the street. “If I’m ambushed,” she said, “try to pull me out. But if you can’t, make sure one of your bullets finishes me.”

  Spence looked as if she weren’t listening. In Macnamara she saw horror, then acceptance. He nodded and said nothing.

  This time she was able to go in the front door. The shop had been reopened, and the display cases and racks showed only weapons suitable to Naxid anatomy.

  Sidney waited behind a tall ceramic desk, his mustachios newly waxed and elaborately curled. “That was fast,” he said in his ruined voice.

  “Efficiency is my motto.”

  From his desk, Sidney locked the front door and reprogrammed the sign out front to announce that the shop would reopen in an hour. “Come along,” he said, and took her to the back room.

  The room was the same model of neatness and regularity it had been a few days earlier, though the smell of hashish was more subdued than on Sula’s first visit. On the immaculate surface of a workbench she saw a short rifle. Sidney turned on a lamp, picked it up and held it to the light.

  “The Sidney Mark One, if you like,” he said. “I went for a simple firearm-nothing requiring a heavy battery pack or elaborate technology.”

  Light gleamed on the rifle’s matte-black surfaces. It was obviously crude, with a stock made of pieces of carbon-fiber rod, a barrel that might have originally been a resinous pipe fitting, a receiver of metal, and iron sights.