by John F. Carr
“I hope the shipment is as I require,” said Jomo, with carefully elaborate politeness.
“Better than you could imagine,” Cole replied, just as carefully. “You asked for arms to enhance your—ah…’business’ and I have done better than you asked.” Jomo and his crew had been sent to Haven on a BuCorrect ship over ten years ago to foment trouble with the ruling Harmonies and provoke an excuse for CoDo intervention. Unfortunately, Jomo had been unable to do the job on his own; he was greedy and vicious, but not the sharpest tool in the box.
“Look.” He produced an odd tool from under his coat and pried open the nearest crate. “The latest CoDominium crowd control weapon: the sonic stunner. Forty of them.”
“A weapon that stuns? It does not kill?”
“You should find it most effective for your purposes, Mister Jomo. No damage to the subjects, and they awake in an hour or so with nothing but a headache.”
Jomo lifted the bell-mouthed weapon.
“Yes, these will do well.… After all, a live captive can always be made dead at a later date, but the reverse of that cannot be accomplished.”
Cole smiled, and shrugged. “This is the method of loading and the manual for maintenance. Simple enough, as you see.”
Jomo smiled in turn, not prettily.
His purring whistle brought a man from the back room, carrying a small box that had once contained boots. At Jomo’s gesture, the man put the box on the table and stood attentively to the side.
In a single quick motion, Jomo lifted the weapon and fired.
The sound of the stunner was only moderately loud. The target crumpled in his tracks.
Jomo went to him, bent over and cruelly pinched the right earlobe. There was no reaction. “Yes.” Jomo grinned widely. “These will do well indeed.”
“Ahh, Mister Jomo, my remuneration?”
Jomo handed him the boot box. A brief inspection proved that it was full of CoDominium and Trade credits, a small fortune on Haven.
“Would you enlighten me as to how you acquire such tools?” Jomo nudged, studying the stunners.
“Such things are possible, if one knows just whom to blackmail or bribe….” Cole shrugged again. “And as long as they’re not found on Earth, or a planet under CoDominium control, they’re quite safe to own.”
Jomo nodded, put down the stunner and opened the manual.
“I must go now,” Cole reminded him, “as I wish to ride the shuttle back to the ship. The sooner I’m out of this icebox, the better. I’ll send down the rest of the ammunition with the next load. As it stands, you only have twenty rounds.”
“I have no choice but to trust you in this matter,” Jomo admitted. “But without the weapons the ammunition is useless. Also the converse. It is nice to do business with a professional.”
They turned to the door and walked back to the dock. Before boarding the zodiac, Cole stopped and turned to Jomo.
“You’ll need this,” he said, handing Jomo the very special tool. “You can’t open the other crates without it. The security devices would ruin the control chips if you tried any other method.”
Neither of them noticed that the zodiac captain, although turned away and occupied with unloading cargo, was close enough to hear.
They did not shake hands on parting.
Jomo mused on how much easier this would make the takeover of Docktown, the outlying farms, eventually, Castell City and the rest of the planet. Jomo considered himself a man of great plans.
Owen Van Damm was watching quietly while his immediate boss Maxwell Cole hung up his off-ship over-clothes and readied himself for the briefing. He felt that he was like that, layer on layer, persona under persona, and at the center? I don’t know anymore. I know that I am unhappy with Earth, and the CoDominium. The Fleet is a home, but I know too much to go back to being a Fleet Officer.
“Here’s the situation, Owen… Jomo has the weapons and appears willing to use them.… He didn’t press too much on where they came from and was willing to pay cash… I imagine that we have the majority of hard cash on the planet. That means a serious retreat into barter, as Charles Castell doesn’t seem to want money of any kind here. He might be a hell of a leader, but his knowledge of economics is primitive.
“With the breakdown of the economy it shouldn’t be hard to nudge Jomo into a full takeover…I’m afraid that the religious gambit is out. They are still pacifists. Kennicott has an agent in place, and another from Reynolds Offworld is present. The Reynolds man is in Jomo’s gang; the Kennicott rep runs a bar and whorehouse called the Golden Parrot. His name’s DeCastro. Your job will be to provide some resistance to Jomo… Make it bloody enough so it will hit the off-planet news.”
Van Damm considered the options. “You mean put a bunch of farmers and religious nuts in a position to be slaughtered?”
“Exactly. You handle this one well, and I’ll recommend you for a job on Luna in charge of the Haven desk. It will be small, but will require a man with on-planet experience.”
“Especially in light of the planned mining operations and BuReloc’s policies.”
“It will mean a promotion for you. “Cole said.
“So this whole thing is a setup for making a planetary prison mine for BuReloc and the mining companies?”
“Yes, and you have ninety days to pull it off. The captain of this ship can hold only that long, no longer. Kennicott can’t afford to have a filled ore ship waiting any longer than that, so get to it.”
Owen took that as a dismissal, and started to leave. Another thought made him pause in mid-step.
“Mister Cole? What if I don’t pull it off?’
“If I don’t get a report on the start of an uprising inside of ninety days, then you will stay here until you do it. Good luck.”
“Thank you, Mister Cole.”
Owen Van Damm considered that there was no choice involved. In fact, a field agent on Haven could be a better deal than assistant to some bureaucrat on Luna.
Kennicott Metals, Reynolds, Anaconda Mining, Dover Mineral Development and BuReloc…and probably a couple of big politicians behind it all.
There were greater dreams than Jomo’s out among the stars.
Captain Makhno steered the Black Bitch back to the waiting shuttle, considered what he’d seen, and kept his own counsel. There was much to see here, and much to think about.
He eyed the last passenger he took ashore with the same sharp eye he’d turned on all the others. This one had the stamp of toughness about him, but not the sort Makhno was used to seeing: not the obvious bluster of the bully or the cold disinterest of the cop, but more the quiet confidence of someone who could use violence quite competently when needed. There had been another like that on the last ship, six months ago, but that one had been older, and talkative. He walked with a cane and was now in Castell City somewhere.
That one, unlike most of the voluntary settlers, was full of questions about the planet, the town, what kind of work there was to be found and where, the availability of lodgings, and the rest.
This one was silent. He was in his thirties, perhaps, and he stood about 170 cm. tall, shaven of jaw and head with gray eyes and a scar on his left cheek. He was well-muscled and seemed fit. He had a familiarity with small craft, and helped casting off from the shuttle and the docking.
The duffel bag he carried had an insignia freshly painted over, but looked to be that of the CoDo Marines.
Interesting, Makhno thought to himself…Not in uniform…Maybe a wounded retiree…Perhaps senior enlisted…Not the usual sort at all. Janey would be interested.
He had a lot of news this trip, and not all of it good. The sudden change of ownership at Harp’s Place, for instance: how had Jomo managed that? What had become of Old Harp? Where was Harp’s family, and how were they doing?
And just what was Jomo going to do with those loads of mining equipment? Jomo wasn’t the sort to be interested in hard work of the legal variety, and running a mining operation took long hou
rs and a lot of sweat. Maybe he got it cheap, and was going to sell it to the highest bidder; but that didn’t fit either. Cole hadn’t acted like a machinery dealer. The military type was another interesting factor.
Makhno’s fees for hauling passengers and cargo from the shuttle should be enough to fund a lot of pub-crawling, greasing a few palms, collecting all the news he could. Something had gone seriously wrong in Docktown while he’d been away.
Jane Wozejeskovich strolled through the upper field of South Central Island, examining her current crop and grinning in joy at the sight of the tall stalks, huge palmate leaves and already-forming flowers.
Of all the seeds she’d brought with her from Earth, this Illinois-bred hemp had adapted best. Something about the light/dark cycle and climate pattern had stimulated the plant growth to the point that she was getting a full, harvestable crop every other full cycle of Haven around Cat’s Eye. She knew—who would know better than an organic gardener?—all the practical uses of marijuana, but the accelerated growth was a bonus she hadn’t expected.
Gods, yes: a very good crop, and a very good year.
Well, so much for the main crop: now on to the latest project. Jane strode out of the field and up the guided course of the island’s sole reliable creek. Long before she reached the new mill-pond and dam, she could hear Benny Donato arguing high and loud with Big Latoya. Jane grinned again. She’d bet a bushel of medicinal-quality “euph-leaf” that Latoya was sweet on Benny, was trying to get him housebroken to suit her before she made any moves, that Benny had some idea what was going on and wasn’t exactly running away.
Benito Donato—volunteer settler, master machinist complete with a Multimate machine shop—had been a prize catch for her settlement, but he did need an occasional kick into line.
With his pal, Jeff Falstaff, he’d come to the island with a head full of delusions about being the only man among a co-op of eight women. The reality—that he was one of three men, counting Makhno, and would have to work his butt off like everyone else—had left him a bit miffed. Well, he’d get over it.
Falstaff had caught on, and settled in, a lot quicker. His little brewery was already producing a good enough beer that the miners downriver were trading rough copper and zinc for it. He had been a general science teacher Earthside, until caught teaching things not required by the curriculum of the Greater Los Angeles School System and the requirements of the CoDominium—such as original thought and Scientific Method.…
Her course took her through the main hall/dining room and the kitchen beyond, where Maria-Dolores and her mother tended the ever-burning fire and the still-kettle set into the wall behind it. Granny calmly stirred the stewpot on the fire while Maria-Dee fussed with her baby in the crib and watched the temperature gauge on the brew-kettle.
Falstaff was in his laboratory down the passage. So were the kids: Latoya’s big-eyed toddlers, Muda’s gawky ten-year-old boy, the teenagers Nona and Heather—all of them staring in fascination at the current demonstration by Mister Wizard. Jane wondered if he’d ever had such devoted students back on Earth.
Falstaff—tall, bald, dark and reedy—looking like his Shakespearean namesake, had designed and made a “caseless” ammunition to replace the dwindling supply Jane had brought with her from Earth. Right now he was busy showing the kids how to package the stuff. Even the toddlers were fascinated.
Hopefully, Donato would start teaching them gunsmithing next. He had modified her “coach gun” to use a piezo-electric igniter for the new shells, which were better than the ammo she had brought with her. The pair of them were a treasure beyond belief out here on Haven.
A quick stroll through the rest of the house showed little Muda and Lou fussing over the hemp-doth loom, arguing over how much fiber they’d need to keep the settlement in clothes with the children growing so fast. The treasured cat that Heather had brought from Earth lay curled in her basket, buzzing contentedly as she nursed her new litter of kittens; the previous litter had sold for incredible prices in Castell City.
Jane paced up the stairs to her bedroom, her one indulgence, a semi-tower room whose glassless window looked out on the cultivated land, most of the island and of the river beyond. She never tired of the view. There was the house and the home-acre, the outbuildings and kitchen-garden, the pens of rabbuck and pigs and cattle, the hemp-fields beyond, the trimmed and cultivated forest of nut, fruit, resin and timber trees beyond that, divided by ditches and greenthorn hedges, then wild forest down to the waterline. All her doing: her dream, her seeds, her labor…
Hold on, there. Never forget the labor of the others: they’d been in it from the start. Those seven women she’d recruited at the landing had worked harder and longer hours than she had asked; even the children had worked too, as best they could. The men had provided needed skills the women didn’t have.
And don’t forget the help of the neighbors, all the squat-farmers on the river—little settlements hidden behind thick forest along the riverbank proper—living in dugouts, scratching bare existence out of the forest, hardly surviving before she came with her offers of seed and tools. They’d prospered too, repaying her in shares of their hemp or useful plants and animals discovered in the forest. Oh, yes, one needed to have good neighbors here.
Of course, what she offered them was worth the work: land of their own on her homestead, but who could have guessed they’d all do so well? Let the stupid CoDo bureaucracy sneer at “welfare bums,” not that she would ever tell the CoDo about it; she knew better.
She wished the Earth-normal corn was doing as well, but her people wouldn’t starve. The pigs she had traded from the Harmonies were thriving on local flora, as were the two heifers. One had taken to insemination, and she hoped the calf would be a bull.
Now if only Leo Makhno would come home soon, her contentment would be complete.
Tomas Messenger y DeCastro was no fool, as anyone in Docktown could tell you. He could see the writing on the wall—or on the new sign over what had been Harp’s Place. He also knew how to move fast when he had to.
Therefore he had the advantage of surprise when he strolled into the Simba Bar and calmly asked to see Jomo. He drank a beer while various underlings slipped in and out of the back room. Eventually a flunky waved him toward the rear door. DeCastro coolly finished his drink and strolled to the inner sanctum.
Sure enough, Jomo was there—curious enough to ask what DeCastro wanted and listen to his answer.
“Very simple, señor,” purred DeCastro, lighting a large off-world cigar. “Everyone in Docktown knows of your new, ah, equipment. Everyone in Docktown has also seen your, hmm, acquisition of this establishment. It is only logical to assume that your next target will be none other than my estimable self. Correct, Señor Jomo?”
Jomo answered with nothing but a smile. Only his lips moved.
“I see you have considered it,” DeCastro continued, blowing an almost perfect smoke ring “Certainly I have considered it, and come to the conclusion that I must join forces with you to survive.”
Jomo raised an appreciative eyebrow, saying nothing
“I ask not for equality with your most estimable self,” DeCastro continued smoothly. “No. I ask to be your segundo, your teniente, your caporegime as it were. In exchange, I will ensure the loyalty of men and carry out your every command with great efficiency.”
He leaned back in his chair and puffed another smoke ring, letting his words take effect.
Jomo was silent for a long moment, then laughed harshly. “You expect me to believe this? You: a proud, independent Castillano, willing to bow the neck and swear service to another man? You expect—”
DeCastro was ready for this. “I am no facisto Castillano” he broke in, calculatedly indignant. “I am Mestizo, ten generations’ worth.” His voice turned calm and ingratiating again. “And I have the good intelligence to prefer being a small and wealthy frog in a large pond to being a big and very dead fish in a small one. You, señor, are clearly Going Places
—and I wish to go there too.”
Jomo nodded acknowledgement, and considered the offer. He knew DeCastro to be smart and as good as his word when it came to holding a bargain. He had not progressed much because he was somewhat lazy, content to be comfortably wealthy and safely powerful, not terribly ambitious.
After inspecting the deal from all sides—and considering the value of one Paul Jefferson who currently held that position—Jomo pronounced: “I have a second in command already. It must be settled between you as to who will have the position.”
DeCastro smiled, bent his head formally, and stubbed out his cigar.
Jomo got up from the desk and walked toward the door, motioning for DeCastro to come with him.
The only people now present in the bar were Jomo’s men. Paul Jefferson was drinking at a table with one of the “safe” women. At a gesture from Jomo all noise and movement ceased.
“Paul,” Jomo announced, “this man wants your job. Do you wish to give it to him?”
DeCastro raised an eyebrow as he recognized the Reynolds off-world man.
“Hell, no!” was the shouted answer, as Jefferson came up from the table, drawing his sheath knife.
Jefferson’s next step was met with the roar of a large caliber pistol. He collapsed on the floor with a bullet hole through his right eye. The woman at the table carefully reached for her cup, and drained it.
“Discipline must be sure and quick,” said DeCastro still holding his pistol in a combat marksman’s stance. “Is there anyone else who wishes to dispute my authority?”
Nobody answered.
“No? This is good. I will now have a drink with each of you. We must get to know each other.” DeCastro went to the bar, holstering his pistol.
DeCastro pointed at the first two men at the bar. “Dispose of that corpse, then come back and speak to me,” he said.
