Most people who didn’t live in the Capitol thought the place was a nest of workers bereft of comforts and luxuries, living in crowded hovels. Until he had moved there himself, Jonah had fallen into the same erroneous thinking. Capitolinos were far more politically aware than anyone outside the district understood. While food and resource shortages and ration skimming, unemployment, quota and harvest failures were hotly debated issues in the Aventine and the Palatine, people in the Capitol lived with those conditions every minute of the day. Capitolinos intimately understood the delicate balance of shipboard life.
That was why he assumed Rosalina was going to introduce him to more Capitolinos. She knew everyone in the district. Through her, Jonah knew many of them himself.
“Not just fans,” Rosalina said quietly, squeezing his arm. “More than fans.”
“More than?” He almost laughed. Then he saw the table where she was leading him and the people sitting around it and his amusement faded.
The names came easily to him, even though he didn’t know any of them personally. Of course he didn’t—these people moved at a different level to him. The blond giant at the back of the table with the blue eyes was Lloyd Hampus, the Spanners manager. He had once been the Spanners’ premier groundman and he was still carrying the muscle needed to throw the ball through two gees to the upper levels of the tank.
Hampus was watching him approach, his gaze steady and speculative.
Next to him, looking small and slight, was a man in a dress shirt of the type that was more often seen in the Palatine and the Aventine. His dark hair was neatly trimmed and he was clean shaven, even at this hour of the day. Jonah knew who he was because Conrad Sansone managed the wall he lived in. Fourth Wall, Capitol District. Sansone had been his landlord for the last two years.
The woman on Conrad’s right was wrinkled, slight and silver-haired. Her hair was short. Her gaze was keen, defying her advanced age. She was sizing Jonah up as well. Veda Kovaks coordinated the Capitol marketplace. The marketplace wasn’t nearly as big as the markets in the Aventine, yet it was busy all the hours it was open. Jonah wouldn’t underestimate her, either.
When they stopped at the table, Rosalina waved her hand toward the three of them. “This is Jonah Solomon, who I told you about.” She finished the other side of the introductions as Lloyd Hampus shifted his great body easily, to move around the table and make room for the two of them. He hooked two stools, a hand around a leg each, then dumped them on the floor in front of it and waved to them.
Jonah sat down, his thigh twinging where she had stabbed the…whatever it was, against the flesh. She hadn’t hit very hard. At least, it hadn’t felt hard. Yet he still couldn’t properly feel the muscle there and he had to concentrate on walking.
He would have to find out about the little stick he had spotted her putting away. Did it have an electrical current? Was that how she had taken him out?
Jonah cleared his thoughts and looked politely at the three across the table from him.
Veda Kovaks pulled a glass off the tray of untouched drinks sitting to one side of the table and put it in front of him and a second in front of Rosalina. “We’ve been hearing rumors of your activities, Mr. Solomon,” she said. “Long before Rosalina suggested we talk to you.”
“Rumors?” he asked blandly. He curled his hand around the glass but didn’t drink. Not only did he want to keep a clear head, he wasn’t sure he could lift it without slopping the contents. Not yet, anyway.
“I’ve read your essays on the Forum, of course,” Conrad said.
“Did you like them?”
“We are all entitled to say what we think, on the Endurance,” Veda said. “An essay, even a pointed one, is merely an essay. Although, that isn’t where it stops with you, is it?”
Jonah stayed silent. They were teaming up. Clearly, they had a point they wanted to reach. He’d just shut up and let them get to it.
“You talk to people all the time,” Rosalina said. “What’s more, they listen to you.”
“The ability to influence people is a powerful gift in a man,” Veda added.
“That’s why you wanted to talk to me?”
“You make people change their minds,” Lloyd Hampus said. His voice was unexpectedly soft for such a large man. “That’s why we wanted to talk to you.”
“If you think I can talk a Panthers fan into supporting the Spanners, then you misunderstand what it is I do,” Jonah told them, keeping his tone polite. “I don’t change minds at all. I just help people make their minds up and Palatinos made up their minds a long time ago that no team other than the Panthers is worth spit.”
None of the three reacted.
“You’re currently unemployed, aren’t you, Mr. Solomon?” Veda asked. Her voice was wavering with old age, yet there was still snap and strength in it.
He frowned. “I choose to be unemployed.”
“Yes, the first aboard the Endurance to turn his back upon the system. We are aware of your politics,” she replied.
“I’m not political,” he shot back.
“Of course you are,” Veda replied calmly. “Everyone is, if the cause is great enough. You don’t like what is happening in the Capitol, do you? The shortages of food…of everything. They bother you.”
Jonah gripped the glass of lager more firmly, feeling the chill of the beverage against his fingers. “Of course they bother me. They bother everyone. We’re in a spiral downhill and no one in a position to do anything about it seems to understand that we should have acted to halt the spiral ten years ago. The Endurance is a system. A closed-in system that has cycles, then more cycles within bigger cycles, just like the seasons on old Terra.”
They were all watching him calmly and he realized that his breath was rapid and his heart was thumping in his head, making his temples hurt.
You might try to control your temper better, Mr. Solomon.
Her voice had been cool, the modulations like music to his ears. He had been more entranced by how she spoke, than what she was saying. This time, though, he heard the actual words, whispering in his mind.
Today had been one of those days when everything had been determined to push his limits. This moment was just the last of them.
He gripped the glass and carefully lifted it to his lips and drank deeply. Then he put the glass down again. He was pleased that he didn’t spill a drop. “Why do you care what I think about ship management and economic cycles? You’re tankball supporters, aren’t you?”
“We like tankball, Mr. Solomon,” Veda said. She seemed to be happy to speak for everyone at the table. “However, if you think tankball is just sports entertainment, then you disappoint me.”
Jonah snorted. “If Captain Sekar continues to support the Panthers openly the way he does, tankball will become a political arena as much as it is a sports arena.”
“Too late,” Conrad Sansone said in his light voice. He nodded his head, just a little, to point without pointing to a place behind Jonah.
Jonah turned, making it look casual. There were two tables in the corner at the front of the garden, where the lights were lower. More than a dozen people were squashed in around both tables. Jonah saw Ambrose Gunther, the senior topline player for the Dream Hawks, was one of them. The manager of the Dream Hawks sat next to him.
Jonah let his gaze skim over the other faces there, then turned back to face the table he sat at. “Dream Hawks fans,” he said.
“Not just fans,” Conrad Sansone replied. “There is a man with a dark jacket sitting next to Ambrose Gunther.”
“I saw him,” Jonah said patiently. “Short, bald patch on the back of his head, drinking water. What about him?”
“That’s Nicolo Hayim,” Conrad Sansone said.
“So?”
“He’s the lieutenant of the Red Guard.”
Jonah considered that soberly. The Red Guard, or to give it the proper name, the Red Division of the Bridge Guard, was the elite division, charged with protecting key per
sonnel on the Bridge. The Captain was their priority.
If the senior officer of the Red Guard was chummy with the key people of the Dream Hawks, that was a lot of influence sitting right next to the current tankball team champions.
“Let me assure you, Mr. Solomon, that Nicolo Hayim is not a huge tankball fan. You won’t see him at games. It is also a fact that the Captain has only ever been seen at Dream Hawks games for nearly ten years. It is a fact that has been noticed.”
“I don’t think that’s why they win,” Jonah replied. “I think they win because they play better than anyone else, including the Spanners. No disrespect, Lloyd.”
Lloyd shrugged. “They win because they get more.”
“More?”
“More tank time, better players, better equipment to train with, special coaches, strategy experts, access to the Bridge Guard training center.”
“Really?” That surprised him. He’d heard about the training facility the Bridge Guards used. If all the guards were as good as Lieutenant Fitzgerald at handling people, the training center had to be part of the reason why. If the Dream Hawks were using the same facility, they were definitely at an advantage. “Why would the Captain be so openly biased?”
“Because he’s a tankball fan and he wants his team to win.” Veda said it dryly.
Jonah understood her derision. The captain’s predilections were shifting the focus of power and influence on the ship.
Then it clicked into place. “You’re not tankball fans. You’re lobbyists.”
“Exactly, Mr. Solomon,” Veda said softly. “Rosalina was right about you, after all.”
“I told you, I’m not into politics.”
“You do want things to change, don’t you?”
“I want everyone to be able to decide what they want to do and be. I want true self-determination. I want open systems, that are free to work as they should, instead of being manipulated and structured by legacy policies that don’t work anymore.”
“The only way you get any of those things is to change the way things are,” Conrad said.
“I’m not a revolutionary, either,” Jonah said sharply.
“Have you considered changing things from inside the system that exists?” Veda said.
“I am one man,” Jonah shot back, his temple throbbing. “I’m not the Captain’s drinking buddy and never will be. I can’t even change the code on my front door. What makes you think I could change the economics of a stable, enclosed system? It’s like…like trying to reverse the spin on the Palatine. The inertia will flatten anyone who tries.”
“If enough people try, they can move mountains,” Veda said.
Jonah looked at her. “Tankball fans are going to change life as we know it?”
“Small groups of people with conviction and passion have changed the world, more than once.” Veda’s gaze was steady. She really believed it.
Something in his chest shifted. His heart beat, hard enough to hurt.
Hope. It was hope stirring.
Jonah swallowed. “You’ll kill us all.”
“Not trying will kill us just as fast,” Veda said.
Conrad Sansone put his hands together on his crossed knee. “Tomorrow, the Bridge will announce a farther reduction in the daily basic ration.”
“By how much?” Jonah asked. His voice was hoarse. The basic ration was all that many people got. It was all he was entitled to, officially. He had learned how to supplement that years ago.
“By two hundred calories,” Conrad said. “That puts it fifty calories below sustainable energy levels. Those of us in the basic professions, the unentitled ones, they will starve. They will die slowly and painfully.”
Jonah looked from one to the other, around the table. Even Rosalina was not smiling. “If people can’t get enough to eat, they won’t be able to work. There will be even more firings because of non-performance….”
Veda nodded. Rosalina sighed.
“So, Jonah,” Lloyd Hampus said, “are you with us?”
Chapter Three
Jonah got home just before the midnight rain started. He directed the spatula up to his quarters and it ground against the wall with a clank of hydraulics. The anti-grav thrusters rumbled softly, audible in the quiet that gripped the district. The lights that lined the terraces between the walls were turned down low.
He unsealed the door and stepped in. The spatula moved away smoothly, dismissed by the removal of any weight upon the flat platform.
Jonah’s quarters were the standard one-person basic box that anyone was entitled to, although most people tried to trade up to bigger quarters in various ways. He had never bothered. Instead, he had set about making his living quarters work for him.
He had been blessed with neighbors who thought as he did and two years ago, they had removed the common walls between their three apartments and rearranged the living space inside.
Now, Jonah’s living quarters were large, airy and comfortable. He also had four roommates. Remarkably, they were all still up. The screen was showing a talky-feelie. They had probably watched the game before that.
Agatha and Siegel were sitting together at one end of the lounge.
Instead of sitting on the other end of the lounge, in his usual position next to Roger’s chair, Peter was sitting on Roger’s lap, hugging him and laughing, while Agatha and Siegel looked on. Clearly, Jonah had just missed the joke.
They all looked up as he came in and Agatha got to her feet. “You look awful,” she said quietly. “Has something happened?”
“You could say that,” Jonah replied. He gave her kiss on the cheek and pushed her back toward Siegel and sat on the edge of the armchair in the corner that was nominally his. No one else ever sat there, anyway.
Everyone turned to look at him. Peter climbed off Roger’s lap, making his chair rock and the wheels to squeak, then sat back on the end of the sofa.
“They’re dropping the basic ration limit tomorrow,” Jonah told them. “Another two hundred calories.”
Peter, the health nut, shook his head. “No one can live on that.”
Agatha pressed her lips together, making them thin out. “We can get by,” she said firmly. “With Siegel’s acquisitions on the farm and Peter’s extra entitlements, we can manage it.”
“I have some books and essays I can trade, too,” Jonah said.
“Only if anyone has anything edible to spare to trade with you,” Roger said quietly.
“Plus, there’s one or two other things I have brewing…” Jonah shook his head. “Details don’t matter,” he said firmly. He didn’t want to tell them about his meeting with the Spanners faction. Not yet. He still needed to think about it a while longer. He had managed to walk away from the table without committing himself one way or the other.
“How did you hear about this?” Peter asked.
“At the game,” Jonah said easily.
“Is it true that Willard Bordon showed up?” Roger asked, maneuvering his chair so it was more precisely aligned with the side of the lounge next to Peter. Roger was a digital engineer, just as Bordon had been. He had a professional interest in the outcast.
Jonah kept still, as Roger’s question about Bordon prompted images of her to flash through his mind. Her full lips. The lovely curve of her neck and the clear jaw above it. Her steady gaze. The gray eyes, limpid and beautiful.
Everyone was watching him while he let his mind wander. Jonah straightened up. “Bordon was there,” he said shortly. “Wretched soul that he is. Do any of you know who Marlow Fitzgerald is?”
They all looked at him blankly.
“She’s in the Capitol?” Agatha asked finally, sounding confused.
“She’s the senior office in charge of the civil division of the Bridge Guard. None of you have ever heard of her?”
Peter frowned. “I knew the division has a lieutenant. I didn’t know who the lieutenant is. The Bridge Guard has never had a reason to look at me, or for me to mix with them.” He was a se
nior coder for the Tankball Association. Of course they wouldn’t look at him. He was an upstanding citizen.
They were all frowning, now, trying hard to recall if they knew someone called Marlow Fitzgerald.
“I think…is she Esquilino?” Roger said.
Siegel lifted his hand into the air in the way he did when he wanted to speak. He didn’t like to lift his voice to speak over the top of anyone. Everyone looked at him expectantly.
“She is a parent,” Siegel said.
Jonah’s chest tightened. “How do you know that, Siegel?”
“I grew up with their child. He was younger than me, but we lived near each other.” Siegel shook his head. “He must be nearly an adult now.” That was almost more than all the words Siegel usually said in a day.
Jonah didn’t doubt that he was right. That made Marlow Fitzgerald older than he had thought. Possibly close to his own age. Jonah scrubbed at his hair. “Is she…attached to the father?”
Agatha’s gaze grew sharper as she studied him. “Why do you ask about this woman, Jonah?” she said gently.
He shook his head, trying to deny anything Agatha might suspect. “She’s the lieutenant of the civil division. She’s in charge of security for the entire ship, except the Bridge, yet no one seems to have heard of her before.”
“Neither had you until tonight,” Peter said. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Jonah sighed. “Never mind. I was just curious.”
“You’re never just curious about anything,” Roger said. “That fertile mind of yours never switches off.”
Jonah shrugged, trying to make it look casual. “She’s…pretty.” At the last moment, he diluted what he had been about to say, even as the memory of her smooth flesh and the slenderness of her waist outlined by the black uniform both crowded out any other thoughts.
They were back to looking at him again.
“If she’s Bridge, then she’s mired in all that legacy thinking,” Roger said gently, rocking the chair backward and forward. It was his way of doodling while he was thinking. “I’ve never heard you say a kind word about Bridge people.”
Yesterday's Legacy Page 3
