The Relativity Bomb

by Arlene F. Marks

  “And I passed the test?” she said uncertainly.

  “You took point when you saw that I was too weak to continue leading, and you were willing to break the law to save my life. And when Carlos and his men challenged you, you stood up to them and then charged right through them. That is exactly the way to deal with the rotten apples who have grabbed power in the industrial zones.”

  “I only did that because I was desperate. It’s not the way I was raised to be, and it’s not what I want to be known as.”

  “But it’s what you’re made of deep down, what you can become if the circumstances demand it. That’s what the test reveals, to you as well as to me, and that’s why it’s necessary to push candidates to their limits. We both need to know we can rely on each other as well as on ourselves if we get into a tight spot once we leave Veggieville. That is,” she added, settling back in her chair, “if you decide you want me to come along for the rest of the trip.”

  Juno wasn’t ready to answer that question yet. She shrugged it off and changed the subject. “Tell me about Veggieville. It’s not really like the other settlements, is it?”

  “It has its own character,” said Angeli. “If you’re finished eating, let’s go for a walk. There’s something you need to see. And something important I need to tell you.”

  The dining hall was less than half full by now, and servers had begun clearing tables. Getting ready to feed the children, thought Juno as she and Angeli stepped outside, into the busy ebb and flow of field and greenhouse hands hurrying to catch their rides to work. Angeli paused briefly, then struck out in the direction of the schoolhouse, with just a momentary glance over her shoulder to confirm that Juno was following her. As they crossed the first open field, however, the older girl changed direction and slowed her pace, letting Juno catch up to her. They were now headed for the row housing where the workers lived.

  “Forrand would burst a blood vessel if he heard me telling you this, but I think you have a right to know,” said Angeli as they strolled. “The initial requirement for candidates that I mentioned earlier…? You have to be related to him.”

  Related? The word gave Juno pause. The current Supreme Adjudicator was the most disliked and powerful man in Americas. She’d known that even before she’d sought him out. Desperate times, desperate measures. However, it was one thing to strike a deal with the devil, quite another to find herself hanging from a branch of his family tree.

  “So … just how distantly am I related to him?” she asked, doing her best to sound only marginally interested. “Is he a cousin four times removed or something?”

  “Much closer than that, actually.” Angeli shot her a sideways look before continuing, “You’re his granddaughter.”

  Momentarily speechless, Juno nearly tripped over her own feet.

  “His granddaughter? Are you sure?” she finally managed to stammer.

  “Beyond a doubt. Are you wishing I hadn’t told you?”

  “Would it matter if I said yes?”

  “Not to me, but it should matter to you, and it definitely will to Forrand. Ignorance is not bliss, Juno. Where he plans to send you, it’s a fatal flaw. In the halls of power, lack of information will end your career and ruin your reputation. It can even shorten your life. So, never shrink away from learning the truth.

  “Dennis Forrand is entered in the database as being single and childless,” Angeli went on, “but he sowed a lot of seed when he was younger. He’s kept track of every child he fathered, and of their children as well. We’re his legacy.”

  “And he’s my grandfather,” Juno repeated, trying the words on as though for size. They were an imperfect fit. This particular truth was going to take some getting used to, on every level. “Wait a minute,” she said, coming to a halt. “If we’re both related to him, that means we’re related to each other. So, what are you to me?”

  “It’s complicated. Let’s just say that we’re cousins and leave it at that.”

  Angeli had continued walking. Rushing to catch up again, Juno asked, “And you have just one name?”

  “Yes. Like you, I had to choose a new identity. I told him I wanted to be Angeli Forrand. When he flatly refused to let me use his last name, I worked myself into a temper and informed him that it would be Forrand or nothing. Something else that seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway, I’m in the database as Angeli A. Angeli.”

  “What does the ‘A’ stand for?”

  She made a wry face. “Guess. You were half-right about him, Juno. He isn’t cold-hearted, but he can be a real son of a bitch at times.”

  “Is that why you decided to tell me he’s my grandfather?”

  “No. But it’s a well-documented fact that loose cannons have a lot of trouble following orders unless there’s a damned good reason for them. And we’re here.”

  Juno looked up and saw a whole regiment of boxlike structures standing in formation directly in front of her. The previous day at dusk, she and Angeli had skirted the perimeter of the workers’ housing, concerned only with fading into the shadows it cast. Today, Juno was seeing the actual buildings. There had to be hundreds of them, lined up in facing rows to create at least ten streets, all straight and unpaved and running parallel to one another. Metal numbers shone on each of the doors. And just like the ones on Isabela’s street, each door was a different color than the ones on either side.

  Juno had grown up in a neighborhood very similar to this, surrounded by tidy rows of identical, well-maintained homes. There were no PVs here, of course, and no gates with guards to keep outsiders where they belonged, but… “This is the enclave,” she murmured.

  “Take a closer look at the backyards,” said Angeli.

  They had backyards?

  Juno peered down the long space between the backs of the houses on two adjoining streets and was astounded. Behind each house was a small plot of land containing a garden, and it appeared that no two of them were identical. Some were all colorful blossoms, while others had none. Most were a combination of flowers, dwarf shrubs, and vegetables, selected and arranged by whoever lived in the house. Unpredictable choices made by workers who were constantly being told — by the Council, by the Relocation Authority, and by crew chiefs and overseers like Carlos — that they had no power.

  “Take a good long look,” Angeli advised her. “Engrave this on your memory, Juno. This is what happens when people are treated like people instead of like interchangeable cogs in a great big machine. They take pride in their homes. They grow things that they enjoy, that make them feel happy.”

  “Things like babies,” said Carlos’s voice behind them. “This way, ladies.”

  They followed him to a bright blue door bearing the number 511, then waited while he knocked on it and announced himself to whoever might be inside. There was no answer. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a collection of keys on a metal ring, something else Juno had heard about but never actually seen.

  “I can’t discourage people from falling in love,” he said, still facing the door as he flipped rapidly through the keys, isolated the one he was looking for, and shoved it into the lock. “Isabela would probably kill me if I even tried. After all, she and Vikram found each other in Veggieville.” He twisted the key and swung the door open. “But there’s a byproduct of lovemaking that always seems to take young people by surprise.”

  With that, Carlos pocketed his keys once more and entered the house, waving to Juno and Angeli to join him.

  They were standing in a narrow beige hallway with plaincoated walls. Juno counted three doorways on the first floor, belonging to a washroom, a living room, and a shared bedroom respectively. A banistered wooden staircase led to a second floor landing. Everything was clean and tidy. The two single beds she could see from the hall were neatly made. The floor was polished and free of clutter. In one corner of the living room sat a lidless packing crate filled wit
h toys.

  “There’s a barracks like this one on each street. This is where we billet children who are without parents,” Carlos explained.

  “They’re orphans?” said Juno.

  “No,” he said sadly, “their parents are living, but not in this district. When the transfer order comes, workers have no choice but to move. If they’ve had children since arriving here, the transportation and moving costs may be much higher than they were before — and Ineligibles have to pay the full amount out of their credit accounts. Too often, their credit isn’t sufficient to move the whole family at once, so a son or daughter old enough to require a separate seat on the MPV may be left here, to be sent for later when enough has been saved at the next posting to cover the transportation fee. The problem is, that depletes the account of the parents at the next posting, leaving them in even worse straits if they’re transferred again before they’ve had a chance to build up enough credit to move their whole family. And you see how it goes.

  “Realizing how well school-aged children are cared for in Veggieville, most parents in that situation simply leave one or two behind for us to finish raising. In a way, it’s flattering; but it’s also problematic having so many extra mouths to feed. Our resources are stretched pretty thin right now.”

  “How many of the students—?” Juno began.

  “Between forty and fifty, evenly distributed among the four classes,” replied Carlos. “If their parents were Eligible, the moving costs wouldn’t be an issue. We tried applying to the Relocation Authority for some relief for Ineligible families being transferred, but were told to quit whining and be grateful for what we’ve got.”

  “Is there someone you can complain to? Someone higher up?” she persisted.

  “I’m afraid not,” he told her. “And in any case, drawing attention to Veggieville would not be a good idea. We don’t want anyone on the Council looking too closely at the way we do things here. It would undermine all of Dennis Forrand’s good work.”

  Confused, Juno stared a question at Angeli.

  “Forrand feels the same way as we do about the Relocation Authority,” she explained. “That’s why he set up Veggieville in the first place, as a small act of rebellion against the powers that be. As soon as he was high enough up the government ladder, he hand-picked Carlos and Isabela to run things, expedited permits so proper housing could be built for the workers, quietly established a medical supply channel to keep the infirmary stocked… Basically, he turned a barebones settlement into a town with decent living conditions, then stepped aside and let the Calveras handle the on-site details. As long as the Agricultural District continues to meet its quotas and the workers’ standard of living appears to be roughly the same as what’s available elsewhere in the Food Production Zone, Veggieville will continue to sit in the Council’s blind spot.”

  Juno looked around her and made a decision. If this was part of Dennis Forrand’s legacy, then she definitely wanted to share in it.

  — «» —

  “It stinks of dead fish in here,” Angeli reported, her nose wrinkling with disgust as she wiped down the back of a seat with a damp cloth.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to let them throw their catch into the luggage compartment. There’s next to no ventilation down there,” came Juno’s voice from the rear of the MPV. “It’ll be okay. We’ll just keep the windows open for as long as possible and hope someone in the Waste Management Zone has invented a super-strength air freshener that we can trade for.”

  “We?” Angeli straightened up and turned in the aisle to face her. “So you’ve decided I can come with you after all?”

  Surfacing with the tattered remains of a food wrapper that one of the students had dropped on the floor during the field trip, Juno stepped into the aisle as well and replied stiffly, “I believe your knowledge could come in useful, so yes. But there are going to be rules. This is my road trip. I decide where and when we travel.”

  “Fair enough, as long as we don’t run out of fuel,” she warned. “Synthetics are hard to come by out here.”

  Juno shrugged. “Ronny can keep track and let us know when it’s time to head back to New Chicago. In the meanwhile, we’re not just going to observe or sight-see — we’re going to help people as we go. And we’re going to have fun doing it.”

  “Forrand did say you should get as much enjoyment out of the trip as you could,” Angeli agreed, her blue eyes beginning to twinkle.

  “What’s in Breadbasket, anyway?”

  “Besides the hospital? It’s a transfer point on the edge of the grain fields, so there’s not much. All the elevators and flour mills and such are deeper inside the district. But they’ve planted hop and have built themselves a fair-sized brewery.”

  “A brewery,” Juno echoed thoughtfully. “That could be interesting.”

  CHAPTER 6

  One year to the day after they’d left Dennis Forrand’s office in New Chicago, Juno and Angeli strolled into his anteroom, happily chatting.

  Mrs. Delgado welcomed them with a broad smile and punched her intercomm.

  “They’re back, Mister Supreme Adjudicator,” she informed him as she waved them past her desk.

  Forrand watched them come through the door. They’d been good for each other, he mused, noting Angeli’s relaxed demeanor and Juno’s confident poise. Angeli would always be a rebel, of course, and secrecy went against her grain; so it was a safe bet that Juno now knew they were both related to him. However, if Juno Vargas turned out to be everything he had hoped for, it wouldn’t really matter.

  Composing his features, he pulled a printout from his desk drawer and indicated the guest chairs where they were to sit, Angeli at his left side, Juno directly opposite him.

  “So, Juno Vargas,” he began, “tell me in ten words or less what you’ve managed to learn in the past year.”

  Counting on her fingers, Juno replied, “I’ve learned how to fix what’s wrong with this world.”

  His gaze darted to Angeli’s face before settling once more on Juno’s. “I’m impressed. And just how do you propose to repair our broken planet?”

  “By getting rid of the Relocation Authority,” she declared, with the blithe conviction that only a seventeen-year-old fresh off a year of adventuring on her own could possess. “It may once have served a purpose. Now all it does is create misery. It needs to go.”

  “Reshaping a government is no easy task,” he pointed out. “Men much older and more experienced than you are have tried it and failed. What makes you think you can do better?”

  “Because power works differently for women than it does for men.”

  “I see you took my instructions to heart,” he said approvingly. “In fact, you took all of my instructions to heart. You’ve been a busy girl, Juno Vargas. When Ronny parked the MPV this morning, the reservoir held about five minutes’ worth of fuel. Let me just replay some of the highlights of the past year.” Opening the printout, he began to read. “According to my sources, you filled the MPV with children from the Veggieville school and took them on a fishing trip to the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “It was the nearest large body of water,” she explained. “They’d never seen the ocean, and the Atlantic and Pacific were too far away.”

  “You also brokered a trade deal between Voltaica and Breadbasket, energy for beer. That was extremely enterprising of you. Then you went to Stinko and kidnapped a shift boss’s pet snake, holding it for ransom…?”

  “That was me,” said Angeli. “The shift boss’s son took a shine to Juno. His attentions were quite persistent. When he got physical, she rebuffed him, and as a result, his daddy locked her up in the town jail. I needed leverage to negotiate her release. Apparently, that snake meant more to Daddy than his son did.”

  “She rebuffed him,” he echoed skeptically. “With what? A two-by-four?”

  Angeli looked shocked. “Of course not
! Wood is a scarce and precious commodity in Stinko. She discouraged his amorous assault with a length of aluminum pipe.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, repressing a smile. “And — the pièce de résistance — you got yourself run out of Steeltown for attempting to organize a labor strike.”

  “That crew chief was a thug,” Juno told him hotly. “He was charging the workers rent for the use of their Council-mandated safety equipment and extorting credit from them in exchange for protection from his gang. Then he was loaning their own credit back to them at interest so they could afford to move when their transfer orders came.”

  “And you thought it would be a good idea for a sixteen-year-old girl to take on this criminal and his cronies.”

  “No,” she replied, “I thought it would be a good idea for the workers to express some anger and put him in his place. All I did was stir things up a little.”

  “No, Juno. All you did was temporarily nudge the balance of power. Even if the strike had been successful and the crew chief deposed, the moment you left he would have called in reinforcements and taken back everything he’d lost, and more. The workers would have been worse off than they’d been before you arrived. They realized that — it’s why they refused to cooperate with you. Quite frankly, young lady, I’d say you were lucky to get out of there alive.”

  “I had Ronny and Angeli watching my back, along with about a dozen muscular steel wranglers. They weren’t going to let anything happen to me.”

  “You trusted these men?”

  “As much as I needed to,” she informed him coolly. “Everywhere we went, I helped people, or tried to. Everywhere we stopped, I made at least one friend. I can’t offer what you do — a fresh start with a new identity. But in nearly every industrial zone between here and all three southern coasts, there are people who now owe me favors.”