I wasn’t sure I did either. Marr and The’On were the real masters in that realm. But compared to all the folks in this room I was actually pretty savvy, which said more about them than me.
“Enough talk,” Stal said. “Vote now.”
“Do you have anything else to say before we do, Mr. Naradnyo?” R.G. said.
“I’ve never sided with someone because they were Varoki, or against someone because they were Human, only because of who they were as people and what they were doing. That’s the truth and I think you all know it. So kill me if you want, but if you do, don’t feed yourselves some lie about how this trial was anything but bad theater.”
“Very well,” R.G. said. “Zdravkova?”
I heard a low murmur of conversation in the room, felt sweat run down my back and tickle the ribs under my arms.
“Life,” Dragon Lady said at last, the anger gone from her voice.
“Death,” R.G. said.
I felt a surge of fear-driven adrenaline. Boy, had I read him wrong!
“Stal,” he said, “it is apparently up to you.”
Nikolai Stal laughed.
Chapter Seventeen
“So what you think of two idiots brought you in?” Stal said as we sat in his office an hour after my acquittal. I sipped scotch, my second one. The first one went down in one gulp, but I was feeling steadier now.
Stal sat behind his desk, leaning forward in his chair but relaxed. He smoked a cigar, a damned fine one imported all the way from Earth. I know because it was from the pocket humidor they’d taken from me when I was arrested. The cigars had been a birthday gift from Marr. They were more extravagant than I’d have sprung for, mostly because of the shipping, but maybe that’s what gifts are for.
He was shorter than I’d expected and thinner, not all that physically imposing. But I’d known small, wiry guys before you wouldn’t want to cross, and he was one of those. You could see it in his eyes, grey and deep-set, guarded, calculating. Someone had broken his nose for him once and it hadn’t quite healed straight. His hair might have been brown not long ago but it was sandy grey now, even though I figured him to only be in his early forties. He wore it long, almost to his shoulders, and had a long droopy mustache to match. He had laugh lines at the corner of his eyes and that was usually a good sign. Occasionally it was very, very bad, but usually good.
“Bela’s rough around the edges but basically smart and energetic,” I answered. “Pablo’s stupid and lazy. Both of those are useful combinations, in my experience.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “You like stupid and lazy?”
“Sure. You give them a few simple things to do, enough to keep them busy, and you never have to worry about them getting into trouble. They’re reliable—no surprises.”
He thought about that and his eyebrows clicked up a notch.
“Okay. So Bela make good captain someday?”
I shook my head. “Smart and energetic isn’t a good combination for a captain. He’ll be a good tactical guy for you, an idea man, but you don’t want him calling the shots. You want someone smart and lazy in charge.”
He leaned back in his chair, clearly intrigued. “This is management philosophy?”
“The personnel end of it, yeah. Smart and lazy guys are always looking for the easiest way to do stuff, which means most efficient and least dangerous. They’re the ones you need to rein in the idea guys. They’re also a lot better at delegating.”
“Huh,” he said and frowned in thought. “Okay, so…smart and lazy are leaders, smart and energetic are idea guys, stupid and lazy make reliable followers. Leaves stupid and energetic, da? Where they fit in?”
“Oh, they don’t,” I said. “They’re the ones who will screw things up, every single time. I think that’s mostly what’s wrong with politics and organized religion—like moths to a flame. You need to keep them out of your organization, and if any get in, find a way to deal with them.”
“Deal with?” he said, and he studied me for a couple seconds. “I heard Sasha Naradnyo dealt with over forty guys.”
“Well, that’s an exaggeration.”
Stal’s desk beeped and he looked down, for the moment absorbed by the surface set to viewer mode. Despite the army jamming his desk was still live, so it must be hooked to a hard fiber network of some kind. That was an obvious precaution for a hood, since it made it harder for someone—like possibly the police—to do a data capture. I’d done the same back in the old days on Peezgtaan. It also had advantages in an emergency like this, when the wireless links were all down or jammed.
I looked around. His office wasn’t what I expected either. I’d never seen a hood with a “love-me” wall before, but he had a whole bunch of group pictures and certificates of appreciation virtually displayed on the smart wall behind him. The smart wall to my left was set to mimic a picture window, while the other two simply showed a pale pastel wallpaper pattern. All the furniture was expensive-looking flexi-units with reprogrammable configurations and surfaces depending on what you felt like that week. Right now it was British Regency. The arms on my chair even felt like wood. Very nice.
Stal tapped a string of entries and keyed two live buttons on his desk. He lifted his eyes to me and took a drag on his cigar.
“Can shoot with arm in sling?” he asked.
I knew that question would come, sooner or later, and I found myself thankful for my injury. I was twenty-two-and-zero, and I was comfortable staying at that score.
“Not if you expect me to hit anything,” I answered. “I’m not much of a southpaw.”
He leaned back in his chair and gave me an appraising look. “So what good for is Sasha Naradnyo? Aside from maybe feeding to Varoki so kill us later instead of sooner?”
I thought that over for a few seconds. Yeah, what was I good for? Things were probably going to turn pretty bad once the mobs out there got organized and started coming after Humans on a methodical basis, and with Gaant behind them, that was almost a certainty. What would these people need, other than rock-steady gunmen?
“Logistics,” I answered. “You’re going to be under siege here. You know the sort of operation I ran back on Peezgtaan and I also funded a clinic there, handled a lot of its management behind the scenes. In the Army I worked for a while in my cohort’s quartermaster shop, learned the four B’s of keeping an outfit going: beans, bullets, batteries, and bandages. Unless you already have someone really good to coordinate supply procurement and distribution, you need me for that.”
“Citizens’ Troika already has guards on two food warehouses in district. What else to do?”
I thought for a moment. They were right: first priority would be just feeding everyone. Since the native life forms on Hazz’Akatu were based on a whole different protein chain than Humans could metabolize, eating almost anything grown locally would kill us, which made foraging pointless. Everything we ate had to be grown hydroponically from imported organic stock.
“Distribution warehouses usually only have a few days of food,” I said, “maybe a week’s worth, to supply the different food stores in a district, and that’s just for your baseline population. If you manage to hold out, you’re going to get Human refugees swelling the count, people who don’t live in a Human ghetto and start to realize how unhealthy it’s going to get for them out there among the Varoki. We need to inventory everything, and it still needs to be guarded, but we need to disperse it some, not concentrate it. Too much chance of one lucky hit taking out half our food.
“But that won’t be enough to last long, so we need to find any hydroponic tanks in the district and secure them, make sure they’re growing as much protein as we can manage. I don’t know what flavoring they’ll have, if any, but we can live on plain algae and tofu if we have to.
“There won’t be near enough packaged water and sooner or later they’ll think to cut off the water mains. We need to set up some reservoirs and draw as much off now as we can.”
Stal nodded, eyes
on mine, and took another drag on his cigar. I stopped and thought some more, worked out what they’d burn through fastest once the shooting started. I began ticking things off on the fingers of my left hand.
“Drugs and medical supplies: we need a complete inventory, and if one of the local med centers has a drug fabricator—and a good supply of raw organics—we could sure use it. If so, we’ve got to get it to a secure location as soon as possible.
“Power: we’ll need every kilowatt of electricity we can get once they think to pull the plug on us, especially to run autodocs and fabricators, and to charge gauss weapons. We need to pull every LENR generator and solar skin from every vehicle and building roof we can find, get them centralized and redeployed. Wouldn’t hurt to identify any electricians and mechanics as well and use them to keep things running.
“Ammunition: no matter what sort of stocks you have, it won’t be enough if this turns really hot. We need raw carbon and powdered metallics, and a bunch of fabricators with flechette software loaded. I heard a rumor you might be able to help with the software. I’m not sure what heavier weapons you’ve got, but—”
“Stop,” Stal interrupted, raising his hands to silence me. “Take job.”
“You need to clear it with the others or something?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Will go along. Not need gun for job so Katranjiev will like. Do not start now, though. Already dark and most people off streets pretty soon. Get rest. Who knows when next chance?”
“Okay. So tell me, what’s the deal with this Citizens’ Troika? Is it anything but a funny name?”
“No, but maybe we make it so, da? Katranjiev is head of Merchants’ and Citizens’ Association; I think was formed to protect them from criminals, like me. They misunderstand my motives.”
“You just want to shear them, not skin them,” I volunteered.
“Precisely! So Katranjiev brings in this awful woman Zdravkova and her revolutionary ideas. Very dangerous. But she has well-armed fighters with hard eyes, and many people listen to her, so to persuade masses has turnip and club.”
“What makes you think anyone’s going to pay attention to you guys?” I said. “The people I’ve seen around here so far don’t look like they’re used to taking orders, and that’s on a good day. Hard times coming.”
“Food,” he answered and took another puff on the cigar. “Once Park Authority Police withdraw yesterday, Zdravkova post guards on food warehouses before smart guys can grab and start black market. Puts out word, bring food in, will guard it.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I bet they’re lining up to do that.”
Stal shrugged. “This morning Chinese gang—Lěng Nánhái—from ghetto south of here raid two houses where people have food, kill families. Now many people bring food to warehouse. Troika controls food, Troika controls Sookagrad.”
I’d read about Lěng Nánhái but never run into them personally. They were supposed to be one of the nastier Human gangs in the Sakkatto slums, but you never knew. Anybody posting a feed story wasn’t going to get much play by claiming it was “just an average gang,” so you had to make some allowance for journalistic hyperbole. Their name meant Cold Boys. Going for the food made sense.
“Grab them by their stomachs and their hearts and minds will follow,” I said. “Sounds like Katranjiev and Zdravkova have the bases covered. Since neither one of them cares much for the criminal element, why’d they let you have the third seat? Oh, yeah—fabrication.”
Stal studied his cigar and smiled.
“Bogo Katranjiev troubled man,” Stal said, his voice thoughtful.
“The only one who voted to kill me—not my favorite guy down here.”
“What to say?” Stal answered. He settled back again and took a long draw on the cigar. “Katranjiev was married, had little girl. Little girl killed by stray shot when two tough guys had argument. Marriage ended, lost business. So now hate crooks like me—or former ones in your case. Understand?”
Yeah, I understood. There’s a cold space in me, though. Well, most people would say there were lots of cold spaces in me, but one particular one was for hard luck stories people use to justify acting like assholes. I mean, I get it that everyone acts the way they do for a reason—cause and effect, right? Every asshole I ever knew, once you got to know them, turned out they had a pretty good reason for acting that way. But everyone I ever knew who treated people decently and generously had just as good a reason for taking their pain and disappointment out on the rest of the world, lots of times a better one. They just didn’t.
For my money, the important thing which separated folks wasn’t how good an excuse they had for acting like a tortured asshole, it was just whether or not they did.
Of course, in Katranjiev’s case there was the added complication of him having voted to execute me. My objectivity was probably compromised.
Stal shifted in his chair and frowned in thought, his eyes still on me.
“So tell just me, why you help Leatherhead kids two years ago?”
I shook my head. “Part of it was because they were orphans and alone and on the run, and I knew exactly how that felt. But the other thing was I was tired. Tired of the violence, you know?”
He looked at me, his face carefully blank. If he knew what I meant, he couldn’t afford to admit it, not in his position. Some of his people followed him out of loyalty, and some out of enlightened self-interest, but there were some who did so only under the threat of deadly violence, and he could no more admit a reluctance to kill, and survive that admission, than I could have two years ago on Peezgtaan.
He turned to the smart wall to his right, my left, which gave a panoramic view of the northern approach to the district. The setting sun painted the western faces of the buildings orange and red. Smoke columns rose into the sky from a couple fires a kilometer or so away, but it had been worse yesterday. A remote recon hoverplat in military colors made slow orbits around the upper stories of e-Kruaan-Arc, waiting, waiting.
“Heard about what you did on Akampta shuttle two years ago,” he said. “Killed Kolya Markov and eight others, hard-core gunmen.”
“Actually I only killed Markov and seven others. My wife Marrissa killed the eighth one.”
“Wife? Saw picture of her: very elegant, high-class. Does not look type goes around shoot people.” He took another draw on the cigar she’d given me and blew a long column of smoke up toward the ceiling.
“Well, you never know, do you?” I said. “She drilled him right through the liver. Took him a while to die.”
Stal frowned. “Hard way to go.”
“Yeah, sometimes I cry myself to sleep at night just thinking about it. Funny thing is, it never bothered Marrissa one bit.” That wasn’t really true but he didn’t need to know all our personal demons.
He looked at me and the look became something close to a glare. Finally he shook his head.
“Okay. Wife one tough bitch. Sasha one tough bastard. Everybody tough, okay? Jesus! Is always same conversation.
“Is funny, you kill all those guys, and ever since I hear that, I want ask, how? But you not know how, are you? I mean, you just do, one by one, until are all dead, da?”
“Something like that.”
“‘Something like,’” he said and then frowned. “Now I actually need someone can kill like that, you say, ‘Am tired of violence.’”
“Something like that. Besides, I wasn’t exactly unstoppable. You might recall Markov killed me the same time I killed him.”
He smiled. “Not my problem. Do job, then die on own time. But tired or not tired, arm in sling. So no good with gun…you say. But if mob get past perimeter, then maybe see what Sasha really made of, da?”
“You’re the boss,” I said.
His grin widened. “Famous Sasha Naradnyo calls Nikolai Stal boss? Could get used to that.”
“Don’t,” I said, and his smile became cold.
“Okay, tough guy. And don’t make mistake of thinking Sasha and Nikolai same
underneath it all. Nikolai Stal not tired. I love this.”
Chapter Eighteen
What was I good for?
That was a really good question. What I’d told Stal about my background was all true: I was a pretty good administrator, and a good judge of people’s abilities, but that wasn’t the secret of my success. I had risen as high as I had in the criminal underworld because I could kill without hesitation and without any genuine remorse. That is a much rarer ability, even in violent criminal gangs and the military, than most people imagine. Train soldiers to shoot and stick bayonets in dummies all you want. When it actually comes down to aiming at a living being and pulling the trigger, you would be astonished how many hesitate, or shake uncontrollably, or don’t fire, or deliberately miss.
But I never hesitated and I hardly ever missed, and that was my edge. After a while I understood what that meant, that there was something wrong inside me, or something missing, but that realization did not change anything. I wanted to escape that life, wanted to become something different. It wasn’t lost on me that my escape from violence involved the single most murderously violent episode of my life.
So I died and I was reborn. Not hard to attach some sort of spiritual significance to that, huh? But now what? What was I good for now? The idea of picking up a gun and discovering that I could still kill without hesitation, that that was still what I was good for, would mean it had all been for nothing, wouldn’t it? And that thought haunted my dreams like a dark reaper, waiting, waiting.
I was twenty-two and zero.
So far.
Not that I had a wealth of time for introspection. I figured we had maybe a day or two to get ready and at least a week’s worth of work to do. Everyone in Sookagrad wanted to do something, but nobody knew where to start, and sure as hell didn’t want to take orders, so you mostly ended up with a lot of people standing around talking and waving their arms.
Come the Revolution Page 13
