A Gluttony of Plutocrats (The Respite Trilogy Book 1)

by Ella Swift Arbok

  I crouched down and examined the tire, although the damage didn’t require a close inspection. “Need a hand?”

  A two-horse cart slowed as it passed. Piled high were sacks of farm produce. The carter tilted his head to see the damage. He smiled but didn’t look at us. “Horse’ll never do that.”

  The old man ignored him. He studied me again. “You need more sunshine.”

  Seeing him up close with his single greasy braid and bushy eyebrows, I thought of the first man I had seen on the planet, silhouetted in his car. But the seats were empty. The trunk stood open.

  He nodded to the rear of the car. “You can crank the jack, if you like.”

  A metal levered device sat braced between the cobbles and the car’s chassis. Easy enough to figure. Push the handle down enough times, the back wheels would be lifted clear of the ground. It required a firm pressure, but after half a minute, I created a clearance that satisfied the old man.

  The man—his name was Al Dempster—fitted the end of a cruciform device against one of the wheel’s bolts and spun it around. He plucked the bolt free, laid it on the ground, sat back, and took a deep breath. He did the same to the other four bolts, resting after each. “You can help with the flat, if you like.”

  I lifted the wheel to the ground, pulled out the spare, struggled unaided to lift it into place, and held it while Dempster tightened each bolt. Then, I hefted the damaged wheel onto the spare’s shelf.

  Dempster kicked at a lever on the jack, sending the car back to the ground. He then stashed his tools, puffing from the nominal exercise. “Need a ride? I owe you that much.”

  With the town in sight, we passed a gated estate. It stood prouder than all the others we had met. A stone-block wall, set back a hundred yards from the road behind fields of corn, stretched more than a mile. I couldn’t gauge its depth. Armed guards stood on either side of its main gate.

  Dempster clicked his fingers. “Don’t stare.”

  I turned to the front. “Who lives there?”

  “That’s J. B. Wellar’s place.”

  “Who?”

  Dempster shook his head. “What planet are you from? The senator for equality.”

  I settled back. Respite, with its disappearing children and its senator with more than his share of equality, intrigued me.

  Chapter 2

  Farmland gave way to Cragglemouth without clear demarcation. Homesteads, interspersed with larger farms, gave way to stone and wooden houses, each with its own land of some acres.

  At first, I didn’t notice the transition, but something had changed. Whereas on the homesteads every square yard of ground bore crops, around the later houses, food crops received a lesser emphasis, with a fruit tree or two and an occasional bed of vegetables.

  Dempster brought his car to a halt in a paved square surrounded on three sides by a mishmash of stone-block buildings. A broad thoroughfare, an extension of the road over which we had traveled, ran along the fourth side.

  Dempster waved a finger. “Rumpard Square. Packed, on a market day. Cheap hotels down that road, cash in advance. I’ll take you on if you need something fancy, but I need sleep.”

  Two children, maybe eight and ten years old, approached the vehicle. They wore little more than rags. Grubby faced and gaunt, they reminded me of one of the films—I can’t remember which—by the great filmmaker Charles Dickens. He would have panned around in a brownish monotone, coming to rest on those wide, plaintive eyes, cello strings wailing in the background.

  Dempster rapped a knuckle against the side window and waved them away. “Don’t look at them. Damned disposables, just trouble.”

  “But they’re starving.”

  He did something with his feet that set the engine revving. “Not our problem. You want to get out here?”

  Disposables? An ominous name. I tucked it away in my mind and fumbled with the lock. After a moment, the door opened. I remained seated.

  Dempster waited.

  I pulled the door closed. “You still use money here. I have none. Perhaps you could…I’ll work, for a meal and a place to sleep.”

  More children, emaciated as the first two, approached. Dempster rammed a lever forward and pressed a pedal. Tires squealed as the car shot away. “I could’ve changed that tire myself, you know.”

  He drove farther into town and then turned along a tree-lined avenue, cobbled like all the streets I had seen up to that point. After a quarter mile, he pulled over. “You can get the gates, if you like.”

  I stepped to the running board then down to a paved sidewalk. All around was alien land, yet Earthlike, like an Earth I hadn’t seen but knew through its fiction.

  So much open ground. Each house had its own land—land that would have signaled great wealth on Earth. Most had a paddock. In some, a turkey or two shared this with horses. In others, the turkeys had a separate run.

  Dempster’s low picket fence offered no security. I could have stepped over it. A symbolic boundary marker? A simple bolt system secured the gates. I pulled the gates back and closed them after Dempster had driven in. I walked the forty yards of graveled path to his front door, past apple trees and rows of seedling leeks on one side. A horseless paddock lay overgrown on the other.

  Despite its great space, the house showed no sign of opulence. It had a solid stone floor and a second story of sawed timber that seemed, from the better condition of its windows, to have been added much later.

  Inside, a hallway led to a living room with two more connecting doors. Flaking paint covered the walls. Four wooden chairs and a small table were the only moveable furnishings.

  Dempster called for Mabel. A woman—sparse gray hair, short, and plump, with wisps of hair on her chin—emerged from the far doorway, saucepan in hand.

  She looked me up and down, lips pursed. “Why gray? You’re not a priest.” She ambled around me, her expression no warmer when she came back into view. Something caught her eye. “Those buttons.” She reached a hand toward my coat. “If they’re silver, don’t wear that out at night.”

  I checked. “They are silver. Does it matter?”

  Her eyes widened. “Don’t understand your type. With all your money, you couldn’t get something more in fashion?” She nodded toward her life partner. “Cooking for three, am I, Al?” She headed back to the kitchen.

  Dempster gave me a tour of the house. It didn’t take long.

  Two bedrooms upstairs. Dempster showed them with pride. “We built these two rooms. And she big with our second child. Same old slates, raised a few feet. Timbers from a tumbledown bridge.”

  Downstairs, what was once a bedroom had been converted to a storeroom, with a small shower room beyond. The kitchen, with its wood-fired stove, washtub, and freestanding dresser, could have come from old Earth.

  The backyard held fruit trees and bushes, together with sixteen chickens that supplied more eggs than Dempster and Mabel needed.

  Dempster tossed them a handful seeds from a bucket. “We sell at the market—eggs, maybe some apples. Winters can be savage. Trucks can’t get through. We’d struggle if we couldn’t trade.”

  We ate well but simply, just the three of us. I asked about their children.

  Mabel put down her knife and fork and pushed her plate away. She shook her head. “Children’s all full grown. We’ve done our bit. They don’t write. Don’t visit anymore. What’s a mother to do?”

  Silence filled the room. Time to change the subject. “I could maybe do some work in the garden—weeding, feeding the chickens, whatever needs doing.”

  I knew nothing about chickens or gardening, but I could learn. I needed friends. I needed to understand Respite’s ways. How better than to take part in the daily routine of life?

  Mabel fetched a jug of lemonade from their refrigerator. We sat around the kitchen table. Sunlight streamed in. Dempster yawned.

  Mabel stared at my coat, which hung on a hook on the wall. “Are those buttons really silver? Worth a bit, if they are.”

&n
bsp; I had to trust someone. How else could I survive on a strange land? “I have something better.” From my pocket, I took three small metal bars and held them out, my fingers still enfolding them. I smiled and opened my hand. “Gold.”

  Mabel took one from me, gave it a cursory examination, and tossed it on the table. “Our water pipes are gold. We could sell a button for you, if you like. Keep you a week and feed you well.”

  Silver more precious than gold? My one item of trade had been consigned to the scrap heap with a few words.

  Dempster’s eyes narrowed. “You’re clearly not from Eden.” He turned to Mabel, who shook her head. “Trouble for us. We should report you.”

  I rubbed my beardless chin. “Al, I left Earth more than two hundred years ago. You knew I was from another planet.”

  Dempster laughed. “Fairy tales? I’m too old.” He shook his head. “Lemuel, we’re at war with Elysium. And if you’re not from Eden, you must be from Elysium.”

  He didn’t seem threatening, but my lack of provable identity could become a burden. My backpack lay by a wall, scarf tucked inside.

  My third gadget—a scarf in its alternative form—wouldn’t prove who I was, but it could do enough to demonstrate to the most reluctant mind that I wasn’t from Respite. Anyone accustomed to unreliable black-and-white television might find it scary.

  The combi. What could I do with it? Take a picture of Dempster and project it against a wall? Witchcraft, by local standards. I fetched the elm rod and handed it to Dempster.

  He turned it over in his hand. “A lump of wood.” He passed it back.

  I laid it on the table beside Dempster’s hand, with the working end pointing away from him. I pressed my fingernail against the trigger-mark. “An invaluable tool.” Light pressure caused a slow reaction. When four inches of blade showed, I lifted my finger from the wood.

  Dempster’s hand shook.

  Mabel shrieked. “Oh, Darken. I saw it happen, and I still don’t believe it. What have you done?”

  I touched the elm to retract the blade. “If I wanted it to, the blade could reach double the length of this handle. I don’t understand the details.”

  Dempster stared at the wood. His mouth opened, but no words came out. He tried again. “That’s a hidden weapon. Illegal, unless you are a senator. Or in the security forces. Or an Elysium diplomat. Darken knows how many exceptions.”

  I took the rod back. “It’s just technology, several centuries ahead of yours. I need you to know I’m not an enemy.”

  Dempster told Mabel to fetch him a beer from the storeroom. She pointed out that his legs were as good as hers, and after a slight tilt of Dempster’s head, they both went to the storeroom together. Muttered conversation drifted through the doorway.

  Dempster came back alone, without a beer. “Trust me?”

  The question put me on my guard. “As much as I trust anyone I hardly know.”

  He frowned for a moment then chuckled. “Good answer. Listen, it’s like this. Those buttons’ll keep you awhile, but you can’t survive without a job. You need papers.” He took a dark-blue jacket from a hook by the front door and threw it to me. “Put this on. You’ll be less conspicuous.”

  I tried it on. A little loose, but the length was right. “Where are we going?”

  “To the police station. It’s the easiest way. Turn yourself in, an Elysium refugee.”

  I moved a hand to the combi that hung around my neck. I had no plan to use the weapon, but having my hand around it gave me confidence.

  Dempster raised a finger, touched his own gold talisman, and lowered his hand.

  I took off the jacket. “Let’s talk this through first.”

  Dempster shrugged. “Make it brief. I need sleep.”

  We talked for an hour.

  Refugees, Dempster explained, were often criminals escaping the justice system of Elysium, the other country-continent with which Eden was still officially at war. This made them attractive to some employers, once they had registered. They could be used to do work that nationals found unpleasant.

  Without registration, they would be presumed spies. I didn’t press too hard to hear the consequences of that.

  I needed an identity in order to get work. Dempster offered me a way, but it carried some risk. To claim I came from an enemy state? There had to be a better way.

  Dempster handed me the jacket again. I put it on, and we stepped into the glare and heat of Eden’s midday sun.

  Broadleaf trees offered occasional cover. One type seemed designed for shade, its umbrella-like canopy reaching forty feet in each direction. Its scent, sandalwood and lemon, reached far beyond the canopy.

  Just four blocks, Dempster had said. Big blocks.

  On foot, at Dempster’s ambling pace, I had time to take in more details of the houses than had been possible during the drive through town. Stone block and wood, often combined. Slate roofs. Children playing, some walking tethered turkeys. Vegetable plots. Paddocks with a horse or two.

  I nodded toward the houses. “No bricks?”

  “Bricks?”

  “Building blocks of baked clay.”

  Dempster hadn’t heard of such things. “Stone is getting expensive. Can we talk later?”

  We passed a row of shops. In a butcher’s shop, horse and goat meat hung alongside other meats whose names meant nothing to me. In the next, wines and tobacco shared shelves with magazines and books. Dempster didn’t object when I stopped to look.

  Three daily newspapers lay in piles to one side of the door. The Daily Globe and Eden Daily each had four piles. The third, the Wider View, had just the two piles, pushed back against the shop wall.

  Gowns and shoes, fruit and vegetables, and a shop selling hunting weapons and associated paraphernalia completed the row. We passed a livery yard and reached the police station. It stood three stories high between the livery and a school. Built of granite block, the wall, at least by the main entrance, was two feet thick. The windows had bars.

  When Dempster had recovered his breath, he entered with me. Three doors led off a small entrance hall, one of which, standing ajar, had a hand-painted sign: Reception. I pushed it open.

  A man in a black uniform stood behind a desk, his sleeves rolled up, his attention on papers scattered in front of him. More desks lay behind him, two of them occupied.

  Dempster smiled at the man when he looked up, then turned his head to me. “This man’s a refugee. Here of his own choice.”

  The policeman put down his pen and scrutinized me. “Is he, now?” He walked around the desk. The black coat hanging at the side of the desk had what on Earth would have been sergeant’s stripes. At his side, he wore a holstered gun.

  He looked me up and down, reached out a hand, and eased my jacket, Dempster’s jacket, open. “Is that Elysium clothing? I think not.” He stared at my boots, shook his head, and took up position behind the desk again. “Let me take a few details.”

  Dempster patted me on the back. “Stick to the facts. You’ll be fine. Find your own way back?” He started to leave, then turned. “Key’s under the mat, if Mabel’s out.”

  The sergeant rocked back on his heels. “You’re going nowhere, sir. Not without a statement.”

  Dempster pointed to one of the seated officers. “Cragsby knows me. I teach school next door. Taught him for years, for all the good.”

  Despite Officer Cragsby’s confirmation, Dempster was only allowed to leave after his own papers had been checked and he had promised to come back the next day.

  The sergeant summoned Cragsby. “Take this man to room sub-eleven. D’you know the alien form?” He rummaged through a drawer. No luck.

  Cragsby nodded toward a yellow coffee-stained pad on the desk. “Under your cup, Sarge.”

  By the time the sergeant had peeled off enough sheets to reach clean paper, the pad was almost depleted. He handed it to Cragsby, together with the ruined pages. “You’ll need a Damaged Forms form to account for these.”

  Crag
sby grunted and took what was offered. “Pockets, sir?”

  The sergeant took a wooden tray from behind the desk and laid it in front of me. “You’re probably right. He looks a shifty character. Empty them.”

  I emptied my pockets onto the tray, relieved to find nothing sinister in Dempster’s jacket. Somehow, the precariousness of my situation had been pushed to the back of my mind by their bureaucratic i-dotting. What if the pad of Damaged Forms were to suffer a mishap? Would all police work cease? No, there must be a form for that.

  Cragsby instructed me to raise my arms while he carried out a cursory check. He pointed to the combi around my neck and then to the sergeant.

  I handed it over.

  The sergeant lifted it close to his face. He held an eyeglass in one hand. “What do we have here, then? A little ostentatious, wouldn’t you say?”

  Both he and Cragsby had a goat-head badge in their lapel.

  Mine was as small as Newton could build around a combi shell. “It was my grandfather’s.”

  The sergeant tossed it into the tray. “Interesting.”

  Cragsby ushered me through ill-lit corridors, down two flights of stone stairs, and along a dark passageway. He stopped by a painted metal door, which he unlocked. It was further secured by a latch handle. Cragsby forced it round and pulled the door open. It moved with a metallic grind.

  He turned on a light, using a switch outside the door. “Take the far seat.”

  I entered.

  The windowless room contained little furniture: a red-painted wooden table with a chair on either side, two more plain chairs against the wall, the stub of a pencil and an overflowing ashtray on the table. A hint of chlorine filtered through the stench of stale tobacco. In one corner, grime on the wall and floor had been smeared into arcs and whirls by recent scrubbing.

  Cragsby closed the door. He tossed the forms on the table, took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and sat.

  The presence of an ashtray should have been a clue, but such a blatant disregard for my rights alarmed me. “You’re not going to smoke in here, are you?” Did I have any rights? I knew nothing of the laws of that land and had no reason to expect Cragsby to follow them in such a secure and scrubbable setting.