Senescence (Jezebel's Ladder Book 5)

by Scott Rhine

  Chapter 13 – Indignation

  Stu and Onesemo left the courthouse during rush hour. While waiting for the limo, he visited a nearby construction site. A large crane arm with a concrete nozzle was “printing” a building the way Oleander had iced his birthday cakes. Every couple meters, a smaller robot would whir over to insert an electrical or plumbing segment. As he watched the apartment complex take shape, the usual cloud of drones gathered behind him. On a whim, he waved to the virtual masses online. “The prosecutor won’t let me talk about the case, but I love your food. Pizza and steak are great. Your girls are really nice, too.”

  In the back of the limo, Onesemo said, “Don’t encourage the media! You’d be better off slathering yourself in sugar water and wading into mosquitoes.” On the bench seat opposite Stu, he kept an eye out the back window and one hand on his weapon.

  “What’s a mosquito?” Stu asked.

  “You don’t have them in paradise?”

  “Nope.”

  “That alone might be reason to consider your offer to join Sanctuary.”

  Stu glanced out the tinted windows at the glacial traffic. “Could we stop at a clothing fabricator?”

  “You can wear that same suit tomorrow with a different shirt,” Onesemo explained. “They gave you eight to choose from.”

  “I need something to wear for a date with Laura at eight.”

  “Whoa, Romeo. She’s a little fast for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The car jerked to a halt for some reason Stu couldn’t see. Sometimes pedestrians or bicyclists crossed where they weren’t supposed to.

  Onesemo said, “I hear she uses guys and throws them away like tissues.”

  Stu puffed his chest out. “Well, she happens to be taking me to meet her mother. How would you feel if I talked about Kelly that way?”

  A guard in Fortune body armor climbed out of the front passenger side of the limo.

  Onesemo shook his head. “I’d break your freaking face, but this is different. Do you know who her family is?”

  The corporate guard opened the door to the back seat. “Mr. Onesemo, sir, your presence has been requested in the lead car.”

  The Rescue Corps member raised an eyebrow. “That’s the way it is? One wrong word, and I’m in the doghouse?”

  “We were just having a conversation,” Stu said, attempting to intervene. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Orders, sir,” the front-seat guard said.

  “Did I lie to the man?” Onesemo asked belligerently.

  More men were climbing out of the lead vehicle. The guard beside them whispered, “Please?”

  “Fine, but only if you ride back here,” Onesemo demanded as he slid out. “Anything happens to him, and I’ll take it out of your hide.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Fortune guard took Onesemo’s place.

  When the fire drill was complete, Stu said, “So what do I call you?”

  “Dmitri.”

  The caravan moved once more. “So, Big D, can we stop to pick up some clothes for my date tonight?”

  “The tailor will meet us en route with additional clothing, sir.”

  Flowers and wine would be a nice touch. “I’d also like to pick—”

  “Talking is a distraction to us, sir. Please only speak to us in an emergency. Feel free to watch the feeds or order merchandise online.” The new guard indicated Stu’s left knee.

  Stu pointed at the same knee. “Here?” He moved his leg and examined the upholstery.

  Sighing, Dmitri ran his finger along a pinstripe on Stu’s trouser leg. A square patch lit up. Stu reached over and tried the same trick on the guard’s leg. Dmitri caught the finger and moved it back to Stu’s square, tapping. A menu came up: sports, sex, shopping, infotainment, movies, and search.

  When Stu tapped Infotainment, the choices staggered him. After scrolling through what seemed like a thousand titles, he asked, “What show is popular in California?” The menu responded to voice commands like Snowflake might, listing the top ten choices. Number one by a large factor was a feed called Ballbusters. He raised an eyebrow toward the guard.

  Dmitri held a thumb up. “Funny stuff.”

  Shrugging, Stu tapped his knee and a list of episodes appeared. He requested the one with the most stars.

  The documentary began with an aerial view of a squalid camp, emphasizing what seemed to be a solid kilometer of tents behind a wire fence. Latrines were sparse. Clouds of flies hovered over the narrow mud streets and swarmed anyone who sat in one place too long. A voice-over said, “Six hundred thousand refugees were displaced in the first week of the latest African civil war.” The camera panned to show a female Asian narrator in combat armor sitting in the open bay door of a helicopter. She shouted into her helmet microphone, “The lucky ones who cross hundreds of miles of wilderness on foot end up in camps like this. Approximately 70 percent of the people here are women and children. If the conflict lasts the standard five to seven years, a tenth of them will die of disease—twice that number from starvation.”

  The screen filled with photos of people in loose clothing, some with covered faces. Their skin spanned every shade imaginable from raw peanut to dark walnut.

  This is certainly educational.

  The Asian narrator was sweating profusely in her heavy armor because of the tropical climate. She had the name Sif stenciled on her chest plate. “The refugees have no running water, so every morning the mother in each family must make a two-hour journey lugging one of these filtration units.” Sif held up an enormous jug marked “15 liters.”

  “She has to wait in line at the docks to fill it. On the way back, the jug weighs about 16 kilograms. This is the minimum UN refugee daily requirement per person. A mother of two children would need two of these, or 32 kilograms. The US military ruled that 30 kilos is too much for male soldiers to bear without causing long-term back and muscle problems. That means she would need multiple trips, wheelbarrows, or a daughter who helps.”

  The helicopter swooped over a long path dotted with hunched women. “Unfortunately, this is ‘rape alley.’ As in Rwanda, Darfur, Sudan, and Congo before it, violence toward women has become an accepted strategy in war. Militiamen from over the border race down on horseback to kidnap and savage these women on a regular basis. Rape is used as a form of genocide to dilute the opposing ethnic group and deter them from staying. Peacekeepers say they can’t police the camp, the trail, and the kilometer of shoreline. By the time they arrive, the perpetrators are often gone. Even when they catch the rapists in the act, the peacekeepers are not allowed to fire until fired upon. As long as the horsemen don’t use their rifles, they can easily evade a jeep.”

  Stu covered his knee to block the graphic scene and the wailing from a collection of women. When he peeked in order to turn it off, the image paused with the jeep flattening a full jug of water. That indignity made the entire event more horrifying. After all she’s suffered, that victim is going to have to walk all the way back to camp, get a new jug, and start over again. Worse she’ll need to do the same thing tomorrow. He couldn’t catch his breath. This show gave him the same feeling as the end of that book, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Hearing the hell these people had to endure squeezed his emotions like an orange juicer.

  Stu looked up at his guard. “Is this real? Are they serious?”

  “As a heart attack, sir.”

  “Why did so many people mark this with smiley faces?” Stu asked, aghast.

  The guard shrugged. “Usually people use stars. The boss said you like smileys. Please. I have to work.”

  Stu tapped the picture on his knee in an attempt to dismiss it, and the narrator screen said, “We decided to take this problem back to our roundtable to brainstorm solutions.”

  They’re going to fix it. Maybe that’s what the high rating is for. The team planned how to use their limited budget for the show. A blonde with the nametag Freya opened with, “We could buy camera drones to follo
w every woman traveling to the water source. Teams in the refugee camp could monitor each feed and signal troops in the event of trouble.”

  The director replied, “We would have enough money for about 500 floaters with dedicated monitors. Even if the women travel in shifts to share the cameras, we won’t have nearly enough coverage.”

  “Such monitoring might get medical care to the injured,” said Themis, the legal panel member, “but to get a conviction for the crime, video evidence of the attacker’s face, bruises, and vigorous resistance need to be shown.”

  The debate about other methods to protect the women was lively. Nurse Evangeline suggested a universal DNA database to catch the offenders. Themis explained the impracticality.

  Freya wanted to do decoy runs and bomb the offenders via drones.

  Themis vetoed it. “If we accidentally kill one innocent or injure a perp on the soil of his home country, we all go to jail.”

  One woman off camera suggested chastity belts.

  Freya rejected this idea. “If the woman has the key on her, they’ll force her to use it, and then she’ll be labeled ‘willing.’ Even if a woman left her keys at the base, three hundred thousand of these devices would only have a limited number of keys, like police cuffs. Once the rapists steal a few of these, they can open any belt they want.”

  The tech guru, Nemesis, spoke up suddenly. “Limpatol! We’ve used it before with success.” According to the link at the bottom of the screen, the drug releases an enzyme like PDE-5, which convinces the male body it’s already had an orgasm and relaxes the arterial wall.

  The man labeled Advocate said, “So he goes flaccid. Fine, that prevents the rape, but how do we arrange that many injections? Darts? The refugee women will never be able to hit a man in body armor with that.”

  Nemesis bit her lip. “What about a grenade that releases an airborne agent?”

  The advocate nodded. “Maybe. We’d also need a way to mark the culprits for arrest later. You can’t prosecute a man for not having an erection when you’re waving a gun in his face.”

  The tech guru laughed. “Right. How about UV dye like they use in fire alarms to catch kids who pull them to get out of class?”

  “And the arming pin for the grenade should link to a cheap video camera. That way, all weapon uses are documented, and false alarms are reduced. If we see a grenade go live, we know we have an incident brewing,” the advocate concluded.

  “We may be able to prevent the act from occurring,” Nemesis said, beaming. “If we arrest enough of the criminals, maybe the others will stop.”

  Freya looked a little sad at this suggestion. “Honey, just because a guy can’t get it up doesn’t mean you’re safe. Sometimes, it just makes them angry.”

  For the first time, Sif spoke up. “I’d rather be beaten and have the cavalry show up while it’s happening. Conviction rate for that is almost 100 percent. For rape, less than 3 percent of perps ever serve a day behind bars.”

  Grant Thisbe looked down. “I’m the advocate, and I approve this experiment.”

  ****

  Stu managed to shut off the feed as the car stopped in a shopping mall. “How does this happen?”

  The guard explained, “The first few trials worked until the militia wised up and wore gas masks. Then the team added hot-pink dye to occlude the vision so the bastards had to remove their masks and breathe in the Limpatol.”

  “Not the experiment, the rape gangs!” Stu said, incredulous. “Three percent convicted?”

  “Yeah. That percent is sort of worldwide. The gangs in some places never get punished. Like the caste violence in India. Something on the order of a billion people live without toilets there. When they pee in a field during the night, a lot can happen. Hey, I think the tailor is ready with your date clothes.”

  Stu jumped out of the car into the parking lot. The cloud of media drones converged on him like the flies in the TV show. He shouted to the collection of cameras, “As ambassador from Sanctuary, I have something to say. I just watched something you call entertainment. The Ballbusters second season finale made me sick. This isn’t right. I can’t believe you haven’t fixed this problem yet. My mother and my friend Mira were both raped. The women on this show are your sisters and daughters and mothers. What is wrong with you all? This violation shouldn’t be happening anywhere on this planet. How can we teach the pandas this is wrong when we break the code ourselves?”

  Dmitri put a hand on his shoulder. “Sir, we should really be moving. Killers could be converging the longer you stay here attracting attention.”

  Stu jerked his arm away, spinning to face the guard. “I don’t care. Someone has to do something!”

  Onesemo and the other guards climbed out of the trailing car. “Sir, we need to get you back under cover.”

  “Earth First and the US government have both taken shots at me since my arrival,” Stu ranted. “Both organizations are complicit in this continuing outrage. Those rape gangs could be prevented. Instead of spending hundreds of millions a day on troops, why not dig a well for a couple thousand?”

  “The locals didn’t want any permanent—”

  “Screw what they want. If they can’t protect their guests, they lose the right to object.”

  Stu pointed to the closest camera. “Earth First should change its name to Hypocrite First. If you’re really concerned with making this planet a decent place to live, you should start with the women.”

  Guards piled on Stu, pinning his arms. He shook the first couple holds, but too many men weighed him down. He shouted, “Protect the Earth, but rape your mother? It’s the same thing.”

  Onesemo mumbled, “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d let me stay with him.”

  A member of the security detail activated an EMP device, and the drones dropped from the air.

  “Sorry, sir. This is for your own good.” Guards stuffed Stu into the lead vehicle, and tires squealed as the caravan fled.

  Chapter 14 – Betrayal

  Laura was busy at her apartment, directing caterers and her mother. She wanted the atmosphere for the date to be perfect. When the control wand for her apartment chimed, she discovered the Internet alert about her client. The clip was labeled as an uncensored celebrity rant, and Stu’s emotional reaction to a Ballbusters episode was trending higher than his video with the panda language. She cursed and pressed the button to hear it. The video broke her heart. He wants to see the unicorns, and we’ve killed them all.

  She called up the head of corporate security and reamed him for allowing the media access.

  Maurier said, “I accept full responsibility, ma’am. We have Llewellyn on lockdown, but how are we going to manage this fiasco?”

  “Don’t change a thing other than the video title,” Laura advised. “Change it to ‘Ambassador Llewellyn Asserts Rape Is Never Acceptable.’ Let our news crews do a story on it. Buy a copy of the footage for our stalker site on him. This quote just won us eight more jurors.” All we need now is the foreman, and this is a lock. He was a mechanical engineer who would respect things like ballistic evidence and materials specifications.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As she terminated the connection, the wand buzzed with an incoming call. The federal prosecutor, Isaiah Parrish, bellowed, “What are you trying to pull?”

  “My client spoke extemporaneously about an episode of a popular show. Everyone else on the planet has already seen it. I don’t see the problem, Izzy.”

  Isaiah huffed disapproval. “He accused my government of being in league with Earth First and trying to kill him.”

  “Is he wrong?”

  “We were justified in firing on him!” Izzy ranted for a while, threatening to add slander to the charges and put her client in solitary confinement.

  She polished her nails until he ran out of steam. “Or you could turn this to your advantage.”

  “What do you mean?” A budding politician, Izzy was hooked.

  “Use the public accusation a
s waiver of his right to remain silent. Now he has to talk about his landing and the Icarus device on the stand.” Which should win over the jury foreman.

  “Thanks, baby cakes, I owe you,” he said, hanging up.

  She shuddered. Baby cakes? Ugh. Now I’m going to hear that phrase every time I have to talk to him.

  Kaguya called out from the steamy kitchen, “Is there a problem?”

  “Just a bump. Stewart made a little gaffe tonight. He said something Mira Hollis has been preaching for years. However, people are listening to him.”

  Her mother came out of the room, wiping her hands. “Because he’s a man?”

  “A good man,” Laura said softly. “We need to take the meal to him. Security has him locked in the doghouse. I’ll signal you if I need time alone with Stewart.”

  “Let me borrow the wand, dear. I need to make arrangements,” her mother said.

  Distracted, Laura unlocked and handed over the remote control for the apartment. She walked to the mirror, adjusted her lipstick, and cinched her pants. Instead of her usual patterned-snakeskin, she wore thin, white slacks with a black thong. Her underwear would be clearly visible under the right light.

  Kaguya tapped the screen a few times and sighed. “I thought so.”

  “What?”

  “Koku warned me there was a disruption in your behavior patterns.” Grandfather’s pet AI is shadowing me on this mission? Creepy.

  Kaguya held up the display on the longevity app for her daughter to see. “You’ve gained twenty years on your life expectancy since you met him.”

  “So?”

  “You’re in love.”

  Laura checked the app and reran the hormone levels. The device told her what she already knew. “I’m so fucked.” I can’t be a spy or a lawyer if my emotions are tied in a knot.

  “It’s okay, Tsukiko. It happens to the best of us.” She put an arm around her daughter.