Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar-Apr 2013

by Spilogale Inc.

He grinned. "Okay."

  The Stead Life offices were a lot smaller than I'd imagined them. Just like High Stakes , they had a producer who was not one of the people who appeared on camera. Her assistant buzzed me in and then went for coffee. The producer's name was Leah; I'd seen it in the credits a million times but I'd never seen her face. She was the opposite of Janet—scruffy where Janet was polished, nerdy where Janet was slick. "You're Beck Garrison," she said, before I could introduce myself. "I'm glad your friend found you. You disappeared really effectively."

  Huh. Good .

  "We can interview you on camera if you want, but mostly I was hoping you could help me find that woman, Debbie. We really want to interview her."

  I laughed out loud. "You're hiring me for a finding job?"

  Leah blinked, confused for a second. "Oh, yeah, you found stuff for the Miscellenry, didn't you? I heard that when I did background on you. Well, so. Yes, we want you to find Debbie and help us arrange an interview. She's disappeared even more thoroughly than you did."

  "Probably because she doesn't want to get killed."

  "If necessary, we can give the camera and list of questions to the person of her choice. You, for instance. Surely she'd want to get the word out on the stead. That's what we do: get the word out."

  I bit my lip and looked up at Leah. "So why weren't you planning to go to Miguel's funeral?"

  Leah looked down at her desk. "We didn't think it fit our show. Funerals aren't very interesting."

  "Oh? Really? Is that the reason?"

  "More or less."

  "Yeah. If Debbie gives you an interview, will you actually air it? Even if—say—Paul Garrison tells you not to?"

  "We don't take orders from your father, Beck."

  "That's good, because you'd probably be surprised by just how many people on this stead do . And the ones who don't are easily cowed by his goons."

  Leah tilted her head. "I live on Min because I don't like people telling me what to do. I run a reality show because I like asking questions. And I carry a gun because I don't like people trying to intimidate me."

  "Good to know," I said. "If I find Debbie, how shall I tell her to reach you?"

  "Let me give you a disposable phone—"

  I shook my head. "I've had a bad experience with gift gadgets. How about just a number?"

  "Fine." Leah wrote a number down on an index card and handed it over. "You can also feel free to come back here. I'm hoping to interview her before tomorrow morning. Let me know if you hit a dead end."

  It kept coming back to finding.

  I started with the locker rooms, because maybe someone knew where she was, enough to pass the message along, but no luck. I tried Clark's, plus similar low-end dining halls on Rosa and Pete. I tried the real estate office, on the off chance that she'd used her money to buy a place to live straight off.

  When I went to St. Peter's, Father Tim looked happy to see me. "I assume you heard the funeral got moved," he said.

  "I heard it wasn't going to be on the sea platform anymore," I said.

  "Yeah. We've fixed things with the Methodists. It'll be tomorrow, in their church. I'm hoping it will at least be a harder location to attack. They certainly won't be able to blow it up without destroying a lot of stuff they'd rather not destroy." I must have looked uncertain because he added, "We can't not hold a funeral."

  "I guess not."

  "Any news on the slowdown?"

  "I'm not the one to ask," I said. "Do you know anything new?"

  "I've heard rumblings of a caveat to the 'medical care' thing, after the broadcast last night. No one wants to be packed off to a doctor who didn't go to med school."

  "Or who might experiment on them? I can't imagine why they'd object."

  In any case, Father Tim hadn't seen Debbie and didn't know how to get a message to her. "Actually," he said a little sheepishly, "I was thinking of asking you to try to find her for me. I want to make sure she's okay with the current funeral plans. If you could give her this note.…" He handed me a paper envelope. "She can send a message through you, if she doesn't want to come up."

  Come up . Of course . She was hiding at the bottom of the stead, the same as I had last night.

  SO, THE PROBLEM NOW was this: the thought of endlessly wandering around that dimly lit maze of pipes and wires with no destination, trying to find someone who was hiding on purpose when I'd already been warned that plenty of groups down there weren't "friendly"—frankly, that didn't sound like a good plan. I mean, I'm not exactly a coward, but when I went to rescue Lynn from the place on Lib, I took an Alpha Dog with me. I could actually hire a bodyguard, but going down there with a hired gun was the most certain way possible to ensure that no one trusted me and I never found Debbie.

  I pondered whether I knew anyone who was big enough to make me feel like I had someone with me, but also nonthreatening enough that he wouldn't make things worse, and went to see if I could find Thor. I caught him as he came out of his afternoon class. His face lit up when he spotted me. "I wasn't expecting to see you again today."

  "Yeah, well, I want company for something." I was trying to avoid specifics where people could overhear.

  "Awesome." Thor put his arm around me and his head close to mine. "Do you need help getting to the Citizens' Services Bureau?"

  "No," I said. "I want company while I hunt for Debbie."

  "Why do you need her?"

  " Stead Life wants to interview her."

  He raised his head and glanced over his shoulder. Shara was coming out of the tutor's apartment as well, and he waved. "See you later," he said cheerfully, and we picked up the pace.

  "Okay," he said, "I'm in."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Of course. Do you want to stop and get something to eat first?"

  "Yeah," I said, "but you have to let me treat, because it's not a date when I'm kind of basically using you for your height and gender."

  "Sure it is," he said. "As long as we're spending time together, I'm good."

  "You haven't seen where I'm taking you!"

  "I should tell you, I'm still jealous of that Alpha Dog who got to hang out with you on Lib."

  "You should be more jealous of Lynn. After all, she was officially my date—that's how I got the Alpha Dog to rescue her."

  "True, but since she's either dead or somewhere awful, that felt like sort of a tasteless joke for me to make."

  "Sorry."

  "No, it's okay for you to make it. I just didn't feel comfortable going there."

  I bought us both sandwiches. The line was kind of long; a lot of the people with dining hall contracts had realized the one-person operations like sandwich shops were mostly not affected by the slowdown.

  "We should make sure you're not being followed," Thor said. "I mean, if other people are after her, you probably don't want to lead them to her by accident."

  "Good point," I said, and we took a circuitous route to the locker-room level. If anyone was following us, they were good enough that we didn't see them when we looked over our shoulders repeatedly.

  The door to the utility level was still taped open. On the other side, Thor looked around in wonder. "I can't believe you didn't think this was a romantic destination," he said. "It's dimly lit, mysterious, and our parents would never find us down here. What more could you ask for?"

  " Not being slapped with a massive fine if you're caught during your date?"

  "That just adds the element of excitement."

  Walking down the row, I realized that the whole place was labeled on a grid with letters and number: A-Z in one direction, 1-99 in the other, which undoubtedly was the key to finding L-38, that number I'd seen written when I got up this morning. Debbie hadn't been with last night's squatter crowd, but I went to L-38 anyway, thinking I could ask if anyone knew how to find her. I could ask about my gadget, too. But no one was there, so either it was too early, or someone (like the gadget thief) had written down entirely the wrong location to send me astra
y.

  We kept walking down that aisle, past holding tanks with AIR BALLAST CHAMBER stenciled on them in orange, and something with a sign saying DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE, and a locked cage that held a bunch of switches that looked sort of rusty.

  "Password!"

  It was a male voice, but not one I recognized. I froze and held up my hands to show I didn't have a weapon. Thor did the same. "Sorry, I'm not with your group," I said. "I'm looking for someone I have a message for."

  A light exploded in my eyes and I covered them, too late. When my vision started to come back I found myself nose-to-nose with a man in a black leather jacket, with a blue tattoo of a lightning bolt down his cheek. "What sort of message?"

  " Stead Life wants to interview Debbie. Union organizer Debbie. They want to put her on their show. I said I'd try to find her and let her know."

  "Can't help you," he said. "But pass freely."

  "Okay," I said. "Uh. How freely? Any areas I should avoid? I'd hate to get shot, you know?"

  "Hardly anyone down here has a gun," he said dismissively. "Just don't act like you're a cop, you'll probably be fine."

  "Thanks," I said. "But if hardly anyone has a gun.…"

  He shrugged.

  I turned to Thor as we walked away. "We can go back, if you want."

  "We haven't found Debbie yet."

  "I feel guilty about getting you into this."

  "You're not making me do anything."

  "Yeah, but I asked you to come.…"

  Thor put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a sideways hug. "Quit it," he said. "If you're here, I want to be here."

  If Debbie were here, she was surely as far as possible from the stairway in. The next encampment we passed wasn't guarded at all, but abandoned. It looked a lot more established than the place where I'd slept last night; there were bedrolls laid out. I couldn't tell if everyone who normally lived there was out for the day or if they'd scattered when they saw us coming. "Debbie?" I called, tentatively. "It's Beck." No response.

  "Do you want to wait here and see who comes?" Thor asked.

  "No," I said. "If we can't find her, we can try this spot again."

  The next camp found us before we found them. We were approaching a corner when I felt something hit me in the back. I was starting to turn to look behind me when every muscle in my body seized up; I fell, hard, unable even to catch myself.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" someone was yelling at me. No, at Thor.

  I struggled for breath. The shock—it had been an electric shock, I was pretty sure—had stopped, but I was still having trouble making things work, and that included my mouth. "Stop, wait," I said, struggling for coherence. "Don't blame him! I made him come!" I need to tell them I want Debbie , I thought, but in a way that doesn't make me sound like a threat . Whoever it was shocked me again; this time it felt sort of like the numbness that shoots down your arm when you hit it between the bones of the elbow. Thor was yelling something, too. I didn't know what. "It's not Thor," I said when I could talk again. Which was not exactly helpful, but I was terrified that they would hurt him even worse, because he was big and more of a threat. Why did I bring him ? Why did that seem like a good idea ?

  Hands grabbed my shoulders and yanked me upright; I could see nothing but a dazzling light. "Oh, her," someone said.

  "Let her go." This time it was a woman's voice, with a southern accent. "She's one of us."

  "Debbie?" I said, hopefully.

  "Yeah, hon, it's me. Put her on one of the cots. The boy, too. Good God, y'all, can't you tell an Alpha Dog from a jumpy teenager?"

  "Is Thor okay?" I asked.

  "Yeah, he got the same as you. Just relax, you'll feel better in a few minutes."

  My vision slowly cleared, although my fingers and toes still felt weird. I sat up and looked around. We were in the far corner, as far as possible from the stairs, and this camp looked downright permanent. They had plastic sheets tacked up all over, with labels written on them in permanent maker: men's bathroom, women's bathroom, kitchen, do not disturb.

  The most startling thing—I mean, beyond finding Debbie and getting shocked—was that there was a child here. A little girl, three years old, watching TV.

  "Holy crap," Thor said, sitting up next to me. "Do you think she lives down here? I mean, all the time?"

  Bond contracts typically required contraceptive injections for workers—male or female, it didn't matter. They usually further specified that if a child was born anyway , that child would be taken away and placed for adoption unless either the mother or the father could buy out within one month of giving birth.

  It's pretty harsh, but it's not like you could keep a kid in the locker rooms. I wouldn't have thought you could keep a kid down here, either, but clearly someone had managed it.

  Once we were steady on our feet, Debbie led us behind the "do not disturb" plastic sheet to a room with an actual table and chairs. "Welcome to my office," she said. "Have a seat. You must have had a pretty big reason to go to the trouble of tracking me down."

  " Stead Life wants to interview you," I said, and laid out their proposal.

  "What do you think, Beck?" she asked when I was done. "Should I do it?"

  "I think it's a good idea," I said. "It'll give you another chance to get the word out, both on the seastead and elsewhere."

  "Maybe." She ran one hand through her hair and sighed. "I wish I could talk this over with Miguel. He had a much better sense of strategy than I do. He'd probably have come up with a better idea than hiding down here."

  "Yeah, well," Thor said. "He also got killed. So maybe not."

  "Hmm," Debbie said. "Tell them this, Beck. Tell them I'll do it—I'll meet them down here, in A-15, right near the stairs. I'll give them a half-hour interview. But in exchange, they have to cover Miguel's funeral, too. I heard they aren't coming. I want them there. That's my condition."

  I nodded. "Yeah," I said. "I'll tell them."

  Miguel's funeral was held the next day.

  I knew what Debbie was thinking: getting Stead Life to cover the funeral would be good for the movement and would build sympathy for the people doing the slowdown, but it would also provide them with human shields. Uncle Paul or my father or whoever it was behind the man I heard hiring the Cut-Rate Bastards—they might have been able to get away with sinking a sea platform full of bond-workers, but killing journalists guarantees that their friends will make you look as bad as possible in the stories that run afterward.

  I liked that idea, but I thought they could do with a few more human shields. I had Thor pass the word to Shara and the rest of our classmates; I told Geneva about the funeral when I met her to withdraw more money; I told Jamie at Miscellenry. Father Tim had been sympathetic, so I stopped in at the Baptist Mission Outreach Center, the Mormon Mission, and the Russian Orthodox church over on Pete. The Mormons were not initially sympathetic—I think they were annoyed about the slowdown—but when I told them about overhearing threats of violence they said they'd come.

  I went to the funeral two hours early to make sure I had a seat. No one stopped me entering. Once I was in the church, I borrowed a phone and called my father.

  "Hello, Beck," he said when he picked up.

  I looked over my shoulder. "How did you know it was me?"

  He sighed heavily. "You're the only person who has my private number. Besides, you're coming in from the Methodist church's data node. I'm not surprised you decided to go to the funeral."

  "Well, I was calling to let you know I'm here," I said. "I know the ADs were going to do something horrible to the funeral the first time around, and the Cut-Rate Bastards were supposed to keep any minors from getting in. I'm here, Thor's here, and I think most of the other teenagers are coming. All the religious leaders are coming, including the Baptists and the Russians. Stead Life is coming. If anything goes down, it's not just bond-workers who will die."

  There was a pause. Then he said, "You know, I was expecting you to bring
up a more personal issue first."

  My cheeks warmed. "Mom," I said. "I saw her on TV."

  "Yes. 'Mom.' I suppose it won't do much good to give you my side of the story at this point, but she was trying to keep you from me, she was telling you lies about me, and it was clear that it was her or me—we could never both be your parents."

  I didn't really want to argue about this. Not here, not on the phone. So I sat there silently, waiting to see if he had anything else to say.

  "Come home, Beck," he said. "Please? You don't…I don't want you to feel like you have to go to her. To give up the sea, the stead, your life here. I'm sorry I turned you out. Just come home."

  "Settle the strike," I whispered. "I know you can make it happen. Negotiate with the bond-workers, find a deal that everyone's satisfied with, and when the slowdown's over, I'll come home."

  THE METHODIST CHURCH was a lot like the Catholic church, only bigger: one of the stead's large interior rooms, structural pillars here and there, folding chairs. They'd borrowed extras (probably from St. Peter's) and jammed them together, with standing room in the aisles and in the back.

  The Methodist church had elaborately painted walls: they'd created twelve arched windows that looked out on various made-up scenes. One showed the sea on a sunny day; another had gardens. The window painting next to me depicted a playground filled with children. I wondered if children on real playgrounds all looked as joyful as the kids in the painting, or if in real life they squabbled a lot over whose turn it was to go down the slide.

  Father Tim and the Methodist minister both appeared to be presiding. I wondered if Tim was nervous. He didn't look nervous. He welcomed everyone and then drew a cross in the air and blessed the crowd. Some of the people near me crossed themselves, but most kept their hands at their sides, so I didn't feel too conspicuous.

  There was a series of readings. Some of them were religious: Father Tim read a passage about Moses saying "Let my people go." Some of the people in the crowd shouted "Amen!" to that, which appeared to startle Tim a little. The Methodist minister read a bit about tending vineyards and flocks and getting grapes and milk. "Is it about OXEN that GOD is concerned?" he thundered. ("No! Amen, brother, no!" someone near me said, half under his breath.) "Surely he says this for US. Whoever plows and threshes should share in the HARVEST." ("Amen!" the person near me said, louder this time. It didn't seem to startle the Methodist as much as it had Father Tim.)