Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire (38 page)

Danya awoke, and peered through the hole in the wall. Dim sunlight, a yellow glow. Still, it was very cold. He took a breath from his puffer.

“Svet.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Svetochka. Wake up, it’s morning.” She complained, as she always did, and burrowed more deeply into the coat she used as a pillow.

On Danya’s other side, little Kiril was already awake, sitting up without complaint and taking his puffer in both gloved hands. Danya stretched, and adjusted his woolen cap. It had slipped up on one side during the night, and his ear was numb with cold. There was no heating in their little hidey, just room on the floor for three, with holes in walls that let in the chill. He’d tried to plug them, but any material good for plugging was good for bedding and blankets too, and better used for that. Within their little nest, three bodies lying close could keep warm enough, even on Droze nights.

Danya reached into his side of the nest, pulling out his coat and struggling into it. That movement upset the big cover over smaller blankets, and Svetlana complained as the cold got in. Danya slipped out of the covers entirely and pulled on his heavy pants over the light leggings. A fresh pair of socks, because the old ones were becoming truly ripe. He could get their stuff cleaned, but it cost coin he’d rather spend on food. Sometimes Henrietta who worked at the laundromat would smuggle a bag of their bad clothes in and wash them for a trade. Trade got you more than coin did, lately. Danya was good at trade. He’d had to be.

He crawled over his sister and cracked the door a little. Never a lot—with the UAVs around, it was never smart to make a lot of movement on the upper floors. He peered out. This was the fifth and top floor of what had been an office building. Beyond the hidey, the floor was scorched and blackened. That had happened during the crash. No one really knew why this building had been targetted, and anyone who’d witnessed it was likely dead in the witnessing. Anything of value was long ago taken, all that remained were bits of charred and melted furniture, even the walls stripped of wiring, surviving panes of glass and fittings. An outer wall and much of the ceiling were entirely missing, exposed to the yellow morning sky.

Beyond that, Rimtown, a frontier sprawl of low-rise buildings along gridwork streets, smudged with ever-present dust. In the distance, the corporate zones, clusters of high-rise buildings, unreachable behind their defensive walls. From outside came morning noise, generators whining, a few vehicles. The water crier, trundling his barrow. The snorts of luozi, hauling loads.

The need to use the bathroom finally got Svetlana up, as the only working facility was downstairs, and she hated to pee in a bucket. Danya made certain Kiril had his scarf, gloves and goggles, because the pirate frequency last night had said it would storm today. Svetlana double-checked him, because Kiril was forgetful, and they went down the short hall to the stairwell, where Danya took the big padlock off the door.

They descended the echoing concrete stairwell together. Danya was always cautious doing that, and insisted Svetlana and Kiril should not do it without him. They were not the building’s only tenants, and some of those below them, who also used the stairwell, made him nervous. He had a big knife in his coat pocket and knew how to use it. Sometimes he thought of upgrading it to a gun, but the corporations’ penalty for NCPs carrying guns was death. That didn’t stop lots of folks from doing it, but then, lots of folks ended up dead, while he and his siblings were still alive. Danya’s sole mission in life was to keep things that way.

Downstairs had once been a floor of offices like all the others. Now it was a tavern of sorts, all the partitions cleared out leaving only open space and ceiling supports, like an empty shell. Against one wall was a bar and behind that, the kitchen, adjoining Treska’s office. Opposite that was storage, boxes and trunks and spare junk, all Treska’s stuff. Generator engines and fuel, the place always smelled of fumes. Elsewhere about the floor were trestles and tables for patrons, a small stage that could be used for music, and some pool tables.

Danya tried the switch and the lights came up. “Power’s on!” he told the other two. It was always good to start the day with good news. “Svet, you can make us some coffee, the machine will be working.”

“I don’t like that coffee,” Svetlana complained, leading Kiril to the rear bathroom, behind Treska’s office. “It smells of juno piss.”

“That’s probably because some juno pissed in it,” Danya explained.

“Ew!” said Svetlana.

“Yuck!” added Kiril, cheerfully.

Danya set about making up the tables, pulling table cloths from their trunk by the wall, and cutlery from the box beside it. Treska kept their rent low and let them have breakfast if they set up every morning. Treska lived on the floor above, where it was rumoured he used banned communications to do business. Danya didn’t ask what, though he could guess.

He was making up some tables near the front door when he noticed one of the locks securing the big steel shutter across a window was broken. He froze. The shutters were heavily secured; breaking one wasn’t easy. Had it been opened from the inside? But how could it have been, when anyone sleeping inside could have just left through the door?

He heard the bathroom flush for a second time. Svetlana was already in the kitchen, clashing pots and pans. Danya examined the big, heavy window shutter. It was open, all right, the locks sheared right off. Had it been open like that all night? That was an unpleasant thought. There were some things out in the night you didn’t leave a window open for.

“Danya!” It was Svetlana’s voice, shocked and frightened. His heart stopped, and he spun. Svetlana stood in the kitchen door, frozen, staring at something behind the bar. “Danya, there’s someone in here!”

Danya ran, hands fumbling for the knife in his coat. Around the edge of the bar he saw her—a blonde woman, lying as though unconscious on the floor.

“Is she dead?” asked Svetlana, hopefully. Dead people were a nuisance that could be disposed of. The live ones could be trouble.

“I don’t know,” said Danya, warily. “I don’t want to check, she might be a GI.”

Svetlana’s eyes widened, and she backed up a step. “A GI, really? Why?”

“The front shutter’s been broken. It looks like someone just forced it open.”

“Is that a GI?” came Kiril’s voice from the kitchen. He peered past his sister in the doorway. “Is she alive, Danya?”

“I don’t know, Kiri.” Danya crouched just short of her feet, peering to try and get a better look. She wore a heavy black coat, which made it hard to see if she was breathing. He thought hard. A GI could be trouble. There was no telling whose side she’d be on, or who she worked for. Though she could be a privateer. That would be even worse—the companies took a hard line with privateers. “I have to tell Treska.”

“No, Danya, don’t leave us here with the GI!” Svetlana protested. “I’ll go and tell Treska!”

Danya shook his head firmly. “I’ve told you, Svet, I don’t like you alone with him.”

“I’ll be fine,” she retorted, “better Treska than a GI!”

“I don’t even know if she is a GI. She might just be augmented, that could be enough to break the shutter.” There was blood on her clothes, he saw. Whether or not it was hers, there was no way to tell.

“I’m not scared of GIs,” said Kiril.

“Kiri,” Danya warned, “you listen to me. They’re not all friendly like Gunter, do you hear me? Some of them work for the companies, and they’re very dangerous. You stay well away from them, understand?” Kiril nodded, gazing at the unconscious woman. “Now, I’m going to go and get Treska. If she wakes up, be very polite and stay out of her way. She won’t hurt you if you don’t give her any reason to, okay? GIs don’t hurt people for no reason. But don’t you go near her, or you might give her a reason, understand?”

Danya left for the stairs. He couldn’t check for a pulse, anyway, because GIs didn’t have a jugular vein, everyone knew that. He really didn’t want to leave Svetlana and Kiril alone with the maybe-GI. But also, he didn’t want to be slow to tell Treska, and make Treska upset. If Treska got upset with them, they’d have no place to sleep, and no breakfasts.

He climbed the stairs back up to the first floor. Treska’s door was sealed with steel hinges, with an electronic peep hole in the middle. Danya hit the doorbell. That would make a noise inside the apartment, though Danya couldn’t hear it. He waited. There was no telling if he’d been heard or not, and no way of hearing if someone was coming. He hit the doorbell again. Sometimes he thought Treska had set it up like this just to be disconcerting. It worked.

After what he figured was a fair time waiting, he turned and went back down the stairs. Treska could hardly claim he hadn’t tried to tell him. Down in the tavern he could see Svetlana hustling over a stove, through windows in the kitchen’s prefab walls that closed it off from the rest of the floor. And behind the open bar . . . his heart nearly stopped for a second time. Little Kiril was helping the blonde woman to sit on several storage kegs behind the bar.

He couldn’t yell—a sudden noise might scare her, and if she was a GI, he couldn’t scare her. He walked forward, hands balled to fists, willing himself to calm. The woman was awake, though moving very gingerly. She was having trouble standing on her own.

“Kiri,” he said in measured tones, and leaned on the bar. “I think you should move away from there.”

The woman slumped back against the wall, head lolled, and looked at him. Pale blue eyes, shortish hair, all messed up. Beautiful, if she didn’t look so awful.

“She’s okay, Danya,” said Kiril, supporting her to make sure she didn’t slide over. “I think she’s sick.”

The woman seemed to note Danya’s alarm. Her hand on Kiril’s shoulder lifted, a pronounced gesture. Almost an apology. She seemed to have difficulty breathing.

Svetlana emerged from the kitchen with a glass of water. Danya glared at her—she should have been watching Kiril. Svetlana made a snotty mimicry of his glare and handed the woman the glass. Her hand shook. Kiril moved to try to help her drink it.

“Kiril!” Danya commanded, and he stopped, looking confused. Kiril was such a nice boy, he thought everyone might be his friend. Danya worried about him constantly.

The woman spilled a lot of the water on her chin. It trickled onto the pullover under her coat. When the glass was empty, she handed it to Svetlana, who took it before she could drop it.

“Hello?” Danya tried. “What is your name? What happened to you?” The woman said nothing. Whether that was because she would not tell, or could not, Danya didn’t know. “We don’t own this place, do you understand me? We pay rent. The landlord is upstairs, I tried to reach him but he didn’t answer the door. Either you tell us, or you tell him. He’s not always a very nice man.”

The woman slumped her head back against the wall, and closed her eyes.

“Who are you?” Danya tried again. “Are you a GI?”

A faint nod. Svetlana grabbed Kiril’s shoulder and pulled him back a little. Danya could have smacked her on the head.
Now you’re worried?

“Who do you work for? What designation are you?” Nothing. “A high designation, or low?”

“Very high,” she croaked.

So she could speak. “Do you work for a corporation?”

“No,” she said. “I got hit with . . . tranquilizer. GI specific. Can you get . . . bipofalzin?”

“Drugs?” Now Danya was very wary. “Is it expensive?”

“Don’t know,” she gasped. “Maybe.”

Danya spread his hands in exasperation. “Lady, we’ve barely got enough to eat. Thieves get killed. Either this bipofaz . . .”

“Bipofalzin.”

“ . . . either it’s easy to get, or I can’t get it. I’m sorry. I don’t even know if you can stay here, once Treska finds out.” Pity she’s a GI, he thought. If she weren’t, with looks like hers, Treska would have let her make payment in other ways. But no one was crazy enough to offer that with a GI.

“The tranq shuts down my systems,” she said. “If I don’t get it, I’m dead. Forty-eight hours, max.” She had a funny accent. At first Danya had thought it was just her condition. But now that her voice was loosening up, it was undeniably an accent. Which was odd, because old people had accents, those that had come from other places. No younger people did, and never any GIs. How did a GI get an accent? Where was she from?

“I’m sorry, lady,” Danya repeated. “But this is Droze, people die all the time. I have to look after my brother and sister. They’re all I have.”

The woman looked across the room, gathering thought as she tried to gather air, one deep gasp at a time.

“You’re fifteen?” she asked, looking back at him.

“Thirteen,” he said, a little self-consciously.

“So you were seven in the crash.” Her eyes rolled across to Kiril and Svetlana. “And these two . . . the little one might not have been born.”

“He was a baby,” Danya confirmed. “Svet was four.”

“So this is all you’ve known. Do you like it here?”

Danya frowned. What kind of a question was that? “What difference does it make?” he retorted. “Here is all there is.”

“No.” She shook her head, with slow effort. “I’m Federation. Tanusha, on Callay.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Danya. “The Federation doesn’t make GIs, everyone knows that.”

“I came from the League,” she replied. “But I left. I emigrated. Became a Federation citizen.”

Danya was unconvinced. “Danya, I heard about this,” Svetlana cut him off, eyes wide, before he could ridicule the GI further. “People say some GIs went to the Federation. To Callay.”

“Which people said that?”

“News feeds,” Svetlana insisted. “I read them, Danya. How does she have an accent if she’s not from the Federation?”

“She could be League,” said Danya, coldly. “All offworlders have accents.”

“But that would be suicide!” Svetlana insisted. “Everyone hates the League!” Danya was uncertain. Svetlana was a dreamer, and too often she wanted things to be true that weren’t. But she did read the news feeds, and all kinds of things Danya never found useful. If she said she’d read that GIs had gone to the Federation, it was probably true. But that didn’t mean this one was telling the truth.