Exile-and Glory (32 page)

Kevin couldn't think of anything he had done. He was exhausted from standing in lines for his food ration stamps, and he wanted to send the policeman away, but he was afraid that his landlady would believe he was in trouble with the law. Mrs. Jeffries was a good friend to her student tenants. She would let them be late with the rent, but she didn't want police trouble in her rooming house. "What's it about?" Kevin asked. His voice sounded much more calm than he felt.

"This yours?" The policeman held up a wallet.

"Uh—"

"It's got your ID in it," the detective said. "I'm returning it. No big deal. Want to talk about how you lost it."

"Yes, sure, it's mine," Kevin said. He felt relief, and saw that Mrs. Jeffries had lost her worried look. Kevin winked at her and got a slight smile in return before she left and the policeman came in.

The room wasn't very large. There was a couch that could make into a bed, but it was long enough for Kevin to sleep on without unfolding it, and he never opened it. The walls were lined with bookshelves. Over the years the many students who'd lived there had added to the shelving until there wasn't a bare wall. There were two desks and a table that came from the Salvation Army Thrift Store. At the opposite end from the entrance was an opening onto an alcove where a stove, refrigerator and cat litter box filled what would not have been a very large closet. The room smelled of food and cats. The desks were littered with papers, pocket calculator, library reader-screen, opened books, drafting tools, and junk mail.

"Reminds me of my student days," Sergeant Mason said. "I stayed down the street in a room just like this. What class are you?"

"Senior, I think."

"Kevin Senecal," Mason said. "Senecal. Unusual name. Don't think I ever heard it before."

"It's Norman French. We think it used to be Seneschale," Kevin told him. "That'd be Stewart in English—you know, meant Steward." He wondered why he was so nervous with this policeman. The cop had brought back his wallet, and Kevin hadn't done anything to be afraid of. But the policeman's manner was unusual, cagey, as if he were trying to think of the right way to say something unpleasant. He didn't think the policeman would have come alone if he'd intended to make an arrest, but why was he acting this way?

Kevin had never had much contact with police: in the neighborhood where he grew up police were to be avoided. Cops didn't have much respect for people on welfare and unemployment. When Greg Tolland's People's Alliance won the White House and Congress that had changed for a while, but then Tolland was hounded by the press and the Alliance was smeared and things went back to politics as usual and—

His reverie was interrupted by the policeman. "Here." Mason tossed him the wallet. "Put it away. Officially, I never saw it."

"Uh?"

"Look, Kevin—you don't mind if I call you Kevin? We took this off some bad people last night. Guy carrying it had a broken jaw. His buddies were trying to get him to a doctor."

"You caught the bastards! Good work," Kevin said. He looked at the policemen with new respect. His mother, who had once had a better life, had always told him the police were all right. "But isn't the wallet evidence?"

"You don't want to prosecute."

"But—"

"No." The policeman was very firm. "Look, those guys belong to the Garvey Street Crips. If you identify them, you won't live until the trial. Actually, you're probably in trouble anyway; they wouldn't have kept the wallet if they didn't have something in mind. Usually they just take out the money, put the credit cards into an envelope and mail them to friends—and dump the wallet so there's no evidence if we shake them down. They kept yours. I don't have to be very smart to guess why. You did a good job on the guy with the broken jaw. And a better job on the other one."

The policeman was looking carefully at Kevin's face. Kevin didn't care. He was glad that he'd hurt those bastards.

Whatever the policeman saw seemed to please him. "You didn't know, did you?" the cop asked. "You killed one of them. That garbage can lid caught him just at the base of the skull. Clean and neat."

"Jeez—" Kevin felt a rush of shock, fear, and anger. "I never meant to kill anyone! Am I in trouble for that?"

"You would be if we knew who'd done it. But of course we don't. Never found anything at all. They must have ditched the wallet."

It took Kevin a moment to catch on. "But—"

"But nothing," Mason said. "We got ourselves a new DA, a real People's Alliance type, and we've got judges who don't approve of 'deadly force.' Somebody killed a juvenile last night, and you don't kill juvies in this town. That's bad news."

"But they were trying to kill me! They poured lighter fluid on me, to set me on fire!"

"Can you prove that?"

"How the hell could I prove—"

"Exactly," the policeman said. "You can't. And we can't do one damned thing for you, Kevin. If we give you protection the DA will want to know why, and we can't tell him or he'll have you up for manslaughter of a juvie. It gets worse. Those were black kids. Ever say anything about blacks? Africans taking jobs? Say anything against the quota system? Even if you didn't, the DA will likely go against you for hate crimes. You could get twenty years."

"That can't be true."

"I sure wish it couldn't. Look, Kevin, I don't make the rules. I'm breaking hell out of them coming here."

"Yeah. I know that. Thanks, but—"

"But it stinks. Look, the DA isn't the worst of your problems. He doesn't know who you are. The Crips do know, and they'll be looking for you. If you're smart they won't find you."

"You're telling me I ought to run because some muggers tried to kill me and I defended myself?"

Kevin's face showed anger. His fists clenched and he felt the blood rising—

"Nope." The detective's calm was maddening. "Remember, I don't even know who you are. I'm just returning some property I found while I was off duty. Which, by the way, I am now. You got any beer in that fridge?"

"Sure." Kevin went to the refrigerator. Snowdrop, his white kitten, was sitting guard on top of it. She mewed hopefully when Kevin opened the door, then looked resigned when no cat food or milk came out.

Mason popped the top of the beer bulb and made a face at it. "I liked this stuff in bottles or cans. Now we got biodegradable cardboard, and it don't taste the same." He drank it anyway, a long healthy glug. "Can you change apartments?"

"I'm a month behind here. There's no way I could get the money for a new place."

"Probably wouldn't help anyway. They'd follow you when you moved. What are your plans?"

"Well, I graduate this term . . ."

"You might last that long. Want some advice? Keep out of dark places. Don't have a routine. Come home at different times, and don't eat in the same place every day. Keep the shades down and keep your shadow off the shade. Lock up good when you go out. Get a better lock. Get
two
locks. And stay with people you know." Mason drank again. His lips tightened as he set the bulb on the couch arm. "Kevin, do you think I
like
this? I'm a cop. My job is protecting people. And I'm telling you that I can't protect you, that the bastards in City Hall won't let me. I don't like that much, but you tell me—what should I do?"

"I don't know," Kevin said.

"Yeah. Well, if you think of something, let me know."

It seemed appropriate that the lights dimmed just then. The experimental windmills never did deliver enough power, and many of the regular generators were down for maintenance. It always took a while to get the lights back on.

Long after the policeman left Kevin sat at his desk staring at a book. He read the same page three times, but none of it registered. He was afraid. His books said he lived in a post-industrial society and described the benefits in glowing words, but the police couldn't help him.

Out there somewhere a gang of nameless children—the DA would call them children, and Kevin a child-murderer—was looking for him, and those children would kill him if they could, and the police were helpless. The United States of America in all its awful majesty was no use at all. The police could give out tickets and harass taxpayer demonstrations but they couldn't protect Kevin's life.

His life had been settled and orderly, completely planned. He would get his degree and go to work for one of the big international corporations, perhaps even go out to one of the near-Earth space industries if he could get a post. Junior engineers weren't paid much for a starting salary, because nearly everyone graduated from state universities and had some kind of "professional" job—or didn't work at all—but when he got his degree Kevin would be eligible to join a strong union, and the union with its influence with the government would keep the pay raises coming. The unions would prevent smart-ass whiz kids from taking his job, too. Once Kevin had wanted to be a smart-ass whiz kid, but he'd seen what happened to them. Now Kevin looked forward to marriage, a house, a car, perhaps a camper and a small boat.

When he told his friends, they usually laughed and said it sounded dull, but Kevin didn't mind. Dull was fine, as long as it was secure. After the years of living with his mother and his brother on welfare checks and food stamps, split pea soup, chicken once a week when they were lucky, patched clothes and shoes bought from the Salvation Army, dull-but-secure was attractive. Dull meant buying food in private stores instead of standing in long lines at the cooperatives, even eating out once in a while. Dull meant living in a neighborhood where the police were polite and respectful. Dull meant all the things Kevin had never had and always wanted.

And his dream of dull security was vanishing with the memory of a garbage can lid smacking into human bone.

The book stared back at him. "The most crucial questions that will be faced by every post-industrial society will deal with education, talent, and science policy. The rapid expansion of a professional and technical class, and the increased dependence of the society on scientific manpower, suggest a new and absolutely unique dimension in social affairs: i.e., that the economic growth rate of a post-industrial society will be less dependent on money capital than on human capital."

The words blurred and the idea was silly to begin with. The most crucial question was: how would Kevin Senecal stay alive long enough to graduate and get his union card so that he could find a job?

The letter had been generated by a computer. It had his name spelled "Senegal," but the student ID number was correct. It was for him.

It told him that two summer classes he'd taken at California State University, Northridge, were not recognized as transferable for credit to UCLA. "As these classes are prerequisite to other classes required for graduation (see schedule 4 below) you may not hold credit in the classes named in schedule 4, and thus you have not completed the requirements for graduation. Your application for graduation is denied, and your present class status is second-year, commonly called sophomore. Upon completion of the required prerequisites, and following that completion, your successful completion of the courses noted in schedule 4 (see below) you may again make application for graduation."

He read it three times. It said the same thing each time. Instead of graduating in two months, he had two more years of school. He crumpled the letter in rage, but then carefully smoothed it out. These things happened. It was futile to get excited. Computers often made mistakes. He telephoned the UCLA Appointment Exchange. The Voice Mail system was slow and cumbersome, but eventually he was able to register a request to see his advisor.

"Your appointment with Ms. Rasmussen has been scheduled for two PM on the twenty-second of April," the computer told him.

"Two weeks. Can't you make it earlier?"

"To accept the appointment, press one. To reschedule your appointment for a later time press two," the machine said. Kevin raged silently at the phone, then pressed one.

"Thank you for calling the Appointment Exchange. If you have further business with the Exchange, press one."

He slammed down the phone, then felt ashamed for being so angry. It shouldn't be surprising that it would take a while to see his advisor. There were over 50,000 students at UCLA. It took time to arrange for a human interview.

He took the policeman's advice: varied his schedule, stayed off streets at night, and always locked his doors. His friends didn't notice. He'd always been something of a loner and a bit of a bookworm since he dropped out of the football squad, so there was no one to miss him. The girl he'd been dating had found someone else two days before the muggers had caught him, and except for Wiley Ralston no one would care.

Wiley had graduated a year ahead of Kevin, staying on after graduation to specialize in space industry technology. Engineering students were never popular on campus, and those going to space were hated. The One Earth Society, and other anti-technology groups, picketed the engineering building nearly every day. Their lunchtime demonstrations seldom got out of hand, and Kevin had become accustomed to their shouted insults whenever he went in or came out of his classrooms. Today they were getting on his nerves. When they ritually shouted "murderer!" at him, he remembered the crunch of bone that he'd felt that night in the alley.

"Hey, don't let those nuts shake you," Wiley said as they walked past the demonstrators.

"Aw, they don't," Kevin said. They hurried toward the cafeteria.

There was a long line waiting. "Not really anyway."

"You ever really listen to them?" Wiley asked.

"Once," Kevin said. "Didn't make much sense to me. They kept telling me we're wasting all that money in space when there's so much needed here, and I know better. Without space technology we'd be a lot worse off than we are now. What goes to space wouldn't help anyway. It's just not enough."

Wiley nodded, then waved at the line ahead of them. "Yeah, except sometimes I wonder."

"You?"

Wiley Ralston laughed. "Not very often. Just sometimes. Like this. Why're so many people lined up for lunch? Because you get a free lunch on your student ID card. Which is why most of these turkeys are students to begin with."