The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection (71 page)

He would have been a good political officer, Max thought.

“Unlike these off-worlder animals,” the voice from the bullhorn continued, “we believe that you can repent of your evil choices” – interesting, Max thought, that their secular government used the same language as the religious one that preceded it – “and return to being productive citizens. We know that you were all misled by the criminal Mallove. Reject him and you’ll be accepted back into society.”

A surge toward the fence came from men ready to admit to, confess to, anything, for immediate release.

“I’m innocent,” the civilian contractor was yelling as he shoved his way to the gate. “I don’t even know Mallove.”

Bullhorn gave an order. Guards cracked the gate while the sizzle of shock rifles kept the prisoners at bay; one guard yanked the civilian out of the compound before locking the gate again. The whole mob protested and yelled that they too were innocent. Bullhorn pulled out a handgun, placed it against the citizen’s forehead and shot him. His body collapsed to the ground. A shiver went through the mob around Max.

“We know all of you are guilty,” Bullhorn shouted, “You will now have to redeem yourself through penance.”

Yes, Max thought, a terrific political officer.

A large articulated bus, hastily armored with bars outside the windows, rumbled up to the gate.

“This is your ride,” Bullhorn said. “Next stop, fabulous seaside beach resorts. Bring your swimsuits, towels, and tiny shovels. All aboard!”

The guards with shockguns opened the gate and herded the prisoners into the bus. They shuffled past the civilian’s body, sprawled facedown on the rock. Professionally, Max admired that detail – it worked on so many levels: it showed the men that if civilians weren’t safe, neither were they. And if Adareans could be killed, and if civilians could be killed, it made the prisoners identify more with the men with guns.

He stepped onto the bus, noting that it was one of the charter buses that mothers used to visit their children who’d moved to the new cities close to the coast. Another nice detail. Very reassuring.

Max shouldered his way back to the other door, then to the sliding door that connected the front compartment to the back, and found both locked. Not so reassuring.

The bus had three sections – a separate cab where the driver was safe from the passengers, important for this ride, followed by two individual sections, each with forty-eight seats. They’d be shoving sixty to seventy men in each.

Someone bumped into him, then someone else bumped them both. Bodies pressed close, the cumulative odor of sweat and bad breath and stale lunch was almost overwhelming. Guards yelled, “Get in, get back from the door!” as they physically packed the last few men on board. It felt like a grotesque game of musical chairs, with cursing for music and metal benches for chairs. The door snapped shut, stayed shut even as men pushed back. Through the window, Max saw guards herd more men into the second compartment.

A hand snaked through the bodies and grabbed hold of Max. Max twisted, tried to tug free, but it only had the effect of reeling the man to him.

“Hey, it’s me, Vasily.”

“I don’t really need a guard any more,” Max said.

“The front doors are locked.”

“And the back doors and the compartment door.”

“What are we going to do?” Vasily said. “You’re a senior political officer —”

“Sh, sh, sh,” Max said, squeezing a hand up in Vasily’s face to make him shut up.

“Nikomedes – that’s it!” a voice said from the bench beside them. The major from the van. His cheek was bruised, his lip swollen, where he’d been hit in the face. “I knew I knew you.”

“I’m sorry,” Max said.

“Major Benjamin Georgiev,” the man said, squeezing over on the bench, making room for Max. “I served aboard the
Jericho
with you, years ago.”

“You were the radio tech,” Max said, sitting, recalling the name once it was matched to the ship. Another chance to keep a low profile, remain invisible, slipped away. The bus lurched into motion, throwing everyone off balance, raising a chorus of curses. “I thought you were regular service.”

“Transferred. Got inspired by the spirit of the revolution to join Education.” Georgiev’s eyes surveyed the bus. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You two,” Vasily interrupted. “You know how to get out of this, right?”

Georgiev ignored Vasily. “Killing those Adareans, that was a mistake,” he said to Max. “That’ll bring down the power of Adares, first with political pressure, then with force.”

“Maybe,” Max answered. “But Intelligence can get away with killing Adareans during the first throes of the purge. They’ll blame it on runaway elements, punish some token low-level grunts, execute someone prominent, then appease the Adareans later.”

“I doubt it’ll stop there – it never does. Did you ever hear the one about the secret police?” Georgiev asked.

“Probably,” Max said.

Vasily asked, “Which one?”

Georgiev lifted his head toward Vasily. “The secret police came for the Adareans and no one tried to stop them, so they took the Adareans away.”

Max recognized the old chestnut; Vasily said, “Yeah?”

“Then the secret police came for the unchristians and no one tried to stop them, so all the uns were taken away. Then the secret police came for the sinners – the fornicators, the secret body polluters, the users of forbidden technology – and no one tried to stop them.”

“So they took the sinners away,” Vasily finished.

“Right,” Georgiev said. “Finally the secret police came for honest men like you and me.”

Max finished the joke. “And there was no one left to stop them.”

“No,” Georgiev said. “When they came for me, I said, ‘Welcome, brother. Isn’t it good to be the secret police?’”

After a pause, Vasily chuckled. The bus braked hard, throwing them back in their seats, then sped up again.

A young man with a soft chin leaned in from the bench beside them. “I heard you guys talking. You know, that guy they shot at the gate —”

“The accountant?” Georgiev asked. “He told me he was an accountant.”

“No he wasn’t, that’s what I’m saying.” He jerked his thumb down the aisle. “Guy back there says he recognized him as an actor. It was all staged. Guy got up and walked away while we were getting on the bus.”

“Not walked,” interrupted another kid hanging from an overhead rack. “There were two guys, one on either side of him, helping him, made it look like they were dragging him, but you could tell he was faking it.”

“See, they’re just trying to scare us,” the first kid said. He laughed, like he wasn’t fooled.

“Well, it’s working,” Vasily said, rubbing his throat, where his cross would’ve been. “I’m scared.”

“The Adareans, that was fake too,” Max said. “Really great bunch of actors.”

The kid sitting down, the one with the soft chin, looked away and didn’t say anything. But the one hanging from the strap said, “Yeah, the whole thing is a big scam. I hear Mallove and Drozhin worked it out together, plan to combine the two departments. Mallove’s going to take over as soon as Drozhin’s dead.”

The pitch of conversation rose around them, a dozen variations of the same stories being told, repeated, and invented. Their small group sat quietly for a second.

Max coughed. “Did you ever hear the one that goes, how can you tell when a rumour about Drozhin is true?”

Major Georgiev stared at Max, his face carefully blank. The two kids waited for the answer. Finally, Vasily said, “How?”

Max aimed his finger like a gun at the other man’s head. “‘What did you just say?’”

Georgiev smirked and the kids chuckled nervously. Max leaned back, closed his eyes, ignored the press of bodies. His day had started as a prisoner, waiting to hear from his contact in Intelligence. His day ended as a prisoner, waiting to hear from his contacts in Intelligence. Nothing had changed. But then he thought about the distance from the Adarean baptism at the execution that morning to the brutal murder of the Adareans in the park, and it felt as if everything had changed.

As he listened to the sound of the wheels, all he could think of was the roar of the mower blades as the tractor rolled toward the Adareans trapped in the pit.

“Wake up, Nikomedes.” A hand shook him.

Before he was completely awake, Max deflected the hand and turned the wrist. He snapped alert quick enough to stop before he broke it. Major Georgiev bent over him. “What?”

“We’re passing through the outskirts of Lost Angeles – it’s night, the city’s big enough to hide most of us.”

“What’s the plan? There are bars welded on the windows, and the doors are locked.” He’d watched younger men waste themselves for hours trying to find a way out, everything from tearing through the panels to breaking windows. One of them had been cut badly on broken glass. Wind whistled through the broken windows; combined with the night temperatures, it would have chilled the ride to the point of hypothermia if not for the warmth of the bodies jammed together.

“We’re going to rock the bus, tip it over,” Georgiev said. “I could use your help organizing these kids.”

Max straightened in his seat. “Tipping the bus – that will get us out how?”

“They’ll have to empty the bus then. We’ll overpower them, make a break for it.”

“You’re on your own.” He leaned back again.

“To think that I was ever inspired by you,” Georgiev sneered. “You’re a coward.”

And you’re a fool
, Max wanted to respond. He had nothing against escape, but suicide? “Don’t play into their hands.”

“This morning,” Georgiev said, looking around, “we were all part of an organization, each of us knowing our role and function. Tonight we are starving, thirsty outcasts, deprived of basic necessities. But we’re still men, we have to do something.”

There were murmurs of “amen” and “witness” from the men around them.

“Don’t you think Intelligence’s purpose is to reduce and dispirit us?” Max asked.

“Yes, but —”

“So what do you think they’ll do to anyone who goes against their intentions early on?” Max asked. “What would your response be? To anyone who tries to lead?”

Georgiev said nothing.

“You would destroy the ring leaders as an example,” Max said, answering his own question. “And first you would create a situation where you expect people to step up, just so you can make examples of them. It’s what I would do.”

“I’m not you,” Georgiev said. “And I believe this is all a mistake. Those are our fellow soldiers out there, our brothers and cousins. If we force them to pay attention to us, they’ll listen. And if they don’t, we’ll overwhelm them.”

Murmurs of “yeah” and “they have to listen.”

“You’ve been hit in the face and burned and you still say that?” Max said, leaning back in his seat. “We save ourselves. No purge lasts forever.”

“You’re pathetic,” Georgiev said and turned away.

Vasily, hand at the invisible cross at his throat, stared at Max, shook his head, and followed Georgiev.

Georgiev had no trouble organizing the men: he was the senior officer on board and soldiers were trained to love a hierarchy, taught to do something instead of nothing. After explaining his plan to tip the bus, he said, “All right, on the count of three, we all throw ourselves to starboard. Is that clear? One! Two!”

“Wait, wait, wait,” cried one voice, and then others said, “Stop,” and Georgiev yelled, “Wait, stop!”

The compartment was dark, but lights outside rolled front to back, front to back, illuminating puzzled faces. Finally, someone said, “Which side’s starboard?”

Max smirked. Most of the men had only served groundside.

Georgiev rattled the locked door. “The doors are port, the other side is starboard. We want to tip over to starboard, so we can climb out the doors on top.”

Murmurs of “got it” and “all right” were followed by Georgiev resuming the count. Max braced his feet on the floor and grabbed hold of the bench.

On
three
the mob of men surged toward the starboard side. The bus rocked – about as much as it did when it hit a bad pothole.

“That was pretty effective,” Max said, but Georgiev was shouting out encouragement and instructions: “All right, that was a good first try. Let’s all squeeze over to port, to the door side, and do it again.”

Men crushed Max against the side. He smelled urine mixed in with all the other locker-room odours.

“Three!”

This time the men yelled as they surged to the other side.

This time there was a noticeable rock.

“Good work, men,” Georgiev shouted. “Now we’re going to rock it back and forth. As soon as we hit port side, the door side over here” – he leaned over and banged the door —“I want you all to run back to starboard, over here. Got it?”

Mumbles of “got it” and “yes, sir.”

“What? I can’t hear you!”

“YES, SIR!”

On three, they all shouted and threw themselves at the port side. Max brought up his arm to cover his head. This time the bus rocked again, though no more than it would be by the wind coming off the escarpment this time of year.

“Starboard!” Georgiev ordered, and with a roar, they immediately threw themselves at the other side. Several men tumbled to the floor in the dark, but despite the blindness and swearing, the rock on the other side was bigger.

Georgiev got them cheering and clapping for themselves, then set up a rhythm, charging one side, then the other. As Max persisted in staying in his seat, knees and elbows hit him with every rush, even though he pulled his legs up on the seat. He deflected some blows, braced and took the others.

“Come on,” Vasily shouted, all excited.

Pounding from the compartment behind them led to a shouted exchange of plans. On the first combined rush, the two compartments ran toward different sides, cancelling each other’s efforts. One of the young men leaned up against the back wall, and yelled, “Starboard, you morons, starboard!”

“Hurry,” Georgiev shouted. “We’re almost through Lost Angeles!”

Renewed effort in both cars quickly led to rocking until the bus tipped up, wheels off the ground. As it swerved suddenly on the road, bouncing down again, the men fell silent, all but two or three forgetting to finish the charge back to the other side.