The Shadow of Cincinnatus (33 page)

He rolled his eyes in disgust, then walked behind the counter and frowned. Patty was sitting behind the rows of machines, crying. Jonathon winced – Patty was young, barely older than the students – and too sensitive for the job. If her father hadn’t been owed a favour by someone in the civil service, she probably wouldn’t have gotten the job. She was really too young and pretty to survive as a waitress. Between being leered at when she was behind the counter and being groped when she was serving food, it was unlikely she would survive very long. But she didn’t have many other options, unless she wanted to become a whore. The brothels were always looking for fresh meat.

“Go find the next few bags of fries,” he told her. She was young enough for him to feel almost fatherly towards her, although she was five years older than his oldest son. “I’ll take the food out to the little bastards.”

He watched her scurry off – her trousers were really too tight, but the workers weren’t allowed to change anything without written permission from headquarters – and then picked up the tray of food. The students probably didn’t realize it, he suspected, but they were actually eating the diner out of cheap reprocessed food. He’d already asked his boss to put in an emergency order for more foodstuffs, yet they’d be unlikely to arrive in time. They might have to close the diner early for the first time in years.

Balancing the tray with the ease of long practice, he strode out into the eating zone and sighed as he realized that someone had spilled a large milkshake on the floor. The little bastards hadn’t even bothered to tell the overworked staff that there had been a spill, even though the staff could lose some of their wages if inspectors saw the hazard before it was mopped up. He gritted his teeth and walked up to the table, then announced the contents of the tray in a loud voice. The students were debating so earnestly that he had to repeat himself twice before they heard him and started to claim their food.

One of the students – a loud girl wearing a shirt so tight her breasts were threatening to break out – caught his arm, fortunately just after he’d emptied the tray. “What do you think of it?”

Jonathon had to fight to keep the irritation off his face. Being sneered at by his superiors was always easier to handle, if only because his superiors had worked to earn their ranks. The students, on the other hand, always looked down on him, as if working for a living was somehow a bad thing. The lucky ones would be joining him in a year, he was sure, no matter how much they sneered now. And the unlucky ones would be buried in the crapper.

“Of what?” He said, somehow managing to keep his voice civil. These were trying times and a single complaint could cost him his job. “I haven’t heard of anything.”

“There was a strike on the moon,” a male student said. The disdain in his voice was so strong that Jonathon had to resist the temptation to punch him in the face. “The pigs broke it up and arrested the leaders.”

Jonathon shrugged. He’d never heard of any strike – or of the cops being involved. Pigs indeed – didn’t the students realize that their lives would be much worse without the campus police? There were places barely a mile from the university where he wouldn’t dare go without an armed escort, where looting, rape and murder were daily occurrences. The pretty girls in front of him would be torn apart if the madness ever slipped into the campus, no matter how socially just they considered themselves to be. And their boyfriends wouldn’t stand a chance.

“I wouldn’t know anything about it,” he said, instead. He picked up several empty boxes – the students were too occupied with their debate to shove them into the waste bins – and a half-eaten burger that someone had abandoned. It was hard to blame whoever had been trying to eat it. Jonathon knew, all too well, just what went into the burgers. “My job is merely to serve food.”

“He’s one of the exploited,” another student whispered, too drunk or too stupid to keep his words low enough so they couldn’t be overheard. “He dare not say a word.”

“We’re going out on strike ourselves,” the first student said. She took a breath, which did interesting things to her chest. “Why don’t you join us?”

Jonathon studied her for a long moment. Judging from her appearance, her family was almost certainly middle-class. It was unlikely in the extreme she would be anywhere near the campus if her family was upper-class. Her perfect face, soft appearance and complete lack of concern over her clothing – what little there was of it – all added up to a disgraceful naivety about the universe. But he knew there was no point in trying to lecture her. She didn’t want to hear anything that disagreed with her worldview.

“Because someone has to serve the food,” he said, reminding himself why his sons weren’t going to go to university. They were going to become tradesmen instead. “And because I have work to do.”

“That’s true,” another student said. “You can serve us food while we’re on strike.”

Jonathon nodded politely, then left them to their plotting.

“There’s some shouting outside,” Patty said, when he got back around the counter. Another line of students had appeared and were ordering takeaway, even though it cost an extra credit to eat outside the diner. “I think there’s going to be trouble.”

Jonathon rubbed his ears. A lifetime of working in the diner – at least it felt like a lifetime – had left him deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other. It had its uses, particularly when his wife felt like nagging, but it was irritating. Now Patty mentioned it, though, he could hear someone shouting outside the diner. It almost sounded like they were chanting something over and over again, but he couldn’t make out the words.

“They’re calling the students to strike,” Patty said. “For Great Justice or something like that.”

“Get the cash out of sight and into the safe,” Jonathon ordered. “And then stay behind the counter. If rioters get in here, hit the screens and jump into the back.”

Patty blinked in surprise. “What about the students?”

Jonathon snorted. “What about them?”

* * *

Being a Campus Policeman was not an easy job, Constance McNamee considered. The students might not be as violent as people unfortunate enough to live in the lower-class parts of the city, where the police only went in armed squads if they went at all, but they could be incredibly argumentative. And they could get away with one hell of a lot, if they were careful or hired the right lawyers. Staff weren’t permitted to exclude or expel students for anything less than a truly dire crime, which meant that the campus policemen had very little effective power. She’d lost count of the number of times an open and shut case had become a multi-sided nightmare, thanks to political interference. It was a wonder to her that so many students kept coming to university. Didn’t they realize just how dangerous it could be?

She heard the shouting as she walked down the streets, students chanting demands into the air. Protests were one thing – and fairly common on campus – but this sounded different, nastier. She gritted her teeth, then clicked her radio and started to make a report as the students came into view. They looked furious about something, but what?

No change there
, she thought, darkly. She’d once harbored the thought that university was supposed to be about education. Instead, the students seemed to spend half of their time getting drunk or chasing sexual relationships, while the rest of their time seemed to be spent on one political cause or another. She had never had any idea why the Grand Senate tolerated it. But then, the students were hardly a political threat. They didn’t have any weapons, for a start.

“Freedom for strikers,” one of the students yelled. “Strike! Strike! Strike!”

The mob swelled as more and more students emerged from campus buildings and joined the crowd, picking up the chant as it grew louder. Constance felt cold fear running down her spine as the mob advanced towards her, one hand playing with her stunner as the other fiddled with her radio. The students, damn them, had managed to convince the campus authorities to ban lethal weapons on campus, which hadn’t seemed a problem until now. But the more realistic part of her mind knew that a loaded gun wouldn’t have made a difference.

Her radio bleeped. “Constance, pull back,” her supervisor ordered. “There are mobs forming everywhere. It looks as though every damn student in this whole damn campus is out on the streets.”

“Or trying to hide,” Constance said, as she caught sight of a group of students distributing drugs and alcohol to the strikers. “They won’t want to be caught up in this...”

“No, they wouldn’t,” her supervisor agreed. “Get out...”

“Kill the pig,” someone yelled.

Constance looked up, just in time to see the mob changing course and bearing down on her with terrifying speed. Some of them might have their doubts about attacking a campus policewoman, but they were being pushed on by the people behind them. And when it was over, they would have nowhere to go. She turned and ran, as fast as she could, but the mob grew louder and louder. And then she sprinted around a corner and ran straight into another mob. There was no way out.

She reached for her stunner, but it was already too late.

* * *

“But damn it, Tony,” the dean protested. “You have to do something!”

Director Tony Kingworm looked up, meeting the dean’s eyes. “Like what?”

He sighed inwardly as the dean started to splutter. If only they’d been allowed to set up headquarters somewhere else. He could have barred the dean from entering during a crisis...but they’d been forced to set up their headquarters in the admin building. The dean, as soon as he’d heard about the budding riot, had come down the stairs and into Tony’s office. He hadn’t had a moment of peace since.

“Like...like
something
,” the dean said. “Do
something
!”

Tony rose to his feet. “Right now, I’ve lost seven officers,” he said, sharply. He’d seen mob violence before, back when he’d been on the streets. It was unlikely that any of the officers had survived. “Your damn students are rioting and tearing the place apart. And you have persistently denied me the tools I need to deal with them.”

“Then...then
get
the tools,” the Dean said. “Just...do
something
.”

It was unlikely, Tony knew, that his career would survive. Losing control of a university campus would look very bad on his record. He’d have to apply to serve as a colonial marshal or something along the same lines, if he wished to stay in law enforcement. There certainly wouldn’t be such a cushy posting in his future. But if his career was doomed, he might as well go out in style.

“Very well,” he said. He reached into his desk and produced a stunner. “If you’ll just look this way.”

The dean’s mouth dropped open. A moment later, Tony pressed the trigger and the dean crumpled to the floor.

“Leave him there,” Tony ordered. He walked over to the display, mounted on the wall. “I want you to pull all of the officers out of the campus, then concentrate them at the security guardposts.”

“Yes, sir,” the dispatcher said. “But what about us?”

“Seal the building,” Tony said. He had no illusions. Main Building was no castle. It was incapable of standing off an attack from a horde of insane students. If the students attacked, he and his men would be rapidly overwhelmed. “We’ll see about getting out through the roof, if possible.”

He cursed under his breath. The students might just stop rioting in a few hours and go back to classes – they’d certainly done that before – but the speed at which the riot had spread suggested otherwise. This was no spur of the moment reaction, he was sure. Someone had done a great deal of planning and preparation in advance. The bastards were already smashing security monitors, both the overt bulky cameras and the smaller, well-hidden sensors. It pointed to treachery. No, it pointed to outright subversion.

“Contact the planetary security command,” he added. “Tell them we need reinforcements.”

He’d been briefed on the dangers of Outsider propaganda, back when the Outsiders had first shown they were capable of reaching all the way to Earth to make their anger felt. Some of the students were intelligent enough to realize they were in a trap, after all, and seek some way to get
out
. Backing the Outsiders might seem a way to escape...and besides, the Outsiders did have a point. Earth hadn’t been free before Emperor Marius, let alone after him.

Stupid bloody students
, he thought.
And they’re about to learn just how unpleasant the world can be
.

* * *

Jonathon watched, grimly, as a pair of students entered the diner. They were swaggering, deliberately showing off their power, hoping to intimidate the staff. He felt cold ice flowing through his body as they waved the other students out, then marched up to the counter and smiled at him. They had no doubts at all about their cause.

“We want food and drink, now,” the leader said. “One hundred burgers...”

“We’re almost out,” Jonathon said. The last report had told him that the transport had reported heavy delays. He suspected that was something of an understatement. The riot had made it impossible to deliver to the campus. “You won’t get half that...”

The leader snarled at him. “You will send us the food,” he snapped. “I...”

Jonathon hit the emergency button. Solid metal bars dropped into place, sealing off the staff section from the rest of the diner. The students looked shocked, then stamped out of the diner, banging the door closed behind them. Moments later, the howling mob started to pour through the door and trash the eating zone.

Patty caught his arm as rocks and glass bottles started slamming into the bars. “They can’t get in, can they?”

“I hope not,” Jonathon said. The howling was growing louder. He’d always known the students believed in conspiracies, but he’d never realized how absurd they were. What sort of idiot thought that food was still delivered, even in the midst of a riot? “But all we can do is wait and see.”

And pray
, he added, silently. The bars were starting to rattle ominously.
If they break in, we’re dead
.