Windswept (12 page)

We both tumbled into the office’s reception area, money bouncing out of Jordan’s pockets as we hit the ground. Stars danced in front of my eyes as my head bumped a desk. We both staggered to our feet, and I could hear Jordan yelling, though I couldn’t understand any of it. My head was fuzzy, and my ass still hurt from my fall on the bus. Jordan raised the wrench over her head. The only thing that kept me from getting brained was the fact that I puked on her boots and collapsed. That was enough to throw off her swing; the wrench crashed down into the floorboards, and I rolled away from her feet.

“This isn’t the way to do things,” I gasped, wiping flecks of vomit from my chin as I crawled toward the shattered window. Pieces of broken caneplas crunched under my palms.

“Shut! Up!” Jordan tugged at the wrench, trying to extricate it from the recycled bamboo.

“Going right to physical threats? You’ve been around too long to know that won’t work.” I grabbed the open window frame to steady myself and breathed in the night air. God, it tasted good.

Jordan roared as she tore the wrench from the floor.

“I mean, shit, you didn’t even try to
bribe
me,” I said. Jordan charged, and I sidestepped in time to trip her up. Jordan sailed onto the sidewalk, landing with a heavy
wuff
. The wrench clattered away, lost in a tangle of feet. A small crowd had gathered, and I waved as I stepped through the open window.

“Contract dispute,” I said. Everyone nodded, then dispersed to the nearest bars.

The tiffins from Mooj’s were still outside, as was the bottle of Stillson. I scooped them up, then grabbed Jordan by the belt loops and hauled her to her feet. Blood streamed from her broken nose and various scrapes on her cheeks. I helped her through the window, making sure to give her head an extra bump on the closest desk as we navigated through the office.

At the bottom of the stairs was the loose change that had fallen out of Jordan’s pockets. I let go of her long enough to scoop it up, and noticed one of the fifty-jiao coins had a weird finish. It felt way too light, and its surface felt more like caneplas than metal. I bent it between my fingers, and the thing snapped in half, a few bits of wiring and circuitry frazzling out the edges. I held it down to Jordan’s face. “Where’d you get the jammer, Jordan?”

“Fug you,” she said.

“And now I’ve got that on video,” I said, blinking my way back into the Public. I set my pai on live streaming as we made our way up the stairs.

“See, Jordan, this isn’t the way intra-Union discussions are supposed to go,” I said, steering her up the stairs and looking the other way when I walked her into the bannister. “If you have a problem with your recruitment contract, you’re supposed to contact your rep during office hours. If you aren’t happy with the answer you get, you can always go to the Union Arbitration Board, where you’ll be given a hearing in a timely fashion. Your satisfaction is what makes the Union go ’round. If you’re not happy, we’re not happy, and we’re not happy until–”

We entered the fourth-floor dorm, and I turned my head away so fast my neck popped. I blinked and blinked until I was sure my pai was off, then looked back in the room.

Jordan’s gang sprawled on the ground, all of them bound with old clothes and covered with bruises. Their weapons lay in pieces in a neat pile in the middle of the room. The Breaches sat all on the couches, looking exhausted. “What the
hell
happened here?” I said.

One-Eye shrugged. “We defended ourselves.”

My hands went limp. The tiffins rattled to the floor, and Jordan fell to her hands and knees. “You
what
?”

One-Eye pointed at Thor, who was unconscious and had a number of purple lumps growing on his cheek and forehead. “This asshole had a gun pointed at Mimi, and I didn’t like that.”

“First of all, it was a bolt thrower,” I said, “and, second, do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Of course I do,” said One-Eye, crossing her arms and smirking. “We stood up for ourselves.”

“No, you didn’t,” I said, clenching my hands so they didn’t go around her throat. “You assaulted Union people.”

One-Eye shrugged.

“Are
you
a Union person?” I said.

One-Eye shrugged again, but her smirk flagged a bit.

“
No
,” I said, pointing at her as I stepped over the unconscious crew. “
You
are still an employee of Walton Warumbo Universal Unlimited, and that means–”

Jordan coughed. “It means you have fucked up in a great, big way.”

One-Eye’s smirk was gone. She shifted in her seat. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” I said. “Keep-you-out-of-the-Union bad. Send-you-back-to-WalWa bad. Put-your-ass-on-the-lifter-without-a-spacesuit bad. About as bad as it gets.”

Jordan got up on her elbows and laughed. “You want to make that deal now, Padma?”

I thought about the broken jammer in my pocket. There was still the possibility of calling the cops and getting Jordan and her crew nailed for assault and interfering with Public transmissions, but that would be undone by any video of One-Eye disarming the hell out of her captors. It was built into every Contract between the Union and the Big Three: Any physical assaults on Union people that were not dealt with swiftly and harshly would turn into a shitstorm that would spread across all Occupied Space. I blinked my pai back on and looked at Jordan. “What are your demands?”

She wobbled to her feet and wiped the blood from her face. “Slot transfers, effective immediately. You put us in some place where we get fresh air, real sunlight, and no goddamn sewage.”

I put up my hands. “OK.”

“Also, you pay us for pain and suffering.”

“Fine,” I said, pointing at the bottle of Stillson. “Drinks are on me.”

“Oh, no,” said Jordan. “It’ll take at least five hundred each.”

Three grand? Used to be a measly hundred yuan would be enough to pay for a good coverup. I blinked the money to an escrow account, then sent the link to Jordan. “You’ll get it when I get what I want, and you know what I want,” I said. “Now get the hell out of here.”

“What,” said Jordan, grinning through the streaked blood and snot, “you’re sending Union people out of our own office?”

“Out.”

Jordan nodded as she untied her crew. They scooped up the pile of parts and shuffled out of the room. “Man,” Thor muttered as he passed, “that old lady can
hit
.”

“She’s not
that
old,” I said, looking at One-Eye, who gave me the bird.

“Is that dinner?” said Banks, pointing at the tiffins.

“Seriously?” I said. “That’s all you can think of?”

“All I’ve had to eat is NutriFood,” said Banks. “Can you blame me?”

“Not really,” I said, realizing I hadn’t had anything since that kumara cake at Big Lily’s. The smells of spilled daikon and burdock were killing me. I handed containers and chopsticks all around, hoping the palm nuts would pass Mimi’s muster. The bottle of Stillson was intact, though a little scraped.

“Is that stuff any good?” asked Banks as he chewed, a yakitori skewer in each hand.

“It’s not bad,” I said. “Nice bite, a sweet aftertaste. A little simple, really, but it’ll go well with dinner.”

“Plying us with food and booze, just like our bosses said you would,” said Banks, tearing the chicken off one skewer with his teeth. He ate like someone who hadn’t seen food in a year. Then I remembered he hadn’t. Jesus, eighteen months with nothing but NutriFood. Hibernation seemed like a pleasant alternative.

–and the Fear reared its ugly head, grinning with icy teeth at the thought of hibernation.
Oh, it was so pleasant in there, wasn’t it? Just close your eyes and remember-

I excused myself and did my best not to run into the bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face, then gripped the sink, trying to remember what Dr Ropata told me to do: focus on the drain plug, not look in the mirror, and say to myself
I am
here
, I am
here. I blinked up the time: ten fifty-two. A little under seventeen hours until six o’clock tomorrow evening. I could do this.

I toweled my face dry, found some glasses, then set them on a table, the picture definition of a perfect Union recruiter. “Twelve years ago, I was in the same position as you guys,” I said, picking up the Stillson. “I was tired, and hungry, and scared out of my mind because I’d just left behind everything I’d ever known. It’s like you’ve just challenged a giant to a fight, and then the giant actually looks down at you.” I swirled the rum in the bottle. “Hieu Vanavutu, the guy who recruited me, did something for me on my first night as a Breach that made all the difference. He poured me a drink. Not a lot, just a sip from a distillery that’s since gone out of business. He wasn’t trying to get me loaded” –I said this to Banks, who smiled and held up his hands in mock surrender–“he was telling me I was like everyone else on this planet. We’re all scared, we all aren’t sure what’s going to happen, but we all look out for each other. So. Let’s have a drink, and get some rest, and–”

I cracked the bottle cap, and the stench of mustard and dead dogs filled the room. I gagged and dropped the bottle, rum spilling everywhere and turning the room into a gas chamber. “Out!” I choked, “out!” We hustled down the stairs, the smell following us. One of the old ladies, the one who couldn’t eat eggplant, stumbled, and I picked her up and carried her out into the street. The air was fresh, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like puking again.

I set the old lady down and asked if she was OK. She gave me an unsteady nod and said, “I think I would like to go home now.”

“Me, too,” I said, putting an arm around her shoulder. “Everyone here? Good. We are now going to my place.”

“Why?” said One-Eye.

“Because I know there’s nothing there that can kill us. Come on.”

We took back streets and alleys, and arrived at my flat a few minutes later. Along the way, I’d texted a konbini run by Freeborn and ordered more food, making sure not to get any rum when they tried to upsell me a fifth of Stillson. Three skunked bottles in a day? Either the Co-Op was getting lax, or someone had started poisoning the cane. Whatever it was, I didn’t have the energy to cope with it now.

The kid from the konbini met us at the front door to the flat, and I tipped him extra to forget the size of the order and how many people were with me. Banks, Mimi and One-Eye had managed to clean up while I’d been at Mooj’s, so the old ladies took turns showering while we ate in silence. They changed into some old coveralls I saved for muck work in the garden, and then I grabbed fresh pajamas and staggered into the bathroom, not even bothering to look at myself in the mirror. I knew I was a wreck.

The hot water was better than sex. All the salt and mud and sweat washed away, along with the last bits of me that wanted to stay awake. The only thing that kept me from falling asleep in the shower was the blast of cold water as the hot ran out. I was too tired to blame my guests, so I just toweled off and got dressed. Everyone was asleep when I returned: the old ladies had curled up on my bed like a pair of cats, Mimi sacked out on the couch, One-Eye on the floor with her back to the wall.

Banks was in the sitting room, staring at the snuffed candle and the bottle of Old Windswept. He turned to me and said, “Buy you a drink?”

“That’s not for company,” I said, grabbing the bottle and holding it up. He hadn’t drunk any, as far I could tell. That meant I wouldn’t have to knock it over his head.

“The good stuff, huh?”

“I said, it’s not for company.” There weren’t many hiding places in my flat, so I just opened a kitchen cabinet and rattled the bottle behind some plates.

“OK,” said Banks. “Sorry.”

“Look,” I said, resting my hands on the counter. “It’s been a really, really long day. I’m exhausted, I have two old ladies–”

“–Gricelda and Madolyn–”

“Sleeping in my bed, and this one” –I pointed a toe at One-Eye–“looking like she’s on guard duty. You are not regular Breaches.”

“There’s no such thing,” said Banks. “Breaches come from every career category, every walk of corporate life–”

“–and stop quoting my own goddamn pamphlets at me,” I said. “There is something seriously weird about all of you, and… you know what? You could all be the heads of the Big Three for all I care. In the morning, I’m finding you all jobs and flats and counseling and pre-chewed acorns or whatever you need, and then I am going back to work, because there are only six of you, not forty. Thanks for not convincing more people to jump ship with you.”

“We were it,” said Banks. “You know how WalWa likes to keep its crews light.”

“I know they don’t let lawyers participate.”

“I was a special case.”

“Special as in ‘exemplary’ or as in ‘polite antique euphemism for mentally retarded’?”

“Well, I
am
a lawyer,” he said, trying to keep his grin from exploding all over his face.

I exhaled, and the last of my strength went. “Don’t sleep in that chair,” I said. “You’ll tweak your back. Sleep on that one.” I motioned to an overstuffed highback I’d gotten from a moving sale. It was the comfiest spot in the flat, other than my bed.

“Thanks.” He peeled himself from the chair, still looking like a scarecrow, even in new clothes. “Hey, is there a way to read up on the law here? I’d like to know what we’re getting into.”

“You’re not going to sleep?”

He shook his head. “Almost getting killed three times in one day has me a little wired.”

“Here,” I said, tossing him a pad. “You can access the Public on that, or at least the guest stuff. When we get you all signed up tomorrow, you can just use your pai.”

“Assuming we all sign up.”

“Shut up, Banks.”

“Good night.”

I sat at the dining room table, looking at the candle. The Fear tried to come back, but I told it to fuck off until tomorrow. I put my head down and was out.

There was something about the way riot armor rustled that woke me faster than cold water. I could hear it in the hall: plates of caneplas scraping against each other, the fizz of priming riot hoses. I opened my eyes and immediately regretted it: the light leaking around the edges of the curtain was bright and sharp, slicing right into my brain. I didn’t need to blink up the time to know that it was early; the city outside was still quiet, which was why I could hear whoever was ready to kick in my door as clear as if they were a herd of elephants at a ballet recital. My back seized as I slipped out of the chair, but I kept it together long enough to grab the cricket bat I kept by the umbrella stand. I glanced around the flat: everyone was still here and asleep, except for Banks. He was gone, and the pad sat on the table next to a fresh candle.