Windswept (14 page)

In Whaui, Su-Yin Tags was polite when she said the recycling plant had just gone through a turnover and couldn’t afford to let their newly trained Contract people go, not with garbage season approaching.

In Cheapside, Mama Gertrude took a break from stirring her compost pits to tell us, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off.

And on and on at every Ward we visited. We putted from one meeting to another, from Beukes Point to Jotzi, down and down my list of people who owed me favors, all of them unable to repay me just now. (So sorry, Padma, it’s just not the right time/quarter/phase of the moon.) “This makes no sense,” I said as we crawled along Landry Underpass. We’d just gotten the bum’s rush in Budvar, a Ward with a long history of cooperation and football hooliganism with Brushhead. (Hard workers in Budvar, but they’re a pack of bastards on the pitch.) “Even the people who’d told me to my face they could help are backing out.”

“Maybe they got better offers,” said Banks.

“I doubt it,” I said as we approached the border of Steelcase, the low shops giving away to giant warehouses. “This is one of those deals you only pass up if you’ve taken a blow to the head. And even then, there are clauses in the Union Charter to override this shit.”

Steelcase had the second-biggest holding depot in Santee. The Ward was a collection of warehouses, molasses storage tanks streaked with rust and grime, and blind alleys. Loading cranes zipped overhead on the coral steel trellis that enveloped the entire Ward, carrying massive cargo cans in their rusty jaws. The grid of two-hundred-meter-high uprights and four levels of maglev rails left a spiderweb shadow on the streets. The trellis was the only thing straight and square in Steelcase. Back when this place was under construction, Hurricane Minh had blown so hard that the buildings, their new pourform foundations still wet, moved from their original layout into this claustrophobic’s nightmare. I didn’t mind coming down here, but Jilly was white-knuckling her way around.

“This is out of my turf,” she said, slamming on the brakes as a panel truck screeched around a blind alley. “I don’t like it, boss.”

“You didn’t have any problems bootlegging fares in Brushhead,” I said.

“That’s different,” she said, wringing the wheel. “I could see when the cars were coming there.”

“Relax, this is a friendly neighborhood,” I said, looking at the black streaks lining the buildings. It hadn’t been that long since I’d visited, but it seemed more run down than I remembered. Wash must have been having as bad a time as the rest of us.

“You know someone here?” asked Banks.

“The Ward Chair,” I said. “We go way back.”

“You trust him?” asked Banks.

I looked down at the stains on the front of my deck jacket, remembered Wash putting it on my shoulders the day Typhoon Sampson started. I’d just come off a double shift at the sewage plant and had staggered into the Kea Kea Lounge for a bite and a beer when the rain started. He was playing accordion with a tango combo there, and I just kept watching and listening and grinning as the storm grew and grew. It wasn’t until he took a break between sets that I realized it was almost six o’clock, and I just about ran out the door before he took off his jacket. “If you gotta go out in this weather, at least make sure you’re covered,” he’d said. I grabbed his hand and took him with me to my flat and made him wait outside until I’d had my six o’clock taste. And then I brought him in and didn’t let him leave until two days later. We stayed together a month, but then we both got buried at work and drifted. We stayed on good terms, even meeting when the weather warnings started flying, and I could always count on him to float Breaches whenever the Slots were light in Brushhead.

…ah, but you screwed that one up, didn’t you?
The Fear raked its claws against the back of my brain, sending a shiver down to my bowels.
You really think this is going to work? You think you can keep this up? You should just stop now, find a nice corner and curl up…

I picked at one of the pockets on my jacket. “As much as I can trust anyone. Let’s boogie.”

We splashed over a small molasses spill, then turned down another street that dead-ended into a T. Just as Jilly goosed the tuk-tuk, there was a grinding of gears overhead. Jilly swore as a crane clanked along the girders until its lowered boom was almost on top of us. It held pallets filled with rotting breadfruit, probably meant for the composter. Jilly hit the horn, and the crane lowered its cargo to the ground, right behind us. The crane scooted out of sight, and the stench drove us forward.

Jilly turned us to the right, but another loaded crane dropped out of the sky and plunked giant spools of lifter cable in front of us. She tensed and threw the tuk-tuk into reverse. “This is bad, boss, this is a trap–”

“Just calm down and back us out,” I said.

Another crane swung down behind us, this one holding crates of palm crabs. Live ones. Their claws clacked away as the operator dumped the pallet to the ground, littering the road with giant, pissed-off crustaceans. We were fenced in.

“Friendly neighborhood, huh?” said Banks.

“Even your friends can be assholes,” I said, climbing onto the seatback. The crabs skittered up to the tuk-tuk, bumping the tires and snapping at the running boards with their claws. I called Wash. “Think you can play ‘Misty’ for me?”

“Padma! My favorite muse.” That warm saxophone voice made me feel a bit warm, like everything was going to be OK. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Boy, Steelcase hospitality has really gone downhill,” I said. “Used to be a girl would get a smile and a free bowl of pho just by showing up, but now?”

“Are you here?” he said. “I just got back from a few days at Chino Cove.”

“Must’ve been nice,” I said, toeing the crabs away. “Hear the seafood’s good.”

“The best,” he said. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have brought some lemongrass stew, maybe warmed up the squeezebox.”

“Well, we can probably still have some crab soup,” I said, now kicking at the swarming claws. I tried blinking a shot to Wash, but it got eaten by the buildings. So, I told him what I was looking at.

There was a pause.

“That shouldn’t be there,” he said, all the cheer gone from his voice. Cargo always made Wash serious, the same way thinking about making my number made me serious. It was a wonder we got together at all.

“Well, it is,” I said. “And two other cranes did something they probably shouldn’t have, too.”

“Not in my Ward,” said Wash. “Especially if they’re dealing in perishables.”

“I think the breadfruit’s already perished,” I said as the wind shifted and blew the rotten scent our way. “Think you can get someone to knock this stuff out of our way, Wash? I’ve got a Union ride, and I don’t want to mess up the paint.”

“You coming down on business? I know you talked up bringing me some mining people, but, after those ships went down, I figured we were done for a while.”

“Not at all,” I said, settling into my seat. I didn’t like warming people up over voice, but there would be nothing else to do until the crates were removed. “Remember how you said you’re always looking for bodies for your Slots?”

Wash laughed. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’ve convinced some other poor bastards to slide down the wire and into your pocket?”

“No, into
your
pocket,” I said. “They’re sitting in my place right now, eating croissants.”

He laughed. “And how did you convince them to eat your baking?”

“Hey, I serve my Breaches only the finest from DuMarque’s,” I said.

“Now I know you’re full of shit,” said Wash. “Giesel hates you.”

“But he loved these people so much he gave them his only begotten buns.”

“Seriously, Padma, what is going on?”

“You get me out of this fix, and I’ll tell you face to face over a bottle of Old Windswept.”

Wash exhaled, his lips buzzing as the air rushed out. I remembered those lips. They knew what they were doing.

There was a click in the connection, and Wash said, “Oh, hell. Padma, can you hold just a moment? Ward business.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“We gonna get out of here?” asked Jilly.

“Soon,” I said. The crabs turned their beady eyestalks toward us, and I stuck out my tongue. Wash may have been all business when it came to running his Ward, but I knew I could convince him to help out. Hell, I should’ve just called him in the first place without all the rigmarole from this morning.

Wash clicked back in. “Padma, that was my maintenance head. We got some kind of power issue, so I won’t be able to talk with you now.”

“Wash, if you can just move these crates–”

“Maybe later–”

“No, NOW.” Jilly and Banks started. Even the crabs backed away. I sighed and said, “Washington, I am really under the gun. I need to transfer some people into better jobs by the end of the day, and you’re the only person likely to play ball.”

Wash paused. “Like I said, Padma, I have to deal with this power problem first–”

“Oh, Christ, Wash, can’t it wait?”

“-–this
sticky
power problem that’s just sprung up.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said, now officially at the end of my rope. “I was here two months ago when you got those new backup generators installed. Christ, I lent you people to help install the molasses pipelines so you’d always have fuel–”

Faoshue was nestled in a valley that spent most of the day in shadow, so they had to burn molasses for electricity. Whaui never got wind, so they had to borrow power from Faoshue. Beukes Point, Jotzi, and Budvar all had geographic weirdness, so they all had molasses-fired power plants, too. And Steelcase, despite all of the molasses it held from other refineries, relied on that industrial pustule at Sou’s Reach, just like every other Ward I’d visited today. And every trip I’d made, every bit of business, all of it was indexed and searchable in my great, big Public file.

Oh, fuck me.

“He’s there right now, isn’t he? With your maintenance guy.” I imagined Evanrute’s shiny, shiny suit reflecting the early afternoon light, right into the poor guy’s face. A Ward may run on its Slots, but it lived and died by dealing with cane.

“No, but he might as well be,” said Wash. “I’ll get someone to clear you a path, but it’s gonna be a while.”

“How long of a while?” I yelled, Banks and Jilly looking on with alarm. “Goddammit, Wash, don’t you leave me here!”

“Sorry about the inconvenience.” He clicked off the call.

“Assholesonofabitchbastard!” I said, kicking the dashboard a little too hard. “No love in Steelcase.”

“What about your friend?” asked Banks. I didn’t like the way he put extra emphasis on
friend
.

“Saarien beat us to him,” I said, and explained the whole ugly chain. “Cane trumps favors.”

“We got help coming, boss?” asked Jilly, eyeing the crabs.

One crane after another swooped overhead, but none of them stopped to clear our path. “Not until it’s too late,” I said, looking up until I saw an idling crane two uprights away, its cab empty. “But we’re not hanging around to find out. Go.”

Jilly juiced the tuk-tuk. Claws snapped at us as we rammed through the crabs and collided with the breadfruit container with a stinking smash. I climbed over the dented nose of the tuk-tuk into the rotting mass. “Well?” I said. “Are you coming?”

“Boss, what are we doing?” asked Jilly. “What about the wheels?”

“We’ll get ’em later,” I said, pulling myself up the fire escape until my feet could get in the rungs. I was halfway up before I realized there was no one following me. Banks and Jilly stood in the crate, up to their knees in breadfruit.

“Hop to it!” I called down. “We still have a ways to go.”

“Where to?” said Banks.

“Wash’s office so I can kick his ass into the middle of next week,” I said.

“That’s premeditated,” said Banks.

“And I’ll save some for you, too, if you don’t get a move on.”

Banks and Jilly looked at each other for a moment before Banks put his hands together for a makeshift step. Jilly sprang up to the ladder, and Banks trailed after. It probably wasn’t fair to make him do this kind of physical work after all that time in space, but tough nuts. If he couldn’t keep up with me now, how could he keep up in a courtroom?

After picking our way through the obstacle course of AC units, catwalks, solar stills and squats that dotted the rooftops, we were below the idling crane. It was an older model, thank God. MacDonald Heavy had given up a few dozen newer cranes as part of a Contract concession. They were roomier, more efficient, and prone to detaching from their tracks whenever the wind was more than a kilometer an hour. MacDonald Heavy swore up and down they were looking into it. That had been eight years ago.

The cab had just enough room for the three of us. Banks and Jilly crouched into the tiny storage space behind the single seat. “Easy peasy,” I said, slipping my feet into the pedal baskets as I fired up the crane’s power. The Univoice greeted me, reminding me to put on my restraints. “We can ride this sucker straight to Wash’s office if we want. Right into it, even.”

“Is that wise?” said Banks.

“Probably not, but it hasn’t stopped me before,” I said. “You might want to hang onto something.”

The chair’s headrest gave a little bit, probably from Banks squeezing the life out of the poor thing. “Is this going to be over soon?” he said. “I’m not crazy about confined spaces.”

“That why you didn’t go frozen?” I asked, gripping the joysticks.

“Mostly,” he said as the crane’s servos whined to life.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be gentle.” And then I stomped both pedals and the crane shot fifty meters straight up in ten seconds.

“Ohgohdohgohdohgohd,” said Banks.

“Don’t you dare puke in here,” I said. A twist of the joystick, and the crane caught onto a crossrail, its magnetized track zipping us away. The ground flew by as I guided the crane through the girder highway above Steelcase.

“This is a little fast,” said Banks, his voice quavering.

“What, you’re scared of speed, too?”

The Univoice warned that our equipment was not rated above ten kilometers per hour. We shot a gap between two loaded cranes, their backup beepers dopplering away behind us.