Windswept (2 page)

Bloombeck brightened. “So, you’re in?”

“No, I said ’stop’ because I’ve now hit my monthly limit for hearing your stupid shit,” I said, pointing to the door. “Get lost.”

“But you haven’t even heard the deal!”

“Bloomie, if it involves the words ‘bribe’ and ‘radar control officer,’ then I don’t need to hear any more.” I waved my hand at him and closed my eyes. “Now get the hell out of here. You’re blocking my breeze.”

This was the time of day when the land began to cool, sending the wind back out to sea. Big Lily had all the windows open, so I got a noseful of Brushhead’s afternoon scents: the laundry house up on Taupo Road where the proprietor kept plumeria, hints of naan and baguettes from Giesel du Marque’s bakery. There was the sweetness of citrus from the Shareholder terrace farms, the tang of arcing steel from the shops of Repair Street, the swirl of boiling molasses from six hundred distilleries, all of them heady and full and rich, and none of them able to cut through the rancid stink of Bloombeck’s odor.

I opened an eye. “You’re still here.”

“Forty Breaches, Padma,” said Bloombeck. “This is all completely on the level.”

“Your level isn’t even level,” I said, waving for Big Lily to bring me another tea. “You’re so crooked it defies physics.”

“But I know how to work an angle, and I got a winner,” he said. “You just hear me out, and you’ll see.”

I took a sip. “If you know about the Breaches, why do we need to bribe anyone?”

Bloombeck blinked. “Uh, what do you mean?”

“I mean, forty people wanting to jump ship. Even on one of those big colony seeders, someone would hear the grumblings and do something to shut it down. Call in some Ghosts.”

“Yeah, but this far out? With the little traffic we get now?” said Bloombeck, hunching closer to me. “You really think the Big Three care about us anymore?”

“I don’t see WalWa closing up Thronehill or slowing their demand for our cane,” I said. “But, still, even if this magical forty avoid attention, how would they get down here? They wouldn’t steal a shuttle or do anything flashy. They’d hide in an empty fuel tank or a cargo can or something that would let them avoid attention. They might even follow your lead and slip down through the bilge on Garbage Day.”

“Hey, that
worked
, didn’t it?”

“But accident, if I remember your story correctly,” I said. “Still, it’s got me thinking about bribing the radar control officer.”

“Well,
someone’s
got to cover for those people–”

“That’s a Union job,” I said. “And can you think of anyone in the Union who’d pass on information about forty Breaches when they could keep it for themselves? You walk into a Union Hall with all those fresh bodies, people are going to fall over each other to get you whatever you wanted. Wouldn’t you?”

Bloombeck opened his mouth to protest, then sagged back on his barstool.

“That was a nice try, Bloomie,” I said.

Bloombeck’s flabby arms plumped against his sunken chest as he sputtered, “Don’t you want to make your number?”

“Of course I do,” I said, “but I still want to respect myself in the morning.”

Bloombeck hissed, then leaned back in at me. “You think you’re so hot, with your payout and your brown-nosing with Tonggow. Like you’ve ever done anything for us here. You’re just ready to live it up on Chino Cove with all the other Co-Op fatasses.”

I slammed my fist on the bartop hard enough to shake everyone’s mugs. Despite the stench, I put my face right in Bloombeck’s. He flinched.

“Up until now,” I said, “I have been practicing some restraint, out of respect for Big Lily. She doesn’t like fights in her place, and I don’t want to get on her bad side.”

I grabbed an empty mug and held it up to Bloombeck. His eyes crossed as I tapped the mug on the bridge of his nose.

“That’s why I am going to use my words,” I said. “I let you slide on dues, Bloomie, because it’s not worth the effort to chase you down. You don’t register on the Union’s bottom line, the same way you didn’t register with your employer when you Breached. If you did, you think they would’ve let you roam around in your ship’s bilge?” I gave him a gentle tap on the forehead with the mug. “But when you annoy me like this, you make me wonder if maybe it
would
be worth squeezing that cash out of you, just because I’d have an excuse to kick your ass from one side of the island to the other. It’s like when the Big Three decides they need to make a show and send out Ghost Squads to sabotage each other. Or when they get their goons to crack down on Indentures so they don’t get ideas about Breaching. You ever see a goon work somebody over with a riot club, Bloomie?”

Bloombeck shook his head, his jowls shivering.

“I have,” I said. “I had to take a lot of classes in hostile negotiation in business school, and I did really, really well. You want to see what I learned?”

He shook his head again.

“Then get lost.”

Bloombeck’s eyes opened wide, and he tumbled over himself and a couple of seats on his way out.

I took a deep breath and sat back, blinking up a link to the Public and loading up the traffic queue from the top of the lifter. All the ships coming and going from Santee Anchorage lay there, listed in neat little rows, a spreadsheet that could tell all kinds of stories if you knew how to read it. Ten years ago, that story would have been one of scrapes with goons and derring-do on the high seas, of fishing Breaches out of the ocean like pickles from a barrel. Now there were only half a dozen supercarriers swinging by to grab a few billion barrels of industrial molasses, and those beasts barely needed to refuel from our ocean.

There were four colony seeders en route for refueling, but there was no way to tell if any of them were the ship Bloombeck had talked about. I scrolled them away until I saw the ships I knew were the real deal. I’d dug their names out of news reports, stolen Big Three financials, and all the gossipy whispering that traveled around Occupied Space faster than light. I smiled as I saw them: fifteen LiaoCon Xinzang-Class ore processors coming in from Nanqu. Fifteen claustrophobic nightmares filled with choking gases and horrible rations and enough people who would want to jump ship even if there weren’t a sprawling city at the bottom of the anchor. I had been making payments to people who ran orbital traffic control, enough for them to run broadcasts on my behalf and keep quiet. There was always a chance they could screw me over at the last minute, but that was a risk worth taking. Besides, the messages they’d broadblasted into space made a point of telling people to ask for me by name, all but ensuring I’d get the credit for them joining the Union.

I watched the queue for a few more minutes. The LiaoCon ships were still four hours away – a little tight for my timing, but I’d be able to take care of business before the miners started their descent.

Business. Gah. I blinked up the time: quarter past four. Damn Tonggow for ditching me at the last minute. How a woman that scatterbrained could make a rum as good as Old Windswept was a mystery. How she managed to keep her distillery running was an even bigger mystery. She’d been doing something right, though, for her to keep producing as well as she did, and, as long as she kept it together long enough for me to buy the place off her, I could make sure there was always a steady supply of Old Windswept...

My scalp tingled at the thought of the still running dry. I sipped my tea, but it was too late. My fingers grew cold, and my eyeballs watered, and that voice scraped across the back of my brain, dry as bagasse and sharp as nails:
You really think they’re going to make it? You pushed away a good thing with Bloombeck, like you push away everything good, and now Tonggow’s not here, and you’ll
never
make it to six o’clock…

The breeze blew through the seaward windows again, carrying the cool green from the ricewheat paddies and the cane fields way out in the kampong, the bite from cane diesel engine exhaust, the heavy tones of coral carbon being spun into lifter cable. The first Breaches had called it getting windswept, back when they came down the cable and decided that their lives were worth more than their Indentures to the Big Three. It sure as hell beat holing up in Thronehill on the corporate side of the fence with the office drones, all of them breathing triple-scrubbed air and never getting a noseful of this. I breathed deep, forcing myself to relax, tamping back The Fear. I would not let it get out. Not today.

Big Lily walked up with my tea. “One of these days, I really
will
call Soni to bust that twerp,” I said.

“I would think Captain Baghram would be busy fighting real crime,” said Big Lily, setting down the mug. “Besides, you’d have to catch him doing something illegal, and I don’t think even Bloombeck is stupid enough to try that in here.”

“Soni and I are good enough friends that she’d do that for me,” I said. “Especially if I paid her off.”

She made a face. “I’m sure she’d charge you a pretty penny to lock him up. Save your money. It’s not worth dipping into your budget for the likes of Bloombeck.” She got a fresh bottle of Nelson’s Column from underneath the bar. “You want a little extra?”

“You know I don’t drink until after six o’clock.”

“Yeah, though I’ve never understood why.”

“Girl’s got to keep some mystery.”

“What’s the fun in that?” she said, opening the bottle. She gagged, and some of the rum splashed on the bartop.

“What?” I said, and then the smell hit me, like mustard and raw sewage. My eyes watered as my throat tightened. “Christ, Lily!”

People ran for the windows, and someone hit the massive fans that kept the place cool during the peak of summer. The air freshened, though the stink lingered, the puddle staining the bartop’s finish with yellow streaks. “You ought to tell your friends in the Co-Op about that,” said Big Lily as she capped the bottle and tucked it into a trashcan.

“What, you, too?” I said, eyeing the stain. What looked like steam rose from its lightening surface.

“Me, what?” said Big Lily.

“Everyone thinks I have some magic pull with the Co-Op, just ’cause I’m talking with Tonggow,” I said.

She grabbed a rag to clean the bar, eyeing the now-fizzing discoloration. Then tossed the skunked bottle in the bin and pulled up Beaulieu’s Blend instead. “Well, I hope you work things out with her. You’ve been talking about buying her place as long as she’s been talking about retiring. And better you than someone else. She makes a hell of a rum, and I’d like it to stay that way.”

She didn’t know the half of it. I eyed the Beaulieu’s and blinked up the clock. Four twenty-seven. Jesus.

I blinked up the two numbers that ruled my life: the number of people I’d recruited into the Union, and my cash reserve. I knew both numbers by heart, since they hadn’t changed in the past six months: 467 and 120,300. I’d fought like hell to get those people included in my headcount, and I’d scrimped to keep that bank account as filled as possible. It was enough money to buy out Tonggow now, but I needed the pension and completion bonus to get through the first few years of production. And I wouldn’t get there until I’d recruited five hundred people. It was so close I could taste my first batch of Old Windswept. Those mining ships would come in, those people would emerge from the can with my name on their lips, and I’d never have to deal with this crap ever again.

“You looked at your numbers again,” said Big Lily.

“You bet I did,” I said.

“Just don’t go crazy with it,” she said, pouring a splash of Beaulieu’s into a rocks glass and giving it a swirl. “Take it from a Shareholder who’s been in your shoes: what you do for the Union is important, but being your own boss? That’s more important.” She took a sip, then nodded. “At least Bill Beaulieu is still up to standard.”

“I’m sure he’d be thrilled,” I said.

“Hey, he was a Breach once, just like you, just like me,” said Big Lily. “He came here with nothing, did the same shit-work we all did, and he earned his way up and out. If a nice guy like him can make it, you’re a shoo-in.” She laughed, and I blinked away my numbers.

“It hasn’t happened yet,” I said. “Besides, those people might not Breach after all. Some other recruiter might nab them for their headcount. Carmody or Leslie Paik. Even Neil Scoon might rouse himself from his tomato patch to get ’em.”

“Or Saarien,” said Big Lily.

“Es
pecially
Saarien,” I said. “You know how many Breaches he’s pinched from me?”

“I think we all do, Padma.”

I sagged onto the bartop, careful to avoid the stain. “Every time I’ve gotten close to adding someone to my headcount, he snatches them away. Like those economists! You have any idea what we could do with that kind of expertise in Brushhead?”

Big Lily shook her head.

“Me, neither, but I’d have done
something
with them. Instead, he keeps ’em all working in that deathtrap he calls a refinery, sucking away funding from the rest of us. Hell, now he’s talking about turning Sou’s Reach into an artisan community!”

“That’d be something,” said Big Lily.

“He stood up at the last Union Board meeting and said, ‘We need to acknowledge and nurture our innate creativity.’ Walked away with a hundred thousand yuan to make glassware or some crap like that. Just because he has the highest headcount on the planet.”

“I know he’s pissed you off by poaching bodies from you, but that’s how it was even during the peak times. Everyone wants out of their Slots, and recruiters want to make their numbers.”

“Yeah, but does he have to be such a dick about it?”

Big Lily shrugged. “Evanrute Saarien may an asshole, but he’s a
loyal
asshole.”

I almost spat on the bar, then thought better of it. “To himself, sure.”

“And to the Union,” said Big Lily, wiping the highball glasses clean. “He’s gone to the mat for his people, got his head cracked in the same picket lines as the rest of us. He may get wrapped up in all his speeches about the Struggle, but we’re on the same side, Padma.”

“His ego crowds out anyone else on his side.”

Big Lily shook her head. “You sure you’re not pissed because of what he used to do? A little transference, maybe?”