Braddock’s long finger flicked to a comfortably round middle-aged woman with short blond hair and a peeling nose. “Cordelia Gudon. Tom’s just about set it out. I can’t see anything else, maybe some of you can: All I got to say, whatever the rest of us do, the kids gotta get out.” She sat.
“Blue.”
“Blue Fir Alendayo. I know the trails and the border well as Tom. Same reason. I say we go as soft as we can far as we can, shoot our way through if we have to, probably will, get the lot of us over the border, then those who want to come back and make as much hell as we can for these…” She paused, searching for a word that would adequately characterize their foes, gave it up and went on. “Well, they can.” She sat, bounced up immediately, eyes shining. “And anyone who wants to stay now and shoot him a copter or two, why not.” She sat again.
The meeting went on its orderly way. Doubters and grumblers, quibblers and fussers, minor spats and a couple of yelling matches. Hern watched them, fascinated by a kind of governing he’d never seen before, even in the few taromate convocations he’d looked in on. He took his eyes away when the meeting was winding toward some sort of consensus. “Coyote,” he called.
The scruffy little man came out of nowhere, his eyes darting from the image in the Mirror to Hern to Serroi, back to the Mirror. “Yes?” he said, pointed ears spreading out from his head, pointed nose twitching.
“I want those. If they’re willing. Those people, their weapons and transport.”
“Willing? What willing? You want them, I bring them through.”
“No point, if they won’t fight. Are you going to bring them through here or can you transfer them directly to the Biserica?”
“Will I, not can I, Dom. Will I? Yes. No. Maybe. You go there.” His ears went flat against his head, then his grin was back, mockery and anticipation mixed in it. He giggled. “Hern the happy salesman. Death and glory, you tell ’em. They buy you or they don’t. Come through where I want if they buy. Not Biserica. Maybe Southport. I think about it.”
Serroi straightened. “Ser Coyote.”
Coyote rocked on his heels, his head tilted, long narrow eyes filled with a sly laughter that she didn’t particularly like. “Little green person.”
“If they refuse, then Hern chooses again because your debt isn’t paid.”
Coyote squirmed, went fuzzy around the edges as if he vibrated between shapes, then he wilted, even his stiff gray hair. He sighed. “Yesss.”
“That being so,” she said more calmly than she felt, “put us through.”
Poet-Warrior
Julia set about the reams of paperwork, the miles of red tape that should eventually land her in the public ward of some hospital and pay her surgeon’s fees.
You know the route, you’ve helped a thousand others along it. Faces pass before you, good people, petty tyrants, both sorts overworked until anything extra is an irritation not to be borne, both sorts harried by their superiors and the local politicians who found attacking them a cheap window to public favor. You’re unemployed? Haven’t you tried to get work? What do you mean too old? At forty-seven? They say no one’s hiring untrained forty-seven-year-old women? You say you’re a writer. What books? Oh, those. You own nothing? Not even a car? Estimated income for the year. Oh, really, you expect me to believe that? I’ve seen your name, you’re won prizes. Or-hi, Jule, haven’t seen you for years, what you been doing? Oh, god, I’m sorry. Cancer? All that high life catching up with you, no I’m just joking, I know it isn’t funny. I hate to tell you what funding’s like this year. Look, let me send you over to Gerda. And don’t be such a stranger after this. On and on. Keep your temper. They’re really trying to help you, most of them, if they get snappish it’s because they hate having to tell you they can’t do anything. Answer patiently. Show the doctor’s report. Explain you couldn’t afford insurance, you can’t afford anything, you’re just getting by. Say over and over what you’ve said before as you’re shunted from person to person, watch them hunt about for cracks to ease you through. Be patient. Experience should tell you that you can outwit the system if you keep at it. Try to wash off the stain of failure that is ground deeper and deeper into you. And try to forget the fear that is ground deeper and deeper into you as the days pass. You know the lumps are growing. You can’t even feel them yet, but you know they’re there, you have nightmares about them. Treacherous flesh feeding on flesh.
Yet more aggravation. The landlords raise the rents to pay for a sort of sentry box they’ve built into the side of the foyer, equipped with bulletproof glass, a speaker system and controls for the automatic bolts on the inner and outer foyer doors and the steel grill outside. An armed guard sits in the box day and night, no strangers are allowed in without prior notice. The landlords also save money by doing no repairs no matter how much the tenants complain. And as the chaos increases in Julia’s flesh, the disruption increases in society around her. There are food riots and job riots. In the suburbs, vigilante groups are beginning to patrol the streets armed with rifles and shotguns. There are a number of accidents, spooked patrols shoot some night-shifters going home, but are merely told to be more careful. Police are jumpy, shoot to kill at the slightest provocation, even imagined provocation. At first there is some outcry against this, but the protesters are drowned in a roar of outrage from those in power. The powerless everywhere begin to organize to protect themselves since no one else seems willing to. No one can stand alone in the world that is coming into being here.
Except Julia. Stubbornly alone she plods through the increasingly resistant bureaucracy. More and more of the people she has worked with are being fired or laid off or are walking away from impossible conditions; funding is decreasing rapidly as the fist of power squeezes tighter about the powerless. It is becoming a question of whether she can break through the last of the barriers before the forces eating at the system devour it completely. She is growing more and more afraid, but bolsters herself by ignoring everything but the present moment. The economy is staggering. More and more are out of work, thrown out of homes, apartments, housing projects, more and more, live in the streets until they are driven from the city. Tension builds by day, by night. Prices for food are shooting upward as supply systems begin to break down. Underground markets dealing in food and medicines begin to appear. Hijacking of produce and meat trucks becomes commonplace, organized by the people running the illegal markets, by bands of the homeless and unemployed desperate to feed their families. The UD overgovernment organizes convoys protected by the national guard. It is clumsy and inefficient but food fills the shelves again. Prices go up some more. The first minister of Domain Pacifica declares martial law. The constitution is suspended for the duration of the emergency. The homeless, the jobless, the rebellious are arrested and sent to-labor camps. The city begins to quiet, the streets empty at night, night shifters are rarer and generally go home in groups. Knots of angry folk begin to form in the mountains, people driven from the city by the labor laws, local vigilantes or GLAM enforcers-bands of men generally in their twenties and fanatically loyal to GLAM principles. Because these men wear black semi-uniforms on their outings, they’re given the name blackshirts by those likely to be their victims.