“You have no idea.” Kyle tried on a grin but it didn’t quite work. “I definitely qualify on that count.”
“Well, if you hadn’t come with us, you’d probably be dead,” she said. “So you should just count your blessings and let us explain things to you.”
“Have a seat, all of you,” one of the Hazimotians who had been here from the beginning said. This one, a male sitting cross-legged on the bare tile floor, looked Muftrihan, like Cetra, but much younger, with pale yellow hair and tiny black eyes. “You’re making me nervous, looming around like that.”
The others had been sitting on ramshackle chairs, which were the only furniture in the place. It looked like a meeting room more than a dwelling, but with walls that had been shredded by time and misuse and a rough-hewn floor that squeaked with nearly every movement. The air. was close and musty smelling. Jackdaw and Cetra took chairs, while Michelle and Kyle joined the Muftrihan on the floor. Kyle couldn’t bring himself to relax—his heart was racing, epinephrine pumping, and he remained tensed to spring up and run at the slightest provocation. Fight or flight—he recognized the sensation well.
Michelle touched Kyle on the knee. “You’re upset, Joe, and probably scared. I don’t blame you a bit, and I’m sorry we had to run away from there before I could give you any kind of explanation.”
“Obviously there was a certain urgency to it,” Kyle admitted.
“That’s right. But now that we’re here and relatively safe, I can do the right thing. First, introductions are in order. You already know Jackdaw and Cetra ski Toram, I believe. This,” she said, pointing to the Muftrihan on the floor, “is Baukels Jinython.” She gestured in order toward the first Hazimotian woman who had spoken, the woman; then the human male; and finally the unidentifiable one. “That’s Melinka, Alan, and Roog. As I told all of you, this is Joe. He lives in my building, and I believe he can be trusted.”
“He has to be now,” Melinka said. “Or killed.”
“She’s just joking,” Michelle assured Kyle.
“No she’s not,” Melinka responded.
“I can be,” Kyle told them all. “Trusted, I mean. But I’d like to know what I’m being trusted with. And I’d like to know why the police came in and started killing people.”
“The two issues are interrelated,” the bulbous creature introduced as Roog said. Its voice was low and phlegmy, but if it had a gender, Kyle couldn’t ascertain it from that. “We are, you might say, a group that meets from time to time to discuss certain political issues. And the police were killing because that’s what police do, especially here in The End.”
Kyle could hardly believe what she was saying, even though he had seen it for himself. “The police do that? Aren’t they supposed to uphold the law?”
“They do,” Michelle says. “But we’re not supposed to be living here, and congregating inside The End is definitely against the law.”
“So it was okay for them to just move in and start killing? I didn’t see them trying to disperse the crowd, or make any arrests.”
“In other parts of the city they would have, okay, but not in The End,” Jackdaw pointed out. The little man moved constantly, his leg twitching, fingers tapping. “Rules are different here. Life is cheap, okay?”
“They’re right, Joe,” Michelle told him. She sounded sincere, but everything he was hearing was so outrageous he wasn’t sure what was real. “They don’t like us being here, and they use any excuse they can to try to drive us away.”
“Away where?” Kyle wondered. “I thought this was pretty much where people went who don’t have anyplace left to go.” He’d been living here for many months, and though he’d heard horror stories, none of them had been as bad as what he’d just seen. Police here seemed to have a habit of picking on individuals, but he’d never seen or heard about an organized attack on a whole neighborhood.
“It is, okay, that’s the thing,” Jackdaw agreed. “But you have to understand the power structure here, Joe. The rich like to be rich, and they don’t want a bunch of poor people running around making things unpleasant for them. That’s what we are in The End. The lowest of the low, as far as they’re concerned. They can do whatever they want, and get away with it.”
“So the authorities know about this? Condone it?”
“Joe,” Michelle said. “We’re giving you the shorthand version here. If you’d like, we can talk all about the socio-economics of it later. The gist is, the division of rich and poor here in Cyre is an enormous gap, more of a chasm, with less and less middle class all the time. The very poor, which is most of those in The End, are considered disposable in order to make room for the new poor, which used to be the middle. The authorities wouldn’t really mind if a plasma bomb wiped us all out, except that it might be a bit of a public relations problem. When they catch us breaking the law, though—even a ridiculous law—they have no problem with killing as many of us as they can.”
“That’s crazy,” Kyle muttered, shaking his head. “It makes no sense.”
“You’ve been here long enough to know better than that,” Michelle reminded him. “You know about the gulf between the rich and the rest of us.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And you have heard of other altercations. The one last month, when seven teenagers were shot by the cops? Remember?”
“Of course. I just hadn’t put it all together into a pattern yet.”
“It’s a pattern,” Alan said, the first time he’d spoken. His handsome, lined face was grave. “Just not a pretty one.”
“Can’t something be done?” Kyle asked.
“We’re working on it, okay?” Jackdaw said. “But we need more time.”
Kyle almost laughed, but he realized that would be a bad idea and contained it. “You?” he asked, trying to keep the disbelief from his voice. “What are you, some kind of revolutionary group?”
“A revolution is exactly what’s needed,” Roog said.
“But ... you’re not very many. Especially against such an entrenched power structure.”
“We have friends,” Michelle told him. “Supporters. We are more than you see here, many more. Now tell me, Joe Brady. Was I right to trust you?”
Kyle wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. He felt certain that they were fighting a hopeless battle, unless their “friends” were far more numerous and powerful than they were. This tiny group couldn’t hope to battle Cozzen’s authorities on their own, much less the rest of Cyre. There was, though, the flame of righteousness burning in their eyes, the fire of those who believe they’re on a sacred quest, and Kyle knew better than to underestimate people who thought that way. These were true believers, and from what he’d seen today there was every chance that their cause was just.
Which still didn’t make it hiscause. He had served Starfleet because he believed in the things Starfleet stood for, which included accepting the basic decency of all beings, and striving for equality and fairness. Hazimot, he had known, had not come close to measuring up in those areas, which made it a perfect place to hide from Starfleet. But he hadn’t reckoned on the cost of life in such a backward society making itself known in such a direct and immediate fashion. He had hoped to live on the sidelines until he felt ready to go back and take on Starfleet himself. The sidelines had shifted, though, and suddenly he seemed to be straddling the center, expected to take a position one way or the other.
While he contemplated, Jackdaw had jumped up and run out the doorway. Now he came back in. “It’s all clear out there,” he announced. “We can go back out anytime.”
“I don’t think it’s fair of us to expect Joe to make up his mind this second,” Michelle said. “We’ve thrown a lot at him in a short time, and it’s been a traumatic evening.”
“As long as you’re sure he won’t turn us in,” Melinka said, her tone one of warning.
“Will you, Joe?”
“Of course not,” Kyle promised. He wouldn’t, either. Certainly not before he had amassed a lot more information. Even if he wanted to, at this point any claim he made would be his word against theirs, and they could probably get him locked away for a very long time if he tried to make trouble for them.