"That's a real expensive favor. I'm short a couple hundred kilos American because of you."
"There was a blizzard, your honor," Thor explained. "We saved the farmer's life."
"A square-head's life ain't worth his volume in cheese. But he might not know that." He stroked his chin again with his thumb. "You sure you ain't from Juneautown? Nah, I guess not," he answered himself. "If you was playing Trojan horse it woulda been a stupid stunt; and stupid ain't one of Alderman Wlodarczyck's sterling qualities." He shrugged his arms out wide and slapped them down on the arms of his throne.
"But I'm still out the cheese. So what do I do?"
Alex suspected the question was rhetorical; but Thor spoke up anyway.
"I thought the shipment was going to Chicago. Your honor. Did they put us on the wrong truck?"
The courtiers laughed. Even the waiters permitted themselves a supercilious snigger. The Alderman's smile turned tolerant.
"Did I say something funny, your honor?"
"Ah, those square-heads don't know nothing about economics. Sure, they was sending their cheese by Chi-town; but they coulda got a better deal here. So we did 'em a favor."
"You!" Sherrine blurted. "You're behind the monties!"
The Alderman turned a fierce glare on her. "You watch your mouth there, lady. If you wasn't a lady, you'd get six months hard for leeze majesty. We don't steal cheese here. We need it to negotiate with them gangsters in Chi ever since Juneautown cut us off from the Port and the Marina. Chi's gonna get their cheese sooner or later, don't you worry about that; but it might as well do us some good along the way."
Alex was having a hard time remaining seated. Floaters didn't lose the strength in their hands. Alex's hands were hard and sinewy; they could crush the fat Alderman's throat, if he would hold still for a moment.
An honest man beset by greedy neighbors. Was it simply hypocrisy? Self-deception? Or the lack of any moral code but relativity?
Or was it not so simple as that? The Alderman and his cronies were arrogant bandits at their center of power. But did the smiles seem forced? Did the eyes glitter with a hint of fear? The Ice was sliding down the west side of the Lake faster than anywhere else on the planet. Places like Fox Point and Brown Deer were already engulfed, according to Thor.
Then why was it so warm here?
Milwaukee was no longer a city: the two sides of the river had become separate waning towns. Maybe Alderman Strauss was just an old-time, city machine politician desperately fending off disaster from his bailiwick, knowing all the while that it was hopeless. The pressure of that sort of burden could deform a soul past its yield point, maybe even past its breaking point.
Look what it's done to Lonny Hopkins. And that was an odd notion, because it was the first sympathetic thought he had had about the station commander in a long, long time.
All right, Alex. What would you do if you were sitting on a plundered restaurant chair, wearing a cloak of animal skins, watching your beloved community be swallowed slowly by glaciers? Anything it took, right? There was nothing like disaster to focus one's loyalties.
"But the farmers, your honor," Sherrine insisted.
Back off, Sherri, he wanted to tell her. These are desperate, ruthless men and women. They aren't stealing cheese for fun. They are trying to save themselves and their families.
"Hey," the Alderman shrugged magnanimously. "They'll get their payment. We ain't thieves. They got more cheese than they know what to do with it. We got beer coming out our--" He grinned. "Well, coming out, anyway. So we'll load up their stinking cheese wagon with enough barrels we figure equals the cheese and send it back by them. Value for value. We ain't got cheese here; they ain't got beer there. They even get their trailer and their drivers back."
"But, your honor, what can they do with a trailer load of beer?"
"Throw a party. Get drunk. What else is there to do in the sticks? The e should be happy we're bartering at all. Meanwhile…" And he rubbed his hands. "I figured out what to do with you folks. My city clerk will calculate the value of the cheese you displaced from the truck. Then we'll put you to work at standard wage--minus room and board of course--until you pay it off." He smiled an appeal to them. "That's fair, aina?"
Alex, for one, was not going to tell him otherwise.
The guard who took them to their new duties was full of enthusiasm and civic pride. If it hadn't been for the short sword at his belt and the crossbow on his back, Alex would have thought him a member of the chamber of commerce. Or maybe he was.
"Ain't the Alderman a piece of work?" he bragged. "I was in the fight when Juneautown burned the Clybourn Street bridge. He was all over the battlefield, rallying the men, leading that last charge to tear down the barricade. A damn shame we lost the battle; but you can't say the Alderman lost his nerve." The guard shook his head. "That harbor belongs to all of Milwaukee, not just the east siders. It ain't right that they keep us out. Same goes for the old City Hall. Juneautown thinks they're hot shit."
The horse cart pulled up at Zeidler Park and the guard ordered them all out. The park was enclosed in an immense plastic tent shored up by a wooden framework. The plastic was translucent, and through it Alex could make out the dim, distorted shapes of people and plants. He climbed down from the cart with the others and stumbled toward the tent. Despite support from Thor and Fang on either arm, each step sent a lance of fire up Alex's thighs.
"Hey Hobie!" the guard called out. "Got some new temps for you!"
Glancing up, Alex noticed again how gray the cloud deck was that hung over Milwaukee. And the twin plumes of black smoke to the north. "Guard," he asked, "are those fires?"
"Hunh? Oh, sure. That's how we get our steam heat. We're burning buildings down. So does Juneautown; but it was our idea first. Most everything north of Capitol Avenue is one now."
"What do you do when you run out of city?"
The guard blinked at him. "There are other cities, aina?"
Hobie was the head farmer for Zeidler Park Farm. Once inside the huge, low tent, Alex was assaulted by the warm, moist scent of compost and plant life. The entire park had been turned over to crops. Rows of corn and wheat were mixed with pea vines and bean plants. The plastic sheeting acted as a greenhouse, letting in the solar energy but trapping the ground-reflected heat, which was supplemented by steam hissing from radiators jury-rigged about the grounds. Shorewood is burning to keep the corn warm, Alex thought. It was actually warm inside the farm and, for the first time since falling to Earth, Alex saw men and women in shirt sleeves. They were bent silently over the plants, tending them with hoes and rakes. Some were kneeling, grubbing at the dirt with hand claws and weeders. A few of the… serfs?… glanced at the newcomers with a studied lack of curiosity.
There had been a popular joke on Freedom, started by a man named Calder. Looking down from space, he had said, the dominant life forms on Earth were obviously the cereals and other grasses. They occupied all the most desirable and fertile land; and they had tamed insects and animals to care for them. In particular, they had domesticated the bipeds to nurture and cultivate them and to save and plant their seed. Now, watching the farmers, Alex could easily imagine that they were worshiping and genuflecting before their masters.
Hobie looked them over. "New temps," he said. "Heh, heh."
"That's right," said Bob. "Just until we pay off the fine."
"And what fine is that, sonny?"
"Well, we were in the back of a cheese truck and…"
Hobie cackled. "Heh, heh, heh. In a cheeser, was you? And you gotta pay the Boss back for the cheese he couldn't steal because you, was back there instead? Heh, heh."
Bob scowled. "What's funny?"