“Huh?”
“And ask MTB where we can put sixty-odd women on Belvaille long-term.”
I turned off the radio.
“Hank, we are all sentenced to life in prison on the Royal Wing, not Belvaille. Isn’t it unfair that women prisoners get better treatment just because they are women?” Uulath asked.
“Yes. But it’s also unfair they get worse treatment. Life isn’t fair. I’m just doing what I can to make it as close as possible.”
We walked for some time and reached the people I was looking for, some former feral kids now repairing the shanty homes of the inmates. Uulath called them over but they were still anxious on seeing me and it took some coaxing to bring them down from the second and third stories where they were working.
“The Supreme Kommilaire has some questions for you. Answer him as best you can,” Uulath stated firmly.
They looked at me timidly.
“You were in feral kid gangs, right?”
“I don’t know if they were gangs. It’s all very fluid,” one said.
“Yeah, there aren’t any rules or organization. Not like here,” the other said.
Wow. Holding up the Royal Wing as a paragon of sophistication.
“It might have been after your time, but did a robot or person in shiny armor, with four arms ever talk to you? Or did you see him?”
They both seemed incredibly confused.
“A Dredel Led?”
Oh well, I guess it was just that one time. I was trying to determine how long 19-10 had been around here and interfering.
“No. Never mind. Another question.” I thought how to phrase it. “Had anyone ever asked you to do something for them when you were feral kids?”
They both answered immediately.
“Sure.”
“Yes.”
“I mean like outside the ferals. The person who asked you wasn’t one of you. And they asked you to do something that didn’t involve other ferals.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s how we got a lot of our stuff.”
“What? So this was a ‘normal’ person? He just came to the feral kids and gave you jobs?”
“Paya’ Man we called them.”
“We called them Cleana’. I guess because they were clean.”
“Yeah, we called them that too.”
I looked at Uulath who seemed to not know this either, but he was letting me do the talking.
“So what did this guy look like?” I asked.
“There were different ones.”
“Lots.”
“How did they give you work?”
“There were a few blocks where they would show up. They would say how many kids they would need and we would jump in to do it. They gave food.”
“Or clothes. Or blankets. Or whatever.”
“Why didn’t you just rob him?” I asked, surprised anyone would go to the ferals to barter.
“All the other kids would protect him because they wanted jobs.”
“And there were usually a few of them with guns. Kids aren’t stupid. No one is going to get shot for a blanket when you can just steal it from the person who got it after the job.”
The other feral gave the one who just spoke a dirty look.
“What jobs did they have you do?” I asked.
“Attack buildings. Rob.”
“Set fires. Steal people.”
“Steal from people or kidnap?” I asked.
“Both.”
Huh. I wonder if Two Clem could have been kidnapped by feral kids. They made the perfect thugs. They were untraceable. They didn’t even know what they were doing. And you could buy their services for comparatively nothing.
I couldn’t even ask them if they had kidnapped Two Clem because he would be meaningless to them.
All these problems we’ve been having with feral kids over the years turns out to be because they were hired to do it. Then they would run into me and my Kommilaire and I would send them here if we caught them.
“Did they wear robes?” I asked.
“Robes?”
“Order,” Uulath clarified.
“No.”
“No.”
But that didn’t mean anything. Doubt the Order would have shown up in feral kid territory in their finest clothes.
“Do you know why they hired the feral kids?” I asked, with little hope of an answer.
“Ferals don’t worry about the motives of normals. They got enough problems of their own.”
CHAPTER 23
I figured the best way to find out what Garm was doing or not doing was to talk to Garm.
She was the owner in the tower. Belvaille’s landlord. Lawmaker, judge appointer, and rich person talker-toer.
The only area more fortified than Delovoa’s block was the area around City Hall where Garm lived.
There had always been extra space around City Hall as it was the only non-rectangular building in the city. But Garm had leveled an extra block just for security. There were a series of walls thirty feet tall and five feet thick, covered with bunkers and bristling with weapons. There were trenches in between filled with mines and traps and electrified razor wire.
It was not solicitor friendly.
It was also completely overkill since half the population lived in abject poverty and the other half wasn’t about to go charging their way into City Hall just to meet Garm who was, unless I was really mistaken, simply not that important.
Every once in a while I got a communique from her about a new law she wanted implemented. I read it and if it made sense I took it under consideration. But I was on the streets. I was down here every day. I wasn’t sitting behind a hundred feet of steel ten stories up for the last forty years. I knew what laws we needed.
“Hello?” I yelled outside one of the wall sections. “I’m Hank. The Supreme Kommilaire. I know Garm. Um. We used to date. Can you tell her I want to talk to her?”
I yelled up various things at the impassive wall for another thirty minutes until my voice hurt and I felt stupid.
On my way back home I saw a Totki force fanned out across a block. They were knocking on doors and talking to people.
At first I was pretty excited to see them. Maybe they had listened to me about the election and were canvassing to get votes. And then I saw them drag some poor guy into the center of the street where they began beating him with the blunt ends of their spears.
Great.
I hiked up my belt and started walking that way. It didn’t take long for them to see me. Inconspicuous was not a talent of mine.
I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I got there. Shoot them? Berate them? I was running out of sugary lies to say about their dead leader.
Like feral kids with weirder hair styles, they immediately turned and scampered out of the street in the opposite direction from me.
I went over to the bruised guy on the ground.
“What were they talking to you about?” I asked him.
He reached out and clung to my leg. They had really done a number on him.
“They asked me about Su Dival. What I knew about him. Crazy stuff. Had I killed him? Did I know the killers? Did I belong to the Olmarr Republic?”
“Well?”
“I don’t know any of those things! I’m a Water Scrape,” he said.
I knew the job. It was not a totally legal career, but more legal than most. He collected condensation from pipes and surfaces under the city, and sometimes above the city, and sold it for consumption. That didn’t preclude him from being in the Olmarr Republic, though.
I saw other neighbors on the street were coming out and they complained of the same abuse by the Totki.
Not sure if it was random or the Totki had some information that led them to this street. It seemed unlikely, since I doubt they knew of 19-10 and even if they did, he probably wasn’t hanging a sign showing where he lived.