Santiago paused—for effect, Lumler supposed—before continuing. “Now, I think that each of you should ask yourselves a question: What are we doing here? What’s our purpose?”
He waited for a moment and the little black dude, Daniel, finally answered.
“Overthrow the Governor,” he said, as if this was self-evident. “Reform New America. Ever’body knows that.”
“Exactly!” said Santiago, raising one forefinger. “Overthrow and Reform. That’s what we’re all about. Not politics, not squabbling with each other. We don’t have that sort of luxury, know what I mean? So here’s the deal, either we accept Doug—and let him tell us all about the PF, how they work, their routines and little secrets—or we can turn him out and lose all that juicy intelligence. And for a measly couple of boxes of ammo? Well, you decide. But if you ask me? You’ll let him join, no question.”
The others, with varying expressions of distaste and concentration, listened to Santiago’s little speech and then, nodding and talking softly with each other, withdrew to another part of the warehouse. Santiago stayed with Lumler. When the others were out of earshot, he grinned at his friend and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Pretty good speech, huh?” he whispered.
Lumler scowled. “What,” he hissed, “was all that shit about me tellin’ ‘em all about the PF? We never agreed to that!”
“Hey, look,” said Santiago. “I had to give ‘em something, didn’t I? They aren’t just gonna say ‘what the fuck, let’s let the former Second in Charge of the Police Force in on our cabal to overthrow society’, now are they? Besides, what did you think? We were just gonna forget about it? Forget that you were Deputy Chief? I mean, we gotta use every weapon we got, man!”
Lumler scowled some more, but his friend was right, as usual. “Yeah, OK,” he said finally. “But I ain’t too crazy about it. Some o’ them guys are pretty decent dudes, you know?”
“Only some of ‘em?”
“Yeah, well, a lot of ‘em—shit, most of ‘em—are just big dumbass goons, but still. I mean, the PF has almost a hundred guys, not all of ‘em are assholes. An’ don’t forget that a lot of these dudes were just plain shanghaied into it. They showed up here in New America and no matter what they’d been Before, if they were big guys they got stuck on the PF. Shit, look at me! I was a damn warehouse grunt! Think I really wanted to be a cop?”
“I know, I know,” said Santiago. “That happened to everybody. We all have our jobs to do, all that crap. But like you said yourself, most of ‘em are goons and assholes, right?”
“More or less. I mean, they’re none of ‘em somebody I’d like dating my sister or anything, if I had one, but some of ‘em ain’t so bad. Like there’s this one guy, Wilson, over in the Eighth Sector? An’ he’s—”
Santiago interrupted him with an upraised hand. “Quiet,” he whispered. “Looks like they’re comin’ back.”
Lumler looked at the six as they came back into the room and tried not to glare. Besides the ones whose names he knew, the Professor, Daniel, and the hard woman called Still (short, no doubt, for Stiletto), there was a short, older Hispanic guy, a tall, gangly, horsy sort of gal, and an old gray-haired lady dressed in Agro coveralls. All in all, he had to say, not the most imposing bunch by any means. But then, they’d been giving the Governor and the PF fits for almost a year now, so maybe looks didn’t count for much in this case. At any rate, whatever their names and abilities, they seemed to have come to some sort of decision. The woman called Still came out from the group as spokesperson.
“OK, here’s the deal,” she said tersely. “We decided to keep him. Cause yer right, Santiago, this dude is way too valuable to just trade away to slavers. But we got a couple o’ stipulations.”
“Such as?” asked Santiago.
“Well,” said Still, eying Lumler, “first we wanna have a nice long chat with the former Sergeant. See what he can tell us, right? And if he gives us somethin’ good, somethin’ we can really use? Well, then we’ll see how it goes from there. How’s that sound?”
Lumler scowled but stayed quiet. He didn’t much like the idea of being grilled by these people, but then he was pretty sure that they weren’t the type of people to use torture, either, so it didn’t worry him overmuch. Santiago shrugged and looked at his friend.
“Well, Doug?” he said. “Up to you, I guess.”
“OK by me,” said Lumler evenly. “But I wouldn’t waste a whole lotta time, neither. Cause Reform or no Reform, if the Army don’t stop the deformos, if they lose the War, well, you ain’t gonna have nothin’ left to reform. Get me?”
“Yes, well,” said the older man, the Prof, “we have our own plans in that respect. But for the present, what say we have some lunch. And then? A nice long, detailed discussion.”
“Fine,” said Lumler, rising, his stomach gurgling. “What you guys got to eat around here, anyway?”
Santiago laughed. “Oh, you’re gonna love it,” he said. “All the tofu you can eat!”
Lumler muttered a curse. “Figures.”
Chapter Fifty
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Justin had never thought about the word or used it very often, thinking it overused and often trite, but, looking at the mind-bending state of the great mine chamber before him, the term ‘surreal’ most definitely came to mind. That or nightmarish. Because the huge area, maybe a hundred yards long by fifty wide, with an uneven ceiling some thirty feet up, was, just as Cass had said, decorated and fully equipped for some kind of party. Crepe streamers of all colors hung from the jagged ceiling, a series of tables, laid with festive place settings and mixed, haphazard decorations (a Santa Claus next to a big Valentine’s heart, a Hanukah menorah alongside a bridal display), had been set out, complete with folding chairs, and balloons of every shape and size bobbed and waved in the stinking, dank air. Yes, definitely surreal.
At one end of the chamber were positioned what looked like tables of honor, three in all, set in a T shape, with even more garish and outlandish decorations. The place was glaringly lit as well, with a whole bank of big work lights casting knife-edged shadows of the streamers and balloons. From one corner came the wildly incongruous sounds of a sing-song recording of children’s music. Justin was pretty sure it was The Bear Went Over the Mountain.
Naturally, all of this would have been odd enough, down at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft as it was, but what put it over the top were the assembled party-goers. Like something out of a bad dream, the various twisted, freakish residents of this place gathered at most of the tables were as adorned as the chamber itself; funny conical hats, paper leis, goofy glasses and mustaches, little cowboy Stetsons. They looked like some crazy person’s idea of kids at a ten year old’s birthday party.
More ominously, Justin saw that, placed in the middle of the chamber at about ten yard intervals, there were eight ten-foot tall wooden poles, old telephone poles, probably, that had been set firmly into the dirt floor. Lashed to each of these, hands above their heads and looking both scared and ridiculous in party hats and fright wigs, was a human being. Men and women, they were a mixed bunch, but most wore the remains of soldiers’ camouflage uniforms and all were more or less beat up, bruised and wounded. With a start, being hustled past these unfortunates, he saw that one of them was the Small Man, the one who’d kidnapped Lampert. He stared at the man, but the other was glaring at nothing, a spot on the ground, and didn’t seem to notice.