Outside, the sunlamps were dim, simulating twilight. It would be dark soon, and then the curfew would be enforced by immediate execution for those who lacked a special pass like him. After all these years, the Highborn still practiced martial law.
Quirn noticed that several of the big lamp-sockets up in the ceiling were empty. Work-crews unscrewed broken or damaged bulbs but none of them had replaced any yet. Sydney had fallen into disrepair since the conquest several years ago when the Highborn had invaded. Labor crews cleaned wreckage, swept the streets or removed broken pipes but they seldom built or installed anything new. Even worse than the disintegrating city were the recruitment raids for military and labor personnel. The pressgangs stopped people on the streets and demanded to see their cards. Those below a certain category were tested on the spot. If they passed, they entered a van, which roared away, taking them to their new life. Most went to the labor battalions. The best people went to the Free Earth Corps and the rest became farm workers. That was a nice way to say they went down to the slime pits to harvest algae.
The raids had emptied Sydney, but not enough to assuage the hunger, the borderline starvation. Quirn knew that certain rumors were very true. Useless mouths went to the bottom levels, there to die a lingering, painful death, as they were no longer given rations. Down there, people practiced cannibalism to eke out a few more months of life.
The Chief Monitor shivered as he shoved his hands in his coat pockets. It was better not to think about such things. He didn’t make the rules. He just enforced the ones that kept him alive and kept him in the Highborn’s graces.
Quirn held the packet of dust in his clenched palm. His bad leg hurt tonight. Maybe he should have stayed home and enjoyed his dreams. He could use Ah Chen later.
He scowled. It was hard work ferreting out people’s secrets. He had few joys with a harpy wife. Who would have ever suspected that Molly would get fat and argumentative? He would have sent her out into the streets long ago, but her job was in the Records Department. It would be easy for her to alter critical pieces of his biographical data and help bring it to the attention of the Controllers. Molly was good at altering records. He had taught her his secrets, learned many years ago as a hall leader for Social Unity. No. he would endure Molly for a little while longer. In the meantime, he would inhale the precious dust and punctuate those glory moments by blackmailed sex. These days, it was hard for him to enjoy any other kind.
I’ve become a deviant.
His scowl intensified. He needed help. He would like help with his problems. He didn’t like the person that he’d become. Sometimes he used to wonder what small choice in his early years had led him down this path. He had a theory about that. He now believed that a person made small choices in their youth. Those choices set a person onto various paths. One path didn’t seem very different from the other in those early years. But later, as one walked down the chosen path, it took him far, far away from what he had envisioned as good or proper.
Where can I get help?
That was the problem. He had no idea. He was the Chief Monitor of Sydney. If he showed weakness, people would use that against him. He knew that to be true because that’s how he operated.
His fist tightened around the packet as he limped onto Ah Chen’s street. He entered a lift and rode up to her floor. The hallway was carpeted, and her door was number A342.
Knocking would imply a choice on her part. The little minx had no choice. He pulled out a key, unlocked the door and let himself inside.
It was a tidy apartment, as one would expect from a deep-core engineer, and it was quiet. A light flashed from the living room. There was darkness, and another flash.
Curious, Quirn investigated, moving quietly. He spotted Ah Chen on her sofa, with her pretty legs curled up under her. She held a clicker, wore loose clothing and she had cut her black hair into a bob around her elfin head. A holo-unit sat on the floor, with a holo-image of the Sun above it. There were Chinese symbols on the wall, a few paper-made art pieces and a half-full glass of liquor on a stand beside the sofa.
Three things about the situation angered Quirn. The nights he visited, Ah Chen was supposed to paste sequins on her body in erotic swirls. He had told her to buy extensions and wear her hair long. Lately, he wanted music playing as he entered the apartment. He did not want her to be working on something.
“What are you doing?” he said in a querulous tone.
She screamed, twisting around as terror contorted her features.
That mollified him a little, as he limped toward the sofa.
“What…?” she whispered. She stared at the holo-unit and clicked it off so the Sun disappeared. Another click and the living room’s lights came on.
Until that moment, Quirn wasn’t curious about what she was studying. He stopped, and he blinked at Ah Chen and frowned at the holo-unit.
“Was that the Sun?” he asked.
“It’s nothing.”
“That isn’t what I asked,” he said, his professional senses alerted. “Why do you have a holograph of the Sun?”
“Would you like a drink? Are you thirsty?”
“Why are you nervous?” he asked.
She shook her head, her lips firming.
“Put the hologram back on,” he said.
Something he hadn’t seen before swirled in Ah Chen’s eyes. It looked like determination or stubbornness. Just as quickly as it came, however, it disappeared. Demurely, she lowered her head. If she had been wearing sequins and nothing else, the motion would have been very erotic.
As it was, Quirn licked his lips in an obscene manner. “Hurry,” he said, in a husky voice. “Put it up. Let me see what you were looking at.”
Ah Chen weighed the clicker in her tiny hand. Everything about her was petite and pretty. She glanced up at Quirn. It was so artfully done. She bobbed her head in acquiesce and pressed a button.
The living room’s lights dimmed. The Sun hologram returned.
Quirn frowned as he examined it. “I don’t see—” No, wait. There was a dot, several dots in fact in front of the Sun. “Give me greater magnification.”
Reluctantly, Ah Chen pressed the clicker several times. Each click produced a larger Sun hologram. Soon, it encompassed the entire living room. Now the dots had become mirrors. Since they appeared to be very close to the Sun, the mirrors must be gigantic.
“What am I looking at?” Quirn asked.
“That is what I am attempting to learn,” Ah Chen said.
He stared at her, at the blank look on her face. “You’re lying,” he said. “Tell me what I’m seeing.”
She hesitated a moment longer. Then she said, “It is a prototype, I believe.”
“Of what?” asked Quirn. “What are you trying to hide?”
She lowered the clicker. “I am being reassigned in several weeks.”
Quirn hid his dismay. It wouldn’t do to let her know how much he needed these times with her. That could possibly give her an advantage over him. “Where—” He studied one of the mirrors. “Are you going there?”
She nodded.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You’re a deep-core engineer. You work with magnetic forces…” He turned back to the Sun mirror. His gaze tightened. Without looking at her, he said, “You work with the great temperatures of the core.” He pointed at the dot, the mirror. “What is that exactly?”
“I believe it is a weapon,” she said.
Quirn shook his head. He didn’t understand.
“What if one could focus the Sun’s energy into a single coherent beam?” asked Ah Chen.
“Those mirrors can do that?”
“I cannot see how. Yet I think the Highborn are setting up mirrors to focus some of the Sun’s heat and energy. Perhaps such a beam could reach the Earth.”