To Do or Die (A Jump Universe Novel) Page 15

  “Nice, but how does that lead to present costs?” Ray asked.

  “Well, once the unions were broken, Unity started making more demands on the owners. Those that didn’t cough up the donations suddenly found their house burning down. And there were few survivors. The courts declared the mines in arrears to some contracts that no one could remember signing. However, since the ink was dry on the signatures, judges found that Unity now owned several mines. When the Unity thugs suggested that other mine owners might want to sell out cheap, it was amazing how quickly the owners did.”

  “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas,” Ray said.

  “A bit of advice they might have wished they’d taken earlier. Anyway, today much of the raw materials for the factories comes from pretty monopolistic sources. The factory owners can either pay up or try to make their products out of thin air.”

  “Or find their own homes catching fire some night?” Ray added.

  “Maybe that, too.”

  “Any of the previous mine owners trying to reclaim their property?”

  The diplomat nodded. “Several of them, but again, the judges aren’t moving any too quickly.”

  “And where does the money go from the mines and refineries?” Ray asked. “Other than to bribing judges.”

  “Some ends up in Milassi’s pockets, but a lot of it seems to go off planet.”

  “Where?”

  Becky shrugged. “We’re still chasing that down.”

  “So Milassi has a police force of thugs and an army to pay and is getting money from the middle managers’ security fund and from the extraction sources that Unity controlled. I imagine he’s also got some money coming from the Unity-controlled factories.”

  “Some, but not a lot. Those factories really aren’t making much of a profit. Production is down. They need to modernize, but most factories are using obsolete machinery that hasn’t been upgraded since it was first built. You can only get so much out of your workers.”

  “This place is sick,” Ray said.

  “Yeah. You got any pill you can give it?”

  “In my profession, pills are usually 155 mm and delivered from the mouth of a cannon.”

  “I only wish it were that easy in my line of work,” Becky said. “Still, I think there is a critical weakness in the system. If we can bring down that one point, the whole house of cards comes down.”

  “You having much success on that?”

  “Not a lot, yet, but I have high hopes.”

  With that, Ray left. He’d been invited to observe the annual maneuvers of the Corps of the Capital Guard Divisions. Their headquarters were just outside of town. He’d asked Trouble to come along with him. It was a chance to take the measure of the young Marine officer.

  If Becky and her eggheads did find the place to tap this mess and make it all fall apart, Ray would be depending on this man to help him police up the pieces. It would be tragic if the young man wasn’t up to the work.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  MARY TOOK RUTH out the next day. They met Major Barbara and Scott before noon in River Park. It didn’t take long to bring Scott up to speed on the problems they faced and their hope to use the street kids to change things.

  Briefing done, he and Major Barbara exchanged worried glances. Still, he came on board.

  Mary left each an envelope with a hundred dinars. They’d settled on the smaller monthly stipends after the locals explained it wasn’t unusual for the orphanage or the shelter to be shaken down by the local cops. Any money lying around or locked in a desk would likely disappear.

  “The cops don’t get much pay, and it’s expected that local business ‘donate’ to help the cop on the beat. I’ve told them we’re living hand to mouth, but that doesn’t cut it with the cops,” Scott explained.

  Yet another thing Mary didn’t like about this place.

  The next day, Mary checked out a larger sedan from the motor pool. Once Lek assured her it was bug-free, she and Ruth headed out. Again, the Bear ignored them.

  “I think he’s just waiting for us to get close to the Farm again,” Ruth opined. “If we do, they’ll be on us like ticks on a hog.”

  Mary remembered that a hog was bacon on the hoof. She had no idea what a tick was, but she let it pass. Clearly, this farm girl had a vocabulary different from that of a kid raised in the asteroids.

  Once Mary was sure they had not grown a tail, she collected not just Alice Blue Bonnet but a half dozen other kids just at the cusp of becoming women and men.

  Like Alice, they were thin to the point of starvation, but with eyes already old that took everything in.

  They were the ones who had been working with Alice on learning, or been standing behind them wanting to learn. Now, each drew a commlink. Before they’d gone a block, all the kids squeezed in the backseat had their noses in their new wonder and were soaking up what the handheld offered.

  Mouse had wanted to come, but he’d never been separated from his sister, Tiny. And Tiny would not wander too far from Major Barbara’s storefront.

  Thus Mouse stayed behind with his sister.

  Mary wanted to cry for all these kids, handed duties that would break grown men, but she drove a winding route toward the shelter across town.

  Ruth insisted they stop for lunch at a collection of lunch wagons. Mary gave each kid a five-dinar note and sent them to order their own lunches. The kids spread out and ended up with sandwiches and burgers, burritos and bentos. But as Mary watched, each of the street kids was required to show the color of their money before their order was taken, and at least two of them were turned away from their first choice when they discovered their money was no good.

  There was nothing wrong with the money, but the guy running the lunch wagon didn’t like the color of their eyes or the way they combed their hair.

  “I told you,” Ruth said. “You take these kids outside their own tiny fishbowl, and they don’t know where the land mines are.”

  “But they learn fast,” Mary said. “And they’ll have Scott’s kids to teach them the ropes.”

  “Brother Scott’s kids,” Ruth corrected.

  “Brother?”

  “Yeah. He and the three others working with him are religious.”

  Mary shook her head. “I didn’t see a habit or anything.”

  “It’s kind of rare to find a monk’s robe in a bag of discarded clothing,” Ruth said. “They wear what they’re given and make due as well as they can. If Brother Scott looks thin and sickly, it’s because, Major Barbara says, when they’re short on food for the kids, he and his associates declare it a fast day for themselves.”

  “Damn,” was all Mary could say.

  “Or God bless,” Ruth added.

  “Yeah. You probably have the better answer,” Mary agreed.

  The kids came back with their lunches, and the change. They had a hard time believing the grown-ups didn’t want the leftover coins and small bills.

  It was Alice who solved the problem. “We can save it and make a donation to the place where we sleep tonight.” That seemed a good solution to the kids.

  It also told Mary that they had already been briefed. They’d not be going back to Major Barbara’s anytime soon.

  Ruth made the call to the shelter and gave Mary a list of three street corners. They dropped a couple of kids off at each point. There was a skinny kid of their age waiting at each stop. They quickly disappeared down alleys.

  Three quick stops, and Mary and Ruth had the car to themselves.

  “It’s started,” Ruth breathed with a sigh.

  “How long do we leave them alone?” Mary asked.

  “We’ll meet Alice at a vacant lot two days from now. She’ll bring us up to date with what they’re doing. They’ll only use the hotline to deliver stuff that needs action fast. For the most part, the kids are on their own.”

  Mary drove a winding course back to the embassy, wondering just how long two days could be. Then she remembered. When she was a kid, they lasted
forever.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  OLD FATHER JOSEPH enjoyed these afternoon walks. It gave him a chance to work the kinks out of his old bones.

  The walk also saw to it that his grandson, David, got home quickly after school.

  The young lad had survived his time with the star-striding Colonel Ray Longknife from mankind’s home worlds. Still, the priest kept a good eye on the boy.

  He enjoyed playing games with his fellows just like he always had, and if Father Joseph wasn’t there waiting for him at the schoolhouse gate, he’d play until darkness drove him in like the rest.

  Not that the old priest didn’t let him play with his friends. A lad needed the lessons his own kind taught him as well as book learning. But he needed book learning, too.

  So it happened this fine spring afternoon that the padre and his grandson were walking up the hill to the old parish church when the sun was still well up and the birds sweetly into their song.

  The old priest didn’t miss a step when he saw what was waiting for him in front of his own church.

  Cars there were. Three fine-looking things with the proud seal of the Government of Santa Maria, just as pleasant as could be.

  Assuming any good could come of a visit from the lowland lords, may God bless them and keep them far away from here, the old priest prayed.

  He tried to mean it.

  Now weren’t two fine, strapping men in uniforms coming down the hill to meet him.

  “And what brings you out on such a fine day as this?” the priest asked.

  “We’ve come for the boy,” said the one who strode at the lead and was clearly the commander, not pausing for a fine word at all but coming to the point with the kind of brusqueness that the Protestants of the capital prided themselves on.

  “And what might you be wanting with my wee grandson?” the priest said, noticing that the lad had fallen back and was hiding himself in his cassock, something the proud ten-year-old hadn’t done for many a year.

  Clearly, the wise wee lad had no more use for these bold men than his grandda.

  “The colonel himself needs him,” the uniformed man said. “Your boy and the other two.”

  Now the old priest saw the full gathering before the doors of his church. Not only were there more men in the uniform of the bold man before him, but there were also the other two children who, with David, had worked with the colonel to save not only the fine people of the farming country but the whole of Santa Maria, even the lowland Protestants, there being no way for men to understand the holy ways of God’s mercy.

  The children were there, with tearful elders as well.

  The proud men in uniform had made their demands to these others with no more apparent care than they had with him.

  The priest fingered his shillelagh. For many years, it had been no better than a walking stick. But in his younger days, before he took to the collar and the Mass, it had been put to many a good use.

  Across from him, the proud man in the uniform took this in and his hand came to rest on his own air pistol.

  The old priest smiled. His years might not have made him wise, but they had at least made him less of an idjit. He glanced around the gathering crowd. Of course, the old gossip who did such cleaning of the church and his own house as penance for her many sins was right there at the edge.

  No doubt she’d have the word of what happened here spread to the six mountain counties before the sun was down.

  “Mistress Beth, do you think we could do with a wee spot of tea?” he called out.

  “Methinks more like a gallon or two, good priest.”

  “Then put the kettles on, for I have a mind to see all of us in the parish hall for a fine talk.”

  The parish hall, unlike the thatch-covered, gray-stone church, was new. Made by the star walkers for their own use, it had been broken down and moved to beside the old church as their thanks for what the fine folks here had done for them during their stay.

  The proud ones in their uniforms seemed unsure of this offer of tea, but their leader must not have been dropped on his head as a child. At least not too many times. He recognized that hospitality once offered was not to be turned down.

  All of them adjourned to the fine new hall and talked of small things while the kettles boiled. They talked of small things until teacups were filled and passed around, then they talked of any wee thing while it cooled and they drank.

  Only after the second cup was cooling for them that asked for one did the old priest finally turn to the pressing matter at hand.

  “You say that Colonel Ray Longknife has need of our three bright children again?”

  “That was what I was told, and those are my orders,” said the proud commander. “Three ships have been sent to bring the children from Santa Maria to the homes of humanity.”

  “Can you tell an old man why?”

  “Isn’t the request of a great man like the colonel enough for the likes of you?”

  The old priest glanced around at his people, both those teary-eyed and those with more determined looks on their darkening faces. “Some of us would trouble you for more of an explanation before we part with our own flesh and blood.”

  As it turned out, there was a fuller explanation. The proud one nodded, and a man of his set up one of those magical projectors the star walkers had brought. In two shakes of a lamb’s tail, the lights had been turned off and they were watching the colonel himself as he explored among the stars.

  And nearly getting himself killed, him and those fine people who followed him.

  “That has got to hurt,” one of the village men observed as the colonel’s helmet and gloves were removed in the vacuum of space. The people of Santa Maria had not had much experience of space since their ancestors came to settle on this God-given and God-blessed orb.

  Still, the stories of how space killed had been carried down through the years.

  The room cheered as the colonel’s sacrifice saved his troops and they, in turn, managed to get him back in his space suit and hurried from the hall that had almost killed them all.

  When the lights were back on, the proud one stood. “I am told that the wall he leaned against in that alien space station worked much like the stone that he and your children put their head and hands against during the recent, ah, emergence here on Santa Maria. The colonel has asked that the three children who did that with him be sent to his planet, Wardhaven, where they might go out with their exploration ships and help if they get into any situations like the one you just saw.”

  “You want my daughter to bare her hands and face to space!” shouted a bold father, jumping to his feet. Beside him, his wife’s soft sniffling turned to loud cries of anguish.

  Others villagers rose to their feet.

  Now the proud uniformed men were up, too, and their hands held their air pistols.

  “Now, now, good people,” the old priest said, coming slowly to his own old feet. “The colonel did us up fine in our hour of need, he did, that he did. And while some of these lowlanders might have been less than courteous in passing along his, no doubt, gentle and gracious request, we should still entertain it.”

  “Would you let them do that to your grandson?” the father of the girl demanded.

  “I would at least give it some thought. We do owe the colonel a debt. We owe him the courtesy of at least talking about his request like good men and women of the land.”

  The father looked dubious, but he settled back in his chair. True, it was the edge of his chair from which he clearly meant to leap back up at the first hint that his daughter be sacrificed on any altar.

  “Grandda,” came from beside the old priest.

  “Yes, me bucko.”

  “I liked the colonel,” David said from where he sat. “He was good to us. Us three.” Slowly the young boy got to his feet, rising to the full height that his ten years had given him. “He’s a brave man, Grandda, and it seems to me that what he did didn’t harm him all that much.”


  “That, me lad, is not something they showed us in the moving picture,” the old priest pointed out to the love of his later years.

  “I know, Grandda, I saw where it ended. Still, sir, could they maybe make a space suit that would let us touch the stone without going through all that?”

  The village smithy was up now. “The young lad has a point. I know I couldn’t hammer together anything like a space suit, but still, they can do things we forgot long ago.”

  “It’s not your kid they want to take,” the father of the girl growled like a bear defending his own private nest of honey bees.

  “May I say something?” came from the back of the room.

  The third child, Jon, a bit older lad, stood on a chair so he could be seen and heard. “I lost me ma and da when the monsters came and made some folks walk like people possessed, or so I’m told. The space people protected us kids from all of that. If they want me, I would go.”

  There was a tremble in the boy’s voice that would bring tears to stone eyes.

  Two of the uniformed men moved toward the boy, their intent clear.

  “Just a moment, my fine men,” the old priest said, coming again to his feet. “The child has expressed a fine sentiment, and I applaud him for it, but he is a lad of this village, and we will decide if one so young and inexperienced as he may make such a momentous decision for himself.”

  Now it was the proud leader of the fine uniformed men who was on his feet. “It seems to me that the lad has spoken well for himself.”

  A woman now was on her feet. “He is my sister’s boy and I’ll not see you taking him from here. Not while I have breath to speak. He’s all I have left of my darling sister, and I’ll not see him hauled off a slave.”

  Two bold men stood, shillelaghs in hand, blocking the way of the fine, strapping men in uniform.

  “People, people, let us keep the peace of the Lord in this his house.”

  “It’s a hall, Father.”

  “And one built by them Godless spacers,” was quickly added.