Like a Boss (13 page)

“Now, may I please go and stop this strike?”

“No,” said Kazys. “We’ve got orders to keep you here for the next forty-eight hours. Also, if you try Command Presence on us, I’m going to put my hand over your mouth.” He held up his hand; it was big enough to cover my entire face.

“Okay,” I said. I sat on the floor. “Can I get some of that soup now?”

Odd poured me a bowl. I threw it in the air. Both goons looked up, their mouths wide open. That gave me enough time to roll to my right and vault for the door. I slammed into it, and the door swung into an alley full of angry, chanting people. Some of them gave me hard stares. I didn’t take time to explain. The goons fought each other to get out the door. I climbed up and over the crowd, apologizing as I stepped on shoulders and heads all the way out of the alley.

When I got to the intersection of Lutyen and Kamakiri, a blast of arena-concert sound hit me. The street was wall-to-wall bodies, all of them holding signs and chanting “OUR WORK, OUR PAY! OUR PAIN, OUR CANE!” I saw Freeborn, Union, old, young, the whole city, the whole
planet
moving like the tide up the street. I scanned feeds on the Public and saw the same scene everywhere. Human cordons stopped the cane trucks and the airships. Crowds flooded the lifter control room and the cargo depots. The planet had stopped working.

Strike.

It took me two hours to return to Brushhead. I had to go on foot. The streets were jammed so tight with people that bicycles couldn’t even get about. I tried to take alleys and side streets, but they were also packed. Every time I blinked up a map, it looked like a rash. Everyone was out of their houses, out of their jobs, out of their churches, and into the streets. They were also moving opposite of where I wanted to go, which meant a lot of pushing and shoving and yelling at people to just
stop
for a minute and let me through, dammit.

So, I wasn’t really in the mood for any more bullshit when I entered my flat and found, yet again, Letty Smythe sitting in my chair. Jennifer the bodyguard stood at Letty’s shoulder. Letty had helped herself to the Beaulieu’s Blend (not, I noted, the Old Windswept; she may have had no problems breaking and entering into my home, but at least she respected me enough to keep away from the good booze). “This,” she said, holding her glass aloft, “is indeed a remarkable fuck-up.”

“Don’t you have a job to do, or an office to do it in?”

Letty shook her head and knocked back the rum. She slammed the glass on the table and reached for the bottle. It took her a few tries to get a grip, and even more to get the rum into the glass. “I’ll clean the table,” she said as she reached for the glass. “Later. You know.”

I shook my head and sat down. “Letty, I know I’m not privy to what goes on in our Union’s upper echelons, but, outside, it looks to me like the entire city is marching.”

She drank and nodded. “Excellent observation.”

“I was under the impression that Saarien’s movement was much, much smaller.”

Letty nodded. “Did I say that? I’m not quite sure.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t jammed my pai, we could go back over my buffer and confirm that.”

She snorted. “You’re still hung up on that? By the way, you look like hell.”

I put the bottle on the kitchen counter. “I’m going to take a shower. When I’m done, I expect you both to be out of here. And you can threaten me all you want, Letty. I’m too tired to care right now.”

I plodded into the bathroom and turned on the taps in the shower. A spurt of water shot out of the showerhead, followed by a few more convulsions. The plumbing groaned like a giant having an orgasm, and the water stopped. I twisted the taps, then tried the sink: nothing. I marched into the kitchen and turned on the faucet. It spat water, coughed, and did nothing more.

Letty had retrieved the bottle and settled back in the chair. “Trouble?”

“Did you do this?”

“Oh, no. That would be the strike.”

“Even at the water works?”

“Everywhere!” Letty waved her hands, and rum spilled out of her overfilled glass. “The entire planet has stopped, all thanks to Evanrute Saarien and his magical marching millions. They’re probably gonna burn stuff down, starting with my office.”

“Your office is made of solid pourform.”

“You know, that’s what all my advisors have said. They also told me that this unrest was limited to isolated pockets of Freeborn. Yet, there are many, many of our Union brethren in the streets, all of ’em chanting for a strike.” She shrugged. “I’m sure those fuckers will figure some way to burn the Union Hall to the ground. They’ve probably got some magical Greek Fire shit ready to roll as soon as I show up.”

“All the more reason for you not to be here. I happen to like my flat in its non-burned state.”

“But don’t you see that this is
both
our problems now?”

“Uh-uh. I’m not the Prez. I’m just a rank-and-file bozo. This is all on you. Not my circus, not my monkeys.” I opened the door and waved my hand into the hall with a flourish. “Thanks for visiting.”

“I will cancel your debt
now
. Right here.” Letty pounded the table, sending her glass bouncing to the floor. It shattered, and Jennifer dove to cover her. “What was that?” Letty said underneath her human shield.

“Go home, Letty. We both know that you can’t make any deals when you’re drunk.”

“The hell I can’t!” Letty shoved and slapped at Jennifer until her bodyguard moved aside. Letty wobbled to her feet and emptied her pockets on the table. Out came two multi-tools, a mini-torch, keys, breath mints, and six matchboxes. She made a show of opening the boxes and showing me their sparkling electronic innards before smashing them to pieces with her fist. Then she scooped them into a little pile and lit the torch.

I took a step forward. “Hey, don’t–”

Whoosh
. The cardboard caught, and the stench of burning cane plastic and solder filled my flat. “Don’t worry, I got it,” Letty said as a bright spot of fire rose in the middle of my dining room table. She sprinkled the mints on top of the electronic funeral pyre, and the sugar burned a neon green.

And that’s when the rum ignited.

Letty yelped as the cone of blue flame spread over the tabletop. The rum had seeped into the table’s seams, down its legs, onto the floor. Within moments, a full-blown fire had broken out in my living room. I ran for the sink to get a glass of water, but only got a cough of air. I reached for the fire extinguisher next to my stove, but it was too late: Letty had grabbed the bottle of Beaulieu’s and poured it on the fire, forgetting that 140-proof rum has a tendency to burn when it touches an open flame. The ensuing fireball rolled up and out, catching the curtains and spreading to the ceiling.

“OUT!” Jennifer threw Letty over her shoulder and ran for the door. I pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher and sprayed down the table. The foam crackled as it hit the flames, but it wasn’t enough. The fire jumped to the highback chair. It rolled into my bedroom. I dropped the now-empty extinguisher and bolted for the door.

I hacked the rising smoke out of my lungs. All around me, people burst from their apartments holding spouses, children, aquariums. Swaroop Patil’s children clustered around his knees; I picked up the two closest to me and shouted for everyone to follow me out. When Swaroop didn’t move, I kicked him in the ass. He started and began cussing me out as I ran down the hallway to the fire door.

Down the rickety fire escape and onto the street we went. The building’s muster point was at the koa tree out front, and all our neighbors had gathered round in a sooty huddle. By the time we reached the tree, Swaroop had cooled down, though the fire hadn’t. Flames gushed from every window on every story. I handed Rohit and Aman back to Swaroop and blinked up a schematic of the building. Everyone trackable had gotten out. I sent texts to everyone who lived at 42 Samarkand, just to be sure.

The clang of bells cut through the noise of the crowd. A truck – not a fire truck, but a regular old MacDonald Heavy Hanuman Cargo Truck – nosed its way through the rubberneckers. A dozen people hopped out, all of them carrying axes and fire extinguishers. They wore heavy coats and work boots, the kind of gear you’d see on an airship ground crew. “Is everyone out?” asked one of them, a Freeborn man with tight cornrows and the most impressive mustache I had ever seen outside of a military history book.

“I think so,” I said.

He grunted. “Well, did you check?”

I gave him a look. “I’m sorry. I was helping my neighbor with his kids as we fled for our lives. Who the hell are you, anyway? Where’s the fire department?”

“We
are
the fire department,” he said. “At least, until the pros can get here. The marchers have cut off access from the station, and we were nearby.”

I gave their tools – machetes and rakes – the once-over. “You guys are cane cutters?”

The man grinned, his mustache making his smile look even wider. “Best in the biz. We can clear a hectare, do a controlled burn, and have everything stacked, all before the dinner bell. We been busy doing mop-up burns for the black stripe, and we were nearby for a–”

A window blew out on the top floor, and a sooty face looked down. “HELP!”

It was Agamjot Patil, Swaroop’s youngest. Oh, crap, she must have gotten lost on the way out. I sized up Mustache Man; he was too short. Another cutter was more my size. “Give me your coat!”

“What?”

I grabbed at his coat and started peeling it off. “This is my building, and you don’t know the way up there.” I threw on the coat and checked its pockets. Cane crews had to carry breathing gear and portable heat shelters in case they got caught in the middle of a burn (even though burns were illegal and inefficient as hell, the regulations for their gear had stuck around). I pulled the respirator mask from one pocket and snapped it over my face. I pulled the shelter – a folded-up foil balloon – out of the coat’s other pocket. Mustache Man looked at me. “What are you waiting for?” I grabbed his fire extinguisher and ran to the front steps. Two blasts of foam in the door, the balloon over my head and shoulders, and I went in.

The mask wasn’t tight enough to stop the smoke from seeping in. The stench of burning fabric and smoldering caneplas burned the inside of my nose. I wanted to push the mask into my face, but one hand was keeping the shelter up while the other spurted at the flames. I heard the other cutters behind me, all of them coughing and joking about the heat. I turned and lifted the shelter high enough to make eye contact. Mustache Man and seven others stood there. “Stick close! Stairs are to the left!”

I led them up the stairs, wondering what the hell I was doing. Leading crowds out of burning buildings was one thing, but leading wannabe volunteer firefighters
in
? Maybe I’d get some kind of special solidarity award to decorate my tombstone.

The heat grew more intense the higher we climbed. The shelter was meant to be sealed, so using it as a cape only prevented me from getting burned. Sweat slicked off my forehead, leaking into the mask’s poor seal. By the time we got to the fourth floor, my eyes burned more from perspiration than smoke. The extinguishers helped push back the fire, but it couldn’t save the structure. Holes had opened up in the floor and ceiling as the wood turned to cinders, and the floor began to make scary noises with every step. I hoped
we
wouldn’t need rescue ourselves.

I counted off the doors; Agamjot had appeared in Millicent Cadwallader’s window, sixth from the stairs. I pointed at the door, and we took turns smashing it with our almost-empty extinguishers. Finally, the door gave, and we burst into the smoke-filled flat. Agamjot lay beneath the window, one arm hanging outside. “Look in the other flats for anyone else!” I yelled above the roar of the fire.

I rushed into the room and slapped my respirator on Agamjot’s sooty face. She still had a pulse, and she stirred as the first puffs of clean air hit her lungs. “Good girl,” I said, wrapping the shelter around us.

There was a crash, and I turned to see the ceiling collapse behind me. A shower of sparks rushed into the flat, pyro pixie dust riding an updraft toward my face. With a great
crack
, another beam smashed to the floor. A wall of burning timber cut me off from the cutters.

I picked up Agamjot and cradled her so the respirator would stay on. We’d have to go out the window and use the fire escape. No one liked using the fire escape. The kids wouldn’t even climb on it. But it would have to do.

As I looked out the window and tried to figure out how to get us both down, something heavy hit the floor. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

I looked over my shoulder. Jennifer stood in the middle of the living room, sparks drifting down on her from a hole in the ceiling. Her clothes were singed, and her face was sooty, and she looked
pissed
. She pocketed a tiny rebreather and closed the gap between us in three fast strides. I had enough time to throw my body over Agamjot before Jennifer brought an elbow down in the middle of my back. My arms gave out, and the kid fell to the ground. I lost my grip on the shelter, and it slid off me to cover Agamjot. At least, I think it did. It was hard to tell after the follow-up kick I got to the side of my head.

I flopped next to Millicent’s coffee table. The table was solid glass, and it had this collection of polished glass bricks on top. Each brick held a sea shell in its center. Making those knick-knacks was Millicent’s hobby, and I never noticed before how pretty they were. Above me, I saw Jennifer, her face backlit by the burning ceiling overhead. She looked at me the way someone would look at a cockroach, and she lifted a boot. I held up a hand. “Wait,” I gasped.

She paused and cocked her head. “Why should I?”

My head lolled in Agamjot’s direction, and Jennifer’s eyes followed. The transformation on her face was remarkable. The cool rage melted, and she froze. “You gotta help me get her out,” I croaked.

Jennifer blinked as if I’d slapped her. “I don’t have to do anything you tell me.”

“Then just be decent and help me help this kid.”