The 97th Step (34 page)

Children they were, too. Most of them were students, still young and idealistic, full of fire and rage against Confed oppression. There were a few older people, mostly with their own knives to sharpen over some wrong done them.

Talk was cheap, holograms denouncing Confed atrocities not much more expensive, and Pen had little trouble fanning his radicals into enough of a heat for a direct strike. The plan was simple: they would topple a power substation, the one that fed the local garrison. Put out the lights, and let the army know they weren't safe even at home. It was, Pen knew, no more than a psychological strike—the Confed had its own generators and they would be online within minutes of the power failure. Still, the point would be made, and it would be made cheaply and without much danger.

Every text he'd read on revolution made that very clear: don't stand facing a stronger opponent unless you need a martyr; better to sneak in and prick his unprotected ass and then run. Even a big man can bleed to death from pinpricks, if there are enough of them. Pinpricks and straws were what made a revolution. Those, and information.

The main problem with the plan lay in coming up with sufficient high-powered explosives to do the job properly. Sure, there were ways to use readily available chemicals, making one's own bombs, but Pen did not want to appear to be some half-baked radical group. That was true enough, but he wanted his troops to seem much more dangerous. What he wanted was state-of-the-art weaponry, something that would make the Confed worry. Sure, a couple of kilos of homemade dynamite or nitroflex would do the job, but anybody could come up with those. A few grams of L-40 MicroGel or a cable of slapfuse would make the military engineers studying the explosion sit up and take notice: nobody but the Confed was supposed to
have
shit like that! What are we dealing with here? Precisely the kind of question Pen wanted them asking.

Of course, that was a problem. One did not walk into the local chemstore and buy such items. They were available only on the black market, and the price was high.

Pen explained none of this to his five cell leaders. Instead, he said, "I will secure explosives from our supply depot off-world. You five have been chosen out of the hundreds of cells because of your abilities. You are the best."

Pen paused, to let that sink in, knowing it would give them a warm ego-glow.

"Return to your cells, but say nothing of this. I will contact you with further plans in a week."

The five filed out of the cheap room. Pen had rented the place under a pseudonym, wearing his skinmask. It would be used only this once. The owner had been led to believe it was for a sexual encounter.

After they had gone. Pen left, and took a public transport in the form of a wheeled bus. After ten minutes, he alighted, caught another bus going the opposite way, and rode for another fifteen minutes. Finally, certain he was not being watched, he switched to a port shuttle, got off at the port, and walked the klick back to the pub.

If his five cell leaders talked to their members, so much the better. He had given the impression they were part of a large organization. Such a feeling would help the troops. And, in the unlikely event one of them should be picked up for Confed questioning, any kind of electronic or chemical truthscan would reveal the same information. The Confed would be a lot more worried about some shadowy organization purported to be thousands strong, with easy access to military-only explosives, than it would about a local group of students.

Pen felt a small pang as he thought about one of his people being caught by the Confed, but he pushed it into a corner of his mind. There were risks in disobeying the law. He had known of them as a thief.

But not when you were young and running with Gworn
, said the voice in his head.
The young
cannot really believe anything bad will happen to them
.

He pushed that voice away, too. The path he'd chosen had its dangers. He was prepared to risk the consequences personally, but he did not know how ruthless he could be when using others, and that worried him. All the texts pointed out the obvious: one could not make an omelette without breaking eggs. In this case, however, the eggs would be starry-eyed young radicals. Could he send them out to be injured or killed? He didn't know. Did the end justify the means, as so many of the revolutionary heroes of the past had asserted? Sometimes it did, certainly. Sometimes, maybe not. Pen did not know if it was possible to be a humanist revolutionary. The term might be oxymoronic. But he was going to find out.

The man Pen was looking for sat in a corner of the pub, sipping ale. Pen didn't know his name, but he knew what the man was. You didn't spend years running the lanes and then as a full-time thief without learning to recognize one of your own. Without being obvious the man watched the inside of the pub, quickly shifting his gaze back and forth, looking for trouble. He was young, early twenties, Pen figured, but he had the look of somebody experienced in the biz. A couple of days had passed since Pen's meeting with the cell leaders, and he needed somebody. This might be the one.

The place was fairly crowded, and three servers worked the floor. Pen pulled one of them aside and asked him to watch the bar for a few minutes. Then he put a glass of icy ale on a tray and moved toward the young man in the corner.

The man looked up. "I didn't order this," he said.

"A man at the bar sent it to you," Pen said. "Along with a message."

The young man searched the stools at the bar, flicking his gaze back and forth. His body language was good; from a few meters away, you wouldn't be able to tell what he was doing.

"What man? Which one?"

Pen turned and pretended to look at the line of customers seated and standing by the bar. He turned back. "Funny, he's gone."

"What did he look like?"

Pen was glad his face was hidden behind the shroud. This one would be hard to lie to if he could see your face. "Medium height, about my size. Wore a cargo handler's coverall, maybe thirty-five T.S. Short hair, kind of gray."

"That's all?"

Pen shrugged. "I get a lot of customers. He gave me a five-stad coin to deliver the ale and the message."

"What's the message?"

" 'Maybe you and I can do some biz. Meet me at the port sleeper, stall #363, two hundred, if you're interested.' "

The man sipped at the fresh ale. "That's it?"

"What he said."

The young man's stare was direct. "You been a tender here long?"

"A few months."

"You some kinda priest, aren't you?"

"Priests have to eat."

"Yeah. You know the local cools?"

Pen glanced around, then back at the man. Here was where he made the sale. He rubbed his thumb over his fingertips, the ancient sign for money.

The young man smiled, a hard-edged expression. He produced a five-stad coin and flipped it at Pen. Pen caught the coin and shook his head. "Guy at the bar wasn't a cool."

"You sound sure. You ever done biz?"

"Some. It's been awhile."

"Thanks for the message."

"Thanks for the stads." The conversation finished. Pen turned and walked back to the bar.

The young man showed up at the sleeper stall fifteen minutes early. Pen, sans robe, now wearing, a. new skinmask and a hidden throat inducer, had arrived fifteen minutes before, that. He opened the door. The sleeper had a chair next to a bed, and enough floor space to stand—Pen lay sprawled on the bed, hands in the open and away from his coverall.

The other man remained standing.

"I don't know you," the man said.

"Mwili Kalamu," Pen said "from Cibule." True enough.

“I hear you are looking for something." He kept his hand near the, pocket of his synlin jacket. Probably had a small gun there, Pen figured.

"You got a name?" Interesting, how fast the flow of biz came back to him. It wouldn't do just to blurt out what he wanted. There was a kind of protocol, and a certain amount of tough that had to be put forth.

Not fugue, exactly, but enough of an undercurrent to let someone know you weren't a cool or a Confed or if you were, you were a hell of a fake.

The young man thought about it. In biz, you trusted your gut more than your ears. Good instincts were worth more than brains. "Maro. Dain Maro."

Pen grinned. He'd passed the first test. "After the planet," Pen said.

"My parents liked it there."

"Hypothetically speaking, suppose I knew somebody who wanted something only the Confed military was likely to have on hand?"

Maro grinned. Biz-talk. It wouldn't keep somebody listening from being, suspicious, but it might keep a conspiracy charge off your back. "Hypothetically speaking, I might know somebody who might be able to get ahold of something like that. Depending on what, it was. But I probably wouldn't want to talk about it here."

Pen sat up straighter on the bed, and said, "In my right coverall pocket I’ve got a confounder. I'll take it out, real slow."

Maro nodded. His right-hand slipped into his jacket pocket.

Pen came out with the electronic jammer. It was the size of a deck of cards, with a pair of LEDs on the back, next to an off-on button. Green light pulsed from one of the LEDs. He put the device on the bed.

Maro moved his empty hand from his jacket pocket. He reached for the confounder, picked it up, and looked at it. "Nicholson Five," he said. "Nice machine."

"Hard to rascal," Pen said.

"What I understand. And I just happen to have a line scanner." From his left jacket pocket, he pulled a small, flat disc and pressed his thumb against the center. It beeped once, and flashed a thin line of LED red. "So, your confounder is running."

"I don't want anybody listening."

"I like a careful man."

"So do I."

The two men grinned at each other. They could do biz.

Maro was a smuggler, mostly, but he had connections. He never said, but Pen figured the young man was dancing with Black Sun as a sometimes partner. The crime syndicate did serious biz, and they could get anything they wanted. Three hundred grams of slapfuse? Sure, Maro had said, I can get that. No problem. He named a price. Pen halved it, and they bargained for a few minutes before settling. Maro didn't ask why Pen wanted the explosive, and Pen didn't say. In biz, you kept things as simple as possible.

It took three days for the delivery.

"Pleasure," Maro said, counting the hard curry Pen gave him. "You ever need anything else, leave a message with that tender, the one in the blankets."

"I will," Pen said.

He watched Maro leave, and smiled at the retreating figure. Maro reminded him of a time that seemed long past.

The run at the power substation was anticlimactic. It was a one-man job, but Pen included the five cell leaders. A moonless night under an overcast sky gave them a thick darkness in which to work. Rain began sprinkling down as they cut through the fence and made their way into the unmanned station. No guards, no security, save the tall mesh fence topped with razor wire, but Pen made his group think a Confed quad might arrive at any second, Parker carbines blasting. Adventure and risk would buy more troops, once the story got out. The story would get out—he'd make sure of that.

He laid the explosive cord against the main rebroadcast unit and triggered the timer.

When the station blew and shattered. Pen was tending bar. The rain damped the sound somewhat and swallowed the ensuing fire, but the effect was immediate. Some of the Confed troops had seen combat, they knew a cord explosion when they heard one. The soldiers streamed out of their barracks, armed ants, looking for an enemy. They didn't think for a moment that the cause was serving drinks in a port pub less than a klick away. In five minutes, the back-up generators had the garrison lit up again, but the damage had been done. Somewhere in the city, a handful of radicals must be grinning like fools.

The gnat had bitten the dinosaur.

The revolution had begun!

Pen knew he couldn't stay. One small group on one world could not begin to do the job needed. He brought the brightest of the cell leaders into a rented room and passed the mantle of command to her.

He, he told her, was being called offplanet to another post. She knew the goals, and was being given command of seven cells, as a beginning. If she handled them well, and recruited others, she would be promoted. Somebody might check on them, from time to time, but she must consider that she would be on her own, maybe for a long period.

The young woman nodded. She understood. She would prove herself. The Movement could trust her.

Pen smiled through the tightness of his skinmask. Of course it could. Long live the revolution.

She echoed his words.

As he left, Pen reflected on his first year as a radical rouser. He had teachers spreading the radical word, trying to recruit others. He had a symbolic victory to which they could point: See? They aren't invulnerable. It was a start. A year was not so long. Many men working together could do much in a short time. One man working alone would have to take longer to do the same job. It was a start.

Long live the revolution.

Thirty-Four

FIVE YEARS PASSED
.

Pen moved across the faces, of four, worlds, in four, different, systems, working, toward his goal...

From the bustling civilization of Mason, in Centauri, where another, patch of laserglass helped his cause; to Rim, the Dark world, in the Beta System; to the backrocket Fox, in Pigme; and Aqua, in Sto; four worlds, nine cities, twelve pubs.

On his workshift, he was Pen, Sibling of the Shroud, who mixed a fine Sinclo Suicide and was always sympathetic toward a man or woman with a problem; or he was the oddball, character who danced in the park, practicing something called the Ninety-seven Steps, dances with names like Bamboo Pond, Arc of Air, and Cold Fire Burns Bright.

When he wasn't working, he was Mwili, or Ferret, or sometimes Stoll. The names didn't matter. Only the cause mattered.

He had given up looking very hard for God, but he found the disaffected; he grew polished at his presentations; he became very persuasive. His personal fire lit up others.