Windswept (10 page)

Papa Wemba sighed. “You know there’ll be more goons on the way back to town, right?”

“Yes, Papa Wemba.”

“And you know that time is money, right?”

“You know I do, Papa Wemba.”

“So how much money are you willing to part with to make good time?”

I blinked up my bankroll, just out of habit. One hundred eight thousand, five hundred fifty-two yuan. I could make up the difference by the end of the week. “How much time does five hundred yuan buy us?”

Papa Wemba chuckled. “You
must
be in trouble to pay that much.” He jerked a thumb toward the back of the truck. “Get in. Mind the eggshells.”

I blew him a kiss and hustled the Breaches into the back of the truck. “We are
not
sitting on garbage,” said Mimi, freezing up as the smell hit her.

“This isn’t garbage,” I said. “It’s pre-compost.”

“It smells like garbage.”

“But it pays better,” I said. “Get in, or get left behind.”

Mimi looked at One-Eye, who nodded. Mimi climbed in, followed by One-Eye, still shouldering Thanh’s body. Banks and I helped the old ladies get over the tailgate, then hopped in ourselves. “Find a pile that’s crunchy and dry,” I said, pulling the canvas flap behind me. “Then hunker down.”

“How much longer?” asked Banks.

The truck rolled, then picked up speed. “Half hour, tops,” I said. “Papa Wemba won’t bother to take any main roads, now, not for that kind of cash.”

Banks grunted as he sat on a pile of palm fronds. “You trust him?”

“I trust how much he values five hundred yuan.”

“Is it always about money with you?”

“What, you never thought about your pay grade when you were still with WalWa?” I said. “You never thought about billable hours, or what you could
buy
with those billable hours? You never thought about good food, good booze, all the stuff money made possible?”

“Sure, but that was all for after,” said Banks. “You know, when I did my thirty years.”

“Then it’s time to start thinking about it
now
,” I said, shifting the pre-compost until it felt comfortable. “Nobody starves here, but if you want anything above subsistence living, you’ll have to pay for it, and that means working for cash. Everyone here hustles because everyone has plans.” I smiled. “Give it some time, and you might make some for yourself.”

Banks leaned against the side of the bed. “So, what’s yours?”

The Fear laughed.
Tell him. See how fast they all go running back to WalWa once they know what kind of person you are.

I shrugged. “Still working on that part.” The Fear hissed.
Nice try,
I thought, then closed my eyes and thought about how to get another seventeen people to fall out of the sky.

The compost truck bumped over the Sway Street Bridge, sending a load of half-rotted cane leavings over my legs. “Sorry about that!” called Papa Wemba from the cab. “Shocks are still a little off!”

I wiped the slime from my pants, leaving streaks of black. “Where did you get this stuff?” I called. “It looks like it’s already broken down.”

“It’s the last of the salvageable bagasse from Jerzy Yutang’s fields,” said Papa Wemba. “He got hit with some nasty fungus, wiped out most of his crop.”

I tried wiping my hands, only to have the black streaks get bigger. “You sure this is safe? Shouldn’t he have torched the whole yield?”

“The piles will be hot enough to kill off any pathogens,” said Papa Wemba. “Though you’re probably going to want to use a little bleach on your clothes.”

“Terrific,” I muttered.

“Tell me wherever we’re going has laundry,” said Banks.

“Where we’re going has a new wardrobe for all of you,” I said. “Unless you’re married to those coveralls.”

“God, no,” said Banks, plucking at his filthy lapels, now streaked black. “These things itch like hell. We only rated paper clothes, you know.”

“Then they’ll burn that much easier,” I said, peeking through the canvas. We were on Wedge Boulevard, a mostly residential street right on the edge of Brushhead. It was the usual Wednesday night traffic: people sitting at sidewalk tables outside The Mead House and the few bulgogi joints, the sounds of people having dinner coming from the upper-story windows, and the last of the shift-change traffic petering out.

“Looks nice,” said Banks behind me.

“It is,” I said. “Brushhead’s a good neighborhood to start out in; plenty of housing, plenty of jobs, plenty to eat.”

“Oh, tell me more about that part,” said Banks. “If I never see another bowl of WalWa NutriFood, it’ll be too soon.”

“They still have the same three flavors?”

“There’s a fourth now,” said Banks. “They combined the first three. Tasted like imitation crab and old chewing gum.”

“Lovely,” I said. “I always did like how they had to put the word ‘food’ in there, like a reminder that it was supposed to be edible.”

“Nothing’s too good for us Indentures,” said Banks.

“That’ll change, once we get you settled,” I said. “A couple quiet nights, and–”

My pai flashed a call from Soni. I got the groans out of the way before I took it. “What’s up, Soni? The payment not get through?”

“What the hell are you doing to me? First it’s rescue on the high seas, now you’ve turned my precinct into a mess.”

“What are you talking about?”

The truck turned a corner into what sounded like a cricket riot. Papa Wemba called from the front, “You better get up here, Padma.”

I climbed over the piles of coffee grounds and mulched bagasse to the front of the truck bed. I threw aside the canvas to get a view through the windshield, and my jaw dropped. We were now on Koothrapalli Avenue, Brushhead’s main drag, and the street was a sea of bodies. I saw a lot of smiles and laughing in the neon glow, which was always better than an angry mob, but still distressing.

Then I saw the people waving signs:
WELCOME, FRIENDS!
SLAVES NO MORE!
FREE AS IN BEER!

“I’ll have to call you back,” I told Soni and hung up before she could protest.

The signs were sloppy, obviously hand-made this evening. Who could have told the crowd? Soni wouldn’t, because she hated crowd control. Jimney couldn’t, because he was probably still stuck in the broom closet. That only left...

Vytai Bloombeck pushed his way through the crowd and thumped the truck’s hood. He waved at the crowd like a game-show prize girl and gave me a blue-gummed grin.

“This delay is gonna cost me,” said Papa Wemba.

“Me, too,” I said, blinking him fifty yuan. “Get us off Koothrapalli as fast as you can and go to the Union office on Reigert.”

“Not the Hall?”

“Hell, no,” I said, blinking him another twenty. “I’ll meet you there. Don’t let anyone know who’s in the back.” I turned to the Breaches. “Everything’s OK, just a typical Wednesday night. I’ll be right back.”

“What about this?” said Mimi, pointing at the garbage.

“Can’t be any worse than your old ship, right?” I said, then dove into the cab and out the door and into the street. People slapped me on the back and tried to put beers and pierogis into my hands as I made my way to the front of the truck.

“Padma!” cried Bloombeck, holding his arms aloft, like he expected a hug.

I grabbed his wrist and spun him away to an empty stoop. “Hey, everyone, let’s not stop a working man here!” I yelled, pointing to the truck. “Time is compost and compost is money and” –I got in Bloombeck’s face–“I am going to feed you to the squid. What are you doing?”

Bloombeck’s face fell. “You don’t like it? I thought you’d like it.”

“Like what?” I said. “A mob? How’d you even get this many people to talk to you?”

“You’re upset?” he said. “I figured this was good news, the kind of thing that’d make your rep even better.”

“I need you helping my reputation like I need a nail in my skull,” I said. “It’s not your place to go sticking your nose in my business.”

“Yeah, but this is everyone’s business,” said Bloombeck. “You’d got forty Breaches, and a whole bunch of people could move up and–”

I looked back at the signs, then saw who was holding them. There was Gene Snout, a sonic landscaper who’d Breached eight months ago and now worked as a cargo checker on the lifter depot. There was Vimi Van, who’d managed the road crew in Thronehill for the past year; she wanted to open a butcher shop. And every other bright, hopeful face was someone I’d recruited, slotted into some shitty Contract job, and left until I could find their replacements.

I turned back to Bloombeck. “You son of a bitch, you blabbed. You blabbed to everyone, after I told you
not
to, after we made a
deal
–”

“–which I kept up–”

“–except you
didn’t
, because you
blabbed
!” I yelled, blinking up the contract I’d just signed a few hours ago. I scanned the whole thing, then grinned as I hit the magic clause. “Section seventeen, paragraph eight, clause six, sub-clause two: ‘All parties shall keep this agreement in confidence. Any breach of this confidence renders the contract null and void.’” I slapped Bloombeck on the head. “Deal’s off, Bloomie. Find someone else to buy your scam farm.”

I turned back to the sidewalk and got two steps before he grabbed my jacket sleeve. “But–”

“But what?” I said, spinning around and flipping his hand away. “But I should help you, even though you broke our agreement? But I owe you, because we go back a long way? But, no, Padma, you’re completely right and I’ll leave you alone because I know anything I say won’t hold up in court?”

“But... you already paid for this,” he said.

I felt a bubble in my stomach. “Paid for
what
?”

He waved his hands toward the crowd. “This! I mean, yeah,
you
didn’t pay for it, but I told everyone you would, because, you know, you’re going to make your number and all. And I figured, since we’re in business–”

I grabbed him by his greasy lapels. “We are
nothing
but null and goddamn void.”

“Well,
now
, yeah, I see that,” he said. “But I made the arrangements, people to fill the crowd, the sign makers, the band–”

“Band?”

There was a burst of horns, and the crowd cheered and parted as the Brushhead Memorial Band fired up “For She’s a Bloody Great Union.” Within two bars, everyone swayed and danced as the band strutted down the middle of the street, all dressed in their red-and-gray jackets and white pants. The woodwinds circled, the brass and drums following, and then they set up right in front of Papa Wemba’s truck, which still hadn’t been able to move.

I looked down at Bloomie, who tried to give me a smile. “You got them to put on their
uniforms
?” I said.

“Well, it’s a special occasion, so–”

“Do you have any idea how much this will all
cost
?”

“Eight hundred sixty-five yuan,” said Bloombeck. “It would’ve been an even grand, but I talked the band down when I told ’em it was for you.”

In the back of my head, I could hear the crowd singing along with the band (“And so say all of us, and so say all of us, for she’s a bloody great Union...”); everything in the front of my brain said I could strangle Bloombeck and get away with it.
Your Honor, this piece of shit completely overstepped his bounds, making business decisions like this, especially when this was only supposed to cost me a lousy one hundred fifty yuan...

Papa Wemba caught my eye, then pointed to the masses and tapped his wrist. Time was money. Of course it was.

I left a still-blubbering Bloombeck on the sidewalk, waded through the crowd, then climbed on the hood of the truck. The band was drowned out by the roar of the crowd, a sound I would have welcomed and loved at any other time. All those people, they’d looked to me to help them out, and here I was, about to deliver.

Except I couldn’t.

I held up my hands, and everyone stilled. “Thank you–” I started, before someone yelled, “We love you, Padma!” and the cheering started again. One of the trumpets tooted away, and the band started up, and I yelled, at the tops of my lungs, “THERE AREN’T FORTY BREACHES!”

It took me a few more tries before everyone got quiet, and I could feel the waves of love turning into something hot and ugly. “There are not forty Breaches,” I said, loud and clear.

“Then how many are there?” said Jordan Blanton. As a LiaoCon architect, she had designed suborbital hanging gardens; now she’d been helping muck out the city’s sewage pipes for sixteen months. The stars on her cheeks started to look as hard as her eyes.

I opened my mouth, about to say
six
, but then looked at everyone’s faces. Their good mood was gone, their faces growing hard as people remembered the shitty jobs they had and would continue to have while a few of their neighbors would luck out. Anything less than the forty Bloombeck had crowed about would give this mob an excuse to become a riot. Union people could put up with a lot of bullshit, but this would be too much.

So, I took a deep breath. “Evanrute Saarien pinched them, so there are none,” I said, bracing myself for the first of many flung bottles.

There was a moment of silence. Then the signs sagged, along with the faces. People shuffled away, heading into the bars and cafes. I jumped off the truck, and Jordan just shook her head. “Jordan, I tried,” I said.

“I should’ve know this was all crap when I heard it from Bloombeck,” she said, her eyes getting a little damp. “But then you show up in this truck, and I thought, maybe it’s my turn. I can get someone to take my Slot, start designing again–”

“You will,” I said.

“Heard that one before,” said Jordan. “About sixteen months ago.” She gave me a little wave, then melted into the crowd.

I opened the truck’s shotgun door. “Let’s go,” I said, climbing in.

“You’re gonna mess up my seats,” said Papa Wemba.

“Bill me,” I said, slamming the door behind me and waving up the road. “Drive.”

It was a short hop to Reigert and Handel, and we slipped behind the Union satellite office, which took up all of an old shophouse. “I need to make a pickup here anyway,” said Papa Wemba as he stomped on the parking brake. “Wednesday night is AA at Our Lady, and that means a lot of coffee grounds.”