Windswept (25 page)

I ran my hands over my legs, felt the flask in my pocket. “I’ve been shot in the face with beanbag rounds, trapped on the anchor with a leaking environment suit and no reserve air, crushed in the middle of football riots, but none of that was as horrible as that four years of hovering between sleep and waking, right in that twilight where I wanted to doze but, no, there was something coming down the tubes that I just
had
to watch. Every time my brain said, ‘Hey,
wait
a minute,’ the hibernant kicked in, and I slipped back into that conscious coma. It was terrifying how comforting it was, floating in that level of cold where my body stopped shivering and
accepted
what was going on.

“And then it all ended. The ship pulled into orbit above Santee, and it was like getting kicked out of a dream. The TV flicked off, the sleeping bag heated up, and I screamed at the top of my lungs because it was the first time I could do
anything
in four years. I didn’t stop screaming until the techs shot me full of tranquilizer, and even then, after I’d been cleaned, dressed and slotted into my new job as Colonial Services Liaison, I probably would have kept on screaming if someone hadn’t kept giving me tranqs.

“When I woke up, I threw myself into work. Those first three weeks, I slept like the dead, just out of sheer exhaustion. No dreams, nothing. I thought my lack of dreaming was because I was sleeping so deeply, but after six months, I got worried. Even at the height of the B-school crush, I’d have dreams – usually nightmares, but what the hell. And then I started to feel like there was this
hole
, right in the back of my brain, and that everything that made me
me
was starting to drain away.” I swallowed. “That’s when The Fear showed up.”

Banks cocked his head. “The Fear?”

“That’s what I call this…
voice
. Imagine all your doubt, all your rage, all your disappointment, mix ’em together with a rabid wolverine and a cane viper, and let it loose in your psyche.” I shuddered as The Fear screamed in triumph. “It started small, just a whisper, but grew bigger and louder and meaner and it just did. Not. Stop. I started having these blank-out spells where I’d forget trivial things, names and numbers and the way to write out the letter ‘e.’ Then I began screwing up schedules for food and cane harvests, air and fuel loading for ships in orbit, hurricane shelter restocking.” I shivered. “And then, one day, I couldn’t move. I just froze in my bed and didn’t leave for three days. I got hauled into the company hospital, shot up with a whole bunch of crap, and wake up on the other side of a desk from a doctor.”

The Fear laughed at the memory.

“I told all this to the doc, and he just smiles and hands me a bottle of little green pills.”

I cleared my throat. “Now. Up until then, I had had no problem with slugging down whatever someone in a white coat gave me. Every good Indenture knows that there’s a treatment for every problem, whether it’s concentration, hunger, anxiety, addiction, lack of addiction, whatever. Whatever your problem, someone in a white coat will help you out.

“But, as I sat there, looking at the bottle of little green pills, then at the smiling doctor, then at the WalWa Pharma poster behind the doctor that showed some Indentured woman sitting in front of a smiling doctor who was fondling a bottle of little pills – and I was sure they were green – I remembered that I hadn’t told the doc that I was having trouble sleeping or eating or fucking or shitting or any of the ailments that had plagued me in B-school. I said I wasn’t
dreaming
anymore.

“
There’s a treatment for everything
, said the poster.

“I walked out, out of the office, out of the building, out of Thronehill all the way to Brushhead – this was before the Big Three
really
clamped down on Indentures’ free movement – and Breached, then and there.

“No other WalWa Breach I’ve known has had the same problem. Maybe it was the process, something in the hibernant, or maybe it was just unhealthy to stay awake for four years. Every time I speak at Union fundraisers, I always say I Breached because the Big Three stole my dreams, just like they stole everything else. It’s a cheeseball line, but it always gets a big cheer and a flood of donations from guilt-ridden Shareholders.

“So, flash forward a year, I’ve thrown myself in work, and I’m getting loaded every night, and it’s just enough to keep The Fear at bay. I still it gnawing at my brains, right at the edges where I can’t see or understand what’s going on. The Fear keeps making its presence known, so I went to a local doctor, Tem Ropata, and asked if he had any ideas. He was a McDonald Heavy MD/PhD, but he wasn’t as quick with the pills. After taking my pulse and looking at my qi and sticking my head in a makeshift MRI tube while I tried to sleep, Ropata said, ‘Your brain’s just waiting.’”

“Waiting?” said Banks. “What the hell does that mean?”

“That’s just what I asked him,” I said. “‘You were awake for four years,’ he said. ‘What’s worse, you had all that idiotic stimulation. Your brain was on hold, and it’s waiting for you to kick-start it back into gear.’”

“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Banks.

“I know,” I said. “Ropata gave me one of those shrugs you can only learn in medical school, and said, ‘Would you prefer the little green pills?’

“‘Will they make me dream again?’ I asked.

“‘No,’ he said, ‘but they’ll make you not care that you don’t.’

“Well,
that
was right out, so I asked if he could prescribe something else, and he opened his desk, took out a bottle of Old Windswept and told me to drink a finger of it every night at six o’clock in a room lit only by a single candle.”

The minute I’d said it, I knew it had been a mistake. The whole thing sounded insane, and there was no way Banks would think I was anything but a drunk. I could see the streetlamp reflections wavering in eyes as he flicked them back and forth, like the way people do their mental calculations when they hear something ludicrous and they wonder:
what’s the best way to humor this crazy person
?

“There’s a mild psychoactive in there, something that has to do with the way the distillery works and the way the rum is aged and the type of barrels, and...” I held up my hands. “It keeps me sane, OK? It works. I haven’t heard from The Fear since then. And then a few years ago, I hear that the woman who owns the Old Windswept Distillery, Estella Tonggow, wants to retire and sell the whole thing. And, suddenly, I’m working my ass off, saving every jiao, fighting to get everyone I can added to my headcount, ’cause if I get five hundred people to join the Union, I get a massive bonus
and
my pension early. I’ve almost got enough saved up to buy the distillery, but I need the bonus to push me over the edge.”

I hugged my knees, then shook my head. “It’s not about the money, Banks. It has never been about the money. It’s about securing my future mental health. There are no neuropsychologists on Santee, no psychiatric treatments. What we’ve got is what we make, and what Estella Tonggow makes
works
. For me, anyway. I’m not going back to being that catatonic slug, not now, not ever.”

I shivered. “But if I don’t get my name cleared and get you guys to sign up, I don’t get those extra Slots from Wash. I don’t get those Slots, then I have to wait and wait until someone else comes slipping down the cable into my headcount, and that just isn’t happening anymore. Either they don’t show up, or they blow up in orbit, but Saarien pinches them. So, I have to make this deal with Wash
now
, or I don’t get that bonus, and then it’ll all go away. Someone else will buy the distillery, and something could happen to the way Old Windswept is made, and that means the hole in the back of my brain is going to open up and suck me into the void. The Fear will win. WalWa will win.”

Banks took a breath, looked me in the eye and said, “It’s only been a day, right? Maybe–”

“It’s been three days, and that’s because those miners couldn’t keep their shit together and bring their ships into orbit!” I said, standing up. “I couldn’t sit down that night, because the whole city was in mourning, and I couldn’t sit down
last
night because I was in fucking jail, and I can’t sit down tonight because I’m out in the middle of the fucking kampong because you and your stupid fucking shipmates
weren’t forty fucking people
.”

I walked out of the warehouse, banging the door behind me. Fucking Banks. Fucking Breaches. Fucking...
everything
. I marched around the warehouses, listening to my boots squidge from the mud from the fields as I crunched through the gravel. A cool breeze lofted through the cane, rustling the stalks and sending a flash of a chill through my clothes. I wished for my deck jacket, stuffed in Bloombeck’s syphilitic cargo bike, I wished for my flat, I wished for it to be six o’clock, I wished for The Fear and everything that came with it to just go away.

A few laps later, I had gotten cold enough and calm enough to go back inside. Banks hadn’t moved, as far I could tell: he sat on his tarp tatami, hands resting on his knees. I sat down opposite him.

“I am very sorry that happened to you,” he said. “And I’m glad you found something that works.”

I coughed, rattling loose a few tears. “Thank you,” I said, wiping my face. “I think we should get some sleep.”

“Me, too,” said Banks.

I lay down on the tarp, wrapping it around me as best I could. I could feel the hole in the back of my brain try to open, just a little, The Fear howling for full release, but I hugged myself and willed the damn thing closed, just for a little longer.

Jilly shook me awake. “Boss, we gotta hide.” I rolled off the tarp, and Jilly pulled it and me deep into the stacks. Outside, I could hear the buzz of voices, the rumble of diesel engines, and the shouts of people moving heavy loads of cane. Faint orange light came in from the dusty window above us. I climbed up a stack, then wiped the grime away to get a better view.

A long line of cargo trucks idled below, the convoy stretching from the transfer station half a klick up the road. I didn’t know too many industrial farmers, and barely knew the heirloom growers that Tonggow used. Still, I was pretty sure I’d be able to show my Union card and wave around a few blue boys to get us a ride back to Santee City. I scanned the trucks, looking for a friendly company chop. There was one from Dmitrius Sisters, one from Tuff Gong Haulage, one being searched by a squad of goons...

I blinked, but the goons didn’t vanish. They weren’t wearing uniforms, but with those massive necks and the way they cradled their riot hoses, they might as well have been. There were a dozen of them; the ones that weren’t picking through the piles of cane looked through the trucks.

“I think hitching a lift might be tricky,” I said, pulling Banks up.

“That’s bad, isn’t it?” he said.

“It sure as hell is,” I said. “Goons aren’t allowed to operate outside of the Corporate side of the fence. Why would–”

When the goons had finished searching the entire column of trucks, they marched into the transfer station, only to return a minute later on either side of a long line of tired, beat-up people. The workers looked at the ground as the goons shoved them into the waiting trucks, shuffling their feet and wiping soot from their clothes.

“Who are they?” said Banks.

Jilly had climbed next to us, then balled her hands into fists. “They’re Freeborn. They’re taking them.”

One woman took a swing at the goons, only to find herself at the business end of a dozen riot hoses. She laughed, diving for one of the goons and turning his hose on the others. She stopped laughing when one of the goons caught her neck in the crook of his meaty elbow and squeezed. He released her before she passed out, then threw her over his shoulder like she was a stack of cane and tossed her into the back of a truck.

“You recognize anyone?” I said to Jilly.

She shook her head. “We can’t let this happen, boss.”

“No, we can’t,” I said, then scrambled down the stack to the door.

“What are you doing?” said Banks. “You jumped bail. You think those people out there aren’t going to turn you in for some extra cash?”

“Shit, Banks, how are they going to do that?” I said. “They don’t have pais, so they can’t ping me to find out who I am. They’re busy being enslaved, so they won’t really have the
time
to turn me in.”

“What about the goons?”

“We shoot footage, and then we’ll nail ’em when we get home.”

“And how are we getting home?”

I looked at the stacks of cane, then hefted one onto my right shoulder. Banks shook his head. “Are you serious?”

“To a goon, labor’s labor,” I said. “Come on.”

Banks got a stack for himself, the weight sending him staggering. Jilly pulled a stack toward her, then tipped it over her shoulder, using its momentum to get to her feet. She shook her head at Banks and walked out the door. The three of us joined the lines of Freeborn loading the trucks. I kept my inked cheek against the cane as best I could. The goons were too busy harassing the Freeborn to pay attention to us. I pitched my cane into a half-loaded truck and hopped in. As Banks and Jilly climbed aboard, I turned to the driver of the truck behind us and pointed at the Union fist on my cheek. His eyes went wide, but he nodded and made a zipping motion over his mouth.

The cane was piled thick, but we managed to squeeze our way through to the front of the truck bed, only to find a tiny compartment someone had hollowed out. It was dim and stuffy, but I could make out a dozen people crammed in, all of them shrinking away from us. I held up my hands, but they just cowered that much more. Jilly and Banks pushed their way through, Jilly asking the Freeborn where they were from, what was happening. They just turned from her, looking at their feet. Someone pounded on the door of the truck’s cab. The driver threw the truck into gear, and we rumbled away.

I sat down on an empty patch of floor, and the thickset man next to me said, “You come here to fuck us some more?”

“I’d probably take you out for dinner and movie first,” I said, but he didn’t laugh, didn’t crack a smile. The few people who looked at us scowled, and one woman spat at my feet. I leaned toward her. “You care to tell what I’ve done to upset you?”