Windswept (26 page)

“You here to make sure we work hard enough?” said the woman. “You think we don’t work hard enough for you already?”

“I’m sure you do,” I said, “but–”

“But nothing!” she said. “You come here, try and screw us on our cane prices, then cart us away to work more? And without the upfront money you promised!” She spat again. “You Inks are all the same, coming here, making big deals, then leaving us in the dirt come harvest time.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “All the prices are set on the Public, and if anyone’s been screwing you, you should be able to report them on any terminal.”

The woman waved her hands and looked away. “Like any of you liars would listen. That’s why my family came to the kampong in the first place. To be free of all that garbage.” She looked back at me, her face puckered up like she’d been sucking on a lemon. “But you come out
here
, after us. You’re not happy with your city, you have to come to the kampong and–”

Jilly stood up and put her tiny face into the woman’s. “Hey, you don’t get to treat her like that. Don’t you know who she is?”

The woman eyeballed Jilly and said, “That fist on her face tells me all I need to know.”

I put a hand on Jilly’s shoulder and reeled her back. “The last thing we need is a fight, kid.”

“I can take her.”

“Can you take all of them?” I nodded to the other Freeborn, the hollow look in their eyes now turning to dull anger. “We need to dial this back.” I tugged her elbow, then pulled until she sat down next to me.

I looked up at the Freeborn. “Despite what you think, I do not know what’s going on here. I don’t know about any deals. I don’t know why you’re in this truck. Hell, I don’t even know where this truck is going.” The Freeborn opened their mouths to yell, so I banged my boot on the floor and yelled, “The only thing I do know, is that you’ve all been screwed. Am I right?”

The crowd settled back into their seats, and I nodded at them, getting to my feet. “Yeah. You’ve been screwed, and
that
is something I can do something about. Now. You.” I pointed at the thick man to my side. “Pretend I don’t have this ink on my cheek, and tell me what’s going on.”

He wiped his hands on his pants, then took a cigar stub out of his shirt pocket. “We’re all part of a collective. Grow industrial cane, bring it to the city, sell it on the market. Last year, Typhoon Horace hit. Storm surge overloaded our irrigation canals, flooded our fields. Lost a year’s crop. Then, six months ago, just when we’re getting back on our feet, we got nailed with black stripe.”

“That happened to everyone.”

The man made a face. “Not like this. It was a new variety, started around Sag Pond and spread. Stuff grew faster than we could burn it out. We went to the Union for a carryover loan for fungicide, but we got denied.”

“Why?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. The man from the Union said we didn’t qualify, but that he’d make us an outside offer. He was starting up a new processing plant, and we’d get paid back in diesel and credit if we sold to him on the cheap.”

I looked at Banks, who said, “Is there such a thing?”

“No,” I said. “There hasn’t been a new cane processor in years.”

The thickset man shrugged. “That’s what I thought, too, until he takes me on a tour. New facility, right in the middle of all this run-down city. Right on the coast. Smelled horrible.”

“Sou’s Reach?” I said.

“Yeah, I guess. I spent most of my life in the kampong, don’t know much about the city.”

Banks and I exchanged glances. “This guy,” I said, “did he wear all white?”

The man nodded. “Smiled way too much. Whipped out this bigass contract and a stack of thousand-yuan notes. Down payment, he said.”

“What then?”

The man shrugged. “We keep it up all season. He buys our crops, pays us in cash. Never as much as we want, but enough to keep going, replant, get us on our feet. Then the goons showed up.”

“When?”

The man shrugged. “About a month ago. They make us work at hosepoint. Then they start taking us.”

“Where?”

“Don’t know. Everyone who goes with them doesn’t come back.”

I looked at Jilly. “You ever hear of anything like this?”

She nodded. “We got hit by black stripe a few weeks before I left for the city. No one ever made us a deal, but we heard about people disappearing. Thought it’d be better getting a job driving, you know?”

The man with the cigar nodded. “You got that right, kid. We’re the last ones on the collective, so they’re making us go.”

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Why you want to know?”

“Because I’m about to make a deal with you that you can take to the bank,” I said. “This deal will be so good that you can borrow against it for the rest of your life and have enough money to build irrigation canals that would make the Romans shit themselves.”

“Why should I trust another Ink?”

“You know another Ink who would be sitting in this shitty little space, letting you vent?” I said.

“I still have no way of believing you,” he said. “Not after the contract we signed.”

“You have it?”

“Of course,” he said, patting his pants pocket. “I figure I’d need something to wipe my ass with.”

“You mind if my attorney and I read them before that happens?”

He sucked on his teeth, then pulled a sheaf of papers from his pocket. They were long sheets covered in legalese and bar codes. I flipped through the first few pages, then flung it back at him. “What is this crap?” I said. “‘The parties of the ex partite particulars’? This is what you get when you give first years WalWa law students fistfuls of cranquilizers and a thesaurus.”

The man turned over the pages, then held a very large, very real Union chop in my face. That giant red fist punching out a planet might as well have been aiming for my own eye.

Next to the seal was a clause written in plain language: all Freeborn sugarcane grown on the Lively Wetlands Collective would be sold to Evanrute Saarien at twenty percent below market value in exchange for future profits, cane diesel futures and a whole lot of other crap Saarien could never deliver. “This is some bullshit,” I said.

“It was all we had,” said the Freeborn man, waving a hand over his face like he was wiping it clean. “We can’t trust any of you. All that ink, you look like a bunch of slobs.”

I smiled and said, “Big talk for someone who smells like a rat’s ass, which is more than I could give about what you think of our ink.”

He snorted. “You Union types, you give us shit deals, steal our children away to your city. What do you give about us Freeborn?”

“We made sure you had the chance to call yourselves that,” I said, pulling back my hair to show him a thin line on the back of my head. “You see that scar? I got that from a goon’s club because I had the nerve to protest their reneging on a supply deal in Ivory Bay. And I got this”–I rolled up my sleeve to show him two black spots on my forearm–“from an overamped taser because I wanted MacDonald Heavy to pony up their contractually obligated back pay to a bunch of dirt farmers in Palanquin. And this one”–I pulled my shirt collar aside to show him a puckered star on my shoulder–“was a rubber bullet fired at point blank range by my former employers because I didn’t want them raining garbage on Sou’s Reach, the one Ward on the entire planet that deserves to get garbage rained on it. I have been beat up, set on fire, spat on, shat on, all to make sure people like you”–and I jabbed him extra hard in the chest, which felt pretty damn nice, actually–“would have a choice. So don’t give me any of this ‘What have you done for me lately’ bullshit.”

The man nodded and rolled up the contract. “You’re a lot pushier than the guy in the suit.”

“You don’t get your way by being polite,” I said. “But you
do
get your way making deals with me. Now, you going to tell me your name?”

He squinted. “Marolo.”

“OK, Marolo,” I said. “I’m Padma Mehta, and this is Banks and Jilly, and here’s the deal. We’re going with you to Sou’s Reach, where we’ll figure out what’s happening. We’re going to get your people released, and we’re going to get you a shitload of back pay, and we’ll make sure this never happens again. I will put the entire Union and the Co-Op behind this promise, and you’ll never have to deal with that white-suited asshole ever again. That sound fair?”

“I’m gonna need something more than your word,” said Marolo. He rubbed his fingers together.

“What, you think I’m made of cash?” I said. “You think I can just peel off a few blue boys and that’ll do it?”

“I think you can make all kinds of deals and guarantees,” said Marolo. “I also think that if you’re out here, you’re in some kinda trouble, and that you need us to keep quiet.”

“I’m offering to
help
you,” I said.

“So was your man Saarien.”

I swallowed the bile back and said, “How much would it take to keep you quiet?”

Marolo looked around the bus and said, “Thirty thousand would cover our nut.”

“Thirty thousand would buy you a continent,” I said.

“We have families to feed, crops to regrow, and we aren’t getting any help from your Union,” said Marolo. “Thirty thousand would go a long way to help a lot of people and to make sure they were appropriately
grateful
.”

I ground my teeth. “You know I can’t make that deal while we’re here,” I said. “Unless you’ve got a Public terminal installed in your pocket.”

He held out his hand, then spat on it. “A Freeborn’s word is enough.”

I pulled Wash’s flask out of my pocket and showed it to Marolo. “You know, where I come from, we just share a drink. You know what this is?”

He unscrewed the lid and sniffed. Even in the dim light, I could see him flush. “It’s good, whatever it is.”

“That is thirty-year Old Windswept,” I said. “And I only share it with people I do deals with. Saarien ever share a drink with you?”

Marolo sniffed the rum again, then took a gentle sip. All the color rushed from his face, and he blew out a long, slow breath before handing the flask back to me. “Never,” he said. “But that’s still not enough.”

I didn’t have to blink up my balance to know how much this would hurt me. But I also didn’t have much choice. I held out my right hand and spat in it. “We got a deal?”

Marolo nodded and shook my hand. “Now, you got more of that stuff?”

“Marolo, you stick with me, I’ll get you so much you could bathe in it.”

“All the same, I’d rather drink it.”

“Done.” I took a swig, only getting a taste of the rum before passing it back. The Fear was now wide awake, threatening to tear my brain apart.
You really think six o’clock will help, even if you make it?
it said.

I took another taste, then handed the flask to the next Freeborn.

An hour – and half the flask – later, the truck slowed, and the stink of rotting molasses seeped in. I pushed my way through the cane screen until I could see the rusty industrial ruins of Sou’s Reach roll by. It looked like we were moving into the heart of the refinery, but all the cane should have been dumped near its edges. I thought about sending a message to Soni, but I had no idea if it would get out with all the metal. Plus, once the police found me, it would get ugly, seeing how I’d jumped bail. Unless I could show them someone committing a much bigger, badder crime, the cops weren’t going to help.

The truck hissed to a stop, and Banks motioned for me. “We’re going to stand out from this crowd,” he said, pointing to his ink.

“Good point,” I said, reaching to the bottom of the truck and getting a handful of mud. I slapped it on his cheek, then on mine. “Better?”

“Now you look too filthy,” said Marolo. “We have
some
pride.”

Someone pulled the cane screen from the back of the truck, and a goon pointed his hose at us and said, “Out.” We obeyed, and I made sure to keep my head down as we followed the line of Freeborn into a squat, collapsing building that smelled like burning candy and cleaning solvent. My nose burned and my stomach flipped as we filed through the door, into the middle of what looked like Hell’s swimming pool. Giant pourform pools lined the room, all of them filled with hot, sticky molasses. Workers with no protective gear stirred with giant paddles, which only made the smell worse. Some of the Freeborn gagged as we were shoved past the pools and down a flight of metal steps into a dark, dank space with barely enough room for us. The floor shuddered, and my guts fell into my shoes as the wall in front of us began a slow, creaking slide open. Beyond it was more black, and the goons ushered us in at hosepoint. As the light faded, I stopped caring about waiting and called Soni, but there was no signal, and that scared the crap out of me. We were either way inside the refinery, or someone had ripped out every transceiver in the area.

The door behind us thudded shut, and another one in front of us opened with a well-lubricated whisper. The light was blinding, so we couldn’t see who ordered us to move. I found Banks and Jilly in the middle of the crowd, and we walked side-by-side into... a full-scale industrial cane refinery?

Everything that was in the plants at Beukes Point and Jotzi were here, but newer and shinier. I could see condensers the size of buses, coils big enough to wrap a dozen rugby players, and steel holding vats so big you could have used them as fuel canisters for starships. Hundreds and hundreds of people, all under the watch of a company of WalWa goons, ran about, taking measurements, adjusting equipment, and working on filling drum after drum with what looked like industrial molasses. The entire room had the sweet scent of boiling sugar and fermenting molasses, though the air was undercut with something harsh and sour, like an acetone spill.

The line rounded the stacks of molasses drums and ended in front of a woman in a green jumpsuit. She held an honest-to-God clipboard, something I hadn’t seen since I audited History of Management. I tried not to gawk at the antique as I shuffled my way toward her, but wound up gawking at her ink instead. It was some serious work: two Union fists smashing into a factory, a pair of winged seabirds flying off her temples, and a shark swimming down her nose. Impressive as hell, but there was something off about the ink, something I couldn’t place...