* * *
The capsule stopped on 3rd Echelons, Nozick Prospect and down the street and to the right was a long, narrow and obscure path linking Nozick Prospect to Dragon Boulevard.
Republic Alley was a known dreg street in Durkheim, and ran through the bottom of a deep urban crevasse in the lower levels of the sky city. The alley was starved of sunlight by day and pitch black on moonless nights like these. It reeked of dried excrement and rotten everything, as did most dreg precincts. In martial metropolises, where dregs were accorded the same fundamental rights as vermin, residing in the most unpleasant corners of the city was the best way to avoid danger, especially at night.
Halfway down the alley, over an arched doorway, a rusty, blazoned sign read “DUKE’S MESS” in lashes of red spray-paint, and a clique of dregs lingered around the middle of the alley as far away from the main streets of Durkheim as possible. When they caught sight of the familiar silhouette approaching, they greeted him with reverent nods and the word “Martial.” He lowered his head as he passed under the rusted sign and into a tunnel, down a flight of stairs.
A large room was lit with flickering tubes of dim, pale neon and filled with long aluminum tables and rickety metal benches which looked to have been bent out of scrap. A dozen pairs of tired eyes were upturned to the holoscreen in the upper corner. Others were asleep, sprawled out on benches and on the sheeted floor. Duke Maclean, a.k.a “Dreg Duke”, the old mess-keeper, used to let the dregs stay in when he locked up his mess at night. The stocky, thick-bearded, box-skulled and heavily tattooed ex-patriot (which was the term for ex-government soldiers) was behind his counter, getting his mess ready for the following day.
As soon as Saul entered, old Duke turned, put down a big pan full of thick broth which he had been pouring into a mess tray. He straightened up, tall and barrel-chested, wiped his rough paws in a tattered cloth and took the cigar nub from his teeth.
“Guid mornin’,” greeted the burly innkeeper, rubbing his thick knuckles into his sore eyes and poking his blackened tongue on the insides of his cheeks. “Yer early,” he said, his voice gruff and tired.
“Is it a bad time?”
“… Nae bad time.”
“How are things?”
Old Duke puffed on his cigar. “Cannae complain,” he moaned, with a jagged-toothed smile and a raspy chuckle. He stretched his neck back, rolled his head from side to side and the thick vertebrae popped in realignment.
“Do you have my package?”
“Aye…”
Duke nodded, then clasped his cigar in his teeth and limped away.
The conversation seldom varied.
The heavy-set old mess-keeper hobbled into the backroom, where his consignments of food and water from the civils were kept. He came back a minute later holding a parcel, untidily packaged in brown paper and bound with duct tape, and laid the parcel on the counter. “All there,” he said, taking the cigar from his teeth. “Yer usual, plus that – eh – other thing ye asked fer. Almost got stopped at customs.”
“Did the Commission give you trouble?”
“Nae trouble.”
“Good,” said Saul, examining the parcel. “About the money….”
“Giit teh fuck.” Dreg Duke rolled up his sleeves and returned to the work for which he derived no profit, no glory and certainly no assistance.
He tucked the parcel in his coat and thanked him with more sincerity than usual. He would have preferred a more formal farewell with the only man in the martial world he could remotely call a friend.
The cubicle door shut. The chronometer read 2330. He dropped the package on the small counter top and stretched out his neck. His joints throbbed and ached under weeks of accumulated insomnia and malnourishment.
There was a small sliding door over the cluttered counter, and the green light over the door meant that the freight chute was loaded. He pressed the button near the light. The door slid open and he took out the following days’ provisions: six small boxes of desiccated protein isolate and some sawdust-textured, barely edible matter which took on the taste and consistency of sludge whenever he mixed in the hot water. The door slid shut and the light went red.
He picked the jasmine-scented sheets up off the floor and laid them in a pile on the mattress, lit a cigarette before taking his knife and carefully cutting across the tape on the folds of the wrapping. Inside, there was a carton of Lucky Strike cigarettes, an unlabeled bottle of earth-brown single malt, and a most curious third item which one would be even more hard-pressed to find in the martial world than scotch or cigarettes: A book. More unusually; a paperback book. The bold title on the front cover, provocatively read:
“UNITED MARTIAL COVENANT AND THE BIRTH OF NEW WORLD ORDER”
Books were not outlawed from the martial world. However, any piece of data that entered Sodom did so digitally. It was not known whether the Commission filtered out any “undesirable” material from cyberspace, but it was almost certain that they did. Emails, phone calls, bank transactions – everything went through the Martial Nexus. Everyone was free, provided it was known exactly what was done with that freedom, and it was likely that political literature ranked high on the Commission’s blacklist. That said, if there was anyone in the martial world who could smuggle in illegal contraband, it was Dreg Duke.
He stared at the book cover as he poured a glass of scotch and opened the fresh carton. He drank the scotch, toked the cigarette and turned over the front cover, flipped through the table of contents, cases, laws and treaties, stopping on the first page of the prologue, and then skimmed through the page from a standing distance:
This book was written with the scope that the lay person may understand how the foundations of the new world were laid. Part I examines the historico-political and economic premises behind the formation of the United Martial Covenant of western powers and its institutions. Part II focuses on the foundations of the internal divide between so-called “Martial Order” and “Civil Order” and the relationship between these two worlds. These central themes of UMC politics shall be discussed in light of the later formation of the East Grid Pact, three years subsequent to the establishment of the UMC…
He stopped reading mid-paragraph, removed his coat and laid it over the counter. He then took the book and lowered himself into his bed. The weariness sunk in instantly. He skimmed through the prologue, arriving at page 12: