‘We hear there’s been some changes at work. What can you tell us?’ Scat asked, getting right to the point.
Before he replied, Goosen took a quick look out of the window, hoping no one could see inside.
‘There have been plenty. What do you know already?’
Thomas told him.
‘Well, you’ve got the gist of it, at least. Yes, ISRA’s decided our security isn’t up to scratch, and yes, we’re being replaced. As we sign on over the next two days, they’ll tell us who’s staying and who’s leaving. There’s no appeal. Any of us with a Trevon connection, or has ever expressed Trevon sympathies, are out.’
‘And you?’ Thomas asked.
Goosen looked at him, as if to suggest he had to be a little quicker on the uptake, and then turned back to Scat.
‘It’s the same over at Lynthax, Raddox and all the other operations. Rumour has it, us police are giving way to the ORF. They arrive later this morning.’
‘So what happens to ones they’ve fired?’
Goosen shook his head at the stupidity of it all.
‘They go back to Earth,’ he said. ‘The only ones who can stay are the the Trevon PRs.’
‘So they’ll be shipped back on an LM?’ Thomas asked.
‘I guess so. Look Thomas, I’m just a grunt. I’m not on their planning committee. What I know is what my friends in admin tell me. We’re pissed off by it, but all we can do is go to court.’
Thomas looked over his shoulder at Scat. Scat curled his mouth downwards, suggesting there was no harm in trying.
‘How about a more direct challenge, Birdie?’ Thomas asked. ‘Something a little more effective? The courts will take a while, and they’re in Lynthax’s pocket in any event.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Direct action. Leave the legal shit to the politicians. Your mates, the non permanent residents at any rate, will be back on Earth before a lawyer agrees to represent you.’
‘That’s what I said,’ Goosen agreed, ‘but they insisted on it. Something to do with principals.’
‘Then on a principal, would you fight to redress the wrong?’
‘Bloody right, I would. What are you thinking?’
‘We need to know when they are moving Nettles.’ Scat said.
Goosen looked as though he could smell a fart.
‘Are you kidding me?’
‘No. It’d be useful to know.’
Goosen took a hard look at Thomas, to see how serious he was. He then looked at Scat.
‘Agh, I suppose I might hear something, but it won’t come with a “fact” stamp on it.’
Scat looked back at him, head tilted slightly.
‘OK, I get it. Unusual times and all that.’ Goosen looked at his watch. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. We need more hands.’
‘To do what?’
‘Bust him free. Then hit back.’
The penny dropped. As he was not going to be a cop for very much longer, all that mattered now was the manner of his leaving. He looked around the cabin of the soft-track. All eyes were on him.
‘Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s just the sort of thing that’ll screw up my land pension.’
Land parcels had been one of the big lures, and one of the ways in which Lynthax had attracted reasonable candidates for Trevon’s police force. It had been a cheap lure, too, coming as it did for free alongside the corporate mandate, even though the land was unprotected and almost unusable while the climate remained as it was. But the deliberate policy of restricting the availability of land within Go Down immediately increased its value. And Goosen would lose his share if he were discharged for dishonourable conduct.
‘The Irwin family will guarantee land of an equivalent size, Birdie,’ Thomas said, confidently. ‘You’ve my word on it. And it won’t be on the Gap Plain. It’ll be in the valley.’
‘Then what’s to discuss. Where do I sign?’
Scat was surprised at how quickly and calmly Goosen made his decision.
‘OK, then. Welcome on board. When are you next due on duty?’ Scat asked
‘Tomorrow evening.’
‘And no one expects you to be anywhere between now and then?’
‘That would be right. Except I do have my amateur dramatic class.’
No one said anything.
‘What?’ Goosen asked.
Again, nothing. Scat and Thomas exchanged glances. Scat couldn’t think of many characters that were six feet four inches tall, had fists like hams and dressed like a bag lady. Unless it was a Viking.
‘So I do theatre. What of it?’
‘Nothing, Birdie,’ Scat said. ‘Can you miss it?’
‘Well I’m sure I can. But we’re working a classic Brian Rix farce, and believe me, they aren’t easy to get right. It’s in the timing.’
‘But you could still miss it, right?’ Thomas asked.
‘Yes—I could ... But I’ll lose my place if I do, and they’re casting next week.’
Scat took a deep breath, trying to do no more than grin. But it was hard.
‘I don’t see you as the farce kind of guy, Birdie,’ he said. ‘You’re more the Shakespeare type. Why don’t you give it a miss? Something better’s bound to come along.’
‘So, you’re not into the arts, then Scat. Pity. I could have gotten you tickets—if you weren’t such a celebrity yourself. What do you need my time for?’
‘A kidnapping.’
‘Any acting involved?’
‘Some.’
‘Got a script?’
‘Later, Birdie,’ Scat replied. ‘Can you miss it?’
Goosen gave it a moment’s thought. He looked at Scat who was peering over the rear bench seat, kneeling in the fuel cell compartment next to a cage full of arctic hares labelled “Bio-experiment: no scanning”, thinking that maybe he didn’t have to give up farce altogether.
‘Sure.’
Thomas shook his hand as the soft-track made its way up the ramp and into Mary’s vehicle park.
‘Looks like we’re here. Ready for that coffee, Birdie?’ Thomas asked.
But Goosen had one last question:
‘Do you think they’ll serve me whisky at this hour, Thomas?’
78
As Thomas, Scat and Goosen went inside to grab a coffee, Paul hailed a soft-track taxi and drove over to the airport to meet with Mark Stafford.
They met during Mark’s tea break, standing outside the cargo hangar in the still, freezing air. Mark pulled on a cigarette while pushing his free hand deep inside his light blue coveralls. Paul stamped his feet.
The LM-V4 had not yet arrived.
‘So! You’ve woken up to the ways of the New Worlds, eh, Paul,’ Stafford said, his breath leaving wispy clouds in the air. ‘Dreams can’t be had by rewriting agreements. The written word means nothing when there’s so much land at stake. Not these days.’
‘I hear you, Mark,’ Paul replied, being careful to show respect. Mark Stafford was a couple of years older than Paul was, and still had that senior schoolboy air about him, despite Paul being so much better educated. ‘We were a little naive. Nettles had us thinking we could talk them into making concessions. My old man bought into it. But what’s to be done? We’re out numbered, out gunned and out lawyered. They walked all over us during the negotiations. Apparently, they were all neural netted. Our teams didn’t stand a chance.’
‘Shoot! Neural netted, eh? How cool is that?’
‘Well it was overpowering. They slaughtered us. There was no give and take—not how they teach it in international affairs, anyways.’
‘So what’s your old man thinking now, then?’ Stafford asked. ‘And Spelling?’
‘I can’t say because I don’t know,’ Paul replied, genuinely not knowing what either of them actually thought. ‘But I’m not leaving this to the old men anymore.’
‘What’re you thinking?’
Paul took a quick look back over his shoulder and lowered his voice
, as if he were about to reveal a secret.
‘A police friend of mine is being dismissed. About 300 are, in total. Those without Trevon PR are being shipped home.’
‘I know. It’s a bitch, eh?’
‘That means there will be a fair few pissed off Trevons thrown onto the street—along with their “exceptional” skills,’ Paul added, implying they would find it hard to find alternative employment.
Stafford forgot he was on a ten-minute break. He rubbed the scar over his left eye, the one he earned during a bar room brawl at The Drunken Parrot a few weeks ago. He remembered how he had earned it: sticking up for Trevon’s vote for independence.
‘Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking, Paul?’
‘It depends, Mark. What are you thinking?’
‘I’m thinking this could get pretty exciting. Did you see that clash down on Second Avenue last night? And the week before last? The police were using gas guns, stuns, peppered water, the whole works.’
‘No, I’m not thinking street fighting, Mark. Think a little broader.’
‘Work stoppages?’
Paul shook his head.
‘Think bigger,’ he said.
‘What’s bigger, Paul? As you say, we’re out-gunned and out-lawyered. Lynthax controls just about everything, and they’ve Earth’s resources to back them up. We can’t just take Trevon off them.’
‘Can you get me access to the V4’s manifest when it arrives?’
‘I could,’ Stafford said. It sounded conditional.
‘And could you get hold of its passenger manifest when it’s due to leave for Earth?’
‘I could.’ Again, Stafford sounded as though he was waiting for a good reason to do so.
‘Would you?’ Paul asked.
‘I will. But you’ve got to tell me why.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Then no, I can’t.’
‘Come on Mark, don’t piss about. You can, so you should. You can guess what it’s for, but I can’t tell you.’
Stafford shook his head.
‘If it’s to have a go back at Earth, then I have as much right to hit back as you or anyone else. I’m Trevon born; I ain’t ever going to see Earth and I don’t mind if I never do.’
‘OK, OK, just checking on your current level of agitation,’ Paul cut in, smiling.
‘Yeah, well. I might be a worker drone, but I’ve the same rights you have—high born or not. So pony up, Paul. What’s it for?’
Paul looked at the concrete and sucked on his lower lip.
‘I can tell you if you promise to meet with a friend of mine and then never admit to having met him. I’ll tell you at the meeting. It’s the best I can do without getting into serious trouble myself.’
‘OK, fair one. When? Where?’ Stafford asked.
‘I’ll call you. And not a word to anyone. OK.’
‘I'm insulted,’ Stafford replied, smiling and pretending to clip Paul around the ear. ‘Get out of here. Come back when you finally grow a pair!’
79
Scat sat with Thomas and Goosen in a booth away from the door. It wasn’t so unusual for utility workers to walk into the diner wearing their survival suits; not if they were on their way out onto the Gap Plain, or had just re-entered the city, so Scat was wearing his with the hood pushed up at the back and the faceplate hanging down his front. He also placed his goggles low on his forehead to help pinch his eyebrows and face. Unless someone had a photo in his or her hand, he or she wouldn’t recognise him.
As Paul worked on Stafford out at the airport, Scat bounced some ideas around with Thomas and from Goosen he learned a little more about the mood of the Trevon police force.
‘To answer your earlier question, Thomas, I’ll be dismissed, for sure,’ Goosen said as he sipped his coffee. It was the same for several hundred other officers, but not all of the dismissals would take effect until the replacements had found their feet. That meant that the LM-V4 wouldn’t be taking them all back to Earth on its next run, though it might take Nettles. Maybe. It became a question mark. ‘So we’ve got a week or two, even if the replacements arrived later today,’ he added.
In the meantime, the soon to be ex-police were to serve out their notice periods, as normal. If they didn’t, they risked losing benefits. There was even the suggestion that the city would replace their land pension with a small cash bonus of sorts—but to qualify they had to stay out of trouble, and there was nothing in writing. Moreover, while they were working off their notice, their access to Police HQ, the policenet, records, armoury, and sensitive communications equipment was restricted.
‘But nearly everyone’s working to rule,’ Goosen said. ‘Even the brass.’
He then described how that morning’s debriefing had descended into chaos, with the youngest officers leading the way. Not even the cash bonus carrot could calm them down: it was irrelevant to them—they had no significant land pension to convert. Nor did they have wives or children to support. They had nothing to lose in showing their bosses just how terribly angry they were. It suggested they would be ripe for rebel recruitment over the next few weeks.
‘OK, then,’ Scat told him. ‘First thing you can do is go get yourself a pay-as-you-go graf. We all collect messages on the hour, once an hour. When you’re on the network, keep moving. When you’re finished, change direction.’
‘OK: So I stay off the network and don’t stick around to be picked up when I’m on it,’ Goosen replied. ‘The malls are open. I’ll be back in half an hour.’
He rose, threw a few dollars on the table, and walked out onto the vehicle park. Scat watched him pull knicker-elastic from out of his butt, hail a t-pod, then disappear.
As Scat looked out of the window, Thomas sipped at his coffee mulling over Goosen’s land pension. With Earth being so crowded and over developed, the New Worlds were the only places with unclaimed land to spare. Land here was plentiful, it was under developed, and it would be attractive to everyone seeking PR – it just needed prising from Lynthax’s grasp. If it was gone, or beaten down, Trevon House would be free to distribute land to everyone who had helped in the insurgency. It would be a mighty big giveaway, but it would help in Trevon’s development.
In making his promise to replace it, he had stumbled onto the one sure thing they could use to help sway the less committed.
He could not wait to speak to Nettles.
If they could get to him.
80
With Paul back from the airport, they now had to make a decision that they could live with for up to a week.
That decision concerned Chan, the GCE reporter, and Li, the bugcam operator who worked with him: Scat’s preferred prey.
‘If we kidnap them now and Nettles isn’t moved for a couple of days, where’d we keep them?’ Thomas asked.
‘In his hotel room. It’s paid for,’ Paul suggested.
Scat wasn’t so sure.
‘Messy. There are the cleaners. Someone might pop along. They’d be missed if they didn’t get out and about. It’d attract attention. Besides, two single beds and a single bathroom for the five of us?’
‘We might not get a chance later on,’ Paul noted.
‘I know. But I don’t want to be stuck in one place looking after them. And we can’t just drive around town with them in the back of the soft-track.’
‘Perhaps we should just line them up with a story, and bring them to us when we need them,’ Thomas suggested.
It was all they could do. Scat looked at Thomas.
‘Go talk to him.’
Chan was difficult to rouse, even though it was mid-morning: he had been running up and down Second Avenue until the early hours of the morning, sometimes chasing a story, at others running for his life.
From a phone in the hotel lobby, Thomas promised him an inside scoop on the heavy-handed police force dismissals and the real possibility of a violent backlash, but the offer was only good for the next 15 minutes. Despite the lack of sleep, Chan’s cur
iosity got the better of him. He agreed to meet.
Thomas grabbed a sofa and a chair in the corner of the lobby and ordered two coffees. Chan arrived looking a little crumpled; he was still wearing the clothes he had worn the night before. His body language suggested he was genuinely tired, although Thomas could not see it in his face: it was clear-eyed and unlined—just as it was in his celebrity website photo.
Thomas told him of the chaos at the police debrief that morning. He played up the social consequences of the dismissals, the resentment of losing hard-earned pensions, and the possibility that some police officers may go rogue. He laid it on thickly, sounding every bit the concerned citizen he was meant to be.
Chan nodded throughout. As he waited patiently for the young man to get to the point, he took questions on his knowledge of the Trevon police contracts, their land pension and of the constitution regarding land rights. The lad seemed to think an understanding of these issues was vital to the deeper story, so he played along. He fiddled with his e-reader and called up the Trevon housenet. With the persistent young Trevon looking over his shoulder, he scrolled down to the schedule containing the land provisions.
Finally, they got the part Chan had left his bed for: there was to be a meeting of the more seriously pissed police officers across town in a short while. It may just decide how they will respond to the Outer Rim Force’s arrival.
This was more like it: if the police challenged the ORF then that may be more explosive than the street protests he had covered last night.
‘They want a record of the meeting—to play on Earth, to explain their position,’ Thomas said, adding, ‘Can you bring a camera?’
Chan agreed. If the young lad hadn’t brought it up, he was going to suggest it anyway. Using his graf, he called up his bugcam operator and told him to be ready for an outing.
As Chan chatted to his colleague, Thomas returned to his coffee. So, for communications to his closest colleague, the Chinaman relied on standard comms and he used an e-reader to conduct basic research. As far as he could tell, the beggar wasn’t neural netted.
Without warning, Thomas declared the meeting over. He wanted to keep Chan on his toes; he needed him to want a little more.
‘I’ll call you when the meeting’s been set. Can you be on 30 minutes notice?’ he asked