Like a Boss (17 page)

“We’ve been dealing with dehydration all week,” said the woman. I really wished I could blink up her name, just so I wouldn’t have to keep thinking of her as
Medical Lady
. “At least salts are cheap. But if we start getting more knifings, we’re gonna be out of supplies pretty soon.”

“Is Santee General running that low?” I asked.

Medical Lady snorted. “Everyone’s running low. Haven’t you heard? Or have you been in a hole in the ground?”

I thought to tell her that, no, my distillery was actually quite comfortable, but held my tongue.

She shouldered her pack. “Before the strike started, we had enough to get us through the month. But that was a month of regular life. Things get uglier with strikes.”

“Then who’s supposed to be in charge of getting you what you need?”

Medical Man snorted. “The Medical Committee. But they have no money.” He nodded to me. “Don’t work that shoulder for a few days. The muscle needs time to knit itself back together.” They pushed their way back into the crowd.

Onanefe gave me a hand up. “That was a bit of good luck, finding the medicos.”

“They’re always handy to have around when some nut wants to stab you.” I gave my shoulder a tiny roll. The CauterIce had left my entire arm numb, so I felt nothing. I peeled off the bloodied remains of my shirt and buttoned up my jacket. I’d have to find a cooler replacement layer soon, or I’d turn into one of those dehydration victims Medical Lady talked about. “Where is he?”

Onanefe gestured toward the back of the cutters’ truck. “We got him here. Luccio used to farm pigs, so he’s got the guy trussed up nice. What do you want to do with him?”

“Talk with him. From a safe distance.”

My assailant lay in the truck bed, hog-tied on his belly, his head facing outward. His face was screwed up in a frown, and his eyes kept flickering from side-to-side.

I squatted in front of him. “Hi, there. People usually have a few drinks with me before they try and stab me. You want something?”

His lip quivered, and he looked me in the eye. “I wanted you out of my way.”

“I don’t even know you,” I said.

“You are in my way!” he shouted, jerking against the knots on his wrists and ankles. He flopped toward me, his teeth bared. “You are in my way!”

I slapped him.

He stopped moving and stared at me. “You
hit
me,” he said, all the fire out of his voice.

“And you
stabbed
me,” I said. “If you’re going to get worked up over a little slap, then you’re more messed up than I thought.”

“There’s nothing wrong with
me
,” he said. “I’m doing the people’s work. I’m one of history’s select.”

I smiled, making my face as bright and open and gullible-looking as possible. “Selected by who?”

He grinned, showing me perfect teeth. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I sure would, seeing how it might keep you from getting tossed into the clink.”

He barked a laugh. “Who’s going to do it? The police? They’re with us. Besides, when they find out what I was doing, they’ll let me go. I’m a hero, me.”

“For stabbing innocent women?”

“You were in my way,” he said. “No one is innocent if they’re in my way. I am the fist of righteousness.”

“Even if that fist has a knife?”

He blew his tongue at me, and I walked back to Onanefe at the front of the truck. “Does anyone know this guy?”

They all shook their heads. “City’s getting super crowded with marchers,” said Onanefe. “I hear there are people sailing in.”

“From where?”

He shrugged. “Everywhere. It’s a planet-wide strike, you know? All those farms have a couple of dozen people, and there are, what, ten thousand farms across Santee?”

“So he could be from anywhere. Terrific.”

Onanefe rubbed his mustache. “I have the feeling he’s local. Ish. His accent isn’t sing-songy enough to come from the Western Chains, too harsh to come from the South Archipelago, and too flat to come from the North. His clothes are from a Big Three catalogue, not homespun. He’s seen a lot of sun, but his skin’s in pretty good condition. No scars, no ink. All of that tells me he’s a Freeborn kid from Santee City or its immediate surroundings.”

“You can tell all that from his voice, clothes, and skin?”

He nodded, then his face broke into a grin. “That, plus he dropped a wallet stuffed with receipts from a bakery in Globus Heights.” He pulled a battered leather wallet from his trousers and held it up. Dozens of bagasse-paper slips stuck out of its folds, little flags flapping in the breeze.

I rolled my eyes. “And here I thought you were going to crack this case wide open just through observation.”

He shrugged. “So I read a few detective novels. You get a lot of downtime in this line of work.”

“Did that wallet tell you this guy’s name?”

“It did not. Just that the dude loved him some proja.”

I took the wallet and sighed. “Well, it’s a start… Did you say proja?”

He nodded. “I’m not a fan, myself. A little too sweet. I like my cornbread crumbly.”

I looked at the receipts. They were all from Lepa’s Bakery, where I had just met Odd Dupree before he took me to Saarien’s church. I rewound my buffer and saw it again: the knife, the anger, the screams of
PARASITE!
I rewound to just a few moments ago:
I’m one of history’s select.
I rewound even farther: Ly Huang’s smug face as she said,
We are history’s select.

“Son of a bitch,” I said. I banged the hood of the truck. “SON OF A BITCH!”

“Hey, mind the wheels, please,” said Onanefe. “This truck is our calling card.”

“Sorry,” I said through gritted teeth. “I think I know where this schmuck came from.”

“Yeah?”

“You know the Temple of New Holy Light?”

Onanefe nodded. “I’m familiar with it.”

“The guy who runs it, the one who called for this strike? He tried to kill me once.”

Onanefe’s eyebrows shot up. “The skinny white guy? Bad teeth? Wears a white suit?”

I cocked my head. “You been there?”

He shook his head. “A couple of cousins got caught up two months ago. They were spongers, so I figured anything to get them out of the house, you know? That Temple’s been trying to scoop as many people as they could into their flock.” He sucked his teeth and spat. “I had to tell my cousins to stay in the city before they pulled their families’ work crews apart. What is it with bums and religion?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” I said, wiping sweat off my forehead. “Right after I get a new shirt.”

“I saw a place on Saroyan that’s still open,” said one of the cutters.

“What about Stabbing Boy?” said Onanefe. “You want we should find a cop?”

I winked at him. “That’ll do.”

I walked down Samarkand and got as far as the corner when I heard a scuffle of feet behind me. I turned, and Onanefe and the rest of the cutters bumped into each other as they came to a halt. All of them carried leather satchels, as if they were going to work.

“Help you guys with something?” I said.

“We’re going with,” said Onanefe. “If you don’t mind.” The cutters all nodded.

“I think I do,” I said, taking a few steps.

The cutters followed suit. “It’s just there’s this little matter of the fifty thousand yuan,” said Onanefe.

“Which I’m not about to discuss without a change of clothes and a consult with my site manager,” I said. “What, you think I’m going to disappear?”

The cutters all looked at each other, then nodded.

I rolled my eyes. “Where can I
go
? Up the cable? If there’s a planet-wide strike, it’s probably going to extend to everyone working in orbit. Besides, it’s creepy as hell to have you all following me. Knock it off.”

“But–”

“No.” I didn’t yell it, but I put as much force into that word as I could as I held up a single finger. “You got a business problem with me? Okay. Then we will deal with this like business people.”

“But–”

I put my finger on Onanefe’s chest. He froze, and I pushed until he stepped back in the middle of his crew. “If I actually owe you money, I will make it right. But that doesn’t mean you get to tail me, hoping I’m going to drop fifty K on the sidewalk for you to scoop up. You’re freaking me out, and that makes me want to call a cop, not my manager.”

“Cops are on strike,” said one cutter. Onanefe shot him a withering look, and the man shrunk behind his comrades.

“I’m sure they are,” I said. “But they’ll look out for someone from their neighborhood who’s got a dozen guys following her around.” Or for someone who could call the police chief’s direct line, busted Public or no.”

Onanefe worked his jaw for a moment, then pulled his crew into a huddle. They conferred in low whispers, punctuated by the occasional punch to the shoulder. They stood up, and Onanefe said, “How do you feel about me going with you?”

“Still creepy as hell.”

“I would like to point out that someone tried to stab you.”

“What, you want to be my bodyguard?”

He smiled. “Why not? I have a vested interest in keeping you free from harm.”

On the one hand, it still bugged me that these guys felt the need to stick with me. Then my shoulder twinged, like my whole arm had been jabbed with tiny, tiny needles. The CauterIce must have begun to wear off. It had been a long time since someone had tried to take me on at close range. The fact that I hadn’t seen it coming bugged me even more.

“Here’s the deal,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and regretting it. “First, the minute I feel like you’re occupying too much of my space, you go. No questions asked.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and swayed, like the movement helped him weigh his options. He shrugged and nodded. “Done.”

“Second, if someone tries to take a swing at me, you do not step in.”

He snorted. “What, you want me to just stand by and let you get knifed again?”

“No, but I would rather you not get knifed on my account.”

He swiped at his mustache with his thumb. “Okay. But I’m not going to let you get yourself croaked. Dealing with probate’s a bear.”

“I appreciate your concern.”

“Anything else?”

“Keep up.” I turned and walked down Samarkand.

Onanefe ran after me. “You always this quick?”

“Death threats are a great motivator.” I looked up at the sun, now working its way toward the middle of the sky. “Besides, this coat is hot as hell.”

We pushed our way through the mass of marchers working its way down Koothrapalli. The commercial enthusiasm I’d seen earlier had not touched this block. Only a konbini and a bar were open. Every other business had closed up, their storefronts covered by makeshift barricades. The ribs of airship canopies held battered deckplates over windows and doors, and worried shopkeepers cradled cricket bats and pipe wrenches as they eyed the mass of people. I couldn’t remember the last time there had been any looting, not even during the messy weeks that led up to Contract Time. My neighbors looked at me like I was a barbarian raider, not as someone who bought eggs and face cream from their stores.

Saroyan Street was on the other side of Koothrapalli, and the open clothing store had marked everything up two hundred percent. I was out of cash, so Onanefe had to float me enough to buy a second-hand t-shirt covered in pinhole burns. “Factory seconds,” said the woman behind the counter, a cigarette smoldering between her lips. The shirt itched, but I figured the holes would help with ventilation. I made a mental note to bring the owner in front of the Commerce Committee for price-gouging, assuming there would still be a Commerce Committee.

It was a long, long walk to Globus Heights. With no cash or Public connection to my bank account, I couldn’t buy any of the food offered by the conspicuously non-striking vendors we saw. Onanefe, however, kept recognizing people along the way and cadged a sandwich here, some guava there, drinks of water everywhere. By the time we got to Lepa’s Bakery, I was full, hydrated, and had to pee.

I assumed the woman standing in front of the bakery was Lepa herself; with no Public access, every face in the city now belonged to a complete stranger. Her hair was held close to her skull in a hairnet, and her lipstick was a bright orange. She held a rolling pin in her hand, and she had a rolling pin tattooed on her cheek. I walked up to her, my knees tumbling together to keep my screaming bladder from emptying. “Bathroom’s for customers only,” she said before I could even ask.

I gritted my teeth. “Then I’ll take some proja.”

“That’ll be forty yuan.”

“Can you take an IOU? I’m good for it.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “‘I’m good for it’ usually means ‘I don’t have cash.’”

“The Public’s down, and I had to shell out all my money for this shirt.”

“My money, technically,” said Onanefe.

Her other eyebrow went up. “You got ripped off.”

“I got this,” said Onanefe, holding up a ten-yuan note.

Lepa’s orange mouth curled into a sneer. “What do you expect to buy with that?”

“A bathroom break for my friend.”

Lepa snorted. “You have any idea what my water bill has been for the past week? What toilet paper costs?”

“Look, forget it,” I said, stepping between the two. “I’ll cop a squat in an alley.”

Onanefe held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Where’s your dignity?”

“Dignity probably costs more than either of us have right now.”

Onanefe pulled more bills out of his pocket, muttering under his breath. He held up the wad of cash in Lepa’s face. “Is that enough for her?”

I batted his hand. “I do not need you covering for me, okay?”

“What, you’re worried about adding more to your tab?”

I fought back my rising gorge. “You know, a few hours ago, I was prepared to give you a fair shake. I’d get my manager, talk this out, make sure we were square. But now? Now you’re pissing me off. Now you make me want to get
lawyers
.”

“Oh, look at Ms Distiller. How’s the weather up on your high horse?”

“At least I can climb up on a high horse myself, without some asshat pretending to help me.”

“Jesus.” Lepa snatched some bills from Onanefe’s hand. “I haven’t seen drama like that since Shakespeare in the Bay.” She unlocked the door. “You can do better than this, honey.”