Nigel sighed and worked two pipes together, applying sealant. No matter how advanced technology got, there was always grunt labor needed to jimmy stubborn matter into place. No legions of robots or smartened animals ever replaced the general handyman-cum-janitor.
Time to trot out the apology again. “Son, I’m sorry I got us into this—”
“Look, I heard a rumor,” Ito said evenly.
Nigel shook his head, bone-weary. He was feeling sour, defeated. “I’m not in the mood for rumors.”
Matters had not worked out well between Ito and Nigel for quite a while now. His brilliantly mangled handling of the Chairwoman had not improved the festering tension—inevitable, he supposed—between him and his first son, now coming to manhood.
Ito had bridled at the discipline imposed by the Chairwoman’s silent, impassive police. Rough handling. Abrupt dawn awakenings. Long days of scut work. Adequate meals that had to be eaten in a rush. Little privacy in the muggy, close apartment given them, sandwiched into a brawling tenement. No time off the grinding labor. No chance to get out of the curfew hours, the iron-hard lockup, the rigid lights-out. No access to any media, no contact with ordinary people other than to pick up their trash.
Angelina and Benjamin had borne up well. Nigel and Nikka could take punishment, too, but their oldest son had snapped back at their police “escorts.” He had refused to clean up messes when toilet plumbing broke, swore at the police orders. So the placid police had most politely smacked him around, prodded him with neuro-stims, given him a “seize-up,” which locked his muscles in vibrating bands of rigid tension—all while faintly amused. It had not improved Ito’s mood.
Not a future utopia, no.
But the future, certainly. The city they glimpsed from the back alleys where they worked was strange and fabulous. As nearly as they could tell, the complex was stratified, with an upper crust that reveled in techno-wonders, a vast majority that lived ample lives, and a lower caste that did the grunt work. Not exactly a fresh idea.
There were technologies Nikka and Nigel were sure had not existed anywhere in the esty in their era. The Grey Mech had slammed them into a future far from their comforts.
Ito persisted. “This rumor, it said maybe the Chairwoman will listen to us again.”
Nigel studied his son’s face, trying to think clearly despite the spreading ache in his lower back from stooping, and the silent blanket of fatigue that had spread over him. Still an hour left in this work day. “That’s not a rumor. Who told you?”
Ito looked edgy as he swept back a greasy tangle of hair. “Tonogan. She wants to see you.”
“You’ve been negotiating with her?”
“Not really.”
“Which means?”
“Well, maybe some.”
“The family has to speak with one voice, as you full well know.”
Ito chewed his lip. “Well, you aren’t doing anything.”
“I’m waiting her out.”
“Her waiting’s easier than ours.”
“She wants our property. It’s probably worth a lot more than you or I think.”
Ito flared, mouth twisting. “How can we know what to think? We’re stuck down in basements and alleys all day, busting our humps, getting flat nothing—”
Nigel sat on a trash can and kicked at a brown flask, still corked but empty. He had never thought of the far future as a place of ordinary junk and grit, much of which a medieval peasant would have instantly recognized.
“Right,” he conceded, “it’s not playing out well. That Chairwoman—what a bland name for a tyrant!—seems bound by what passes for law here. She can’t simply take what she wants. There are procedures.”
“I can’t see where we have any rights at all.”
“This place seems to work through intimidation, rather than rights.”
Ito chuckled dryly. “With a frosting of polite brutality, I bet.”
Nigel nodded. The family was getting depressed and, quite so, the Chairwoman could exert arcane legalisms to keep them like this indefinitely.
“Dad, you’re in over your head here. That fall you took last week was nasty and I can see you’re still limping—”
“Scarcely felt it.”
The slow, steady ache in his left leg never left him. Somehow he had not thought that the far future would still have pain in it, either. I saw too much rosy-visioned Walt Disney, he thought tartly. Would anybody in this whole cupped city recognize that ancient name? Of course not.
“So I just took it on myself to talk a li’l to Tonogan—”
“Without telling anyone. Breaching the family’s—”
“You weren’t doing a goddamn thing to—”
“That’s enough.”
Tonogan had come into the alley without their noticing. She was sleekly dressed in gray-black, a thin club like a riding crop tapping on her thigh. Nigel gestured to Ito to be cautious.
She said, “I gather from your son that you might be in a mood to renegotiate.”
“You’re just in time,” Nigel said, sitting up straight. “I was about to leave for my exercise at the gymnasium.”
“Very funny. Remember, I have your medical indices.”
