Like a Boss (20 page)

“That’s a lie!”

“You’re a liar!”

The squabbling started up. I banged the wrench on the strut so hard that sparks flew. “ENOUGH!” I yelled. I could feel the feedback from the nearby pais. The crowd stilled again.

“Everyone here has gotten screwed at some point in their lives,” I said. “I used to be a Ward Chair, and now I muck out the holding tanks at the bottom of the Brushhead water works. I spend every day covered in filth. I’m sure a lot of you do, too.

“And you know what keeps me going? It’s the knowledge that, as bad as things may get for me, I’m not owned by WalWa anymore. I know that there are people here on Santee really looking out for me, even though I have to kick them in the ass to remind them of that.”

A mild titter traveled through the crowd. A few of them whispered to each other, and I caught them saying my name or
Sky Queen
. That damn song...

I cleared my throat. “I know a lot of you are angry because you haven’t gotten what you think you’ve earned. A lot of you think you’ve been ripped off by your bosses, or by the Union, or by the person who sells you vegetables. The more I’ve talked with people, the more I’m convinced that you’re right. Things have gone bad with the Union. It’s not living up to its end of the bargain.

“But is this the way to hold them to it? Fighting each other over tea and bolts? This is the kind of crap that the Big Three
loves
. When we fight each other, we forget to fight
them
. And do you want to let the Big Three win?”

The people looked at me, then at each other.

I sagged, then leaned toward the crowd. “Really? Contract Time is less than a year away. The Big Three are betting that we won’t have our act together so they can slip some new evil under our noses. You want that? You want to make even
less
than you do now?”

People shook their heads. I heard a few
No
s here and there.

“Then you have to
want
a better life. You have to
want
to work together, ’cause that’s the only thing we’ve got. When we’re united, Union and Freeborn, we are unstoppable. We have to work together. We have to
fight
together. And you look like people who want to fight. Am I right?”

That got a few cheers.

“I said, do you want to
fight
?”

That got even more.

“Then start talking it out
here
, then you take it to your Ward Chairs. Take it to the Union Hall. Even if you’re Freeborn, ’cause whatever the Big Three are planning to do will screw
you
even harder.”

I jumped off the table and pointed at the first person I saw, a Union woman clutching a stack of motherboards. “You,” I said, “what are you pissed off about?”

She held out the circuitry. “I can’t operate my CNC mill with this crap.”

And so on for another two hours. I ran out of buffer space on my pai recording one story after another about pay cuts, evaporating benefits, or promised equipment never arriving. I got the names of everyone involved: the Ward Chairs who were supposed to make things happen, the Committees that were accountable, the endless list of promises broken to everyone, Union and Freeborn alike. I cadged a notebook from a bookbinder’s stall and a bunch of colored pencils from an art supplier, and even then I ran out of room. I had a whole volume of How I Got Screwed By The Union, written by the people of Bakaara Market.

I blinked up the time: five o’clock. My hand hurt from writing. My eye twitched from all the blinking. I thanked my last interviewee and found Onanefe talking to a Freeborn woman. He scribbled in a notebook, nodding as the woman talked about water cutbacks. When he saw me, he thanked her and stuffed the notebook in his satchel. “You finally ready to go shopping?” he asked.

“Food first.” I nodded to his satchel. “You been busy?”

He shrugged. “A lotta people want to talk. I like to listen.”

“And record.”

“That a crime?”

I shook my head. “Looks like someone doing the work.”

He made a face. “I think I’d rather do the eating.”

“Then follow me,” I said. “I know a place with great tacos.”

“I suppose I’m buying?”

“No, because I get tacos on credit.”

He opened his eyes wide. “I think I have much to learn from you.”

I threw him a very sloppy wink. “Stick with me, mister. I’ll take you places.”

We wove our way through the stalls. The mood had calmed, though I could see tension on everyone’s faces, as if they were still waiting for
something
to happen. The vendors kept their patter to a minimum. Everyone kept blinking madly, the sign of pais on the fritz. The sharp wave of panic had died down, but I could feel the anger running through the people, like a low-level electric current just waiting for a gap to jump.

“What’s got you angry?” asked Onanefe.

I shrugged. “The usual. The unfairness of entropy. Man’s inhumanity to man. The fact that my favorite konbini upcharges for kimchi.”

He shook his head. “You want to keep it to yourself, fine.”

“I don’t
know
you,” I said, giving him a broad
fuck-you
smile. “We’re not friends. We’re not colleagues.
You
claim I owe you money, so that means we have a transactional relationship. Feelings aren’t part of that transaction.”

“Even though we have the same goal?”

“We do? That’s news to me.”

He smiled as he wagged his finger. “I watched you today. Every time you talked with someone, you lit up. You
like
this.”

“Because I know I’m going to use it to get Leticia Smythe off her ass. Never underestimate the motivational power of spite.”

“So you’ve been done wrong, too?”

I gave him a little shrug. “I guess. Spend enough time wading in muck, you’ll think
everyone’s
done you wrong.”

Next to us was a table covered in coiled multi-colored network cables. Two men were arguing about the esoterica of network protocol and blaming each other for their lack of pai access. A pair of cops stood by, not looking at the ever-heating argument. Soni would have had their heads if she’d seen her people not breaking up arguments before they turned into brawls.

Both of the arguers, I couldn’t help but notice, wore a Temple pin. Even Saarien’s people were losing their cool. “But you know what? Right now, I just want to get dinner. We can worry about Letty later.”

“What, you think she’s gonna pay attention to you?”

“I’ll make sure she does.”

And that’s when the network cables exploded.

My brain wasn’t sure how to process that. One moment, I was looking at a table full of cables; the next, the cables flew at me like a forest of striking cane vipers. There was no flash, no bang, no puff of smoke. Just a thousand noodles of wire and caneplas shooting toward our heads. They lashed around my shoulders and neck, and I fell to the ground under their weight.

I took a moment to catch my breath and tamp down my rising panic. I wasn’t on fire. I looked over at Onanefe. He wasn’t on fire either. That was good. I could work with that.

“Here.” I reached for him, and another wave of cables flew over us, followed by a table, two chairs, and a few hundred people.

Three of them stepped on us before I could grab Onanefe and pull him toward me. I wrapped my arms over his head and held on tight. Boots came down on my legs, my hips. Someone tripped and landed on my side, squeezing all the air out of my lungs. I let fly with an elbow while I gasped in a breath. Onanefe’s eyes were wide with panic. I couldn’t hear his muffled words over the roar of the mob. I held him closer, wrapping a leg over his hip. “It’s going to be okay!” I yelled, my own voice fighting to get through the cables covering my face.

The Fear hissed:
You’re going to miss Six O’Clock, and all because you saved this guy who says you owe him money. What is he to you? A creditor. Who saves someone you owe money? You’re an idiot.

“Shut it,” I hissed under my breath. A foot came down on my back. Three people stepped on Onanefe, and he howled. I held him closer. To hell with The Fear. I wasn’t going to let anyone get trampled. I wormed both of us against the overturned table until we both huddled against the ragged tabletop. People jostled the table as they bumped the ends. The world was a white noise haze of rushing bodies, screams, and the table banging on the pourform ground.

I didn’t know how long it took for the noise to die down. I waited until the table stopped moving for a whole minute before I threw off the cables and gave Onanefe a nudge. “You still alive?”

He groaned. “I think I broke a rib.” He tried to get up, then went right back down. “Or three.”

I took my multi-tool from my trousers, thankful it hadn’t tumbled out in the chaos. I snapped open the shears and cut away the cables around his body. “Just stay still. I’ll find help.”

Onanefe gave a weak chuckle. “I think the help went with the mob. What was that?”

“No idea.” I pulled cables off his neck, trying not to touch the fresh lashes the cables had made on his skin. “Can you breathe?”

He inhaled and winced.

“Good enough.” I got under his arm and helped him up. “Please don’t faint on me.”

We stood all the way up. It looked like a hurricane had swept through the Market. Everything that wasn’t made of coral steel had been smashed to pieces. Awnings were torn apart, tables snapped in half, and fruit, clothes, and electronic components lay scattered on the ground. There were a few other wounded people with bloodied faces and limbs hanging at weird angles.

But as I looked toward the west edge where Hawa kept her stall, I saw no damage. The line of wreckage moved in a thin, straight line from Parkhurst to Djimon, two hundred meters long. It was like a stampede of very narrow bison had plowed its way through the Market.

The small amount of damage wasn’t enough to keep the other vendors open, however. As I helped Onanefe toward Hawa’s stall, I saw everyone had closed up shop. What couldn’t be rolled up, stowed, or boxed was simply dumped into wheelbarrows and bakfietsen and taken away. It looked like someone had hit the hurricane warning alarm, the one that meant get the hell out now.

Hawa’s stall was one of the few permanent ones, more of an open-air office than a tent. The front was all display boards, but the back was a pourform shed with enough room for four people. By the time we got there, the coral steel door to the shed was closed, and chicken wire wrapped around the now-emptied front. An embroidered sign (
All done for the day, thank you!
) hung from the wire. Above the sign was the crocheted figure of a woman holding a spiked cricket bat. Tiny crocheted heads hung from the woman’s belt, their eyes now adorable stitched X’s.

“Hawa!” I yelled, banging on the chicken wire with my free hand. “I need you!”

“We’re closed!” came Hawa’s voice from behind the door.

“I can see that, but I still need you! It’s Padma!”

There was a horrible pause, and then the door’s multiple locks clacked. Hawa opened the door enough to see me and cursed. She was an elegant woman who decorated her hand-knitted hijab with strings of glass beads. They rattled as she shook her head. “This isn’t a good time.”

“I pay you five hundred yuan a month for times just like this.”

She
tch
ed, wrinkling the starfield and sextant tattooed on her cheek. “I’ve got all my stock in here, plus my granddaughter.”

“Then we’ll be very careful and polite as we take shelter. You gonna let us in, or do I have to start telling everyone that you farm out your needlework?”

“Shh!” She strode to the chicken wire and unwrapped it. “You want to ruin me?”

I helped Onanefe through the gap. “Of course not. I love the scarves you make.”

Hawa gave Onanefe the hairy eyeball. “Who’s this?”

He straightened up enough to give Hawa a bow. “Asalam malakum, sister.”

“Wa alaikum salaam.” She nodded. “At least he’s got manners. More than I can say for you, Padma, showing up in the middle of a riot. Get your asses inside.”

Hawa slammed the door behind us and threw four bolts into place. The pourform walls kept the inside of the shed cool, though I felt little balls of heat from the two lamps overhead. Stacks of knitwear went from floor to ceiling. A teenage girl sat at a tiny table, knitting needles in hand. I eased Onanefe into the chair opposite her. The girl looked at him, then gripped her needles together, points facing him. He gave her a polite nod before going back to sweating and wincing.

“How long you been holed up in here?” I asked.

“Long enough.” Hawa’s copper bracelets rattled as she fussed over a tiny teapot with equally tiny copper cups. They looked like giant thimbles. She made a tall, precise pour into each one. The smell of heavy mint filled the office. “I opened up this morning and could tell it was going to be a weird day. Everybody was snapping up staples or meds or anything that could make for a good weapon. And no one knew why! No one talked about what they were worried about, just that they were worried.” She handed each of us a cup and toasted us. “One gulp. You lose flavor if you sip.”

We downed our tea, and I felt something like relief rush from the back of my head down to my toes. Except for the bus ride and hiding from the human tsunami, I had been on my feet all day. I also hadn’t eaten since that guy gave me a coconut hours ago. I nodded to Onanefe. “You got any pain meds? He got stepped on.”

Hawa shook her head. “My first aid kit got boosted yesterday. Why don’t you give him a slug of that rum?”

I felt the blood rush out of my face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She clucked her tongue. “Oh, please. You think I don’t know what’s in your stash?”

“I paid you to keep it, no questions asked!”

She shrugged. “I didn’t ask. I just looked. A case of Old Windswept and some candles? Is that really worth five Cs a month?”

Onanefe turned to me. “Seriously? What is it, some kinda special blend?”

Hawa laughed. “No, it’s just the plain stuff. From what I understand, you make a good rum, but it can’t be
that
good.”