War World X: Takeover (20 page)
Entering the penthouse, Cole was directed to a large office where Ehrenfeld Bronson sat behind a big nineteenth-century style partners’ desk that did little to obscure his bulk. Bronson wasn’t a fat man, just a big mesomorph, like a linebacker with an extra hundred pounds.
Cole pointed to the portal which displayed the blue ball of Haven with a wide brown and black girdle across the center.
“Ultima Thule, at last,” he observed.
“Enough of your wisecracks, Cole.” Bronson paused to shake his head. “I haven’t enjoyed the last year myself. Couldn’t they find a worldlet any farther away?”
Cole shook his head. “It’s a good place to die.”
Ehrenfeld sighed. “You just don’t get it, Cole. You’re in enough trouble as it is after your last screw-up. If your little revolt had gone off as intended, we’d both be in a better place.”
Bronson was wrong, Cole did get it; he knew exactly just how deep he’d sunk into this particular septic tank. He also knew that getting out of it meant taking orders from this fathead, which was something he wasn’t going to enjoy. On his last visit to Luna, Assistant Director Wainwright had made it very clear that he was to follow any and all orders of the Bronson scion. Cole’s own due diligence had informed him that Ehrenfeld Bronson was in the same cesspool that he was, although at a much higher level; and, knowing just what it was that flows downhill, he knew exactly where he stood.
Thomas Ehrenfeld Bronson had suffered as well, having been cashiered from his cushy CEO position at Dover Mineral Development. He had been sent out to Haven to corner the shimmer stone market and regain the monopoly Dover had lost when some lucky miner discovered the shimmer stones on his own. It was do the job or be stranded on Haven for the next few decades for both of them.
He also knew about Bronson and DeSilva patronage and power. It was no coincidence that the CD cruiser, the
CDSN Invincible
, was scheduled to arrive in a few T-weeks with a battalion of CoDominium Marines. This time the Harmonies were doomed; there would be no rabbits popping out of this hat.
“Just to make things perfectly clear, Cole. This is a joint operation between Dover and Kennicott Metals. For once we’re both united in our goal, which is to have Haven declared a CoDominium Protectorate.”
“I’m well aware of your joint stand, sir,” he replied.
Sure, both companies want to strip the moon of all its resources with the CD’s permission and help. Nothing could be clearer, The Masters of the CoDominium have spoken. Who am I to stand in their way?
“Well, you have about four T-weeks to provide the Marines with a token excuse to clean up Castell City and declare martial law. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Cole answered. “The Harmonies are not the most sophisticated of opponents. This time we’ll keep our activities centered on them rather than the farmers and outlying prospectors.”
And you’d better hope I succeed, you fat frog. Or we’ll both be stranded on this ice-ball for the rest of our lives. And, when it comes to corralling the Haven Shimmer Stone Cooperative and controlling the shimmer stone market, your are on your own, as per Asst. Director Wainwright’s orders.
2057 A.D., Haven
T
hey came from gutters, from hovels and from broken homes. They came from the wrong side of the street and the wrong side of the tracks. They came from sleeping rough. They came hungry, angry and terrified, but they came. From Docktown, Cambiston, and even from Castell City proper they came to the meeting, having heard the whispers, the coded phrases. They came to see, and stayed to hear.
To an undeveloped segment of shore just south of Town Square, where bushes blocked easy access to higher ground, they came, and some helped dig foxholes and trenches amidst the bushes. They came because the son of the man who had led the first settlers to Haven had called them together, all the unwanted, neglected, feral children of Haven. Despite the difficulty of birthing, making each child a kind of miracle of survival, there were many such waifs. Most got by scrounging, stealing, or worse. The rest barely got by. If this preacher’s son, this Wilgar Castell, could offer them some better-shuffled deal, then fine, they’d take it under advisement.
“You’re all here because there’s no other place to go,” Wilgar said, his thirteen years of age carried in a tall, lanky frame with a grave face and laughing eyes. And that first time, they’d agreed with his logic, and they’d agreed to help him in his plans to face reality, to find out what was really going on with Haven, and maybe to figure out some way of dealing with matters his father had long since stopped seeing.
Several months later they dubbed themselves the Irregulars, after a group of street urchins used by Sherlock Holmes for low-level intelligence gathering and running errands. Wilgar Castell had read aloud to them occasionally, but never those dreary Harmony Concordances. He always read exciting stories, stories with elements that made sense to their lives, the way they lived. They learned from Wilgar, and he, in turn, learned from them.
Wilgar crept on hands and knees from the tunnel, leaving his parents, the Reverend Charles Castell and his wife Saral, sleeping soundly. Activity in the Harmony Compound at that hour consisted of a few bleary-eyed acolytes tending the farm animals or doing other quotidian chores.
Staying low, Wilgar dug up a pouch he’d stashed under a corner of a midden-heap, hurried to his secret exit, then ran away from the Compound, moving first west, then south. He followed a random route on which he decided moment-to-moment, now dashing over yard-fences, then ducking under wagons trundling by loaded with barrels of beer, now dodging barrows stacked high with sacks of foodstuffs from the outlying farms. He hurried, but kept his eyes open. His breathing, even in the thin, cold atmosphere of Haven, remained steady because he’d been born there and his body had acclimated well indeed.
His clothes, dark and nothing at all like a Harmony’s usual robes, hid him in shadow and blurred him as he ran to new ones. When he had to run, he clutched the heavy pouch against his chest.
At the trenches he found most of his Irregulars already there. One, Butch, stood up and said, “All set, sir.”
“Good. Report.”
They told him of strangers. These mysterious souls had drifted during off-times, probably from Splashdown Island. One was definitely from a wealthy, influential family on Earth. Some spoke with off-world accents, and one had a distinctly Earthish accent. Old King Cole, one of the Irregulars called that one. “His name’s Cole, I think, and he’s always scowling, like he hates it here. He was here a few years ago, smuggling arms for Jomo’s gang.”
“Find out what he’s up to now,” Wilgar said.
There were other reports, too, concerning unrest among the miners, rumors of valuable ore-strikes made by lone prospectors in the Atlas Mountains, and even a report of a new strain of venereal disease currently turning various body parts of Haven’s whores a purplish-blue. “No other symptom that they can see, so it’s kind of getting popular.” There was even heavy wagering on who’d come up with the first blue tongue.
Wilgar maintained his connections with all sorts, the better to gather more disparate data. Each datum added to an aggregate mosaic picture which bothered him more and more. His father’s church, the Church of New Universal Harmony, owned the settlement charter for Haven, yet dominated the planet less and less: Wilgar wondered how everything fit.
After reports, the Irregulars divvied up the food from Wilgar’s pouch, and as they ate perhaps their first decent meal in days, they chattered, sang, rough-housed and generally acted like one big extended family.
Wilgar slipped away when he was able, and made it back home before his father, never a heavy sleeper, awoke and began issuing that day’s duties. For him, the world had become the Harmony Compound, but for his son, the world was a much bigger, much more complex, and much more interesting place. It was a place Wilgar intended to affect, and for the better.
“Oh, and get me some rope, would you?” the Reverend Charles Castell asked Wilgar.
“What for?” Wilgar asked. It would be easier to get the right type and length if he knew what purpose the rope was to serve.
His father, however, merely gave a glance to one side and said, “You’ll see. I need lots. Any kind. Even odds-and-ends. Just keep bringing me rope.”
To avoid sparking another fit of ranting, Wilgar simply agreed to the odd request. In fact, he actually had the Irregulars gathering up bits and pieces of discarded rope, until he saw what it was being used for, and by that time, many other developments occupied both Wilgar and his Irregulars, for Haven, having been settled, was about to be settled again, top to bottom.
2058 A.D., Castell City
“More,” the Reverend Charles Castell demanded. He held out his fingers like claws. He motioned with urgency, causing the white robes to flap on his scrawny frame. His eyes stared, and drool escaped a corner of his mouth. His hair formed a white halo behind his shiny, bare face; the walk he’d taken through the fire pit over a decade ago had robbed him forever of his facial hair.
Kev Malcolm, Castell’s First Deacon, handed over another tangle of rope, then sat back into a resigned, exhausted slouch. He watched the Reverend Castell work, now and then shaking his head in disbelief, disgust or despair. The lumpy thing on the altar grew slowly but steadily.
“It’s got to be perfect,” Castell said, crouching over a huge tangle of knots, at the core of which nestled a leather-clad, locked book of some sort. No one but perhaps Castell knew what the book contained.
Kev stood and stretched, joints crackling. “I must see to the others,” he said, his tone quiet. When the Reverend failed to acknowledge him, Kev got down and crawled under the curtain, through the zigzag tunnel, and out into dim-day. He glanced at Cat’s Eye, which seemed stuck on the sharp peaks of the Atlas Range. His breath puffed, a tiny cloud soon shredded by brisk wind. Kev flopped his cowl over his head, then trudged through the compound, seeking the Deacon’s lodge.
Raucous laughter, reports of firecrackers, and other sounds of revelry lobbed over the palisade from Castell City. Such noise fell unwelcome into the Harmony compound, fell as discord into a chorus whose music had already been scattered by too many lone voices.
Cambiston, the section of town adjacent to Havenhold Lake, produced the most noise with the fewest excuses, being the place with the most bars, taverns, saloons, bordellos, flop-houses, gambling establishments, and liquor stores. Between Cambiston and the Harmony compound lay Castell City proper, where merchants cringed behind barred windows, citizens walked the streets only in armed groups, and where the town square once consecrated by the Reverend Castell in the first hours of Haven’s settlement lay strewn with garbage and the droppings of foraging animals, some of them featherless bipeds too drunk to make it indoors.
With a raised hand, Kev greeted a group of children, led by three Harmony women. Each woman wore the new garments called Wrappings or Swadlings, to cover all but eyes and hands. Based upon a Muslim burnoose, the clothes stemmed not from Harmony disdain of the feminine sex, but from an impulse of self-defense against the rapacious, lawless males roaming the streets just outside the compound. A glimpse of female flesh often brought rape, even death to the luckless woman, and with no police to enforce restraint, it was best to cover and avoid.