Barry, looking at the images of the strangers on the wall above the doorway, said, “What in hell do they want?”
“I don’t know,” Duncan said. “Some housekeeping offense, I suppose. Unless they’re ganks trying to get in here and take us without any public fuss.”
The Cloyds paled, but Donna’s voice was firm. “Why can’t we just pretend we’re not home?”
“Citizens Shurber and Tan,” the woman’s voice said. “Please let us in. We’re here to check out a cross-temporal complaint made by Sunday’s tenants. Sunday’s organic department left the message for us. We have a warrant for inspection, and here are our IDs.”
The icon and official ID of the woman appeared on the door monitor. She was Corporal-Inspector Rani Isu Williams, and she had the proper authority.
She had been smiling, but now, looking grim and her voice hard, she said, “We know that you have been using extra power and are home. Open up!”
“Oh, Christ!” Donna said.
Duncan swore softly. Though the transmissions he had been making were undetectible, the amount of power over and above that required for normal household use was being registered. Normally, payment via ID card would have been sufficient. It was not very likely that the power department would call that excess usage to the attention of the ganks. But if the inspectors were not admitted, they would report that denial to the ganks. And the ganks might come around with a warrant or set up a special surveillance unit to watch this place.
It was possible that they just might be organics in disguise. Then he thought, Or assassins sent by Diszno.
That possibility was not too far out to reject.
Snick, without being told to do so, had deactivated all screens in the apartment except for the news channels and the personalized wall decorations. Duncan said, fiercely, “Donna, Barry! One of you answer right away! Tell them you were taking a nap. Then let them in!”
Snick was now by the stoner room door. Her gun was in her hand.
“What if they know what Shurber and Tan look like?” Donna said.
“Maybe they won’t,” he said. “No reason for them to check that out. Answer them!”
Before he reached the hall, he heard Donna. “Sorry! We were taking a little snooze. Had a big party last night!”
Duncan got into the stoner room just as the street door began to slide back.
15
He quietly activated a screen so that he could hear and see the people in the living room. The woman, Williams, was saying that the department had to take action after it had received three interday complaints from Sunday. These were (1) failure of Saturday to put all of its possessions in its personal-possessions closet before becoming stoned; (2) dirt found by Sunday, left by Saturday, along the base of the kitchen wall, northeast corner; (3) a sack of garbage left under the disposal chute, which garbage had not been stoned; (4) failure to replace dirty bedsheets with clean ones. The reprimands left for Saturday by Sunday had not been replied to with apologies. Instead, Saturday had left an insulting and obscene message for Sunday. To wit (but not so witty): Blow it out your asses, hemorrhoid brains.
Donna said, “The bums! Why do they live in the bloney area if they’re so damn tidy?”
“There are certain minimum standards of which you must be aware,” the female inspector said. “We’re authorized to validate or invalidate the complaints and to make an on-spot inspection.”
“But it’s a long way from midnight now,” Barry Cloyd said. “You can’t cite us for untidiness if we haven’t had a chance to clean up before then.”
“Our orders are to report the general cleanliness during the time of inspection,” Williams said. “That’s required by Ordinance Number 6-C5, subsection 3D.” The short man, Sebta, had said nothing. His jaw worked on a stick of gum.
“This is harassment,” Barry said.
Despite the serious situation, Duncan grinned. The Cloyds were so indignant because they were not actually responsible for Saturday’s housekeeping, yet they had to take the blame.
“You may report us if you wish,” Williams said indifferently. Doubtless, she was used to far stronger and more personal accusations.
Snick spoke very quietly. “Do we hide in Friday’s stoners again?”
“Forget it,” Duncan said. “We just can’t take the chance.”
“Good, I didn’t want to. But how in hell can we avoid them?”
Duncan told her his plan. She said, “That’s just as risky as going into a stoner.” She smiled. “But we’ll be able to fight.”
“Don’t you wish we’ll have to.”
By then the tall brunette, Williams, and the short man, Sebta, dark-skinned and with a purple-dyed beard, were at work. Sebta carried a camera and followed Williams while she spoke into a hand-carried microphone. The light from Sebta’s camera beamed on the junction of the screenwalls and carpet while Williams commented on the cleanliness or lack thereof of the area in the camera’s view. They went around the living room, then looked under the siayl (shape-it-as-you-like) furniture. Williams, down on the floor, said, “Aha!” She reached under a sofa and pulled out a dirty sock.
“That’s not ours!” Donna said.
“Whose is it?” Williams said.
“How would I know?” Donna said. “It could be Sunday’s, the schmucks!”
Williams dropped the sock into the evidence bag hanging from her belt.
The inspectors and the Cloyds moved into the hall. Williams said, “Open the PP.”
Fortunately, the personal-possessions closet door had been left open. If it had been locked, the Cloyds would have been unable to produce the ID card to unlock it.
Duncan and Snick waited behind the half-closed stoner room door. The inspectors could go next to the bedroom or go straight to the kitchen or enter the stoner room. After a few words about a neater arrangement of the items on the shelves, Williams led the others into the bedroom. Duncan, watching them, was pleased when the Cloyds stood in the doorway. They were partially blocking the view of the hall from Williams and Sebta. Then Donna pulled the door towards her, shutting off the inspectors’ view even more. Barry made some frantic gestures, which Duncan interpreted as meaning that he and Snick should get out now.
They were acting more coolly under pressure than he would have given them credit for. One of them, maybe both, had figured out that Duncan and Snick were probably watching them through the wallscreens.
Duncan de-activated the screens so that the inspectors would not know that they had been watched. Then he went into the hall, Snick closely following him, and sped to the living room. There he got down behind a sofa. It was near a wall and the most distant piece of furniture from the hallway entrance and the apartment exit-door. He did not want to go outside and attract the attention of the neighbors. Weighed against that was the need to intercept Shurber and Tan before they walked in with the groceries. If, however, he did that, he might attract even more notice. The neighbors might wonder why Tan and Shurber did not enter the house and dispose of the groceries before they walked away from the apartment.
He muttered, “Man, my life has depended upon a lot of very fragile things.”
“What?” Snick said.
“Never mind.”
Now that he did not dare to activate the wallscreens, he could no longer follow the inspectors’ course. Presently, though, Donna said loudly, “I hope everything was all right in the bedroom? Where do we go next?”
“At least minimum,” Williams said, sounding disappointed. She did not answer Donna’s second question.
Snick said, “I got to see where they’re going.” She was up from her couch and halfway to the right corner of the hall entrance before Duncan could say anything to her.
He rose up from behind the sofa so that he could see her. Her head was stuck around the corner. Then she withdrew it and came back to him.
“They’re in the stoner room.”
“Oh, hell!” he said.
In reply to her puzzled expression
, he said, “I didn’t think about it before. If they notice that both Tuesday and Saturday are not in their cylinders, they’ll be suspicious. Probably arrest the Cloyds.”
“I thought you thought of that,” she said.
At that moment, the front door began sliding back. Though its motion was silent, the increased light and the voices of neighbors in the street caused Duncan to look around the end of the sofa. Here came Shurber and Tan, she pulling behind her a collapsible two-wheeled cart full of paper sacks. Duncan jumped up, waving one hand and a fingertip of the other on his lips. Snick also came out from behind the sofa, mouthing silently and jabbing a finger at the hallway.
Tan had been about to say something. Her zebra-lipsticked lips remained open, but no sound issued, Duncan strode to them while they looked wonderingly at him. Close to them, he said, “Inspectors! Give me the cart! And get out! Don’t come back until about half an hour! Call first! Don’t ID yourselves when you do!”
Tan and Shurber walked out. Duncan trundled the cart to behind the sofa. Snick, who had been watching the hall to make sure that the inspectors did not see them from the kitchen, went back to the sofa. The door began sliding back. One of the two who had just left had had the presence of mind to insert his ID card and voice-activate the door-closing mechanism from outside.
Now on the floor with Snick and the cart, Duncan said, “That was close!”
Snick did not reply. She knew it had been tight.
He waited for five minutes before the faint voices suddenly got louder. The group was now in the hall. The Cloyds were talking at a high volume so that Duncan and Snick could get some bearing on their location. They were doing this even though they might not know if Duncan and Snick were still in the apartment.
Duncan said, “Thea, crawl over to the wall and turn on the interior monitor again. Set it for the kitchen and stoner room. And stay there, be ready to turn it off and get back here.”
The small command-section, voice-shifted by Snick to the lowest part of the wall, was split into four parts. Each one displayed the room from a screen in the middle of a wall. The inspectors were in the stoner room. It took them several minutes to check the wall bases before glancing at the stoners. They were probably looking for dust on those, though Saturday’s occupants were responsible for only their own cylinders.
Duncan was relieved when Williams passed by Tuesday’s cylinders and did not look at them. Her main concern was Saturday’s, and she went around these two swiftly. Then she asked the Cloyds to voice-sign her recorder to acknowledge that she and Sebta had completed their inspection.
All should be well now, he thought, unless someone at the department HQ should get the idea of comparing the voice-frequencies of the signers to those of Shurber and Tan. No, that trouble would not be taken unless the ganks were behind this visit.
But it was possible that Williams and Sebta were ganks. They might know by now that the Cloyds were not whom they pretended to be. And Williams could have noted the empty Tuesday stoners before Snick had set up the wall monitor. Perhaps, the two “inspectors” were going outside to make their report to the ganks stationed outside. Then, a large force would storm into the apartment. No. Shurber and Tan would have seen these and warned him and Snick.
Williams and Sebta did not know that there were two hidden people here. If they were suspicious, they could just pull their guns from beneath their uniforms and arrest the Cloyds.
Williams said, “The department will notify you of any action to be taken.” She jerked her head at Sebta to follow her, and they walked out of the stoner room door. Duncan signaled to Snick to turn off the wall-displays. She did so and crawled swiftly back to him. A minute later, the inspectors had left the apartment.
As soon as the door closed entirely, Duncan rose from behind the sofa. Donna screamed and clutched Barry. He turned and saw Duncan and Snick. “My God, you scared us! We didn’t know you were still here!”
Duncan told them what had happened. “Tan and Shurber should be back within fifteen minutes. But they’re to call first.”
“I was about to crap in my pants,” Donna said. “I was certain they’d see our empty stoners! What about a drink? I can sure use one!”
By the time Tan and Shurber returned to the apartment, the Cloyds were deep into their cups. Duncan and Snick were tempted to join them, but they had long ago agreed to limit themselves to one drink a day. They did not want to be intoxicated if they were ever caught off guard.
Shurber and Tan were so shaken that they tried to catch up with the Cloyds’ glugg-glugging. Dinner was late. Afterwards, all sat in the living room. Duncan and Snick were the only ones who looked alert. This was despite the excitement on the news channels. The anti-government demonstrations were being covered on many levels of every tower. Donna Cloyd watched these for a few minutes, then said that she was too sleepy. Instead of going to bed, she would enter her cylinder now.
“Then I’ll be doubly stoned when I wake up,” she said, and she laughed.
“Good idea,” Barry said. The Cloyds walked down the hall with their arms around each other to keep from falling over.
According to the newsheads, political demonstrations were taking place in other California states. None of these had been licensed by the organics department. The ganks were going to have a hard time, Duncan thought. But that means that they’ll give the protesters a harder time.
The news channels switched around to various meetings, finally zooming in on the one most promising violence. This was in the Blue Moon Plaza, which was not far from the apartment.
Twenty-two wallscreen sections showed the plaza from as many different views. The demonstrators, mostly young men and women, were massed in the middle of the plaza and surrounding the huge many-tiered fountain in the center. Their yelling roared from the screens, causing Duncan to lower the sound volume somewhat.
“We want more freedom!”
“Break up the eyes in the sky!”
“Down with living once a week! Up with the natural way to live!”
“Clean out corruption in the government!”
“Piss on the tyrants!”
“Up against the wall, pigs!”
“Give the people ASF now!”
“We’re not scum! Give us the ASF, too!”
“Eat shit, Big Brother!”
And, as the sound detectors beamed in on individuals, “Hurray for Duncan and Snick!”
“Pardon Duncan and Snick! Let them tell the true story!”
“We’re tired of government lies! Give us the truth!”
Many in the mob were waving printouts. Duncan could not read these but suspected that they were the two messages he had broadcast only two weeks ago but which now seemed a long time ago. And then he heard a portable transmitter blasting out a part of his messages.
“…THE GOVERNMENT RESISTS, REVOLT!”
The crowd was surging, changing shape. Tentacles formed by groups reached out, then contracted.
A newshead said, “The illegal gathering in the Blue Moon Plaza is estimated to amount to a thousand. The official estimate of the total number of demonstrators, all unlicensed and hence breaking the law, totals approximately fifty thousand. That is a very small number compared to the total population of Los Angeles State, twenty million. Though the Great Organic Commonwealth Charter of Rights and Responsibilities gives the people the right to demonstrate for political, social, and economic reasons, it also stipulates that local organic departments must issue licenses of permission for such demonstrations. But this tiny minority of subversives and malcontents…”
The avenues radiating from the plaza were clogged with ganks. Their proguns were still holstered, but they carried electric stun-sticks, cattle prods, and tear gas grenades. Two enormous water-pressure tanks were stationed at the junctions of thoroughfares and plaza, their cannons pointing toward the mob. Outside the ragged circle of protestors were many patrol cars, now fitted with rotary steam-powered guns which could shoot low-powered
sponge bullets.
Some of the screens showed a host of gank airboats landing on the rooftops and in the ports of precinct stations at various levels of the towers. They had been brought in from other California states.
Now the organic general bellowed through his bullhorn.
“This is the last warning! You will immediately disband and disperse! Go at once to your residences! Otherwise, you will be arrested! I repeat…!”
“How about that?” Shurber said. “Not one, not a single one, is leaving! They’re all staying! Listen to them!”
A newshead was saying, “…in San Francisco State. The reports of fighting with the organics have been confirmed. The organic department representative there states that an undetermined number of demonstrators have been arrested. There have been some casualties, no deaths, though, and when the situation clears up, we shall specify the exact numbers…”
The general’s voice roared over the shrieks, yells, and chants in Blue Moon Plaza. “Officers! Arrest the felons! If they resist, use proper procedures to restrain them!”
“God, I’d like to be there!” Snick said. “I’d show them!”
The first ganks to try to make arrests without the use of excessive force, as defined by the department, were bowled over as the crowd surged against them. The ganks behind these began ramming the prods into those who advanced against them. The general’s bullhorn issued orders, but they could scarcely be heard above the uproar. Then the watertanks spouted their red-dyed water over the officers’ heads and into the center of the mob. Many were knocked down, screaming, and pushed hard into the ranks of their comrades on the edges of the swarm.
A momentary depression was made in the center, but those swept down were up again. Then the tanks moved in closer, their sprouts knocking down some ganks, too. Abruptly, the entire mass seemed to be a bright red from head to foot. The water, spreading out on the plaza surface, looked like blood.
“Damn!” Sarah-John Tan said. “They won’t be able to wash off the dye. They’re marked for at least a week! Poor devils! The ganks’ll get them for sure even if they run away!”