Like a Boss (10 page)

Part of me wanted to do nothing but cruise for the rest of the night and see what was happening. That was the one part of being Ward Chair that I’d enjoyed: just seeing what was going on. I could just walk up to a group of people and ask: what’s up tonight? And they’d direct me to hear a new band or check out a new machinist’s shop or try someone’s tacos stand. And, inevitably, I’d start hearing about what was going wrong with their lives: the bass player didn’t like the mandolin player, or the price of palm oil had gone up, or the permits for the taco stand were slow to come through. It would be my job to listen and take notes and do something about it, even if that something was to shake my head and say
Well, if you don’t agree on how to arrange your songs, you should probably look for a new band
. There would be drama and accusations and grumbling about what the hell good was the Union anyway, but they would still come to me for solutions. It never ended. I missed it, and I was glad it was someone else’s job now.

Most of the people on my list had also hidden themselves. I’d have to track them down the old-fashioned way: grabbing people they knew and telling them I wanted a meeting. But, for tonight, there were some Union people I could find. Plus, I really wanted to corner Ly Huang myself and find out what her deal was. I sent out texts to twenty people:
If you see this woman, tell me and I will buy you beer and burritos for a week
. I attached a picture of Ly Huang, one where she was working the cane press, laughing at a joke Marolo had told her.

In the meantime, I would start with the first person on my list of Saarien’s congregants: Serena Llorens. A lifetime ago, she had been a shift supervisor at the cane refinery at Sou’s Reach. It had been her job to keep that horrible place running, which had been a neat trick considering how Saarien had funneled all of its upkeep money into his various plans to Immanetize the Labor Eschaton. She had testified about being told to falsify safety records, to skimp on routine maintenance, and to stay quiet if she’d wanted to keep her job. She’d moved to another refinery on the Greenbelt, one that wasn’t a deathtrap. We’d talked a bit after the trial, and she had even apologized for the way Sou’s Reach had been such a mess.

My pai highlighted my route as I rode down towards the coast. The smell of decomposing seaweed hit me like a fist wrapped in kelp. The Greenbelt got its name long ago, back when the city was trying to become a place to live instead of a place to survive. Some of the first Breaches had moved here to get away from Thronehill. They would drag bundles of seaweed into carefully laid-out plots in order to fertilize the soil. Some of the choicest produce came from the Greenbelt, and I made a point of coming down here when strawberry season started. It made up for the fact that the neighborhood smelled like a baked tide pool. The cane refinery squatting on the shoreline was new, so its air scrubbers kept the odors of solvents and burned sugar inside.

Serena’s pai placed her in a pub at Yusunori and Lowland, a place I’d never been to, called the Mermaid’s Kick. I dropped my bike in a share stand and watched the clientele: they were all clean and wore nice clothes, like they’d scrubbed up before coming here. The sign was a picture of a mermaid with cornrows, bulging biceps, and clenched fists. She used her tail to knock a shark unconscious. Maybe it would be my kind of place.

The minute I walked through the door, I realized it would not. The lights were bright and harsh, the colors were muted pastels, and the people inside were punching at speed bags or doing yoga. A sign behind the bar boasted eight kinds of fruit juices and two raw vegetable entrees. It wasn’t a pub; it was a fitness studio that had gutted and taken over a pub, the same way a parasitic wasp lays its eggs inside a caterpillar and eats the host body from the inside out. The whole place felt like it had been lifted out of Thronehill, down to the mind-breaking abstract pattern in the carpet.

I crouched down. Holy crap, the carpet
was
from Thronehill. Of all the things to remember from my time working in the Colonial Directorate, this ugly swirl of brown and purple had burned itself into my damaged brain. What’s more, it looked new, like it had just come down the cable from an off-world WalWa factory.

I looked closer at the customers and saw they were all doing horrible impressions of people who worked for the Big Three. Their hair was slick and sculptured. Their clothes were tailored to be stiff and uncomfortable. Everyone clenched their glasses at chest-level, like we were taught to do in B-school, and everyone looked into each other’s eyes with unblinking stares. I saw all kinds of Indenture markings: Medical Research, Nuclear Engineering, Heavy Entertainment. All of these people were acting as if they were still living the Life Corporate.

“Can we interface in a meaningful professional interaction?” said a woman at my shoulder. It had been fourteen years since someone had said that in earnest, and I shuddered at the sound of that greeting.

She had a funny mark underneath her tattoo (a merlion wrapped around a planet: LiaoCon Colonial Preparation), and I blinked her face into the Public to find her profile. Ernestine Andrada, a Union liaison for the refinery at Beukes Point. She had Breached six years ago. I realized the blotch on her cheek was her Union fist covered by foundation.

“Fuck, no,” I said, and I pushed my way towards Serena’s dot.

She was in the next room, where she stood in front of a seated group of people, all wearing workout gear. Serena wore a sweat-stained red gi, and she exchanged a series of furious punches with a gray-haired man half her size. The man swept her leg, and she hit the floor, only to bounce back with the kind of speed that would have made Michelle Yeoh rise from her grave on Dead Earth and cheer. She knocked her sparring partner to the ground and rammed her fist toward his face, stopping just short of his nose. Her face was beet red and shining as she stepped back so the man could get to his feet. They bowed, and he sat back down.

I glanced at the wall: there was a schedule of classes posted. Tonight’s was
SELF-ESTEEM THROUGH SELF-DEFENSE
. Jesus, even the names were straight out of the Life Corporate. What was going on here?

“I don’t expect you to be able to do
that
right away,” said Serena, and the people laughed. “But if you continue with your practice, you’ll be faster, stronger, and better equipped to take on your daily challenges. And we all want to be prepared for anything that might happen, right?”

“YES, SIFU!” the class responded in unison.

She bowed, and they bowed, and everyone went for fruit smoothies.

I blinked up my buffer from Saarien’s trial. The woman on the stand was definitely not the woman toweling herself off at the front of the room. Two years ago, Serena Llorens looked exhausted and ill, like she was going to throw up and pass out. Now, her skin flushed from an evening of beating up people, she looked like she could knock out the world with one punch.

“You here for the next class?” she said. “You’re going to have to put on appropriate clothing…” She stopped and blinked.

I held up my hands. “Please don’t hit me.”

She focused back on me. “Why would I?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “But that seems like a good thing to say in a place like this.” The walls were decorated with WalWa motivational art: nude people climbing mountains, lines of happy customers buying NutriFood, executives trading grooming tips and social diseases. “Though, I have to admit, I’m not sure what
kind
of place it is.”

Serena licked her lips and nodded at the art. “Nostalgia. Or something like it.”

“For the Life Corporate?”

She tossed the towel into a battered bag. “You ever miss it?”

“Hell, no.”

Serene shook her head. “That was a pretty quick answer.”

“Because it’s the truth. Working for WalWa was a disaster. I gave everything to climb the ladder, and it almost killed me.”

“How?”

The Fear stirred. “That’s none of your business.”

“Then what is? What are you doing here, Padma?”

“I should ask you the same question.” I tapped a poster, an image of a multi-ethnic crowd, all of them smiling, their teeth identical. “I realize we don’t know each other, but after all that time basking in Evanrute Saarien’s bullshit, you really want to tell me you’re longing for the days before you Breached?”

“The one has little to do with the other,” said Serena. She picked up the bag. “You want a beverage?”

“No, I want a
drink.”

She snorted. “With an attitude like that, you
should
have some juice. My treat.”

I followed her out of the room as eager students in jodhpurs and riding boots entered. I gawped at them; where in the world could they have found equestrian outfits? What kind of weird hell had I entered?

At the bar, Serena got two glasses and filled them from the taps. She gave me one. It smelled like lawn trimmings. “To nutritional optimization,” she said. When I realized it was a toast, I clinked glasses and slugged it in one go. Serena laughed. “It’s better if you sip.”

“What was it?” I put the glass back and tried to swallow the taste away.

“Sea grapes, collards, and ong choy. All locally grown.”

“Well, I can sure taste it.”

She took a sip. “You must think we’re all mad. To be here.”

I looked around the room and remembered the hundreds of conferences, mixers, and think-alongs I had attended during my illustrious Indenture. “There was a time when stuff like this was my life. Nineteen hours Standard Time, we would clock out and socialize with our colleagues, try out the latest improved intoxicants, attempt the latest sexual positions, work for another couple of hours in our housing, then collapse and do it all over again. I thought that was all there was until I Breached. Then I learned that you can leave work, hang out with
friends
, drink stuff that people had made with care, fall in love, try and build a future on our own.”

She smiled. “I remember feeling like that, too.”

“But you don’t anymore?”

Serena took a long pull on her juice, then gritted her teeth like she’d just drank primer. “I know why you’re here, Padma, and it’s not like you think.”

“What isn’t?”

She put down her glass. “I don’t want to go back to Thronehill. Not now, not ever. You know why I Breached? Because everyone in my department was offered promotions if they went and got brain surgery. It was an experiment to see if LiaoCon could squeeze a little more productivity out of us. Everyone would get implants to regulate adenosine and melatonin, all to keep people awake as long as possible. Do it for eighteen weeks, measure the results, bam, instant raise in pay and benefits.”

“Did you do it?”

She bit her lip. “No. But I
wanted
to. I wanted that promotion so bad I was willing to let someone cut into my skull and keep me awake for eighteen weeks. I put in for a transfer to a new colony, just so I’d have the opportunity to jump ship. Took me a while to get here, and I would never go back.”

She swallowed and looked at the executive cosplay. “But my life had an
order
back then. You get that, right?”

I nodded. “But it also didn’t have freedom.”

She snorted. “Freedom is an illusion. Come here, and you’re free to starve. Free to get left outside in a hurricane. Even the people doing the worst Corporate work had a guaranteed income and bennies. Not here.”

“It
is
guaranteed.”

“Then where is it?” She pointed at the people in the crowd. “Everyone here has been passed over for promotion, or they’ve been bumped from their housing, or they’ve just been screwed in some way because someone higher up in the Union could do so. And I’m not just talking about people in Contract Slots. Everyone here is a Shareholder, but their Share income is drying up. They can’t live on it anymore, and there isn’t enough work to make ends meet.”

“So they dress up and come here?”

“How is that different from going to a bar and getting loaded? People are hurting, and they need something to take away the pain. If it’s not rum or chiba, why not pretend you’re back in a time and place where everything made sense?”

“Because…” I looked at the people in their business suits, talking like they were making billion-yuan deals. “Because it’s just so fucked up.”

Serena laughed. “Our lives are fucked up. And they’re only going to get worse.”

“Why’s that?”

She shook her head. “You wouldn’t know, what with your distillery and all. You’re part of the problem.”

“Because I make rum?”

“Because you consume cane. You need it just like the Big Three, just like everyone.” She bit her lip. “I’ve spent my entire adult life processing that stuff. We grow it, and we burn it, and we grow more, because it’s the way we’ve always done things. We don’t try and harness the sun or the wind or the tides, not when we can just grow our own hydrocarbons.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Because it still takes
people
to make it happen, and…” She sighed. “I saw how the Big Three were grinding people up. I Breached, and now I see that the Union is doing the same. There’s a lot of anger out there, in the city and in the kampong. You need to get ready for what’s coming.”

I nodded to her makeshift dojo. “That’s why you’re teaching that class?”

She nodded and smiled. “That, and it’s cheaper than therapy.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it dialed in.” I thought about ordering another drink, then remembered where I was. “What I don’t get is why you go to Saarien’s church.”

She scrunched her face up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“On Lu Yua Street, about six blocks from here. You’ve visited three times a week for the past six weeks.”

She stiffened. “Are you tracking me?”

“I’m tracking a bunch of stuff, because none of it makes any sense. Why would someone like you fall back into his orbit after what he did?”

She shook her head, hard and fast. “You don’t know me.” She went for the door.

I waited until she had left before bolting after her. She walked up the Belt, her head down and her steps quick. “Serena!” I yelled, then ran. She didn’t stop or turn around, not until I put a hand on her shoulder. She grabbed my wrist and spun me around, smashing my face into a café’s window. I glanced down at a couple, cups halfway to their open mouths. I tried to smile, but it probably looked like a grimace as she drove her elbow into my back.