Walter Jon Williams - Dread Empire's Fall - Solidarity.pdf - Walter Jon Williams - widez2

*Solidarity* by Walter John Williams

A Novella

"Solidarity" features Sula/Gredel, the protagonist first introduced in "Margaux" (_Asimov's_, May 2003),

and takes place in the same future as the author's novels _The Praxis_, _The Sundering_, and the

forthcoming _Conventions of War_ (Harper Torch). Familiarity with any of the previous works is not

necessary for enjoyment of this riveting story.

--------

Sula dressed in fine Riverside low style for her meeting with Casimir. A bright tight-waisted jacket with

fractal patterns, overhung by the wide, floppy collar of her blouse. Pants belled out around platform

shoes. Cheap colorful plastic or ceramic jewelry. A tall velvet hat, crushed just so, with one side of the

brim held up by a gold pin with an artificial diamond the size of a walnut.

"I don't like this," Macnamara said.

Sula peered at herself in the mirror, flipped her fingers through her dyed black hair.

"I wish there were other choices," she said, "but there aren't."

"My lady -- " he began.

She turned to him.

"I'm going," she said. "We need allies."

And, because he was under military discipline, he said nothing more, just glowered in his petulant way.

The neighborhood known as Riverside was still, and the pavement radiated the heat of the day as if it

were exhaling a long, hot breath. Between bars of light, the long shadows of buildings striped the street

like prison bars. She saw no sign of Naxid or police patrols.

The Cat Street club was nearly deserted, inhabited only by a few people knocking back drinks on their

way home from, or on their way to, their work. The hostess said that Casimir wasn't in yet. Sula sat at a

back table and ordered sparkling water and transformed the table top into a video screen so that she

could watch a news program, the usual expressionless Daimong announcer with the usual bland tidings,

all about the happy, contented people of many species who worked productively and happily under their

new Naxid overlords.

She didn't see Casimir arrive: there was only the hostess coming to her and saying that he was in. The

hostess escorted Sula to the back of the club, up a staircase of black iron, and to a door glossy with

polished black ceramic. Sula looked at her reflection in the door's lustrous surface and adjusted the tilt of

her hat.

The next room featured a pair of Torminel guards, fierce in their gray fur and white fangs, and Sula

concluded that Casimir must be nervous. Lamey had never gone around with guards, not until the very

end, when the Legion of Diligence was after him.

The guards patted Sula down -- she had left her pistol at home -- and scanned her with a matte-black

polycarbon wand intended to detect any listening devices. Then they waved her through another polished

door to Casimir in his suite.

The suite was large and decorated in black and white, from the diamond-shaped floor tiles to the onyx

pillars that supported a series of white marble Romanesque arches, impressive but non-structural,

intended purely for decoration. The chairs featured cushions so soft they might tempt a sitter to sprawl.

There was a video wall that enabled Casimir to watch the interior of the club, and several different scenes

played there in silence. Sula saw that one of the cameras was focused on the table she'd just left.

"Were you watching me?" she asked.

"I hadn't seen you around," Casimir said. "I was curious."

He had come around his desk to greet her. He was a plain-featured young man a few years older than

Sula, with longish dark hair combed across his forehead and tangled down his collar behind. He wore a

charcoal-gray velvet jacket over a purple silk shirt, with gleaming black boots beneath fashionably

wide-bottomed trousers. His hands were long and pale and delicate, with fragile-seeming wrists; the

hands were posed self-consciously in front of his chest, the fingers tangled in a kind of knot. His voice

was surprisingly deep and full of gravel, like a sudden flood over stony land.

She felt the heat of his dark eyes and knew at once that danger smoldered there, possibly for Sula,

possibly for himself, possibly for the whole world. Possibly he himself didn't know; he would strike out at

first one, then the other, as the mood struck him.

Sula felt a chord of danger chime deep in her nerves, and it was all she could do to keep her blood from

thundering an answer.

"I'm new," she said. "I came down from the ring a few months ago, before they blew it up."

"Are you looking for work?" He tilted his head and affected to consider her. "For someone as attractive

as you, I suppose something could be found."

"I already have work," Sula said. "What I'd like is steady pay." She took from an inner pocket of her vest

a pair of identity cards, and offered them.

"What's this?" Casimir approached and took the cards. His eyes widened as he saw his own picture on

both cards, each of which identified him as "Michael Saltillo."

"One's the primary identity," Sula said, "and the other's the special card that gets you up to the High

City."

Casimir frowned, took the cards back to his desk, and held them up to the light. "Good work," he said.

"Did you do these?"

"The government did them," Sula said. "They're genuine."

He pursed his lips and nodded. "You work in the Records Office?"

"No," Sula lied. "But I know someone who does."

He gave her a heavy-lidded look. "You'll have to tell me who that is."

Sula shook her head. "No. I can't."

He glided toward her. Menace flowed off him like an inky rain. "I'll need that name," he said.

She looked up at him and willed her muscles not to tremble beneath the tide of adrenaline that flooded

her veins. "First," Sula said, speaking softly to keep a tremor from her voice, "she wouldn't work with

you. Second -- "

"I'm_ very persuasive,"_ Casimir said. The deep, grating words seemed to rise from the earth. His humid

breath warmed her cheek.

"Second," Sula continued, calmly as she could, "she doesn't live in Zanshaa, and if you turn up on her

doorstep she'll call the police and turn you in. You don't have any protection where she is, no leverage at

all."

A muscle pulsed in one half-lowered eyelid: Casimir didn't like being contradicted. Sula prepared herself

for violence and wondered how she would deal with the Torminel.

"I don't believe I got your name," Casimir said.

She looked into the half-lidded eyes. "Gredel," she said.

He turned, took a step away, then swung back and with an abrupt motion thrust out the identity cards.

"Take these," he said. "I'm not going to have them off someone I don't know. I could be killed for having

them in my office."

Sula made certain her fingers weren't trembling before she took the cards. "You'll need them sooner or

later," she said, "the way things are going under the Naxids."

She could see that he didn't like hearing that, either. He turned again and walked to the far side of his

desk and stood there with his head down, his long fingers tidying papers.

"There's nothing I can do about the Naxids," he said.

"You can kill them," Sula said, "before they kill you."

He kept his eyes on his papers, but a smile touched his lips. "There are a lot more Naxids than there are

of me."

"Start at the top and work your way down," Sula advised. "Sooner or later you'll reach equilibrium."

The smile still played about his lips. "You're quite the provocateur, aren't you?" he said.

"It's fifty for primary ID. Two hundred for the special pass to the High City."

He looked up at her in surprise. "_Two_ hundred?"

"Most people won't need it. But the ones who'll need it will really need it."

His lips gave a sardonic twist. "Who would want to go to the High City now?"

"People who want to work for Naxids. Or steal from Naxids. Or kill Naxids." She smiled. "Actually, that

last category gets the cards free."

He turned his head slightly to hide a grin. "You're a pistol, aren't you?"

Sula said nothing. Casimir stood for a moment in thought, then suddenly threw himself into his chair in a

whoof of deflating cushions and surprised hydraulics. He put his feet on his desk, one gleaming boot

crossed over the other.

"Can I see you again?" he said.

"To do what? Talk business? We can talk business _now_."

"Business, certainly," he said with an nod. "But I was thinking we could mainly entertain ourselves."

"Do you still think I'm a provocateur?"

He grinned and shook his head. "The police under the Naxids don't have to bother with evidence

anymore. Provocateurs are looking for work like everyone else."

"Yes," Sula said.

He blinked. "Yes what?"

"Yes. You can see me."

His grin broadened. He had even teeth, brilliantly white. His dentist was to be congratulated.

"I'll give you my comm code. Set your display to receive."

They activated their sleeve displays, and Sula broadcast her electronic address. It was one she'd created

strictly for this meeting, along with another of what were proving to be a dizzying series of false identities.

"See you then." Sula walked for the door, then stopped. "By the way," she said. "I'm also in the delivery

business. If you need something moved from one place to another, let me know." She permitted herself a

smile. "We have very good documents," she said. "We can move things wherever you need them."

She left, then, before glee got the better of her.

Once outside on the hot, dark streets, she used evasion procedures to make certain she wasn't followed

home.

Casimir called after midnight. Sula groped her way from her bed to where she'd hung her blouse and told

the sleeve to answer.

The chameleon fabric showed Casimir with a slapdash grin pasted to his face. There was blaring music in

the background and the sound of laughter.

"Hey Gredel!" he said. "Come have some fun!"

Sula swiped sleep from her eyes. "I'm asleep. Call me tomorrow."

"Wake up! It's still early!"

"I work for a living! Call me tomorrow!"

As she told the sleeve to end her transmission and made her way back to the bed, she decided that she'd

done a good job setting the hook.

* * * *

The next day she had deliveries in the High City, the cocoa and tobacco and coffee that Sula had spent

her modest fortune acquiring when she found out that Zanshaa's ring was going to be destroyed, and that

there wouldn't be imports of anything for a long time. At each stop she talked to business owners and

employees, a task which came under the heading of "intelligence gathering" even though there was no one

left to report the intelligence _to_ -- all her superiors had been captured and tortured to death, their

torments broadcast live to the planet as a lesson to anyone tempted by the idea of loyalty to the old

regime. Sula survived by way of bombing her own apartment as the Naxid police crashed down the

door, and then used her back door into the Records Office computer to give herself and her team clean

identities.

Sula returned to her apartment weary and sweat-stained. Gredel's comm unit showed that Casimir had

logged three calls asking her out for the night. She took a long, delicious bath in lilac-scented water while

considering an answer, then picked up the comm, turned off the camera button that would transmit her

image, then returned the last call.

"Why not?" she said at the sullen face that answered. "Unless you've made other plans, of course."

The sulky look vanished as Casimir peered into his sleeve display in failed search for an image. "Is this

Gredel?" he asked. "Why can't I see you?"

"I'm in the tub."

A sly look crossed his features. "I could use a wash myself. How about I join you?"

"I'll meet you at the club," Sula said. "Just tell me what time."

He told her. Sula would have time to luxuriate in her bath for a while longer and then to nap for a couple

of hours before joining him.

"How should I dress?" Sula asked.

"What you're wearing now is fine."

"Ha ha. Will I be all right in the sort of thing I wore last night?"

"Yes. That'll do."

"See you then."

She ended the call, then ordered the hot water tap to open. The bathroom audio pickup wasn't reliable

and she had to lean forward to open the tap manually. As the hot water raced from the tap and the steam

rose, she sank into the tub and closed her eyes. She allowed herself to slowly relax, to let the scent of

lilacs rise in her senses.

The day had started well. She thought it would only get better.

* * * *

Sula adjusted her jacket as she gazed out the window of the apartment she shared with Macnamara and

Spence, the two members of her team. Because of electricity shortages, only every third street lamp was

lit. Most businesses were closed, and those remaining open had turned off their signs. The last of the

street vendors were closing their stalls or driving away in their little three-wheeled vehicles with their

business packed on the back. The near-blackout imposed by the Naxids -- not to mention the

hostage-taking, and the roundups that took place in public areas -- had severely impacted their business,

and there weren't enough people on the streets after dark to keep them at their work.

"I should be with you," Macnamara argued. He was a tall young man, a bushy-haired recruit who had

been the star of the Fleet's combat course. He was from a mountain village on a backwater planet, and

war was his way of seeing the worlds.

Walter Jon Williams - Dread Empire's Fall - Solidarity.pdf

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