Scale, p.14
Scale, page 14
Noor pondered this. “I can’t see the government dropping bombs on D7.”
“Not indiscriminately, but if they try to destroy some facility and miss, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere close by their standards.” Sam’s guess was that no ordinary bombs could damage Scale Seven metals, but apart from the river base, all of G8’s buildings would contain a mixture of durable and vulnerable materials – and who knew what else. “Suppose they try to take out the launch site in the desert. That’s not much more than a kilometer from D4. I don’t know how those rockets are powered, but I wouldn’t want to be around any blast that ignited a store of rocket fuel.”
Noor said, “But if D7 decide to bomb the naval base ... ”
Sam groaned and put his head down on the table. “So what do we do? Go up north, and look for somewhere safer?” No other Council had announced their intention to join the proposed Scale Seven Alliance, so it would be easy enough to find a place with neither separatist unrest nor any strategic importance. But neither of them could continue their old lines of work without a large enough client base, in Sam’s case, or a suitable university if Noor was to keep teaching. “Find a campus town that’s a hotbed of corruption and adultery?” he joked.
“Maybe we should wait for the vote in Mauburg,” Noor suggested. “Once the result is in, everything should be clearer.”
“I want to go to school in D5,” Idris announced.
Noor said, “That’s not going to happen.”
“So Sarah can come to our school, from D3, and Talia can come to our school from D5, but no one from D4 can go to school in D5?”
Sam said, “There are students who do that, but it’s not the right time now. It has to be worked out beforehand; you can’t just decide you want to do it.”
Idris had no argument against the need for an orderly arrangement. “Then I’ll do it when it’s the right time again.”
Sam glanced at Noor, and she gave him a look that said, “Just let it drop.”
“The ants all got smaller very quickly,” Idris noted. “First Scale One, then Scale Two, then ... ” He raised his hands and brought them together rapidly, whistling a rising pitch. “You should have made me Scale Five, but I don’t mind. I’ll make friends at school there, and that’s where my children will live. And their children will be Scale Six. And their children will be Scale Seven.” He smiled. “And I’ll still be alive, won’t I? So they can help me, and teach me everything they know. If you won’t help me get to the moon, they will.”
Chapter 25
Jake said, “I want in.”
Lisa Braun, the Mayor’s assistant, regarded him skeptically, but led him into her office. “That might not be possible,” she said. “You know our consultants have you flagged?”
“Spotlight? That’s just professional jealousy; they’re annoyed because I made one of their tails, who was wasting his time on me anyway. I’ve worked for you in the past, you know I’m not two-faced. I don’t approve of what was done to Cara Leon, but that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to help defend the District.”
Braun said, “I have no idea who Cara Leon is.”
“Of course you don’t,” Jake replied. “So let’s put all those things you have no idea about behind us, and tell me how I can contribute.”
“If you don’t get along with Spotlight, that’s really not an option,” she said. “The security of the transition is in their hands.”
“You mean the referendum?” Jake corrected her.
“Of course. And whatever follows.”
“What about the police?”
“The police are in an invidious position,” Braun admitted. “They’re answerable to the Council, administratively, but they’re also obliged to enforce national laws. I think it’s wise that they’re just standing back and letting things play out for now, without interfering.”
“Your consultants don’t seem to mind interfering.”
“If they hadn’t, we’d be under martial law right now,” Braun protested.
“Fair enough.” Since the Mayor’s announcement, Jake believed he’d pieced together how Spotlight had been turned from Cara’s accomplices into her kidnappers: not G8 alone, but the Mayor herself, must have offered them a role shepherding District Seven past all the hazards into its stellar new future. And if a medium-sized security firm might normally have blanched at the prospect of holding off a national army, a preview of the superior weapons they’d have at their disposal had apparently been enough to clinch the deal. “But they must be looking to expand their workforce,” he said. “Last I heard, they only had about thirty staff in total. I had a run-in with the Scale Six soldiers myself, and we don’t know what else might be coming our way before morning. Do they really want to leave this to ad hoc groups of citizens trying to cope with tear gas and batons, and a handful of people who are properly equipped but can’t be everywhere at once?”
Braun said, “They have their plans, but like I said, you’ve been flagged. I can’t overrule them; if you think it’s unfair, you’ll have to take it up with them.”
Jake nodded reluctantly and thanked her for seeing him. As Braun walked him to the door, she said, “You should get back together with Loretta. You two were a good team.”
He smiled and said nothing. It wasn’t impossible that she was just making small talk, but he would not have put it past her to be fishing for information about Loretta’s own plans.
Jake walked from the Town Hall to the Spotlight office, and told the receptionist, “I’m here for the recruitment drive.”
The man looked confused. “I’m sorry, I don’t ... ”
“Spotlight put a call out for experienced security personnel,” Jake assured him, “to help protect the vote. No one told you?”
“Let me check.” He picked up the phone and spoke with someone. “I think you’ve been misinformed,” he told Jake. “But the personnel manager will be out in a moment to explain everything.”
“Thank you.” Jake took a seat.
While he was waiting, a man entered the office from the street; he caught sight of Jake and flinched slightly. Jake rose to his feet and gave him a brotherly embrace; the recipient endured it without complaint, perhaps out of some urge not to make a scene.
“Oh, you know this guy, Dave?” the receptionist asked. He turned to Jake. “Sorry, I didn’t realize ... ”
“Dave will vouch for me,” Jake proclaimed, smiling warmly at Gray Jacket, who was actually wearing the same clothes as Jake remembered from their last encounter. “I can’t think of anyone better to attest to my qualifications.”
As the personnel manager emerged into the lobby, Jake still had an arm across Gray Jacket’s shoulder. Jake reached out and shook the manager’s hand. “Jake Palmer. I heard you’re looking for a few new people to help keep things running smoothly with the vote.”
“Pegah Amini,” she said. “I know who you are, but ... ”
“And I know I’ve been flagged,” Jake said, “but it’s all a misunderstanding. I’m on your side. Unequivocally.” He reached down and tapped his shin. “I was beaten by the soldiers when they came across the border; I would have been here sooner, but I was waiting for the wounds to heal.”
“Can we take this into my office?” Amini suggested. “Dave, did you want to ... ?”
“Come on, Dave,” Jake urged him. “We have no secrets from each other.”
For a moment, Gray Jacket seemed to be on the verge of disowning him, but maybe he decided it would be better if he had a chance to witness whatever transpired next.
When they were settled in the office, Jake spoke plainly. “Cara Leon approached me to spy on G8, and I turned her down. How does that make me the enemy? And now that Cara’s free, and Dave’s no longer following me around, I’m willing to forget that whole debacle. I don’t want soldiers of any scale interfering in D7’s politics. You need people to help keep that from happening; I’m offering to play my part. The fact that I have a bit more background knowledge than someone plucked off the street shouldn’t count against me. If anything, it just means you won’t have to worry about me stumbling on all your embarrassing secrets. I know what you did to Cara, and I don’t like it, but I’m over that. I just want the vote to go ahead, unimpeded, without anyone coming in and telling us that it’s not our choice to make.”
Amini mulled over his speech for a while, then asked, “What role did you have in leaking the documents?”
“The what?”
“Anselm and Mujrif tried to convince us that we’d retrieved G8’s documents from Cara without anyone else getting copies, but it turned out that wasn’t the case.”
“I had no idea,” Jake replied vehemently. “I only started helping Loretta when Dave here made it plain that I was part of the whole mess, whether I liked it or not. Loretta only told me as much about G8’s shenanigans as I needed to be useful, and I have no knowledge of anything she did with the documents – let alone what Mujrif might have done. All I heard was that G8 got what they wanted, and Cara was free, so the case was over.”
Dave said, “Don’t blame me. Everyone knows about your history with Loretta.”
Jake regarded him bemusedly. “I don’t blame you that you were easy to spot, I blame Spotlight for sending you out with such poor training.”
Amini said, “Look, it’s possible we can find a role for you, but I’ll have to talk it over with the other managers. Give me your phone number and I’ll get back to you in a couple of minutes.”
“Thank you.” Jake wrote down the number for her.
“Didn’t you offer me advice about employment options once?” Dave recalled smugly. Jake bit his tongue and kept himself from mumbling something inane about the lesser of two evils. There was a limit to how frank he could be about his contempt for Spotlight and still expect them to find his candor refreshing.
On the street, he tried to gauge the mood of the people around him. There were groups gathered outside shops and cafés, arguing heatedly, while others walked with downcast eyes and expressions of dismay. No one welcomed turmoil or danger, but his hunch was that most people would support protecting the vote from cancellation or interference, even if they disagreed with the separatists themselves. A “yes” vote would have no legal force, but it might lend weight to a renegotiation of the historical arrangements that impacted the smaller scales disproportionately – and a shake-up like that could benefit everyone. There was no zero-sum game; it was a matter of finding better ways for everyone to do what they were suited to, unencumbered by the old jealousies and anxieties. In a perfect world, it would have been enough to say: “Look, we’ve developed this amazing new technology, but the way things stand we’ll spend years tripping over each other trying to put it into practice.” If everyone could see what they were missing out on because the political and economic relationships between them were stuck in the last century, there’d be a chance for reforms that improved everyone’s lives.
But the rest of Stedland needed a scare before they’d offer any concessions. They needed to believe that they really were at risk of losing access to the stream of Scale Seven innovations, just when it was swelling into a torrent.
Jake’s phone jangled in his pocket, but it wasn’t Amini, or anyone else from Spotlight. “My son’s gone missing,” a woman explained frantically. “He wasn’t at school for the past two sessions, and none of his friends have seen him.”
“How old is he?” Jake asked.
“Three months. The police said it’s too early to be worried, but I don’t think they’re taking it seriously.”
Jake went to the house and interviewed the boy’s mother, Elaine Beckman. “Does Shane have anyone he’s close to, that he might be with?”
“He has a girlfriend, Kate,” Elaine replied, “but she says she hasn’t seen him. And I don’t have any reason to doubt her; she’s been at school herself, and when I spoke to her parents they didn’t think she was hiding anything.”
“Was he upset about something? Any pressure from school, any arguments at home?”
“No.” Elaine hesitated. “He was a bit rattled by all this political nonsense.”
“Did he say anything specific?” Jake asked. “Was he afraid there’d be more fighting? Or was he angry with one side or the other?”
“He wasn’t too impressed with the Mayor,” Elaine said. “And I agreed with him! As far as I’m concerned, she’s just making a grab for power. So we didn’t fall out over the referendum, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Okay. But is this personal for him? Does he have any cross-scale friendships?”
“Like exchange students? No. His school doesn’t do that.”
“Did he ever talk about joining the military?”
“Not to me,” Elaine replied, in a tone that made it clear that she wouldn’t have approved.
Jake asked her for a photograph, and the contact details for Shane’s friends. They’d all be at school right now, and he didn’t think he’d be able to have them called out of class so he could talk to them.
“Has he ever been in trouble with the police?”
Elaine wasn’t happy with the question, but she said, “He broke a shop window, about a week ago. I paid to have it fixed, and we managed to keep it out of court.”
“Why did he break the window?”
“He bought a radio that stopped working a few minutes later. When he took it back, they claimed he’d damaged it himself, and they refused to replace it.”
Jake decided not to provoke her by asking who she believed in the dispute; either way, it was clear that her son had some trouble controlling his temper.
“Does his father live here?”
“His father died five weeks ago.”
“Any relatives Shane might stay with? Maybe someone on his father’s side you’re not close to, so he might have been able to persuade them not to contact you?”
Elaine seemed offended by the idea, but then she admitted, “I don’t talk to his uncle Thaddeus much, but I don’t think Shane does either.”
“You haven’t called him?”
“No.”
“Could you do that? Just in case?” Jake suggested.
Elaine tried the number, but got no answer. Jake added Thaddeus’s details to his list.
“If you think of anything else, please call me,” he said. “I hope the police are right and your son’s not in any danger, but I promise you I’ll do everything I can to clear this up quickly.”
As he left the house, he pictured Shane walking a few steps ahead of him, a volatile young man angry at the politicians who were upending his world for their own advantage. If he’d broken a window over a malfunctioning radio, maybe he’d responded to the separatists the same way – only to find that his target this time was protected far more zealously, by people who were already on edge.
Jake phoned Lisa Braun.
“If you’re asking me to give you a character reference for Spotlight, I already have,” she said.
“Thanks,” Jake replied. “But that’s not why I’m calling.” He hesitated, wondering if there was a tactful way to phrase the question, before giving up the hunt for euphemisms and asking bluntly, “Are your consultants holding anyone, other than those Scale Six soldiers?”
Lisa’s annoyance was palpable. “What is this? Are you trying to join Spotlight, or are you trying to discredit them?”
“I’m not accusing them of anything,” Jake insisted. “I just want to be absolutely clear. Are they detaining any civilians right now, for any reason?”
“Of course not.”
“If some local kid tried to vandalize the Town Hall ... ?”
“That’s a matter for the police,” Lisa said brusquely. “How can you even ask that?”
Jake declined to offer the obvious reply. Cara Leon was an exception, a blackmailer who’d threatened to derail the course of Scale Seven history. And the soldiers who’d marched on the Town Hall had been sent in by generals abusing their authority. But where did the list of special cases end? Once you decided the stakes were high enough, you could find an excuse to lock up almost anyone.
“All right,” he said. “Thanks for the reference.”
With Shane’s friends in school, where could he pick up the thread? The uncle seemed like a long shot, but if there was no one else he could talk to it was better than doing nothing.
Jake called the mobile number Elaine had given him, but it still wasn’t answering. Thaddeus worked for a printer; Jake got their number from directory assistance.
“Can I speak to Thaddeus Beckman, please?”
“He’s off sick.”
Jake trudged across town to Thaddeus’s apartment. No one answered when he rang the doorbell, or responded to his subsequent pounding. Two relatives skipping their usual obligations could be a coincidence, and Elaine hadn’t thought they were close. But what exactly might an uncle drag his hot-headed nephew into, if their views on the separatist Mayor aligned? If you’d welcomed the military incursion, but then seen the soldiers humiliated and imprisoned for defending the integrity of the nation, what form would your own intervention take? Jake had a feeling Spotlight might already be trying to gather intelligence on any would-be nationalist uprising, but they weren’t likely to want to share their data with him, least of all when his own priority was the boy’s welfare.
He looked around to check that his banging hadn’t attracted any neighbors, then he picked the lock and entered the apartment, salving his conscience with the rule that dragging a three-month-old into a militia was enough to void anyone’s right to privacy.
Elaine had told him that Thaddeus lived alone, but there was a pillow and blanket on the couch in the living room, and the dishes and utensils soaking in the kitchen sink looked like evidence of a two-person meal. Jake hunted around for anything more revelatory, but even a printer might have other priorities than leaflets or posters spelling out his cause. And for all he knew, Shane and his uncle might be kicking a ball around in the park, sharing their memories of the boy’s father, while Thaddeus tried to talk him out of a rash response to the separatist push.
