Survivors Page 4

  “But they’re – ”

  “State property. I know. And it’s to safeguard state property that I’m encouraging all my people to take charge of their costumes, wigs, whatever. I can’t be here all the time, and things have gone missing already.”

  He helped her pack two very large suitcases and a backpack with not only her ‘Ditani Stavros’ costumes but everything she’d ever worn in any holo, and grandly announced that he would convey her to her home in his personal flitter.

  “I thought they were all grounded because of the energy crisis!”

  “I have an exemption,” Galen said. “Vital state work, you know.”

  Definitely higher class than Jillian; he didn’t even act as though his exemption were a big deal. It had probably been given to him before he even thought of asking.

  Not that she should complain; the return home was much pleasanter than the trudge to the studio had been. Gliding along nearly deserted streets, they reached her Vista View apartment block an hour earlier than she’d expected to be home.

  “Oh, I meant to ask,” Galen said offhandedly at the last moment, “did your brother find you?”

  Jillian’s heart leapt. “Tomas?”

  “I suppose so,” Galen said, “we didn’t exchange names. He came by the studio earlier today, wanting your address.”

  Jillian frowned. Tomas, of all people, should know exactly where she and Trisha lived. Oh well, perhaps the studio had been on his way and he was just checking to make sure they hadn’t moved. That must be it. Galen wasn’t known for his precision in speech.

  She couldn’t get out of the flitter fast enough, and barely took enough time to thank Galen so that he wouldn’t feel insulted. One of the elevators was empty; Jillian crammed her suitcases and backpack and herself inside. She couldn’t think of anything but seeing Tomas again.

  But it was really odd that he’d stopped at the studio first.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Trisha met her at the door. “I guess you were serious when you complained about the holos using too many cosmetics! If that’s what you have in the suitcases, I should be able to set up a beauty shop as well as a hair salon.”

  “There’s costumes and stuff, too,” Jillian said. She was slightly out of breath after lugging suitcases, backpack and tote bag from the elevator to their door. “Is he here yet?”

  “Oh – you knew he was coming?”

  “Galen just told me,” Jillian explained. “Evidently he went to the studio first, Harmony knows why.”

  Trisha twinkled. “To get your address, silly! Come on in, and be nice to him!”

  The whole interchange felt somehow, subtly, off-key. Jillian dragged her luggage inside, straightened up and understood, with a sinking heart, why that was.

  It wasn’t Tomas standing in the living room.

  It was the big dumb farmer from Liya’s party.

  “Oh – it’s you,” Jillian said. Her mind was whirling. She couldn’t, mustn’t let Trisha know that for a few moments she’d expected to see Tomas. He might still come. Later. “I, um, wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I’m not making any progress with the officials I need to convince,” Ruven said, “so I’m here to take you up on your offer of tutoring.”

  “Ah – right. Yes. I don’t remember giving you my address?” At least now she could make him admit that he knew perfectly well who she was, and had known all along. But he surprised her again.

  “Liya DelPlato told me where you worked,” the farmer said. “She seemed to find it very amusing that I didn’t already know. So I went to your work and some old guy there gave me your address.”

  “The studio isn’t supposed to give out my address.”

  Ruven gave her a lopsided smile. “I can be persuasive in some ways,” he offered. “He said I must be your brother and I didn’t contradict him. Then he asked if we’d lost touch while I was out of town and I said I would be very much obliged if he could give me your current address.”

  “That’s not persuasion,” Jillian snapped, “that’s just lies.” Lies which had fooled her into a moment’s soaring hope and then let her down with a crash. Because all her hopes for Tomas’ return had been built on those lies. It might not be fair, but she blamed him for her disappointment.

  Trisha stepped into the room; Jillian hadn’t even registered her leaving. “Jilli, can you help me in the kitchen for a moment?”

  She slid the door shut as soon as Jillian stepped into the kitchen. There didn’t seem to be anything there that needed her attention. “Trisha. What – ”

  “Don’t be so rude. He’s a nice guy. And look what he brought!” Trisha unwrapped the white paper around a parcel that had been lying on the counter. “Cheese, and real butter, from his dairy coop, and grapes. Jilli, don’t you dare drive that man away! Would it kill you to help him out? You said you’d tutor him for food; well, here he is, and here’s the food.”

  Jillian held her hands under the sink faucet and let the automatic spurt of cold water run over them. She grabbed an absorbent flimsy, mopped her face and then splashed it with water. “I never imagined he’d take me up on it.”

  Back in the living room, she offered this Ruven Malach a seat so that she could sink down on the sofa. “Let’s start with what you’re doing here, Citizen.”

  “I just told you. You said you could help me learn how to persuade these people. I need help. Were you joking?”

  “I meant here in the city, not here at my apartment. I can’t help you make persuasive arguments unless I know what you’re trying to achieve.”

  Ruven took a deep breath and launched into a long-winded, overly detailed exposition on fixed prices, dairy processing, cattle feed, and—

  “Stop.” Jillian held up her hand. “Pretend I’m in elementary crêche. Tell me what you want to do in no more than three sentences. Short ones,” she added, to fend off the paragraphs that had been pouring out of his mouth.

  Ruven shook his head and scowled. “Okay. Give me a minute… The Bureau for Trade sets the prices we can charge for dairy products, and the quotas for what we’re supposed to produce. Is that short enough?”

  Jillian nodded. “Keep going.”

  “It costs us more to produce milk and butter and cheese than we can get selling it at the new prices. Also, we would have to double our herd to meet the new quotas, and even if we could borrow the credits for that, we’d only go broke faster. They sent me to try and make the Minister for Trade see reason. I’m sorry, that was four sentences.”

  And Edd Delprado was Assistant Minister for Trade. Jillian began to understand. But some things weren’t clear.

  “Why were you trying to make your case to Anji Elmasri, that night at Liya’s party? She’s got the intellect of a hummingbird, and neither she nor Ray have any connection with the Bureau for Trade. He’s something in Labor… I think.”

  “At that point I just thought, if I can make one person in the government see reason, at least I’ll have an ally.”

  Jillian looked him over thoughtfully. His loose clothes of heavy material were absolutely wrong for city wear. The shaggy, dirty-blond hair was still a disaster, and his nose looked as though it had been broken at least once. But he was clean, and Trisha could probably fix the hair, and she could take him to a tailor and get him a better outfit. All right, he’d probably clean up well enough to make a good impression… until he opened his mouth.

  “Tell me. Did you march into Ray Elmasri’s office and tell him you were there to make him see reason?”

  A dull flush stained Ruven’s prominent cheekbones. “Something like that. Why?”

  “It’s not a good way to start a conversation,” Jillian explained patiently. “You’re implying that the person you’re talking to is in the wrong, and that you, being better informed and smarter, can tell him what he should think. Naturally he’s going to feel that you’re putting him down. Offending the person you want to convince is never a good beginning.”

  Ruven’s flush
grew darker. “I don’t care about people’s feelings. If they’d only pay attention to the facts, they’d see that I’m right.”

  Jillian suppressed a sigh. “How long is the cooperative expecting you to stay here?”

  “Until I get results!”

  “And can you afford to stay that long?”

  “I’ll get by. You sound as though you don’t think I’ll ever get anywhere.”

  “Changing a Minister’s mind? It might be easier to bribe him,” Jillian said honestly.

  “We don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Well then, it’ll have to be persuasion, and that’s going to take a long, long time if you insist on acting like a self-righteous prig.”

  “I’m not…” Ruven swallowed the rest of his response with a visible effort, and got up to pace the room. “Is that really how I come off?” he inquired with his back to her. “A self-righteous prig?”

  “Of the worst sort,” Jillian confirmed. “That’s the first thing we have to fix.”

  “But you do understand that I am right?” Ruven’s pacings brought him within a foot of the sofa. He stopped and stared intently at Jillian, as though he expected to read the answer in her face.

  “It doesn’t matter whether I think you’re right,” Jillian said, “you need me to teach you how to make other people think you’re right.”

  “But I’m not likely to succeed, am I,” Ruven said flatly, “if I can’t even persuade my tutor.” He dropped to one knee in front of the couch and lifted his hand. “Is this why you’ve been sitting in the shadows?” One large finger touched the bruise under her eye, ever so gently. “Who did this to you, my girl?”

  The momentary tenderness almost made Jillian feel like crying. This wasn’t like Galen’s theatrical indignation; this man made her imagine what it would feel like if she could break down occasionally, if she didn’t perpetually have to put a good face on everything.

  That could destroy her. She leaned back, away from his touch. “Nobody. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I could make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  “It was an accident. Really. Sort of… There was a bit of a fuss at the market yesterday, and I just happened to get hit in the confusion. I don’t even know who did it.”

  “You shouldn’t be going to the market these days. It’s not safe.”

  Jillian shook her head impatiently. Who did he think could go to the market for her? Her pregnant sister-in-law? “Look, I – I appreciate your concern, but you didn’t bring a food parcel just so you could sympathize over my black eye. Let’s get back to work. I’ll withdraw the self-righteous prig remark if you’ll forget that I was so unladylike as to get caught up in a brawl.”

  “No need,” Ruven said softly. “Could be I deserved it. How d’you think I should make my case, then?”

  Jillian’s mind flashed back to one of the previous season’s episodes. Despairing of ever being together with her true love (Charley Lagos), Ditani had fallen for the seductive wiles of an Esilian agent who hypnotized her into weakening her husband’s values with subtly unharmonious speeches.

  “Well, maybe you could say something like this,” she said, standing up and drawing herself straight and tall, thinking herself into her Ditani role. “The people cry out for bread, and you give them a stone; the little children need milk, and you give them water. Think for once of the people’s needs, and forget your dry theories. Do you not sorrow for the little ones who die for your theory? Do you not mourn the deaths your policy has brought upon the city?”

  By the end of the speech she was fully caught up in the role, she was Ditani, a Ditani who – just for the moment – was fooled by the Esilian’s sentimentality into forgetting the basic principles of Harmony. She delivered the last two lines in a low, throbbing voice that Galen had taught her for moments of deep emotion.

  It was disconcerting, to say the least, to find Ruven laughing heartily at the speech.

  “Nay, girl, I cannot say that,” he told her. “No human being ever talked like that!”

  Jillian put up her chin. “That speech,” she warned him. “had the highest ratings of the episode, in one of the highest-rated episodes of all time, last year. People cried in the streets when I gave that speech!”

  “Ah – who exactly did you give it to?”

  “In the script, I was speaking to my husband. But the holo was broadcast all over the city. And as I told you, it was extremely well received. So perhaps you should take up your objections with my scriptwriter!”

  “Hold on, lass. So you didn’t make up that sentimental mush yourself?”

  She gave him a disbelieving look. “It’s not sentimental mush; it’s the work of the top scripter in Harmony City. I’m an actress. The scripter comes up with the lines; my job is to deliver them properly. As you very well know!”

  “No, but I am beginning to get the picture now. So that’s why Liya thought it was so funny I didn’t know where you worked? You’re a famous actress?”

  “You must be about the only person in Harmony who doesn’t recognize my name.”

  “Nay, I’m sorry to break it to you, but there are a lot of men up-river who wouldn’t know it. We have real work to do; we leave watching those trashy romance holos to the women.”

  “Trashy romance holos! You’ve got a lot of nerve. Before our next session I dare you to watch one episode, just one, of Love for Living. You’re denigrating something you know nothing about!”

  Ruven’s deep chuckle made it clear he still wasn’t taking her career seriously. “Aye. I’ll be sure and do that.”

  They fixed a time for a next lesson, and after she got rid of him Jillian settled down with Trisha and brainstormed ideas for persuasion with her. She still didn’t understand what Trisha saw in the man, but as long as he was getting food packets from home she was willing to try and teach him a little elementary tact.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jef Elmasri stretched out next to the air vent and listened to his parents’ voices. They’d never noticed the oddity in the apartment’s construction that sent voices from the living room echoing down the cooling system to the room he used when he was at home, and a good thing too. This was about the only way he ever found out what was going on.

  He wouldn’t have known about this if his secondary crêche hadn’t been closed for the duration of the “emergency.” Normally he was only allowed home on weekends, and not then if his parents were entertaining.

  “Anji, we simply can’t go on assuming that the crisis won’t affect us.” His father was speaking slowly and clearly: the deep voice projected I’m a reasonable man. You should listen to me. “We’ve already been touched by it! The streets aren’t safe. Jef’s crêche is closed. I don’t know what happens next, but it won’t be good.”

  “What happens next,” his mother said, “will be our party in two weeks. I’ve got your boss and the Minister for Trade and the Assistant Minister for Education lined up and if I can get Charley Lagos or some other holostar, there are half a dozen slightly less influential people who will suddenly discover that they are free to come. I’ve been working on this for a month, conniving and fiddling to get the people who can push your career. You can’t spoil it now!”

  “Two weeks?”

  His mother huffed. “As if I hadn’t been talking about it every day! Everything I say goes in one ear and out the other, doesn’t it? You never appreciate all I do for your career!”

  “If the crisis goes south,” Ray told her, “it won’t be the next promotion we’ll be worrying about, it’ll be the next meal! And by then it may be too late to get out of the city. If you’re going to talk about appreciation, I wish you’d appreciate that I’m doing my best to save the family.”

  “By dragging us all to the country that’s destroying us!” his mother wailed.

  “Don’t be a fool. Blaming our troubles on Esilian saboteurs is a convenient line for the masses, that’s all.”

  “I don’t care! You’re mad. You
’d throw away your position, all your seniority, your salary, just because a few choof addicts are throwing bricks through windows?”

  “Anji,” Ray snapped, “my salary wouldn’t pay for the drinks and canapés and hired entertainers at your parties. It wouldn’t pay for those jeweled combs in your hair. Don’t pretend you don’t know that.”

  Jef pressed his ear closer to the vent. He certainly hadn’t known that the family couldn’t live on Dad’s salary. Where did all the money come from, then?

  “What I know,” his mother said frostily, “is that everything you profit from – the bribes for getting the right people contracts with the Bureau, the cut out of your underlings’ salaries, the share in black market profits – comes from your position as Assistant Minister for Labor. You sell power. What do you think we’re going to live on if you throw your power away?”

  Jef had pressed a hand over his own mouth to stifle a gasp. Dad was crooked?

  Of course Dad was crooked.

  Last year his school holiday had coincided with one of Mom’s famous parties. She’d been annoyed but eventually concluded that as long as he was there, he might as well make himself useful by handing round canapés. Jef had heard half a dozen Important Men boasting about the tricks they’d found to augment their woefully inadequate salaries. Smuggling, import fraud, money laundering – there was no scheme too low for them to get their fingerprints on it. Why had he assumed Dad was immune to corruption?

  Of course, he’d been a little boy then. Only fourteen. Now, at fifteen, he was mature enough to handle the disillusionment. He had liked the idea of moving to Esilia when his dad first broached it, over breakfast this morning. But Mom had shushed him; it figured, she wouldn’t want him to know anything until it was all arranged and they could present it to him as a fait accompli.

  What she’d forgotten was that after breakfast he didn’t go off to crêche as usual, conveniently out of the way for a week. Instead he’d made tracks for his room and practiced being inconspicuous, hoping that this would happen – that they really would forget about him and say more about the move.