Rats in the Pipes

13: Being Stoical

As the cycle wore on the heatwave eased. By Nineday the temperature was back to normal and Per's bruises had become spectacular displays of purple and yellow. He told me they hurt much less. The swelling in his hands and fingers had gone. I felt slightly voyeuristic but I insisted he drop his shorts to prove his equipment was also back to normal. It had looked terrible and I was worried the spragging had done permanent damage. It's a vile torture. They use a bundle of hardened plastempal rods with the ends split so that they whip and cut. Often the victims are left permanently damaged. Per said he remembered only one blow but then he'd passed out. Still it looked like it had only been sufficient to bruise. Perhaps that was their idea of a friendly warning. Running about the city delivering stuff hardly occupies the brain so I spent a lot of time thinking about the episode of the splats and what had subsequently happened to Per. The more I thought about it the less I liked it.

I was puzzled by the disposal of the corpses. Many of the Elite are insane. Others are so drunk on power as to be the next best thing to mad. They act on whims and impulse. Reason plays little part in their lives. Malf Tesh Vik falls into neither category. He may be a despicable excuse for a human being but he never acts without logic or calculation. It's why he's held Esperance in an iron grip for so long. Status is extremely important to the Elite. Per said Hedd didn't care that he was disowned by his family but by the time Per knew him he was an old man. He'd had a life time to come to terms with whatever regrets he might have had. Certainly he was an exceptional person from Per's account. Treating the corpses like garbage would be a total and unforgivable insult. Also the idea of allowing residents of the lower levels of the city to know that a power struggle was going on was odd. Normally elite business is elite business and hard to know about even for a lot of the residents of UpCit. So presumably there was or had been some intention to make something public. But about four cycles had gone by and there had been nothing about it. It appeared that no-one was supposed to have seen the Tesh Vik guards so had that disrupted whatever the plan had been? The problem was Per was right; in Esperance it's impossible to find out what's really going on. In the end I decided to take a leaf out of Per's stoicism and shove the whole thing to the back of my brain. It was nothing I could do anything about. What was in my control was coming home to Per and Mik. Against all my expectations I had acquired a family and not just one but two people to love. I had been wrong to think I couldn't have those things in Esperance. For the moment I was entirely happy and that was enough.

Per went to the ARM offices and cancelled the contract for his flat. He still had to pay a Turn's rent but on Restday we went and collected the rest of his stuff. When I clocked off on Oneday I ambled over to Dom's station. He didn't glance away from his screens.

"My legs are better now so I'll do my own."

"Fair enough. I take that means my Hi-Mids are a thing of the past?"

"You take it right. Unless of course?"

"No. Anyway that wasn't what I wanted to talk about. I wondered if there were any jobs. I know someone who's looking. He'd be reliable. He had a steady job but he got injured. He's better now."

"Why would I want a friend of yours? I don't need any more weirdo's cluttering up the place."

"Hey I thought I was the right kind of weirdo?"

Dom chuckled "Maybe. That doesn't mean I need two of you. So what did this friend of yours do before he became desperate enough to want to be a delivery boy?"

"He was a Forcer."

Dom swivelled round. He grinned "Well that's different. Tell him come see me tomorrow."

I went home and reported the results of my conversation to Per who sighed then shrugged

"It's no more than I expected. My employment prospects are not enhanced by my record to date. Cage fighter as in numb brain who is good as muscle. Forcer who will be likely to scam anyone who employs him unless of course they are running one big scam in which case they'll love to have me. I'll go and see him but it sounds like he won't want me if I come clean and say I won't scam."

"You could always do what I did and say nothing. Actually the conversation didn't happen until I'd been there a couple of Turns and at first he thought I was just negotiating hard. By the time he rumbled I meant it I'd sort of become a fixture."

Per grinned "I expect he's learnt by his mistake. How come he didn't get rid of you when he realised you wouldn't scam?"

"There are a reasonable number of jobs where it's not possible to make anything on the side. Like the Chizzles work where it's just packets of samples or the stuff for private addresses. They're not popular. None of the other boys want them so it saves Dom trouble to give them to me. Problem is he's right about there being no room for two people to do that. I pretty well mop up all those jobs. It's why I can always make my twenty creds."

I was jerked out of a deep sleep by the sound of Mik wailing. I crawled to the edge of the platform as Per put the light on and picked him up off the floor. I scrambled down the ladder.

"What happened?"

"He fell."

Mik was sobbing "it hurts, it hurts."

"Let Dad Per look. Where does it hurt?"

"Here." he put his hand to his head. I got a wash cloth and some ice from the chiller and made a little pack.

"Let me put this on." Mik jerked his head back at the touch "It'll make it better like it did Dad Per." I gave the ice pack to Per and got the home farmo kit out of the cupboard. "We need more Ezal bruise cream." I grinned "As a family we seem to specialise in bruises"

Per grinned back at me. He sat on the couch with Mik on his lap. Mik had stopped howling and was now just sniffing a bit. It didn't look too bad. There was a red mark on his forehead but he seemed otherwise undamaged.

"What did I tell you about waking me if you needed the cubby?" Mik squirmed a bit. "Do you want the cubby?" he shook his head

"I wanted Fant. You didn't say about Fant." he pointed and I saw the toy on the floor by the couch.

"Slots, in future wake Dad Ben when you want anything. You are not to climb down the ladder in the dark by yourself."

"He can stay down here with me for what's left of the night."

"One of the reasons he's up there with me is that the couch even when it's pulled out is not big enough for you. You have to sleep diagonally and bent up. In fact it would be more sensible if you slept up there and Mik and I shared the couch."

"Well let's argue about it tomorrow. It's four in the morning."

I groaned, only an hour until the alarm went off. "Slots."