Strange Perceptions (10 page)

“Really?” Favel said. “I wonder where he gets them. Last book I saw was two years ago at the Eastside Market.”

“I don’t know, but it’s got to be true. He’s so smart.” Jesper tore off another chunk of bread and dipped it the saucepan of gravy Favel had warming on her small atom cooker. “This tastes wonderful. What’s in it?”

“You don’t want to know. I got it from Meadows.”

Jesper shrugged and continued wolfing down the soggy bread.

“What I want to know,” Favel said, “is what disabled the Sentinels?”

Jesper shrugged again. “Just some box he had with a big red button on it.”

“Well I don’t care if he has a magic box. It won’t protect him from the Uppers. You shouldn’t get caught up in his mess or you’ll end up in jail, too.”

“Naw. It’s not like that. See, Mr. Grady has it all planned out. He has thousands of people to help him all over Eastside. They can’t wipe us all out. Then what would they do? Clean their own toilets? Pick up their own garbage? That’s the thing. Mr. Grady says the Uppers need us. They just don’t want us knowing they need us.”

Favel considered this. Maybe, but it didn’t pay to stir things up. She removed the saucepan from the atom cooker, set it on the plastic floor, and turned the cooker off. The surface instantly cooled. She wrapped the cooker in an old shirt, stuck the shirt in a cereal box, and packed the cereal box back into her shopping cart.

“What does Mr. Grady want?” she asked. “I mean why is he doing this?”

“He says the Lowers should take part in the government just like the Uppers. We should be able to vote.”

Loud pounding on the outside of her cube woke Favel the next morning. She hated sleeping in the cubes, without a back door you were trapped. And she detested being around so many people, but it was safer than sleeping outside.

Annoyed, she unlocked her door and peered out.

Bane, a tall, skinny, annoying homeless with a handlebar mustache shouted “They got him.” Bane couldn’t talk in a normal voice. He always yelled. This time he actually screamed. He moved from Favel’s cube to the next one down the row and pounded on it.

Favel stuffed her ragged sleeping bag into her cart and went outside to see the cause of the commotion.

Jesper ran to her. “They arrested Mr. Grady. They also got the men who took the Sentinel ships.”

“I told you,” she said. “Best not to get involved.”

“It’s on the screens. They got him saying it was wrong to go against the system. That the only way a system works is if each part does its job. They’re going to fast track a trial.”

Favel snorted. “Right. He’s already been found guilty. They’ll just put on a show to make it look good. You ask me, he’ll be tried, found guilty, and locked up before the week is out.”

She was right. Almost.

Later that day Jesper caught up with Favel at the Eastside Market.

Cars seldom traveled the Eastside streets. Most traffic was on foot, but a fair amount of bicycles and tricycles, both human powered and atom powered, zigzagged through the pedestrians. The City had closed off the Eastside ten years prior, allowing access only through monitored points. Over 90% of the traffic through these points were workers going to work and coming home after a long shift. Since being sequestered from the rest of the City, Eastside had become sort of a city within the City. People referred to this area as Eastside or simply the East.

The Eastside Market was the main point of commerce throughout Eastside. Vendor tables and booths were set up in a two block area which had a tall wooden fence around the perimeter. Favel sat at her normal spot, the curb across street from the market’s entrance, where she had an unobstructed view of two different waste receptacles. She had disabled the incinerator on each and when she noticed a receptacle getting full or if she saw any other homeless lingering near, especially that blasted Bane, she’d rush over, empty the receptacle into her basket to dig through later.

“You hear?” Jesper asked. He sat on the curb next to Favel.

“I hear lots,” Favel said.

“About Mr. Grady. His trial starts in the morning.”

“So?”

“So it’s going to be on the screens. Lots of Eastside people are going to watch it from the park.”

“Okay,” Favel said. She spotted Bane walking casually, as if he had no destination in mind, but he was inching closer to one of her waste bins. “What does this have to do with me?”

“You want to watch the trial with me?”

“Are you kidding?” Favel said, keeping an eye on Bane. “It’s all for show. Why would I want to watch any of
their
propaganda?”

“But Mr. Grady’s one of the good ones. He was nice to us.”

“So? Lots of good people end up worse off the Mr. Grady. He was stupid. Look what he got. No upside to being nice. You got to watch out for yourself or something bad will happen to you.”

“Like your parents?”

Favel glowered at Jesper. She would not discuss her parents. “Mr. Grady wasn’t watching out for you. You’re a chump if you think so.”

Jesper stood. “Sometimes you can be a real jerk.” He stomped off.

Bane pulled an armful of trash from a waste bin and sprinted away, leaving a trail of litter behind him.

The next morning there was a general exodus from the cubes to the park. Favel hung back, watching everyone leave. She decided to follow. Not that she cared about the trial, but there was no sense going to the market. Nobody would be there today.

Eastside park is a large rectangle, over fifty acres big, crisscrossed with paths and ringed with trees and bushes. An artificial stream meandered through one side, but the water had been turned off long ago. The grass had died, replaced by weeds. In the center of the park was an amphitheater. At the amphitheater’s bottom, on the stage, was a huge screen, the only thing in the park maintained by the City. After all, they had to keep the propaganda flowing.

Favel entered the park just far enough to see the crowd assembled before the screen. The homeless were there, sure, but many others had showed up. Factory workers, janitors, plumbers, auto mechanics, manual laborers of all types. People who performed jobs the Uppers didn’t want to do and couldn’t easily automate. They were the unwashed mass that kept the City running.

Favel had never seen such a large crowd. The amphitheater overflowed, people stood around the top, ten deep. She couldn’t have seen the screen if she wanted to. Not that she wanted to. Not really. She’d be able to hear the broadcast, which was more than enough to satisfy her curiosity.

A loud voice boomed “Hear ye. Hear ye. This trial will now come to order.”

The crowd’s murmur decreased to a small din.

“We have before us case DP1-405G, the case of The City vs. Mr. Anthin Grady. The Honorable Justice Cackett presiding.”

Favel tuned out the announcer’s voice and became lost in her own thoughts. Maybe she should just go. What was she hanging around for anyway? Did she really care what happened to Grady? He was a good man, just misguided if he thought he could change things. She couldn’t help him. Sticking around to listen to this farce of a trial was the same as watching emergency services when they came to haul away a body that had died in the cubes. You knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

She left.

Jesper caught up with her a few hours later. “They’re going to kill him.”

“Really?” Capital punishment was unheard of. Much easier to stick someone in jail—cubes of a different sort—and forget them.

Jesper’s head bobbed up and down. “Yep. Said inciting violence against the City was treason. They’re executing him in the morning.”

“Wow. I didn’t think they’d go that far.”

“And the crazy thing,” Jesper said. “They’re doing it here?”

“What?”

“They’re having a public execution in the park. Going to broadcast it live.”

Favel scratched her head. “I guess they want to scare everyone to keep this from happening again.”

Jesper rubbed his eyes with the palms his hands. “Can you go with me?”

“I don’t do public things.”

“Please Favel. Just this once.”

“I got my principles. A person’s got to have principles.”

“I don’t know if I can handle watching it by myself.”

“Then don’t watch it. Why torture yourself? You won’t be by yourself. There’ll be hundreds, if not thousands, there with you.”

“I kind of have to go.”

“Why?”

“Because …” Jesper paused, looked distantly in the sky as if trying to see something far away. “I can’t explain it.”

“I don’t understand why you’d want to torture yourself?”

Jesper looked her in the eyes, something he never did. “Please. I need a friend with me.”

His pleading eyes were uncomfortable. She looked away and sighed. “Okay.”

For some inexplicable reason Favel allowed Jesper to talk her into camping overnight in the amphitheater, sleeping on the first row, a long, circular bench cut into the hillside. She had her sleeping bag, but left her shopping cart with Cap, a homeless man she trusted. She didn’t know if his name meant “captain” or if he was called Cap because of the hat he always wore.

Several dozen people, not all homeless, also slept in the amphitheater, staking out their spots.

People started arriving shortly before day break. They arrived in singles and small groups, straggling in, a mish-mash of Eastside people. Favel didn’t expect any Uppers. They wouldn’t debase themselves by sitting among Lowers.