Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar-Apr 2013 (5 page)

Naomi Kritzer introduced us to Beck Garrison and her seastead home in our May/June 2012 issue and then shared with us the story of filming
High Stakes
in the story of the same name in our Nov./Dec. issue. This new tale takes us deeper into the heart of the floating nation known as New Minerva.

THE SEASTEAD HAS SOME big hotels, but they're all over on Amsterdarn, for the tourists. On Rosa and Min, we have a couple of guest houses—just a few small rooms, comfortable and private, with attached bathrooms. When someone has a guest visiting from shore, they stay in a guest house, because no one's apartment is big enough to comfortably house guests.

When I went to the guest house on Min, the guy said they were full. The guy running the Rosa guest house said the same thing. It was possible they really were full, but it was just as possible my father had paid them to turn me away.

My father doesn't hold any of the elected offices and he's not even on the Business Council, but his word carries a lot of weight on the seastead. Our chain of manmade islands is technically a half-dozen separate countries, each with its own rules, but from the antiquated freighter that holds Lib to the decommissioned aircraft carrier that's built into Amsterdarn, people know who my father is, and care what he thinks.

The seasteads were built by people who wanted to live with fewer rules. (Or none at all, in the case of Lib.) They've been afloat here for forty-nine years. My father brought me to live here when I was four, and told me that my mother had died. I didn't question that until the year I turned sixteen, when I got my first job—finding stuff, for people who wanted to buy it—and realized for the first time what a messed-up place this was.

And now, for defying him—first by helping a woman escape from a factory where she'd been bonded against her will, and then by helping a bond-worker named Miguel who was trying to start a union—my father had kicked me out.

Fine. That was
fine
. I didn't want to have to live with him
anyway
.

Especially after he'd lied to me about my mother.
Especially
after what had happened to Miguel.

With nowhere else to go, I went to the Catholic church to sit and think. The knowledge that I would
not
see Miguel there was nearly overwhelming. I was a little worried the priest would try to talk to me, but everyone left me alone. The church was crowded, and a lot of people were crying; clearly, I wasn't the only person grieving Miguel's death. Most of the people there seemed to actually be praying. I found a spot in the shadows and tried to consider my options sensibly.

I could take a boat to Amsterdarn. It was unlikely that my father had bought off every taxi driver and every hotel owner, so that would probably work. Amsterdarn was large, though, and honestly it kind of freaked me out, since I didn't know anyone over there. I could go to Thor's apartment and see if they had a couch they'd let me sleep on—except his parents would call my father, and turn me away if he asked them to.

I didn't think the American Citizens' Services Bureau (our fake embassy) was likely to be open this time of night. But even if it was, leaving like this—now—felt cowardly. All the bond-workers had stayed (well, almost all) and they were in a lot more danger than I was.

And that brought me to my final option. I could go rent a locker to sleep in, like a bond-worker would. I stayed in the church for a long time after that idea occurred to me. The third time I pulled out my gadget to check my mail, I had to admit to myself that I was hoping my father would change his mind. He wasn't going to. I stuck it in my pocket and found the stairs down to the lower levels.

It was late enough by then that I wasn't certain I'd be able to find a landlord. I tried Debbie's old room, but of course she'd given up that rental while she was on the show and no one knew where she was staying now. A woman named Elaine recognized me, though. "Why do you want our landlord?" she asked bluntly.

"I need a place to stay. My father kicked me out."

"Oh! That's terrible. I'll find him for you."

It turned out that lockers could be rented only by the week, which meant I had to spend a lot more than I'd expected. Then it turned out that mattresses and blankets were offered a la carte and had to be paid for separately. Oh, and so was the lock. If I stayed there for more than six weeks it would cost more to rent the mattress and blanket than it would have to buy them, but surely by then.…

The locker was exactly long enough for the mattress, with half a meter of clearance overhead. It felt a little like crawling into my own coffin, an image I tried desperately to push out of my head. Elaine showed me how to lock it from the inside. It was pitch black, and I realized that the only light source I had with me was my gadget. I turned it on, trying to glean some reassurance from the dim glow. But the "battery low" light was lit, and I didn't have the charging cable. I turned it off and tried to settle in.

The mattress was so hard I wasn't sure why I'd bothered to rent it, and the blanket was thin. I had no pajamas or even a toothbrush, and I'd forgotten to get a pillow.

When I focused, though, I could feel the movement of the waves: the gentle up-and-down rocking that had been part of my life since I was four years old. That, at least, was the same down here as it was in my father's apartment. I closed my eyes and focused on the waves until I fell asleep.

I woke up desperately wanting to pee. It took me a second to remember how to work the lock, and I mis-remembered the distance to the floor and stumbled. Three women were standing around talking, but they fell instantly silent and stared at me, wide-eyed.

"Elaine helped me rent this locker last night," I said. "My father kicked me out. And I have to pee. Can you tell me where the bathroom is?"

It was down the hall, but you needed to swipe an ID card to get in. "I'll swipe you in," one of the women said grudgingly, "but you'll owe me the charge."

"…it costs money?"

There was a round of derisive laughter. "You sound like a foob," one of them said. "Fresh on the boat. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, honey, and there's water in those bathrooms. Desalinated water. You don't think that's free, do you?"

Of course. In our apartment, the water was simply billed to my father. "I have an ID card," I said, hesitantly, "but I'm not sure it'll work. And I don't want my father to know where I am."

"You can get a cash-basis card if you want to stay anonymous," the woman said. "They cost more, though." She swiped her card and let me into the bathroom. "Don't waste water," she called after me. "It's all getting billed to me."

I peed. The toilet would be saltwater, so at least I wouldn't be charged as much, but it flushed itself twice while I was sitting on it. I'd run into toilets before that did this and it had startled me, but never
infuriated
me. When I was done, I rinsed my mouth, since I had no toothbrush. I carried a hairbrush in my backpack, and I wet it to brush my hair and then put my hair in a ponytail. I would have liked a shower, but I had no towel, plus I didn't want to abuse the woman's generosity.

"The stupid toilet flushed itself three times," I said when I came out. "But I used less than a gallon from the sink. Can I pay you later today? I need to get money from Geneva."

"Yeah," she said, and told me how much I owed her.

Now that I'd peed, I realized how hungry I was. The last time I'd eaten was on Amsterdarn, yesterday, with Thor and Janice. Clark's was the dining room on this level: it was cheap and offered meal plans by the week. The line was really long, probably due to the slowdown the union had organized. I was standing in it when I remembered that this was the dining hall that had poisoned Debbie's sister Lynn. What if they poisoned me? What if my father had
paid
them to poison me? What if the whole purpose of throwing me out was to set me up to get so sick that they could blackmail me with medical care?

I went to the sandwich shop near my morning school, instead.

"Hey, Beck!"

It was Thor, waving me over to his booth. Seeing a friendly face gave me a jolt of hope and relief—a sense that everything would be okay, maybe. I slid in across from him. "You look a little frazzled," he said.

"Yeah. My father kicked me out. He said I could come back if I agreed to 'act like his daughter,' which I think probably means spy on whoever he wants me to spy on, and tell him anything he asks."

I wanted to sound tough and defiant when I said this, but looking at Thor's face—which was worried and concerned and sympathetic all at once—broke my resolve. I started to cry. Thor moved over next to me and put his arm around my shoulders as I sobbed.

"Hey," he said. "Beck, it's not that bad. You can go to California, right? And live with your mom."

"I don't
want
to leave." I tried to explain, but I could tell from the noises he was making (the sort of "uh-huh" that means, "You can keep talking, I'm still listening," not the sort that means, "I totally agree with you") that he thought I was nuts.

"I can't wait to go back," he said. "If I had a parent on shore who wanted me, I'd be in the embassy right now saying, 'Get me out of here!'"

"Shore's
home
for you, though," I said.

"I asked Tyrone—you know, the guy at the Citizens' Services Bureau—about whether I could become an emancipated minor. He said no, probably not, at least not yet. But the day I turn eighteen, he said he can help me. I might enlist."

"Enlist?"

"In the military. Which admittedly is a little like being a bond-worker, since you can't quit, but they pay for
everything
. Housing, food, clothes, all your medical care.…"

I had seen a few movies where people were in the Army. I pulled away and looked at Thor, trying to imagine him with all his pretty curls shaved off for boot camp or whatever they called it these days. I must have made a face because Thor laughed.

"Anything but the Navy," he said. "I've had enough of the ocean."

He put his arm around me again and I leaned my head against his shoulder.

"Go to California," he said. "That way when I get there in two years, I'll have someone to visit."

But I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to leave
Thor
. And I knew from the way his arm tightened as he said "go" that he didn't really want me to go, either.

 
I GOT MONEY from my underground off-the-official-books bank and went to Miscellenry to buy the stuff I needed most urgently—a toothbrush, a towel, a change of clothes. A second blanket. A charge cable for my gadget. A flashlight. Jamie took my money and avoided my eyes. I could feel my father's influence as if he loomed over Jamie's shoulder, glaring at me. I thought about asking Jamie if he wanted to hire me back—he'd said just the other day he'd hire me back in a second—but I was afraid I'd start crying again when he said no. So I didn't ask.

"I need a cash-basis water card," I said.

Jamie looked over his shoulder, like he really did expect my father to be standing there, and said, "I don't sell those," a little bit too loudly. Then he pulled one out from under the counter and slipped it to me. "Don't tell anyone," he whispered. I reached for my wallet and he shook his head. "It's on me."

I tried to calculate how long my savings would last, paying for bed, food, water, and all the things I was probably still forgetting to account for. Not long, was the answer. Maybe a month. And then…what?

For now, I decided, I wasn't going to worry about it.

It was supposed to be my first day back at school, but I was pretty sure I couldn't go—if my father was cutting me off, he'd surely have canceled with my tutors. The day stretched out in front of me, empty, so I went for a walk, Min to Rosa to the far edge of Pete. I didn't go to Pete very often, because about the only thing I can say in Russian is, "Sorry, I don't speak Russian." (I had a Russian tutor for a while when I was little, but then my father got pissed off at some collective decision made on Pete and switched me to Spanish. Which I don't speak very well, either.)

Pete does have a few cool things, though, including a good-sized stretch of open deck that you can get onto for a really small fee—you don't need an ongoing subscription. Unfortunately, I realized only after I'd paid my entry fee that the weather was lousy. It was overcast and drizzling, but at that point I felt obligated to go stand in the open air for a little while anyway, because otherwise I'd have wasted my money. I looked out over the rail. I could see Sal, which was about a kilometer away, but only barely. Sal is short for Silicon Waters, and it's separated from the rest of the seastead because they do nanotech experimentation and the rest of the steaders were nervous about the dangers. Of course, people go back and forth by boat all the time. It's where my father's business is, although mostly he works from home.

Amsterdarn was on the other side of the stead from here, so I couldn't see it. Aside from Sal, I could see a couple of speedboats and someone who looked like he was out fishing. One of the signs said (in English, Spanish, and Russian) that on a clear day, visibility from this point was 6.85 miles, but I certainly couldn't see that far right now.

"…funeral of the rabble-rouser," someone said, in English. I stiffened but didn't look around.

"What about the press? I'm thinking of
Stead Life
, in particular, since they have a significant following." The voices were male; there were two of them; they were standing a short distance away. I resolutely stared out to sea.

"They're already not going."

"Heh. Good. The last thing we need is someone making more of this than it is."

"At any rate, we hired the ADs for the actual action. Your people are for the perimeter—we want you to make sure no unacceptable targets even make it to the funeral in the first place. Ideally we'd like no one who isn't a bond-worker, but for sure, absolutely no minors are to be allowed in."