Martin Greenberg: Visions of Liberty

Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep…

Duggan cursed under his breath and tugged the compak from his shirt pocket. The caller was Brose’s assistant aloft in theBarnet . All ship’s personnel were recalled to base immediately. General Rhinde had finally gotten his way and announced plans to take over Ferrydock as a military demonstration. The occupation force had begun mobilizing aboard theBarnet and would descend from orbit at dawn.

Four flights of assault shuttles made synchronized landings at key points and deployed with alacrity to seize and secure the prime means of access and communications. Two task forces sealed the main highway and rail links north and south, another commandeered the airport, while the last took the Strandside bridge and sent a column into Ferrydock to occupy the broadcasting stations and news bureaus. Meanwhile, special details sped through the town to install military administrators and technicians in the offices responsible for transportation, power generation and distribution, and communications. By midday the operation was completed as per the timetable. At noon precisely, General Rhinde went on the air to inform the inhabitants of Ferrydock that their town was now under Terran military jurisdiction and subject to the laws of its governing council. Communications and public services were under control of a colonial administration reporting to an appointed governor, and regulations concerning the conduct of business and finance would be announced shortly.

The townspeople seemed to think it was a great idea. An enthusiastic crowd in the central square greeted the news, relayed through their personal phones or from loudspeakers set up for the occasion, and by early afternoon representatives from the sanitation, harbor facilities, and water supply services were appearing at the governor’s downtown headquarters offering their organizations for takeover too. Meanwhile, the management at places the Terrans had declared themselves to be in control of were resigning or taking a holiday to disappear to the beaches at Strandside, visit with grandchildren, or spend time on their hobbies. By next morning, the town was in chaos. Half the communications were down, the airport was barely functioning, and services languished as employees took breaks to line up enthusiastically in hundreds to be issued newly introduced permits and licenses. In the end, Rhinde’s officers were forced to send out squads to track down essential professionals and bring them back at gunpoint to carry out tasks which until yesterday they had performed readily and willingly. That was when Duggan began getting his first strong intuition that this wasn’t going to work out in the way that had been envisaged.

When all-out war failed to materialize, the restrictions confining non-occupation personnel to base were eased. Duggan was standing on a street corner with Tawna, watching two troopers shouldering assault rifles and clad in riot gear, posted to protect the Municipal Services Building from a gaggle of curious onlookers, when Zeebron Stell called from the office suite he’d rented as a trading base. He sounded agitated.

“Dug, where are you?”

“A few blocks away from you on Johannes Street. You know, Zeeb, I think Gilbert and Sullivan could have done a lot with this.”

“Is Tawna with you?”

“Yes, she is. What’s up?”

“I’ve got problems. People here don’t seem to understand that I’m running a business, not a thrift store. Can you get over? Maybe she’d be able to do a better job of getting the message across.”

“It’s Zeeb, from his emporium,” Duggan murmured to Tawna. “He’s having some kind of trouble with the locals. Wants us over there to see if you can maybe talk to them. Is that okay with you?”

“Sure.”

“We’re on our way, Zeeb.”

A miscellany of vehicles was parked outside the building in which Stell had his premises, including a beat-up truck. Inside, they found him remonstrating with a dowdily dressed woman who seemed interested in some toilet preparations that he had amassed a stack of in one of the rooms. Elsewhere, a couple with two small children were examining a shelf of electronics appliances, while a small, bespectacled, bearded man, wearing a tweed jacket with deerstalker-like hat and waving a list of some kind, hopped about, trying to get Stell’s attention. “ NolYou’re outta your mind,” Stell told the woman. “How is that supposed to be doing me a favor? It’s not even what I paid.” Then, to the man, “Look, I told you I’m not interested. I don’t even know who any of those people are. How in hell do you figure you’re helpingme?” Another man appeared in a doorway at the rear, smiling and holding an elaborate wrist unit of some kind that had a miniature screen. Stell groaned, then caught sight of Duggan and Tawna and steered them gratefully back into the entrance hallway.

“There’s some kind of victimization conspiracy,” he told them. “With each other, they’re real generous. I know. I watched ’em. But when they come here, they try and rip me off with pennies and buttons. It’s almost like they think Iowe them. And Sherlock Holmes’s brother back there keeps pestering me with every hard-luck story in town. One guy’s house got flattened in a mudslide. Somebody else’s baby needs surgery. I even had a lady in earlier, asking if I wanted to put something into an education fund. What’s going on?”

Tawna nodded. “Of course. These are people who really do need help…”

“But they’re talking about helpingme!” Stell protested.

“Well, yes… that too.” Tawna obviously still couldn’t see anything strange.

“How do they figure that?” Stell demanded.

“Well…” Tawna hesitated in the way of somebody reluctant to spell out what should have been clear. “To enjoy pride and self-esteem, the way everyone wants to,” she said. “The more wealth and material things you acquire, the more you can make things easier for those going through hard times. Once you’re reasonably comfortable yourself, it starts to mean more, right?” She glanced at Duggan. “It’s like what we were saying the other day about eating all day. Beyond a certain point, any more doesn’t make sense.”

Stell’s eyes bulged. “You mean they’ll hassle me like this forever here?”

“Oh, no. Only until you learn to judge for yourself what share to put back in, like everyone else. Since you don’t know how it works yet, they’re probably just trying to help. It might take a little time.”

“Well, suppose I don’t want them telling me. What if I put my own guards on the place and keep ’em away?”

“That would be up to you, of course…. But why would anyone want to?” She looked at Duggan again and caught the resigned expression on his face. “Okay, don’t tell me, Paul. Back home they’re all like that. Yes?”

General Rhinde’s measures weren’t having the intended effect. In a closed-door meeting of the political and military chiefs aboard theBarnet , it was agreed that the citizens of Ferrydock were undergoing too little violation of their freedoms and rights to provoke whoever was supposed to defend them into coming out and doing so. Accordingly, since there was no set precedent at Tharle to say how far these things should be taken, the governor was instructed to issue a declaration stating that to facilitate improved control and efficiency, the Terran administration now owned everything in the name of everybody and was taking charge of manufacture, distribution, employment, and other services directly.

But the populace seemed happy to let them take it. A mood of festivity spread as virtually the whole of Ferrydock shut up stores and offices and took to the boulevards or sat back in the sun to await decisions and directions. Very soon, surface landers were shuttling frantically between the Barnet and Base 1, bringing extra details of planners and controllers to relieve the harried supervisory offices, now working around the clock. Meanwhile, ostensibly to bolster the security of all by setting up a centrally managed disaster relief agency—in reality, to get faster results through imposed austerity—huge stocks of food, fuel, clothing, materials, and other supplies were impounded and locked up in a large warehouse near the airport requisitioned for the purpose and officially renamed the “Federal Emergency Relief Repository.” (Use of the word “federal” was a bit premature since as of yet there were no political entities other than Ferrydock to federate with it, but the planners were already shaping up grand schemes and visions of the future.) The repository was duly furnished with a ten-foot wire fence, traffic barrier and checkpoint at the gate, and a billet of armed guards.