Walter Williams - Conventions of War

“Ahundred?” For a moment it was Casimir’s turn to be outraged.

“Think about it,” Sula said. “Think how much they’ll be worth to you.”

They held each other’s eyes for a moment, then both broke into laughter. “We’ll talk price later,” Casimir said, and hustled her into the vestibule along with Veronika, who showed Sula a five-zenith coin.

“Julien gave it to me for the cab,” she said triumphantly. “And we get to keep the change!”

“You’d better hope the cabhas change for a fiver,” Sula said, and Veronika thought for a moment.

“We’ll get change in the lobby.”

A Daimong night clerk gave them change, and Veronika’s nose wrinkled at his corpse scent. On the way to her apartment Sula learned that Veronika was a former model and now an occasional club hostess.

“I’m an unemployed math teacher,” Sula said.

Veronika’s eyes went wide again. “Wow,” she said.

After letting Veronika off, Sula had the Torminel driver take her within two streets of the communal Riverside apartment, after which she walked the distance to the building by the light of the stars. Overhead, the broken arcs of the ring were a curved line of black against the faintly glowing sky. Outside the apartment she gazed up for a long moment until she discerned the pale gleam of the white ceramic pot in the front window. It was in the position that meantSomeone is in the apartment and it is safe.

The lock on the building’s front door, the one that read her fingerprint, worked only erratically, but this time she caught it by surprise and the door opened. She went up the stair, then used her key on the apartment lock.

Macnamara was asleep on the couch, with a pair of pistols on the table in front of him, along with a grenade.

“Hi, Dad,” Sula said as he blinked awake. “Junior brought me home safe, just like he said he would.”

Macnamara looked embarrassed. Sula gave him a grin.

“What were you planning on doing with agrenade?” she asked.

He didn’t reply. Sula took off her jacket and called up the computer that resided in the desk. “I’ve got work to do,” she said. “You’d better get some sleep, because I’ve got a job for you first thing in the morning.”

“What’s that?” He rose from the couch, scratching his sleep-tousled hair.

“The market opens at 0727, right?”

“Yes.”

Sula sat herself at the desk. “I need you to buy as much food as you can carry. Canned, dried, bottled, freeze-dried. Get the biggest sack of flour they have, and another sack of beans. Condensed milk would be good. Get Spence to help you carry it all.”

“What’s going on?” Macnamara was bewildered.

“Food rationing.”

“What?”Sula could hear the outrage in his voice as she called up a text program.

“Two reasons for it I can think of,” she said. “First, issuing everyone a ration card will be a way of reprocessing every ID on the planet…help them weed out troublemakers and saboteurs. Second…” She held up one hand and made the universal gesture of tossing a coin in her palm. “Artificial scarcities are going to make some Naxids very, very rich.”

“Damn them,” Macnamara breathed.

“We’lldo very well,” Sula pointed out. “We’ll quadruple our prices on everything on the ration-you don’t suppose they’d be good enough to rationtobacco, would you? — and we’ll make a fortune.”

“Damn them,” Macnamara said again.

Sula gave him a pointed look. “Good night,” she said. “Dad.”

He flushed and shambled to bed. Sula turned to her work.

“What if they rationalcohol?” she said aloud as the thought struck her. There would be stills in half the bathrooms in Zanshaa, processing potatoes, taswa peels, apple cores, whatever they could find.

In the next few hours she roughed out an essay forResistance denouncing the food ration. Her previous job, before she’d volunteered to get herself killed with partisan forces, had been with the Logistics Consolidation Executive, which had been deeply involved with cataloging and deployment of resources. She knew that, as the Praxis demanded, the planet of Zanshaa was self-sufficient in foodstuffs, and that from the practical point of view of providing food to the population, the ration was nonsense. She quoted numerous statistics from memory, and was able to get the rest out of public data sources.

By the time she finished, dawn was greening in the east. She took a shower to wash the tobacco smell out of her hair and collapsed into bed just as she heard Macnamara’s alarm go off.

She rose after noon, the apartment already hot with the brilliant sun of summer. As she rubbed her swollen eyelids and blinked in the sunlight flooding the front room, she began to remember what it was like to be a clique member’s girlfriend.

And then she had another thought. Thus far Action Team 491 had been selling her own property out of the back of a truck, a business that was irregular but legal. But once the ration came into effect, selling cocoa and coffee off the ration would be against the law. The team wouldn’t just be participating in informal economic activity, they’d be committing acrime.

People who committed crimes needed protection. Casimir was going to be more necessary than ever.

“Damnit,” she said.

Macnamara failed to procure a large stash of food. Police were already in force at the market, and foodsellers had been told not to sell large quantities to any one person. He wisely decided to avoid attracting attention and bought only quantities that might be considered reasonable for a family of three.

The announcement of rationing had been made while Sula slept and the food marts were packed. Tobacco had not been included, but Sula couldn’t hope for everything. Citizens were given twenty days to report to their local police station in order to apply for a ration card. The reason given by the government for the imposition of rationing was the destruction of the ring and the decline in food imports.

The news reports announced that certain well-established Naxid clans, out of pure civic spirit, had agreed to spare the government any expense, and would instead use their own means to manage the planet’s food supplies. The Jagirin clan, whose head had been temporary interior minister during the changeover from the old government to the new, the Ummir clan, whose head happened to be the Minister of Police, the Ushgays, the Kulukrafs…people who, even if some of them hadn’t been with the rebellion from the beginning, clearly found it in their interest to support it now.

Sula reworked herResistance essay to include a list of the cooperating clans, along with a suggestion that anyone working for the ration authority was a legitimate target of war.

The Naxids, she thought, had just created a whole new class of target.

Naxids were placed in every police station to monitor the process of acquiring ration cards, and the Naxids wore the black uniform of the Legion of Diligence, the organization that investigated crimes against the Praxis. All members of the Legion had been evacuated from Zanshaa before the arrival of the Naxid fleet, so apparently the new government had reformed the Legion, probably with personnel from the Naxid police.

Anotherclass of target, Sula thought.

She then sent out the usual fifty thousand copies through the Records Office broadcast node. The next few days were spent making deliveries, arguing with restaurant and club managers about her increased prices, and watching resentment build among the city’s population. Fury against the Naxids was now quite open, and even solid, prosperous citizens felt free to vent their rage publicly.

She wondered how people like One-Step would fare at acquiring their ration card. What, for instance, would One-Step claim as an occupation?