John Brunner - The Squares of the City

A fine of a thousand dolaros? Why did so small a sum go unpaid? We are poor—but there are those who say they agree with us, and some of them are rich!

Hence: The defenders of our rights have been robbed! And from there it was a slip of a mental gear, a less-than-jump to a conclusion close at hand, an automatic identification by thousands of people given to thinking in identities, to the plain statement.

“We, the people, have been robbed!”

I ought never to drink on my own. A few drinks give me mental clarity; in company, I could keep my consumption down because of the amount of talking I did. I’d got two reputations that way—as a good conversationalist and as a bore. On my own, I always reached too far too fast in search of still greater clarity, and wound up fuddled.

When I threw myself into bed, I fell deeply asleep for the first part of the night. About four or five o’clock I began to toss and dream. I was wearing an awkward nightshirt that kept tangling my legs; I had gone to a Latin American carnival dressed as an angel with a flaming sword, but the sword was pasteboard. Dark, piteous faces kept rising before me. I slashed at them with the sword, knowing it would not harm them. Yet every time I slashed, the heads rolled and spurts of blood two feet high leaped into the air. Desperately I tried to control the sword, but even when I let go of it it kept slashing and slashing, and the heads rolled until they made a monstrous grinning pile around my feet and my nightshirt was soaked with blood.

In the morning my bed was damp with sweat, and that was not due to the warmth of the night. It had been warm every night since I arrived.

I washed and shaved and went down to the lounge without having eaten my breakfast. I had that curious unsatisfied hollow feeling that isn’t quite a hangover but is compounded of too many cigarettes, slightly too much to drink, and not at all enough sleep. I called for the morning papers and then didn’t bother to open them; my mind was too distraught. I wasted a bit of time smoking a couple of cigarettes and went down to the traffic department to see Angers.

“Morning, Hakluyt,” he greeted me. “Just looking at those costings. Your scheme seems pretty sound—works out under two and a half million dolaros.”

“That’s bad,” I contradicted grumpily. “It oughtn’t to take more than half the appropriation—after all, it’s only half the job. I’ll take a look at it and cut the corners off: then if I can’t get it below two million I’ll have to start over.”

“But there’s no need for that,” said Angers, looking at me in mild surprise. “I’m sure we can raise the additional—”

“Four million I was told; four million it can very probably be,” I interrupted. “Oh, don’t let it bother you. I can lose half a million out of that, I imagine. I was generous as hell with the estimates—weighted them for rise in cost of living, suppliers’ greed, everything. And for bribery in the treasury department.”

I don’t know why I added that. Angers gave me a sharp stare.

“You oughtn’t to go around saying things like that, Hakluyt,” he warned. “Even if you have been reading Tiempo.”

“Are they after Seixas again this morning? I haven’t opened my papers today.”

Angers shrugged. “Nothing special this morning, so far as I know. But this blighter Felipe Mendoza has been insulting Seixas right and left recently. I don’t much care for Seixas personally, as you know, but I don’t believe a word of what Mendoza says, and in any case it is extremely bad for the prestige of the department to repeat his accusations.”

He rattled the papers before him into a neat pile. “Well, I’d like to put this scheme before Diaz, anyway. Any objections?”

“Provided you make it clear it’s by no means final, I suppose you can if you like.” I took out cigarettes and gave him one. “What do you think of the situation in Vados today?”

“Terrible,” said Angers succinctly. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Somebody actually threw a stone at my car on the way to work this morning. And there wasn’t a policeman in sight.”

“Police learn early not to be on hand when they’re really needed.” I thought of the scant help I’d had from them when Dalban started to threaten me. Well, Lucas had that in hand. I hoped.

“Speaking of police, though,” I said after a brief pause, “I’d appreciate having a few of the local force along with me today.”

Angers nodded. “I’ll tell O’Rourke,” he said, making a note on a scratch pad. “So you’ve changed your mind about that bodyguard you were offered, have you? Can’t say I blame you.”

“I don’t want a bodyguard. But if I’m going down into that hole of Sigueiras’, I suppose I’d be safer with an escort.”

He took a few moments to decide that he had heard me correctly. Then he drew a deep breath. “What makes you think of that all of a sudden?” he demanded.

“I’ve been saying—and believing—that this slum was a simple problem, not calling for elaborate answers, and that it’s been dragging on and dragging on… I want to see what it’s like down there. I want to see the extent of the human problem involved.”

He fiddled with the ball-point pen from his desk stand. “Human problems don’t exactly fall in your province, do they?” he ventured. “I should have thought you could safely leave that to the city council.”

“You misunderstand me. I’m sticking to my own speciality all right.”

He didn’t press that line further. He countered, “But you must realize that to go into that place just now would be worse than walking into a den of lions! It’s Tezol’s home, for instance; now that he’s in jail and Francis has killed himself, it would be—would be foolhardy!”

“As it happens,” I said, “my middle name is Daniel. Boyd Daniel Hakluyt. I’ve already thought about the consequences —I still want to see for myself.”

“Couldn’t Caldwell give you an idea?” Angers insisted. “Or someone else from the health department? There are several people on the staff who’ve been down there—”

“I’m tired of ‘being given an idea,’“ I said wearily. “I was given a wrong idea when I first came here, and there’ve been enough wrong ideas foisted on me since to make me suspicious as hell. I want to form some ideas of my own.”

“Very well,” said Angers stiffly. “I’ll arrange it for you. It’ll have to be this afternoon, I’m afraid, because I have an appointment with Diaz this morning that I can’t put off.”

My rather grudging respect for him rose a notch or two. I said, “You mean you’re coming with me?”

“Of course. Sigueiras’s main quarrel is with me; I wouldn’t want you to think you were collecting something aimed at my head if there is trouble. I’ll ask O’Rourke for a suitable escort—come to think of it, it might not be a bad idea for them to say they’re looking for Brown.”

“Would that hold up? Haven’t they searched the place already? I’d have thought it was an obvious hideout for him.”

Angers shrugged. “I don’t know whether they’ve searched the place or not, and I don’t care. It would be a good excuse.”

“I wonder what’s become of Fats,” I murmured, more to myself than to Angers, but he caught the words.

“Does it matter?” he countered. “The one certain thing is that he hasn’t dared to show his face in Vados again, and I’m sure that’s not a bad thing.”

I didn’t say anything. Whatever else anyone said, though, Fats Brown had left an impression on me: the impression that he was an honest man.

It was roughly what I had come to expect of the Vadeano police that for the afternoon’s sortie they laid on eight armed officers in two cars—after previously having established that Sigueiras himself was going to be out in the city somewhere. They seemed to be good at shows of this kind; less good at the practical side of police work.