Christopher Nuttall - Picking Up the Pieces

“Here you are,” Suki said, as we drove into the government complex. “I’ll wait for you here.”

Muna and I walked inside, passed through the nervous guards, and entered the waiting room. “I don’t think she likes me very much,” Muna said, dryly. “You do know that there’s no choice, don’t you?”

“I know,” I reassured her. I could do the maths as well as she could. The planet was heading for disaster unless we could force it off the failure path. The contraceptive program, as harsh and cruel as it was, was a step in the right direction. “There’s no choice at all.”

Frida looked tired and worn when we were finally shown into her office. Her scar looked more prominent on her face than before. “General, Captain,” she said, with a thin smile. “I don’t have as much time as I thought — I’m supposed to be away from here by the time the protestors arrive — so shall we cut right to the meat of the matter?”

“Of course,” I said, seriously. “Muna?”

Muna coughed and folded her dark hands on her lap. “The food rationing program is holding up so far,” she said. She’d been tasked with handling it because few locals could be trusted to do so. Everyone and his dog wanted extra rations and they’d found all kinds of ways to pressure the government into feeding them. “There has been a slight drop in the number of people claiming food rations as they’ve gone out to the new farms, but otherwise numbers remain fairly consistent.”

She smiled, reciting from memory. “There has actually been a slight economic boost as a result of the program,” she added. “It’s too complex to analyse here, but items that are not rationed cost considerably more than items that are rationed, pushing people into spending money on other goods. This has led to a slight rise in sales and several hundred additional jobs being created. That is actually separate to work crews clearing the rubble from the streets, here and in Pitea, and other make-work programs, which are actually net drains in some ways. Unfortunately, we have no choice, but to rely on them.

“The attempt to rebuild the damaged or destroyed industrial capability is running into problems,” she continued. I heard Frida’s muttered curse and fully shared it. “The Communists killed a number of the trained and skilled workers we need to rebuild the industry, operate what we have, teach new apprentices and generally be in several places at once. Again, we have no particular shortage of unskilled labour, but the lack of skilled labour is producing a major bottleneck. In short, I’ve pulled a number of skilled workers out to serve as teachers and training manages, but I don’t think we’ll see major results for at least another five years. We can repair the damage, but rebuilding Pitea is going to take years.”

Frida glared down at her hands. “Is there no way the process can be sped up?”

“Not easily,” Muna admitted. “The quickest way to speed up the process would be to hire labour from off-world, but that would be costly; Svergie, frankly, does not have a high credit rating or trustworthiness index. The fact that there’s a war on…”

“I understand,” Frida snapped. “The sooner we put an end to the war, the better. General?”

I nodded. “The current stalemate seems likely to continue for the next two years, unless something happens to upset the apple cart,” I explained. “Once we have the new farms up and running, we can either negotiate a peace treaty or move into the mountains and defeat the enemy on their own ground. The mere presence of the new farms will weaken our dependence upon the old farms — although we will have to remove most of the government inspectors, those who are still alive.”

“Of course,” Frida said, annoyed. Most of the inspectors had been killed by the farmers. Those who had survived were not keen on going out again without a heavily-armed escort and guns of their own. It hadn’t saved several more from a violent and unpleasant death. “We should just admit defeat, like that!”

She snapped her fingers. “You have little choice,” I pointed out, reasonably. “Your government lacks the support in the right places to carry out a UN-style restructuring, even if it would work — and I think we have established that it wouldn’t work. Once the new farms are up and running, I think you will discover that the farmers and miners are willing to discuss terms.”

“I hope you’re right,” Frida said, sourly. “I just got an earful from the Progressive Party Coordinator. He thinks that I’m betraying the dream and had the nerve to demand that I submit to a full self-criticism session. I told him to go to hell, of course; the mass of the Party supports me, not him.”

She looked over towards the window. The noise of the protest could be heard, faintly, in the distance. “That’s his work out there,” she added. “He was rounding up everyone who thought that the contraception program was a bad idea and getting them to round up the usual suspects. It won’t matter, of course; much of the party supports me, even though they don’t dare say so out loud. It would get them lynched like the Communists. The great mass mind of the Party would regard it as high treason.”

I nodded. I was not unfamiliar with such reactions. On Earth, it was illegal to engage in any form of hate speech — which was basically defined as whatever the UN wanted it to mean — and yet, many would have supported a more vigorous crackdown on the gangs, or religious terrorists, or people whose only crime was being different. It was just politically incorrect to say so. A mob might only be half as smart as the stupidest person in it, but it was still composed of people who could think — in theory — for themselves. They might, given time, learn how stupid the ideas they professed to believe in actually were.

The door opened and one of the Presidential Guard stuck his head in. “Madam President, the protest march is approaching the lines now,” he said. “You have to evacuate.”

“Yes, thank you,” Frida said, crossly. I got the impression she didn’t want to be driven out of her government’s headquarters, but I agreed with them. Svergie didn’t need another power struggle on top of everything else. If Peter had been here, he would have been urging me to go with her to safety. “Andrew, we’ll catch up later, all right?”

“Of course,” I said, standing up. “It will be my pleasure.”

The noise of the mob stuck us with full force the moment we stepped out of the building. I could see it in the distance, a tangled mass of humanity, advancing with all the inevitability of a UN battleship, or a force of armoured tanks. The handful of policemen and soldiers keeping an eye on the protest seemed pitiful compared to the howling fury pent up within the snarling fury the mob was expressing. Their rage was almost a palpable thing and I shivered. I had seen soldiers swarmed under and crushed by such a mob and I had no wish to go the same way.

Muna’s hand caught on to mine. It was so out of character for her that I was astonished, but her face was as pale as it ever got. “We need to get out of here, sir,” she muttered, desperately. She was shaking like a leaf in a howling gale. “Sir, we have to get to the car.”

“Come on,” I said. Suki had already revved up the engine and was waiting for us impatiently. Not for the first time, I cursed the agreement that had put control over security in the capital in the hands of a wholly-Svergie unit. I could have contacted the spaceport and demanded reinforcements, but what good would it have done? I helped Muna into the rear and slipped into the jeep’s passenger seat, one hand reaching for the pistol I kept on my belt. “Suki, we’d better get moving.”