Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [104]
The afternoon before he and Diane were going to leave for New York, he phoned Spencer to see when they were playing, because he wanted to get one more game in before he left town.
It was a perfect October day, Indian summer, and in the amber horizontal light of sunset they threw across a stiff western breeze that brought a continuous rain of yellow and brown leaves spinnerdrifting down on them. Frank slung his disk through the forest’s tickertape parade, hooting with all the rest, and he was deep in the game when they ran into the bros’ little clearing.
Spencer stopped so abruptly that Frank almost rammed into him, thinking aurochs, but then he saw half a dozen men wearing flak jackets, aiming big assault rifles at the astonished bros.
“Get down on the ground!” one of the men shouted. “Get down right now! GET DOWN.”
The guys dropped awkwardly, faces on the ground, arms out to the side.
The frisbee players stayed frozen in place. One of the men turned and said to them, “We’ll be just a minute more here. Why don’t you be on your way.”
Frank and the frisbee guys nodded and took off down Ross, jogging until they were around the corner, then stopping and looking back.
“What the fuck was that?”
“A bust.”
“Yeah but who?”
“We’ll find out on the way back.”
They played on, distracted, missing shot after shot. On the way back they hurried the pace, and came into site 21 huffing.
The guys were still there, sitting around—all but Jory.
“Hey guys what was that all about?” Spencer cried as they ran in. “That looked horrible!”
“They rousted us,” Zeno said.
Redbeard shook his head resentfully. “They made us lie down on the ground like we were criminals.”
“They didn’t want any trouble,” said Zeno. “They thought Jory might be carrying.”
Ah ha. Jory, the only one who had ever made Frank feel seriously uncomfortable. So it had not been a misreading.
“They were ready to shoot us,” Redbeard complained.
“Sure they were. They probably heard Jory had a gun.”
“So it was Jory they were after?” Spencer said. “What did he do?”
“Jory’s the one who beat up on Ralph! Don’t you know?”
“No.”
“Yes you do, it was in the papers. Ralph got pounded by Jory and a guy, down at 18.”
“We had to pull him right off the guy, yeah! I had to peel his fingers right off of his neck! He was pounding his head right against the concrete.”
“Yeah, so Ralph was in the hospital after that, but then a couple weeks later Jory showed up again and started hanging out with us like nothing had happened.”
“Jesus,” Frank said. “Why didn’t you go to the police and get rid of this guy?”
They shouted “YEAH RIGHT” at him in unison. Then, interrupting each other in their eagerness:
“What do you think they’re going to do?”
“They’ll call in and find out about my outstandings and get my parole officer—”
“Fuck that, they’ll beat on you—”
“You could end up put away for fucking years.”
Zeno’s grin was sharklike. “Some things you just gotta live with, Doctor. The police are not there for us. Assholes come to hang with us, that’s just the way it is.”
“Hard to believe,” Frank said.
“Is it?”
On they ran, and after they had finished their frisbee, Frank asked Spencer about it. “So they can’t get help from the police if they need it?”
Spencer shook his head. “We can’t either, for that matter. People without a legal place of residence are kind of outside the legal system. It’s very property-based.”
“Don’t you guys have places to live?”
Spencer, Robin, and Robert laughed.
“We do have places to live,” Spencer said, “but we don’t pay for them.”
“What do you do then?”
“We wander a bit. Just like you, right? We hunt and gather in the technosurround.”
“A godly state,” Robin said.
“Come to dinner and see,” Spencer offered. “The fregans in Klingle Valley are having a potluck.”
“I don’t have anything