Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [79]
“He has to be now,” Melinka said. “Or killed.”
“She’s just joking,” Michelle assured Kyle.
“No she’s not,” Melinka responded.
“I can be,” Kyle told them all. “Trusted, I mean. But I’d like to know what I’m being trusted with. And I’d like to know why the police came in and started killing people.”
“The two issues are interrelated,” the bulbous creature introduced as Roog said. Its voice was low and phlegmy, but if it had a gender, Kyle couldn’t ascertain it from that. “We are, you might say, a group that meets from time to time to discuss certain political issues. And the police were killing because that’s what police do, especially here in The End.”
Kyle could hardly believe what she was saying, even though he had seen it for himself. “The police do that? Aren’t they supposed to uphold the law?”
“They do,” Michelle says. “But we’re not supposed to be living here, and congregating inside The End is definitely against the law.”
“So it was okay for them to just move in and start killing? I didn’t see them trying to disperse the crowd, or make any arrests.”
“In other parts of the city they would have, okay, but not in The End,” Jackdaw pointed out. The little man moved constantly, his leg twitching, fingers tapping. “Rules are different here. Life is cheap, okay?”
“They’re right, Joe,” Michelle told him. She sounded sincere, but everything he was hearing was so outrageous he wasn’t sure what was real. “They don’t like us being here, and they use any excuse they can to try to drive us away.”
“Away where?” Kyle wondered. “I thought this was pretty much where people went who don’t have anyplace left to go.” He’d been living here for many months, and though he’d heard horror stories, none of them had been as bad as what he’d just seen. Police here seemed to have a habit of picking on individuals, but he’d never seen or heard about an organized attack on a whole neighborhood.
“It is, okay, that’s the thing,” Jackdaw agreed. “But you have to understand the power structure here, Joe. The rich like to be rich, and they don’t want a bunch of poor people running around making things unpleasant for them. That’s what we are in The End. The lowest of the low, as far as they’re concerned. They can do whatever they want, and get away with it.”
“So the authorities know about this? Condone it?”
“Joe,” Michelle said. “We’re giving you the shorthand version here. If you’d like, we can talk all about the socioeconomics of it later. The gist is, the division of rich and poor here in Cyre is an enormous gap, more of a chasm, with less and less middle class all the time. The very poor, which is most of those in The End, are considered disposable in order to make room for the new poor, which used to be the middle. The authorities wouldn’t really mind if a plasma bomb wiped us all out, except that it might be a bit of a public relations problem. When they catch us breaking the law, though-even a ridiculous law-they have no problem with killing as many of us as they can.”
“That’s crazy,” Kyle muttered, shaking his head. “It makes no sense.”
“You’ve been here long enough to know better than that,” Michelle reminded him. “You know about the gulf between the rich and the rest of us.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And you have heard of other altercations. The one last month, when seven teenagers were shot by the cops? Remember?”
“Of course. I just hadn’t put it all together into a pattern yet.”
“It’s a pattern,” Alan said, the first time he’d spoken. His handsome, lined face was grave. “Just not a pretty one.”
“Can’t something be done?” Kyle asked.
“We’re working on it, okay?” Jackdaw said. “But we need more time.”
Kyle almost laughed, but he realized that would be a bad idea and contained it. “You?” he asked, trying to keep the disbelief from his voice.