Up Against It - M. J. Locke [56]
“Oh for— My friends’ son had just died! What do you expect?”
“The battle wagons are circling, and you’re the one in their sights. Your job is in jeopardy. Benavidez is trying to help.”
“Talking to the public isn’t going to make me any more popular than I am now, if I fail to get the resource allocation system under control.”
He looked straight at her. “You are Madam Resource Maven. You don’t talk and they are going to assume the worst.”
As well they should, she thought.
He signed off. She toyed with the idea of not going. But she needed to keep Benavidez on her side right now. More important, Thomas had scored a point, damn him. People were scared. She had a responsibility, however painful she might find it, to give them information and assuage their concerns.
The lifts were locked down and her waveware politely informed her that all citizens were requested to remain on their own levels till further notice. She used her access code to secure a lift, and arrived at Level 226 in a swarm of chaos: shouts, people pushing each other and running around beyond the opening doors of the lift. As she stepped out, a speakerphone blared in her ears, both live and across her wave connection: “—is the police! Come out with your hands on top of your head! Attention, all citizens in the Mall! This is the police—”
She pressed her hands to her ears and passed through the police cordon. The mayor and police chief, just ahead, were heading for a uniformed officer holding a loudspeaker. She made her way toward them. Beyond was the New Little Austin Mall, a three-level warren of shops, living spaces, and crannies along the sides of a narrow atrium. Reporters and their remotes were kept behind the barricades, but she felt their cameras on her, and the spy-glamour was chokingly thick.
Rioters on the upper levels were heaving trash or heavy, pointy objects over the railings. It was well over half a gee here—high enough for the larger items and chunks of debris to do damage. Looters were breaking into the shops and running out with goods: food, clothing, survival gear, electronics, optronics, and bionics. People ran toward the police barricade, dodging debris, hands on heads, shouting their innocence. A group of police officers herded them over out of the way. A large troop of police loped past in riot power-suit regalia, wielding canisters of riot foam and shock sticks. The smell of fear, sharp and sour, hit her nostrils, and one young man’s hands trembled on his shock stick as he passed.
As she approached the small knot of officials and media representatives, a group of suspected looters was hustled past. One of them, a teenaged boy maybe sixteen or seventeen, shouted, “Commissioner! Commissioner—I have something important to—ow—!”
A police officer shoved him. Jane eyed the boy; he was nobody she knew. She wondered, briefly, if he had been an acquaintance of Hugh’s or Dominica’s. Probably just some kid hoping to bullshit his way out of trouble. Though his sammy cache was impressively big and green for his age. Maybe she should at least talk to him—but she saw that they had already manhandled him into a nearby lift and the doors closed. Oh, well.
Then they all stared as an old man ran out of a store on the highest mezzanine, chased by looters swinging clubs and sticks. He vaulted one-handed over the railing—an amazing leap for a man his age—landed hard on the first level, then staggered to his feet and limped toward them, arms high.
More debris rained down. The rioters’ taunts pursued him. The shopkeeper ignored the rioters’ jeers as he limped toward the cordon. Jane had to admire his courage; if he had not jumped, they might have beaten him to death. The reporters and officials around her were just standing there, watching him, and the medics were all busy.
For heaven’s sake, she thought, annoyed; he can barely walk. She jogged out to give him assistance.
He was old, at least a hundred thirty, stooped and bald, and was nursing his ankle. “You OK?” she asked. He nodded with a grunt, face pinched with pain. Behind them