She turned and extended a finger toward the group of household staff. “Any of you houseboys Citizens. Any of you want to stand over there with the bossman?” A few of the field-workers stirred before they remembered this was Sparta, where Citizen meant member of the ruling class rather than a Welfare Island scut.
Four of the house-workers moved over to stand beside the rancher; an older man and his wife, two of the surviving guards. A boy of about fourteen tried to follow them and was pushed back by the guerrillas, not unkindly. The little band had their hands roughly bound behind their backs.
“These good Citizens wouldn’t listen when the Helots came calling,” Skida continued. “No, they wouldn’t listen to such rabble as us. Wouldn’t listen to the workers’ friends about the low pay and the bad conditions. Wouldn’t pay their taxes for the people’s cause.” She shook her head, making tsk, tsk, sounds. “Thought the kings off in Sparta City would help them against such riffraff as us. Thought the Really Shitty Mounted Pimps would protect them.”
The guerrillas laughed at the nickname of the Royal Spartan Mounted Police; a few of the farmhands joined in ingratiatingly.
“But then, why should they lift a finger for you?” Skida continued. She freed one hand to wave backward at the house. “Why should the haciendado listen to the friends of the poor? Isn’t it always the way? They get the big houses and the fancy cars. They ride by and watch while you sweat in the fields? And if you object, if you stand up for your rights—”
She grinned, a glint of white teeth against the matt brown of her skin “—why, they call in the RSMP to beat you down. You aren’t Citizens, you haven’t earned the vote.” A scornful laugh. “Learn how to pass their exams and tests—” There was a stir; most Welfare Island dwellers were not only illiterate but had what amounted to a cultural taboo against everything about the written word. “—while you’re working for a living and they’re living off you! Your kids can spend their lives shoveling shit, while the children of the noble Brotherhoods get their special schools and fancy—”
“You lying bitch!” It was the older man who had volunteered to stand with the rancher. “Mr. Velysen built this place up from nothing, and anyone can—”
Thunk. The carbon-fiber stock of Two-knife’s machine gun caught him at the base of the skull. Silly mon, she thought as he sank to his knees and shook his head dazedly. Skilly is giving a speech, not arguing.
“—fancy tutors. But tonight, everyone’s equal! Tonight, you see how the rich live.”
A working party had been setting out tables. Now they stepped back, showing trestle tables covered with bottles and casks and heaped plates; whatever had been available in the wine cellar and the kitchens. The farm-workers moved hesitantly forward, but most of them snatched at the liquor eagerly enough. Doubly eager from fear, but they would have drunk anyway; Skida watched with carefully hidden contempt. You did not get out of the gutters on booze-dreams, or on cocaine or smack or borloi; those were for fools, like God or the lotteries or the Tri-V with its lying dreams.
Skida waited until the liquor had a little time to work, then rapped on the table with her rifle butt.
“You see who your real friends are,” she said, as the guerrillas went up and down the table; they distributed handfuls of cash and jewelry. Most of the workers snatched greedily at the plunder. A few had the sense to think ahead, but nobody wanted to be a holdout.
“The Helots is your friend. The kings and the RSMP couldn’t protect their friends, but the Helots can protect and punish. The Helots have its eyes and ears everywhere; here and in Sparta City, in the government, in the police, we know everything. The government is blind, it strikes at the air but it can’t catch us; we cut it and turn away, cut it and turn away, and soon it will bleed to death and we be the government. Look around you! We didn’t harm a hair on your heads. We didn’t touch the tools or workstock or barns . . . because all this will belong to you when the people rules.”
She smiled broadly. And if you gallows bait believe all that, Skilly has this card game she could teach you. “And look what else the Helots gives you!” she said, signaling. Guerrillas pushed the rancher’s wife forward, and the two other women who had come to stand with her. The rancher began to shout and struggle as they were stripped and thrown down on the rough planks of the trestles.
Skida signaled to Two-knife as the screaming began, from the women and the men. “The other women, house servants and the workers, give them a shotgun and put them in a room with a lock,” she said. “It is muy importante, understand. Just before we leave, we lock the other workers back in their barracks.”
Two-knife blinked at her. “Sí, Skilly, if you say so. The gringo Croser, he say that?”
Skida sighed. “No, my loyal fool, he has taught Skilly much of the way of fighting the guerrillero, the little war, but Skilly put the books to work. See, if we let these animals loose they will rape all the women, burn down the ranch and then start killing each other. That makes them just criminals who the RSMP will hang. This must be a political thing, not a bandit raid.”
The Mayan frowned and pushed back his broad-brimmed leather hat to scratch his bald scalp. “But the RSMP will hang them anyway,” he said reasonably.
“If all share the crime, then none will talk for a while at least,” she said patiently. “They will themselves kill any who would. They will say that we did it, that they were helpless before our guns, but among themselves they will know. They will feel they must support us, because they are as guilty as we, and they fear our spies among them.”
She made a throwing gesture. “Many will run before the police come. Some the RSMP will catch and hang; these will be martyrs for our cause. Others will scatter to rancheros who ask no questions of a man willing to work. They will talk in secret in the bunkhouses, and all those who hate their masters will dream of doing as was done here—perhaps some will. The haciendados will hear as well, by rumor; they will fear their workers, and be twice as hard on them, which will turn more to us. You see?”
The man stood, frowning in concentration. He was far from stupid, simply not very used to abstract thought. She slapped him on the shoulder as he nodded agreement. The screams had died to a broken sobbing. Skida cast a critical eye at the tables. Unlikely that the haciendados women would survive; best to have the rancher and all of his supporters shot just as the guerrillas left, though.
“Two-knife, you will take the first Group and any recruits we get from here back to Base One,” she said. “All the Group leaders are to make for their drop camps and lie low until I return. Work the new ones hard, but do not kill more than is necessary. McMillan may begin their instruction.”
Two-knife snorted; Skida nodded agreement; the Liberation Party theorist was something of a bore, but necessary. She found his cranky neo-Marxism even more ridiculous than the religion the nuns had taught her, but it was a lie with power.
“You would do well to learn his words also,” she said. “I must attend a conference of regional leaders. The kings are bringing in help from off-planet. Mercenaries.” And we will have help as well, but that is a secret even from you for a while, she thought.
Skida frowned thoughtfully down the rutted dirt road that lead away from the ranch house; it joined a gravel track down toward the Eurotas. Her mind threw a map over the night; the Torrey estate was there, older and larger than this and too formidable to attack as yet. Then came the switchback down into the valley of the upper Eurotas. The guerrillas had a Group there, about the size of a platoon, to serve as a blocking force, and then as her cover for the trip to town.
“And I might as well leave now,” she added. “Adios. Meet me in the usual place in three weeks.”
CHAPTER TWO
Crofton’s Encyclopedia of Contemporary History
and Social Issues (1st Edition):
The CoDominium emerged almost by accident as Earth’s first world government; many of the consequences were unplanned and unanticipated.
One of the most notable was the emergence of a far less competitive world society. The founding powers of the CoDominium had an effective monopoly on military power, and an absolute monopoly on space-based weapons. After a series of crises convinced the United States and the Soviet Union to work together, smaller states could no longer play the Great Powers off against each other. Maintaining that power monopoly became a goal in itself.
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