Quester amongst the flowers 19

 

Chapter 19

 

Lady Vanrensula threw a fit of hysterics and Quester threw cold water on her.  She was reduced to sobs.

“I didn’t know we were doing anything wrong!” she moaned.

“Really?  You would have spoken openly about it to... the First Consul at a dinner party?”

“I... no. It... well, I knew it was illegal, but everyone gets what they can from the government.”

“If you knew it was illegal, you knew it was wrong,” said Quester.

“But it is such a little thing!” said the lady, bewildered.

“Little! It is wholesale defrauding of the Government!” cried Quester.  “I am not sure you will even understand an explanation of what it means, other than theft from many people. How did two stupid people like you and your husband manage to produce a clever girl like Jessica?”

“Poor Jessica, you cannot leave her without support!” cried Lady Vanrensula.

“As far as she feels, she has been without your support all her life,” said Quester. “A suitable guardian will be appointed for her whilst you and your husband serve your time for fraud, treason, theft, and attempting to pervert the course of justice and as accessories after the fact to murder. Yes, murder,” he added as the lady gave a little shriek. “Your criminal associates are not nice men,” he added. “Perhaps you should have found that out before you were willing to accept so much cash for what you appear to think of as free.”

“But we are not criminals! Everyone does something like falsify tax accounts, you know,” she said.

“And I will run down and imprison all of those who do,” replied Quester.

“But... but you can’t imprison me can you?” asked Lady Vanrensula, bewildered. “I haven’t done anything to be imprisoned for!”

“Yes, you have!” snapped Quester. “You knew about your husband’s and his secretary’s tax fraud; therefore you are an accessory. You did nothing to stop them, did you?”

“Well, no, of course not. It was nice to have extra money. I suggested they should round it to the nearest Imperial not cent, or even ten Imperials, because ten Imperials is only small change, and who notices that?”

“Come with me,” said Quester. He reached out for Kiliana. “I am taking your friend’s mother to see the sump rats. Do you want to come?”

“No, but I think I ought to,”  Kiliana replied.

“What are you about, my lord?” asked Cayban.

“Showing this entitled, spoilt woman how ten Imperials a week can be the difference between life and death to those on low incomes,” snarled Quester. “Purity, you are in charge of her, Burdock, bodyguard.”

“I’m coming too,” said Cayban, grimly. “There are a sufficiency of guards here, and I hand-picked them for loyalty and discretion, and asked them to voluntarily hand in their datatabs, holding one-time throwaways for recording only. They can call the Principal if there is a problem. But I know the sump, and the sump rats know me.”

Quester gave a curt nod. It seemed unlikely that, separated and in capture shock, the three dozen patricians would manage to cause trouble. They had already had their own datatabs confiscated. Under Judiciary law for Heresy, a Justiciar could hold suspects incommunicado under Nisi Corpus, which suspended Habeus Corpus for seventy-two hours unless proven and convicted during that period, being a nisi prius assumption of guilt.

 

 

Kiliana, out of class, put her books together and stood up.

“Where are you going?” asked Jessica.

“I had a summons to join Justiciar Quester to help him make a demonstration to a defendent, visiting the Sump,” said Kiliana.

“Do you want me to come?” asked Jessica.

“It’s your mother who’s having the object lesson,” said Kiliana.

Jessica shivered.

“I think I’ll forgo the pleasure,” she said.

“I thought you might,” said Kiliana.

“I could cope either with mother, or with the sump,” said Jessica.

“Understood,” said Kiliana, and gave her friend a hug.

 

 

oOoOo

 

No air vehicle could reach the sump; but Quester was not surprised to find that the Hussars had a couple of hovercraft on their massive war-zeppelin, and were prepared to lend him one with an armoured plexiglass dome. It was armoured, of course with chitin skirts. Purity could drive this as well.

“I did the full driving course,” she volunteered. “I was hoping that, even if I did not pass as a nurse, I might be a paramedic in charge of casualty evacuation.”

“What went wrong?” asked Quester.

“I forgot to take off a tourniquet in the test,” said Purity. “A stupid little mistake, which could have cost the patient his arm, but if you can’t remember things under pressure of exams, they assume you will forget them in the field. I think that in the field the sight and smell of blood would be a reminder, but there you are.  Eusebius said he would personally intervene if I wanted to join the Nightingales, but I have Burdock now, and family with you, my lord.  But I did say I would go as a casevac operative if they ever needed me, in return for the extra training they gave me, and so on.”

The ‘and so on’ was the extra heart with which Burdock and Purity had been gifted by the Hussars, but was not to be talked about freely.

 

 

The sump was deep below the level most people lived.  It was after dark, and such light as there was filtered down from lit buildings and streets above.

“You should know that the initial surge of the cataclysm flooded deeper than the subsequent level at which it has now settled,” said Quester. “As soon as was practical, solar-power absorbing bacteria at the north pole were introduced, to run freezing units, which are recreating a polar ice mass, and helping to moderate the climate at the same time, locking up water in ice, and buying an inch or two every year.”

“So what?” said Lady Vanrensula.

“Are you really a Patrician?” asked Kiliana, curiously. “I ask, because you don’t seem to have any manners, and as Jessica is totally ladylike, I was surprised.”

Lady Vanrensula went dull red.

“I don’t appreciated being given a lecture on things I don’t want to know,” she said.

“I was lecturing my ward, not you; you’re just excess baggage until we are where we are going,” said Quester.

“So the reason the streets are damp is that this is about at sea level?” asked Kiliana.

“Yes, and at times there are floods. But as you see, there are walkways above the general level of the streets, for people to move from building to building. If you look down this long, straight street, you can see the lights of the high rise living accommodation of the middle class district in the distance. The people skulking in shadows are justly afraid of a visit from anyone in authority; it usually means trouble. We’ll walk from here; Purity, you’re in charge of the machine.”

The first thing which Kiliana noticed was the stench, as they got out. The smell of tidal debris, human waste, and boiled nettles assaulted her nose. The nettles grew, rather lank and yellow, on a number of balconies, a ready source of nutrients, which would grow almost anywhere. A few dispirited hens were kept in a coop precariously cantilevered from the third level of a house.

“Someone is rich,” said Kiliana, indicating the chickens.

“Yes, and I imagine down here, an egg costs half an imperial,” said Quester. “And that’s a normal egg; no augfowl here. Now, woman, look at those half-starved children lurking in the shadows. For the ten Imperials you call small change, they could guarantee to eat for a week. As it stands, they don’t know if they are going to starve this week or next week; or hope to sell their skinny, pathetic bodies. They are younger than your daughter and already have the look of adults under death sentence in their faces.”

“Leo?” said Kiliana.

“No,” said Quester. “If we give money to one, we’ll be mobbed. We’ll give money to the Poor Sisters of Abe’s Mercy, who send out mobile soup kitchens. Do not touch anyone, you do not know what diseases they might have. The Poor Sisters are innoculated against most things, and are good, caring, women. Many of them are Patrician women who have turned their back on their class to serve the Blessed Abe by doing what they can. They grow their own food, and turn the eggs from augfowl into powdered egg, to be able to give in food parcels as well as to use in sustaining food. And they teach how to grow nettles, and potatoes, to provide extra nourishment, and install stations which collect the gasses of decay to make communal kitchens where the locals might go to make their own meals, and trade what they have managed to raise.”

“How can they live like this?” whispered Lady Vanrensula, shocked beyond measure.

“How? Because the poorest of the poor have no choice,” said Quester, harshly. “There are not enough jobs for every citizen of the Empire, and the dole is poor at best, and easy to deny on some technicality or another. Not being clean when going to claim it being one; but if you grow up here, there are no good facilities for washing, and every ounce of clean water must go for drinking or raising their poor crops. Hand-outs are not the answer, but they are a stop-gap whilst communal kitchens are installed, and water purification plants.  And sometimes such things are vandalised by the mindless, who have only the instincts to destroy. And many of those living in such circumstances are those who have no skills to take into jobs, and so destruction is all they know to ‘get back’ at the higher level dwellers, regardless that it causes more misery for their own kind and does not touch those who walk, unaware of these poor creatures on the plastiglass street level which was thrown across the streets – if you look up, you can see the dirty grey ‘sky’ is, in fact, a partially transparent street, such as we normally traverse.”

“Doesn’t that cut the light down more?” asked Kiliana.

“Yes, but when they were built, that was considered the safe level at which to dwell,” said Quester. “The government has installed mirrors to funnel more sunlight down to this level, and clearer plastiglass sections,” he added. He felt uneasy here, as if something was going to happen, but he needed to answer the question. “It helps a little. And more gas collectors run turbines for electricity, but on the whole, it is a dark, dreary, damp place, where people exist rather than living, seize pleasure and the semblance of comfort in sexual gratification, bringing more innocent offspring into their hopeless poverty-stricken lives, to live and die in lifespans rarely exceeding thirty five years, and...” Kiliana, filled with sudden foreboding, stepped in front of him, and sensing something approaching, said “stop”, holding her hand out. She cried out in brief pain as something struck her hand, and she held out her hand to Quester, in some shock, finding a bullet partly embedded in her hand.

“Come here,” said Quester, using voice control.

The man with the gun shambled forward, unable to resist the pressure on his mind.

“Why did you shoot at me?” asked Quester.

“They said you was on a mutant hunt,” said the man.

“Are you then a mutant?” asked Quester.

Dumbly the man showed his hands, each of which had an extra thumb.

“Polydactyly; that’s a legal mutation,” said Quester. “You have no need to worry.”

The man spat.

“Thass not what that foaming little priest said,” he said.

“Well, then, I will write you an affidavit, that your mutation is legal,” said Quester. “Name?”

“Boll,” said the man.

“Just Boll?” said Quester.

Boll shrugged.

“We don’t need no stinkin’ surname,” he said.

Quester wrote him a chit, declaring that the man Boll, five feet six, brown hair, grey eyes, had extra thumbs and was certified to have a legal mutation.  Burdock was removing the bullet from Kiliana’s hand, and putting a rough dressing on it.

“Your gun,” said Quester.

Reluctantly, Boll gave it to him.

“It’s illegal, you know,” said Quester. “And you attempted murder.  I’m confiscating this and letting you off with a warning, however. If you are caught with another fire-arm, Lictor Cayban here will have you prosecuted.”

“Right,” said Boll.

“You say, ‘Yes, me lud, thank you!’” barked Burdock.

“I heard him say it in his own way,” said Quester, mildly. “He’s already intimidated, he doesn’t need any more.”

“Not like the Stay-Vagrants and this Lady Van-rental,” said Burdock.

“Indeed,” said Quester. “Boll, tell this lady what ten Imperials means.”

“Ten whole Imperials? That’s a place to sleep for a week, or enough food for the week,” said Boll. “What can I do for you, uh, me lud, for ten imperials?”

Quester sighed.

“You can take a chit as my agent to claim a garden package for the kids in your block, from the Poor Sisters,” he said.

“Yus, me lud,” said Boll. He took the chit and some cash. “How do I know which is which?” he asked.

“The Poor Sisters will know,” said Quester. He turned to Lady Vanrensula. “The chit covers a fifty Imperial kit to grow simple foodstuffs, and six pullets,” he said. “If he sets it up correctly, he will be able to feed himself and half a dozen kids, so long as they also scavange from muck heaps for potato peelings, cabbage and lettuce stalks, and so on, to add to what they can grow.”

“I... I cannot imagine it,” said the lady.

“We’re getting back now,” said Quester, hustling everyone back into the hovercraft. “Kiliana, my dear! Thank you, but never step between me and a bullet again, even if your telekinetic power can slow it so much.”

“I can’t obey that, Leo,” said Kiliana.

He sighed, and ruffled her curls, and she leaned on him.

Lady Vanrensula was sobbing.

“I did not know, I did not know!” she said.

“This is why I am going to sentence you to eleven years working with the Poor Sisters, whilst  your husband is in a penal gang,” said Quester. “I do not think you would survive a female penal band, and moreover, it would show you nothing. I think you will learn a lot with the Sisters of Mercy.”

“Th... thank you,” managed Lady Vanrensula. She was suddenly aware of how much worse her fate could have been.