She gave a beautifully contrived shudder. “You see the trap we’re caught in, Pol. We have to comply with their threats. And it’s got to stop. John Andrews certainly won’t stop it. He relies on that thing, uses it deliberately to terrify the rest of us into swallowing the disastrous policies he enforces. There’s only one way to stop it, Pol, and that’s for the honest, decent people of Jefferson to vote for someone who will demand that Colonel Khrustinov shut that thing down like he should have long ago. We need to elect officials who aren’t afraid to tell the Concordiat and the Brigade that we’ve had enough of their threats and their demands and their war-crazed madness. We need officials who aren’t taking advantage of the situation to further their careers and build their personal fortunes.”
Kafari did a not-so-slow burn. Nassiona Santorini was the daughter of a Tayari Trade Consortium tycoon. She’d been born with a diamond spoon in her mouth. And Tayari’s profit margin was higher now than it had been before the Deng invasion. Tayari had bought every fishing trawler still in operation on Jefferson, gobbling up the smaller operations during the postwar havoc, which meant Tayari owned — lock, stock, and barrel — the only means of obtaining the main commodity Jefferson was required to supply to the Concordiat.
As a result, Tayari was exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of Terran-processed fish to the Concordiat, which was — per treaty — paying for it at a higher rate than the same fish could be marketed on Jefferson. Malinese miners and fighting soldiers weren’t as finicky as sophisticated urbanites about what ended up on their dinner plates. Tayari was raking in tons of money, as a result, and a great deal of that money ended up in trust funds set up for Vittori and Nassiona Santorini. The interest income from that money — invested shrewdly, off-world, in Malinese mining stock — had given POPPA a vast source of income that was sheltered from the shocks jarring Jefferson’s economy. POPPA’s war-chest — or anti-war chest, given the party’s political platform — was vastly larger than the pool of money any other candidate for office could hope to raise.
Yet Nassiona Santorini and her brother, already rich and rapidly getting richer, had the unmitigated gall to accuse John Andrews of doing what they did every single day. Why weren’t the big broadcast companies pointing that out? Had objective reporting gone out the window, along with every other scruple Kafari had been raised to honor? From what Kafari had seen, Pol Jankovitch never asked any POPPA spokesperson a question that might have an unfavorable answer.
His next question, delivered with a thoughtful frown, was typical. “Given the treaty stipulations and the gun to our heads, what can we do about the situation? Our backs are against the wall, on this thing. How would POPPA candidates change that?”
“We must start where we can. The most important thing, and we must do it immediately, is make sure the burden of obeying the Concordiat’s demands is fairly shared. If you examine the lobbying record of the big agricultural interest groups, for instance, you’ll discover a sorry litany of protests that their children should be exempt from military quotas. Why should farmers enjoy special privileges? This world was founded on principles of equality, fair dealing, individual worth, freedom. Not pandering to wealthy special interest groups!”
Nassiona’s dark eyes flashed with outrage. “And what do the farmers clamoring for special treatment give as reasons for their demands? Nothing but flimsy, money-hungry excuses! They need more labor to terraform new acreage. To plant thousands of new fields nobody needs. And they’re damaging pristine ecosystems to do it, too. Why? They have one interest. Just one, Pol. Lining their pockets with cold, hard cash. They’re not interested in feeding children in mining towns, children who go to bed hungry at night. Whose parents can’t even afford medical care.
“It’s time we faced facts, Pol. The surplus of stored foods set aside for civil emergencies is so large, we could feed the entire population of Jefferson for five full years. Without planting a single stalk of corn! It’s time to stop this nonsense. Time to make sure that no one benefits unfairly. No special deals, Pol, no special privileges. That’s what POPPA is demanding. Fair and equal treatment for everyone. Equal sharing of the risk, the burden of compliance. No protection for special groups who think they’re better than the rest of us. No under-the-table deals with elitists who think their lives are worth more than the rest of us, worth more than the lives of people thrown out of work through no fault of their own. It’s immoral, Pol, grossly immoral and it must stop, now.”
Kafari’s slow burn went hot as liquid steel. If the burden of meeting troop quotas was “fairly shared,” urban residents had a long, long way to go, just to catch up. Almost ninety-eight percent of the nearly twenty thousand troops shipped off-world to date had been Granger-bred volunteers. There was literally no chance in a million that any planetary draft would ever be instituted, let alone rammed through today or next week. Not only were elected officials dead-set against it, not wanting to slit their own throats at the polls, it wasn’t needed. Granger volunteers had consistently exceeded the Concordiat’s minimum quotas.
As for “special deals,” agricultural producers couldn’t afford to lose any more of their labor pool. Nearly five thousand people had died in Klameth Canyon, including some of the region’s best expertise in animal husbandry and terraforming biogenetics. Most of the volunteers who’d shipped out had come from the Klameth Canyon complex, as well, men and women too angry, too haunted by the ghosts of loved ones who’d died on their land, too financially broke to start over. Come the harvest, those who’d remained on Jefferson would be hard-pressed to take up the burden.
What was wrong with people like Nassiona Santorini? Or the people who believed her? Didn’t the truth matter to anyone, any longer? The ob-gyn clinic’s waiting room was crammed full of people who apparently had no interest in the truth, judging by conversations on all sides. What she was hearing gave Kafari a deep sense of foreboding.
“Y’know, my sister went looking at the POPPA datasite, the other night, called me on the ’net-phone, she was so mad. Said the government’s fixin’ to drill right through the Meerland Sanctuary to get at the iron deposits. If they start strip-mining out there, it’ll contaminate the water all the way down the Damisi watershed and poison us all!”
“Well, I can tell you, every single person in my family is votin’ the same way. We’re fixin’ to kick President Andrews’ ass out of a job. We gotta get somebody in there who knows what it’s like to have half the folks in your neighborhood outta work and damn near killin’ themselves with despair a’ gettin’ any…”
Kafari couldn’t listen to any more of it. She headed toward the bathrooms, stopping briefly at the receptionist’s desk to tell them where she’d be, and closed the door on the mindless babble in the waiting room. She preferred to sit in a public lavatory that smelt of air fresheners and stale urine than listen to any more of POPPA’s silver-spun lies or the braying of jackasses who believed them. She understood, profoundly, the impact joblessness had on a person, a family. She understood the loss of self-worth, the sense of helplessness it engendered, had watched members of her family and close friends stricken by one such blow after another.
But POPPA’s brand of swill wasn’t the answer. To anything. Kafari wet a small towel and laved her face and throat, trying to calm down the gut-churning anger and the nausea it had triggered. She drew several deep, slow breaths, reminding herself of things for which she was thankful. She was profoundly grateful to have her job. And not just any job, either, but a good one, a job that tested her skills, her ingenuity, and let her contribute to the all-important job of rebuilding.