Most of the crowd had launched a kick or thrown a punch, but there were seven people who’d done more. Leaving the two unconscious men and the third man still whimpering in pain aside, he focused his attention on the other four.
Juliana Dundee had thrown the blow that had dented his helmet, but it was clear she’d done it accidentally whilst trying to escape the melee in the centre of the room.
The other two, Ashford and Leeds, had initially acted in self-defence, then kept going when instinct overtook reason. He docked them forty points each. That left the other four.
Edmund Lundy, one of the two men on the floor, had thrown the first punch at Gerald Carlisle. Mr Gerald Carlisle, Ely corrected himself, seeing the annotation indicating the man was married. Carlisle had retaliated but neither quickly nor forcefully enough. Before he had landed two blows, Lundy had managed five. Carlisle went down.
And there, Ely thought, the fight could have ended. It would have ended if the woman, now kneeling next to the unconscious Mr Carlisle, hadn’t picked up a chair and swung it into Lundy’s back.
Ely winced as he replayed footage of that blow. It might be a spinal injury. He hoped not. That would mean months of rehabilitation, possibly even a year before the man was productive once more.
The evidence was incontestable. Once Lundy was down, the woman had swung the chair at his head, twice. There was no question that this warranted a custodial sentence. The only possible mitigating factor lay in the reason why she’d gone to the aid of Mr Carlisle in the first place. Sadly, Ely thought he already knew.
“You picked up that chair and hit him. Why?” Ely asked the woman.
She raised her eyes from the man on the floor.
“Because he…” She swallowed, and her tone became loud and defiant. “Because he hit Gerald. My husband.”
Ely nodded. The display recorded her name as Mrs Geraldine Carlisle. The two had been approved for breeding three days ago, registered their marriage during their next free shift, and officially changed their names twenty minutes later.
Marriage wasn’t compulsory, nor was changing one’s name, but both were strongly encouraged since the Re-Organisation. Adopting the names of old places now lost beneath the waves was a way of holding onto the past, of remembering those billions who had died, and carrying their memory onwards to Mars. That was what Councillor Cornwall had said. Ely didn’t disagree with the policy – he’d adopted one of the old names himself – he just didn’t understand the importance of it. Not that it mattered to his job. A citizen could change their name everyday, but that wouldn’t stop the system from tracking their every waking moment.
“Why were you here this evening?” he asked Mrs Carlisle.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” she retorted.
“A good citizen like you, why weren’t you in Recreation?”
“We already did our time there,” she said.
Ely checked the records.
“It says here that you did two hours,” he said.
There was a murmur of disapproval from the crowd.
“So? It’s not like it’s compulsory,” she stated, belligerently.
“No, it’s not,” Ely said. “And the only reason it’s not is that most workers know to do their duty. All we need is for each worker to spend four of their off-shift hours exercising on one of the machines in the Recreation Room and we’ll generate enough electricity to keep the Tower working. And the only reason that malingerers like you don’t cause the lights to turn off is that most people do five or more.”
There was a mixture of self-righteous nodding of heads and shame-faced downcasting of eyes from the crowd.
The Tower’s citizens were split into three shifts. Whilst one third worked, one third slept, and another third were free to do what they wanted. Each shift lasted approximately seven hours, with an hour in between for the workers to get from one part of the Tower to another. During that time, the drones cleaned and sanitised the Assemblies, ‘homes’, and lounges, getting them ready for the next shift.
Theoretically, every citizen had seven hours each day to do with as they pleased. And they had, up until fifteen years ago. That was when the rains had begun.
Whether the rising seas had brought the rains, or the deluge had caused the flood, no one knew. That the water had risen up to lap at the walls outside Level Three, and that the constant rain made the solar panels useless, was indisputable.
“You changed your name to that of your husband,” Ely said to Mrs Carlisle. “Indeed, you chose to get married, yet you waste all this energy here when you should be contributing to the greater good. I find that suspiciously inconsistent.”
“They were celebrating,” the man with the broken arm, Roger Grimsby spat out.
“Celebrating what?” Ely asked, but again, he thought already knew.
“That we were going to be able to have a child,” Mrs Carlisle stammered, her defiance beginning to crack under the withering stares of the mob.
“See?” Grimsby said with zealous indignance, “That’s as good as treason. Production must come first, that’s what Councillor Cornwall says, and he’s right. People like them.” He spat again. “They have no thought for the future, no thought about the society as a whole. All they care about is themselves.”
“Quiet!” Ely barked, as he quickly ran through the footage working out Grimsby’s part in it.
Lundy had knocked Mr Carlisle to the ground, but not knocked him out. Ely watched as Grimsby waded into the melee, shoving Mrs Carlisle out of the way. The woman blocked his view. He switched to a different camera. He saw Grimsby kick Mr Carlisle in the head. Ely pulled up the footage from Grimsby’s visor and replayed the scene. He was clearly responsible for knocking the man out. The question was whether that kick was intentional.
“We just wanted to spend time together,” Mrs Carlisle said, this time quietly.
The tutting from the crowd, now collectively relieved that their sins were minor compared to hers, grew.
“What use are children?” Grimsby asked, sensing that he had the support of the mob. “They’re just more unproductive mouths to feed. And what use is that when we’re so close to leaving the Earth? Seventeen years is what it takes to breed someone up until they can be productively useful. That’s a seventeen-year drain on resources. How does that help when the first ship will launch in a year’s time? Can’t you wait?”
“Seventeen years, plus the two weeks maternity leave for her,” Juliana Dundee said, seeking to gain some of the crowd’s favour. “And count the energy lost in running the crèche and the school. We’d be on Mars already if it weren’t for the likes of them.”
Whether to have a moratorium on population increase was a debate that had been raging since the launch date had been announced, and one Ely expected to continue until the last human stepped off the planet for the last time.
“And what,” he asked the crowd loudly, “about the two people we will now have to breed up as replacements for these two who are going to the hospital? You didn’t think about that, did you? No, I’ve seen the footage. You can spout whatever high-minded rhetoric you want, but none of you were acting in the interests of production.”
That shut them up. He glanced down at Mr Carlisle. The injured man was looking increasingly pale. It was possible, Ely thought, that the nurses wouldn’t arrive in time.
“Dundee, for damaging state property, I’m docking you sixty points. Leeds, Ashford, for wilful assault you’re docked forty points each. As for the rest of you, none of you tried to stop the brawl. That makes you equally culpable. I could dock each and every one of you for the loss of labour.” He paused. “But I won’t. I’m inclined to be lenient. I’m docking you twenty points each.”