"I don't either, but what can we do?"
"Depends on who the suits were. If they're, like, a mob or something, we stay away. But they were acting all official, l thought, and the Averys haven't ever said anything about mobs. So maybe they're government suits, or company suits, and either way they looked like they were harassing Zelks and harassing people is illegal."
"Maybe, but what about that mob? And I don't know which side had the guns, but I definitely heard guns."
Sherry sighed. "I don't know. Maybe they were there to protect Zelks, but he's just a snack shop owner. That doesn't really make sense. And maybe they were chasing after the suits and just caught up to them there."
They walked in silence for a few minutes.
"Somebody doesn't like the lerkkal, that's for sure," Sherry burst out. "And official types, too, remember the stink over that article we did? And what they were teaching in class?"
"Well, um, people back on Earth in general don't like the lerkkal much."
"Really? I never noticed it."
"Yeah, really. Remember I told you I always got made fun of back on Earth, for being so interested in the lerkkal? Here--well, some people still make fun of me, but in a different way. Like, back on Earth people would make fun of me for being interested in the lerkkal at all, and here it's more just that they think it's funny that I'm so excited, cause they're so used to being around the lerkkal."
Sherry frowned to herself, and looked up. They were at the school, at the gate she usually went in after buying lunch or a snack at Zelks'.
"Oops, auto pilot," Sherry said. "Want to come to my place? We've still got an afternoon to kill and the policeman said we should go home."
#
The next day, at school, rumours were flying every which way. Even ignoring the obviously wild stories, a lot of lerkkal had been harassed the day before. Including, according to several people, humans who had hired lerkkal.
Sherry kept her mouth shut about actually seeing the crowd who had confronted the suits, and listened. It wasn't hard, everybody seemed to want to talk.
At lunch, it was the only subject at the tables.
Michi, who had joined the school newspaper on the first day, was scribbling out notes about the various rumours and shamelessly listening in on every conversation she could.
"I wish the morning paper had printed something about this," she complained while tallying the number of rumours that said somebody had been killed. "Then I'd have some real facts, quotes from the police, something."
"Who do you think did it?" Sherry asked.
"Did what--harass the lerkkal or attack the people doing the harassing?"
"Both."
Michi put down her pen and rested her head in her hands. "I don't know. I hate rumours. What sounds reasonable isn't always. And sometimes the truth is stranger than anything anybody here could dream up." She looked at Sherry through her fingers. "As a best guess, though, the people who stopped the harassment were just gathered off the street, and gathered because they heard about this harassment and didn't like it."
"Has anybody heard anything about Zelks? His shop was smashed up. I heard."
"Hah. Everything from him suing whoever did it, with no mention of who it actually was, to him being hurt or dead to him running back to his hometown."
"In other words, no." Sherry looked at her hands, turning a carrot stick over and over, and debated whether to tell Michi what she knew for sure.
"I'm going to try to get this into the next issue, so I should run. The deadline was yesterday, but they send it off for duplication tonight." Michi flipped her bookreader closed and stood up. "Catch you later."
"Right," Sherry said to her friend's back.
#
"She wouldn't publish it. Dammit! Said they don't publish rumours." Michi stomped down the hall toward their lockers.
"Well, all you had was rumours, right?"
"Yeah, but I didn't try to present them as fact. I even wrote it as an editorial, not a news item. And there still hasn't been anything about it on the news. I checked the noon news and there was nothing. At. All. Nothing! No mention of people hurt, no mention of broken windows, nothing. It's almost like they're keeping it quiet."
"Maybe Victor was partly right. About the secrecy," she explained when Michi frowned.
"Oh, the cell thing. Do you think this is related to the seperatist movement?"
They stopped and opened their lockers.
"Might be. Cathy said yesterday that there was a huge difference in attitude between here and Earth, especially when it came to the lerkkal."
"Oh yeah, she was in town yesterday. Too bad I couldn't--what brought that topic up, anyway?"
Sherry realised what she had just said, and mentally smacked herself. She lowered her voice, glancing at the people around them. "Cathy and I were in Zelks' shop when a bunch of suits showed up. Couldn't tell what they were saying cause of the translator, but it looked like they were harassing Zelks."
"Did you see the people who stopped them?"
Locker doors started slamming as more and more people finished packing up.
"Only from a distance. We took off, they looked pissed. A cop asked us some questions, when they showed up, but the crowd had already disappeared."
"There were police involved? And it hasn't made the news? Interesting." Michi's eyes narrowed, and she thought quietly for a while. "I may need to revise my editorial a bit. Do you think the same thing, sneaking the article in as the last page, will work?"
The crowd in the hallway thinned, only a few people still at their lockers.
"A centre insert. This is actually published like a newspaper."
"Right. Damn, that size paper isn't just sitting around."
"No, but the Averys have some at their publishing house. And I've been working there after school for a few weeks, so I know how to work the machines. I could even do it this afternoon. They have so much paper they'll never notice a few hundred pages less, especially if we replace them later this week. Grab some of the newspapers, run them through the blanker, and they'll never know."
Kara and a group of her new friends closed the locker they were gathered around, and walked away. A few other groups who had stopped to chat after school did the same.
"No, not today," Michi said quietly. "I want to do some rewriting and see what's on the evening news."
"No problem."
They closed their lockers.
Just before closing, the door buzzer buzzed, and Sherry heard Sean call "Be right there!"
Rather late for a customer, but it had happened before. Sherry kept an eye on the library pamphlets that were being printed and folded twice a second. One hundred twenty a minute. Twenty thousand in just under three hours.
She checked her watch. Ok, it was slower than two per second, especially when you counted the time to unjam the pamphlet folder, which was old and grouchy and liked to jam the second you turned your back on it.
Which it promptly did, just because Sherry was thinking about it.
"Stupid machine," Sherry muttered, and started digging the mangled paper out. "You should be thrown on the trash heap."
Heavy footsteps came up the stairs. Unfamiliar footsteps.
Sherry looked up from the folder just as the stranger passed the top, creaky stair. Another suit, scarily similar to the ones who had been harassing Zelks.
"Excuse me, customers aren't allowed up here," Sherry said. He didn't seem to have recognised her.
"Get away from the machine."
"But this has to be ready for pickup tomorrow."
"I said. get away from the machine." He grabbed her arm and pulled her away.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" Sherry yanked her arm out of his grasp and rubbed her bicep where his fingers had dug in.
"Go downstairs."
Sherry gave him a dirty look and stomped down the stairs, trying to hide her fear. Were they, whoever "they" were, starting to harass everybody now?
The main floor was a mess. Boxes were open everywhere, and it was clear from the way four of the suits were digging through them, all the boxes would be opened before they were done. Two more suits were standing guard, one at the door and one with his gun on the Averys.
Sherry gulped.
"Get over there, and sit down." The suit with the gun waved her toward the Averys.
They sat in the corner for an hour, as their shop was torn apart from top to bottom. Not allowed to speak, not allowed to move, a gun always pointed at them.
Finally, the last box opened, the last corner checked, the suits all gathered at the other end of the room for a conference.
The gunman finally put his gun away. "You're shut down until further notice. Go to the governor's office tomorrow to pay your fine, $100,000. If you operate your company or your printing presses before you are given permission to do so, you will be charged with contempt and fined $10,000 for each day of operation. Is that clear?"
Sean nodded once, his face tight. They said nothing as the suits left.
When the door finally closed behind the last suit, Sean started swearing quietly.
"Not here, dear," Sue whispered, and Sean shut up.
They left the back room messed up, and locked all the doors.
Outside, Sean started swearing quietly again. "A hundred thousand? For suspicion of printing treasonous materials, and no evidence?"
"What was that all about?" Sherry said at the same time.
"They were UN officials," Sue said.
They started walking home, their shadows stretching long in front of them.
"Treasonous materials though? What counts as that?"
"Anything they don't like, in effect. Usually anything that is pro-independence."
"Or that supports the lerkkal?"
Sue bit her lip and glanced at Sean. "Maybe."
Sherry stepped on her shadow-legs a few times, always missing as it moved ahead. "I almost got in trouble, on the ship, for helping print something that disagreed with the teachers about the lerkkal. Only they couldn't prove who did it."
After a moment, Sean said, "Did you?"
"Yup. But they screwed up. They deleted all my notes, so I had the better position when I said I didn't write it, because they knew they had deleted them."
Sean chuckled, then started laughing. "Good on you. They need some shaking up."
"Yeah. But the reason I told you--do you know what happened yesterday?"
Sean and Sue looked at each other for a long moment, then nodded to each other. "Yes."
"What?"
Sue hesitated. "What did you see?"
"Some people like the ones just now, they were bothering Zelks, and told me and Cathy to leave. A crowd came up, we ran away, the crowd left, the police cleaned up, and there's been nothing on the news."
"The UN inspectors have been fining people for hiring lerkkal, and shutting down lerkkal-owned shops. Usually with some tax-evasion excuse. The lerkkal don't pay taxes because they're not citizens."
"Well, a friend of mine, the one who helped me with the article in the ship, she was working on an article about yesterday. An opinion piece, because all she had were rumours and speculation." Sherry paused and took a deep breath. "I offered to help her print it, because the school paper wouldn't take it. On your presses."
"Sherry..." Sue looked pained.
"I'm not done. I think the same girl who maybe deleted my notes--she was my roommate on the ship--overheard me mention your press. And that I offered to print it this afternoon."
"Hold on. Are you saying the treasonous material the UN inspectors might have been looking for was your friend's article?"
Sherry nodded. "Ka-that girl walked away before my friend said she wanted to rework it after tonight's news, if there was anything about yesterday on."
Sean put his face into his hand and shook his head, laughing again. "Ok," he said after a few seconds. "Please don't publish that article. Really. And don't talk about it. You've just told us that even the schools have UN spies, so just don't say anything about yesterday. Complain about their raid tonight all you want though, as long as you don't mention this conversation."
"Spies?" Sherry's jaw dropped, and she snapped it shut with a quick shake of her head. "UN spies?"
"They've been trying to find the leaders for over a year now. The former governor, the one who made the initial formal request for recognition as an independent state, has been recalled to Earth and replaced with somebody they control."
"But why would they use teenagers as spies..." Sherry started, then paused.
"Not sure," Sean said. "Maybe because nobody would pay attention to--"
"That's what the screening officer said."
"Who? When?"
"Back on Earth, when they were figuring out who to send to which colony. He had my file out, and said something about how I didn't have a police record, and so nobody would pay attention to me."
"That's... interesting," Sue said. "I wonder how many of the kids in the latest shipment are spies. Or in previous ones."
Sherry chewed her lip for a few seconds. "Well, we couldn't figure out how Mi-my friend's copy of my notes were erased as well. Maybe there was one in her room. I mean, nobody went in or out of her room at all that night."
They turned the corner onto their street. The sun was nearly down, and the city lights were on, casting dim yellow light on the road.
"Could be. Now was it luck, or was there one in every room?"
"I don't know."
"I know, I didn't expect you to." Sue patted Sherry's arm. "I was just thinking out loud.
Now, what do we want for dinner?"
#