The boy claimed he was eighteen.
Twelve or fourteen was what he looked. Sixteen, maybe, at the most, thought Minh, considering that hunger had a way of stunting a kid's growth. This one looked hungry, for sure.
Minh cuffed him hard, before he was even out of the vac suit. Get his attention. "What the hell were you doing out there? Don't you know you could get killed? Do you want to get your head blown off, is that it?" Hit him upside the head again--emphasis.
Of course you only had to look at Minh to see how you could get your legs blown off, as easy as your head. But he was a born Luner, he could manage just fine here in the tunnels, where using the handholds was as easy as walking. And the activity gave strength to the arms. The kid rubbed his head and winced.
"Get that suit off," Minh snapped. "And careful with it."
The suit was the thing. A lot harder to replace than the refugee kid inside it--that was the hard truth. Karli Ottinger sat sweating blood day and night to keep those suits patched together, Karli would have blown the kid's head off himself, if it wasn't inside one of his helmets.
Sullenly, the boy stepped out of it, and Minh reached out to retake possession, turning it inside out and back to check for damage and also any contraband he might be carrying. "What the hell did you think you were doing?" he asked again.
Of course anyone who worked on the surface would know damn well what the kid was doing out there. Illicit salvage. Stealing scrap. Admin was taking a hard line on it lately, calling it sabotage.
The boy wasn't talking. The boy's glance kept going behind Minh's shoulder to the airlock, calculating his chances of breaking past to escape. Minh shifted to better block his way. "Let's see your ID," he demanded.
Against his will, the kid showed him his card (and leave it to Admin--no matter how scarce the resources, everybody had to have an official ID card, no exceptions). Minh's reader confirmed what he'd already figured: temp status, basic allotment. Refugee status.
The basic allotment was a travesty. People resented them, the refugees. Each additional body meant there was less for everyone else--less oxygen, less water, less food. Admin was stretching available resources to the breaking point just to take care of their own, people said. The refugees ought to have to work for a living, like everyone else. But the same people didn't want to lose their own jobs to them, either.
Only some jobs--nobody wanted.
Minh said, "Tell me again, what you were doing."
"Nothing."
"Right. You steal a vac suit, you sneak outside to the surface, just to stroll around and enjoy the view."
"Didn't steal nothing. You find anything on me? Did you?"
Because Minh had searched him, searched the suit. "What did you think--people were letting salvage lay around outside in the open, right outside the main service airlock?" Think about it, kid, his voice said clearly. "And I suppose you didn't happen to know that selling salvage scrap on the black market is illegal, either?"
Sullen expression grew more angry. But that wasn't what Minh wanted. He changed his tone. "Look, I don't know what anyone told you, but it's a minefield out there. You understand that? You understand where it comes from, the scrap we salvage out there? You understand how you could get killed?"
Sullen to defiant now. "I'm not afraid."
"No?"
"I know what I'm doing."
"Oh, you do? So what's this, then?" Minh pulled an object out of his coverall pocket and flipped it in the boy's direction, watched how he snagged it out of the air. The thing looked like an ordinary rock, but appearances were deceptive.
Dubiously, "It's a bomb?"
"A live explosive device," Minh confirmed, observing how the kid handled the thing. It was one he used for demonstration and training. "Now, you tell me--throw that out on the surface, with every other rock out there, you tell me how you're going to know which one is the device. You tell me what's going to happen when you're walking around out there in a field where there might be a dozen of these things, or more, tell me what's going to happen when you step on one?" Because of course that was the most insidious thing about the devices, that no one could tell, just from looking at the ground, just how much danger was there.
The boy looked at him now with suspicious curiosity. "If it was really live, if it was going to go off, you wouldn't have thrown it like that, not in here."
Minh liked the answer. The kid could think, at least. He wasn't stupid. "That's right. This one is what we call a sleeper. It has an internal timer. These sit out there right on the ground and wait. You can't set them off, no matter what you do--step on them, kick them, drive a rover across them. You wouldn't even recognize them if you didn't know what to look for. One day, though, with no warning..." He gestured at his missing legs. "So you still think you know what you were doing out there?"
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