Free Haze and the Hammer of Darkness by L. E. Modesitt Jr. Page A

himself sharing the rear car with fifteen youngsters—all about ten—being chaperoned by two large and jovial-looking young men. Yet none of the seventeen said a word during the time Roget was on the tram. He was almost relieved when he carted his bike off at the platform on the corner of Main and 600 South.
    From there he rode the bike three blocks west to Bluff Street and found himself right beside his destination. Ken’s Cleaners was a small shop set at the south end of the block. The stucco finish was a pale bluish white, rather than plain white, and the door was set on the southwest corner of the building, looking out on the street corner, rather than in the middle of the building facing Bluff Street. Through the tinted thermal-conversion windows, Roget could only see the untended counter. He leaned the bike against the side of the building and then walked back eastward alongside it, flicking on the atmospheric sampler and tabbing the results so they’d be linked properly. Then, halfway back along the side of the building, he extended the microfilament used for air sampling and flicked it as high as he could, swinging it over the top of the low structure. He walked to the rear of the building and repeated the process.
    Then he paused. He could hear a low mechanical rumbling, almost a groaning, coming from inside the back of the cleaners. Some sort of mechanical problem, he thought. He could feel the excess heat from the building. That much heat meant excess energy use or poor insulation or malfunctioning equipment or some combination of those factors. Those weren’t his problems, for either his overt or covert job.
    As he turned, he saw two older men standing in the thin band of shade cast by the building across the side street from him. Both wore white shirts—but long-sleeved—and dark trousers. He smiled politely, then turned and began to walk back toward Bluff Street.
    â€œâ€¦ hecky-darn monitor … snooping round … worse than the DTs, if you ask me … tell by the all white … not really proper…”
    â€œâ€¦ ChinoFeds ought to have more to do than bother small businesses…”
    â€œâ€¦ bother everyone now and again … why they’re ChinoFeds…”
    ChinoFeds? Roget thought that epithet had vanished a millennium ago, and his ancestry certainly had no Sinese in it. Even the apparently meticulous genealogy records kept on virtually all Noram citizens would have proved that. The briefings had mentioned rumors that the Saints had even kept tissue samples of prominent deceased Saints, but those had never been confirmed. And St. George certainly didn’t look like a technology center, but more like it had been frozen in time a millennium ago.
    Roget kept a pleasant expression on his face. What so many people refused to accept was that, when thousands of small businesses in thousands of towns and cities all exceeded the limits, the results on the environment could be significant. That attitude had been the principal cause of the deterioration of the old United States. Everyone had thought that they could question any authority and that they could do what they wanted because what they did didn’t matter. In the end it had, and by then it had been too late.
    He completed his readings and returned to the bike. He pedaled north in the bike lane for another three blocks, where he stopped in front of the next commercial establishment on the list—Santiorna’s. The shop looked to cater to Saint women. While the fabrics on the mannequins were flashy enough, the cut of the garments, and especially the lengths of the skirts, were conservative. The other fact was that there were actual garments displayed, rather than holographic images. Was that because of the Saint culture … or because of the cost of power?
    Roget knew that power costs were far higher in rural areas and in smaller towns and cities. The higher costs