FUTURES RESEARCH

9005 - THE CANYON - 1998

Jake Gonzalez liked to spend his days cruising the markets. In any case, that was where the action was and his friends hung out. After lunch, of the liquid variety, his favourite spot was the bar by the visitors' fountain. A couple of beers could be made to last all afternoon, since the highs he needed came from the weed he smoked. The ganja wasn't as good as the commercial stuff the gringos used, and the impurities often left a hangover the following morning, but it was a tenth of the price and freely available; and, anyway, mornings were for sleep.

From his vantage point near the fountain, he could watch for the arrival of tourists - whilst holding court for his supporters' club. These were mostly teenagers but were consequently that much more intense in their dedication to his cause. In reality, the tourists were a diversion, something with which to amuse himself on a boring afternoon. Why they came to this god-forsaken place he didn't know. It was, after all, just another seedy, run-down town; but it was close to the gringo's city, and it looked authentically Hispanic. Perhaps it was because of the very element of danger he provided. Discretely hidden in the shadows, there were the town's own police, but he knew they wouldn't interfere unless things got out of hand. Then there were the tourists' own bodyguards - local boys turned gamekeeper for the afternoon - but everyone, except perhaps the tourists, knew that they were also part of the game.

This afternoon the first party of tourists didn't emerge, from their armoured bus parked out of sight so that it didn't disturb the primitive ambience, until three o'clock. As usual, it was obvious that the party was mainly made up of retired people. There were no families with young children, they were to precious to risk, and there was nothing for the youngsters playing the mating game - they well knew what would happen if they even so much as approached a village girl. But, then, why did these frail old people come. They could be blown away with a sharp breath, so why take the risk. Perhaps they were trying to remember better times when every gringo city had its Latino quarter, providing alien pleasures close to home.

Whatever the reason, this group was just like the others. They moved amongst the stalls - perhaps it was after all just bargains they sought; other greedy gringos had already taken everything else! They picked over the remaining bric-a-brac, and mauled the handicrafts. Jake suddenly had a mental picture of a troop of monkeys, pawing their way through the fruits of the forest. But, just as quickly, it changed to a herd of buffalo, quietly grazing on the prairie but all the time looking around for the danger they knew lay in the shadows. This was a more accurate picture, for they were ideal marks; like the herd they could be so easily stampeded, and then they were at his mercy. He was about to create that stampede. As he got up from the table a dozen pairs of eyes followed him; and their owners began to follow a pattern as choreographed, and practised, as any Broadway show. Walking briskly across the plaza, as he reached the largest group of these tourists Jake clumsily stumbled over a pile of baskets and sent them flying. Almost head over heels, he bumped into three of the richest-looking tourists, and relieved them of their wallets. His compatriots rushed to help the rest of the tourists - of their wallets too. As they all melted back into the shadows, these wallets were handed to accomplices and immediately rushed to the back-office.

Everyone, including the police and bodyguards, accepted this as a 'performance'; and, as long as nobody got too greedy, or violent, they tolerated it. But the pickings were strictly limited. The tourists were told not to have too much in their wallets - and not too little - and even the wallets, bought in bulk, were often specially provided! The 'back-office' was, therefore, needed not just to keep the gang-members happy with their cuts, but so that the authorities could discretely audit the take. To be honest, their trade really was as a troupe of performers; and the pickings were as thin. From the tourists' point of view, the cost was worthwhile; to have the thrill of their pockets being, painlessly, picked by genuine local gangsters! What local colour, what a story to tell the neighbours. For their part, Jake and his team could have run this scam in their sleep; which was as well, for their nights were given sleeplessly over to much richer pickings.

As darkness fell, the town came alive. With the tourists gone, the bars and clubs abandoned their fakery and were taken over by the real natives; the knowledge workers who laboured by day in the seemingly dilapidated buildings at the edge of town. The exteriors of warehouses provided the charming backdrop for the tourists' adventures, but their interiors were stuffed full of the most modern computing and communication equipment. At night the money flowed out from these rich caverns to be spread across the whole town.

Jake and his friends were not tolerated by this underground society. They could scare the tourists, but god-help any of them who tried the same tricks on their own people. The police in the shadows would have them in jail immediately. In a perverse reversal of history, the town that was lawless in the day was law-abiding at night. Jake's gang was restricted, on licence, to the only genuinely seedy bar, on the outskirts of the town; and it was there that they planned their nighttime pleasures. Not that they required much planning. Indeed, one of their predicaments was that their lives had long-since lapsed into dull routine!

Just occasionally, no more than once or twice a year, they might run into an ambush; as they became too careless and guards finally were able to predict the current pattern of attacks. Then there was real excitement, as the guards, reinforced with army corps members, exacted revenge for the many nights when they were powerless to act. In the gun battle, which inevitably resulted, the gang would lose one or two men - usually wounded and captured, to languish in gringo jails, but just occasionally killed outright. Ironically, it was the excitement of these 'battles' that made all the participants lives worthwhile.

Both sides, guards as much as the gang, comprised individuals who were socially inadequate, and this night of adventure was the moment of glory for all of them - when their lives counted. Thus, the 'rumble', was the gang term for the event, but it was used equally by the guards; who obeyed much the same set of underworld rules. These guards excitedly took pot shots at the shadowy figures fleeing through the night; much as they might at a fairground shooting gallery. Their yells of triumph as the figures fell, usually as result of tripping rather than a gunshot wound, drowned out even the sound of the automatic weapons.

Perversely, it was just as much the highlight of the gang's year. There was genuine danger, maybe even of loss of one's life. But that added the necessary spice to a life which was almost a boring as that of the guards. For those few minutes they came alive, to become heroic guerrillas saving their nation. Of course, the 'nation' to which they formally belonged was on the side of the guards; but that was a detail they chose to ignore. Instead they saw themselves as the marines of the under-privileged, once more forgetting that those underprivileged, in the town below, equally viewed them as outlaws! For those few minutes, though, the flying bullets invested their lives - and occasional deaths - with real meaning. They created the stories on which the gang would live out the boredom of the months to come.

Tonight was, regrettably, one of the mundane kind. The guards would retreat to their redoubts as soon as dusk fell; to play cards, as the mayhem raged around them, to try and relieve their own soul-destroying sense of inadequacy. The gang, even so, waited until the early hours before moving to strike. Why they waited was not obvious. They could have attacked, with as much impunity, at any time after dusk; and been early to bed. Perhaps they had seen too many 'B' films, and believed that that was not how they were supposed to behave. Whatever the reason, it was almost pitch black as they started to make their slow way through the brush to the foot of the canyon. With a whole evening of drink and home-cultivated drugs behind them, they stumbled frequently. The greatest danger was that one of their own number would fall on them! Jake's few real injuries had happened this way. Below the plateau they encountered their first moment of nervousness, as the branches hiding the tunnel chosen for tonight's target were pulled back. Would the guards erupt from it, loosing off a torrent of flying lead? As usual, nothing like that happened - indeed, the guards were very wary of taking the battle to their opponent's territory - but the frisson of danger was delicious even so.

The climb through the heart of the mountain, to the plateau above, was the worst part. The tunnels were narrow and low, for the daytime miners who the gangs hired were not paid to provide for comfort. Worse, the tunnels were genuinely dangerous; the props, where there were any, were often of second quality. The frisson of danger here was much less delicious. Being buried alive, as some of the gang had been in the past, was not a heroic way to end your life. Jake, who was rather more intelligent than those he led and certainly more imaginative, was scared each time he had to make this journey. For he, more than anybody knew that more of his marines were lost here than to the guns of the guards. But, this time, at least, they emerged sweating from their effort, into the cool night air of the plateau.

As if an ironic comment by the miners, this tunnel actually emerged inside a refuge which had once been the safest part of the gringo's proud home, long-since destroyed. The entrance was a miracle of camouflage; it had to be, for the guards' daytime searches were rigorous - it was the one thing they did well. In the dark, though, the gang was safe as it gathered for its final briefing and collected its weapons. It was much safer to leave their automatics here, close to the surface, rather than drag them through the tunnels where they would just add another hazard. In any case, you could buy an old automatic for a packet of cigarettes; and who needed a new one when you never knew what you were shooting at!

Moving slowly and relatively quietly, with just the odd curse as one of the group stumbled into another, they made their way to the evening's target; a large house on the very edge of the canyon, which they had already attacked twice before. The last time had been several weeks before, for even they were not stupid enough to return the following night. Even so, the house was more brilliantly lit than those around it, and no doubt had new electronic defences - everyone knew they would eventually return to complete their work.

With his team in place, Jake's first action was to kill the lights. Even the most incompetent of the guards would be able to pick off his men, if they were silhouetted against these. Those facing them, the most problematic for their approach, were easily shot out. Even the few which had armoured glass were soon killed by their heavy rifle which fired depleted uranium bullets. This was their only expensive weapon; so it was one they did take through the tunnels with them. It made life a misery, dragging it with them in the tunnels, but without it they simply could not succeed. When the armoured lights were first installed, they had taken too many casualties - before they had invested in it. The lights facing away from them, illuminating the building itself, could not be dealt with in this way. But they were soon toppled with plastic charges; which were standard issue in most of the local gun-supermarkets. In this way, in only a few minutes, the house was rendered dark; and the sappers moved in to clear a path through the mines. This was not as difficult now that these had, by law, to be recognisable to the professionals who laid them - and hence to their opponents who had much the same equipment. The only danger was that the owner would have planted a few oldies. These were still available on the black-market, but it was unlikely that there were any of these; their reconnaissance had shown that the owner was an old woman - not a skilled engineer!

Jake sometimes wondered why the owners spent so much money on the electronic detection equipment. Surely the gunfire by itself would alert them in plenty of time, so they could retire to their bunkers. The gunfire, just as much as the equipment, would also warn the guards; but, then, everyone knew that none of them would venture out into the dangers of the night. In fact, the gang just ignored the electronics, and ploughed on, with the alarms screaming all around them. Even so, the physical defences could prove tough to overcome. They knew, from their previous visits, just how substantial were the armoured door and window closings, several inches think in this case. But this time they had brought the shaped charges needed to blow the hinges; and that was exactly what they proceeded to do.

It was not quite as difficult as it might appear, for they only needed to do this at one point. They nearly always chose the windows; the owners had, in better times, been proud of the size of their picture windows - and that too often now proved their undoing. The inner doors would be child's play after that. But, in this case, the specialists who had fitted the outer covers were good at their job. Even after the charges had done their work, it took a further half-hour before the hydraulic rams had finally levered them off sufficiently for even the smallest of the gang members to squeeze through the gap so created. Then, though, the whole house was at their mercy. The inventory list, bought as usual from the house-servants, meant that the real valuables were collected in just a few minutes. Indeed, as was often the case, they had plenty of time to match them to the buying lists already agreed with the dealers in the town below. In this house, according to the owner of the town's art boutique, there were some good paintings. Why they were not in a bank vault was another mystery - but Jake knew that the oldies hung onto the illusion that their previous charmed lives would continue forever. Paradoxically, the most valuable items were the electronics which powered the defence system! There was no need to list these in advance, they were so much in demand that they could immediately be resold to the specialists to be fitted into yet another potential target.

All the valuables went into their commodious bags, and within less than a quarter of an hour they were on their way back to the tunnel. It had been a good haul. They knew that they wouldn't get that much for it, all the intermediaries in the sleeping town below would have to receive their cuts. But it was the only trade they were qualified for, and it funded their meagre lifestyle; and all the drugs that took them - for a brief few hours - to better worlds. In any case, Jake would probably have done it for nothing. His own drug-hazed dreams took him back to the triumphs of previous attacks. Unlike in the days of his youth, he no longer got any buzz from savouring the fear which he knew would be paralysing the owners in their bunkers deep below them. He no longer even thought about them. In any case, he knew their terrors for their own safety were unjustified. The gang might steal all their worldly possessions, and in the process turn them into gibbering wrecks, but nobody would harm them physically. That was the one sure way of bringing retaliation from the state troops, Now his pleasure perversely came from his own bubbling fears, even though he was well aware that there was usually no risk. Strangely coupled with these dark fears was the bright excitement of the fairground. It was the ultimate shoot-em-up game; great fun, great adrenaline rushes which beat any drug, and they were paid for it!

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Mrs. Livingstone dreaded the sunset. Yet, when she and Arthur had bought the house on the edge of the ravine, it had been her favorite time of day. Cocktail parties and barbecues were then the excuse to invite her friends and neighbors to stand on her terrace and admire the sunset over the valley. There had been not a little pride in these elegant events. She had wanted her guests to see not just that she had a better house, but that she and Arthur had made it all the way up here.

Now, with Arthur gone and the world changing around her, she withdrew from the terrace long before the shadows lengthened. Her once beautiful home, designed to show off the view beyond the terrace, had been disfigured by the fortifications which were now so necessary. Security devices covered every point of entry, and barbed wire adorned the walls. The windows were bulletproof. The makers even claimed that they were bombproof, but the nightly events proved that this, at least, simply was not true. In any case, these days they were nightly covered by the even thicker steel doors, which had proved to withstand most things which were thrown against them.

Her neighbors, who she now only saw in the daytime when the patrols were active, withdrew at this time into their inner sanctums. There the claustrophobia generated by their minute size was more than compensated for by the feeling of security that the thick reinforced concrete walls and heavy steel security doors provide. There might only have been a bare twenty four hours of emergency air and power, but that was enough for you to survive until the patrols could rescue you. She, however, preferred to stay outside the sanctum until its use was absolutely essential. Of course, her curtains were drawn and the lights put off - in any case the power was cut by the invaders nearly every night. Above all, she was always very careful, as she peered though the narrow observation slits - which had been cut in the armored walls - to watch with horrified fascination the dramas taking place around her; as the invading gangs roamed with impunity through the night. She could see the tracer fire from the nearest patrol fortress, but it was only a gesture. They never seemed to hit any of the shadows, and they were as much a prisoner in their own fortress as she was in her house. Only at the last minute did she operate the covers for the observation slits themselves, and retreat to her own bunker.

She knew, from the observations of a thousand nights, that the invaders concentrated on just one house at a time. One explosion was enough for them to unhinge even the strongest covers, and then they looted at their leisure - dawn was a long way ahead. They never attacked the inner sanctum, even if a terrified widow crouched inside it surrounded by her jewels. The invaders well knew that dawn would arrive before they could complete such a task.

Most nights she just saw a brief flash and heard the explosion. But she knew one of her old friends was crouched praying in their sanctum, praying that the invaders might leave something - but they never did. Last night she had seen the explosion take place, on cue, at the Wilson’s house. This time the invaders got it wrong and fire overwhelmed the building in a matter of minutes - but, even though the Wilsons were safe in their sanctum, they still lost everything. It was just a matter of time before it would happen to all of them, and to her! The terrible thing was not the attack, she would almost be glad when it actually happened. The waiting was far worse then the event itself. It was what came after.

She had seen neighbor after neighbor emerge from the wreckage of their home and, sometimes crying but usually with dignity, enter the patrol’s car and drive away. One day this would happen to her. They would take her to their fortress and painstakingly write down the details; as if these mattered and they could somehow right the wrong that had been done. Then they would take her on the long road down to the resettlement building in the valley below. Like many of her neighbors before her, she would have no resources left; nobody would insure a house, or its contents, when it would inevitably be destroyed. She would become a charity case. She would join the clan of the invaders. At her age she would not be one of the shadows of the night, but she would be one of those who - the following morning - searched through what was left after the dealers had taken their pick. Maybe she would find some of her own possessions to remind her of better times.

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I do not know how to adequately describe my role as head of security in the little township of Almeida. You might reasonably assume that it was much the same as the chief of police in your own town. That would be to totally misunderstand the complexity of the role. If only the few police actions I was involved in represented the whole of my work. Indeed, they were almost the only part of the job which was enjoyable. At least in those situations you knew which side you were on, even if they were more like military engagements than police interdictions. With the bullets from automatic weapons filling the air, and heavy weapons sometimes brought into play as well, you feared for your own life. But you knew what cause you might be about to die for!

There was no such comfort in most of my day to day work. Take just one day as an example. When I arrived, the waiting room was already full. In keeping with the image of a run-down shantytown, the room was a disgrace by any civilized standards. Crumbling walls, broken seating, no air-conditioning, in fact nothing to make your stay bearable let alone comfortable. I hated having to inflict it upon my clients, but at least its discomfort discouraged all but the most serious plaintiffs. Its occupants really had to want something quite badly to endure the hours spent in those unsavory conditions. Fortunately, though my own office looked much the same, my discomfort was lessened by a few luxuries. My chair looked as broken down as did that the visitor sat on, with wads of stuffing bursting out of it, but in reality it was a miracle of comfort - hand-built by one of our craftsmen to a standard which might cost you several thousands of creds on Fifth Avenue. The theatrical touches of fake dilapidation had been added to live up to the image we so carefully projected to the rest of the, gringo, world. My battered PC looked even worse, if that was possible, but under its carefully distressed covers were the workings of one of the most powerful computers money could buy. It was discretely linked to the network that almost the whole town shared; allowing access to the world's most sophisticated computers. But I still had to pay a price; there could be no hiding any air conditioning. So, along with my visitors, I sweltered in the daytime heat. Much of the time I might have been acting a part, but the sweat was very real!

The problems my first visitors faced were typical of the bulk of my work. A young couple, they wanted to visit her sister in another of our towns. The problem was that it was on the other side of the continent. In theory, of course, they could just get in a car from our pool and drive there - that was everyone's right in this great democracy of ours! The reality was that they would be harassed almost every inch of the route. They would first be marked out by the dilapidated condition of the car; where the car was still the gringo's main status symbol. For once, this was not just a disguise; in the post-industrial epoch we rarely found any need for such cars and the few we did have were run into the ground. But the real give-away would be their licence-plate. It would be instantly recognized by any police officer, their worst opponents, across the nation. Finally, of course, the color of their skins would instantly mark them out as enemies almost anywhere.

So, I would have to arrange safe passage for them the dozens of communities lying on their three thousand-kilometer journey. In fact, the task was not quite as difficult for me as it might seem. First I had to establish the details, and they had to be exact in every one of these. Any mistake would be gleefully picked up by an official somewhere, and used as a pretext for voiding their safe passage. Once we sure, though, the details could be entered into my computer; and the underground's 'travel office' would take over the individual negotiations. They would ensure that the safe passage really took place - under the terms of the 'Rights of Travel' amendment to the Constitution. Even so, on the screen in front of me I had already seen displayed the many necessary detours written into the route. The travel office knew it was far better to spend hours on dusty country-roads than face the wroth of some bigoted community for which the Constitution was only a charter for gringos. But, even so, some hot-spots could not be avoided; and these burned red on the screen. In these cases a federal escort car would also be needed. Even then, though that right too was guaranteed, some Feds were no better than the local law - so underground troops would also follow their movements. Whatever the outcome, and most of my clients did get through, we would only know the final outcome in a week or so when the couple finally reached her sister's home.

The next visitor was more problematic. The middle-aged woman was a regular. She was one of the real victims of our hidden war. When she was young she had fallen in love with a gringo boy and, despite the pleadings of their more experienced friends, they had - as youngsters will - married for love. For a while it looked as if love might overcome all. Even when burdened down by the pressures from the opposing sides of the under-cover war which then emerged, the marriage had lasted for more than two decades. But, finally, the growing pressures had destroyed it; and the wife was sent back to her home community. Unusually, for such a situation, her husband still wanted to provide for her and the two teenage children. Like most gringos he could afford it, especially when the cost of living in Chicano towns was so low, and he felt guilty about the way his own community had behaved. But the gringo authorities, whose duty it was to transmit the money through their systems were not so generous. At times I wondered if there was a commercial reason for their tardiness. Every day the money sat in their own coffers, and sometimes it was held for months, it earned them interest. But, in general, I think it was just vindictiveness by individuals; exacting their own little revenge on one of the enemy. As usual, I passed her onto one of my financial assistants, who would spend most of the next day or so tracking down where the latest tranche of funds was hidden away; then much of her time over the next week making certain it reached our own banking system. So much for instantaneous electronic funds transfers!

My first 'diplomatic' visitors were two of the town's leading figures. One was the general manager of the town's largest employer; the underground chip-factory. In action, this was a wonder to behold. Beneath the skin of the dilapidated warehouses were hidden all the vast machines and clean rooms needed to produce the most modern customized chips; in vast quantities. The specifications for these were sent via satellite from the European laboratories, and were instantaneously transmitted - untouched by human hand - to the factory floor. Like many of the new plants in the developing nations the skills required from their workers were limited, though the factory had its own basic training facilities to upgrade these skills when demanded by the needs of the machines. The one added 'skill', which helped our own workers to attract plants like this, was their fluency in the English language. The biggest pool of English speakers, in India, had long since been exhausted. It was this knowledge of English, above all, which had justified the level of bribes necessary to bring in all the special equipment. You can't smuggle a forty-ton X-ray diffraction printer through a border post. But you can 'persuade' an official that it is invisible! On the other hand, the software houses, which employed most of the other workers in the town, had been much simpler to establish.

Once up and running, though, the output of the plant was surprisingly easy to handle. Worth more than their weight in gold, the chips simply followed the established smuggling routes. I found the idea of them crossing the mountains on the backs of mules rather strange, almost insane, but the process worked. Indeed, it worked like clockwork - or is that yet another metaphor which flies in the face of the bizarre combination of twenty first century technology delivered by tenth century means! But the delivery system had worked for more than a thousand years; so, if it ain't broke why fix it! The other visitor was the owner of that delivery system; or, officially, of the dude ranch outside of town where the mules were housed when they weren't working.

The problem they brought to me was literally a perennial one. It was the time of the year when the 'transport' contract was open for re-negotiation. Needless to say, the negotiations had stalled, indeed stalemated. It had become almost a tradition. I suspected that both sides had come to find some pleasure in the age-old process of haggling. For me it was different. On the outcome depended the wealth of the community, indeed almost its very existence. So, for me, this was no game. It meant I had to assume my diplomatic role, whilst deploying a considerable amount of business sense. While the two contestants in front of me were clearly enjoying themselves, the responsibility worried me more than any other aspect of my job. I had spent most of the previous evening searching the global databases to see what the comparable price patterns looked like, building AI models of the various options. As a result, I was far better prepared than either of the contestants in front of me. As this was but the first round of this game, it inevitably ended in a draw. As would be the case with all the subsequent rounds, it took less than an hour; but the worry took years off my life. I now had to prepare for the next meeting, but at least I now knew which of the options were more likely to succeed. As the contestants left, to celebrate their draw in a local bar, I heaved a sigh of relief; for it looked as if we would survive another year, We were not going to be thrown on the scrap heap of history.

The first intervention from the outside world, where my full diplomacy came into play, arrived in mid-afternoon. My patrolmen had already warned me that the rumble that day had gone somewhat awry. Not merely had the tourists been frightened - that was after all the central element of their ethnic experience - but one poor old lady had received a fractured collarbone in the mêlée. Of course she couldn't be treated in our own ultra-modern clinic, that was supposed not to exist, so the paramedics had patched her up, and given her a pain-killing injection on-site; all in the ten-minutes it took for the fed helicopter ambulance to arrive. It was in many ways a minor incident, but it breached the carefully negotiated 'laws' which governed our relations with the outside world. Exactly on cue, therefore, my office was stormed by my counterpart in the fed; ostensibly, like me, a police officer, but in reality, also like me, on these occasions more of a diplomat. Once the door was shut, and the listeners outside excluded, we settled down to work our way through a bottle of vintage Tequila. We both knew what would happen. With a great show of anger, the gringo authorities would announce that tourists would be excluded from the town 'indefinitely - a week in practice - to starve our miscreants into submission. It would hurt some of the market traders, but they still made a nice living and wrote it off as a necessary business expense. But, even so, they would transmit some of the pressure they felt to the gangs; as was intended. Overall, though, it would have remarkably little impact on the town. I went through the motions of pleading for the livelihood of my starving citizens; to the outside world the tourist revenue was all we had to live on. In reality, of course, it accounted for less than a few per cent; for our community was now richer than most gringo towns; it was just that we didn't show it; and indeed no longer felt the need to show it - and that made us richer still!

As I went through the motions, I was uncomfortably aware, as I always was on these occasions, that my opposite number almost certainly was just aware that this was an act. The question that I longed to ask, but never could, was how much more did he know. We both lived in a fantasy world. Those gringos well away from the front-line saw it in the black and white terms portrayed by the media. In this fantasy the under-class gangs were being successfully contained in their squalid ghettos, hence the need for our elaborate camouflage. There they could not trouble the gentile lives of the middle-class bourgeoisie living well back from the border. It was a story that both sides actually on the border fostered. The Feds found it convenient to have an image as the victors in this struggle for supremacy of good over evil. We, on the other hand, happily accepted it as a useful cover for our growing economic power.

As the sun set and the shutters were put up, I strolled to the market to inform the traders of the decisions. But, of course, they already knew, and had closed down. Only a few of them remained to hear me, most were well into a week of unexpected, but welcome, holiday.

That night the usual gun battle took place on the rim of the canyon. But it was so much part of our lives that I didn't even notice it. We would have missed it if it had not happened. Even so, and though I was forced to live with the harsh realities of life, I didn't like any of the gang members. Even Jake, who was more intelligent than the rest, had a psychotic inadequacy in his character that I found difficult to come to terms with. On the other hand, they too were a necessary part of the fantasy. They kept the gringos locked up on their side of the border, and in some perverted way they cocked a communal snook at those gringos on behalf of all Chicanos. I don't think anyone else liked them either. Even the dealers who handled the booty from their raids, and in my view were no better than them, treated them as outcasts. But, should I move against these bandits, I was certain I would find almost the whole community lined up against me. The gang members thought of themselves as marines fighting on behalf of their community, and in a horribly perverted way they were! God help any nation that needs such defenders.

The true depths of this stalemated war were brought home to me at the border post the next morning. A little old gringo lady was almost dragged to my feet by the canyon guards. My contempt for them was almost as great as that for Jake's gang. But someone had to accept responsibility for this desiccated bundle of rags and bones. Shaking with fear, all she could say - over and over again- was "my beautiful home, my beautiful home". Every week or so I found someone like this on my doorstep. Jake and the community administrators - 'no pay no stay' was their harsh commercial reality - had much misery to answer for. She might have been a gringo, but she was a human being. But the only values their world recognised were ones that were measured in creds. Their god really was Mammon, and their only salvation lay in money!

Fortunately, most of those evicted in this brutal way had a relative onto whose doorstep the corporation, which owned the development, could decant them. Just occasionally, however, no such home could be found and its administrators used the nearest human rubbish dump; us! We could have refused, when no doubt the guards would have left her in the desert until the buzzards had picked her bones clean. They had no compunction about executing the orders of their masters. On the other hand we, the criminal under-classes, still held some values which had not been swept away by the might of the cred. Indeed, despite the covert commercial success of our community, it was driven by its social values; and, not least, fired by a burning hatred of injustice. Our house was, therefore, her house. Unfortunately, though, we couldn't really provide houseroom in the town itself; there were just too many secrets she might discover there.

Her stay in the public part of the town was, therefore, necessarily brief. One of our busier charities soon collected her and delivered her to a comfortable old people's home in one of our non-covert towns. Thus, the story has something of a happy ending for her. Her life would no longer enjoy the moneyed riches she remembered from her past, but it would have a comfortable wealth of new friends. Even so, my anger burned; for her and the other victims of this unnecessary war. It was on this anger I drew when I had daily to face up to the unpalatable realities of my life; especially that of accepting the existence of the gangs. On the other hand, I could never come to terms with the brutality of gringo society, brutality our own existence as well. Would there never be peace, or even peace of mind?

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