The Wrath of Cons

by Robert Kroese

  I led Rex and the others down the hall to the workshop and threw open the door. The monkeys were still clacking away. They paid no mind to us as we entered the hall.

  “There!” I said. “Boggs, do you think you can get that safe open?”

  Boggs strode over to the wall, pulled his fist back and then slammed it into the safe. The safe disappeared, leaving a hole in the wall. The dark courtyard was visible outside.

  “Back outside!” Rex shouted. We followed him out of the room and down the hall. When we got to the courtyard, we saw a group of several henchmen standing around the safe. The door was open, and one of them was leafing through the manuscript. “I don’t understand why Lockwood is back on the moors,” he was saying.

  “I think it’s symbolic of the futility of the human condition,” said another.

  “I’ll take that,” Rex said, striding toward the henchmen. The one who had spoken first turned to face Rex, clutching his halberd.

  “Boggs, maybe you should take it.”

  Boggs walked up to the man holding the manuscript and plucked it out of his hands. The henchmen cowered, gripping their halberds.

  “Useless!” shrieked a woman’s voice from behind us. I turned to see Emily Brontë approaching, flanked by an entourage of lazegun-toting monkeys. “I don’t know why I bother with henchmen. Should have gone all in on the monkeys. Give me that.”

  Boggs saw the lazeguns pointed at him and reluctantly handed over the manuscript. Emily paged through it and sighed. “It really is a bit tiresome, isn’t it? All the mucking about on the moors. I suppose my true calling is to be a despot.” She pulled a lighter from a pocket and lit the corner of the manuscript on fire.

  “Wait!” Rex said. “That’s our only chance to get off Earth!”

  Emily laughed. “You’re never getting off Earth. Once I have your robot’s thought arrestor, you and everybody else on this planet are going to submit to my iron rule. Forever!” As she spoke, the flames licked up the manuscript, rapidly consuming it. We were watching our chance to escape Earth go up in flames.

  Suddenly a deluge of water rained down upon us, drenching Emily and dousing the manuscript. Emily screamed. I turned to see Boggs holding the empty water trough over his head.

  “What have you done?” Emily shrieked. “I can’t get wet!” She fell to the ground, coughing and wheezing. After a few seconds of gasping for breath, she was still.

  “What the hell was that?” Rex asked.

  One of the henchmen crouched over her, putting his ear to her chest. He stood up. “Tuberculosis,” he said. “None of the Brontës have particularly robust respiratory systems. A little water in the lungs was all it took to do her in.”

  I knelt down and picked up the manuscript. The edges were burned, and the first few pages were damp, but it looked to be salvageable.

  “We did it!” Rex exclaimed.

  “I guess we did,” I said. “That was some quick thinking, Boggs.”

  Boggs beamed. “I’m smart at putting out fires.”

  “Great,” Rex said. “Let’s get back to the Narrator. Donny, you’re creeping me out. Get where I can’t see you. Everybody else, grab your porpoises and come with me.”

  Chapter Eleven

  As we strode triumphantly into the Narrator’s palace, the hologram flickered to life. “WHO DARES ENTER THE HALL OF THE… OH, IT’S YOU AGAIN.”

  “That’s right,” Rex said. “We got the damn manuscript and now you have to get us off planet. Like in the deal.”

  “YOU GOT THE WHAT? OH. YES, OF COURSE. THE MANUSCRIPT. THAT I NEED. JUST, UM, PUT IT ON THE FLOOR THERE IN THE CENTER OF THE ROOM.”

  Rex walked to the middle of the room and set the manuscript down.

  “OKAY, NOW BACK AWAY AND MY ASSISTANT WILL RETRIEVE IT FOR ME.”

  Rex rejoined me and the others. Suddenly, the hologram disappeared. A door opened at the far end of the room and a man wearing a baseball cap and a dingy gray bathrobe emerged, ran to the manuscript, picked it up, and ran back to the door. The door slammed behind him and the hologram reappeared, its eyes cast downward as if reading. After several minutes, the hologram frowned and said, “HMMM… SHOULD HAVE STAYED OFF THE MOORS.”

  “Glad you enjoyed it,” Rex said. “Now about getting us off Earth?”

  “YES, WELL,” the hologram started. “HERE’S THE THING. ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE CONCEPT OF PRIMORDIAL ARCHETYPES?”

  “Damn it, you’re going to welch on us, aren’t you?” Rex said.

  “IT’S JUST… HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT MAKING A GO OF IT HERE?”

  “We’re not getting off Earth,” Rex groaned. “You know what you are?” he said, shaking his fist at the hologram. “You’re an unreliable narrator!”

  “Does this mean I’m not going to get brains?” Boggs said to the hologram. “And potential friend isn’t going to get a heart? And Donny isn’t going to get courage?”

  “Does Donny really even need courage?” I asked. “I think he needs… I don’t know. Counseling, maybe.”

  Donny’s shoulders drooped. “Donny underestimated how much his feelings of self-worth were tied to his anatomical idiosyncrasies.”

  “What a fraud,” Rex said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait,” I said to the hologram. “Surely you can do something for us, after all the trouble we went to for that manuscript.”

  “LIKE WHAT?”

  “I don’t know, you’re the archetype here. Some kind of symbolic reward for our efforts?”

  “AH,” the hologram said. “YES. I THINK I KNOW JUST THE THING. WAIT RIGHT THERE.”

  The hologram abruptly disappeared. Music began to play.

  Danke shoen, darling, danke shoen,

  Thank you for all the joy and pain

  Picture show, second balcony was the place we’d meet

  Second seat, go Dutch treat, you were sweet

  Danke schoen, darling, danke schoen

  Save those lies, darling don't explain

  I recall Central Park in fall

  How you tore your dress, what a mess, I confess

  That’s not all…

  “He’s not coming back, is he?” I asked, as the music continued to play.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Rex said.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I really thought he might be able to help us.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Sasha. Now we can get back to what’s really important: finding that rabbit.”

  Defeated, the four of us exited the palace and began making our way back down the street. In the distance, I caught sight of something metallic flying through the air.

  “So help me, if those chimps buzz us again,” Rex said.

  “Sir,” I said, “I don’t think that’s the chimps. It looks like…”

  “The Flagrante Delicto!” Rex cried. “What the hell is our spaceship doing here?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not going to be here for long.” The ship was rapidly gaining altitude. Already it was a barely perceptible dot in the sky.

  “Well, use your remote control,” Rex said.

  “My remote… oh.” I opened my chest compartment and removed the remote control. Tapping madly at buttons, I managed to override the onboard controls and instruct the ship to land. It settled to the ground a few meters in front of us.

  “Where did it come from?” Boggs asked.

  “It must have followed us through the wormhole,” I said. “The remote’s homing signal was turned off, so it just landed and waited for us to show up.”

  Boggs frowned. “So… you had a way for us to get off Earth this whole time?”

  “Apparently,” I replied.

  “Probably should have seen that coming,” Rex said.

  I shrugged.

  The Flagrante Delicto’s hatch opened and a man came down the ramp. He was wearing a baseball cap and a dingy gray bathrobe. “Uh-oh,” he said as he saw us.

  “It’s the Narrator’s assistant!” Boggs shouted.

  “
Boggs,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s the Narrator.”

  “No, it’s his assistant. Don’t you remember? The Narrator had a really big head.”

  “Boggs.”

  Boggs persisted. “The Narrator had a huge head and he had an assistant who wore a bathrobe. Remember when the Narrator disappeared and then his assistant showed up and took that book and then the assistant left and the… ohhhhhh.”

  “You’ve had our ship this whole time?” Rex growled.

  “Well, yes,” the man who had called himself the Narrator said. “But to be fair, I only decided to flee the planet a few minutes ago.”

  “So who are you, really?” I asked.

  The man grinned and held out his hand. “The Unpinchable Hannibal Pritchett, at your service. Some call me the Platinum Pigeon.”

  “You’re the Prancing Pillbug?” Rex asked. “The way the Sp’ossels talked you up, I was expecting someone a little more… not you.” I was in agreement with Rex. Hannibal Pritchett was short and chubby, with a pudgy red face and a shaggy head of hair that failed to hide a prominent bald spot. Hardly the suave con man we had expected.

  “I may have let myself go a little,” Pritchett said, patting his belly. “The great thing about that Narrator gig is that I didn’t have to go out in public much.”

  “How the hell did you get to be the Narrator in the first place?”

  “It was the only option I had,” Pritchett said. “The problem with this place, as I’m sure you’ve discovered, is that you can’t con people because they don’t want anything. The residents are all robots, and there’s no real economy here. Nobody makes anything, nobody sells anything, and nobody consumes anything. They all just wander around, playing their part in a show that nobody is watching. After a few weeks, though, I hit upon it: the currency on this planet is stories. The people with the most power here are the ones with the most compelling stories. And who has the power over all the stories?”

  “The Narrator?” I suggested.

  “The Narrator! So I found that old hologram and started spreading rumors about this mysterious figure known as the Narrator. The writers that make up most of the citizenry are so suggestible that they built up a whole mythology around me. Pretty soon, people started showing up to find out what all the fuss was about. I put on a show for them and some of them stuck around to be my acolytes. It was a pretty sweet gig. I had everything I wanted.”

  “Then why were you leaving?” Rex asked.

  “To be honest, I’m bored. Also, when you showed up with that manuscript, I panicked. Figured the jig was finally up. Anyway, the Sp’ossels must have stopped looking for me by now.”

  “Um,” I said. “Actually…”

  “That’s right,” Rex said. “They specifically told us they’d completely lost interest in you. ‘If you run into Parcival the Pigman,’ they said, ‘pay him no mind.’”

  “Well, that’s… a relief,” Pritchett said dubiously.

  “Do you still have those secret plans you stole?” Rex asked.

  “How do you know about that? Do you work for the Sp’ossels?”

  “Look, I’ll level with you,” Rex said. “We were after those plans ourselves. Hand them over and we’ll take you with us.”

  “Take me with you? I was halfway to orbit when this damn ship just landed all by itself.”

  “You’re not going anywhere as long as Sasha has that,” Rex said. I held up the remote.

  “Well, I’m not giving you the Shiva plans,” Pritchett said. “They’re worth billions!”

  “Not here, they’re not. But once we get them to a more civilized planet, we should have no trouble selling them. We’ll even give you a share of the profits.”

  “Fifty-fifty?”

  “Well, there are five people on our team already, so it would be more like…” Rex trailed off.

  “Sixteen point seven percent,” I said.

  Pritchett frowned. “You’re not seriously going to give that creepy robot the same share as me.”

  “Donny?” Rex asked. “Donny is a vital member of the team.”

  “Donny donnyhammers,” Donny said.

  “That’s right. We wouldn’t even be here without his donnyhammering.”

  “Still, sixteen point seven percent seems low.”

  “I’m willing to round up to seventeen. Sasha doesn’t care about money anyway. She’s all about vengeance.”

  “Ugh,” said Pritchett.

  “Take it or leave it.”

  “Fine. Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Wow, you didn’t tell me Pepper was gorgeous!” Hannibal Pritchett exclaimed as we entered the saloon. Pepper Mélange, standing behind the empty bar, shot him a pained look.

  “Smooth,” Rex observed. I shook my head. How did this schlub ever get to be a legendary con man?

  Shortly after leaving Earth in the Flagrante Delicto, I had plotted a hypergeometric course back to Sargasso Seven, where Pepper’s saloon was located. Sargasso Seven was almost uninhabitable, as nearly the entire surface was covered by water. Pepper’s establishment, a haven for pirates, marauders and freebooters of all stripes, was located on a tiny, rocky island blanketed in a constant fog.

  As Boggs and Donny entered the saloon behind us, Pritchett strode toward Pepper, his hand outstretched. “Hey there,” he said, stopping behind the bar. “How you doin’?”

  Pepper ignored him. “Did you get the Shiva plans?” she asked, looking at Rex.

  “Yep,” Rex said. “Pritchett’s got them.”

  Pritchett reached into his pocket and pulled out a memory crystal. He set it on the bar.

  “Pritchett?” Pepper said. “As in…”

  “Hannibal Pritchett,” he said with a smile. “Also known as the Platinum Pigeon.”

  “You’re the Platinum Pigeon?” Pepper asked in disbelief.

  “At your service.” He produced a business card from his pocket. Pepper ignored it, and he set it down on the bar next to the crystal.

  “Why are you so… you know,” she said, gesturing at Pritchett.

  “Look, we can’t all be the pretty boy type of con man,” Pritchett said.

  Rex and I approached the bar. “You called?” Rex asked. He turned to Pepper. “Vodka martini.”

  “Make it yourself, jackass,” Pepper said. “What happened to Donny?”

  “Donny is in an awkward transitional phase and would appreciate it if people would not draw attention to Donny’s appearance,” Donny said.

  “Fair enough,” Pepper said.

  “Ah, it’s good to be home,” Rex said, walking behind the bar.

  Pepper picked up the crystal and turned to me. “You’ve verified it?”

  I nodded. “It’s the Shiva plans. Vengeance will soon be mine.” For a moment, the bar was silent. Wishing I’d spoken with more enthusiasm, I raised my fist to punctuate the statement.

  “And the rest of us will be rich,” Pritchett added.

  “’Us?’” Pepper said, looking at Rex. “What did you promise this guy?”

  “A sixth of the profits,” Rex said, pouring himself a martini.

  “What? Why?”

  “Well, he’s the one who actually stole the plans. It seemed fair.”

  “Hardly fair, since I did all the work,” Pritchett grumbled.

  “We risked our lives retrieving the sequel to Wuthering Heights,” I reminded him.

  “Sure, but that was just busywork. I didn’t think you were actually going to do it.”

  “So now we’re stuck with this guy until we sell the Shiva plans,” Pepper said.

  “About that,” Pritchett said. “I have an idea. What if I could help you get rid of your zontonium?”

  Pepper glared at Rex. “You told him about that?”

  Rex shrugged. “I may have let something slip on the way over.”

  “It’s okay, I’m not going to tell anyone,” Pritchett said. “But I may be able to help you. As
you’ve probably figured out, it’s pretty hard to unload a chunk of zontonium that size.”

  Indeed, Pepper had been trying to sell the zontonium since we’d gotten it, several months earlier. The problem was that it was so valuable that no fence was willing to handle the sale, as it would undoubtedly attract the attention of the Malarchy. She could break pieces off and sell the zontonium a little at a time, but that would require a lot more transactions—also increasing the odds the Malarchy would come calling. So, for now, the zontonium remained locked away in Pepper’s storeroom.

  “You’re telling me you know someone who would be willing to buy that much zontonium?” Pepper asked.

  “I’ll have to make sure he’s still in business, but I think so. He owns a small refinery, so he could mix your zontonium in with the rest of the ore. The trick is to double-refine the ore to remove the trace chemical signature that makes it possible to trace the source. I’d be willing to set you up with my fence in exchange for a cut. Say twenty-five percent.”

  “Twenty-five percent!” Pepper cried. “I’m not giving up twenty-five—”

  “Hear me out,” Pritchett said. “You give me twenty-five percent of the zontonium, and I give you my share of the Shiva plans. That leaves you with seventy-five percent of the zontonium profits and thirty-four percent of the Shiva profits.”

  “Hey,” Rex said, his brow furrowing. “I’m getting screwed here.”

  “It’s your own fault, sir,” I reminded him. “You gave up your share of the zontonium for Pepper’s help on the Shiva job. In addition to giving her a share of the profits.”

  “And you let me!” Rex grumbled. “I need better supervision.”

  “The important thing,” Pritchett said to Pepper, “is that you and I both get what we want. And then we go our separate ways. We sell the zontonium and then I’m gone. You all can do what you want with the Shiva plans.”

  “Tempting,” Pepper said.

  “Is the zontonium nearby?”

  Pepper regarded him coldly.