Hunters & Collectors

by M. Suddain

  He looked at me like I was mad. ‘Why are you thinking about eating? Do you not see what’s happening here?’ I had to admit, what I was saying did sound a little bit mad.

  ‘It’s what I came here to do. It’s my job.’

  ‘Your job?’

  ‘Sure. You investigate quantum bookkeeping, I review restaurants.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to. I don’t understand why this place just murdered all its guests. I don’t understand why you didn’t make a run for the life-pods when you could. I don’t understand why your response to a massacre is to pick up the first piece of jailbait you see and take her to a movie.’ I saw his jaw dimple. It made me happy. ‘But mostly I don’t understand why the fuck you’re wearing a frock?’

  He stared hard at me. Then smiled as he took a sip of beer. ‘It’s not so hard to understand. The staff have blind spots. It’s basic hospitality: ignore what doesn’t concern you; respond to the out-of-place. Walk around with a dead flower in your lapel, or no trousers, and see how quickly they arrive to help. Keep your dress clean, your glass more than half full, show no signs of stress or alarm, and you are invisible. You ride things out, wait for help to come. It helps if you change outfits regularly. Also, it helps if you destroy your contract, like I did.’

  ‘Destroy my what now?’

  He gave me a smug look. ‘There’s a forty-hour window where you can still get at your contract. But I’m pushed for time. Maybe we’ll talk about it later.’

  Fucker. I wouldn’t beg.

  ‘You really think help is coming?’ said Beast.

  ‘I don’t know what’s coming. But they’ve just moved to Stealth Three. That means someone’s sniffing around. Maybe just the Marine Patrol. But who knows. Maybe the Navy heard a distress call. They’ll definitely pick up on any noise we make. Maybe there’s a way to make enough noise to give our location away.’

  ‘The MP would be minced if they tried to come in here,’ said G. ‘Navy too, probably.’

  He shrugged. ‘Could be a useful distraction. Could bring even more attention. Or maybe there’s a clean-up team on the way. Management must have a plan in place for something like this.’

  ‘Would have to be one fuck of a clean-up team,’ said G. ‘And if this place has as much laundry as it seems to …’

  ‘They have laundry all right. There might not be enough soap.’

  ‘Liquidation?’

  ‘They’ll put this place in an industrial meat-grinder and run it till it’s pulp.’

  ‘Mr Hunter.’ He peeled his eyes slowly from Gladys’s, his grin fading. ‘Aside from being confused as to why your laundry service owns an industrial meat-grinder, I wonder if you’ve noticed that the clientele of this establishment have already been liquidated. And indeed, in some cases, liquefied.’

  He smiled again. ‘What happens when you die, Mr Tamberlain?’

  ‘Oh, a simple service. A few thousand mourners. I want my ashes loaded into a cannon and fired at Chef Tyro’s face.’

  Beast smiled, shook his head.

  ‘What about after that?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea. Why don’t you stop teasing and tell us what’s happening here?’

  ‘You tell me. This is an ordinary old hotel with a military-grade networked security system. It has more cash dumped in it than Big Heart Tobacco. It has a non-national operations licence. They’re DELIITA. Know what that is, Mr Tamberlain?’

  ‘Is it your stage name?’

  ‘Duty Exempt and Licensed International Import and Transfer Agency,’ said Beast with another patronising smirk. ‘Go on, Mr Hunter.’

  ‘That’s correct. Only the Postal Service can authorise those, and they almost never do. It means they can bring just about anyone or anything they like down here without having to declare it.’

  ‘So it’s a smuggling operation,’ said Beast.

  ‘It’s not smuggling,’ I said. ‘They’re DELIITA so they can bring famous guests down without the press finding out.’

  ‘Sure. And all the classified hardware they’ve acquired. If the Navy knew they had this stuff they’d steal it all. If they could get through the door. It’s all Super-tech. Psychographic mapping, high-speed cloning, some stuff our best goons don’t understand. Maybe never will. They have magical fairy gumdrop machines and something something something machines and honestly, Colette, I wasn’t listening for most of this…. And of course there’s the Hyperreal Sensory State Etherography.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Holograms.’ He glanced over at our bartender, Roxy, took a sip of ale.

  ‘We don’t call them holograms, do we, Gladys?’

  ‘Oh, it’s just a word.’

  Fucking incredible.

  ‘The tech all comes from companies purchased from Fire River over the past decade by the proprietor of this establishment. He collects tech firms the way a wealthy man acquires pornography: diligently, and discreetly. This is an immensely powerful and unbelievably wealthy privateer, and he’s throwing everything he’s got at this hotel.’

  ‘Who’re you referring to? Tünghammer?’

  He almost choked. ‘You can’t say that name out loud – are you crazy?’ To Gladys: ‘Please instruct him not to say that name. The system tags you.’ Gladys looked at me, gave an almost imperceptible ‘what the fuck?’ shrug as Hunter took another dainty sip of ale. ‘You have to speak indirectly about certain subjects. Let’s say there was once a poor boy From the East …’ And then the man who said he only had a few minutes, and that we shouldn’t mention Tünghammer, went on to tell us his whole fucking life story in a kind of coded fairy tale, even though none of us had asked him to. But it is a fascinating story. Tünghammer was no peasant. His folks were doctors in the Kirkusk City Cluster in the Near East. Like many doctors and teachers they were taken away for ‘re-education’ after the Revolution and never came back. Lepold survived the Revolution by hiding in a sewer and eating people’s organs. He eventually found work cleaning floors for scraps in a hospital. When he saw that an incompetent doctor was about to accidentally give a man a lethal amount of pain relief, he spoke up and saved the man’s life. The man was grateful, and also rich, and he offered the boy a job in his hotel. It was a grand and magical old palace. Lots of famous people went there. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. The owners were a famous Kaukassian family, the Kharnovars, and they came to love that peasant boy. Little Lepold Tünghammer had charm and wit and a sharp mind. He quickly rose from cleaning floors to assistant concierge. The mother took a particular shine to him. They had nine daughters, no sons. And they were rich because they owned many factories in a not-at-all magical place called the IPDs.

  ‘Industrial Processing Districts.’

  ‘Thanks, Beast, I know what the fucking IPDs are.’

  Anyway, to cut this short: the Great Butcher used the post-revolutionary chaos to seize power, kill all her rivals, and declare herself Supreme Ruler of the East. She ordered her army to renationalise all private property owned by people like the Kharnovars. So little Lepold wrote her a very polite letter telling her all about the hotel, and all the wonderful people who went there, and saying that if she only let them keep their palace she could come and stay whenever she wanted, and she’d be happy too.

  ‘How’d she take it? Well, I bet.’

  ‘She had the family killed, threw the boy into a labour camp. There was no food. He survived by cutting off several of his toes and eating them.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be the worst meal I’ve had.’

  He was lucky to survive at all. Remember, this is the woman who ordered the genocide of her own native race, the Balkani, a race she claimed to have transcended ‘by the gods’ collective hand’. Who renamed all the state’s weights and measures after herself. Who outlawed make-up, wrestling, gold teeth, lip-syncing at musical concerts, and – this information seems to have passed young Lepold by – writing letters to people. She did, however, send en
dless ‘love’ letters to cine-stars detailing violent acts she’d perform on them if they didn’t return her affections.

  But the boy did survive. He even made friends in the camp. Somehow he got the Butcher to set him free. She gave him a job as her private clerk. Imagine that, working for the woman who killed the only people you had in the world, had your sisters raped. But he swallowed his pain because he wanted his hotel back. He had a plan. He became one of her closest advisers. He informed for her. They called him Little Butcher. His brutality was the stuff of legend, apparently. She gave him the family’s old factories to run. They were hellish. But they definitely paid off once relations between East and West thawed a little. Their factories happened to be closest to Fire River. He caught the tech-manufacturing boom, became almost impossibly wealthy. He had to build new factories just to meet demand. The West started shipping their convicts and lunatics to him. The Butcher needed powerful friends at this point, and Lepold was as powerful as any. So she finally decided to give him the thing he loved most in the world. His hotel. And can you guess what his answer was? He said no. He politely declined her offer.

  ‘Why, Mr Hunter? I thought his plan was to get his hotel back.’

  ‘Because he was smart, Beast.’

  ‘Exactly. Never trust the person who wants to grant your greatest wish, Mr Daniels.’

  ‘It’s Daniel. Daniel Woodbine.’

  After torturing her for years, Lepold finally relented and took the hotel back. He gave her a magnificent yacht for her birthday. Some time after that the Queen sailed to the Worlds’ Fair in it, and the next night she and all her friends were dead. Gassed to death. ‘You remember that night don’t you, Tamberlain?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Anyway, Colette. Lepold’s plan finally came to fruition. He got his revenge. ‘We’re pretty sure it was him. Though she had a lot of enemies. If only there was someone on the yacht that night who survived and could tell us what happened.’

  ‘I’d like to help, Hunter, but unfortunately I slept through the show.’

  ‘Of course you did. You slept while all the others died.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Boss is a deep sleeper.’

  ‘I’m half asleep now. I did meet him, though.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your poor peasant boy. He was on The Huntress that night. We spoke briefly.’

  He looked at me like he didn’t know if I was serious. ‘That’s highly unlikely.’

  ‘Whatever. You were saying something about my contract earlier.’

  He smiled at me. I wanted to bust his jaw. ‘You need to answer my question first. What happens after we die?’

  ‘After? We cease to be. Our identity evaporates. We return our energy to the greater cosmic pool.’

  ‘That’s what you think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what if it didn’t? What if you could find a way to stop our identity evaporating?’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Yes you do. What is this place?’

  ‘It’s a hotel.’

  ‘No, but what is it?’

  ‘It’s a closed-system AS –’

  ‘No, let him answer. You’re a smart man, Tamberlain. Aren’t you? That’s what I’ve heard. So what is this operation? What is its purpose?’

  ‘Boss doesn’t do comp –’

  ‘He’s doing one. You’re in it. You can’t escape progress. It’ll follow you everywhere. So why build a place like this? Why would one of the wealthiest people in the Cloud put a multi-billion-pound security system in a tiny old hotel?’

  This was like being back at school again. Some muscular freak trying to force me to join in his games. This is why I took up boxing as a kid.

  ‘I honestly have no idea, Hunter, and no energy to care. It looks like counterfeiting. But it’s not. The ratio doesn’t make sense. If he printed cash for ten years he couldn’t recoup what he spent on this place. Art, maybe. Even then.’

  ‘He doesn’t care what he spends. Lepold’s put everything into this. Sold most of his factories. All to come down here to the bottom of the sea. He could have made himself ruler in the East. There’s a higher purpose here.’

  ‘Revenge.’

  ‘No. He got his revenge. The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen. And long live Roxy – Queen of Poisons.’ Roxy smiled contentedly to herself. She’d been polishing the same glass for fifteen minutes. ‘What is she, Tamberlain? You’ve read Rubin’s book.’

  ‘No I have not.’

  ‘“Manufacturing the Next Human”. Roxy is the next human. But you can’t make a person out of nothing. So what is she? Where did she come from? What makes a person who they are? Not their bodies. Not their clothes. It’s what’s inside. It’s their thoughts and memories.’

  I heard Gladys breathe a little ‘Ahhhhhhh’. The penny had dropped for her.

  ‘She gets it, Tamberlain.’

  I was starting to get it, too. But I wasn’t going to let on. Fuck him.

  ‘She used to be a real person, John,’ said G with uncharacteristic gentleness. ‘She’s a forgery of a real person. Probably some kid from a factory somewhere.’

  ‘Forgery?’ said Hunter. ‘She looks like the old Roxy. She thinks like her. So what makes her a forgery?’ Roxy put her finger in her ear, then sniffed it. ‘She has all her thoughts and memories. Well, not all of them. They wouldn’t want Roxy to remember where she came from. And they wouldn’t want her to remember all the other children. The test rats he had to use to perfect his method. The old way of scanning meant you had to slice the brain up. Like a ham. But once you’ve practised a while you can do it without killing the rat. And once you’ve scanned a mind you can edit it. Filter out all those horrible memories. Put a few happy ones in. Give her parents who loved her, happy thoughts of the years she spent at hospitality college. Now she’s here. And she’ll be here for as long as she’s needed. Imagine that. A servant who could carry on for a million years, and never get old, and never get tired, and never get sick, and never complain, and never go on strike.’

  ‘But who might flip their shit and kill you over some bullshit story about a tulip vendor.’

  ‘Well. Nobody’s perfect.’ He winked at Gladys. ‘Maybe killing is something they’ve been taught. Maybe a bug got in the system. Or maybe Roxy and her friends have just finally remembered where they came from.’ Roxy placed the glass on the shelf behind the bar. The place was alive with light. The rows of glasses seemed to sparkle with a private pleasure. ‘Roxy will keep being Roxy till the stars burn out. Now just imagine what you could do with a copy of a Navy admiral, or a president, or a retired Water Bear.’ He winked at her again. ‘Imagine if you owned a place all the most powerful people liked to come and stay.’

  ‘How do we know you’re not a copy, Hunter?’

  ‘You don’t. That’s what makes this game so interesting.’

  ‘You have to watch the eyes,’ said G. She gazed into his.

  ‘Sure, the eyes, but in the end how do you know what’s real? How do you know your friends are real?’

  ‘Because she arrived with them, Hunter.’

  ‘Yeah? You haven’t taken your eyes off each other for a moment?’ He held my gaze for a beat too long. ‘I’m just messing. I don’t think you could make a copy of this one.’ She blushed.

  ‘So what does this have to do with my contract?’

  He smiled. ‘Oh, you mean that contract we all had to sign? The one that means they own you forever? Literally forever? As long as that contract exists they own your complete biometric, and they can do what they like with it. But it also says in the contract they can’t kill you. Not until you’re scanned. And that takes time.’

  ‘Clause 78.ivv, DATA RETENTION,’ said Beast.

  ‘Exactly. You’re pre-scan, Tamberlain. You’re safe, relatively. That’s why you can’t seem to get yourself killed no matter how hard you try. And she’s probably safe for now, because the Master and his doctor want to know what ma
kes a Water Bear tick.’ Beast cleared his throat politely. Hunter ignored him. ‘Having a contract makes you safe. But it also means they can track you. They know what you’re up to. They can see you sitting here. They can’t see me.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘They can’t see me because I destroyed my contract. There’s a forty-hour window where signed contracts sit in the registrar’s office, before they take them up for processing. If you can get to it before then you can destroy it. Then you’d be free. You could walk out of here. You’re basically invisible without a contract. The system treats you like you don’t exist, so long as you blend in.’ I could feel G crunching this option in her deadly little head. ‘But if you mess up, if they see what you really are, they’ll kill you. You have to stay perfectly invisible. And from the looks of things being invisible isn’t your strong game. Probably best to forget I mentioned it.’

  ‘This is all so fantastic,’ said Beast. ‘I need another drink.’ He went to drain his. Hunter said, ‘I must ask you not to finish your beverage, Mr Daniels. If you do, someone will come to refresh it, and there’s a chance they’ll kill me.’ Hunter adjusted the straps across his muscular cleavage, took a compact from his purse and flipped it open. I thought Beast would be as bemused by all this as me, but if anything he was as smitten as Gladys seemed to be, and perhaps a little jealous at being upstaged. ‘Oh please,’ he’d say when I quizzed him later in the bathroom of our apartment. ‘As if I need a piece of closet beefcake for warmth. They usually cry afterwards. “My wife doesn’t understand!” Or they fly into a guilt-rage and beat you. “You tricked me into it!” Yeah, I tricked you into a three-hour meat-tenderising session at an airport capsule lodge.’ I’d followed him in so we could talk in secret about this mess, but we’d quickly got on to the subject of Hunter.

  ‘You think he’s closet?’

  ‘You’re all closet.’

  Woodbine thinks we’re all closet.

  ‘His story seemed plausible. He destroyed his contract, he blended in, he survived. What does not kill us makes us dress more thoughtfully.’

  ‘Seriously? You bought his shit?’