by Lee Bond
Sehol leaped to his feet, face red as beets. “This is incredible! This is … this is … this is bullshit, Chairman. Everyone in the community knows you still have ties at UMDT. This is …”
“Nonsense, Sa, nonsense and dreck in their finest forms.” Herrig flicked a hand at the door. “My own activities within UMDT are more closely monitored than my dealings as Chairman, Sa. By myself, the Noble Opposition and the Ministry of Examination. I assure you, Sa Sehol, if I were responsible for anything untoward, I might be able to hide it a little more effectively than you and your measly attempt at subterfuge, but I’d get caught all the same. Garth Nickels may have captured the imagination of the people, but I’ve gone a few steps further. I’d prefer it to be a different way, of course, but we all have our crosses to bear in this life, don’t we? You may go.”
Herrig’s lips quirked as Sa Sehol stomped his way out of chambers, leaving in his wake a series of threats and curses that would’ve had any other Chairman frothing at the mouth and eager to send the man’s entire family into stockades.
But not him. Not Sa Herrig DuPont, Chairman of the Latelian Commonwealth. He was better than that.
You just couldn’t afford to take anything someone who wasn’t real personally. That’s why he was better. Because he was real. Most other people weren’t, but he was.
“Yes.” Herrig said to the blue skies outside his windows. “Yes. I am real. I am real. I am real. I am real. Where is HIM?”
***
Si Sally looked at the frustrated and mildly bloody businessman as he howled and shouted for everything from impeachment to an investigation into whatever it was that the Chairman was putting into the air in his chambers because there was no way that he was itching like this accidentally.
Si Sally wanted to tell Sa Sehol that the feeling would go away in a little while, but she knew better.
She knew better. Keeping your mouth shut had always been a part of the job, but this … this was something different altogether. All the girls and boys in the office knew that there was something … off … about the Chairman these days, and went it way beyond being physically uncomfortable in the man’s presence. They all had their theories, most of them centering on the Chairman’s activities with the Horsemen.
And so, they kept their mouths shut. All the way. Well, except when they spoke with themselves. The Chairman was so distracted these days, what with the war and his girlfriend being absent all the time. If he was under attack by the Horsemen in some way, then it was definitely better for everyone to keep quiet. Stay quiet, stay low, say your yessas and your nossas. That way, if it was the Horsemen, they'd leave you alone and if it was -somehow- the Chairman himself, maybe he'd remember you'd been so polite all the time.
Even if the feeling was getting worse. Sally didn’t think she'd be able to go back into the room when he was there, ever again. The sensation of fat, hot, boiling blisters rising under her skin had started right as she’d crossed the threshold, where before, she’d been able to get halfway into the room.
Si Sally supposed it didn’t matter if there was something wrong with Chairman Herrig. Chairwoman Doans had been a ‘frothing at the mouth, chewing on the furniture’ kind of Chairwoman, and the one before her had been a ‘drink all day and be blackout drunk and order the deaths of everyone named Rick’ kind of Chair. All things considered, imaginary boils and hives under the skin was a fair price to pay for the kind of leadership they were getting these days.
Because no matter how you looked at things, Sa Chairman Herrig DuPont was the best Chair the system had seen, possibly since ever. He was genuinely concerned about the health of the Commonwealth!
Just so long as she didn’t have to go back in there any time soon.
“Sa Sehol.” Si Sally said the man’s name sweetly enough to drown an infant in sugar. “I do not know if you are aware, but for the last five minutes, you’ve issued several dozen death threats against the Chairman. Chairman Herrig himself is very personally disinterested in taking these kinds of threats seriously, but the God soldier in the room … yes, that is him directly behind you, he is here to make certain that someone does. And as I understand, Goddie Wickenham is a follower of Candall the Vengeful. He’s very nice if you feed him cookies on a regular basis, but when you’re promising to bomb the home of the man who freed Latelyspace from tyranny, he will probably … ah. Yes. See? He’s doing his best to grip you very gently just now, so I shouldn't struggle if I were you. Please, Sa Sehol, don’t forget; if your facility suffered damages greater than the cost of your fine, please contact these offices with a figure. Independent surveyors will examine everything, and a settlement will be made.”
Si Sally smirked a bit as Wickenham gently carried Sa Sehol through the door, fingers freezing solid when she saw she was gently scratching her bare arm.
He was good for the system. That was all that mattered.
***
…realrealreal…
…he was…
…real…
… but no one else was. Probably not even missing Sidra...
24. Master Assassin of the Planet Earth and Proto-Realistic Murder King, Chezzik Elteren
Downtown Singapore Barternic. All the main hotspots lashed together with foot after foot of patiently handmade bamboo ropes and ladders, long, thin, twisting dangerously in the wind, connecting everything together in the highest of those old, old high buildings.
Sometimes, when the wind was right or it carried a little extra flavor from their very own Wasteload a couple hundred klicks to the North, the bamboo walkways sang a song, a high-pitched, warbling tune that set visitors new to the area on edge.
You lived in DSP long enough, you learned all the songs the Bamboo Bridges made, even found yourself a favorite or two. Then you'd sit on your lashup balcony, sipping salzet-tea, listening to the hum and warble of the magical world at your doorstep.
If you were lucky, it rained, making the image nearly perfect.
The locals, a hodgepodge mix you wouldn’t ordinarily expect to see this far in the world, not when travel between countries wasn’t just a matter of keeping your head straight on and getting through the worst of it but actually dodging mysterious forces that actively sought –and with great prejudice and much displaying of firearms and other methods of convincing- to keep people right where they were.
Asalaam’s Barterhut was on fire tonight, with the titular owner reaping the rewards of a positively huge haul of precious cargo slogged all the way from the mainland, across that little strip of radiated water so alive with nuclear toxicity that you could see the glow from the top of the buildings in the middle of the day. Only wastelanders completely around the bend or particularly socially adapted Wayfarers made the journey that way; it was quicker, and you got to avoid pirates and other nuisances that lurked fifty or sixty miles outside the DSB ports on the other end of the island, but the rads … oh those lovely, lovely rads. Turned most men into liquid good right off the bat, but if you could make it, DSB would greet you with open arms.
Asalaam dealt in historical artifacts. Books, cups, magazines, anything from the life before life ended. Whoever’d brought the haul was out celebrating elsewhere now in style, pouring precious earned money back into DSB’s coffers. By sunrise, when the necrotic green glow of the ocean faded into a dull whisper, whichever idiot wastelander had proved diligent enough to cart a large haul such a distance would find himself pauper once more.
But the stories that idiot wastelander would have to tell! Such tales! The skin! The drugs and drink! The food -well, the food wasn't that great- but the whores! Oh yes, willing, pliant flesh of all kinds!
Asalaam even had his pretty Christmas lights on, expensive and fragile red and blue lights hanging around the exterior fortification, an invitation for the overlords of DSB to come from their high places to see what could be seen, to buy what could be bought.
Unlike other parts of the world –France, Japan, Russia, even Ozland-, the Downtown Singapore Barter
nic had no big city counterpart. It was all Barternic. Big ‘gloms had tried in the past –recently enough, in fact, that you could still wander through the few shattered buildings West of the main promenade, stroll through the broken and bent bodies, and if you had eyes like a hawk or the next best thing in ocular implants, you might even find some techy-tech missed by other scrupulous scavs- to add DSB into this cap or that crown, but the Barternic that called Singapore home had it’s fair share of men and women and the occasional awkward thing that liked the lawlessness.
Needed the lack of corporate sponsorship. Loathed the bright neon and OLED signs that littered every single available inch of eye-space in your average ‘glom cluster that spiralled around your regular Barternic, a ‘healthy’ cancer growing around a darker tumor.
There were a few places like DSB in the 25th. Not many.
The ‘gloms were unusually active these days, with the race fix the world a flat-out footrace between BishopCo –out of San Francisco, if you could wrap your head around that- and the AfroEgyptian concern, ‘RaTech Nahr Alhaya’.
Whatever was going on out there, it was rough stuff if Bishop and Abioye Bazzi were sending their 'glomtroops out into the wild. Whatever. More tech to scav.
There was seedy little Homer’s Paradiso, south of where Tehran used to stand. Gutted, now. Ruined by a Wayfarer rede forty years ago, Homer’s Paradiso was what you got when a wastelander with a brain full of radiated scrambled eggs decided he didn’t care about the damage caused by Wayfarer wyrds. The folks that went there were usually on the run from the Other Guy’s forces. They didn’t last long, because Homer was an asshole who sold high profile targets back to the Other Guy whenever his coffers ran low, so … screw Paradiso. No one liked Homer enough to help him rebuild.
There was boisterous Clarke’s Boondoggle, way up north, Canada way. Too cold for most people, it seemed like the whole damn area was suffering from a literal Nuclear Winter; when the Invasion had happened and the bombs had fallen and the wars had been waged, something had shifted the weather patterns of the whole damned area, transforming it from a sometimes-cold and wintry place to a goddamn block of ice, from which, deluded idiots in warm clothing convinced themselves everything was just fine. Whatever the case, wastelanders and anyone else who wanted a living space free from the lies and demands of a ‘glommy ‘glom and didn’t mind waking up one morning with a coin purse frozen solid to their inner leg could do so in Clarke’s Boondoggle. The prices were fair, the whores not as good, but the food? The food was delicious! Well worth the trip up north way for eggs and bacon and pancakes with maple syrup that cost more than a faffing aircar in a precious 'glom-owned Nic.
Then –last and not least and certainly never visited too frequently because of reasons- there was Avendhura’s Heart. Beautiful spot. Full of sunshine. Theoretically easy pickings all around for hundreds of miles on either side of Heartland, with a Wasteload that wasn’t nearly as bad as what you could find on either of the Old American Coastlines on account of it being in the middle of that broad land, with a wise and kind –and fairly attractive female- Avendhura was leader of the most prosperous Barternic the world over. Well, excluding those that now had to rely on being surrounded by ‘gloms and their drones, their insect-minded hive workers that drudged to and from those tremendous, bulky, blocky, enclosed-environment domains that looked like nothing so much as immense black and gold-limned coffins, enormous sepulchers …
“I get it, Chezzik. We all get it.” Bartender Hammic, with his faulty EngenCo military surplus replacement arm, carefully put the glass he’d been cleaning down and shoved it gingerly towards the pile of clean glassware. The arm tugged a bit, acted like it was going to surge –and cost him another expensive beer glass in the process- but the old bitch behaved. “You don’t like BishopCo.”
“Is not,” Chez tightened the black and red bandana he’d been forced to tie around the left side of his skull to hide his temporarily missing eyeball, “that we’s hate ‘gloms so much as everyone in ‘em.”
Hammic filled a few shot glasses and handed them off to Wu Sho, his pretty little filly and basically the sole reason why anyone came into his drab establishment. The glowing neon dragon tattoos crawling up her bare legs to disappear beneath her clothing was a nightly draw, and thankfully, she wasn’t averse to showing off as much skin as she could yet remain decent enough to skirt the edges of the DSB’s few obscenity rules.
“So,” Hammic leaned back on the counter behind him, “the buildings are okay then?”
“True, true.” Chez swallowed a mouthful of ice cold bland beer. Weren’t for the ice cold part, odds were solid Hammy’d have a face full of hops of barley, he was so on edge. But, it was ice cold, so. “Them ‘glommy buildings have got a lot in them. Stuff places like this would love to get their mitts on.”
“So why don’t you?” Hammy watched a few obvious Wastelanders shoulder their way through the fringed beads dividing inside from outside. They weren’t local ‘loaders, though, which put a bee in the bartender’s bonnet; this was Singapore, and roughly ninety-nine percent of the local ‘loaders were offshoots from the Asiatic peoples. Which meant smaller frames. Continual generations of prosperous ‘loaders crawling through collapsed and submerged buildings in the Wasteload meant that not only were they smaller than their 21st century forbearers, they were unusually athletic. Flexible.
Each type of 'loader had a walk, too. A particular gait. The ‘loaders in his bar now were NorthAMC or Russian Organized Central. Which would be totally fine, were it not for the drunk asshole hanging on to the patiently shined and bloody expensive brass rail, droning on and on about the different unallied Barternics and what was so wrong with them.
Chez drained his beer in a single swallow, fought to maintain control over the wet belch wanting to crawl out of his yapper, won that fight, and ordered another beer. “Wot? Do wot?”
“Empty them out. You could turn a tidy profit.” Hammy’s hooded eyes followed the two burly ‘loaders until they parked themselves in one of the darker, raised-floor booths on the east side of his establishment.
He signalled Vorik –his own repurposed ‘loader, complete with level IV augments out of a ROC mil-spec lab somewhere in the tundra of Motherland itself- that he had two possible undesirables that might be eyeballing their notorious guest.
Vorik detached himself from his perch near where Wu did her work and did a credible job of not being obvious about eyeballing the ‘loaders back. All ‘loaders were twitchy as hell when it came to being watched, non-native ones in a semi-hostile foreign environment, triply so, especially after meeting with DSB’s ruling powers; even if they’d managed to bribe their way in, they would’ve been run through the ringer beforehand, putting them on a level of unease equal to the probable amount of trouble they were going to cause.
If they were here to chat with or –God fucking forbid- collect Chezzik Elteren, their mood would be savage.
“Wot?” Chez’s lone peeper fairly boggled right outside of his skull at the nonsensical statement. “Like … crawl around inside those musty and dusty old buildings like some kind of skulking … skulker? Like some kind of … sborion?” Chez was honestly puzzled at the implication that he was some sort of menial drudgeworker, someone content in life to do something as boring as all that.
Hammy pointed at the satchel currently strapped to Chezzik’s back with a robotic finger that twitched spasmodically until he lowered his hand. “You and I both know that you were the one to visit Sally’s place earlier today. Set the whole DSB alight with your discoveries. If you did that full time, you could set yourself up in style. Here or …” the bartender hoped he made his point clear without upsetting the heavily … heavily cyborged-up man, “anywhere you’d like.”
Chez adjusted the bandana over his missing left eye. He was feeling very awkward without an eye in that hole, and wondered if any of the other patrons of Hammic’s pub had anything unkind to say about his choice in coverings; as far as he understood i
t, the colors and the markings on the headscarf made it some sort of official flag-type thing or whatever, and yes, certainly, anyone formally associated with the old government was probably dead, and for a long time, but you just couldn’t be certain anymore.
“I shall have you know, sir,” Chez signalled he would like another beer, which was promptly delivered to his hand before he was even done asking, “that that was accidental.”
Ham locked eyes with Vor, who delivered the smallest of shrugs. The ROC-boys weren’t doing anything more untoward than making Wu some incredibly inappropriate suggestions. If they pushed too far, they’d discover just what Robottoinkuu~ea-style tattoos could actually do.
The bartender genuinely hoped they behaved. Wu was mellower these days, but when she’d first arrived, on the run from an angry Emperor and followed by a legion of the ruler’s smooth ninja clones, she’d dropped bodies everywhere.
“Accidental?” Hammy couldn’t think of a single ‘loader who’d ever returned from any visit into the Wasteload with as much swag as Chezzik had. Christ, most ‘loaders who tried plying that trade weren’t that successful over the entire length of their careers, let alone on a single venture. “How is that even possible?”
Chez drank the head off his beer. “You know, Hammic, you are singularly lucky that you keep this beer cold as my heart. Hearts. It’s pretty awful.” He smiled archly when Ham gave a lopsided ‘go fuck yourself’ smile, then answered. “I was about my real business when the fella-me-lad I was off to … discuss … certain matters with descended by cunning means into a heretofore undiscovered underground railway of sorts. Not certain why it was there, really. Underground anything on an island such as this one strikes me as unwise, but I’m neither a city planner nor an engineer. Anyways, as I was forced to skulk about in the dark, dealing with the usual sorts of monstrosities you might imagine in places such as the one I was forced into, I came across … trinkets. Knickknacks. It helped pass the time. I found a loverly pair of earrings. Gold and platinum, I think, with just the prettiest ruby beads. They’ll look loverly on some gel’s ears, I warrant.”
