by Andrew Post
“Pasty. It’s honorable. Really, it is—you regarding your former keeper as a great man. And I’m sure he was one spectacular bloke in life. Liked by all who knew him. But you should learn this now about the world while you’re still new to it. Rich men and good men are, without question, mutually exclusive. All those rich bastards, when they die? Not a single one goes to Meech. Where they go is the opposite of up.”
“I don’t want you to say anything else about him. You promised to help me, and if you want to, that’s part of it. Speaking ill of Mr. Wilkshire is as bad as not helping me, and you said it’s a custom of your people to stick to what you promise.”
“Fine. Whatever you say, Your Majesty. Forgive my trespasses upon Mr. Wilkshire, hallowed be his name.” He bowed, lowering his head until his horns nearly touched his knees. Without ceremony, he stood upright and stepped onto the curb in front of the haberdashery’s front doors. He shouldered them open with a thunderous crack of wood.
He glanced back at Clyde, still standing stock-still in the middle of the street. “Well, come on, Pasty. We should probably get some shut-eye if we’re going to find a way down tomorrow so you can begin your journey to avenge the regal Mr. Wilkshire.”
Despite really wanting to spit back that he never slept, Clyde refrained. He turned his back on Flam to take one last glance at the geyser towering over the city, an enduring sentinel that could do nothing but observe. The lights came on, went dead again, a glum wisp of steam popped up off its summit, immediately chased away in the wind.
A moment later, the lights around him, even within the haberdashery itself, came on and again went dead. Reluctantly, he followed his guide inside.
Chapter 7
The Bullet Eater
Awake.
Immediately the odors drifted in, replacing the pleasant ones of Aksel’s flowery dreams. Gone was the new car smell, freshly oiled leather, musky colognes, the glorious aromas of crisp money, fresh-baked bread, good dark coffee, pepper-crusted cuttle steaks. Now it was just the encyclopedic tour of the stinks outside his shack. Stagnant ponds of human waste, spoiled meals, and food that had been cooked despite being rotten and smelling like, well, a ladleful of the first thing. He hated this place—the camp, the shantytown. He was an accidental refugee, and that, too, he hated.
Aksel sat up and took stock of his surroundings. The clapboard walls, the panel of rusty, corrugated steel that he’d lashed down with some twine for a makeshift roof. Nothing new, different, or missing. But mostly he looked over his personal belongings littering the earthen floor. There was no way to securely lock his shack, since doors were a commodity not afforded in any of the temporary shelters.
He sat up and, as on any other morning, grabbed his eye patch from where he had left it for the night, dangling from a nail driven into the wall, and pulled it on. Next, he put on his threadbare duster jacket, which had only one complete sleeve. He tugged on his trousers, which in a previous life may have been a sack for transporting potatoes. His boots were good and were the thing that got him into the most fights, no matter how much he took a rock to them to make them look scuffed or how many mud puddles he went out of his way to step in to sully their appearance. Everyone had been here long enough—if the tick marks on his shack wall could be trusted, a little over half a year—and reliable footwear was a hard thing to hide.
Outside, the suns were high already. The heat was stifling. He wondered why it was that everyone from Geyser was taken here, to Adeshka, where it was always so damn warm. Of course, it wasn’t as they said it would be. None of the refugees from Geyser were permitted inside Adeshka’s walls. The camp was a good half mile up the road, cordoned off by high fences, the gates always manned. He’d had a hard life, but this was downright dishonorable. He felt like a caged animal awaiting his turn to get the shove up the ramp of the abattoir. Hell, after this heat, the hatchet would almost be welcome. But they killed no one at the refugee camp. Well, the guards didn’t kill anyone. Didn’t mean the refugees themselves didn’t.
He tried to ignore it—the heat, the smells, the babies crying and families arguing—forcing his imagination to paint him elsewhere. On holiday somewhere. Somewhere nice. Eye closed, ignoring everything around him to the best of his ability and just focusing on the suns’ warmth bathing his face, he may’ve very well been on another planet entirely. A planet whose sole existence was to be a place for rich folk to vacation, weeks upon weeks spent sprawling on beaches, sipping generously spiked fruit drinks from a chark husk, listening to the tropical music, riffs and clangs of homemade instruments played with incandescent joy, joy, joy.
He opened his eye, and that vacay spot in his imagination vaporized, the music echoing for one blessed second longer, the last victim to reality crashing in.
No, the only music here were gunshots, the all-too-frequent spat over rations, supplies, a chance at the showers, or when they’d get to return home to the city—and beyond that, persistently, babies’ cries. Although Aksel looked a brute, a dirty, haggard savage with no heart, he hated the sound of babies crying; it always made his remaining eye water up. Try as he might to hide it, there it’d come. Somewhere under his leathery exterior, well concealed, was a golden, pumping heart.
The sister city of Adeshka looked like a giant glass blister on the horizon. Weather didn’t affect them, nor did the dust storms that struck the refugee camp weekly. Not with that nice atmo bubble over their heads.
Aksel stood on a pile of trash to get a better vantage over the fences. He surveyed the mighty city, biggest in all Gleese, with its faceless blocky-shaped buildings, its three layers of crisscrossed elevated roadways that from above looked like a bowl of spaghetti. There were aircrafts darting about as well, but from this distance, they appeared to be mere bugs with determined trajectories, looping in and out among the enormous buildings—buildings with fresh running water, soft beds, food that appeared with a click of a button and a swipe of a piece of plastic.
He had spots to him, hidden in a hollowed boot heel. Probably enough for a burger—maybe a burger and a small order of fries. It was strange. Things he never knew he’d miss he now stayed up nights torturing himself about. Grilled slab cut from a freshly butchered cuttle, a mix of white and dark meat picked clean of scales, slathered with mustard, honest-to-goodness real mayonnaise, a buttered bun toasted on the griddle . . .
“Enough,” he told himself. There was no point in it—longing for good food—not while they were still all here for their indefinite and undeserved sentence. He hopped and slid on his heels down the mountain of trash. He bypassed the muddy river that some people voluntarily drank from knowing there was scarcely a better way to give themselves bone worms. There was clean water to be had—just had to know the right fellow to ask.
Ricard “Ricky” Pembrawn was just such a fellow. He was like Aksel in the way that he’d been brought to the camp by accident. Neither man had been an actual Geyser citizen but had acquired a trader’s pass, came in with their assorted junk to sell and hawk in the town square, and when the announcement came over the city-wide loudspeaker that everyone had to get to the elevators, go down to sea level, and board a shuttle bound for Adeshka, well, there wasn’t enough explaining under the suns that’d get them out of having to go along. They’d both tried to let the Patrol rounding them up know—“I don’t actually live here, you see. I’m just a trader!”—but they got pushed right along with the rest, their goods slapped out of their hands as they were ushered into the cramped interior of the water-capable aircraft and whisked off to the mainland, jettisoned to the camp on autobuses, and then through the gates: slam, click, welcome home.
Ricky was where Aksel always found him, square in the middle of the camp, where a sort of hub had naturally developed early on. It was like an agora of sorts, where people hung out and talked, some scheming, most complaining, some fighting over a sliver of shade where it could be found, wrestling along with it as it slowly shortened and disappeared. Even after it was dark and there
was shade everywhere, the fight would continue, because what else was there to do?
But Ricky was a dyed-in-the-wool businessman and, even though his cart had been left behind, he mostly sold automobile parts (under the term gently used, though all his dedicated patrons knew that was just a different way of saying stolen), traveling most star systems in and around Gleese using Adeshka and Geyser as a center point of his travels. He never strayed much farther, having found a reliable income stream to dip his line in here. Good for him, sticking to it like that.
Aksel, on the other hand, set up no shop here. He decided to consider his time as a refugee as a sort of sabbatical from hustling junk to knaves. I really am that desperate for a vacation, aren’t I? he mused.
Walking closer, Aksel noticed that Ricky’s storefront in the camp wasn’t as good as the others’, despite Ricky’s constant attempts at improving it. It still looked like a poor attempt at a lemonade stand, complete with crooked counter. Its leaning sign, painted with a grease pen, meant to announce Ricky’s General Store, Seller of Fine Wares and Whatnots, but had every word misspelled save for the proprietor’s name, bless his heart.
“Morning,” Ricky said, tipping the visor he’d made from a scrap of a lamp shade and elastic he’d pinched from a woman’s discarded brassiere. The greeting was dull, much like any other exchange you’d hear in the cheerless camp.
“Got something to drink?” Aksel leaned in, elbows on the counter.
Ricky set aside his sheathed knife with the twelve-inch blade he’d been using improperly to squiggle a whetstone across the countertop. He kept everything boxed inside the stand itself as a safety measure. Before, he kept everything behind him, but thieves were coming up to him, distracting him with idle chitchat, while their friends went behind, pocketing everything they could carry. Took a few times, but Ricky got smart and rebuilt the stand.
“I got some of this,” Ricky said, producing a soda can. A plastic bag was attached to its top with a rubber band, the inside dotted with condensation. Ricky gave it a testing shake near Aksel’s ear, and some residual carbonation crackled and hissed within.
“Fine.” Aksel took a furtive peek about him and saw people across the way watching, trying their best to play the roles of Nonchalant Men #1 and #2. It was best not to reveal where he kept his cache of spots right now. “Put the drink on my tab.”
His friend agreed reluctantly and handed the drink over.
Aksel snapped off the plastic bag and drank deeply. It was a lemon-lime flavor, chemically enhanced. His tongue felt like the inside of a banana peel as soon as he swallowed.
Glancing back, he saw Nonchalant Man #1 wave to someone coming up an alleyway between the shanties. The angle was funny, so Aksel couldn’t see who it was. Nonchalant Man #2 pointed toward Ricky’s stand, and another set of men joined them.
Aksel turned around so it wouldn’t be obvious he knew he was being talked about. “Come by my place tonight.” He ran his tongue against the edge of his front teeth a few times, spat. “I’ll pay you then. I would now, but . . .” He bumped one shoulder to indicate the roughs across the way.
“You mean my new secret admirers?” Ricky smiled sardonically, not a tooth in his head white. His skin was suns ruined, and he was so thin his bones jutted out everywhere to the point that he looked almost thorny.
But Aksel, one eye or none, didn’t care about any of that. He knew Ricky was all generosity, big hearted, and so loyal to those he cared about it sometimes made him almost seem a doting nitwit. In short, he was his best friend. Not that he’d ever tell him that. Nah. No need. Mates don’t need to spell it out; they just know.
“Been giving you trouble?”
“Some. Haven’t given them anything. Keep that close at hand”—he nodded the green beak of his visor toward the knife he’d been busy ruining—“and they usually get the idea.”
“Never had this much trouble in Geyser.”
“Had the Patrol. Anyone messed with the market, they usually ended up getting Executioner Mallencroix sent after them.”
Aksel shivered. “Come on, mate. It’s too early for that name.”
“Sorry.” Ricky laughed. “You don’t miss having to blindfold yourself every time there was a Patrol raid when he was after someone?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Say, are they still looking this way?” Ricky glimpsed over Aksel’s shoulder, cocked an eyebrow.
Aksel glanced to make sure Ricky was indicating the same two men he’d noticed. Sure enough. They were back to feigning they weren’t watching them, so Aksel openly stared their way. Getting a better look, he remembered having seen them around. They were similar in build and coloring—big, flaky red with suns-burns, hair cut to stubble, maybe with a piece of broken glass.
However, for as close to brothers as these two sods could’ve been, one was notably different: bigger, fatter, meaner. Aksel recalled a few of the man’s bold displays toward a few of the weaker men around the camp, muscling old and young alike out of their water and toiletry rations. The others always handed them over after one shake of the man’s meaty fist. Aksel couldn’t deny he would do the same in their position. The terrifying man was made all the more menacing by a jagged pink scar across his neck. It was as if someone had tried to covertly slit his throat but couldn’t saw deep enough to penetrate the protective collar of flab. While absently eyeing Aksel as if he were something to eat, Neck Scar scratched at his belly, making the entire mass of his midsection jiggle.
“How is it that he’s so fat still?”
“Beats me,” Ricky said. “Must have a friend in Adeshka, someone who comes out and passes things through the fence to him. Don’t know how anyone could hold on to that much chub any other way.” He felt his own flank, his ribs visible through his shirt.
“Ever consider asking him? See if you could cut a deal?” Aksel teased.
“And end up in his pocket? I think not.”
“Still,” Aksel said, swirling the can to try and get any lingering carbonation to liven up, “we’re not going to be here forever. Why not make the most of it while you can? Ask him if he’d share the name of his cookie supplier and go from there? Make a few more bucks, and in another few weeks we’ll be out of here, the spots you get out of the deal yours to keep.”
Ricky wasn’t paying attention. He wasn’t looking at the brute, but his hands were poised on the stamped leather of his business protection device: his serrated hunting knife.
“You’re such a knucklehead,” Ricky said suddenly, lifting his chin so fast a drop of sweat was launched from one of his wispy sideburns. “You really think at some point we’re actually going to be let out of here?”
“I have no reason to believe anything else.”
“You were in Geyser same time as me. You knew that something was up, too.”
“How do you mean?”
“You remember. We were in the square, setting up for the morning, and we saw that bunch of blokes who work down in the mines aboveground after their last whistle. They were going to the palace, all hurried like they each had a turd crossways, quiet as if they had some big secret. A week later, boom, here we are.”
“The Odium, Rick.” They’d gone over this many times already. “Everyone had to leave because the pirates were on their way.”
Ricky sighed. “See? You’re thick. Listen to me, would you? When those miners were cutting across the square, bound for the palace, they weren’t walking with men with bad news to deliver; they were walking like men who had big, full pockets, looking over their shoulders and shite. I’m telling you: they found something down there.”
Leaning forward, Aksel lowered his head. The suns beating on his back and this conversation were equally exhausting. “I think you’ve spent too much time alone with your thoughts. You should take up a hobby, study yodeling or something.”
Ricky rolled his eyes. “Listen to me, would you? Don’t you know the law in Geyser? Any sudden influx of wealth over a certain amount has t
o be evenly distributed to all its citizens. It’s what keeps everyone there so damn happy. Well, back before all this other shite went down of course.”
“Wouldn’t matter to us much, would it, though?” Aksel grunted, resting his chin on his folded arms. He kept his back perpendicular to the ground, legs locked. Strangely, it was a comfortable position. His voice was muffled as he dropped his face into the coil of his arms. “We were just there with traders’ permits. Quite a difference from being on the citizens’ registry.”
“No, but we know something, which is just as valuable as a wallet full of spots.”
A voice, rumbly and terrifying, echoed, “Who’s got a wallet full of spots?”
Aksel shot upright so fast he momentarily saw a white haze pass in front of his eye. He tried to turn around with forced calmness, as if Neck Scar and friends were nothing more than a band of biddies brandishing butterscotches.
“Hey, pal,” Ricky addressed Neck Scar. “What can I do you for?”
“Shut your face, madaca’floon.” Neck Scar squinted at Ricky.
Neck Scar was shirtless, as always.
Aksel said, “You know, with a pelt such as yours, Ricky and I could just go into the lamp oil business. Got enough blubber here to light the entire camp for a year, I suspect.”
Neck Scar looked dumbstruck, then quickly glared. “What did you say to me, Bullet Eater?”
Behind him, Ricky whispered, “What are you doing?”
Bullet Eater. The blood pumped through Aksel’s ears so fast he felt light-headed and could hardly hear Neck Scar’s buddies laughing. “I’m not a Bullet Eater. Leave me and my friend—”
“Funny, you got that Rent-a-Killer look to you.” Neck Scar flicked Aksel’s lapel. “The duds, the coat. You look like an Odium reject if I ever saw one. You got Dreck’s mark? Let’s see that hand, man.”
Aksel raised his right hand. It was said that if you were to be ejected from the Odium, their leader had to cut a perfect square of flesh from your palm, administering the badge of the unworthy. Just in case you wanted to go back to an anonymous life, you couldn’t. Upon Aksel’s leathery palm, there was no discolored square. It was just a regular, if filthy, hand.
