Catalyst

by Jody Wallace

  “I wasn’t wrong. You should have listened to me, and I stand by that. On one leg, or two. Doesn’t matter. I stand.” Perhaps Uncle Hoff had learned not to cut corners after the accident that had nearly killed her and had killed many others, and perhaps he still put profits ahead of people. While she hadn’t heard of any major incidents, he had enough money to hush them up. The gleam of the fancy tile floors suggested profits were high, so she’d make her assumptions based on that.

  But she had nowhere else to turn. Uncle Hoff owned a Q-ship and he could take Wil and Pumpkin wherever they needed to go.

  “Pah.” He waved a hand at her in disgust. “If you don’t understand what you did, then we have nothing to discuss.”

  “It’s not for me.” She tapped her artificial foot on the floor. “I have the only thing I need from you. Now there are other lives at stake.”

  Uncle Hoff glowered at her, looking far too much like Garza for comfort, with all that hair on his face and the sourness emanating from his attitude. “Don’t forget half of my best people. You took them, too. I have nothing else for you.”

  “It’s not. For me,” she repeated, narrowing her eyes. Scrapper might have softened in his anger toward Hoff, but she hadn’t—and neither had Javier, who’d been the one to patch up the few survivors after the accident.

  “I have nothing for anyone connected to you.” But he wasn’t leaving. He wasn’t ordering guards to chase them away. He must want something from her, something besides absolution or apology, and the trick was figuring out what it was.

  Did he want his medic back? His people? Did he want her back, under his thumb, learning the business his way and not the way her parents had taught her?

  Probably, but she had no other ideas to help Wil and Pumpkin. Even if she was willing to murder Casada, which would be no trial to her conscience after what he’d done, she wouldn’t be able to murder everyone he’d told about the cat. Hoff’s Q-ship was a must.

  But she wouldn’t offer herself if she could help it. What did Hoff love? “I will allow you to garnish my factory’s profits at fifteen percent for three years.”

  “I don’t want your money.” Sure would be nice if Pumpkin were here, whispering her uncle’s secrets or giving him a push.

  “Five,” she countered. Fifteen percent of her profits for one year would more than pay for any expenses Hoff incurred in flying Wil and Pumpkin to the other side of the galaxy and setting them up for a few months. Five years was so much more than he deserved for such a small task. It was skyway robbery.

  “No.” He crossed all three of his arms. Scrapper, who had been one of Hoff’s closest friends before the accident, shifted his weight beside her but knew better than to butt in. It wasn’t her fault if Scrapper, Javier, and the others hadn’t wanted to risk working in that environment anymore than she had and had chosen to leave with her to start the box factory.

  “Ten,” she said through gritted teeth. It had to be Uncle Hoff’s Q-ship. She couldn’t trust anyone else to stay quiet about Wil. Hiring mercenaries like the Dead Suns would take too long and cost even more than what she was offering her uncle. “And I’ll refurb your grade B and C hazmat containers free for one year. Wasn’t that what you hoped for when you pressured me to rejoin the union?”

  He grunted, almost as if it hurt him somewhere deep to reject her offer. “I said, I don’t want your money.”

  “Money is all you ever wanted,” she finally exploded, her frustration insurmountable. “Money is why you hired the cheap contractors instead of the good ones. Money is why you ordered shoddy materials from off-planet instead of right here at home, where you knew they would work. Money is why I nearly died! I had to protect myself.”

  “You left me!” he bellowed back, just as angry, just as fierce, as he had been twenty years ago. “You cannot desert your family. No matter what. You stick together and work it out.”

  “Am I family? You disowned me.” She’d been so angry at the time, so wounded, literally, that the disowning had been mutual. But here she was, hoping the family ties Hoff felt could overcome the pain. She’d had to swallow down her own feelings in order to beg him for help.

  “Do you think I took joy in what happened? Do you think I wasn’t hurt worst of all? I only disowned you after you refused to see reason.”

  But his version of reason was her forgiving him for the harm he’d caused. She would have been a fool to stay in hazmat with him at the helm.

  “I’m not tied to the same fate as you and my parents, Hoff. As an adult, I get to seek my own path.” Mom and Dad had worked the family business, but they’d been older than Uncle Hoff and had succumbed to a combination of age and toxic mutations when she’d been in her forties. But not before they’d imparted the importance of putting people first. Uncle Hoff and she had become very close after that—but not close enough for him to listen to her input on the business side of things. On the safety side of things. On the people side of things.

  It was like he’d taken everything her parents wished and tossed it aside in search of profits. A series of escalating incidents had led to the big one. She’d survived it, but she’d been done.

  “But you gotta take over,” Hoff said. “Only the Abfalls handle toxics like we do. We care. We see it to the end and we don’t just shoot them into the dead zone. We reclaim everything worth reclaiming and then some. We provide a vital service to the entire galaxy.”

  Long ago, during the Obsidian War, the first and last quantum bombs had destroyed the entire center of the Salty Way galaxy. Only the outer Rim was left, a wheel of darkness and struggle, and outside that, no one could survive. Many people disposed of waste by transporting it as close as possible to the inner circumference and slingshotting it into the dead zone.

  It cost less but reclaimed nothing and perhaps would cause unforeseen consequences in the future.

  “The family business killed my parents and nearly killed me. It’s killed every Abfall for how many generations? And one day, before your time, it will kill you,” Su said without much inflection. The explosion hadn’t been the only reason she’d decided to leave. “I choose to live. And if you choose not to help other people live, people I will pay you to help, that’s on you.”

  “It is on me,” he agreed, “and then who? Who’s to do it the right way after me now that I’ve been abandoned?”

  Su stared at him for a moment. “I don’t know.” Sterility that couldn’t be repaired by nanobots was a common side effect for toxic waste workers. Hoff had no children, and she wanted none of her own. “Why don’t you use all your DICs to hire an heir?”

  “Flame off past the Rim, then,” he cursed. “I didn’t know the explosion blinded you to what really matters.”

  “That’s not even funny.” Su was about to storm out of the factory and proceed to plan C, or F, or whatever they were on—once she came up with it—but a hand on her arm stopped her.

  “Su,” Wil said. “I’d like a chance to speak my piece. I can negotiate for myself. It’s not your job to save me.”

  “Have at it,” she growled, crossing her arms to match Uncle Hoff. He hadn’t changed, the old bastard. Nothing mattered to him but toxic waste and money and some grandiose idea he was saving the whole Obsidian Rim from further destruction.

  Wil stepped forward and cleared his throat. She was glad he didn’t bow or kneel or some dumb shit like that. “Individual Hoff Abfall, my name is—”

  “Wil Tango?” Uncle Hoff exclaimed. “Wil Tango, the seven time champion of the South Rim Royal Dance Competition? Is that really you?”

  Chapter 12

  Wil executed an extravagant flourish—the one that began the opening act of the La Fe un Laut. The fans loved it and it had become second nature when he was recognized.

  “The one and only,” he agreed, hiding his mystification. Most of his fans thought he’d only won six grand championships. Only true fans knew about the seventh, when he’d been young Wilbur Suggs. But to find a true fan on Trash Plan
et…in Su’s uncle…threw him for a loop.

  The big man whirled on his niece, who looked as stunned as Wil felt. “You didn’t tell me you’d hired Wil Tango. Why didn’t you tell me you’d hired Wil Tango?”

  “Wil isn’t my employee. He’s the person I want to pay you to help,” Su said uncertainly. “Should I…have realized you’d want to know about Wil Tango?”

  “You never paid attention to the art of dance,” Hoff said, waving a hand at her again. It was not the same hand wave as minutes ago, when Wil had assumed this visit was not going to succeed. “Your father and I, oh, we fancied ourselves the best dancers on Trash Planet back in the day. Wil Tango. I can’t believe it.”

  Wil strode forward and offered a hand in the way of equals in many cultures. He could have offered a fist-bump, but this seemed more appropriate. “I’m always happy to meet someone who remembers number seven.”

  Hoff grabbed Wil’s hand with two of his own, pumping it up and down. With the other, he gestured at the receptionist. “Eric, have a meal prepared in the dining hall. Organics, not supplements. Wil Tango. Of course I’ll help you, Wil Tango. Anything you need. Just name it.”

  There was a rush in the corridor behind the receptionist desk. “Wil Tango?” said another voice.

  Then another. “Wil Tango, are you farking kidding me?”

  People in white coveralls began to pour into the reception hall, whispering, exclaiming. Some hugged or bumped fists with Su, Scrapper, and the others, but Wil found himself the center of the activity and Su and her crew elbowed to the side.

  “I saw you live twenty-nine years ago at the Balladere Expo,” a woman gushed. Faint round scars mottled her face, as if growths had been removed, and one of her beautiful green eyes was larger than the other. “You danced with metal plates on your shoes. Tap dance, you called it. It was amazing.”

  “I was in a lottery to win six lessons from you on how to dance the Perritian rhumba,” a man told him. “Hoff was going to send me on a Q-ship if I won.”

  “I take it you didn’t?” Wil asked pleasantly. The man didn’t look familiar, though Wil had met so many dancers, students, fans, and other people in his professional career that he’d become better at identifying their footwork than their faces.

  “Knocked out in the second round,” the man said with a sigh.

  “Wil Tango, by my lucky stars.” An elderly lady with a cane jostled everyone else aside with some quick pokes and jabs. “And you’ve brought our little Susu back to us. I have prayed for this day.”

  “You prayed for Wil Tango to bring me back to you, Nan?” Su said. “That seems pretty specific.”

  “Come here, you naughty girl, and give your Nanny a scrunch.”

  A real smile crossed Su’s face and she slipped between hazmat workers to accept the elderly woman’s embrace. “When did you get home?” Su asked.

  “About eight years ago, I think,” Nan said. “Hoff asked you to return to the union.”

  “But he didn’t say a word about you.” Hurt passed over Su’s features. “Why…why didn’t you call me?”

  Nan blinked rapidly. “Oh, you know Hoff.”

  Su’s lips thinned, but she didn’t step away from the older woman. “Yeah, and that’s why I left.”

  The woman might have been tall once, thin and willowy. Age and who knew what else had sapped her vitality. But there was something about the elegance of her motions, the way she swept across the floor and jabbed at people with her cane, that made Wil suspect she had, at one time, been a trained dancer.

  “Greetings,” Wil said, giving her a bow. “It is an honor to meet a peer.”

  The woman kept her arm around Su and smiled at Wil. “How did he know?”

  Su shrugged. “Maybe his cat told him.”

  “You have a cat?” The woman raised plucked white eyebrows. “I should like to see that. And perhaps…perhaps you would bless us with a few grand jetés?”

  “I have not danced in some time, prima,” he told her. “My life has not lent itself to that sort of freedom. It’s why I have come.”

  Her smile widened. “Prima. You flatter an old woman.”

  The crowd began to flow down one of the two corridors, taking Wil, Su, Nan, and the others along with it. Questions peppered him from every side, people reaching between others to touch him. It was enough to make a man claustrophobic. Su stuck with him, either because she was protecting him or she just wanted to.

  Luckily they passed through some doors into a spacious dining area and the crowd spread out. Shouts and whistles wove through the excited group, and someone piped music through unseen speakers.

  The scents of fresh food overpowered the odd, burning smell that Wil had noticed, stronger outside. Not like the dusty mineral smell in the other parts of Trash Planet. Hopefully he wasn’t breathing in toxic fumes and a fat dose of radioactivity. He didn’t know when he’d be able to re-up his nanobots.

  At this rate, with all the excitement and mingling and more employees pushing into the dining hall to line up at the serving counter, he didn’t know when he’d be able to plead his case to Hoff Abfall, either. How to explain the danger he was putting them in just by being here, though Hoff seemed better equipped to handle Casada than Su had been.

  “Sit down, sit down.” Hoff Abfall clapped a hand on Wil’s shoulder and practically pushed him into a plastene chair. “I’ll have them serve you. You don’t want to tangle with that lot when there’s fresh food. Momma, what will you take?”

  “Fruit, if it’s not duren.” The old woman sank gracefully into a chair on one side of Wil, and Su sat on her other side. “And did I hear that you had gotten a shipment of cheese? You wouldn’t by any chance have broken that out, would you?”

  “Ah, ah, ah, no one was supposed to know about the cheese.” Hoff shook his finger at Nan. “Who’s been blabbing to you about my imports?”

  “I didn’t know about any cheese.” She winked. “But I do now, and I’ll have some, you wicked man. Hiding cheese from your mother.”

  Hoff roared with laughter and strode toward the service counter where a frenzy of hair-netted chefs fried and chopped and steamed and served various things, barely keeping up with the demand. The plates offered to the attendees at the impromptu gathering were small, fresh food being a rarity, but everyone seemed thrilled by the opportunity for a taste.

  Wil certainly was. His occupation had allowed him to sample a number of cuisines and food items across the galaxy as well as such expertly prepared proteins that it was almost as delicious as the real thing. Nobles, royals, corporate bigwigs, dome owners, even E.C. elites—he’d been wined and dined by the richest in the Rim in his day. But he’d always been expected to dance for his supper, and he wondered when the cost of this meal, the price of the help he needed, would be laid on the table.

  “I need to keep my comm open to my factory,” Su said when Hoff returned with a plate of green melon, dried berries, and a sampler of white cheese for Nan. Staff members moved among the tables, serving small cups of beverages. “Can you let me through the block?”

  “I heard about the attack,” Hoff said gruffly. He tilted toward Su briefly, as if he wanted to touch her, but then rounded the table. “Never thought you’d come here for help after everything you said.”

  “I came for Wil,” Su corrected. “I can take care of the rest of my people myself.”

  “Your people and some of mine, you mean.”

  “My people,” Su repeated.

  Hoff sat across from her and laced his fingers together. A young woman placed tiny glasses of pinkish juice in front of everyone at their table, doling them off a tray. Hoff held up a hand. “None for me, child.”

  “An outsider did this to us,” Su reminded her uncle. “It wasn’t another union. Wasn’t a raid.”

  “Some claptrap about stolen goods and a casino boss from Gizem.” Hoff glanced between Wil and Su, on either side of Nan. “A likely story.”

  “You don’t believe it?” Su aske
d.

  “Wil Tango is no thief,” Hoff said, jerking his chin at Wil. “He’s an artist. And I know you haven’t been to Gizem yourself to get mixed up with that lot.”

  Wil could almost see the resemblance between the uncle and niece, in the color and curl to their hair, in the stubborn set of their…cheekbones. Not their jaws, for he had no idea what sort of jaw Hoff had under all that beard.

  “Keeping tabs on me?” Su asked with a raised eyebrow. She didn’t seem surprised. Or hungry. The rest of her crew had availed themselves of the food bar, especially the teenage boy, but he and Su had begun the negotiation. Hoff might be a dance fan, might have offered Wil the sun and the moon, but no person could manage a successful business without being a savvy dealer.

  Hoff grunted. “Is the factory safe now? The families in the barracks? Your medical clinic and such like?”

  As far as Wil could tell, Trash Planet was thinly populated and transportation was limited. It was no surprise that employees and their families lived where they worked. Did Hoff treat his people the same way Su did, as her colleagues instead of her underlings?

  “It was dying down when we left, but your jammers…” She hadn’t unloaded her clunky comm before they’d left the Moll, and she snapped it off her belt and waggled it. “I have people we can’t find, Hoff. I need to be in touch. You can change the frequency when I’m gone. This isn’t a hack.”

  “Perhaps. But don’t think you can get past my block with your gizmos. I hired an expert.” He crossed his three arms. Wil couldn’t tell which of his left arms was the extra and concluded it didn’t matter. Hoff used them all with ease. He’d seen mutations like Hoff’s before, though none on a man as rich as he appeared to be. Was it due to exposure to toxic waste or genetic fate?

  “Give me your comm, dearest,” Nan said to Su, casting Hoff a disgusted look. She adjusted dials and frequencies until the chime of a functional line sounded softly inside the box. “Your comms will work now. You quit being so suspicious, Hoff. Also, this cheese is delightful. Thank you.”