We arrived at the far end of the room, before a set of double doors. Another camera hung just above them. Doctor Watkins stared up at it for a second, then the doors parted and we continued onward.
The doors closed behind us, abruptly decapitating the roar of the casino. We were in an elevator. Soft lighting shined down from the ceiling and mirrors lined the walls. We waited in silence as the box ascended. The quiet was a welcome respite after the chaos of the casino floor.
I stood against the back wall, alternating glances from the doors to Doctor Watkins’s expressionless face to Mister Timmy and his ridiculously weaponized arm and around and around again. I had never been this deep into the casino before, but I had a pretty good idea of where we were going. We were heading to the tippity-top of Naak’s Joint. I figured the odds heavily favored that we were going to see Naak.
The elevator doors opened upon a gigantic open space. It spanned an area the same size as the casino beneath it. The floor was polished wood. It gleamed under the overhead lights like a titanic sheet of brown glass. The sight of that much wood on that treeless planet, used for that purpose, was both impressive and disgusting. The floor might as well have been carpeted with money.
They herded me out of the elevator and across the room... Doctor Watkins still leading the way, Mister Timmy still preventing me from escaping. The place looked like the playground of a very wealthy and very blind interior decorator. We passed large ornate fountains spewing glittering arcs of fresh water into expansive pools beneath them. We passed exotic plants that probably sucked up enough water every week to support a family of five human brown workers for a standard-year. There was enough artwork to fill a moderately-sized museum. There was no universal theme, other than the fact that every single piece was fucking huge. There was a shit-ton of paintings... portraits, landscapes, cityscapes on worlds I had never seen, cityscapes on worlds that I was pretty sure did not exist. There were fucktons of sculptures. No two looked like they were cut from the same kind of stone. Most were of humans, which was ridiculous because Naak was not one of us, but there were also weapons, ships, fruit, animals, grindles, and one very ordinary-looking sculpture of an easy chair. I had no appreciation for any of it. In my mind, that entire room was nothing more than a colossally-frivolous waste of money. Knowing Naak, that was probably the whole point.
We passed beyond the museum area and moved into a three-sided alcove at the far end of the room that served as Naak’s office. Two grindles wearing raggedy loincloths and brandishing gargantuan energy rifles stood guard at the edge of the alcove, where the polished wood floor gave way to utilitarian steel. The office was just as much of an obscene display of wealth as the rest of the establishment, but here the wealth manifested as practical instead of frivolous. Three of the walls were lined with monitors, floor to ceiling, displaying images from the hundreds of security cameras rigged up throughout the complex. A ring-shaped control terminal stood in the middle of the office. Naak was seated in the center of the ring.
Naak was a sagisi, a race of giant insectoids that had settled on a handful of planets across the galaxy in the standard-centuries since the Great Bank had nuked their homeworld. The Great Bank’s initial sagisi policy had not been enslavement, as it had been for most non-human races discovered during the era of economic expansion. The policy had been genocide and it still was, as far as I knew. That was why sagisi gravitated to outlaw planets such as this one... no Great Bank jurisdiction meant no extermination on sight. The popular rationale was that they were too vicious and unpredictable to be trusted to participate in a civilized society. There was a certain degree of logic to that rationale... sagisi killed each other even more often than humans killed them. However... knowing the Great Bank as intimately as I did... I think the real reason was that the sagisi were simply too goddamn ugly, too fearsome, too alien, too inhuman to be allowed to exist in a human-dominated galaxy.
Naak was eight-feet-tall. He had a thin rail of a body topped by a disproportionately large head. His head was shaped like a flat, inverted triangle, with two big, bulbous eyeballs protruding from the points on the top and more, smaller eyeballs running down each side. In place of the bottommost point, he had a gaping mouth with curved pincers sticking out of its corners like vicious whiskers. He had six limbs... four twig-like arms that skittered across the control terminal surrounding him and two massive legs, thicker than his torso, that were bent on either side of him so that his knees were level with his midsection. His entire body was a red so bright it was almost fluorescent, except for his eyes. His eyes were pale yellow with bright green irises. Each eye was pointed at a different monitor when we approached. The two large eyeballs rolled to look at us as we passed between the two grindle guards. All the smaller eyeballs stayed pointed at the monitors.
“It’s about goddamn time, Watkins. I would’ve thought a doctor could be trusted to walk down the Promenade without getting fucking lost,” Naak said. The sagisi language sounded like they were all hocking the galaxy’s longest loogies. The translator implant in my head converted it into human the instant that revolting noise hit my ears.
Doctor Watkins did not respond, but the look that she shot at Naak suggested that she might like to use him for her next science project. Mister Timmy shoved me forward to stand in front of Naak’s control console.
“Hi Naak,” I said. “It’s been a while.”
“It’s been a while because you’re a slippery piece of shit who doesn’t pay his debts,” Naak said.
He did not seem to be very happy with me, which was not a surprise... none of my creditors were very happy with me. I should have been frightened. Naak had enough resources to hire a whole army of red workers. I wasn’t frightened though. I wasn’t even nervous. The drugs were still rocking and rolling through my system. Artificial utopia had a grip on my brain, muting out all appropriate emotion.
“I’ve been busy. Stuff has come up,” I said.
“You’ve been busy being a slippery piece of shit and I don’t care about any stuff that doesn’t involve my money,” Naak said.
I opened my mouth to speak but Naak cut me off.
“You can’t dodge me anymore. I’m with the Nemesis Group now,” he said.
“I still don’t know what the fuck that is,” I said.
“Watkins didn’t explain who we are? Well... that’s eggheads for you... all brain, no sense,” Naak said, eliciting another dangerous glance from Doctor Watkins.
Naak paid no mind to her animosity. He kept talking as if he had not just insulted one of the most sadistic blue workers on-planet.
“We are a confederacy of local business creatures. We have pooled our resources under a common banner and soon we will be the predominant black work organization on-planet,” he said.
That was a second time I had heard black work mentioned over the course of this ordeal. It caught my attention, cutting through the dope-fog in my brain. Black work almost always meant very bad news for me.
Black work was unique among all the other colors of work. Black was not an official classification... like blue denoting police, security, and military or red denoting assassinations and general violence for its own sake or green denoting financial matters. Black was slang. It was used to label creatures or organizations whose principal pursuit was power. Black workers usually dabbled in multiple colors but it was all designed to advance their goal of controlling everything and everyone around them. The Great Bank and its subsidiary corporations did black work on the galactic level. Evelin and Lord Fairfax were black workers on the planetary level. There were black work organizations on every level in between and there were new ones constantly popping up. Black workers were kind of like me when it came to the rules of doing business except they had even less than I did. I had one... they had none. They did whatever they believed was necessary to dominate their little slice of the galaxy.
“So you’re another pack of wannabe kingpins with a stupid name. What the fuck does that have to do with me
?” I said. The flippant attitude was probably a bad idea, but I was stoned so I didn’t give a shit.
“It has everything to do with you. You owe money to most of our Board members. We bought a lot of your other debt too. You owe more to us than you do to anyone else on-planet,” Naak said. He raised one of his spindly arms. A tiny black cylinder extended from his forearm. A hologram materialized in the air above the cylinder, displaying a hugely astronomical number.
“As you can see, my personal sat-com is linked up with the Nemesis Group network. The balance of your considerable debt is available to every member of the Board,” he said.
Sat-com was short for “satellite communicator.” The devices did exactly what their name implied. They bounced a signal off of artificial satellites up in orbit around the planet in order to communicate with other devices on the ground. They all did basically the same thing but, like any other type of tech or hardware, you got what you paid for. Naak’s sat-com was some really fucking fancy high-end shit. It was a cybernetic implant controlled by mental command and it had a high-resolution holographic display. The price tag on that thing was probably close to the astronomical number hovering above it. In comparison, I had found my piece of shit sat-com on a garbage heap. It was a little hunk of metal and plastic, with no screen and barely functional buttons, which I kept in a pocket in my trenchcoat. I did not even pay for service... I had simply fucked with its insides until I managed to pick up a bootleg signal.
The blatant displays of wealth were beginning to irritate me. The casino itself, the high-priced blue workers, Naak’s fancy cybernetic toys... all of it screamed “money, money, money.” The sheer sight of all that affluence was annoying, so I employed my usual defense mechanism for dealing with annoyance... I acted like an asshole.
“So you consolidated my debt for me? That’s convenient. Would it be possible to get an itemized credit report?” I said.
The hologram over Naak’s sat-com winked off. The black cylinder retracted into his forearm. He lowered his arm back down to the keyboard on the control terminal. “You don’t seem to appreciate the seriousness of your situation, Jobs,” he said.
“Please don’t write the report on company letterhead. I’d rather not have to see your stupid cliché of a name every time I check my finances,” I said.
“We own your ass. You work for us until your debt is paid,” Naak said.
“I can’t count how many organizations I’ve encountered that had Nemesis in their name. Everybody who looks to Old Earth deities for a cool-sounding name calls themselves Nemesis. I once had dinner at Nemesis Pizza on a space station in the Alpha Orionis system.”
“We own you. We own your gun. We own your ugly coat. We even own your ridiculous hat,” Naak said. The phlegmy sound emanating from his mouth was coming in broken spasms and the translation in my head was speeding up accordingly. He was obviously getting irritated.
I probably should have stopped acting like a jackass, but impaired judgement was one of the side effects of opioid use.
“Let me help you out. You’re going for an Old Earth deity-theme. I get that. But not only is Nemesis clichéd, it doesn’t make sense. Nemesis was responsible for revenge. From what I’ve heard so far, your organization seems to deal with debt. How about I tap into my mental encyclopedia of Old Earth trivia and find you guys a deity responsible for wealth? It should be easy. There were a lot of them,” I said.
“Enough bullshit, Jobs. Let’s talk about what you’re going to do for me,” Naak said.
“How about Plutus? He dealt with wealth, among other things. Or how about Kubera? You can be the Kubera Group. That has a nice ring to it. Oh... I know... The Tsai Shen Group. That sounds cool, right?”
“I’m done listening to your shit, Jobs. Shut the fuck up before I do something we’ll both regret,” Naak said.
“It sounds like deities aren’t really your thing. How about we go the brutally literal route? You can be the Ignorant of Old Earth Group or the Stupidly Misnamed Group,” I said.
Naak gestured at Doctor Watkins with one of his many arms. She glanced at Mister Timmy. He stepped forward, raised his weapon-arm, and held it an inch from the side of my head. She had not said a word but he had still carried out the order. I suspected that the good doctor had her sidekick rigged up with a mental command link... a rare and expensive piece of tech.
For a moment, I considered continuing to run my dumbass mouth until Mister Timmy blew my head off. It would’ve gotten me out of that miserable, repetitive existence and it would’ve silenced my demons once and for all. Plus... it would’ve been a happy little “fuck you” to all my creditors. They wouldn’t have missed me, but they would’ve certainly missed my money. Nobody would have really missed me. The sheriff might have shed a tear or two, but he would have gotten over it soon enough. He had been half-expecting me to turn up dead ever since we had arrived on that backwater shithole of a planet all those standard-years before. As far as Sheriff Kabamas was concerned, I was already living on borrowed time.
I was really close to letting fly with one last smartass quip, but then that pesky little sliver of self-preservation pushed its way out of my opioid-addled brain. I shut my mouth.
“I’m going to talk and you’re going to stand there quietly until I give you permission to speak,” Naak said.
I shrugged.
“I didn’t give you permission to shrug,” Naak said.
I almost shrugged again out of pure reflex, but the sight of Mister Timmy’s weapon-arm in my peripheral vision killed the urge. However, I could not stop an incredulous look from twisting my face. Old habits die hard.
“There’s a female of my race named Ok-Lem. You’re going to kill her for me,” Naak said.
It was red work. The most straightforward of all the colors. Locate the target and kill the target... it did not require any deep thinking beyond that.
“Ok-Lem has a large hive several levels down the Big Staircase. She has hundreds of drones. Several standard-years ago, she started producing females with functional reproductive organs. One of those females has reached sexual maturity. Ok-Lem wants to mate her with me,” Naak said.
It made sense that Naak would want Ok-Lem dead. Most creatures in the galaxy enjoyed fucking. It was a popular recreational activity for most races. The sagisi were the exception. The sagisi mated solely for the purpose of procreation... except for the drones, which had no sex organs. Females mated once, if they were lucky, then laid eggs for life. Males mated once if they were really, really unlucky... because sagisi coitus culminated with the female killing and eating the male. Hives produced their own males at about the same rate that they produced reproductive females, but the sagisi did not inbreed. Females had been known to eat males from the same hive, but they never mated with them.
“You’re going to leave here and go straight to Ok-Lem’s hive. She’s always there. When the job is done, send word to me and I’ll come down to confirm the kill. I haven’t been able to leave here since she targeted me for fatherhood so it’ll be nice to go out. Besides... I don’t want you dragging her bullet-riddled corpse through my casino,” Naak said.
It all made sense. Naak was a prisoner in his own home because a major hive was trying to capture, rape, and kill him. Once I killed the queen, the drones would die off, the hive males would escape if they hadn’t already, and the unfertilized females would be left alone, scattered and powerless, without drone armies of their own. In short, the hive would collapse. Naak would be able to roam the spaceport without fear of sagisi fatherhood, at least until some other female targeted him for procreation.
“I’ll pay you the standard rate for red work, times two because you’re going to have to shoot through a few drones,” Naak said. “The funds will go directly toward your debt to the Nemesis Group. Do we have a deal?”
Naak stared at me. I stared at Naak. Doctor Watkins stared at the two of us. Mister Timmy kept his weapon-arm pointed at my head. His lack of a face made it impossible t
o tell if he was staring at me, but it sure as shit felt like he was. No one spoke for several moments.
Naak sighed. He rolled his two big eyeballs. His little eyeballs stayed glued to the security monitors lining the walls. He gestured to Doctor Watkins. Mister Timmy lowered his weapon-arm and took a step back.
“You can speak now,” Naak said.
“What’s there to say? This is basically extortion,” I said.
“I know about your code. If you accept a job, you finish the job, no matter what,” Naak said. “So accept the job.”
Danger was all around me. Mister Timmy and his giant weaponized arm were just a couple of paces away. Doctor Watkins was a couple of paces beyond him. Then there were Naak’s two enormous grindle bodyguards to contend with. I should have just agreed to do the job, but a rebellious impulse bubbled up from deep within my brain. I didn’t know if it was a side effect of the drugs or some essential part of the old me that had managed to push past both the drugs and that annoying sense of self-preservation that had been pestering me lately.
“I want the red rate times five,” I said.
Naak’s entire body jerked in surprise. All of his eyes, big and little, rolled to point at me. “This isn’t a negotiation! The price is red rate times two!” he said.
“This is the definition of a negotiation. You want me to accept the job. I want a five hundred-percent multiplier. You can negotiate or you can tell Watkins to have Mister Timmy shoot me and then you can go find some other sucker to handle your lady problems,” I said.
Naak was quiet for a time. I honestly had no idea which option he was going to choose. My sense of self-preservation was screaming that I was a stupid fucking idiot. I forced myself to ignore it and stay the course. It was obvious that Naak was not used to opposition from creatures that he regarded as subordinate. He was angry and that anger decreased my chances of getting out of that casino alive. On the other hand, I owed a lot of money to his Stupidly-Misnamed, Ignorant of Old Earth Group. They would not get paid if I was too dead to pay them. I figured that I had a 70-30 chance of not having a hole blown through me.
Odd Jobs 2: Solomon's Code Page 2