“Even if the Dissenters wanted to help you avenge Rodriguez, we have almost no information on Xanderburg these days. We never had many informants inside that town, even when it was Site 89, and just about all of our settlers have been forced to leave Xanderburg for various reasons. We can’t provide much info on Xanderburg and how it operates. Of course, the Dissenters strongly disapprove of violence and revenge and would never seek to enable someone with those goals in mind.”
“Peebo,” Klein said, “even you’ve killed before, though you may hate to admit it. This planet may not be as sinful or malevolent as Earth, but even here, no one is truly without sin. I’m not asking for help from the Dissenters. I’m asking where I might be able to find some information I can actually use.”
Peebo had a troubled, anguished look on his face. He knew he had already killed for his friend Klein—something the Dissenters could never completely condone once they knew. Was he so different from his old friend? And if Klein was so dangerous and vindictive, why would a man of the Circle like Trevor go through such trouble to save him, especially after he had violated the Dissenters’ orders? Perhaps Klein served the same God as the Dissenters, even if it was in a savage, frightening way.
“You may be many things, you may take many jobs, you may see things on Domremy that we could never imagine,” Peebo told Klein. “But you will never be a Dissenter, and you will never know peace until you see your Father after the last sunset.”
“I’ve known that for a long time. But a person like me has just as much right to exist on Domremy, and try to make it a better place, as the Dissenters do. Even if I don’t walk the same path as the Dissenters, maybe it will lead to the same place in the end.”
Peebo considered the place of Klein on Domremy. For all the Dissenters had done to free themselves from the Sinful Earth and its old institutions, they could be just as dogmatic and as blind to the need to change as the things they had traveled across the universe to escape. The Circle might consider Klein’s words dangerous, even heretical. But perhaps this world needed savage, mercurial men like Klein to help keep it safe from those who would corrupt it. For all his faults, Klein had always strived to be honest with him, unlike the rotting Hyperion Corporation and the manipulative Alek. He made the decision to help Klein in his own way.
“Go to the Archive in Hyperion City,” Peebo said. “I think the man who is in charge there might be able to get you some info. His name is Bill Hollingsworth. He used to have a better job in Hyperion than he has now, so he might know some things about Xanderburg that will be of help.”
“Thank you,” Klein said. “Just the lead I was looking for.”
“The longest road is the one you must walk alone,” Peebo said.
The clouds had broken, unleashing their torrential rains, by the time Klein got to Hyperion City. Although Hyperion City was allegedly Hyperion Corporation’s “capital” on Domremy, Klein found the settlement to be sparsely populated and in shabby condition. The paint was already beginning to look faded on some the buildings, and Klein passed by many empty houses and buildings as he walked the muddy, half-paved streets during the downpour. Klein found the city’s appearance jarring; Hyperion had been one of the few constants in his time on Domremy, a monolithic company that had governed the colony through a veil of secrecy, an organization as inscrutable as it was omnipresent. To Klein, Hyperion City looked less like a symbol of prestige and more like a ramshackle town that had already seen its best days. The townspeople of Hyperion City paid little heed to Klein as he headed in the direction of the Archive; other than an occasional curious glance, most of them seemed to be distracted, wandering through their lives in a state of weary apathy. Klein couldn’t help but feel happy about the fact that, for once in many years, law enforcement wouldn’t be on a state of high alert at his presence.
His good luck ran out the moment he got to the door of the Archive. The doors of the building were locked, and a blue cyclopean guard robot was standing in the window. “Please submit access papers,” the robot said in a soft, reassuring voice that didn’t sound like it should be coming out of such a garish, intimidating physical form. Klein held up a bogus appointment card to the robot’s glowing red eye. After briefly glancing at the card, the robot said, “These forms are not valid, Thor Harbard. Please retry or submit other forms.”
“I don’t have any other forms! These are the only ones the Archive sent out for me!” Klein said, exasperated. I know this hunk of junk is too stupid to know about Norse myth, so he’s just doing this out of general orneriness or incompetence.
“Please retry or submit other forms,” the robotic security guard repeated.
Klein groaned and held up his appointment card once more. The robot glanced again at the card. After a brief pause, it said yet again, “Please retry or submit other forms.”
Before Klein could roar a series of profanities at the machine to vent his frustration, he saw an old man walk in behind the robot and turn it off. “Sorry about this thing. Maintenance men never came to fix the blasted visual scanner when they were supposed to. Sometimes it gets caught in an error loop like that. You’re Thor Harbard, right?” The old guy winked and said in a low voice the robot couldn’t register, “At least for today.”
Klein nodded and held up his appointment card for the man to see. He heard a click as the old man pushed a button and the doors swung open. “Come on in, my office is this way,” the old man said, motioning for Klein to follow.
Klein followed the old man through a maze of shelves and cabinets that made up the Archive. Most of them were filled not with the old classics of a 20th century library, but with printouts and diagrams of various statistics of life on Domremy. Klein could hear the steady whir of the servos of a couple of loader robots, which were used to move files and furniture about as necessary. Access to the Archive was by appointment only, and the interior of the building had acquired a distinctive musty odor due to the amount of time it spent sealed off from the public. The old man guided Klein to a small office with barely enough room for both of them to sit down in it.
“I’m Bill Hollingsworth,” the man said. “I used to be the executive who was in charge of this colony. Now, I’m a pencil pusher filling out reports in an archive that Hyperion barely remembers it built.”
“You said you had some info on Xanderburg for me?” Klein asked.
“Back when I was an exec, I didn’t pay much attention to the details of agricultural production on Domremy. Too little for the board’s taste, anyway. Now that I’ve been stuck checking over these forms and filling out reports on Domremy’s stats, I’ve been able to better understand what went wrong. It appears that agricultural productivity was flat for the majority of Domremy’s population up until the point Site 89 was renamed Xanderburg. After that point, productivity declined across the majority of Domremy’s population. There were some exceptions, of course.”
Klein was very careful not to mention his friends by name. “Maybe not everyone on Domremy likes what Xanderburg’s selling?”
“This minority group, these...Dissenters, they’ve made extraordinary gains in productivity. So much that it may have actually served to mask the agricultural failures of the convicts until Xanderburg really got started. I know I was arrogant, but I think all of us at Hyperion were, to an extent. We thought we could just manage Domremy with minimal intervention and not take notice when organized crime started to get set up down here.”
“Has Alek been running some kind of crime syndicate out of Xanderburg?”
“By all accounts, not a terribly sophisticated one. We have been getting reports that he’s been trying to come up with some kind of drug distilled from the Varoneys, but he hasn’t been successful at anything that wouldn’t put you in the infirmary after you took it. What he mainly seems to specialize in is smuggling in luxury items from Earth -- digitals, off-world booze, gaming devices—and making money off gambling. That doesn’t mean Xanderburg isn’t as dangerous as hell compared to o
ther places on Domremy. The murder rate there is much higher than in the other towns, and lots of people there are loyal to Alek and will kill anyone they think is a threat to him.”
“Alek murdered my friend. I need to know the best way to take him out.”
“There’s an anniversary festival commemorating the Naming of Xanderburg in about a month. The best way to kill Alek -- the one that would be least likely to make everyone in that town try to take revenge and kill anyone remotely associated with you -- would be to go that festival, when Alek’s probably let his guard down and gotten drunk out of his mind -- and challenge him to a fight to the death. As violent as Alek is, all the info I’ve found on him seems to indicate he values what passes for personal bravery highly, and most folks on Domremy won’t try to avenge a death in “fair” combat. Of course, you have a slight limp, which makes me think you may have a prosthetic limb, so you probably don’t have much of a chance anyway.”
“I’ll find some way,” Klein said dryly. “If there’s one thing Domremy’s made me good at, it’s been finding a way to survive.”
“Good,” Hollingsworth said. “If you possibly can, get that bastard for me. His criminal enterprise cost me my job.”
“That’s all that matters to you?”
“It didn’t seem that way at the time, but after being stuck here in the Archive with only those loader bots for company, it sure seems that way now. Those memories of being in a beautiful office with a window view, having respect from my coworkers, driving around in a big Mercedes…sometimes they come back to me in dreams, and I still think I’m living that life. Then I wake up, and I end up in this dusty place. Sometimes I wonder if I died in that car crash, and this new life is actually Hell. Just hearing that Alek died would make me feel alive again.”
“One last question,” Klein added. He looked around the “office” one more time to see if there were any Hyperion people lurking in the shadows, knowing there weren’t. “Why confide this to me? How do you know I’m reliable? I could just as easily rat you out and they’d drop you out a hatch into deep space on the next shuttle.”
“Cause I know who you are. I’m not so cut off or so completely stupid not to know how to find these things out. I’ve been watching my own ass for a long time now, Klein. You see, I had something to do with putting you up here a long time ago. I know you’re a stone cold killing son of a bitch and when you say you’re going to get somebody, you’ll do it. I saw the preliminary Cashman report. I don’t give a crap what happens to you and I won’t lift a finger to save you if you fail. And I know that doesn’t matter any more to you than a yellow fart. Maybe I don’t have the guts to do it myself, but I want a share of blood, too.”
Hollingsworth was so self-absorbed, so lost in the prison of his own delusions and thwarted expectations that Klein found talking to him disturbing. Although the man’s information would be a great asset to Klein in planning his revenge, he realized that Hollingsworth would never consider him – or anyone else on Domremy – a friend, and he would have no loyalty to Klein whatsoever. Klein reckoned that the longer he talked with Hollingsworth, the more he risked saying something that would anger the man and cause him to stop being so cooperative or even to turn on him. So he silently nodded to Hollingsworth and walked out of the Archive, back to the rain-drenched streets of Hyperion City. I may never be a Dissenter, Klein thought, but I’ll never fall as far as some men on Domremy.
The train wasn’t running again until the next day, so Klein hopped a motor transport filled with empty grain containers for the trip back to Stafford Station. He was headed out of town in the direction of Peebo’s when a squirrely guy ran hopping over some puddles to catch up with him. He was so scrawny he looked like the weight of a weapon would tip him over into the mud. Klein was tempted to ignore him completely, but turned around with a sardonic look to face him.
“Hello! Buddy! Talk to you a minute, please? Hello?”
“What’s up?”
“Are you Noseman?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I work the com office and we got a live feed for a Noseman that’s supposed to be passing through. So are you Mr. Noseman? Sir?” he gulped.
Klein was willing to go along with this joke at least for a while. “Well, do you see anybody else around here with a nose as pretty as mine?”
He came along into the com office, where nothing seemed amiss as the little wimp fiddled with the controls. “Coming through from way out on the Blynthian border it looks like. I don’t even know how to arrange a link like that. Here it comes. You can take booth four.”
When Klein stepped in and activated the screen he saw it was a Forlani female on the viewer. Even though this girl was fully mature and wearing a non-Forlani outfit, he almost immediately recognized that this was what Ayan’we looked like now that she had grown up.
“Greetings Noseman. My, the reports of Ragatti’s work are right, your face is something to behold.”
“Ayan’we, this is a surprise. I hope nothing bad has happened to cause you to contact me this way.”
“Oh, bad things are always happening somewhere, but not to me, or the family, right now. Wondering how I got you on live link? This is Blynthian tech. I found a way to link it in with your human stuff, which is pretty primitive in comparison.”
“What are you doing way out there?”
“Didn’t mother tell you I was traveling? I can even fly myself now since I qualified on one of our new hex interceptors. I hold the rank of Lieutenant Ayan’we, if you please,” she chuckled. “But right now I’m civilian. How do you like my Blynthian intern clothes? I had to adapt them of course, since like you I have only four limbs, not counting the tail.”
“It’s wonderful to see you. Congratulations on all the accomplishments. I can see why your mother is so proud. And I like the distinguished way you address me, by the way. Caught my attention and my curiosity right away.”
“No reason to paint the letters C-O-W on a cow, as your religious friends would say. I know mother wrote to you.” Ayan’we’s face became more serious – miraculously, with only about two seconds of com delay. “Do you understand her point of view? You do, don’t you? She really still cares for you like no other. Tell me you comprehend that.”
“Yes, it’s terribly difficult, but I’m trying to understand. I’m doing my best.”
“After my father died, she was really planning to bring the two youngest with her, until one of them got sick and she discovered she was about to give birth again. It’s not just the biology, Kl…. Noseman, there are feelings involved that any human is really going to have to stretch a long way to relate to.”
“I wanted to get to know all of you. To find peace there. I’ve got a back story, too, you know.”
“I may know more about it than you realize. I’m a very good researcher. I feel for you and she does as well, as much as somebody with purple skin and a tail can empathize with a neo-ape. As far as the peace goes, you may be fooling yourself a bit, but everybody’s got a right to that.”
“Copy you.”
“Are you OK? Are you in any danger? I could come and take you away. Given a couple of months. I hope you haven’t gotten yourself into any scrapes.”
“I may have a bit of a scrape coming up, but it’s nothing you can help with, little one. I’ve got to stand on my own two – well, one real and one artificial – legs now. You’ve obviously found plenty of useful things to do and I want you to go on. As for your mother, I’ll try to think of a way of answering her, but tell her I am all right and I have no regrets.”
“When shall I call you again?”
“I’ll try to call you through the Forlani exchange. Don’t know when. It might be a while. But if I don’t call, it’s because I have nothing intelligent to say. Take good care of you know who.”
“Copy that, Noseman. Blynth transfer com 531-w out.”
The first thing Klein heard as he stepped off the train and onto the streets
of Xanderburg was the deafening yelling and cheering of a celebrating crowd. The people of Xanderburg were enjoying their Naming Anniversary with a raucous joy that reminded Klein of the day he chose to run against Alek as a candidate for Marshall. Bitter memories of the election’s outcome—and the suffering he had endured on Forlan and Song Pai as a result—prevented Klein from sharing in their joy, and he walked through the streets with a harsh scowl on his face. The revelers didn’t pay enough attention to Klein to recognize him, and he tried to move as quickly as he could to the Town Center without attracting attention. The town was still recognizable from its days as Site 89 when Klein had been its mankiller, but Klein could sense the place had become tainted and corrupt in the time he had been offworld. There was a seedy atmosphere to the place, a sense of concealed violence and veiled threats that felt far stronger than it had in the days when Cashman had still been Marshall. Klein briefly wondered if some supernatural curse hovered over Xanderburg, if the town was destined to have a series of ever more vile rulers until the hateful place finally burned to the ground. The thought barely registered for a second before the rational part of Klein’s mind dismissed it, his muscles tensing for the coming confrontation with Alek.
Klein reached the Town Center and saw Alek on the podium, speaking to a large crowd gathered there. He could hear Alek’s voice booming out above the babbling of the milling crowd.
“…and on this day, our town was named! We chose the great name of Xanderburg, to represent our new age of strength and wealth! Xanderburg, for a great future for us all! Cheers to the future of our great city!” Alek yelled. The crowd roared its approval. All except one.
Alek could somehow recognize his old adversary immediately. Klein was standing silent as a stone in one of the back rows of the crowd. Alek looked him square in the eyes and saw the smoldering flames of Klein’s hatred, a look of rage and murderous vengeance. Alek met his gaze and called out into the crowd, “Who is this man, who comes with a history of bloodshed and murder, to this day of joy?”
Life Sentence (Forlani Saga Book 1) Page 33