“Say,” The dark man began. “Where are you headed? Least I could do is give you a ride.”
Hamilton zipped up his bag and considered the offer for a second. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. He’d more or less hoped for the offer in return for fixing the vehicle. Hamilton firmly believed that no-one did anything for nothing. He fished in his jumpsuit, withdrew a scrap of paper and scrutinized it. “I’m looking for a hotel called the Star Rider Inn. Know it?”
The black man scratched his chin. “Can’t say I do. But it sounds as if it’s in the South District.” He eyed Hamilton critically. “That’s the rich area of town.”
Hamilton shrugged. “I’m not staying long. One or two nights max.”
Jones looked sceptical. “Looking like that you’ll be lucky to get into the lobby.”
Hamilton smiled. “You’d be surprised at some of the places I’ve gotten into.”
“I believe you.” Jones said. “But they might not.”
“We’ll see.”
Jones shrugged. “None of my concern. Throw your gear on the back seat.”
Hamilton toted his gear around to the side of the car and flipped the door open. He saw that the back seat was already occupied by a variety of boxes and bags. Through the open tops of some of them he glimpsed items that he wouldn’t have said were altogether legal.
He shrugged inwardly. It was nothing to do with him. If anyone asked he’d only seen boxes, not contents. He threw his gear atop the jumble and then got into the front pulling the door closed.
Jones got in the drivers’ side. “OK. Let’s see if we can find this hotel of yours.”
The car pulled rapidly away from the terminal. Jones’ driving was reasonably competent, if a little erratic at times. In no time they were on the connectway leading to the city. It began to rain steadily.
“Nice weather.” Hamilton muttered.
Jones smiled. “You think this is bad? You should’ve seen it last winter. Hailstones large enough to smash windows and dent bodywork.” he chuckled. “Yeah, I bet them insurance fellas had a fit.”
They were silent for few moments then Hamilton asked. “So what line of work are you in?”
Jones glanced across cautiously. “Oh, a little bit of this and a little bit of that.”
“That sounds like a familiar line.” Hamilton grinned.
“Yeah.” Jones agreed. “Truth is, I’m between what you might call regular employment. Just keeping my eyes open. How about you?”
“Same as you at present. That’s why I’m going to this hotel. I’ve got an offer of employment to check out.”
Jones raised his eyebrows. “Must be well paid if you’re willing to come all the way out to this craphole of a planet.”
“Let’s just say, it interested me.”
“Shit! If it pays halfway decent then I’d snap it up if I were you. Ain’t every day you find an interesting job. What kind of work is it, anyway?”
Hamilton considered how much to tell the other. His potential employers hadn’t exactly sworn him to secrecy. On the other hand, he wasn’t entirely certain of his exact duties himself, yet. He decided to be a little vague. “It’s what you might call a security job.”
Jones glanced across at Hamilton. His eyes also flicked to the back seat and Hamilton’s weapon cases. “I get you. In fact, I’m in that line of work myself, so to speak.”
“I noticed.” Hamilton smiled.
Jones grinned. “It’s a small universe, ain’t it?”
“Sure is.” Hamilton agreed.
They drove on for some minutes, finally entering the city suburbs. Attractive one and two storey buildings with extensive grounds were visible from the road.
“Only the wealthy live out here.” Jones explained. “Us poor folk live in high rise ghettos in the north and west sectors. The east sector is mostly businesses and factories, that sort of thing. The south is where the truly rich live and carry on their businesses.”
“You know where this hotel is?”
Jones shook his head. “Not yet. It’ll be in the south sector though. I live in the north and I know both that and the west sector well. It ain’t in either of those and it won’t be in the east sector so that only leaves the south. I’ll stop and ask a guard when we get there.”
“A guard?”
“Sure. You don’t think all those rich folk’d still be rich if they didn’t have someone to look after them, do you?”
Hamilton mulled this over for a while. He hoped that he hadn’t come all the way out here to be employed as a guard. He tried hard to recall the conversation he’d had with the guy’s representative. Not for the first time he began to wish he recorded all such discussions. He was fairly sure that the guy had said it would be offworld, but he wasn’t certain.
Now that they were in the city proper they began to see more vehicles. On the way from the terminal they hadn’t seen any other traffic at all, but now there was a steady stream.
Hamilton glanced at his watch. “I guess we’ll get caught in the rush hour?”
Jones snorted. “We’ll be fine. We’re coming in from the north. Everyone else’ll be headed east.”
In fact, there was little delay as they headed through the poor northern sector. Jones pointed out the shabby high rise where he lived.
“You don’t mind if I drop my stuff off before I drop you off, do you?” he asked.
Hamilton shook his head. “I’ll give you a hand with it, if you like?”
“Thanks a lot, man.” Jones smiled, turning the car toward the block. “Those stairs can be real killers if you have to make more than one trip.”
“Stairs?” Hamilton scowled.
“Yeah, well the elevator packed up about four or five months ago. Since then the only way up or down has been the stairs.”
Hamilton looked wary. “What floor is your place on?”
“The tenth.”
“Shit.” Hamilton sighed.
“Don’t worry about it.” Jones said. “The exercise is good for you.”
Hamilton preferred not to think about the trip up the stairs to Jones’ apartment. It hadn’t exactly been a nightmare, struggling with three or four boxes and several bags up a litter strewn stairway for ten floors, but it was a pretty bad dream. Hamilton was in pretty good shape but even he had been sweating and cursing by the time they had reached the door to Jones’ rooms. Worse still, Jones himself seemed unaffected by the ordeal, not even breathing hard.
Now they were sipping on some brew that Jones had made up. It wasn’t coffee or tea, but somewhere in between. It was thick and dark and extremely sweet. Hamilton decided not to ask what it was. It was in his experience that it was often better not to know some things.
Jones’ apartment was filled with all kinds of objects. Most were electronic paraphernalia, still trailing wires from where they had been ripped from their housings, others appeared to be art objects, carvings, containers and the like. All appeared to be of fine quality. A stack of various photocopied instruction manuals lay to one side.
“Big business.” Hamilton commented.
Jones shrugged. “It pays the bills. Leastways, the one’s I can’t get out of paying.”
“Taking a bit of a risk aren’t you? Bringing me here?”
Jones shook his head and smiled. “Nobody ever gets through that door unless I’m certain they’re trustworthy. Or apathetic. Or so drugged out of their heads that they don’t even know who, much less where they are.”
Hamilton said nothing, concentrating on his drink. He glanced around at the accumulated fruits of Jones’ labour. One item in particular caught his eye.
“Isn’t that an InterDyne fibre-optic alarm system?”
“Sure.” Jones nodded. “Took me some time to figure a way around that one.”
“But you did?”
“Of course.”
“How?”
Jones grinned and flipped Hamilton a small, but heavy box. It was, in fact, two boxes joined by clips. Hamilton
saw how undoing the clips would leave you with two boxes. Each of the resulting boxes had a small slot in one side that extended about half way through the box. At the end of the slot was a gripping mechanism. Hamilton divided the boxes and noted the spool of fibre-optic cable that connected them.
“Simple, if you give it a little thought.” Jones commented. “Of course, smarter systems measure the time a signal takes to travel the loop and there are special codes and so on. That requires a little electronics. That’s where these come in.” He threw a sheaf of papers at Hamilton. Most flew in all directions, but Hamilton caught a few.
He raised an eyebrow. “Technical specs?”
“I got a few friends in interesting places.”
“So it seems.”
“Anyhow, it’s time we got you to your hotel. Don’t want to be late now, do you?” Jones asked, standing.
“I guess not.” Hamilton agreed, standing and draining his cup. He set it down on a cluttered desk, noting the computer terminal hidden by reams of paper. He decided not to say anything further and headed for the door, Jones right behind him.
Finding the hotel was uneventful. Soon after entering the south sector Jones stopped the car, whose only dubious contents now were Hamilton’s bags, and asked a uniformed man. The man was obviously suspicious of them, but gave them the directions anyway. After only a few more minutes of Jones’ unpredictable driving they pulled up outside the Star Rider Inn.
It was a modestly impressive building, faced with what looked like marble. Broad steps led up to a massive revolving door of polished brass with glass panels. Two doormen in immaculate uniforms stood one on either side of the door. They regarded the car, a cheap rental model, with undisguised concern.
Hamilton got out and began to drag his bags out. The doormen exchanged looks and then one strode down towards the car.
Hamilton turned and thrust the heavy bag into the man’s arms. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll carry the rest.”
“Just a minute, Sir.” The man began, but Hamilton ignored him and turned to the car once again. He glanced inside.
“Thanks for everything, Jones.” he said.
“No problem, man. I’ll see you around sometime.” Jones replied.
“Excuse me, Sir.” The doorman continued. “But I’m afraid you might have made a mistake.”
“Perhaps, if you’re lucky.” Hamilton agreed with a grin.
The doorman decided politeness wasn’t going to work. “Mister, you’ve come to the wrong hotel. I advise you to get back in the car and find another.”
“In any case,” Jones continued, ignoring the doorman as well as Hamilton was. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. You too.” He straightened up.
“You’re at the wrong hotel, mister.” The doorman dumped Hamilton’s bag on the ground. “I’m not going to tell you again.”
Hamilton closed the car door and turned to face the doorman. “Still here? I’d have thought you would have taken my bag to the desk by now.”
“Listen, I’ll give you ten seconds to get out of here. Otherwise you’ll be sorry.”
Hamilton looked down at his bag, which lay on the pavement, then straight at the man. “If that bag doesn’t follow me into the lobby, you’ll be looking for a new job.”
The man sneered. “I doubt my employers would take much notice of anything you said.”
“Maybe not.” Hamilton agreed. “But doormen with broken arms and legs don’t carry bags very well.”
“I don’t threaten easily.” The doorman stated, bristling.
“I don’t threaten lightly.” Hamilton replied, mildly. The two stared at each other for a few seconds more before the doorman realised that Hamilton wasn’t trying to look threatening, merely serious. He looked away.
Hamilton turned and strode toward the door, knowing the matter concluded. The other doorman moved to intercept him but, at a signal from his fellow, he resumed his position.
Hamilton reflected that he ought to make more of an effort with his appearance. It would facilitate easier exchanges. Then he remembered how much he enjoyed surprising people and decided he was too set in his ways to change. God knew, he hated to change.
The inside of the hotel was even flashier than its exterior. Brass was here replaced by gold fittings, plated, Hamilton surmised. Expensive furniture was seemingly scattered at random about the lobby. The reception desk was of gleaming Maleen wood, a material almost as strong as steel, and faced with some kind of animal hide. Hamilton did not doubt that the hide was genuine. While most of the galaxy found animal products repugnant, a product of selective education, the rich had always had access to private education facilities. Thus, they had no compunction about using animal products and eating animal flesh. In fact, they often went out of their way to use animal produce where a perfectly good substitute was available in metal or plastic. Most of mankind made do with synthesised foodstuffs and occasional fresh vegetables. The rich often had a different meat dish every night. He considered that his earlier appraisal of the gold fittings might have been wrong.
Hamilton himself had been brought up amid affluent surroundings. His parents had been well-off, certainly to the point of private education, but his parents had finally given in to his child-like determination to go to public schooling. Mainly this was due to his hatred of the tutors they brought in but also to a feeling of missing out on something. But perhaps, he thought, hatred was a strong term. They were merely trying to do their job. He just didn’t appreciate it then. He had taken the same classes as everyone else but had never really seen much point to them. At one moment he was in Nutrition, learning that animal foodstuffs were unnecessary and morally repulsive, the next he was in History, learning how man used to practically subsist on the stuff in times past, or at home, tucking into roast beef. It was all very confusing. It was only at this stage that he truly began to appreciate the differences between social classes.
Years later, Hamilton had joined the Corp and had learned about the life-saving values of meat during a survival course. Naturally, they had said, raw meat was an acceptable alternative to starvation, but, after trying it during the courses, Hamilton had decided to always have the means to create fire on him. Unfortunately for him, meat was only served in expensive restaurants and hotels. Corp wages weren’t sufficient to allow for such extravagances and, by then, he’d been thrown out by his family. In the course of his duties, however, Hamilton had once been abandoned by his survey team on an uninhabited planet for months. There, he got all the meat he could have wished for.
It hadn’t been their fault. They had assumed he’d perished in the rockslide. In fact, he’d been buried alive. The nature of the rock prevented their sensors from detecting him and the Survey transport had just arrived to retrieve the team after their three month stint. No one had wanted to miss the transport and so they had written him off as dead, making arrangements to return to collect his remains later.
Later turned out to be six months. In that time Hamilton had sampled all of the local flora and fauna and had developed a taste for meat. Well cooked meat, that was. He used the excuse of being abandoned to leave the Corp and joined up with a mercenary band.
The band, composed mainly of people like Hamilton, travelled all over the place. They were a tough lot, as all mercenaries were, and soon gained an unhealthy reputation. A rival unit had finally grown envious enough to engineer the destruction of the band. There had been only two survivors. They had set about destroying the other units’ reputation, killing their sources of income, and sometimes their members as well. The pair had done an excellent job. Soon, the unit had disbanded. Even then, the surviving members continued to disappear, sometimes mysteriously. Then there were simply no more to disappear. Hamilton and his companion had gone their separate ways.
Hamilton had learned sometime later that his friend had been killed in a groundcar accident. Hamilton had attended the funeral, an almost non-existent affair due to lack of any relatives, for no reason t
hat seemed good to him. It had cost a great deal to travel to the site, most of his savings, and the fellow hadn’t been that good a friend, more of an accomplice. It had probably been out of pride for his old unit and some kind of respect for his colleague. In any case, he’d gone. The only persons present at the funeral were Hamilton and the Churchman. It had all been over in a matter of minutes.
Afterward, Hamilton had sat by the grave for some time, reflecting on his life and trying to decide what to do in the future. He had briefly considered rejoining the Corp, but with his background they wouldn’t have welcomed him back with open arms. He could have returned to his family but they had already disowned him by then. In the end he decided to become a Troubleshooter, a fancy name for an individual who’d do anything for money, often acting like a mercenary.
His former unit’s reputation provided him with his first contracts. Soon, he had his own reputation. There was always a steady stream of offers for his expertise. These ranged from basic detective work to thinly disguised assassination jobs. He rarely accepted these last unless the victim, to his mind, truly deserved to die. Such victims were most often rapists, crooked officials and the like. More often than not, Hamilton managed to work out an alternate deal with his client, whereby the victim was “set-up” by Hamilton for a serious crime whilst the authorities were somehow ‘just around the corner’. Punishments for crimes varied from system to system. Some favoured imprisonment, others execution, some even slavery or mutilation. Hamilton found that there were few clients who didn’t prefer the irony of their intended victims suffering from an injustice. Of late, however, jobs had grown harder to find. If this one didn’t pan out he was going to have to live on credit for a while.
“Sir?” A voice asked.
Hamilton snapped out of his reverie and focussed on the desk clerk. The man was regarding him nervously. Hamilton wondered how many times the clerk had probed for a response. “Er, yes. I’d like a room please.”
The clerk glanced at the doorman behind Hamilton. “I trust you are aware of our rates, sir?”
Humal Sequence 1: A Breath of Hope Page 2