The only problem came when we discovered that the hospital I’d been treated at was on the wrong side of the planet from the skiptrace’s home office. I was still broke and since the office wouldn’t just take my word I’d bested their giant over communications, we were faced with one option: use more of Ariadne’s money. I felt terrible every time she charged that account, promising continuously that I would repay her. Each time she merely smiled and said she knew.
It cost something of a small fortune to finally arrive on the right side of Earth, a place currently called Dinium. We boarded a real, steam-powered locomotive and made a beeline toward the skiptrace’s home office. Ariadne seemed right at home on the train, where she chatted up the ticket master ad infinitum about exactly how the train was designed, which factory on Proxima Centauri was responsible, and some of the finer points of maintenance. I mostly stared at the window, marveling at how fast the landscape was speeding by. The murky light that filtered through from the sun brought a sort of yellowish tinge to the whole planet, washing out most colors and, if you weren’t looking closely, making the wheat fields look just like the corn fields which camouflaged the low, rounded shapes of organic houses. From orbit it was almost impossible to tell city from farmland unless you were on the night side of the planet. Some pockets of inorganic buildings, mostly made of stone or concrete, still existed, but they were few and far between.
Even with the sunlight handicap, Dinium’s buildings gradually began to look familiar and after we disembarked from the train, I led the way to the skiptrace employer. The building was like any other on the street: outside it was a brownish kind of organic structure they hadn’t bothered to paint, and it had a façade littered with odd-sized windows. Richer buildings often had more uniform windows and some even had falsebone siding to make it a bit squarer and more old-fashioned looking.
This was definitely not one of those buildings. To be fair, it wasn’t rotted completely through and the pulmonary system still seemed to run just fine, if a bit noisy. The building had an old heart, that was to be sure and its thrumming could be heard a block away. Overall the building was sagging with age and use and the once-fancy “Aristotle & Sons, Law & Licensing Ltd.” sign was hanging even more crooked than it had been when I first visited the office a few months ago. Aristotle would be lucky if he got another year’s worth of living out of the building before it disintegrated completely and he’d have to relocate.
The inside of the office was little different, though the rooms and ceilings were lined with completely numb falsebone to give the interior a more rectangular structure and provide a place to hang paintings and put up shelves. Like the outside of the building, however, no one had bothered to paint any of the surfaces, leaving the offices a sort of moldy brown color to add to the murky atmosphere. At least the floor was carpeted.
I strode up to the door marked, “Aristotle Simon, Lawyer and Skiptrace Commissioner,” and opened it after a muffled, “C’me in,” answered my knock. The rotund, red-haired man looked up at me over spectacles with first condescension, then surprise. I moved to stand directly in front of his desk and gaping mouth, Ariadne following close behind.
“You seem surprised,” I said flatly, but gloating more than enough on the inside. I had the opportunity to make him eat his laughter and it felt amazing.
“Ah,” he finally said, “not really, all you’ve done is show up in my office with a new friend.”
“Oh,” I blinked briefly, my satisfaction melting somewhat, “let me fix that.”
I spent more than an embarrassing amount of time searching the various pockets of my outfit before I noticed Ariadne handing the skiptrace’s license to Aristotle. I had insisted that she carry it as collateral for the money she’d spent to get me this far. Plus I was somewhat afraid my still-addled brain would leave it somewhere accidentally.
“I took that from your skiptrace, as per our agreement,” I said as the lawyer read over the slightly crumpled document. He looked over it at me and Ariadne in surprise.
“This is a fake,” he said in a tone that was more questioning than actually accusatory.
I shook my head. “I took it from your guy myself.”
The lawyer sighed wearily and swore just a little.
“Well, if he could be beaten by two sprites such as yourself, I don’t want him on my payroll anyhow,” Aristotle tucked the license into a drawer of his desk and pulled out an all-metal money safe. He unlocked it and began to count out the woven metal credits one by one. Ariadne shifted somewhat as she watched the lawyer finish.
“Is that it?” she asked as I reached for the credits. I looked at the leaflets in my hand, trying to count how much it was. It had been nearly a fortnight since I woke up with radiation poisoning and my brain was still very slow.
“Should be, that’s better than the standard rate for returning a license,” Aristotle said with a shrug.
“What’s the matter?” I said. I had somewhat reached Ariadne’s conclusion, but I needed to verify.
“That’s not enough to cover all the expenses,” she said with a concerned frown. I frowned with her and tried to count the money against the amount we had spent on treatment and transportation. In the end I didn’t have an exact number, but even my figures showed that the money in my hand wouldn’t be enough to repay Ariadne.
“Are you sure that’s it?” she asked the lawyer with concern. The man nodded with assurance. It was the sum I had agreed on when I first set out to discredit his skiptrace. At that point, it had been more than enough to get me to a city where I could find a job and an apartment. Of course, I couldn’t see into the future and predict that I’d be up to my neck in debt to a fellow stowaway.
I glanced at Ariadne. Her face was now more than a little defeated. I looked at the credits in my hand. This wasn’t enough to pay for her ship. She met my eyes with a sad gaze but didn’t say anything.
“Crap,” I said out loud and handed the money back to the lawyer. “Give me the license back. I’ll be your new skiptrace until I pay her back.”
“I don’t think so. You might’ve bested that brute but you’re no good as a long-term investment,” Aristotle said. I slammed my hands on to his desk to surprise him and I leaned in real close to his face.
“Our agreement was money or a job, my choice as to which one. Mr. Carver can verify,” I spoke without much in the way of leniency. Aristotle looked more concerned than actually intimidated, but he nodded. And muttered under his breath again.
“Fine, fine. Fine!” He made more than a few exasperated gestures and ripped the credits from my hands. Eventually, he replaced them with the license.
“But you work for me now, understand? I only have to keep you for sixty days and if I don’t like what you do, you’re out,” Aristotle said. I shook his outstretched hand solemnly. To his credit, he didn’t glare at me too much.
“Return here in two days. By then I will have everything legal sorted out,” Aristotle said, grumbling. I nodded and strode with Ariadne out the door into the sickly daylight.
“You didn’t have to do that!” the ingrate hissed at me.
“Oh would you just shut up!” I said to her in a more than irate tone, stomping down the sidewalk ahead of her. “Go find yourself some place to stay and open an account where I can deposit the money I owe you.”
“I can’t just wait around for you to pay me the money back,” Ariadne spoke as she caught up with me. She was pouting, I could hear it in her voice.
“Well you can’t come with me, that’s for sure!” I shouted the words without thinking them through fully. It would actually be useful to have a partner in this endeavor.
“Wait…that’s a brilliant idea…” Ariadne pulled me to a stop. I glared at her, although secretly thankful she’d caught on to my idea. “We can work together and earn the money back.”
“Didn’t I just say I don’t want you with me?” I asked, trying to fight it. No, it was not practical to bring Ariadne with me, considerin
g I barely knew her and she didn’t seem to have any experience as a skiptrace. I could do this on my own. Ariadne dismissed that idea with a wave of her hand.
“I don’t care what you want or don’t want. You are definitely not capable of tackling wanted criminals as a skiptrace. Not by yourself.” The stubborn girl didn’t cross her arms or even give my anger any attention.
“I am more than capable of handling whatever comes my way! You should have seen the guy I took this from,” I waved the license in her face. She plucked it from my hands with two fingers.
“Well I didn’t see that guy, and the only person I know you as is a Class A klutz who’s still wobbly from her brush with radiation poisoning,” she said, before turning on her heels primly and striding down the street toward the main highway. I stuck my tongue out at her retreating backside before following. I snatched back the license once I had caught up with her.
“All right.” I gave into the idea of a partner. “At least until I pay you back, you can come along. But I’m the one with the skiptracing experience.”
“Got it, boss,” Ariadne said with a smile.
“Let’s go find somewhere to stay,” I said, walking toward the center of town.
“Who Mr. Carver?” Ariadne asked suddenly.
“Didn’t you see him sitting there?” I said without really look at the princess. She made a strange sort of confused noise.
• • •
We spent the two free days twiddling our thumbs anxiously in the cheapest hotel we could find close to Aristotle’s office. It hadn’t taken an exhaustive search to find one. We definitely weren’t rich enough to be living it up any, so we spent the first day calculating how much I owed Ariadne, plus some interest I insisted on, and the day after that tearing apart old magazines and folding paper creatures in our dingy hotel room. My creatures were always far more anatomically correct than hers were, but hers always had some sort of secret mechanical component that made them move.
We didn’t talk all that much during those days; I’m not certain why. Perhaps we were both too busy trying to analyze all that had happened. Perhaps we were just being entirely too polite with one another. By the end of the second day, I was fairly well sick of it.
“Where are you from?” I asked, folding my next paper whale, trying to position the eye of the model from the magazine where the whale’s eye would be.
“Merge, Theopa, but my family moved around a lot. What about you?” the princess asked without looking up from her…whatever that was she was folding.
“I think I was born somewhere in Olds I, but my family moved to Dinium when I was young,” I said. Ariadne nodded, and continued to work on her ambiguous paper beast. More silence. I sighed as I put the last fold in my rhino and set him with the other fifteen creatures I’d folded into existence.
I leaned back on the couch.
“Tell me about your parcel business,” I said.
“I was thinking about calling it King Shipping; that has a nice ring to it,” the princess said, her coffee-colored eyes lighting up with the idea. I wished I had that much passion about something. Even skiptracing had a more or less functional purpose and I doubted I’d be in the field much longer than it took to pay back Ariadne.
“Why parcels?” I asked.
“First, I get to fly around in my own ship. Second, you never know where those packages are going or who they are going to. What if it’s a wedding present from an uncle that missed the wedding? What if it’s important evidence for a system-spanning trial?” She stared off into the distance a little, mind probably racing with more and hopeful scenarios. The princess finally looked back at me and asked, “What about you? Why skiptracing?”
“Revenge,” I said easily. I didn’t really want to spill my entire life’s story in that moment, or ever if I was going to be honest. Unfortunately, that would be unfair since Ariadne had already told me her plans.
I fiddled with the rhino in my hand until its horn was bent out of shape.
“My brother got caught up in the system. I got the license from the skiptrace that mistakenly put him behind bars,” I tried not to mutter. Ariadne nodded solemnly.
“I have a brother too,” she finally said. We sat in silence with our papercraft for a minute. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d make it any further in the conversation without losing it, but Ariadne seemed to understand.
“I’m hungry, want a pizza?” she finally said.
“Five-kind mushroom with black olives?” I asked.
“Green ones, extra whites,” she grinned and made for the door.
I decided I could grow to like Ariadne King.
• • •
Aristotle seemed no happier to see us again the next morning, but he outlined everything official without muttering under his breath too much.
“I give my employees all the regular holidays off, though you won’t be working here long enough to have to worry about that. You work 24/7 until you catch whomever I send you to find and then you get between three days and a full week off afterwards, depending on how long it took you to catch the quarry. If I send you after a criminal, you take him to the local police and collect the reward, which I split with you. If he’s a debtor or someone of that mostly harmless ilk, you bring him here or to one of my branch offices. Got all that?” the lawyer said and looked from me to Ariadne.
“Got it,” we spoke at nearly the same time.
“I can’t issue two licenses, so you’ll have to share. Only the person holding the license can make a legal arrest,” he looked from me to Ariadne again and I nodded impatiently. “Once you sign this, it’s yours until you lose it or I take it from you.”
I snatched a pen off his desk and scribbled my name on the license under the half-dozen names of owners that had come before me. I put my signature under the name of the skiptrace I had beat up and with a great deal of satisfaction drew a lovely “x” over his signature. I handed the pen to Ariadne and watched as she flawlessly signed her name with great loops and swirls. I noted the new seal of the Sodality of Skiptraces stacked on top of the outdated ones. The Sodality updated their official seal for skiptrace licenses every year to help cut down on counterfeiting. It didn’t help much, but since they are technically the only entity legally allowed to approve the licenses, it made them feel better to keep things new. At least Aristotle hadn’t run into trouble getting our license approved.
Ariadne handed the license to the lawyer for his approval. He blew slightly on the paper to make the ink dry quicker and gave me one last concerned look. I took my new livelihood in my hands as he finally gave the document up.
“My first case for you isn’t an easy one, but I’m also not sending you after a mass murderer,” Aristotle said, reaching for a new sort of folder. “Open it later. You start your hunt tomorrow and I want weekly updates until you catch him.”
I nodded solemnly and turned with Ariadne to walk out the door.
“So what’s our assignment?” she said almost as soon as our sneakered feet hit the sidewalk.
“I don’t know, I haven’t opened the file yet.” I cast Ariadne a sideways glance before flipping the cover over. In the process, I managed to nearly spill its paltry contents across the mildewy sidewalk. I made a disparaging noise as I caught the few pictures and what looked like an old hotel receipt with the insides of my elbows.
Ariadne made some kind of soft comment but didn’t grab for anything. I sorted the loose papers as best I could before handing the mugshot to my new, and temporary, partner.
“Not too tough, though he looks like someone forced him to swallow a whole, raw sardine,” Ariadne crinkled her elegant nose as she observed the picture.
“His name is Ottoman Lee.” I frowned a little as I spoke the words. “He’s not wanted for anything more than petty theft, but he’s knee-deep in debt. No outstanding warrants by the look of it.”
“This must have been the last hotel he stayed at. It’s here in the city, so we should go check it out.” Aria
dne handed me back all of the papers and then helped me adjust them properly in the file. I kept the mugshot out of the folder and held it up for a better look.
The man was narrow and less scowling than he was glassy-eyed. He had fewer tattoos and piercings than I had first thought, aside from the rather hideous scrawl of “LOSER” on his left cheek. I wondered if that had been a conscious or drunken decision and how much he regretted it. Not that it was any consequence to me. All I had to do was drag his sorry hind-end to Aristotle & Sons and impress that lawyer into keeping me for long enough to pay off Ariadne.
It’s not like I had anything better to do.
Ariadne and I made our way to Ottoman’s last known hotel address, making good time by taking an engine-powered cab, rather than a train. The cab sputtered and choked a bit, probably struggling from all the residue and sludge organic cities produced, but it seemed to function well enough. We were already running up an expensive tab to catch this guy, but Ariadne insisted that the train would take too long. I abdicated my position as my head started to spin, probably residual effects from the radiation poisoning. At least cabs were far quieter and less jarring than their train counterparts.
Ariadne was out of the vehicle almost the instant the driver announced our arrival at Ottoman’s hotel.
“Wait!” I called after her, not running up the moderate building’s slippery steps. The falsebone sheets that had once run across the tops of the steps for traction and structure were beginning to be absorbed by the building’s organic compounds, meaning the only thing left was slimy epidermis.
“What? We don’t have all day, Marcie!” Ariadne stamped her foot slightly as she turned to face me. Ringlets of her hair bounced in agitation.
“This isn’t a nice hotel,” I said, though it did smell somewhat less than Aristotle’s building and it wasn’t sagging quite as much either. “But I doubt the owner knows that. We have to be a little more like women on an official mission and less like ditzes who just happen to have a skiptrace license.”
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