“Was that,” he started, pointing at the server. “Was that a Dredel Led?”
“Yeah. It works here,” I said of the robot.
The Dredel Led was a wheeled metal machine about five feet tall. It was a narrow black cylinder with spindly robot arms. It made an excellent waiter because it could zip around and between people at great speed—as long as the floor was level and clean. I had never met any two Dredel Led that were remotely identical in appearance or function.
“Didn’t they attack the station? Attack you? Weren’t we at war with them?”
I ate some sandwiches, answering with my mouth full.
“That was almost a century ago. We have nearly every species in the galaxy on Belvaille, with more coming all the time. This is a great place to start a business. We have Gandrine and Dredel Led. If you go outside and look up you’ll see the gaseous species Keilvin Kamigans floating around—what they’re doing up there I don’t know, maybe pissing on us. There’s even a Boranjame,” I said. “But he’s only about this big.”
I held my arms about four feet apart. Boranjame were a crystalline species that never stopped growing. The prince I met long ago was miles across.
Jorn-dole’s mouth still hung open.
“And everyone gets along?”
“I didn’t say that. But look, the war wasn’t other races attacking us, it was a civil war. We didn’t need any help destroying ourselves. But if you’ll excuse me now, I just want to eat my food. I hope you enjoy your stay on Belvaille,” I said.
“Thank you, Hank.” Jorn-dole smiled and departed.
I sat there eating my pile of sandwiches that covered most of the table, trying to think things through.
Belvaille had become more and more complicated. Religions, political factions, businesses, ethnic groups, refugees, homeless, feral kids, beggars, as well as the usual gangs and gang bosses.
Used to be when there was a problem, I would fix it. “Fix” usually involved expelling or jailing or maiming or killing the source of the problem—but more often simply talking it out.
There were too many of them now.
Even if I lined up every serious troublemaker and drove by on my heavy lifter kneecapping them all, that wouldn’t solve anything. I’d just have a third of the population with no kneecaps.
And I couldn’t get personally involved in every problem like I used to. There weren’t enough hours in the day.
I should get this stuff written down and organized. I had always trusted to my memory to keep everything straight, but I couldn’t remember millions of people and their dispositions.
We had some files for the Kommilaire, but it simply took too much manpower to maintain them. We needed people patrolling the streets far more than we needed clerks shuffling papers.
As for electronic storage, I didn’t trust it. The Colmarian Confederation had been run on teles. Personal communication devices and computers. When the empire fragmented, I think a big part of the devastation that followed came from our teles being disconnected. Every transaction, every interaction, was done via tele. All of a sudden they were gone and we had nothing to take their place.
Today, if you wanted to say hi to someone on another planet, you got in a ship, travelled anywhere from a few months to a few years, landed, got out and said hi. If the other planet wasn’t connected by a Portal, you couldn’t communicate with them at all. Those systems were lost.
Something was going to have to give. I felt like the city was barely holding itself together.
It was like someone dropping a single feather on your shoulders one after another. At first you don’t notice them at all, but eventually those feathers are going to crush you to death.
While I was deep in my ruminations, a man rolled up to my booth in a golden wheelchair.
He was an elderly man, but not ancient. He was, however, hooked up to numerous machines and wore a respirator to breathe.
“Hello, Zadeck,” I said.
Zadeck had been one of the younger crime bosses before Belvaille had moved. His claim to fame was he had a Therezian bodyguard named Wallow. Therezians were giants, thirty, forty, eighty feet tall, and nearly impervious. Wallow had been sucked out into space, however, ages ago.
Zadeck had adjusted and adjusted well. He was one of the most important crime bosses on Belvaille now. I didn’t know the extent of his activities, but I knew they were substantial.
He and I dealt with each other frequently. As a member of Old Belvaille, and specifically the gang culture, I liked talking to Zadeck far more than I did most people.
“Is now a good time?” Zadeck wheezed.
It wasn’t due to age that he had his gleaming medical devices. Zadeck had been shot numerous times. He was always a bit of a dandy, so his life support systems were plated in gold.
“It’s fine, Zadeck. How are you today?”
“Lower back is hurting more than usual. I’m trying to wean myself off pain relievers.”
“Good idea. Take it from a guy with permanently dull senses: you want to feel everything you can, while you can.”
He smiled.
“The election,” he said, tapping his fingers on the arm of his wheelchair, “how do you view it?”
I sighed.
“Honestly, I haven’t paid much attention. But everyone else seems to be.”
“Don’t underestimate its importance.”
“But why? The Governor and City Council. What will they do? I suspect nothing.”
“The people are pinning a lot of faith on them. Can’t you hear it on the loudspeakers? Every day it’s election this and election that. And on the street, folks are mad for it.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He looked at me slyly.
“Are you going to run for office?” he asked point-blank.
“What? No.”
He seemed to consider my response.
“Why, are you?” I asked him.
“No one would elect an unpopular invalid. I’ll keep my current businesses.”
“But it wouldn’t hurt you to be friends with the new government, assuming they have any power.”
“Of course.”
We both sat silently for some moments.
“I have some information for you, Hank.”
“What will it cost?”
“You can decide. 19-10 has come to Belvaille,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You really don’t keep track of anything off this station, do you?”
“I can’t keep track of what’s on this station.”
“19-10 is an assassin. A bounty hunter. Very famous across the galaxy. He wears a four-armed Colmarian Messahn battlesuit.”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“It was a weapon created during the war. Only a very few made. It can teleport. Like a Portal or an a-drive on a ship, but anywhere without limitations.”
That was something.
“So just pop across the galaxy? Or into someone’s house? How did that not stop the war? Or win it?”
“Well, I don’t know the specifics. This is just what I’ve heard,” he said.
“Hmm. So I’ll look around for someone with four arms, I guess. In a metal suit.”
“That’s just the first part. He’s here to kill you.”
“What did I do to him?”
“You do know how assassins work, right? Someone hired him.”
“Who?”
“That, I don’t know. But there are, as you must know, many contracts against you. When big name assassins take up a contract, they let everyone know, so other big names don’t interfere.”
“Well that’s courteous of them. Do you know anything else about him? Where he’s at or staying?”
“I don’t, unfortunately. But if I learn anything I’d be happy to tell you.”
I sat thinking about all this.
“I’m going out patrolling tomorrow,” I said finally. “Any recommendations?”