Steven Campbell - Suck My Cosmos

I heard a woosh and there was suddenly a stack of papers next to me on the ground. I picked it up and began leafing through it. It must have been 150 pages of small fonts. When did they manage to write this?

I guessed I made about 500,000 credits a year—I wasn’t entirely sure, Cliston kept track of everything. It was just enough to stay alive and live in Belvaille style.

Credits were our new form of currency. I hated them. They were tiny plastic ribbons with electronics in them. They were super easy to lose and, in my case, accidentally tear.

Flipping through the City Council contract, I saw so many numbers. Numbers and numbers and numbers. And none of them were round numbers. They hated zeroes. I stopped on the fourth page and read something about what I would be reimbursed for parking on holidays. There’s just no way they wrote this in a day. They must have used a pre-existing contract.

I tried to find a subtotal somewhere but I didn’t see one.

“You don’t have to give us your answer now,” the Trade Councilman said testily.

I had been standing here for some minutes as civilization’s lawmakers watched me read.

“Oh, right. Okay,” I said, putting the contract under my arm. I already knew I was going to say yes. The pay was huge. If I did nothing but park on holidays I would make more than I do now.

And it would make me like…a real guy to be working directly for the City Council. I could get good jobs after this and not just ones where I had to locate someone’s lost dog. I’d let them know in a few days so I wouldn’t seem desperate.

They dismissed me and I made my way out of City Hall, a huge smile on my face.

“You know me, Hank, I’ll give you a fair deal if you’re the one that done it. You and I go a long way back. But that won’t stop me from busting you,” MTB said, as soon as I stepped foot outside.

He was leaning against the wall, waiting for me.

“Did what?” I asked, confused.

“Killed Ray’Ziel.”

I snorted so hard I almost inhaled my nose.

“Do you think I murdered Ray’Ziel and then got myself hired to find his killer?” I asked, waving my contract.

“I think that’s exactly what you did. I’ve known you to do worse in the past.”

“Worse, maybe, but not even I could pull off a trick like that. I’m not a magician. You should be looking for some bald mutants. Or robots. Kind of my size. I saw them at the explosion.”

“Big bald mutant robot bombers?” MTB asked woodenly.

It did sound kind of dumb.

“Don’t you have other things to do than hassle me?” I asked.

“This is my job. Killing a City Councilman. That’s Old Belvaille. Man that gets arrested for that is going to have his head chopped off and mounted at the port.”

“Good luck cutting through this thick neck, MTB.”

“For you, Hank, I think the executioner would take as long as he had to.”

“Lift your foot please,” Cliston said, as he was dressing me.

I had to go to a funeral and had no idea what to wear. Cliston usually dressed me when it came to things like this. At first I would only take his suggestions, feeling stupid having another person, or robot, in his case, put on my clothes. But he did it faster and better and it left me able to do other things.

Like try and understand this contract.

“I should be hiring some new kitchen and cleaning staff,” Cliston stated.

“What? I can barely afford what I have.”

I turned to him, but he gently straightened my head so I wouldn’t crease my clothes.

“I see that is a new work order, however.”

I didn’t mind Cliston reading over my shoulder. He probably couldn’t help it. He could see a speck of dust from across the room and make it wish it had never been specked.

“Can you make sense of this?” I asked him.

“It is dependent upon duration. But overall it seems a substantial increase on what you normally manage to earn, sir.”

“How substantial?”

“Orders of magnitude,” he said.

“What do I get if I actually find the killer? Is there some big bonus at the end?”

“The contract is completed from what I gather.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you call me a cab?” I asked Cliston sheepishly. He disliked me riding in them. He felt they were undignified and dirty. He had been trying to strong arm me into buying my own car, but they were far too expensive.

“I believe mistress Garm will be offering you a ride in her vehicle,” he said.

“Garm?”

The doorbell rang. I felt a small gust of air as Cliston accelerated out of the room, down the hall, and to the front door, which he answered a few seconds after the bell.

I looked at myself in the mirror. It was not difficult getting used to having the greatest butler on Belvaille. I looked like a million credits. My clothes fit well and were not terribly uncomfortable despite their appearance.

I exited my dressing room and Cliston was back in front of me. I don’t know how he got around so fast without shattering all my furniture, but he did.

“Mistress Garm here to see you. Should I say you are available?”

“I’ll go. Thank you, Cliston.”

“Very good, sir.”

He took off to make sure every beam of light in the house was evenly distributed.

Garm was at the front door dressed all in black. Black synth. Thigh-high boots. A leather mini-skirt. A short jacket that exposed her mid-riff and forearms.

“Garm,” I said. “What pretext brings you here?”

“Tamshius is being put to rest.”

“You hated Tamshius,” I said skeptically. “And you’re not exactly in mourning attire.”

Garm and Tamshius had come from the same solar system, though different planets. They always despised one another.

“We all pay our respects differently,” she answered.

We rode in her armored limousine to the funeral.

“I heard you were hired to find out who killed the City Councilman,” she said, as soon as we started moving. Clearly Garm was searching for something.

“Maybe,” I said, trying to be evasive.

“Tell me honestly, did you kill him?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me what you were doing there after the bomb went off.”

She chewed that over.

“The Quadrad were hired to protect him,” she conceded.

“Hah!” I blurted, before I saw her scowl. “You serious? That can’t be good for your reputation.”

“It isn’t. Now, did you kill him?”

“Why would I kill a City Councilman? I wouldn’t take that job no matter what they paid me. And bombs aren’t exactly my style.”

“You don’t even have a style. Your butler has style,” she said.

“So why do you want to know about Ray’Ziel? Your job failed. You can’t resurrect him,” I said.

“We were also hired to avenge him if he was killed.”

Typical Garm. She didn’t tell me that part beforehand. If I had confessed to the murder, would she have attacked me in this car? She couldn’t hurt me directly, but she knew that, and she was hardly a novice at tactics.

“Man, it seems like everyone is looking for his killer,” I said.

“Who else is?”

“MTB. And I guess his Central Officers. Though he thinks I did it,” I sulked.

“People know you’re short on money.”

“Really? How?”

She shrugged.

“You’re living on Belvaille and don’t own any planets.”

“ You don’t own any planets,” I countered.

“No, but I work for people who do. But maybe we can help each other,” she offered.

“Are you going to kill the murderers if we find them?”

“What do you care, if you solve the case?”