BOOK TEN - !BEZENDˇ
CHAPTER THIRTY - “
Don't make excuses much,
not no more, me being the Al as what I am... just an accumulation of choices
happened over years... solyears, Die-years, whatever
the jammed reckonings of time and life... and, after all is said and done, most
of these choices never amounted to real choices after all. And the few that
were turn out to mostly have been pretty small ufts
at the time.
I coulda
hopped this one ship out to Cyg Nine before they
discovered the funduck beds, got rich, built myself a domed house behind a gate. Four
wives, kids up to my armpits grown up to be Regency boffs
or lawyers, rawth like that. Coulda hopped another and wound up in the middle of the Apaxin Wars, mawted or in the beed for life. Choices... and choices.
Rateyes never really had any... he was what he was
and bound for where he was goin’; it was only a
matter of when and how he'd get there. Now you take the swobs off Aegelweiss...
Turpin and Broonzy... guess you could say they had
choices, though you'd have to look under a micron glass to find 'em when they really mattered. Maybe not in Broonzy’s case…that was a surprise.
Someone told me, once, how
youth is wasted on the young. I guess it must be faq... seems an old shkook
can't walk up half a block without geening over a
pack of roar-sodden prekts, if they don't geen you over first. Just goes to prove my point... you
choose to walk down that street, at that time or, knowing (or having a pretty
fair rook about) the lay of the landscape, you choose to be otherwheres.
Intifaq?
Lotta Joes choose their own roads to
Johanna... and as for them others as don't have a clue, that's why God made
evolution, to mention an old Rassoulian hum that I
may have mixed up a bit. But I never said I threw much faith by yant, nor judgment. All straight lines wind up in the Bezend, eventually. Hai Rassoul!
Rateyes...
he never brings the boneship back to Tony's. Swollen
with plasma from the 'roid ilaam,
he makes a wobbly course for
"Guys?
My crew... Turp and Broonze,"
Rateyes introduces. "How's the Collector doin'?"
"Ar'right! Gif!"
Davey waves, "I got all these joes' expenses...
rent, caffa..."
"We got our own fuel coming," Rats volunteers.
"So... if we could have a little privacy, intifaq?" the fixer winks.
"Sure, Davey."
Maloom gathers up his clipboards, joes
like him always carry clipboards. The better to clip you with, right? Sorry! Got to know that jammer working for the Regency customshouse and with the unloaders... figure about a third
of the freight coming through Brownsville gets boosted, maybe a little less on
that what’s already been kipped. "Nice meeting you, Doc..." Gif
adds.
"Any port rules we oughtta know
about?" Rats asks.
"Try not to run that rawth of a boneship into anything expensive, faq?" says Maloof, waves his clipboards and
vanishes.
"Good man, keeps his mouth shut.
Gif knows more about nothing and less about everything than any three Regency joes at Passport." Turning to Turpin and Broonzy, Davey explains: "Sometimes I do a job or two
for this rich jim who likes
collecting. Art, ladies, wine... and especially chimes… by which is not meant
the more bestial variety of hydes
but, rather, old broadcast signals from what they used to call
television..."
"Before moodboxes..." Broonze remembers, furrowing his brow, "I’ve heard of
them!"
"For about a century, during and after Dispersal,
televisions sort of hitchhiked on these waves of programs flying out into space
towards the galaxy center... translated them but didn't intercept 'em. This would be eight, nine hundred years back... so
we're talking needles in haystacks except the few as fell into snakes... some,
eventually, into Nag and got shot out near Bezend.
And it's illegal and it's dangerous, but there's a way of bringin’
'em back alive, so to speak. Doc here's a Chimerian...
a catcher... already been on two expeditions for the boss... he'll take care of
the tech rawth for you."
Never met Kollucks myself but, from what Broonzy
tells, he talked like one of those perfessors at the
Regency junior smazes; joes too smart for their own good. Slow, careful...
dragging words as if they were sols out of his own pocket Crooked as a mountain magline…
"May I assume your familiarity with streamer
technology?" Kollucks ventures.
"Sure!" Rats pipes up. "Only we're apt to call it
sucking, like as not!" and he waves one of his twitchy fingers round in a
circle to, enclosing the three of them.
"A variant of streaming can intercept chimes... remove
blocs of up to seven seconds' duration," the Doc says and, as Broonzy told Al, demonstrates what his words were to mean
with his own gestures as if speaking to a trinity of idiots. "These can be
brought back through the snake and reconstituted. The act is simple: point,
shoot and then, if you will… suck them off the horizon. The complication is
that the oldest chimes... alaams, those which are
most desirable to collectors... are nearest Bezend. That’s where the Regency probably found
inspiration for its ghastly advertising signposts, ilaams," he appends, with a pedantic smirk.
"So if we get too close, chasing the good rawth..." Broonzy draws the
conclusion, "...we get sucked in ourselves! Pffht!"
"That's the risk involved," Davey admits, "one of
them, that and the shurts and the snake itself. It's why
the Collector pays big money."
"How big?"
Rats ventures.
"For successful transport and
return... a million soys.
And, as Doc'll explain, there's a bonus... a bounty,
call it... could go up high as ten for certain rare, previously unobtainable alaams."
"Well..." Rats says, glancing
at Turp and Broonzy.
"I'm in!" Broonzy jumps up.
But Turpin hesitates...
"Fifty thousand soys in
advance," Rats offers, glancing from Turp to Broonzy, then back again. "Each. Minimum! ‘Nother fifty for th
rental on Marina.” Broonzy snickers, but the
gambler ignores him. “Bonus to be
determined when we bring back our catch.”
Davey nods. “So long, jammin'
Andromeda...” Rats signs on.
"I'll do it!" Turpin agrees.
Now that wasn't the choice
I was geening you about, that
was a money-choice... simple, with a little intimidation thrown in. Who wants
to look joob in front of buddies, especially when
your choice to joob out cancels their choices? Nobody
else on the Baawl would've had anything to do with
Rats except sikken without even a prayer of getting
the job done. That decision was deenamee... it just
led to another, and then the next.
In fact, the both of them
were so confident of wealth just around the corner that they check out of the
Andromeda a day early, forfeiting six soys rent and
delighting Gargareeva because he could let the rooms
out by the hour to heathers, off the books, and if the shurts
come round, he could just show them ledgers saying that 613 and 801 were
occupied by a couple of snakers and, if any rawth was going on, it was their fault, not his. A clean establishment – not his fault if a coupla
unclean jims happened by! It was just
barely after dawn... the artificial dawn of
"Keep safe you!"
Gargareeva snuffles. “Always with you Rassoul, blessed be..."
"Thanks," Broonze replies. "Ad valorum!"
It was as if, Broonzy said, the Andromeda manager was just about to break
into tears and, since Gargareeva didn't have a
sentimental wart on his spotted hide, maybe it is true about Old Believers and he'd rooked
something. Don't say I believe, don't say otherwise...
there's still a Johanna's ark of mysteries in this old galaxy, despite the wise
guys as say they've rooked everything out. Never did like to judge, I'll remind
you, well... except once...
None of your business,
that!
go
BACK