BOOK FIVE - !JOB¡
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN -
“SIKKEN’S DEAL!”
Broonzy,
slumping in one of the handicap seats facing the driver on a mag car older and
dirtier than the ones in Tao City, juggles Pfloger’s
briefcase between his knees, humming a little ditty currently racing to the top
of the charts on kasqube-4. There are only three passengers on board… one of
whom is a plud, an old woman asleep and snoring
gently… plus the driver. Marge, the name tag on her uniform reads…
she’s mature, talkative and somewhat attractive.
If you like bovihydes, plud bovies. And Broonzy does…
North Dixon, away from the red, glowing methyards,
is grayish white, uniform and dispiriting… at least this sector of it. “That looks like a nice briefcase,” Marge
observes. “Are you a business man?”
Broonzy
checks left, then right, to see whether either of the other passengers is
paying attention. Both are kids, lost in
the device that they wear over their eyes and ears, like sunglasses.
“Why yes,” he smiles, “that's exactly what I am. I'm in business.”
Marge nods. “I can tell.
You're from out of town!” she winks. “We
don't have so many good-looking men in
“What a shame! All the fine ladies…” Broonzy
sighs, with an air of deep regret, “…nobody to keep them warm of a night. Must
get cold here!”
“Colder than a Regent's tit!” the driver snorts… a Taurean snort…
“I can get behind that.”
The passenger leans forward. “I'm
Broonzy… C. Braxton Broonzy
of Terra, OCS, DPC, LLE…”
“So many credintials!” the driver
marvels. “I’m Marge – just Marge will
do; I gave back my husband’s name when I divorced the bastard.”
“Men can be that,” Broonzy allows, and
then there is a buzz - Marge slows the mag to a stop to allow one of the
passengers, a furtive teenager probably taking advantage of the reddish snow to
skip school, to get off and do whatever the jam kids do in this wasteland.
“So…” Marge picks up the conversation, “what brings you to
“Business, of course!”
And he hesitates, wondering how much to risk. “Actually, I'm hoping that there's a mall at
the end of this line… a mall, or, at least, an office supply shop. Need to pick up some supplies before heading
back to Marrack…”
“From the big city, eh?
Well,” Marge gestures with one hand off the wheel and coughs, “h-hate to
disappoint you, but there ain't any mall at the end
of this line… just a couple houses and the middle school. And the paint
factory. You looking for paint?”
A second buzz sounds and the other passenger, the kid with all
of the gear weighing down his face, steps off… the elderly woman appears to
still be sleeping – mouth open, dentures rattling with every breath...
“Actually,” Broonze venturs carefully, “I sort of hoped I might find a place
where I could get a car. Mine broke down…” he shrugged.
Marge snorts again and her passenger nots just the ghost of
little horns atop her eyebrows.
Devilish. “You mean you hoped to
find a place to steal a car,” she
chortles. “You said "get", not
"rent" or “buy”. I'm not without experience you know? And you, you're one of those monkey
businessmen.”
Broonzy
weighs his options, bouncing his briefcase on his toes. “And if I am?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” says Marge, “I could rent… that's rent…
you a car, but my jammin’ husband took it! Got everything! That's why I'm driving a mag and he's out
there in the house I paid for, mostly, watching the sims
on his backside with a bottle until he passes out…”
“Sounds like you got a sikken's deal…”
Broonzy commiserates.
Marge leans over towards the handicap seats. “It's because I got a jacket… just a little
one. Kid stuff, stupid. Everybody's done something wrong one time or
another, right? Except Gus never gets caught… he has connections. Not
that it's over, I mean… we're separated, actually, not divorced… he prefers it
that way. Sack o’rawth
disappears tonight, I'd be back in the saddle.”
She has big, cow eyes, but her pupils are hard and dark, like
wolves’. “And I bet that it is one
mighty fine saddle at that,” Broonzy smiles.
And she smiles back. “It would
be a shame… real shame… if Gus finally got what was coming to him. He had
nothing when I married him, no connections even… they were all my
relatives. My late relatives, unfortunately.
They told me he was no good, and they were right. Sorry-ass jammin'
double-crosser… nobody would look hard if something were to happen to him, shurts would write it off as a makhbool
who shivved the wrong people. Know what I mean?”
“Exactly!” Broonzy agrees.
Their eyes lock. “Go on…”
“Danks like Gus… most keep a pile of
money around, when they got it, but he's got his hidden away in Tao City, some
of it. On Upsilon, Terra, even. I know where it is and how to get it… courts
gave him custody of the joint accounts but they automatically revert to me. So
I couldn't pay somebody much now, to do the right thing, but I could owe
somebody…”
Broonzy’s
face has the long, sometimes mournful mouth of a equi
and when he rubs his chin, he has the aspect of a serious jim, thinking seriously. “You say Gus has a car?”
“Cammarata 2083,” Marge answers. “Sweet little heather, do you hundred ninety
klicks without even shaking. He used to
brag about all the roadshurts that he’d left behind…”
A few minutes later the bus slows on a cul-de-sac off its normal
route…, Al-from-down-the-hall remembering Broonzy's
story…
Al, again, Al-from-down-the-hall. That was some story Mister Broonzy told me over a few too many frooms
at al-Gool.
Why he would never profit from the life of crime, in the end, I don’t
give a rawth, but there’s danks
around, listening to bools in the Klubs and then
selling their rawth to the shurts. Broonzy swore he
never meant to kill the jim,
just check the place out, locate the hover and use the password Marge gave him
take off. Well, if the guy was passed
out the way that driver said he was, half the time, he might come inside, look
around for any skilk in plain sight, maybe a little
extra for his trouble. But things have a way of turning out bool when you least
expect. Just happens. Maybe Rassoul knows why, as Old
Believers say, maybe nobody does. Takes
all kinds to make a world… faq?
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