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I WAS RUDELY WOKEN by Tipper at 5:44. She was standing over my bed and ranting some crazy stuff about Hickster. I snapped awake, trying to drag the covers over me as Tipper kept trying to drag them off. Tyge appeared at my doorway and asked, in a way that managed to employ at least five expletives in a seven word sentence, “What’s going on?”
“Hickster’s gone and bloody topped himself!” replied Tipper at her usual volume.
“What?” I sprang out of bed. “Where? When? How?”
“In the main street, right in front of the Club!”
“Oh crap.” I sank back onto the bed, instantly destroyed by guilt. In a flash I saw everything flying away from me; my career, Sharp, everything! I was going to be found out!
“There’s no ‘oh crap’ about it!” Tipper told me fiercely, “Look at this!” She shoved a single sheet of plazper at me. I spread it out and started reading, but since it was Implant-enabled, I also heard it spoken to me in a simulacrum of Hickster’s mellifluous voice.
‘To The Only One Who Cared:’
‘Dear Doctor Bagel, thank you for your timely visit last night. Your message about my health could not have come at a better time. Since my most recent act of spite I have been seized by a terrible remorse. As I examine my life I finally see the pattern of my wicked ways and the reason for my lonely worthless decline these last fifteen years, trapped in this miserable body in this miserable backwater with no way out. No surprise that you saw the physical manifestation of my spiritual malaise, which I have intuitively known about for some time.’
‘Thus, as the only person to show me true concern for many years, I am leaving you all my material possessions (see Certified Final Will and Testament, attached). Please give Graves a respectful dis-assembly when he finally fails.’
‘I now go to my God, repentant in His All-knowing Sight.’
‘Yours sincerely, Amadeus P Hickster.’
“Fuck!” I said, boiling with ten different emotions, “This was not in the plan!”
“We know that, mate, we all know that.”
For once Tipper was patting me on the shoulder instead of trying to break it.
Tyge was on the other side, “We all know you were only trying to do well.”
“Me? Doing well? But I was a complete phony! A screaming fraud! I didn’t show him a scrap of concern! Quite the opposite, if anything!”
“He seemed to think so.”
“Yeah.”
“You really touched that man.”
“Sure did.”
I stared at the letter, reading and re-reading it, shaking my head in dismay. Finally I said, “So, was there a will like he mentioned?”
“Oh yeah, back there with Hickster, totally safe.”
“But, like, shouldn’t they be together? This and the will?”
“Who says?”
“Aren’t they legal documents?”
“Only the will.” Tipper eased the letter from my hands, “Seen enough?”
“Yeah. I mean it’s already imprinted on my brain!”
“Good.” And she promptly set fire to it.
“Whoa!”
She kept it away from me as it burned, dropping the last flaring corner into the sink. “There. We’re the only three people in this whole town who saw it. Isn’t that right, Tyge?”
Tyge raised her eyes to the ceiling and said, “What are we talking about again?” as Tipper washed the last of it down the plug hole. I was still in shock, sitting on the bed and muttering to myself like a lunatic. Suddenly, Tipper was over me.
“Come on! Up! We haven’t got much time.”
That did it. I sprang up for the second time, suddenly realising I still had a chance to save Hickster. The resuscitator! I flung on some clothes and sprinted to the op-room, shouting, “Hang on, I’ve gotta get some gear!” I grabbed the scanner again, plus a can of Kill&Chill, and sprinted back to the parking bay.
“What’s that for?” asked Tyge, seeing the can.
“I might still be able to save him!”
“You’re joking.”
“No! If I can freeze him down then I’ll have time to get the resuscitator set up. It’ll give him an extra hour. How long’s he been dead?”
Tipper just shrugged. “Dunno, mate. Looked pretty dead when I saw him.”
#
AND HE LOOKED JUST as dead once we got to the Club. Since Tipper’s sporty little spider was only a two-seater I sat on Tyge’s lap while Tipper drove. We parked in the garage and hurried through the empty, beer-sticky main room and out onto the street, twitching on our rain-capes and breathers as we went. Out in the street, in the bleary purple light of another dismal Crush morning, Stevedore, Notch, and Dob Bol the Mayor was standing gazing thoughtfully down at the ample form of Amadeus P. Hickster; neatly laid out on the road.
“We found him just like this,” said Tipper, “and we didn’t touch nothing.”
(Well, I thought, that certainly was the truth.)
“No breather,” commented the Mayor, crouching down to look a little closer, “Poor old bugger. Must have taken a funny turn and just went for a walk. What do you think, Doc?”
I already had the scanner on and gave it three slow passes. Nothing. Not a flicker. Two hours too late. Everything in his brain was gone. As useful as a bowl of custard.
Troubled by a thousand panicking thoughts, I slowly stood up, trying to think of something very neutral to say. “Classic Triple-A,” was all I could think of at first. [‘Alien-Atmosphere Asphyxiation’ FYI.] I gazed away along the taxi-way, then forced myself to look at Hickster once again. I felt like puking. “How long would it take him to walk here?”
Everyone shrugged and looked at one another. Nobody walked in Edgetown!
I added helpfully, “They did some experiments once – figured about seven or eight minutes was as long as anyone could survive in Crush air.”
They started nodding, “Mmm, yeah, that would about do it.” – “Yep, I reckon.” –“Be quite a walk, and he’d have to go a roundabout way.” – “Amazing he got this far.”
“Hello, what’s this?” said Tipper, bending down and pulling Hickster’s hands apart.
“Looks like a will,” said the Mayor. He took it up, turned it over twice, studied the main page laboriously, his lips actually moving as he read. “Dated today, 3:30am.”
He pulled out a device like an old-fashioned pen and scanned the page several times, then consulted a wrist-band screen. “It’s legit. Hickster lodged it official; 3:42 C.C. time.”
I watched as Dob Bol’s eyes resumed working on the document, and slowly his eyebrows went up. “Well I’ll be buggered!” he said when he'd finished, “Doc, I think this concerns you.” With wet eyes visible inside his breather field he passed it straight to me. I tried to be surprised as I read it through, then shook my head repeatedly, shrugging and gesturing helplessly. Unlike the other document, this one just referred to me as ‘the best thing ever to happen to this town’ and ‘the man known to all as Doctor Bagel’. I began to breathe a little easier. There was no reference to my late-night visit. No hint that I’d impersonated a doctor of medicine. I passed the will on to Tipper, knowing she must have already read it. She grabbed it and began reading as if with great interest.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” Dob was saying, shaking me warmly by the hand, “Terrible tragedy. Great loss to the town. Bloody excellent!” I could see his gleaming smile, genuinely happy as far as I could tell. I tried to remember if he had been at the Club last night. Surely this was not just a huge elaborate sham?
“Well,” said Bol, stretching as if he’d been hard at work for hours, “think I’ll head up the mansion and just check everything’s in order. If his breather’s still there then the case is closed far as I’m concerned.”
“I’ll give you a lift, mate,” said Notch, “Wouldn’t trust a taxi in this weather.” He and Bowle turned towards the club. I opened my mouth to call them back when Tyge grabbed me painfully and turned me around.
“Doc,” she hissed, “don’t blow it.”
“But...”
“But nothing! Hickster would’ve done this no matter what you did!”
I blew my stack. (Call me stressed.) “He was a sick man! I used a real scanner, real settings, and guess what: his liver was trashed! Two weeks to live, maybe less. I actually told him three. Because, because I was still trying to push your little scheme! I told him he’d need money, I really worked him over! So if it wasn’t for trying to save the Club, he wouldn’t be dead right now. So yeah – I could’ve saved him!”
There was a moment of silence. Stevedore stood a little way off; towering, silent, and for all I knew terminally stupid. Tipper and Tyge looked at me in what I took to be a suitable degree of shock and awe, and a big change in attitude. So I thought.
“What the hell for!?” Tyge unexpectedly raged back at me, “So he could be a miserable creep for another fifty years? What the hell good is all your fancy medicine when people don’t even have anything left to live for!?”
Boy, I’d really touched one of her buttons.
She was glaring at me, and I had no answer. (More to the point I had several answers but I decided it was in my best interests not to engage in a philosophical debate right then.)
Tipper slid between us smoothly, took us both by the arm and began propelling us towards the Club. “You ever tried coffee, Doc?” She casually asked.
Nice distraction. I panicked. “Isn’t it illegal!?”
“Not here. This planet was set up by scientists, remember? They’re addicted to the stuff, especially if it comes in a styrofoam cup. Come on.”
Tipper, as I’ve mentioned before, can be very persuasive. I let myself be carried away from the bulbous body in the street. Hickster’s yellow puffy face slowly peeled open in the acid rain as Stevedore unrolled a long plastic bag and got to work.
#
SOMEONE WENT OFF TO advise the local Kirrikibat crews that I was taking the day off. Apparently the Kirrikibati all agreed it was a good idea. Besides, I had them up to scratch by then. Hell: I could have taken a week off. After this new experience (coffee) which I had long wondered about, (and which perked me up considerably!) and a big plate of something they called bacon which apparently is made in a meat vat just like no-kill steak, we sat around discussing the situation. My main problem was that I still couldn’t accept Hickster’s death had actually happened, something everyone else seemed to have already moved on from.
“But, this can’t be official?” I pleaded with Dob Bowl.
“All done, mate.” He flipped open his wrist device and peered at the shimmering display that popped up, “I logged my report at 6:14 this morning – death by suicide; no suspicious circumstances. So yep, it’s legit. You're suddenly the big man in town. Oh and here’s your keys. Now I’m dying to ask, Doc, I know you’re probably in shock and all that but, ah, what're you gonna do with it all?”
I hesitated, glancing towards Tipper and Tyge. They made that ‘zip your lip’ gesture, with Tyge adding some interpretive dance which I took to mean ‘or I’ll slit your throat’.
But damn it! What about ethics? What about the truth?
“Well,” I hesitantly began, “I really have to confess...” Tyge redoubled her glare, “...that I don’t feel like I deserve it. Because, ah, if the truth be known...” Those eyes again, sort of pleading this time. “...this town needs it a lot more than I do. So, um ... Aw cripes, let’s go take a look at this other club, shall we?”
“Alright!” Stevedore stood up and pulled out a crowbar, a wild gleam in his eye.
#
IT WAS A SHORT STROLL along the main street of Edgetown. We reached a rust-stained building much like all the rest and Stevedore forced the lock open. There was a faint hiss of air as the pressures equalized. We slipped inside. Tipper lifted her breather ring and cautiously tested the air. “Not bad. Power must still be on.”
I kept mine on. No point in following Hickster quite so soon.
“Needs more light,” muttered Stevedore. He forced open the inner door and trooped away into the gloomy interior. There was a crash of furniture toppling to the floor followed by a curse. A few seconds later we heard the distant ‘chunk’ of old relays kicking in.
The lights came on.
“Wow!” I said involuntarily.
The place was a tip but behind the dust and rubbish and fallen stacks of unbolted tables I could still appreciate its former grandeur. It was definitely bigger than the Crush Club, way way bigger, and done out in a very old style. I’d be guessing here but maybe twentieth century, very decorative with lots of columns and statues of animals in alcoves and back-lit curving walls and stuff. Honestly, I was stunned. I’d spent months on this dismal planet becoming accustomed to everything being brutal, ugly, all the pipes and the repairs and the dirt and rust. This was like a miracle.
I eased off my breather ring and tried the air too. Stale, but breathable. Stevedore was studying a gadget he’d invented: ‘Air Gauge’ he called it. Not very imaginative.
“It’s safe,” he announced, “No leaks.”
“Let’s find the kitchen,” said someone.
We blundered about, took a few wrong turns in the back corridors, and found it.
“Nice,” grunted Notch, looking around. Stevedore ran his hand appreciatively across the stainless steel counter tops, bulldozing up a thick roll of dust. He carefully tipped it into a bin standing empty amidst the chaos of garbage littering the floor.
My brain was racing. I didn’t want the burden of owning or running an entertainment venue. (I, of course, had also just inherited Hickster’s license. Frighteningly neat. Not that I believed in the devil but it was all too easy to imagine him laughing about this!) Nope – it was just not my scene, not in this town, not in any town! It did not fit my visualisations! I’d be compromised. Badly compromised. And if Panther got wind of this... No: if I wanted to achieve my goals it was time to take some decisive action.
“You know what I’m thinking?” I said.
“What?” asked Tipper, worried.
I turned to Komodo. “What do you think?”
He just grunted.
“Could be your answer?”
Nothing. Just one natural eye peering at me suspiciously, and his unreadable cyborg eye.
“You want to get shut down?” I asked, getting bolder, “You want the Authority to crap all over you? Or do you want this? My license; this building; and your expertise. And the piano of course. What do you say?”
“A partnership?” Komodo’s voice sounded deadly at the best of times. Now twice so.
“Y-yeah.” Not precisely what I had in mind, but I had to be agreeable to something.
“I never do partnerships,” he growled.
Tipper leaned over suddenly and whacked Komodo over his one remaining eye-ridge. The leathery spikes flopped back and forth a moment. “Listen you dopey lizard! The man’s offering you the deal of the century! Take it! Take it!!”
Komodo glared at her, his back ridge pulsing with angry colour. I think if it had been anyone else but Tipper he would have ripped her apart.
She glared back. “It’s the Doc,” she added, “You can trust him.”
I cringed at that.
Komodo’s beady eye flicked this way and that, then the colours melted as his skin returned to its usual muddy green. “Partnership?” he repeated.
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to quiver inside, “I mean, I’ll be like the ... the ...” (what was the expression?) “.. silent partner! Yeah, but you’ll have full operational control. Manager.”
His peculiar pair of eyes flicked around the glorious kitchen, then peered out the serving hatch at the enormous main room beyond. I knew what he was probably thinking: about an inspection by the CEA and the inevitable demise of the Crush Club.
Still he did not answer. I turned to Stevedore.
“Hey, you reckon you could get a new sign up by tomorrow night?”
“What sign?”
I spread my arms wide above my head, “The New Crush Club!”
Tipper gave out a cheer worth twenty other people. Tyge joined in. Notch was grinning. Even Stevedore cracked a shy smile. We all turned to Komodo.
“Yeah,” he said slowly, “yeah why not. Sod the bloody CEA! Let’s just give them the total bloody run-around while we start this up!”
Another cheer. Laughter. Relief.
“Yep,” said Tipper, glancing at her mates, “we’ll get this place going again, won’t we?” They nodded, looking a little troubled about something I couldn’t quite figure, but before I had time to ask about it Tipper gave me a rib-creaking hug and said, “Isn’t this guy just the greatest! Come on, let’s go have another coffee!”