Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (25 page)

“Because that is not what the city
wants.”

“Sure it does,” I countered. “A bunch of
people just came to me and said so.”

“If it was, the Boards would already
show it.”

“Why do you keep pretending that the
Boards are some intelligent things? They’re just guys yelling at each other and
your employees with chalk. Companies are going to go bankrupt and people are
going to starve.”

“Then that is what the market demands.”

“Every person, every company, every
Kommilaire on this station has a value that is represented on the Board. Not
always directly, but indirectly. Some will fall, fail, or die, others will rise,
succeed, or be born.”

Wow. I really needed to get a
translator. Because I totally didn’t get these guys.

“So you’re saying I’m listed on the
Boards?” I asked.

“Your value is implied.”

“And likely far-reaching given your
status. But it would be difficult to extrapolate.”

That didn’t help.

“Death is as necessary to competitive growth
as life,” an Ank said.

“That’s fine, as long as it’s not people
dying,” I replied.

“Sometimes that is exactly what is
required by the market. If a person is overvalued they should either be
adjusted or eliminated so that someone more appropriate may take their place.”

I blinked a few times. I didn’t talk to
the Ank a lot, but:

“What the crap!”

“You do the same yourself when you
remove undesirables to the Royal Wing, as it is called. That is what the Boards
do, but they do it with everything on Belvaille.”

“And they are always correct. Every man
has his value.”

“Too true,” the other Ank replied.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t
understand everything they spouted, but it seemed clear they weren’t going to adjust
their omniscient Board prices.

“We do have concerns over the recent
candidates,” an Ank said.

I looked around, waiting for 19-10 to
appear out of nothingness.

“I think maybe you guys should stay out
of politics,” I replied hastily.

“We had warned you that certain
politicians were detrimental to the health of the market. Their activity—”

“As well as your own recent activity.”

“Has caused the Boards to respond in their
current manner. Much to your consternation, it seems. The markets dislike
doubt.”

“So, you’re saying I should have not
allowed Hong, and people like that, to run for office? Physically stopped him? Yet
you won’t walk thirty feet outside, take a piece of chalk and change the Boards,
even though doing so would have exactly the same results?”

“The Boards merely respond to,
anticipate—”

“Aggregate, and display events. They
aren’t events themselves.”

“Sure they are! People can’t buy food,
that’s a thing. It’s a real life happening!” I yelled.

“As the market demands.”

I blew a lot of calories by throwing up
my arms in frustration.

“So what do you want me to do? How do we
fix the Boards?”

“The Boards are inherently correct—”

“You said that, already. But let’s
pretend they aren’t. How do we get them back to the
old
correct when
people and businesses and the city could actually function?”

“You must reassure the market. Belvaille
and its denizens are less valuable today because everyone believes they are
less valuable.”

I couldn’t speak Ank apparently.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Make it valuable again.”

I realized I didn’t know how to do that.
But I knew people who might be able to help.

“What the crap is this?” I asked.

I was surrounded by humble, obsequious
prisoners of the Royal Wing who had just handed me the outline for their new
laws. They stood on stacks of building materials, and clung to pipes and their
makeshift homes so they could get a better view of me.

I had a hope that if anyone could help
me make Belvaille “valuable” again, it would be these guys. They had a true
outsider’s perspective and could tell me what was good about the city and what
was good about society in general. Then I could propose doing that on
Belvaille.

But they had given me one full page. And
it was only a full page because they had written it in large type. Presumably
so they wouldn’t tax my failing eyesight.

If I could sum up the handful of laws it
would be: “don’t be a meanie-face.”

“Those are our laws,” Uulath, the mayor
of Royal Wing, stated nervously. “That’s what we came up with.”

“These aren’t laws. You can’t follow
this. Don’t you guys know what laws are? How is anyone ever going to know if
you broke the law? This is all subjective.”

Uulath got cautiously annoyed.

“We already had laws. You told us to
make new ones,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “let me see your old
laws. Maybe we could start from there.”

“I didn’t…they weren’t really written
down,” Uulath stammered, looking around at his fellow prisoners.

“How did you know what they were, then?”

“I said you were my inspiration. I kind
of made them up as necessary,” Uulath replied.

The people around us grumbled loudly,
like a whole lot of engines had lost a whole lot of teeth on their gears.

No wonder everyone hated me. I’d been
doing what Uulath did for decades.

I crumpled up the paper.

“Well, this won’t do. You need to write
some better laws. Way better,” I said.

“We’re not judges, Kommilaire,” one
prisoner complained. He was a bald man, thin and dirty. He was a former slaver
as I recall.

“If we knew laws we wouldn’t be here,”
another added. The one who said it was a young man who had screwed over the
wrong gang and when he went to trial, they threw him in here, even though his
crimes were insubstantial.

“Give us an example! A hint at least,”
Uulath pleaded.

All the prisoners grew deathly quiet and
leaned forward. I couldn’t leave them with nothing. Not after I had planted
this hope in them.

“Uh…don’t, like, kill other
people…unless they, like, tried to kill you first…and even then, like, if you
killing them back might hurt other people, not…involved, then, like…don’t do
it.”

Man, writing laws was hard.

The prisoners started repeating it
religiously. Scribbling it on the ground. On scraps of paper.

“Don’t, like, kill other people!”

“Might, like, hurt other people!”

“Take out the ‘likes’ and pauses and
make it sound good,” I warned. “This is your Constitution.”

“What’s a Constitution?” Uulath asked.

“I don’t know, just write similar stuff.
But more. And better. That’s just me talking. You guys got time to think this
through.”

“Should there be one about taking other
people’s buckets?” a man asked me, raising his hand. He had a puckered old face
and his mouth seemed to sink almost to his throat as he breathed.

“I don’t know. I mean, stealing
probably. If that’s a big thing for you guys,” I said uncertainly.

“What about lying about taking someone’s
bucket?” another man asked, scowling at the first man.

“Is it okay to kill someone if they
killed a member of your family?”

“What if you’re in a gang war? People
used to kill each other all the time. Are gang wars against the Constitution?”

“What if someone is going to steal from
you and you can’t stop them unless you kill them? Or if you don’t know that you
might hurt someone else, because they’re maybe hiding in a garbage can.”

Alright, I was done.

Valia had been right. These were not the
people to make a utopian society. And I was obviously not going to be Hank the
Lawbringer.

“You guys need to work this out for
yourselves. As a group,” I rambled. “I’ll be back and evaluate your progress.”

I felt like I should at least reward
them for trying. I could see they were giving it thought. Just sociopathic,
criminal, get-me-out-of-Royal Wing thought.

“Is there anything you all need?” I
asked Uulath.

“Well, since I can’t reward anyone with
wives anymore. Could you bring some new mattresses? A comfortable bed is as
good as being a monarch here.”

“Sure,” I said.

The prisoners were all debating and
arguing loudly. They’d probably start killing each other soon.

It was presumably still legal since the
law hadn’t been codified yet.

The Poop Wars had started.

Or at least that’s what I called them.
All the candidates of all stripes were taking to the airwaves, to fliers, to
posters, to newspapers, to word-of-mouth, and mercilessly skewering one
another.

It began innocently enough: “Hobardi
lacks experience and he will pull the city into a theocracy based on his own
religion.”

About a week later it became: “there are
independent reports that Peush is working for the Dredel Led to sell Colmarians
as feedstock to the Boranjame.”

This was going back and forth
constantly. My only take on it was the candidates felt they couldn’t really
resort to violence to win—because I told them they couldn’t, and they had seen
how it had negatively impacted Hong and his Totki Clan—and so they were trying
to get ahead in the polls by hurling turds at one another.

I don’t even think any of them had given
their positions on issues. Stating your position might piss people off who
disagreed with you. But attacking someone else only hurt them, especially if
you did it through third parties.

If the times weren’t so serious, it
would be comical. But the Boards were still a mess and I couldn’t figure out
what to do. Fortunately, I had been wrong and people weren’t rioting due to the
prices.

Everyone was spending all their money on
food or pawning their hard assets to make up the shortfall. But that couldn’t
last forever. Money lenders were charging exorbitant rates.

I lumbered into the Belvaille Athletic
Gentleman’s Club heavy with thought and empty of stomach.

“Secretary. Secretary!” Someone called.

I wasn’t used to being referred to as Secretary
of City yet, so I didn’t answer at first.

“Huh?”

Two men ran up to me, holding some
papers. One was breathless and agitated and he wore a complicated array of
lenses on his face to correct his vision. The other man had a bushy beard and
bushy arm hair and was wearing business clothes, but not very well.

“You need to invalidate Hong as a
candidate,” the eyeglassed man said.

“Why?”

He shoved the paper in my face like he
wanted me to eat it.

“Haven’t you read?”

“Hong is a spy for the Moluk-teen Regime!”
The bushy man said.

“The what?”

The two men looked at each other like I
was an imbecile. And maybe I was. But not because of this.

“The Moluk-teen Regime. They’re trying
to recolonize Belvaille. That’s why the Totki carry spears.”

“They are radio antennas.”

I stood there a long moment. I just
couldn’t bring myself to answer.

“Haven’t you heard of this? You’re
Secretary of City.”

“And Supreme Kommilaire. If anyone
should—”

“Guys,” I said, holding up my hands.

They looked at me with expectant eyes, their
mouths poised in mid-jabber.

“Piss off,” I said.

I walked to my booth and ordered an
extra helping of sandwiches. I was almost tempted to order the meat cake thing.

“Sorry, sir. No sandwiches left,” the
Dredel Led server said.

“How did that happen?” The club was
never out of food. They just served old stuff if they had to.

“The wholesalers are not making their
usual shipments. Apologies.”

Alright, now we had a problem.

I struggled to my feet and looked across
the room. All kinds of deals were going on here. Gangs were fighting. They were
resolving conflicts. There were mergers. Acquisitions. New companies being
formed. Turf was being divided. Products being designed. Products being
diluted.

But no one was eating. And there was a
definite air of desperation over my familiar club.

“Hey. Everyone,” I said.

No one turned. Even the people who heard
me didn’t turn for long.

I took out two pistols and started
firing randomly, just above everyone’s heads, forcing them to the floor.