Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (26 page)

One guy returned fire until I glared at
him. He put his gun down.

“Hey. Uh. If you wanted me to fix the
economy. Make Belvaille more valuable. What would you want me to do? As Supreme
Kommilaire and Secretary of City.”

No one answered.

They still seemed pretty annoyed I had
shot at them. Some were slowly returning to their seats or standing up.

“Like, anything?” I finally heard one
guy ask at my elbow. He was definitely a gang boss. His teeth were all
gemstones and he was wearing every garish color possible on his clothes, none
of them matching.

“Anything I could do. I’m not a
magician.”

“You know Beadle Avenue?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Someone has hacked apart the water
lines underneath so they can siphon them and not have to pay. Any businesses on
that street don’t have water. I can’t manufacture anything.”

A quiet moment.

“Alright,” I said, nodding. That was a
good start.

Wham!

The room came alive. People were
climbing on top of each other to try and get in front of me. They were fighting
and pulling and yelling. It was like feral kids battling over a packet of food
rations, only they were rich criminals in fancy clothes.

“The salt prices in the 48
^th
Street market always lag the others because the train is shut down ten blocks
away. The Neculone Building needs 100 more kilowatts to reach full capacity,
half our machines are idle. Latticework lighting in the southeast has been
spotty for the last three years. Ships can’t languish in port for weeks, you
need to push them out so others can get in, just because they’re bigger doesn’t
mean they should get priority. Garm still has a huge amount of real estate she
isn’t using; turn that over to the public via auction so we can develop it. We
need a city run courier fleet so they don’t gouge you based on location. Not if
my prices go up! You need to put an Ank Board in the southwest. The feral kids
are becoming a real problem on Westlos, increase Stair Boy patrols. If we sell
goods to the city, we should be able to use city resources for free. The
loudspeakers are monopolized by the richest groups, there should be at least
half the time where us normal businesses can use them since you won’t let us
create more. Guns shouldn’t be illegal for gangs that you register and
approve—and we could pay you. That’s a good idea. No drugs should be illegal,
especially XrXr. Clean out the bottom of Deadsouth so we can at least travel
across it instead of going around.”

This went on for about thirty minutes. I
didn’t have anything to record it with and I only heard about a tenth of what
everyone was saying. But soon I realized:

Their goals weren’t to help the economy.
They were offering suggestions designed to help themselves personally.

I now understood what the Governor would
do on Belvaille. He or she would have to listen to this crap all day and night.

“Hey. Hey! People. I need to go. I’ll
come back later.”

But it was like a burst water main, they
just kept talking and talking and clamoring after me. They kept a respectable
distance, like an ocean lapping against a force field. But they didn’t stop and
followed me right to the exit and even onto my heavy lifter. I actually thought
we were going to run over some of them.

I was at Rendrae’s broadcast studio.
“The Boards. Hank, what is going on with them?” Rendrae asked me.

He had been reluctant to talk, but when
I told him what it was about, his news-nose overruled his wounded journalistic
integrity. I was sitting in my portable chair and Rendrae was at his control
panel with his headset on.

“It’s supply and demand, Rendrae. Pure
and simple,” I stated with confidence.

“But what does that mean to the man on
the street? How do you expect them to cope, Supreme Kommilaire?”

Wish he wasn’t trying to put this on my
shoulders, but that was fine.

“No one controls the Boards, as you
know. Not even the Ank—”

“But the Ank set prices. They loan
money. They handle almost everything,” Rendrae interrupted.

“But the Boards demand the market. They
aren’t not correct. In the sense of the market,” I fumbled.

“Tell a person who can’t afford dinner,
what he can do. Give him practical answers,” Rendrae pressed.

“Say you have three rocks in one hand.
Your left hand. And in your right hand you have…four rocks—no, a jar of rocks,”
I began, holding my hands up to myself as I tried to work through my
illustration.

“Secretary of City!” Rendrae said.
“People are hungry. What is the government, Garm’s government, doing about it?”

“Oh. As soon as the prices of food went
past a certain threshold, we call it the…‘bad threshold,’ I put out word to any
supply ships that Belvaille is low on stores. There are three full cargo ships
en route now.”

“Loaded with food?” Rendrae asked,
impressed.

“Yes. And I spoke with Delovoa and he
said he has a solution for the water issue.”

“Delovoa said that?” Rendrae asked,
almost reverently. “Can you tell us exactly what he said?”

Delovoa’s words were almost like gospel
because few people ever heard him. If they did, his words wouldn’t be like
gospel anymore.

“He just said, ‘device,’” I stated
mysteriously.

“A device? So you heard it here, people.
Delovoa is working on a
device
for the water. And do you know if this is
a new device, Hank, or an existing one?” Rendrae asked, completely serious.

“I didn’t inquire. When he starts
talking technical it’s just…whew, no one can understand.”

“I can imagine. So when are the ships
going to be here?”

“I’m not an astro-navigator. I think it
depends. We got a market and they got the goods so it’s in their best interest
to get here quick.”

“And you contacted them personally?”

“In my role as Secretary of City. Yes.”

“Excellent. Excellent. Is there anything
else going on you’d like to mention?” Rendrae asked. He was pleased with the
broadcast and was letting me freeform.

“I want Belvaille to know that we are
undertaking significant efforts to improve the value of the city for future
generations. I believe the long-term value of Belvaille is substantial and
we’re looking to make it even more valuable.”

“That’s great. I think everyone here on
Belvaille appreciates that, Hank. I know things have been difficult lately but I
think this city can get through it.”

He smiled at me.

“It always has, Rendrae. It always has.”

“This is Rendrae, wishing Belvaille a
good evening.”

The light went off and I rose from my
chair, strapping my hooks back onto it.

“This is good news, Hank. I’m glad you
came up with this. Can you give a
hint
when the first ship will get
here?”

I looked over at him.

“There are no ships.”

“What? Why did you say there were? You
just lied on my show to the whole city!”

“Because what you said is true, people
can’t afford to eat.”

“Then why don’t you call for some ships
like you said?”

“Do you think there’s a fleet of
freighters, full of pasta, circling Belvaille waiting for us to run low on
food? I could send messages and it would take months for anyone to get here.”

“Then why lie about it? People will be
dead in months!”

“Because this is a fake panic. The Boards
are spooked and I’m trying to spook them the other direction. The prices are up
because we want them up.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Talk to the Ank.”

“The Ank did this?” Rendrae asked.

“No, but they explained it. Sort of.”

“Is Delovoa working on the water
situation?”

“There is no water situation. We have
plenty of water. We just think we don’t.”

“So there’s no device?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure he has devices
that do water stuff. Just nothing new.”

Rendrae started slapping at me. He was
probably hurting his hands but he kept on until he was winded, which wasn’t
very long.

“This is twice! Why don’t you think I’ll
just turn on this microphone and tell everyone you’re a fraud?”

“Well, for one, because your program is
over and they’re broadcasting Legendary Lovers of Lhoshtor; and two, you’ll
just make the panic worse. You’d be killing all the poor people as the Boards
erode even further.”

“Don’t ever talk to me again!” Rendrae
shouted, his face turning greenish-red.

Considering Rendrae had only been really
helpful maybe five times and really annoying maybe a thousand, I was fine with
that.

“Just look at the Boards tomorrow. If
I’m wrong, you can throw mud in my eye.”

“Where am I going to get mud? Water’s a
precious commodity and good luck finding soil.”

The Ank said the markets dislike doubt.

Well, the markets must despise Delovoa.

The next day the price for foodstuffs
dropped precipitously. Not back to the levels before all this crap started
happening, but low enough that I thought people could afford to exist.

Water, however, dropped lower than it
was before the spike. You couldn’t give it away.

Delovoa was such an unknown quantity,
and such an overwhelming one, that no one wanted to be caught with their money
in something he was tinkering with. They were afraid he would make the
latticework start raining. Or flood the feral kids out of the west and make
Lake Delovoa.

I didn’t blame them, but it showed just
how wacky the Boards were. I’d shifted an unbelievable amount of money on the
station simply by lying.

And I’m a terrible liar.

People were back to normal, washing
their clothes and bathing and wasting water by spitting on sidewalks.

“How did you know it would work?”
Rendrae asked me at my apartment.

“Is it alright for me to talk to you
again?” I replied.

He didn’t answer, just stood waiting.

“Look, I don’t understand the Ank. I
don’t even know why I go to them. But the Boards. The Boards are just like any
gangs we had in the past. If one gang was selling forged documents, then
another starts, then another starts, they have to reduce prices to compete with
each other.”

“But you didn’t create any new food or
water.”

“No one knows that. We didn’t, and
don’t, have a shortage. The Boards are just fear and greed, three stories
tall.”

“So were you creating fear or greed?”

“They’re pretty much the same when it
comes to money. Now I just need to keep the city calm and valuable.”

“With Garm pulling the strings, the city
is never going to be calm,” he sneered.

I was about to argue with him, but I
honestly felt he was right. I didn’t know what Garm was doing and I felt like I
was stumbling around in the dark.

I really needed to talk to her.

“That may be true but—” I began.

“Shh,” Rendrae said suddenly. He cocked
his head to the side.

“What?”

“Listen.”

I was expecting something like gunfire
or sirens or explosions.

“I don’t hear anything,” I said.

He gave me a dirty look.

“The loudspeakers.”

They had of course been droning on. The
loudspeakers were always talking. I could hear a voice babbling about something
at Belvaille’s port. It was a news story.

“Is that one of your competitors?” I
asked.

“Yes. He said a Therezian is here.”

“They’re all dead,” I said, horrified.

“Come on!”

Rendrae was still a news hound and the
fat old man ran outside my apartment faster than you would have ever guessed.
By the time I reached the door he was a block away, his arms and legs pumping.

I caught snippets of the broadcast as I
made my way to the train.

Valia met up with me in the street,
straightening her outfit.

“Did he say a Therezian is here? How is
that possible?” she asked.

Like the clones, Therezians had been the
shock troops of the civil war. When Naked Guy had started the war, he gave one
enemy faction tanks and chemical weapons and biological weapons and clone
soldiers. He gave the other side a single Therezian.

If I had been there to wager, I would
have put my money on the Therezian.

I didn’t really have a religion, but if
there was a Creator Species somewhere, they started with the Therezians. Then,
to celebrate building the perfect race, they got stinking drunk. The next day, when
they were hungover, they built the rest of us.