Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (29 page)

“Now I know where the expression ‘Hank’s
Butt’ comes from,” Valia said, teeth gritted.

“Shut up. Forget it. I’ll crawl up the
stairs. Look around for something sturdy I can put my weight on.”

It took me about thirty minutes to get
up the first flight. My broken and bruised Kommilaire had dragged down some
desks and planters but they all just crumbled under my weight.

“What if someone attacks you?” Valia
asked.

“With what?”

She seemed to think about that and went
back to looking for something for me to lean on.

All of them finally found a tall stone
statue and scraped it over with much panting and cursing. I loved sculptors. Of
all the artists, they seemed the most insecure about having their work last
forever and ever, so they used only the hardiest of materials.

Between the next flight of stairs and
the statue, I managed to get to my feet.

All my Kommilaire really looked like
they wanted to leave. They were injured and exhausted.

“Go to the hospital,” I told them.

They were too tired to even answer and
merely headed upstairs and out.

“Not you, Valia.”

“I can’t pick you up if you fall again,”
she warned.

“No, but you can scout around and find
Hobardi.”

“Where will you be?”

“Walking up this flight of stairs.”

“Can I get something to eat first? I’ll
be back before you’re halfway.”

“This is a combat operation,” I
chastised.

“Wars have been fought in less time,
Boss.”

“I’ve got some food on my back. You can
have some.”

I took out the hose that connected to my
food storage and squirted some of the green mess on the ground. Valia jumped
away like it was toxic.

“Gross! What’s it taste like?”

“I don’t know. But it’s good for you.”

“Good for
you
or good for normal
people? I’m going to hazard a guess that our dietary needs aren’t the same.”

“Go look for Hobardi,” I said.

I was at the first landing of the
stairwell when Valia returned.

“Wow!” She said. “I searched all this
building, the building across the street, asked a bunch of people walking
around, and finally tracked him down to a place called the Temple. I see you’ve
managed to walk up…thirty or so stairs.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, huffing for air.

“It’s probably easier for you to just
knock down the walls,” she said.

“We’re under the ground level.”

“Ah.”

“Keep an eye on the Temple so he doesn’t
sneak out. I know the building. I’ll catch up to you.”

“I doubt you’ll ‘catch up,’ but fine.
Give me a taste of that food you have. I’m really hungry.”

I let her take the hose.

She was holding it expectantly, trying
to work the controls. Then:

Plplt!

She spit it all over my jacket.

“That’s horrible!”

She was spitting and wiping her tongue
on her sleeve.

“Go on then,” I said, taking it
personally that she didn’t like my food and also a bit annoyed that I had been
eating something disgusting all these years and didn’t know it.

I took a few food breaks myself as I
climbed the rest of the stairs.

The Temple wasn’t really a temple. Or
anything other than a normal Belvaille building that had lots of fancy designs
attached to the outside to make it templey. The buildings of Belvaille were all
well-constructed so there was no reason to knock them down just so you could
put up something that was going to be less durable. Besides, it would take an
artillery cannon or Therezian to knock down these buildings and both were in
short supply and not something you ordinarily wanted to mess with.

I wasn’t sure how or why Hobardi had
replaced his floor. I looked at it afterwards and it was still steel, just
about a quarter the normal thickness, which is why I fell through it.

There was a lot of security at the
Temple. Not fancy people wearing colored robes, but mean people carrying
automatic rifles.

But I had just walked up two flights of
stairs after falling down two flights of stairs and I wasn’t in the mood.

“Move or I’ll kill you,” I said.

“You’re not—” one of the guards started.

“I’m going to pull off your face, spray
it with preservatives, and line my underwear with it if you don’t shut up and
get out of my way,” I clarified. “You’ll be smelling my crotch in the
afterlife.”

There are tough guys and then tough guys
and then tough guys. Some are all talk. Some are half talk. And some are no
talk. If I say I’m going to rip off someone’s face and put it in my pants, I’m
going to rip off someone’s face and put it in my pants.

The guards moved away and tilted their
heads back on their necks, as if trying to have their faces that extra inch
away from my undergarments.

We walked into the next room, which was large
and open, with goofy symbols and tapestries and other crap. I can say that
since it was a made up religion.

Hobardi was in a gold toga kneeling in
front of a mound of sand. Or it looked like sand. I’m sure it was some stupid
metaphor for something stupid.

“Hobardi!” I yelled. “Your mutant friend
is dead. Two Clem the clone is dead. And I’m tired and cranky. We got some
things to discuss.”

He stood in one quick motion and turned
around to face us.

“I would like to leave,” he said.

“Holy crap,” I said, not believing my
bad luck.

“What?” Valia asked.

I took off one of my pistols and pointed
it at Hobardi.

“Eat suck, suckface!”

I pulled the trigger and the gun twisted
and fell apart in my hand. Why did I even carry all these guns? Had I gotten
stronger all of a sudden or had I really not fired them in that long?

I was reaching for another gun when
Hobardi dashed forward, did some kind of somersault, and kicked me in the face.

Thud.

He fell to the ground, caught himself
with his arms, flipped back up and kicked me in the chest.

Thud.

“What’s going on here?” Valia asked.

“He’s a clone.”

“How do you know?”

Thud. He kicked me in the side of my
head as I was talking to Valia.

“That’s what the Two Clem clone said.
And he totally ignored your feminine charms.”

“Oh. Should I do something?”

“Yeah, kill him.”

I had another gun out and was handling
it delicately.

Valia shrugged and drew her pistol.

Hobardi kicked her in the face, punched
her in the stomach, jumped over her, then flip-threw her before I could even
open my mouth.

“Whoa,” I blinked.

I aimed at Hobardi but he grabbed Valia
from behind and put her in a chokehold.

“Shoot him,” she managed to say.

“I might hit you. My aim isn’t that
great,” I apologized.

She lifted her legs and folded in her
arms to make herself a smaller target, all while being strangled.

“My aim is really bad, actually,” I elaborated,
though I appreciated her efforts.

She managed a curse.

I plodded toward them with my arms
outstretched, hoping to help out.

“Shtop!” She said, her eyes bulging.

I stopped.

Hobardi had lifted her off the ground by
her neck, when suddenly she broke out of his grasp. She didn’t wrench free, she
kind of slipped out like a wet bar of soap. She hit the floor, scrambled backwards
through his legs, and lay prone on the ground, her arms covering her head.

“Shoot him!”

I aimed. Fired.

Blam!

Er. Fired again.

Blam!

Hobardi was running now, that super
athletic clone-running.

Blam!

I think these guns were flawed. Or I
should practice with them. Or both.

Valia did a forward roll, recovered her
pistol, rested one leg against me to stop her momentum, aimed:

Blam!

Hobardi went down.

Valia stared daggers at me but bit her
lip.

“Good shooting, Kommilaire,” I said
awkwardly.

“Yeah, he’s a clone,” Delovoa said
casually.

“I knew that,” I answered. “Why doesn’t
he look like the Two Clem clone?”

“You know what a clone is, don’t you?”

“No. They had cancelled that class by
the time I went to Supreme Kommilaire University—and just in case you were
unclear, there is no such thing as Supreme Kommilaire University.”

“Clones are just…clones. Of people. They
are copies of them.”

“But with bad brains?”

“With as much, or little, brain as they
require to do their functions. This one is missing a lot. The point is someone
copied Hobardi to make this.”

“So Naked Guy’s clones were copies of
real people?”

“No, those were probably made from
scratch.”

“Are you just making this up or do you
actually know what you’re talking about?” I asked, annoyed.

“A little of both.”

“So Hobardi was a clone and Two Clem was
a clone. So who decides how much brain they have?”

“The people who are cloning them,” he
said.

“Who are they?”

“The people cloning?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“How should I know? I almost never leave
this street. You’re about my only form of entertainment, which tells you how boring
my life is. Oh, I built your voting machine,” he said, conveniently switching
topics.

“Nice. Let’s see.”

In another room he had a giant machine
full of sensors and gizmos and poles and wires.

“Is that going to kill people?” I asked
skeptically.

“Not most people.”

“How does it work?” I asked, looking
closer, but not too close. I didn’t see any controls.

“It deep scans your neural signals and
takes an imprint of your dendritic web.”

“Yeah,” I said, making it clear that
wasn’t a very good description.

“It can tell who you want to vote for
based on your thoughts and then it records your unique brain structure so you
can’t vote again.”

“Why couldn’t you just have had three
buttons or something? Why do you always do this? No one is going to want to
have their brain zapped.”

“Don’t tell them.”

“What about the Boranjame?”

“There’s only one of him, just ask him
who he wants to vote for.”

“How do you know Zeti is male?”

“You can tell by how he walks,” Delovoa
said dismissively.

“He’s a floating crystal… Anyway, what
about the Dredel Led and Keilvin Kamigans and stuff without brains? Or normal
brains.”

“They don’t get to vote.”

“What? Why? You can’t do that.”

“I don’t like the Dredel Led. I don’t
trust them.”

“Since when?”

“Since they attacked Belvaille.”

“That was like a hundred years ago back
during the Colmarian Confederation. They haven’t caused any problems since
then.”

I was going to say he should get out
more often, but I realized I didn’t want Delovoa out more often.

“Well, build your own voting machine
then, smart guy.”

“Test it,” I said, pointing at the
machine.

“It won’t work on me. I have three
brains. I get to vote three times. Which only seems fair.”

“I’ll test it then,” I said, stepping
forward cautiously.

“It won’t work on you either. Your skull
is like a foot thick.”

“It’s just dense! So this thing doesn’t
work on like half the species here and it might kill the other half. As
Secretary of City, I’m not very comfortable with this.”

“But it will let me identify any other
clones in the city,” Delovoa said with a toothless grin.

“If they vote.”

“Yeah.”

“Why would a clone vote? Is there a
Clone Pride Movement I don’t know about? Can you make a clone scanner that I
could carry around?” I asked.

“You could carry this around.”

“People will notice me dragging around a
ten-foot brain blaster. I need something small.”

“I guess,” Delovoa pouted.

“And make another voting machine. With
buttons. Or knobs. Something non-lethal.”