February 1996
The slim man with stooping shoulders watched from the shadows, listening intently. The wine bar was in its last throes of the weekend's death-agony, and all that remained were a few drunken bores and a group of young Officers of the Corporation in their prissy grey uniforms.
The girls with these young bucks worked for him. They were used to this sort of job, getting what they wanted for nothing -or very little- in return.
Casually, all too casually, he brushed ash from his broad-lapelled white dinner-jacket. His little establishment had a smoking licence, a liquor licence and an entertainments licence, all very much above board, all very legal, squeaky-clean and Corporation-friendly. Friendly as in that those wearing the grey uniforms of the Corp were unlikely to be roughed-up in any dark alleys after being served a mickey finn.
The city - New Birkenhead - was agog with the news that a group of rebel activists had broken into the Corporation's Information Centre and physically unplugged the main data-base after feeding in a super-virus to the main hard disk and flushing the only microdisk copies down one of the Personnel Manager's loos. The said Personnel Manager really shouldn't have left the copies in his office, but certain laser images of a personal nature were now in the rebels' possession.
Getting the laser images had been his doing. Fred Birtwhistle - Birt to his friends. It really hadn't been difficult. A few experienced hostesses and a gallon or two of overpriced satellite cheese liqueur. After half a bottle the pot-bellied bombast was raring to go and couldn't believe his luck: after a full bottle totally unable to lift himself from the couch. Ten minutes after breaking into the new bottle he was unconscious, and it took a back-breaking struggle to move him into the hospitality lounge of an orbit shuttle. They didn't even take off. When presented with copies he boiled in his own sweat: when you're a member of the Corp then you don't jump anything that isn't tattooed with GenDiv's Sword & Rose trademark. Such would not please MegaInd's Ethnic Purity Standard, as laid out in the Certainty of Destiny Declaration.
The whole escapade had gone down without a hitch. This made Birt rather uncomfortable. When the Corp weren't trying to persuade the good citizens of the Borough of Madrid Central that they must know about someone or something then they must be following up a lead. The usual suspects had not been rounded up, and no reward had been offered.
That's why Birt stood in the shadows of his own wine bar and listened to conversations, while his girls used every twist and turn to get information from the young technicians of the Info Centre. They'd already drunk a barrel of Three Novas brandy, and Birt's mental cash-register was totalling it all up. There was always a discount for their good friends from the Corp. Booze and superficially-loose women always drew on a deeper well of information than cattle-prods and truncheons. The triumph of PVC and leather over steel and wood.
Trying to appear disinterested in his surroundings he pulled the blind aside and looked out of the window into the sandblown street. Recognising the face of a Sergeant in the Corp's Commercial Fraud Squad getting out of a hover-van along with another half-dozen men in unnaturally shiny, well-polished brogues, Birt blanched. These guys weren't here for an after-work G'n'T. There were bulges under their raincoats. The sort of bulges made by regulation-issue snub-nosed blasters, affectionately known as pebbledash guns.
Birt decided it was time to be away at the Cash 'n' Carry. Smoothly he sloped off behind the bar and dashed upstairs through the roof door. Climbing into the open-topped hovercar he put on his flying-helmet and hit the ignition switch. The altitude was set at thirty metres: putting his foot down he climbed to fifty and began to vacate the immediate area. As he nudged the legal height-limit there was an almighty bang. He swerved the classic Delmonte open-top just in time to see a pall of smoke starting to rise over where his wine-bar should have been.
Racing back to the scene, ignoring legal height- and speed-restrictions, he saw a fire raging in the ruins of his place. Outside stood most of the girls, all of the Commercial Fraud Squad and a few of the young Technicians in an amorphous conglomerate.
The dirty end of the war had come suddenly to this usually-quiet end of the galaxy. Birt turned the hovercar around and made off to a safe house where he hoped to hole up whilst he found out who had left the gas taps on...
For days Birt kept low, only going out for water and croissants. The days dragged. Even worse, the nights dragged. A man of leisure he might be, but enforced leisure was an entirely different matter. No gambling, no intriguing, now showgirls... and his favourite legal carcinogenic patches were running low.
On the fourth morning he pulled on his buff trenchcoat over a nondescript, lived-in survival suit, and went to look at what he expected to be a pile of cold ashes.
Parking the hover car some blocks away he kept to the shady side of the street and hid his face beneath a large, three-cornered bee-questioner's hat, as was standard wear across the Business Empire.
Before he turned the corner into the Old Market Square he could hear that there was something big going on. Slinking even further back into the shadows he chanced a glance around the corner. His jaws sprang open as his eyes focussed on a construction site where his wine bar used to be. The Prisoner Work Gangs were busily building -in fact, half way through constructing- what looked incredibly like... a wine bar. Suspicious of events, Birt circled the building, noting the name of the Construction Company: Alf Weider Sons Prisoner Employment Troop. And there, leaning against a newly-mortared wall was a sign - a big, luminous, flashing neon sign saying... Birt's.
Catlike, his curiosity overcame his good sense, and he decided to ask one of the prisoners how come the wine bar was being rebuilt so quickly. There were no guards about: there rarely were. What would the prisoners do if they escaped - return to their Northern homelands? Here they were at least housed, fed and paid a nominal amount for being a prisoner. To them, emancipation held the same number of letters as unemployment.
Birt approached a big man in a vest, whose broken nose was an amorphous blob on his face, and quietly asked the reason for such haste.
"Divna know, man. Den will know." He then proceeded to shout across the site: "Huy, Den, some fella here wants to know why thur's the bum's rush to get this poseurs' paradise built, man."
Birt physically cringed as a rotund man in a luminous hard-hat came rolling across, scratching at his armpit.
Den -the foreman- looked troubled for a moment, and then said: "Divna know, man. P'haps the Inspector behind yer man can tell ya..."
Birt flinched and slowly turned round, trying to look nonchalant. Then a look of relief spread across his features. The Inspector was known to him. A local bigwig who had worked for one side without fail since the Corporation bought the mineral rights to the planet several years before: namely, he worked unfailingly for himself. Whatever Birt was involved in, the Inspector expected a cut of the proceeds and free drinks. Whenever the Fraud Squad "investigated" insider trading, the Inspector was the first there, to confiscate property... all in the name of Law and Order. That was the job of a Tax Inspector, after all.
The small man in the immaculate uniform smiled. "I haven't seen you around for a few days, Birt." He gazed smugly at the construction site. "I did remind you that you needed new smoke alarms. The tax on them is quite reasonable, I believe."
Birt looked him straight in the eyes. "Did you have anything to do with this?" he asked, gesturing at the site.
"Now, Birt, don't you think I would have told you... if it hadn't been for a senior officer of the Fraud Squad taking up residence in my office. As I'm sure you understand, it wasn't very easy for me. Besides, it looks as though you'll have a nice new wine bar. You did have insurance, didn't you?"
Birt stepped closer. "Yeah, and my insurance is just about to pay up. What's going on?"
"Steady, now." said the imperious little Inspector. "It seems the rebels who visited the Corp's Info Centre were using your bar as a drop for micro-discs... which I'm sure was nothing to do with you..." he gave a knowing smile and shrugged his shoulders. "No business of mine. They knew the Fraud Squad were going to make a raid - a little bird told them - so they decided to eliminate the evidence... and some of the Fraud Squad with it."
Birt seethed. He'd helped the rebels, and this was how they repaid him. Blowing his place to atom-sized particles wasn't his idea of friendly co-operation.
"The rumour goes..." continued the little Inspector, "...that your establishment was due a visit by some important personages: namely Victor Lazdrew and his wife are tying to get off-planet and thought that you might be able to help."
Birt looked shocked. Victor Lazdrew was the hero of the rebel movement and of all the downtrodden little nobodies in the world. The Corporation had been trying to get its hands on him ever since he'd escaped from one of their work camps, where he had been forced to make self-constructing kitchen furniture in shades of off-white for the home handyman.
What could he possibly be doing here? True, Birt had helped a few minor crims to get emigration papers before, but no-one of any note.
"What would they have to do here, with me?" Birt asked, innocently.
"I expect that they don't want to get caught when the Corporation buys up the Settlement Rights and everyone comes under the jurisdiction of the Fraud Squad," said the Inspector, drawing a finger expressively across his throat.
"This still doesn't explain why my bar is being rebuilt with such haste. I haven't contacted any builders." Birt watched the big prisoner chopping a brick in two with a trowel.
The Inspector straightened his tie. "The Corporation would still like Victor to turn up - and then delay him until they have all the Settlement Rights. Until now, New Birkenhead is officially still a neutral City State - and that's the way I like it - but I can't hold out long against the sort of fees they're offering me to forgo tax collection rights. In a short time I intend to be a very wealthy man. But not until the price is right. The Corporation organised the Prisoner Employment Troop. I estimate that it will take another full week, and then you'll have a wine bar again. Of course, I had to pass the Planning Permission..." Tapping his nose conspiratorially, he walked off. "I'll expect the usual privileges of rank when you've re-opened. I believe there's a young redhead working for you. I've always had a liking for redheads, you know..."
Birt looked with disbelief at the retreating back of the little Inspector.
And so Birt had his bar back, risen like the proverbial Phoenix, without even having to make a holo call. He tried to settle in; after all, he had the same girls working for him (minus a few who hadn't made it out of the previous bar), and even Spam the Alpha Centaurian Humus Vacuum was back tinkling his ivories... but something wasn't right. Maybe it was the d‚cor designed by committee, the new antiques and the truly dreadful pictures of agricultural machinery that no-one in this city knew the use of.
The little Inspector sidled up to Birt whilst he was drinking a little newly-fermented mushroom juice.
"You like your new establishment then, Birt?"
The look on Birt's face was plain enough. "Just who requisitioned this Archaeological Nightmare from stores; you?"
"Do I look the sort of man to drink in a place like this?" asked the Inspector, with a wry grin in mock offence. "We do have a little more entertainment set up for you yet tonight. There's going to be an arrest made here."
"Who?" questioned Birt, nonchalently as ever.
"It's not you, rest assured: but I suggest you don't try to interfere."
Birt looked insulted. "Who, me? I don't put my neck out for no-one."
"I'm glad to hear it. I would hate to have to arrest such a good and profitable friend."
They were interrupted by a small nervous man with a strong accent: another refugee of the spaceways. "...err, excuse me, Birt, can I speak with you alone?"
"I'll leave you to discuss matters," said the Inspector, and strolled off. Birt looked quizzically at the back of the little Inspector's immaculate uniform.
"Birt, I need you to look after something for me. I'm being watched and I don't want anything incriminating found on me." From out of his pocket the nervous man slipped two small documents in luminous plastic. "Keep these for me until I come back for them, when I don't have so many interested parties around."
Birt took them and professionally slipped them unobtrusively into the inside pocket of his white dinner-jacket. "What are they?"
"Travel documents signed by Marshall Peachey himself."
Birt looked into the nervous man's boggle eyes. "I'll keep them for two days. If it looks like I'm getting unwarranted attention, then I'll dispose of them. Two days, understand?"
"Fine, Birt. Anything you say. Two days, I remember. Now I'm going off to win back my expenses on your Random Numbers board. Thank you for holding them for me. You make me very happy. Excuse me." The nervous man relaxed a little and wandered off to the gambling board.
Around ten minutes passed before Birt recognised more Tax Inspectors in his joint than usual. Carefully he slipped behind one of the pillars of the vaulted roof to watch events unfold. Suddenly uniformed Inspectors appeared, covering all the exits. A few of them homed in on the boggle-eyed man, gambling for once at some profit. An Inspector placed a heavy hand on the man's shoulder.
"Mr B Ysles, I am arresting you in the name of the Inspectorate of New Birkenhead, for not paying your taxes on all transactions."
"Oh well, if you insist," said the boggle-eyed man, suddenly pale and sweating. "I'll just cash in my chips."
"Mr Ysles, I'm afraid you've already had your chips. When you've got to go, you've got to go," smirked the Inspector.
The nervous man sprang into action, pulled a snub-nosed hand-blaster and made a dash for the door. Two Tax Inspectors were given immediate open-heart cauterisation. The door was blocked by others. Ysles noticed Birt in the shadows, and made a bee-line for him, shouting: "Birt! Birt! Help me!"
Birt looked down on the pathetic example. "Sorry, Ysles; I don't stick my neck out for no-one."
There was a crackle of a discharged blaster and Ysles fell, grasping hold of Birt's legs as his boggle eyes misted over.
Birt stepped back so that no blood seeped on to his shoes. The little Inspector strolled over.
"I honestly thought you had a soft spot for our nervous friend, here." He tapped the corpse with the toe of his polished boot.
"Like I said," muttered Birt through clenched teeth, "I don't stick my neck out for no-one."
"A tortoise is a rather safe animal to be, if a rather unattractive one."
Birt turned half away. "Did I ever say I wanted to be loved?"
A mixture of uniformed and plain-clothed Tax Inspectors carried the lifeless corpse unceremoniously out of the wine bar.
"I will leave you to the cleaning-up, Birt. See you tomorrow. Thank you for being such a model citizen." And with that, the Inspector followed the retreating ranks of the rest of his men. Birt looked round to the watching crowd.
"OK folks, just carry on with your drinks. The cabaret's over... band, play on."
The bar went back to its usual hubbub.
Some time later into the night, a couple came through the doors of the bar. He a slim, middle-aged man in a white suit, with cropped grey hair balding at the top. She a tall long-boned woman dressed in dungarees, with close-cropped bleached hair. As they walked past Spam, who was playing a tune on his ivory teeth, he paused and stared. "Mr Birt ain't going to like this. He ain't going to like this at all."
The as-yet-unknown couple slipped unobtrusively to a table where the waitress came over and politely asked for their order. Meanwhile Birt was casually overseeing the officially-recognised illegal gambling tables.
Spam was nervous. He knew there was going to be a reckoning, and most likely someone was going to end up dead. Trying to head off trouble at the pass he hovered over to the table where the new couple was ensconced. When the woman saw him she smiled and welcomed him as an old friend.
"Hello, Spam. It's been a long time."
"Hello, Miss Edna. What you doin' here?"
"I'm here with my husband, Spam. I heard that Mr. Birt might be able to help us."
At that, the waitress arrived with the tray: realising that the conversation was distinctly private she placed the drinks down and hastened away.
"I don't believe it!" burst out the man in the white suit, who until now had remained silent and watchful beside the beautiful Edna. "I distinctly said no stupid bloody umbrella in the wine, and lo and behold look what they bring me - something that looks like a tart's nightcap! People these days, they just don't even have the common decency to listen to your drinks order."
"That's the problem with places like this..." he added, scowling around him, "...they expect everyone to be some kind of pimp or public official!" And with that he sank into an even more sullen state, staring with loathing at the pink crystal beaker with the chirpy coloured brolly stuck in at a rakish angle.
The bleached blonde with the cropped hair ignored her husband. "Spam, will you play it for me?"
"I don't know what you mean, Miss Edna!"
"You know what I mean, Spam. Play The Chronometer Ticks Away."
"Well, OK Miss Edna; but Mr. Birt won't like it. He won't like it at all." And with that, Spam tinkled away at his ivories, playing a long-remembered tune with a catchy melody.
Birt looked up, catching himself humming a tune from the past. His eyes flared as he rushed over towards Spam, aiming at docking his wages for this venial crime.
"Spam, I thought I told you not to play that... never to play that tune again!" He pulled up short, emotion playing a symphony on his jaw muscles. He looked wide-eyed at the woman with bleached hair and dungarees, whilst everything else went out of focus.
"Hello, Birt."
Quickly Birt recovered his slack jaw. "Hello, Edna."
"It's been a long time. You've done well for yourself." She smiled that disarming smile.
"I'm surviving, regardless of what happens," he said, with a touch of meaning.
Edna turned to the sulking man in the white suit. "I'd like to introduce you to my husband, Victor Lazdrew."
"Mr. Lazdrew, I've heard a lot about you." Birt proffered his hand to shake.
"And I'm not surprised that I've heard very little about you. Are you responsible for this?" He picked up the pink beaker and placed it in Birt's outstretched hand. "I really do expect to get the drink I ordered without all this paraphernalia atop." The man relapsed into a ball of gelatinous huff.
Somewhat taken aback, Birt replaced the beaker on the table and said: "Yes, Edna, it's been a very long time. What do you want?" Spam hovered away, realising he was superfluous to the negotiations.
"Maybe I just want to see you again." Edna crossed her long legs.
"I might have fallen for that three years ago in Southport, but I'm wise to it now. If you're here then you want something from me."
"OK Birt, I'll come clean. The Resistance believes that you have travel documents to get people off the planet. We need two before the Corporation buys up the Settlement Rights. If we were caught here afterwards, then Victor ends up back at a Formica Kitchen Assembly Plant with showers."
"And what if I haven't got any?" asked Birt, with a rather more laconic grin.
"Then I go to the Kitchen Plant with him. You wouldn't want that, would you? Not after Southport."
"OK Edna, you win. Meet me at the Spaceport. There's a flight leaving at midnight. A flight to freedom. The last flight out. There'll be two people on it."
Edna smiled cherubically. Or was it succubusly? Birt could never tell.
"Enjoy your drinks: they're on the house." Extricating himself from her gaze he went to his private apartments above the bar. He left the light off: his eyes had not yet become accustomed to the d‚cor. He went to the holo-phone at the head of his bed, positioned so that it could be seen whilst using Lonely Hearts Club numbers. He punched in a number he knew well. A grey-uniformed operator appeared in three dimensions - no more efficient than in two dimensions, but such was progress.
"Hi. Get me the Chief Inspector of Taxes."
The fog was heavy on the approaches to the spaceport. Not the sort of night on which pilots liked to blast off, even with satellite radar that could pick up a migrating snowflake. Accidents were still the result of computer error.
Birt had started off early. The last thing he wanted was delay in this pea-souper. Thankfully the skies were empty - and if they weren't, then nobody up there knew about it.
Nobody was there other than the odd freelance mechanic, and moths fluttering around the hazy radium lighting. He settled himself down to a short wait with a bottle of mushroom liqueur and a glass that he'd snatched up as he left the wine bar.
It wasn't more than two glasses later that he heard a hovercar settling down behind one of the hangars. Casually Birt drained the last of the glass and stood up, putting his hands firmly into the depths of his trenchcoat.
Edna and Victor Lazdrew came around the side of the hangar. He held her elbow possessively - or was it so that she didn't fall over anything in the fog? Birt smiled, and received a faint glimmer of one back from the blonde. She'd changed into regulation snow-and-fog combat gear which she'd probably stripped from some Corp member with German Sentries' Disease.
Victor looked around in the fog. "I don't believe it! The last flight out and I have to put up with this fog like a thick blanket of whipped cream. I just hope it doesn't hold up the flight. That would be just my luck."
In the back ground there began the steady hum of engines warming up: sounds of the snub-nosed planet-hopper which was about the largest craft in this forsaken corner of space.
"This is the end of us, then," said Edna to Birt.
"It sure is," murmured Birt through clenched teeth, the fog condensing on his large, three-cornered Bee-Questioner's hat.
Another hovercar sped in out of the fog and set down just out of visual range. Edna looked up, a slight sense of unease in her face.
"Just remember," said Birt, "Our troubles don't add up to a whole hill of beans, but they mean a lot to me." With that he stepped in close and pulled out a pebbledash gun from the deep pocket of his trenchcoat, sticking it the ribs of Edna where Victor couldn't see it.
Two men approached out of the fog; one the dapper figure of the Chief Tax Inspector, the other the Senior Officer of the Corporation's Fraud Squad, in his gunmetal grey uniform and high shiny boots. He was carrying a dress uniform hand laser.
Birt looked slightly worried. His plan wasn't being followed: the Fraud Squad should not be making this cameo appearance.
The Fraud Squad Officer snapped out in his curt, off-world tones: "Victor Lazdrew, you are an enemy of the Corporation and a danger to the greater good of the people. I'm arresting you and your... wife."
Victor Lazdrew had a look of pompous disdain on his face. "What are you talking about, you blithering idiot? You can't arrest me; you're out of your jurisdiction."
A vicious grin spread across the Fraud Squad Officer's narrow features. "I am perfectly within my jurisdiction, as my good patriotic friend the Tax Inspector here has just sold me the Settlement Rights." And with that he whipped the documents out of his pocket, flourishing them victoriously.
Birt looked accusingly at the little Inspector. So did Edna and Victor.
"Well, the stock price was beginning to fall..." offered the Inspector, smoothly. "However, I do have something else for you."
The Fraud Squad Officer half looked over his shoulder, and then reeled round almost ahead of the horrendous thud as the little Inspector blasted him at close range with a pebbledash gun.
"I've been itching to do that for weeks," said the Inspector, with a glint in his eye.
Birt looked at Edna, the gun still pressed to her ribs. "Someday I'm going to regret this. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow; but someday, as I'm lying on some beach somewhere with a... brunette. But remember, we'll always have Southport."
Slowly, both he and the little Inspector backed off towards the planet hopper, pebbledash guns aimed and level as they both disappeared into the fog. Birt whispered quietly to his companion: "I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship..."
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