A Lonely World Where the People Are Blue Page 3

  Hutch nodded to the closed office door. I noticed that his name had been programmed out of the nameplate, replaced by the name of a P Saotchun.

  My former boss nodded at me. ‘Yes, go on. Don’t keep him waiting any longer than you have to.’

  What’s the worst that could happen? They fire me? Maybe I should get out of this hellhole anyway.

  I walked, cautiously, up to the office door and poked my head around it.

  ‘Mr Saotchun?’

  Another Bringla sat at Hutch’s old desk. He, too, was small and rotund. Maybe they were just all like that; I couldn’t remember ever meeting a Bringla before Hutch.

  ‘Ah, you must be Ms Raynor, is that right?’

  Without waiting for an answer, he brought my file up on the holoscreen in front of him.

  I sat down on the chair opposite and opened my mouth to speak. In response, Saotchun put his hand up to my face, signalling that he needed longer to read my file.

  If I’m as late as Hutch seems to think I am, couldn’t he have read it in the meantime?

  I analysed his face as he continued to read. If this Bringla’s facial cues were the same as Hutch’s, then he was getting less and less impressed the more he read. I hoped that I was wrong.

  Eventually, he began to speak. ‘So I assume Hutch filled you in outside?’

  ‘Not really. Only that you’d bought the company.’

  ‘That’s right. And, like any business-savvy individual would when taking over a new company, I began with performance reviews. I’m happy to say that over sixty percent of your colleagues passed with flying colours!’

  Nice!

  ‘…The others will be fired.’

  Oh.

  ‘Well,’ I began, a smile on my face, ‘I look forward to working together!’

  The Bringla looked me in the eyes for the first time since I entered his office.

  ‘Oh, you assume you have passed, do you?’

  ‘No, no, I don’t mean that. I just mean… I was just being polite.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  The room fell silent again for a few more moments.

  ‘Your performance reports do not impress.’

  ‘Well, I’m fairly new here, and I haven’t had much in the way of the training that was promised yet, and-’

  ‘So you’re blaming the lack of training for these average results?’

  ‘Well, I- Wait, average? I thought you said my performance was bad?’

  The Bringla seemed to tut at me. Bringla don’t tut, do they?

  ‘No, I said your performance “does not impress”. I like to pride myself on only employing investigators who exceed expectation. You do not. At least, you don’t by my usual standards. But it says here… you’re a Terran?’

  ‘Did my stunning good looks not give it away?’ I asked, and then immediately regretted this flippant response. Sometimes I just couldn’t resist saying these things.

  ‘They did not, no,’ Saotchun replied, giving me a funny look. ‘If I were to judge you against my usual standards, I would fire you straight away, but…’

  He trailed off, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was just for dramatic effect. I remained silent, waiting for him to finish his train of thought.

  ‘Can you say “fuck” yet?’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘This word: fuck. I met another Terran once, he refused to say it. He was insistent that to use such a word would go against everything that he, and all Terrans, hold dear: their morals.’

  ‘I mean…,’ I replied, ‘I could say it if you really want…’

  I could picture my mum shouting at me, horrified that I would say such a thing.

  Young woman, you wash that mouth out this minute, you hear me?

  ‘Can you?’ Saotchun replied. ‘That’s not a rhetorical question, I stress. You see, all the Terrans I’ve met have been missing that certain… quality. That edge, that investigators need in order to do their jobs well. That ability to bend the rules, to break them if they see fit. I’ve never known a Terran to do that. In fact, they go the other way: they look to spread their sense of morality amongst the stars. I’ve never known a race without religion to be so preachy. So, with this in mind, I ask you: will you say it?’

  ‘Yes, I can say it.’

  ‘Well, then…’

  A pause. Only by giving in could I fill the empty air.

  ‘F… fuck.’

  Saotchun roared with laughter, clapped some of his hands together with joy.

  ‘I wish I’d recorded that. A Terran, swearing? Who would’ve thought it!’

  He waved his hand over the desk communicator, opening a line to the outside office.

  ‘Hutch, come in here, will you? And bring the last file.’

  After a scuffling from outside, the door opened behind me, and Hutch stood at the threshold to the room, file in hand.

  ‘Did she pass?’ he asked, mouth hanging slightly open.

  Well don’t look so surprised, mate.

  ‘She’s on probation,’ Saotchun replied. ‘Give her the file, will you?’

  Hutch ambled on over, placed the tablet on the desk in front of me.

  ‘This case,’ the new boss told me, ‘Will either cement you as a permanent member of the team, or it will be your last case. You understand?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Now, unfortunately, I let all the employees who arrived back here on time choose their own cases, and so this one… this one is the case nobody picked.’

  I looked down at the file in front of me. It was a missing persons case. Of course it was - my colleagues were no fools.

  ‘So I-’ I began to ask, before I was interrupted by Saotchun.

  ‘So if you solve this case, you stay on the team, yes.’

  ‘But it’s a missing persons case! We solve maybe… one in ten of these.’

  ‘Well, then,’ the Bringla replied, an overtly fake grin on his face, ‘Maybe you’ll arrive on time for your next performance review?’

  I nodded, looked down at the console, and skimmed through it.

  ‘Missing daughter… government minister…’

  ‘Yes, very sharp man, he was,’ Saotchun added. ‘An Itagurina… Itagurinato… Itagurinatipi…’

  ‘Itagurinatipilaz,’ Hutch offered.

  ‘Yes! One of them. They’re a very sharp species, aren’t they? You Terrans could learn a thing or two from them! Anyway, yes: missing daughter of a government minister. Last seen on Z’h’ar, amongst the…’

  Saotchun’s eyes scanned the document. ‘…Amongst the Iyr - oh, that’s an easier one!’

  As I skimmed, I saw something else on the page, which made my heart drop.

  ‘It says here this is a “no win, no fee” kinda case? How do you expect to turn a profit with that clause in our contracts?’

  Saotchun laughed. ‘Well, Ms Raynor, I expect us to turn a profit by having employees skilled enough to solve these cases. And that’s precisely why some of your colleagues had to go.’

  He shot Hutch a damning look, and my old boss suddenly became very interested in his shoes.

  ‘Look, it’s not just me, or my colleagues - nobody solves these kinds of cases. Nobody! Usually, by the time we even receive these cases, the target is long gone, off-planet, maybe even dead. You’re really gonna give me this as the only chance to save my job?’

  ‘I am, yes.’ He leant in close. ‘Look, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in your position before. I didn’t inherit my managerial title; I worked for it, and, at the very start of my career, I, too, was the latest recruit in some crappy agency which barely turned a profit.’

  Hutch opened his mouth as if to argue this point, but then thought better of it.

  ‘But you know what I did?’ he asked me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I worked. Hard.’ Saotchun sat back in his seat, no longer pretending to be sharing some big, dark, secret with me. ‘And I solved cases like this. And then I got promotions, and I
learned to manage people, to delegate. And, after a great many years of hard work, I now own a chain of detective agencies throughout the sector. I am living my dream. So, if I were you, I would work hard, solve this case, and think about where you want to be in five cycles.’

  Saotchun stood up from his desk and opened the door for me to leave.

  ‘Solve this, or you’re out, understand?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good. I’ll be keeping three of my eyes on you.’

  Z’H’AR

  THE LONELY WORLD

  Boron Sector

  27f-11-2337

  4

  A Cold, Quiet, and Lonely Type of Folk

  The capital of Z’h’ar and surrounding area - circa 2337

  The planet Z’h’ar turned out to be halfway across the galaxy from Station 34-Alpha. Of course it was; this was the sort of luck I was having nowadays. While I had heard of Z’h’ar, I didn’t know much about it - because it didn’t exactly impact much on my day-to-day life. Being the responsible employee that I was, I spent the journey reading up on my destination.

  Z’h’ar was populated by two intelligent species, but to group both into that same category was kinda disingenuous.

  One species, the Iyr, were an advanced people, key members of the GMU, and known particularly for their head-to-toe mechsuits. These suits were installed with a number of programmes giving the user incredible new abilities. They might provide extra strength, night vision, in-built virtual assistants - you name it, they had it. Of course, not every Iyr would have every function included in their suit - such abilities were expensive - and typically only owned programmes relevant to their employment. Most notably of all - or so the guidepage would have had you believe - nobody outside of their race had ever seen the face of an Iyr.

  The other supposedly intelligent species, the Arellians, were little more than barbarians - the equivalent of Terrans over two thousand years ago. They were a rural civilization - as such, they tended to keep to themselves, farm the land, and were barely even aware of the existence of people from other planets. As a result, little was known about their species.

  I stared at the planet as we approached, wondering to myself how on Terra I was going to solve this likely unsolvable case, on this planet I had never before visited. It was, if nothing else, a long shot.

  I suppose I could go work in a bar somewhere. I’ve always fancied doing something like that. Maybe I’d be happier there, anyway. No travelling involved, of course, but at least I could count on regular tips.

  We touched down and I was greeted by a rather cold customs official. There were none of the smiles of home, only a long stare up and down, and a look that seemed to say “what on Z’h’ar are you doing here?” …but it was hard to tell exactly what expression they were pulling from under that helmet.

  ‘I see you left this part of the form blank,’ the border guard said, pointing at the visa application. ‘Referring to where you will be staying on your visit?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ I replied. ‘It was kinda a last-minute thing, so I don’t have anywhere yet, but I’ll be staying at a hotel in town, I guess.’

  ‘I can’t let you through until you have somewhere to stay.’

  ‘But I-’

  ‘I can’t let you through until you have somewhere to stay,’ the guard repeated, their tone exactly the same as the first time around.

  I shook my head in exasperation, tapped in ‘Z’h’ar hotels’ on my console and booked the first one that came up. It took a whole five seconds to do. Maybe I could have found a better price if I had browsed for a little while, but I was too petty to pass up on an opportunity to be passive-aggressive.

  ‘There,’ I replied, showing the guard the confirmation page, ‘Ut’r’a hostel, Central Stronghold.’

  The guard nodded, waved me through, and shouted, ‘Next!’ to the queue behind me.

  I passed through security and summoned a shuttle from my console. Before I could jump in it, a larger Iyr pushed in front of me, chucking their luggage into the back.

  ‘Hey, that one’s mine!’ I called out to the Iyr.

  The only response I was given was a mildly-irritated grunt. They closed the door and I was forced to summon another. That was a whole thirty seconds of my time wasted already. Not that half a minute was going to make the difference between me finding this girl and not.

  After checking in to the hotel (and, of course, spending a good quarter of an hour simply lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling), I headed out to the target’s last known location. There was no time like the present - especially when my job was on the line.

  My best chances, really, were in the target returning home by herself. That’s if “home” was where she actually wanted to be, and this wasn’t just another runaway situation. But it seemed unlikely - she was old enough now that she would have soon been making her own way through life. Maybe she was just caught up somewhere - a party, a brothel perhaps? Although, looking around at the stern, armour-plated Iyr, I couldn’t imagine that either parties or brothels were in particularly heavy supply around here.

  No. If I found her, it would be down to my own abilities as an investigator, rather than dumb luck. Perhaps this was why Saotchun was so keen on using this case as a test.

  I looked around at the city I found myself in. The central stronghold, which operated as the capital here on Z’h’ar, was a desolate place - even for a desert planet. High walls surrounded the vertical city, guard towers posted around every gate. In the city itself, everything was about function; there was no art, no music, only blank screens posted on every street corner. This wasn’t a planet that I would be returning to for a holiday.

  The local Iyr kept to themselves, heads facing down, walking with purpose as though they all had somewhere that they desperately wanted to be.

  Outside the city, as far as I could tell, was no better. On the plus side, there were none of these charmless Iyr about. On the other hand, they had to deal with a lack of air conditioning, which I didn’t myself fancy in this heat.

  I thought it was supposed to be winter here? What do they do in their summers? Melt?

  The target, Melonaitopila (which was supposedly a short name for an Itagurinatipilazutinafi), had, by all accounts, last been spotted at a local U’kka shop. The store, while indeed serving U’kka, seemed to in fact specialise in Guran kebabs - a rather grandiose term for what turned to be simply a rodent cooked on a stick. When it came to my turn to order, I stuck to drinks only.

  ‘Say…,’ I started, ‘Have you seen this woman, recently, by any chance?’

  I showed the store owner a picture of the target on my console’s holodisplay. The Iyr shook his head.

  ‘Not seen her.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I prompted. ‘She was here, about a week ago?’

  ‘In this store?’

  ‘Yes. In this store.’

  ‘I have not seen her,’ the Iyr repeated.

  I thanked them for their (lack of) help and sat down to drink my U’kka. When the shift changed, I asked the new Iyr behind the counter the same questions and received the same result.

  This wasn’t a great start - and it wasn’t as though I had a massive number of leads I could follow. I repeated the experiment outside the store, but found that Iyr were unwilling to stop for a stranger from another world. Even when I stood in their way, many would ignore me, and the few who did stop were less than helpful. The local Iyr would have had me believe that nobody had seen this woman.

  I’d landed fairly late, so the day soon turned to night. Not wanting to be standing around in a strange street after dark, I decided to abandon my post, regroup, and try again tomorrow. Maybe, if I was lucky, a new route of investigation would occur to me by then.

  As I headed in search of somewhere to drink (real drink, not any more U’kka, unless I wanted my bowels to resent me), the screens posted around the city all suddenly blinked into action.

  A symbol appeared, glowing in blue on the s
creens, one that I could have sworn that I recognised from somewhere. An equilateral triangle, with a kind of zig-zag hanging out the bottom. This must have been a character in the Iyr’s own language - one that nobody outside their own race was able to understand, even with universal translators. The Iyr really were a private people.

  Around me, all the Iyr had stopped to stare at their nearest screen, and were transfixed by it. The symbol was then replaced by an image of an Iyr, sitting, facing the screen. He spoke in the common tongue for a few minutes, during which time, everyone else remained still, silent, fascinated by what they were being told. I listened in; little of it was of interest to me, covering only topics like the local economy, updates on the negotiations with the GMU, and the weather.

  Surprise, surprise - it’s hot again.

  And then, just like that, it ended - the blue shape being shown again, upside down this time, on the screens. The nearby Iyr took this as their cue to continue with their days. I shook my head in bemusement at the whole situation, and I, too, carried on.

  I found a bar open just outside the Iyr capital’s Central Command building. It was an impressive structure, almost perfectly cubic but for the doors and windows. Stretching across the whole of the front face, two symbols were painted in a brilliantly-white tone, presumably meaning “Central Command” in the local language. I took one last look at this monument to government and then entered the bar.

  The Iyr’s ambivalence towards the arts meant that their interiors were minimalist, functional. A smooth, concrete bar stood tall along one side of the room, sharp, square corners matching the style of the Central Command building. I assumed this similar motif was unintentional rather than designed - I couldn’t yet imagine an Iyr with that much creativity. Next to the bar itself, a number of (largely empty) bar stools hovered, facing away from the square tables behind them. It was at one of these stools which I sat.

  With no bar staff currently in sight, I took a moment to look around at the other customers. A group of Iyr sat, having a quiet, civilised conversation at one of the tables. A young Pritan trained his eye on the Lonely Galaxy’s guide to Z’h’ar, and accidentally spilt his green drink down his “I heart Z’h’ar” t-shirt. In the corner, another Iyr sat alone, his helmet marked with a red stripe.