THE CURSE OF CITIZENSHIP

The first thing Garth did when he walked into his room was head straight for the armchair where he’d hidden the Stretch gun, the ammo, and the credit chips. It wasn’t the most original of hiding places, but he’d been too damned paranoid to try and hide it anywhere cunning. He flipped the cushion off the chair let loose a huge sigh of relief. Everything was still there. Garth rescued his bounty from their upholstered hiding spot, put the cushion back in place, and sat down, eager to finally use his new toy as it hadn’t been intended.

The Protipal 5000’s government clone bore only superficial similarities to the original. It’d pass the muster with someone just taking a gander, but beyond the face plate and the button alignment, the two had nothing in common. During his illegal foray into the Hotel’s primary systems, one of the things he’d noticed almost immediately was a series of slots set around the edges of the proteus’ screen and down the side of the least flexible parts of the arm-casing. The old Protipal’d only had one, which Turuin had irrevocably keyed to his personal credit chip, but if Garth was right, the cunning bastards in R&D had gone a step beyond common espionage with the additional slots by enabling them to scan other credit chips and even possibly use add-ons.

No longer concerned with getting caught by The Man, , Garth popped one of the chips into an easy-to-reach slot and waited. As the tiny leads on the chip locked into place, Garth’s devious mind was rewarded with absolute confirmation of his suspicions. After scanning the chip for viruses and other illegal codes, an Ident program started cycling up. Worries that he was going to have to go through some sort of password protection were belayed when the program began scanning through its preposterously huge database without pausing. Thirteen minutes later, a series of mug shots appeared on his Hotel Screen, along with the dead man’s name, last known location, known affiliates, and a warrant as long as his arm.

Cackling evilly, Garth popped the other chips in and waited to see what would happen next.

Armed with a host of cross-referenced data from the three additional credit chips, the program began building up a database that the proteus immediately shunted off to the Screen. In forty minutes, Garth was reading through a comprehensive catalogue of criminals operating in and about Port City.

The first four thugs he’d killed did in fact belong to a gang calling themselves ‘The Port Side Boys’ as Jimmy had initially told him. The Port Side Boys, or Portsiders, had their fingers in a number of different Hospitalian pies, varying from prostitution to gambling, but their biggest claim to fame was a supposed ‘inside man’ working at the Space Port that gave them virtually unlimited access to its environs. If the reports were true –and there was little reason to believe they weren’t thanks to the Portsider’s relative standing in the government’s most wanted sections- the mafia-style gang used their alleged contact to aid in their import and export business. Since the Portsiders also proved to be very difficult to infiltrate, the list of items they dealt in was purely hypothetical, but it was believed they were the sole providers of the drugs that kept God soldiers from falling to pieces; by giving this mélange of chemicals, nutritional supplements, and narcotics to inactive God soldiers, the Portsiders were subverting the loyalties of those men and women to their own cause, which had the government shitting themselves.

The Portsiders ran Port City’s seedy underside with utter impunity, but they also moved in the suburban circles by running rackets in the right-hand pie wedge community known as Porttown. Like all really good gangs, they also had a turf war running with their immediate neighbors to the east, a gang calling themselves ‘The Devil’s Left Testicle’.

Garth had a good chuckle of the stupid name. The Devil Nuts wanted to move in on the Portsiders because all the gangs on Hospitalis coveted Port City; they believed in the inside man theory, and imagined that all it would take was extra money in this mystery person’s pockets to co-opt the Portsider’s trade. A little further probing into the database on the Portsiders revealed that they were slowly branching to other planets, edging out a few tougher, already well-established gangs.

Being told that the Portsiders were badass gangsters was all well and good but it didn’t tell Garth why they wanted him dead and buried. A holographic sidebar informed Garth that thirty percent of the ‘Latelians’ living in Port City were in fact immigrants from out system, which further left him in the dark as to the Portsider motive; if the gangbangers came into daily contact with non-Latelian citizens on a daily basis, what in the hell did they really want? Their dislike sure as hell didn’t have anything to do with him being Outsystem, no matter what they shouted.

Garth shifted the credit amounts from the chips, which totaled a little over ten thousand dollars, into his own accounts then instructed the proteus to erase them completely. Staring at the complex web of data and worrying at a thumbnail, Garth tried to find the common element behind his experiences with the Portsiders and their criminal activities.

The key element had to be whoever was in charge of the Portsiders, and Garth wasn’t thinking about the top level stooge. It was the money-man, the mover and the shaker, the one who’d undoubtedly hooked the thugs up in the Space Port that Garth wanted to meet; it was this person and no one else who had to be giving the gangsters their marching orders, because as far as his Intel went, Garth couldn’t see any other assassination attempts in their six year career. Trying to reason out why this mystery man –or woman- wanted him dead was going to be a tough nut to crack; government Intel on the Portsiders had a big fat question mark at the top of the Portsider food chain, so unless he could learn something a crack squad of agents couldn’t, Garth guessed he was just going to have to suffer.

He saved the search and grumped. He’d give the Portsiders one more chance to leave him the fuck alone. If they tried to kill him again, all bets were off. It’d be explosions and fires and lots of running and screaming.

Garth sighed grumpily. Every goddamn time he turned around, someone was coming at him. The Portsiders, OverSecretary Terrance, Yellow Dog assassins. It was like people didn’t like him or something. It was enough to give a guy a complex.

The proteus chimed, and Sa Herrig’s shiny face appeared on the Screen.

“Fuck me sideways.” Garth slapped his head. During his search, his tricky subconscious had contrived to make him forget about the newest, and potentially even more irritating, changes to his life. “Hi, Sa Herrig.”

“Hello, Sa Garth. How are you today?”

Herrig would probably shit himself if he knew what kind of a day his new Offworld buddy was having, so Garth kept it to banalities. “Not too bad, man. You?”

Herrig rubbed the back of his neck. With all the work Garth had given him to do over the last few days, he was inordinately grateful of the fact that very few Latelians did their banking at FHSBC; most of the natural citizens preferred to deal with local banks that didn’t come from Trinityspace, and sooner or later, all of the immigrants did the same. “I was in the middle of compiling the information you wanted on Conglomerating when I got a priority request from someone named Robret, concerning legal changes to your status.”

“Yeah.” Garth shifted in the chair, trying to get comfortable. He was pretty pissed at the Portsiders. That massage had been fan-effing-tastic, and they’d spoiled it completely. “Si Mijomi –she’s the hotel manager or lobby gargoyle- told me I can’t stay here in the Hotel anymore because as a Latelian, I’m not allowed.”

Herrig read over the brief notes he’d made before placing the call. “Well, technically speaking, she and Robret, and by association, the Contest promoters, are correct. The legal wording in the Contest regulations unfortunately does not make allowances for non-Latelian citizens; even with your citizenship being probationary, all of the Contest decision-makers are bound by the original wording –you cannot forget that Offworlders were not permitted to join in the Contest until five years ago.”

“Cut to the chase, Herrig.” Garth couldn’t shake the feeling that the pudgy banker was trying to figure out a way to sugar-coat a not-very-nice blow to the head with a forty pound mallet.

Herrig harrumphed. “Latelians Contestants are not allowed to be housed with Offworld Contestants. Since most of the Latelian Contestants already live here or have family, or are being sponsored by various companies, they’re allowed to stay wherever they want.”

That didn’t sound so bad. Garth rather enjoyed the notion of staying at an upscale Hotel where the other guests didn’t try to take your eye out with a spoon because you drank their orange juice. He could tell by Herrig’s attempt at a blasé attitude that this wasn’t the bad news. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

“Yes, well … yes.” Herrig pursed lips and for a moment looked so much like a hangdog Basset Hound it was comical. The resemblance faded as Herrig came to his decision. “There’s no easy way to say it, so I’ll just come right out with it. Latelians, immigrants or not, cannot fight Offworlders.”

Garth blinked slowly, all the blood rushing out of his head and into his feet. “Are you telling me,” he asked when he rediscovered the power of speech, “that I have to fight God soldiers instead of the fucking bozos in this Hotel?”

Herrig looked supremely apologetic as he nodded.

“God soldiers.” The ‘danger’ feeling resting along his spine tripled in intensity. Garth kissed goodbye any chance of sleeping any time in the next decade. Or, at least until he had his head pulled off. “Big guys, look like tanks?”

Again, Herrig nodded, this time with a slightly queasy cast. He hastened to interrupt. “The elimination rounds start tomorrow, though, so it’s not as though you’ll get ki … er, that is to say … the odds of you pulling one of the God soldiers right off the mark are rather slim. You see, while I did the research, I learned the underpinning reasons for having the Contest officially start a little earlier than normal, what with the Offworlders. Not being a gamehead, I found it quite fascinating; the preliminary elimination rounds haven’t even taken place yet for Latelians and are likely to take as long as the Offworlder competition’s entire run and then some. You see, rather than go from the number they have now to a thousand, and then start another run down to a hundred and then down to ten, the Latelian Contestants start at one end then go right down to the other. The Offworld portion intentionally ends sooner so the government can ship all the losers out-system. Easier to handle one man than however many remain alive.”

Garth irrationally tried to figure out how in the hell Herrig had lived in the system for so long without being exposed more fully to the Contest before refocusing on the fact that he was going to have to fight God soldiers. “I don’t suppose there’s any way out of this?”

“That was one of the first things I checked when I saw where the rules were taking us, sa. You can appeal to have your citizenship rescinded, and I began the paperwork on your behalf, but I got a message from the Bureau of Admissions saying that all appeals will be dealt with after the Contest.”

“Fuck me sideways!” Garth bellowed. He slammed a hand down on the chair, then leaped out of the way as it broke. “Shit. Goddamn motherfucking OverSecretary!”

Herrig raised his voice just enough to cut through Garth’s tirade. “Sa, I feel I need to warn you against saying anything further. Though I cannot of course possibly understand anything you just said,” he tapped his proteus meaningfully, “government officials are held in the highest possible regard, and their offices would treat even irate and unintentional libel very seriously. If you would like to come to my offices and discuss anything of a delicate nature, I would be happy to accommodate you.”

Garth stopped punching holes in the wall and actually smiled. “Bless your heart, Sa Herrig.” Garth’s opinion of the chubby banker rose several notches. The man was no fool; he knew, or at least suspected, that his client/potential employer was up to his eyeballs in unsavory activities and was willing to help him out of a jam. He even suspected that either his or Herrig’s proteus was being monitored. Garth shook his head. “No, no, that’s cool. Just, um, keep on with the whole Conglomerate thingie and, uh, general type stuff of that nature. Oh, yeah, and, uh, give yourself a raise. Like, a thousand dollars a day or something. I don’t know. I have some thinking to do.” A question occurred to Garth. “What would happen if I decided I didn’t want to fight in the Contest?”

Herrig raised an eyebrow at that one. “If you weren’t a citizen, I’d say they’d most likely throw you out of Latelyspace and bar your return for life. As a citizen? If they wanted, they could probably sue you for breach of contract, throw you in jail for a few years, that sort of thing. With your past, though, I’d say that is beyond the best case scenario; you’d probably have to bribe every official in the system to get off so lightly. You could do that quite easily and have a lot of money left over, but it’s inadvisable. Knowing how the government works, seeing how they work after the last few incidents with the Offworlders, I’d say you would most like find yourself in very dire straits. I will contact you once I have more information, sa. Good afternoon.”

OverSecretary Terrance was one slick bastard, Garth had to give the politician that much. Forget the explosive proteus altogether; it was nothing but a red herring, thrown into the mix to give the stupid Offworlder something to focus on while the big bad problem came lurching around the corner at terminal velocity. OverSecretary Terrance seeming willingness to let Garth get on with the rest of his day without any serious warnings or overly heavy-handed displays of intent should have twigged his spidey sense, but it hadn’t: the gift of both citizenship and a fancy new proteus had completely blinded Garth to any really underhanded tricks.

OverSecretary Terrance had maneuvered Garth, a guy so crafty he could chew gum and walk at the same time, into the perfect scenario. No matter what happened, there was simply no possible way that an ‘ordinary’ man could defeat a God soldier. OverSec Terrance didn’t need to worry about being blamed for the Offworlder’s death, and anything he got Garth to do could simply be spun into the maddened behavior of a terrified lunatic

It was a perfect solution, and Garth had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

“Son of a bitch.” Garth dropped onto the bed, trying to think.

Did he dare hope that he could defeat one of those monstrous men? Since coming to Hospitalis, he’d grown stronger and faster than ever. There was also the bizarre occurrence the night before, during his fight with Injiri Katainn. Was it possible that his ‘adaptive morphology’, ever-sensitive to mounting danger, would do whatever genetic witchery it could to ensure his survival? Garth couldn’t know the answer to that question until he was in the middle of a fight; in times past, especially those moments during an assignment that went sideways in an awful hurry that was exactly what had happened: he’d gotten stronger or smarter or faster and gotten away.

The God soldiers, though, were easily the greatest threat to his personal well-being and ability to draw breath.

Could it happen? Could he wake up one morning and be just as strong, as fast, and as deadly as the average mutant Latelian soldier? Garth had to hope so, because the only other option was to somehow sneak back into Trinityspace, find the nearest Black Clinic and pay for severely illegal modifications that might not even be enough in the first place; unaffected Trinityspace

Trinityspace and all of its peoples were extremely lucky that the Trinity AI controlled the Q-Tunnels and that there was no such thing as a hyperdrive or warp speed or any other space-obliterating drives. If it weren’t for that small bit of luck, the Latelians would probably be running the show. Their immunity to the Dark Ages and their bloody-mindedness made them the ultimate menace.

His proteus pipped. Garth dragged himself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. The search avatar he’d set off to find the owners of Hotel Hospitalis had finally completed its task. He read the information over once, and then to make sure he wasn’t going blind or stupid, Garth sent the data to the Screen in the other room. According to the in-depth search his protean avatar had gone through, no one owned the Hotel. Oh, the Contest Company got humungous kickbacks from the holding company who managed the finances, as did various government officials and all the other people associated with keeping a harness on the unruly Offworlders, but there were no names on the bottom line. Even the holding company was just a shell that owed no particular allegiances to anyone.

It was a mystery, but one for a later day; he’d only wanted to get in touch with Management to fill them in on Si Mijomi’s ‘illegal’ activities. He didn’t care if those people decided to cash in on the horrid cunt’s video sales or not. He was only interested in making her life as miserable as possible. Garth saved the search, tagged off various sections that the avatar hadn’t been able to probe for one reason or another, and lay back down on the bed.

He needed to stop dithering and find a new place to stay, even if it was only a temporary stopover. Si Mijomi was the sort of person who’d call down thunder and lightning to get rid of him, and the last thing Garth wanted right then was to get in more trouble. He had enough to last several years as it was.

A twenty minute search revealed few prospects that suited his needs. Other than Hotel Hospitalis, he’d find better accommodations camping out in the wilderness. Within ‘city’ limits’ there were dozens of flop houses and rent-by-the-hour rooms that were about as sanitary as a noxious chemical plant, and offered about as much protection as a house made of toilet paper; any Portsiders wanting to kill him there could do so with a minimum of muss and fuss. To make matters worse, much of the entire planet’s bulk storage and heavy industry dominated Port City’s environs, which added either the tang of pollutants or the ceaseless noise of multi-ton vehicles crashing around at all hours of the night. There were a few nice bed and breakfast nooks tucked away into the quieter sections of Port’s suburbs, but again, the opportunity for the Portsiders to exploit that kind of situation was too wieldy for Garth to deal with; he didn’t want to be responsible for bringing a gang war into a sleepy neighborhood unless it was unavoidable.

Other than Central City, there were no other idyllic choices for Garth; for one reason or another, the other cities fell below his standards, and for a man who would eventually bring doom and doubt to a population, hanging out alongside all the government officials and politicians was pretty damned risky, even if he was Garth N’Chalez, Master of Mayhem. Unless he wanted to take the plunge and stay somewhere where innocent people could get hurt, though, it was Central or nothing.

With a grunt of irritation, Garth signed off on a presidential suite in one of the more grandiose Hotels in Central City. Staying there would make him an easier target for covert surveillance, so he was just going to have to hope Lady Ha’s reprogramming would do as advertised.

The Hotel Palazzo’s primary network confirmed the new reservation, telling him that one of its own limousines was being dispatched before ending the link; it would arrive in fifteen minutes or less, reminded Garth he was going to need to look into getting hold of a local pilot’s license, because once he was done at the Space port, there was absolutely no reason to keep dealing with Jimmish. The cabbie was a standup guy and sure as hell didn’t need to know a guy like Garth N’Chalez.

Securing the overlarge Stretch-gun in his waistband, Garth stowed the few ammo clips down his pant legs, and gave the walls a few more kicks for good measure before making his way downstairs.

Garth N’Chalez was rapidly becoming an itch that Reywin couldn’t scratch, and her patience was wearing thin. Watching him come out of the elevator with a jaunty smile on his lips, Reywin ground her teeth in frustration at her team’s inability to find anything useful about the man. Beyond some very dry physical statistics, a list of planets he’d visited, and a long list of documents more than ninety percent blacked out, Sa Garth N’Chalez was the proverbial invisible man. That he was a threat to systemic security was a given. There was simply no way to prove it.

Reywin was a woman torn. The duty to her section chief, and beyond him, OverSecretary Terrance, was clear. But so was the inner compulsion to do what was right for the people. Being ordered to maintain passive surveillance had been a simple enough task to adhere to; with the number of Offworlders lazing about the Hotel environs day in and day out, assigning a single agent to a single visitor would have been a terrible waste of resources. Instead, she’d gone ahead and programmed some simple recognition avatars and set them loose in the relay towers to track N’Chalez’ movements that way. There was nothing illegal, or even untoward, about using pre-existing machinery to do the job of a human being, but as before, she had received a rescind order from the highest possible levels of officialdom. It was as though Garth was being protected from the OverSecretary himself, which made absolutely no sense. To make matters worse, Reywin was convinced Garth was involved in the recent deaths of eight Portsiders who’d met their end since the man had made planet-fall, but there was absolutely no way to prove his guilt without being able to run even half-assed surveillance. There was clear cut evidence that someone involved in the latest string of deaths had been shot, and badly, but DNA testing had come back with conflicted results; blood evidence found at the scene lacked any of the standard genetic markers that would make the substance blood at all. As far as the vast array of machines and education was concerned, beyond a striking similarity to blood, the stuff found on the scene was just as easily a homemade concoction. If it was Garth N’Chalez who was responsib le for the deaths, what, exactly, had he done to himself?

So Reywin was torn. Should she follow the OverSecretary’s commands and let Garth N’Chalez roam free, doing who knew what? The inner itch was frenetically convinced the man’s death toll would only continue to rise, and sooner or later, would consume more lives than just lowly Portsider thugs. Or should she do what the original, unspoken mandate of her charter demanded, and work to protect the lives of her fellow Latelians, regardless of the consequences? Reywin didn’t know the answer yet.

Garth spotted Reywin lounging by a pile of metallic briefcases that contained her ‘diagnostic tools’. He smiled as he made his way over to her. When she realized what was going on, the agent looked desperately for a way to escape, but couldn’t; to one side Reywin was hemmed in by the tools of her trade, and on the other was a God soldier ordered to permanent station at the Hotel. Garth smiled again, this time with more warmth. “You’re not an ERT specialist, are you?”

Reywin frowned, hopefully portraying someone who couldn’t even imagine what that meant. “Sorry, sa?” Surreptitiously, the agent started cycling an alert on her proteus; the rest of her three man team, spread around the lower levels of the Hotel, were now on standby, and would level the building to get to her.

Garth grinned at Reywin’s craftiness; anyone not expecting the woman to do just what she’d done would have missed the motion entirely. A second later, though, his grin turned to one of mild confusion. A quick burst of static dots played up and down his prote-arm in an undeniably non-random way. He indicated the cluster of six metallic briefcases, the largest one big enough to hold a portable main. “There aren’t any ERT trucks outside anymore.”

“They went to bring more equipment.” Reywin said blithely.

“Why’re these packed up to go if you need more equipment?” Garth asked, apprehensively eyeing the God soldier. His good-natured prying was making the young woman nervous. All it’d take was a small scream of panic to turn the immobile gargantuan into a walking avalanche. “Wrong kind.” It didn’t take a genius to see that Garth didn’t believe her lie for a second, but there was nothing that could be done about that; none of her training courses had covered the possibility of a target striking up a conversation with an agent. They were in a grey area, and if the situation didn’t resolve itself soon, Reywin feared she was going to have to break protocol and deal with N’Chalez right there on the spot.

“Oh.” Garth knocked the side of his head. “Sorry.”

“No need.” Reywin relaxed inwardly. With all of the pressures of having to deal with a Hotel full of raving Offworlders and the continual fear that someone would recognize her outside of her false uniform, Reywin conceded she may have misread Garth’s intentions. Regardless, though, she knew she was going to have to work three times as hard to ensure that the two of them never came within eyeshot of one another ever again, especially if she decided to continue surveillance on him without authorization. Garth N’Chalez was a dangerous man.

Garth’s proteus chimed softly, ending the discussion. “My limo’s here. Gotta go.”

“Limousine?” Reywin asked, raising her voice as Garth moved away from her.

Garth shouted over his shoulder on his way out the door. “Yeah, I’m a citizen now. Can’t stay in this craphole anymore. See you around, ERT lady.”

How had she missed that? Reywin cursed furiously and summoned her team. The decision had been made. They were going dark, and that was all there was to it. She needed to know just what Garth N’Chalez was up to, who was protecting him, and why.

No one hit the ground running on Hospitalis, least of all a foreign devil.