Vyyda Book 1: The Haver Problem (13 page)

              Dorsey was famished.  His midday meal had been put off several times now and the mess was closed for lunch service.  Another hour and the dinner session would begin, but he couldn’t wait.  Leaving the encounter with Dole Vardon, he made for Flood’s – it remained open through the afternoon.  Unfortunately, as he drew close to the restaurant, Dorsey caught sight of an unwelcome presence:  Dominic Spackle, the right hand man of Pietro Sklar who had awakened him with the obnoxious blast on his intercom.  Worse, Spackle was closing on Dorsey, angling to intercept him before he reached the entrance to Flood’s.

Spackle
’s mere presence had come to be an omen of unpleasantness in Dorsey’s eyes.  Somewhere in his twenties and conventionally handsome, Spackle suffered from the insecurity of being considerably shorter than the average man on Sykes and of having none of the formal education that faculty members possessed.

             
He made up for it by being indispensible to Sklar, always having the answers or information that the director needed.  Living in a room just off his little office outside Sklar’s much larger one, Spackle was available to serve every moment of every day.

             
The other, most immediately obvious quality to Spackle, was his wardrobe.  High, wrap-around collars, wide gray, stillian belts, expensive fabrics and square-toed, pinchback shoes that most people on Sykes would bypass for their lack of comfort.

             
Jokes were made behind Spackle’s back about his clothes, enough so that they made their way to Pietro Sklar.

             
“No one’s expecting you to dress like a
magna-plusse
here.  Get something more comfortable,” he’d finally said to Spackle.

             
But Spackle had bigger plans for himself down the line and he continued to dress for them.  As an extension of sorts for Sklar, Spackle could occasionally take a caustic attitude with faculty members, as if they were his to command.

             
“You aren’t on your way to Flood’s by any chance, are you?” Spackle asked Dorsey, closing the gap on his prey just outside the front doors of the eatery.

             
“Keeping track of people’s eating habits now?” Dorsey wouldn’t look at the irritating little man.

             
“Only when the person in question is overdrawn...which you are as of yesterday.”

             
“What?”  Dorsey stopped, glaring at Spackle.

             
“You’re overdrawn on your credit.  Your next salary installment will have to be adjusted, but until then:  No more meals at Flood’s.”

             
“That has to be a mistake.”

             
“I don’t make those kinds of mistakes.”

             
By now, faculty members and students (including Tomas Witt, who was inside Flood’s, awaiting a meal) were within earshot, unable to help but hear Spackle’s claim as he spoke louder and more forcefully.  Dorsey worked to avert eye contact with any of them, half-turning to face the direction from which he’d come, his back angled toward Flood’s.

             
“If you ate in the mess more often, you’d keep a greater portion of your salary, hmm?  Maybe enough to pay for an excursion between terms.  I don’t think you’ve been able to do that, have you?  Such an opportunity to broaden your horizons,” Spackle said.

             
"I think that Professor Jefferson gets the message, Mr. Spackle," Witt said, appearing at Dorsey’s side, pulling him away.

             
The slightest glimpse of smirk could be seen on Spackle’s face as he left.

             
“One of the advantages of having taught here for years:  pay rises high enough and you can afford Flood’s food every meal of the day.” Witt said privately to Dorsey.

             
Dorsey shrugged, pretending it didn’t matter to him.

             
“Don’t let Spackle bother you.  His type never goes away.”

             
“Maybe, but I’m not giving up hope,” Dorsey deadpanned.

             
“From what I hear, there’s at least one person in the vicinity worse off than you.  Vardon voted out, hmm?”

             
Dorsey couldn’t tell if it was an observation or a criticism.

             
“Burgess voted that way, too.”

             
“Mmm…but you were the deciding vote of record.  Another advantage of seniority at The Sykes Academy.”

             
“All of this to make me feel better?”

             
“Of course not.  You did what you thought was right,” Witt said. “Let me get this meal for you at Flood's.  Half a dozen of us just started."

             
Dorsey gazed at the patrons inside the favored eatery, some of whom were still watching.  Starting to lean toward the place, however, Dorsey felt a sudden resistance from Witt's grip on his arm.

             
"Unless it would make you feel uncomfortable," Witt suggested and shrugged, as if to imply that maybe it wasn't such a good idea at the moment after all.

             
"I've got a few things back at my place."

             
Witt nodded and patted Dorsey on the back.  "Good.  Much better than the mess.  Plus, you can put a little reading time in there, if you know what I mean."

V              V              V              V

              Dorsey knew exactly what Tomas Witt meant.  The history man wouldn’t be satisfied until Dorsey had completed reading the entire journal from FTC-45.  Hell, Witt wouldn’t be satisfied until Dorsey was transformed into an obsessive orichaser.

             
Dorsey couldn’t decide if he was more resentful of Dominic Spackle’s efforts to embarrass him or Tomas Witt’s relentlessness.

             
Tell me about Dirty Water.

             
There had been the one portion of the interview on Kovetkoh that stuck with Dorsey.  He’d love to forget it.

             
Tell me about Dirty Water.

             
Everything about it was fresh in his mind – Witt’s expression, the inflection, everything.  The greatest source of lingering guilt for Dorsey Jefferson in his relationship with the man he considered to be his mentor arose from his response to that prompt.  It was, in reality, the main reason he’d finish reading the entire journal, regardless of any inclination to refuse.

V              V              V              V

              Tell me about Dirty Water.

             
"Dirty Water remains the preeminent criminal organization in U-Space, despite Slowe Staine's claims to the contrary," went Dorsey's response.  It was met with a brief nod and expectant gaze that said,
give me more.

“It’s the long ago conditions of the drinking water on…several labor settlements that got them started.  There’s a quote from one of their early organizers.  ‘Man can only be pushed so far down before he comes back with a vengeance.’  Dirty water.  One of humankind’s most basic needs, and it was filthy, unusable.  They were virtuous…at first, these men.  Established a balance and fairness for many who toiled in awful conditions.  But…people are flawed, aren’t they?  Greed.  Greed and the realization that as a growing collective…they possessed the ability to take what they wanted.  The rest is…”

“History,” Witt said, nodding.  He seemed impressed with Dorsey’s reflection.  The approval led Dorsey to expound further, albeit with less philosophical flair.  He cited episodes and trends of criminal behavior and corruption initiated by Dirty Water:  kidnapping, smuggling, theft on a grand scale and even the subjugation of entire settlements.  The things which Dirty Water would not attempt made for a short list.

             
Dirty Water were even frequent "poachers" into C-Space, hitting colonies on the fringe of Earth-controlled territory, Dorsey pointed out, naming five separate incidents.

Tomas Witt listened without the slightest sign of skepticism.  It allowed
Dorsey to hit his stride in proving his worth.  Such a receptive listener was Witt that Dorsey nearly let down his guard on the biggest secret he had to conceal, the thing which allowed him to be so knowledgeable about Dirty Water: he was directly affiliated with the group.

             
Interviewing with Tomas Witt on Kovetkoh hadn't simply been to make a good impression.  It was an absolute necessity.  Hosting the interview at Dorsey's settlement of employment at the time would have been impossible.

             
His first translator job, with Pekk Traders Interplanetary, procured at The Wheel had disappointed:  shortsighted, unimaginative people at every turn, content to repeat the same functions each day.  They were happy to retire to private rooms in the evening, consuming hours of pre-packaged entertainments which would wash over them and rock them to slumber.  Dorsey may just as well have been back on Hyland-6A.

             
Two less-than-inspiring positions followed Pekk.  Considerations of returning to his haska began to appeal to Dorsey, as humiliating as it would have been.

             
That's when he stumbled across an opportunity at Lilligee & Company, a going concern that held promise.  Even if one didn't know the company by name, its product had dug into the consciousness of countless citizens of U-Space:  Gleeson, nutritional supplement of the age.  Settlements with high levels of physical labor imported the stuff by the ton to keep their workforce going.

             
A product and history such as that was worth a try, Dorsey reasoned, and joined Lilligee & Company as a translator and comms coordinator.

             
Unfortunately, it took only hours following his arrival at the Lilligee compound to discover that the company was a front for Dirty Water.  No real phenomenal deduction required; people within Lilligee made no attempt to hide the fact.  Days were spent translating, forging transmission signals (which he learned to do under duress) and generally aiding in corruption flowing in and out of Lilligee.

             
It was bad enough that Gleeson turned out to be a marginally toxic concoction masquerading as a nutritional supplement.  Lilligee involvement in scores of Dirty Water's other illegal endeavors created a whole spectrum of sins to which Dorsey had become an accomplice. 

             
Yet he had to perform well to keep from running afoul of the people in charge.  In turn, his exemplary work rendered him indispensible.  The thuggish head of Dorsey's sector, Kivvington, rewarded this proficiency with a declaration of 'ownership'. 

Generally referred to as Chief Bossman, Kivvington was a
strange, baldheaded specimen – a semi-charming sociopath with bursts of anger and a lazy eye.

             
"You’re just too damn good at what you do," he told Dorsey, explaining his reason for the declaration.  “I’d never find a decent replacement.”

             
Not that Dorsey wasn't treated somewhat well.  He ate the best food of his life and enjoyed a comfortable set of rooms in which he was provided with various creature comforts (his favorite was the air filtration system that circulated pleasantly scented oxygen into his sleeping quarters with a tranquilizing effect, assuring deep sleep every evening).

             
Moreover, once each year, the staff of Lilligee who demonstrated proper motivation in their work and engendered trust were allowed an annual sojourn to any Dirty Water controlled settlement in U-Space.  An old Earth tradition:  vacation.  Earned vacation would ultimately be the benefit that served Dorsey best.  He timed a getaway to one of Dirty Water’s luxury/pleasure planets to coincide with the Sykes interview.  A slippery jump in a transit station to a molka headed for Kovetkoh was all it took.

             
Tell about Dirty Water?  Oh, what Dorsey could have said.  Even though he’d never performed an act of violence, it didn’t really matter.  He’d still been a functioning part of the deeds done by a group of criminals whose cruelty had been visited on so many over the years.

             
Best not to think about it.  Dorsey triggered his ether screen once more.

22 February 2163

I reached my final destination six days ago. The planet is referred to only as FTC-45 and I am a one-man medical staff. Many other Britons here, some Americans and a few Spanish.

As recently as two years ago, I never would have suspected I’d find myself in this situation: A refugee from the planet Earth. My family, circle of friends and frequent acquaintances (most everyone I know, in fact) received years and years of assurances that relocation would end long before we would ever be considered candidates for migration. We were a part of Earth’s bright future, they said.  The alarmist talk going ‘round of expanded forced migration was simply a rumour.