Wool Factors

 The new brochures had been stacked neatly at one end of Jeronica’s desk where she could sweep them into the bin just by stretching out her hand.  That she hadn’t so far indicated that she hadn’t been in her office since they had been placed there by her Executive Assistant.  They were glossy, shiny, and featured an alligator holding a rifle on the front and an endorsement from one of the less intelligent politicians in the state where Guncare had launched.  The chosen slogan, which Jeronica found pithy but trite, was recuperate with a rifle!

The door of the office whooshed open with a breath of chill air from the corridor surging inside and shivering the leaves of an aspodistra in the corner.  Plants were generally deplored within the building as Jeremy Diseased-Rat claimed he was allergic to many of them but here and there a couple lurked and lingered subversively.  As a nod to the requirements of promotion this plant was carefully set behind an empty picture frame and a small plaque underneath read ‘Ceci n’est pas une plante’.  Jeronica strode in, her hair brushing the ceiling as she was wearing 25cm stiletto heels, which required special scaffolding hidden inside the shoe to support her feet.

She glanced at the pile of brochures and gestured to them as Margoyle stepped in behind, carefully checking for approved corporate booby traps.  Diseased-Rat’s opinion on them was they were a good way of backing up quarterly reviews and determining candidates for promotion, so exaggerated caution was required in all executive offices.

“Recuperate with a rifle?” said Margoyle picking one up delicately and making sure she had as little skin contact with it as possible.  Poisonous inks were déclassé this year but she had been at Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisation for five years and had learned a trick or two herself.  “Guncare?  This has launched then?  I believe on the quarterly product plan this would be… early.”

There was a moment of tense silence.  While underpromising and overdelivering was praise-worthy there was the obverse of that coin as well: doing things without permission or adequate oversight could be very detrimental to one’s career.

“The pilot project has launched,” clarified Jeronica.  She stalked around the desk and sat down in her chair, slipping her shoes unobtrusively off and allowing her abused feet moments to ache in freedom.  “One hospital in one state; access to the ER is by NRA membership only and the proposals for a more-specific membership card will be presented at the next executive meeting.  Staffing levels are adequate for the care intended, and there are indications that this will have soft-power repercussions in the next elections.”

“Adequate for the care intended,” mused Margoyle.  Her skin was faintly grey and looked dusty but that was a side-effect of the cosmetics she used.  She had a pearl choker at her neck and was wearing a blue cashmere sweater and a very severe skirt.  “May I speak off the record?”

Jeronica tapped her desk and a panel in it revolved to reveal a keyboard and inset flat screen.  She identified herself to it by fingerprint scan and then tapped away for a few seconds.

“Yes,” she said.  “Privacy screen is enabled.  We have thirty-three seconds from… now.”

“This reads very much like the standard of care is being fed to an alligator,” said Margoyle flicking swiftly through the brochure.  “Although, at a guess, if you shoot the alligator successfully you might get seen by a nurse.  I can’t find any indication that there are any actual doctors in this — facility?”

“Pretty much,” said Jeronica.  “It is two steps up from the standard of care around the state though, and there are plans to have actual doctors there once enough poor people have signed up to pay the bills.”

Margoyle shook her head as though refusing to believe Jeronica.  “Remarkable,” she said softly.  “I thought Stephanotte’s Soft Power innovations would win the award for most profitable intervention this year, but I can see she has real competition.”

The keyboard in front of Jeronica beeped and both women fell silent for a moment.

“I would estimate that this has a ninety percent likelihood of continuing,” said Margoyle, sounding as though she’d been thinking things over.  “I think the expected lifetime of our input here should be in the two to five year range, so there should be opportunities here to push forward our agenda on Diplomatic Consanguinuity as well.”

Jeronica affected a grave tone.  “That is Manguy’s remit,” she said.  “I believe he’s currently involved in waterway issues.  He could hardly be expected to take on Guncare when he’s neck-deep in Reservoirity and Reservations.”

“Demetrion should have space,” said Margoyle, nodding sagely, “but it seems to be that the resalination project has hit some unfortunate difficulties that really should have been foreseen.”

“That would mean I would need to take on Diplomatic Consanguinuity,” said Jeronica as casually as someone inquiring about the weather.  “If that were to happen I might have to ask you to look after the Wool Factors for me.”

“Would you now?” said Margoyle with the faintest hint of a smile on her lips.

Lapin mariné

 It sometimes seems that certain streets are destined to house restaurants.  You can walk along one for five years, noting the shabby pub on the corner and the bizarre, tiny, neo-fascist shops that never seem to have any customers yet never go out of business and have names like Only Britain, Nicely British, or Home Rule.  I went in one of them once, mostly to see if any of the items in there weren’t made in China and was astonished to find that almost everything was expensively provenanced from the British Isles.  As I left, empty-handed and with my tail a little between my legs, a woman wearing a t-shirt bearing a print of Andy Warhol threw a cup of Pho at me and called a Mussolini-licking little bitch.  I was so surprised that I stood there, cabbage sliding down my face, while she ran off and I found myself wondering how long she’d had to wait for that opportunity.

But then a restaurant will open on that street and, suddenly, in what seems like a space of weeks there are six of them and four more announced and a sour-dough pizza place already being constructed.  Almost as though the street was always destined for this and it just took a while for it to realise it.  To come out as a restaurant street, as it might be.

My destination last Thursday night was for just such a street, though happily not the one where I was assaulted with a Vietnamese soup, and a restaurant called Le Lapin mariné which my schoolboy French suggested meant the pickled rabbit.  Whether this was a rabbit immersed in vinegar or a very drunk rabbit was more than I could remember, though neither suggested that a care for animal welfare would be written on the menu.  The Blonde declined to join me as Thursday is her yoga evening and she and two of her friends have a bet over how long it will be before the yoga teacher breaks down and cries, so I was on my own.

The restaurant looks warm and inviting from the outside, and inside you rapidly learn that looks can be deceiving.  I was seated in a draught and when I complained I was moved to a table closer to the kitchen where there were two draughts and the tablecloth was stained.  I considered complaining again but after looking around I realised that there were yet worse places to be seated and held my tongue.

The walls are painted one of those off-white shades of which there are too many to count or learn the names of, so let’s call it Magnoli-esque and be done with it.  Written in black marker are a collection of names: Nora, Robert, Genevieve, Sam (at least three times), Gillian and more.  I asked the waiter, as he was handing me the menu, the drinks menu and a list of daily specials about them and he fixed me with a steely glare.

“Are you complaining that you’re not up there?” he asked in the tones of someone who gets those kinds of complaints a lot.  “Because if you are—“

“Not at all,” I said.  “I was wondering what they’re there for.”

“They’re all the people the owner has slept with,” said the waiter.  He raised an eyebrow as though expecting me to start complaining.

“I hope he devotes as much effort to the food,” I said and turned to the menu.

The front page was a full-page, full colour picture of a preserved rabbit in a Kilner jar that made me wonder what I was in for.  Much to my relief the remainder of the menu, though brief, was much more standard fare.  There was a choice of three starters (‘Henry’, ‘Chloë’, and ‘Patricia’), a page with six main courses, also indicated solely by name, and finally a Desserts page with once again three names on it.  The drinks menu, at least, listed wines with their traditional names and descriptions so when the waiter returned I ordered a bottle of a recent Chablis, ignored his pointed glance at the empty place opposite me, and asked about the menu.

“Ah,” he said, his eyes raising to the ceiling as though to invoke some higher power.  “The Chef decided to take inspiration from the owner.”

“That’s nice,” I said, trying to be patient.  “But what does it mean?  And what is ‘Henry’, should I choose to order it?  The pickled rabbit?”

“Rat,” said the waiter.

“What?”

“So, the Chef thought that if the owner could put the names of all the people he’s slept with on the wall, the Chef could name all the dishes after the people he was trying to sleep with when he first had them,” said the waiter quickly, as though expecting to be interrupted.  “So ‘Henry’ is who he was trying to get with when he first had pickled rat, ‘Patricia’ was there when he tried pasta alla amatriciana, and so on.”

He stopped, looking like he was expecting an outburst and I waved a hand indicating he should continue.  That evidently confused him and he remained silent.

“Really?” I said eventually.  “What’s the point of the menu if I have to ask you what each dish is in turn?  How can I choose from a list of names?”

“Well,” said the waiter, “you might have slept with a Chloë too, and then you could pick her name and get the memory—“

“Of what the Chef was eating when he tried to sleep with her? Chloë’s a common enough name that I’d hope we weren’t both trying to sleep with the same one,” I said.  “And I’ve never tried to sleep with a Henry.  Or wanted to order pickled rat.”

“My name’s Henry,” said the waiter.  He smiled for the first time.

In the end I just drank the bottle of wine and tried not to listen to the waiter as he explained the circumstances behind the naming of each dish.  The wine was excellent, but everything else… left just a little to be desired.  Much like the lists of names that adorn the walls and menus of this odd little place.

Nivello II

 “About fifteen minutes,” said Jasper, scrutinising the display in front of him.  The displays faintly reflected Honoré behind him and it looked, in the blurry incomplete image, like she was glaring.  “It looks like light traffic out here this evening.”

“That’s too early,” said Honoré after a pause.  “He won’t be ready by then.”

“We can park up aro—“

“No!  He was clear about that; no stopping, no waiting.  We drive by when he’s there and pick him up and go.  Minimum fuss.”

“Parking is hardly a fuss,” said Jasper, sounding slightly irritated.  “It’s a gravity-car, I can put it down just about anywhere for five minutes.  Ten if there’s no patrols.”

“No!”  Jasper turned his head, though the bulk of his neck didn’t let it go very far, and saw from the corner of his eye that Honoré had turned red, her cheeks flushing and the colour descending down her neck.

“Fine,” he said, resigned to her intransigence.  “Then I can find somewhere to park now and we can wait until we’ll arrive on time.  Whenever that might be.”

“Don’t get snippy with me!”  Honoré looked out of the window and the wolverine chose that moment to rattle its cage again.  Jasper jumped at the unexpected noise, and Honoré’s gaze snapped back to the cage and she smiled.

“Dr. Veille,” she said.

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes.  You have to deliver this thing anyway, and it’ll take the time we need to lose.”

“I can deliver it later.  In fact, I’d rather deliver it later.  Tomorrow, around lunchtime.”

“Dr. Veille doesn’t go out for lunch,” said Honoré watching Jasper like a hawk.  As she guessed, a look of shame and dismay appeared on his chubby face reflected in the windscreen.  She thought he had no idea about the reflection as he made no effort to hide it.

“Ah, but she… she has to be there to take delivery of it… anyway.”

“What is the problem with Dr. Veille?  I don’t get it; she must pay well for these deliveries, that’s a live wolverine you have there.  Well, if it gets fed it’ll be a live one.”

The gravity-car dipped a little and adjusted course to the left, sliding gracefully from one air-lane to another.  Inside the zero-g bubble they barely noticed it; just a tiny inertial kick making them shift in their seats a little.

Jasper hesitated so long that he saw Honoré start opening her mouth again for another harangue and decided quickly that he didn’t want to listen to that.

“She’s Nivello,” he said and then wished he hadn’t.  Even listening to Honoré’s often bizarre opinions of other people would have been better than telling her that.

“What?!”

“She’s yellow,” said Jasper, knowing he was clutching at straws.  “She’s a member of the… Yellow Party.”  He had no idea if Lustrous’s byzantine politics had a Yellow Party, either by truename or nickname, but he was hoping that Honoré wouldn’t know either.

“You said she’s Nivello,” said Honoré.  “And I—“

“No I didn’t!”  Jasper didn’t quite shout, but he still spoke loudly enough to drown her out.

“Car!” Honoré’s tone would have brought an entire class of unruly schoolchildren to immediate silence and immotion.  “Replay conversation—“

“There’s no need for that,” said Jasper sounding defeated.  “Fine, I said she was Nivello.  I was joking, I meant she was Yellow.  Yellow Party, I just thought you’d find it funny.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Honoré.  “You said it and you meant it.  Why are you defending her if she’s Nivello?  She’s one of them.”

The planet and its four moons, possibly plus an outsize comet that might or might not have been a moon once, were together called Nivello and named for the extrasolar navigator that had determined that the planet and two of the moons were habitable.  Nivello was also the title of the planetary ruler, essentially a figurehead position whose views and opinions were largely written for it by the Union of Governments of all the significant countries and realms on the Nivello worlds.  The people who worked directly for the Nivello were also known as Nivello, by association, and formed a small, elite coterie scattered across the planet and moons.  They were more frequently referred to as them and They and every policy or decision that people disagreed with, or just bad luck, was ascribed to them.

“I’m not defending her because she’s not Nivello,” said Jasper doggedly.  “I was just joking, I thought it would be funny.”  The car changed path again, this time to avoid a collision with a gravity-car that was descending through the air-lanes seemingly without looking where it was going.

“She’s always been one for disappearing without notice,” said Honoré, who seemed to be ignoring his denials now.  “That would make sense now.  I can’t believe I didn’t spot it myself though!  She’s ruthless too, I can’t believe I just overlooked that.  I bet she’s using these animals for experiments!  Vivisection!”

“Look, do you want to go and deliver this wolverine to her or not?” said Jasper hunting for any reason to change the subject.

“Of course I do!  Now I know what I’m looking for!”

Jasper’s hands hovered over the controls as he hesitated; he’d been expecting Honoré to refuse to go until she’d had time to think about it and make plans.

“Sure?” he said, trying to think of anything to make her change her mind.

“Yes!  Get on with it!”

Nivello

 Erimus, the second moon, was rising on their left and Fao, the third moon, was setting on their right.  Between the moons the evening sky was spotted with clouds and the occasional sparkle of a low-orbit satellite.  The sky, normally turquoise during daytime, was shading into purple with red at the edges and the last of the sun was hiding now behind the spires and towers of Lustrous, the capital city of Medthorn.

Jasper squeezed himself into the driver’s seat of the gravity-car, cursing as he twisted this way and that in the plasti-steel seat trying to pull the seatbelt free from beneath himself.  Honoré tsked under her breath and opened the rear door to sit in the back and paused.

“What the hell, Jas?” she said, staring at an animal carrier emblazoned with a logo in red and white that she didn’t recognise.  “This had better not be occupied.”  She put a hand on it to lift it out and something inside lunged against the grille blocking the door, jolting the carrier forward and bumping it against the front passenger seat.  Honoré suppressed a cry of shock and her eyes tightened with annoyance that she’d even let herself be startled.  “Jas?” she said again, trying to put meaning into her tone.

Jasper’s bulk squeaked as he turned in his seat to look over his shoulder.  “Oh that, that’s the wolverine.  Special delivery for Dr. Veille.”

“When you get round to it,” said Honoré.  “Did you feed it?  Is that why it’s trying to take my hand off?  And where am I suppose to sit?”

“Uhhh,” said Jas as he turned back to the controls.  “Huh.  I might have forgotten to feed it today actually.  I’ll do it when we get back.”

“Deliver it already!  Why do you want a half-dead wolverine in the back of your car anyway?”

“I don’t,” said Jasper staring through the windscreen.  “But… well, it’s Dr. Veille.  It’s not like we get on.”

“You’re not to get on her good side by starving her bloody wolverine to death!  And where am I supposed to sit?  You’ve still not answered me!”

“Next to me?”

“Hah!”  Honoré hauled the animal carrier out and pushed it onto the passenger seat next to Jasper, which seemed to agitate the wolverine inside.  It started growling now, a low, throaty noise that made Jasper keep glancing over at it.  His face, naturally jowly and pale, took on a slightly sickly sheen to it and he started sweating.  Behind him Honoré got in the back, her feet crunching on paper and cardboard debris in the floorwell, and sighed heavily.  She slammed her door shut.

“Let’s get going,” she said.  “Ryegate first, then Dr. Veille.  I was rather hoping to get some reading done this evening but that looks like another dream gone up in smoke.”

“What are you reading now?”  Jasper unlocked the controls with his fingerprints and checked the power levels as the dashboard display lit up.  He adjusted the steering column slightly and then gently engaged the antigravity drive.  It whined loudly and the car shuddered momentarily, then there was a stomach-clenching sensation of weightlessness as the whole car became wrapped in a zero-g bubble.  It lifted slowly up into the sky and Jasper focused on the radar display, checking for other sky traffic.  Honoré was saying something about the book she was supposed to be copy-editing but interpreting the two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional sky traffic took up most of Jasper’s concentration.

“Are you even listening to me?”

“I will be when we’re in a sky-lane,” said Jasper, whose brain replayed the last thing Honoré had said when the silence of her not talking got too loud.  The whine of the anti-gravity drive had faded at last and he made a mental note, for at least the fifth time, that he should get the drive serviced.  “Sorry, this is a bit tricky.”  The car shuddered as he engaged the impulse drive to correct their trajectory.

“I thought they did it all themselves?”

“Self-driving gravity-cars got banned last year, Hon,” said Jasper.  “Too many accidents.  Lustrous doesn’t like its residents being scattered over its terraces from a great height.”

“How?  They’re AI driven, right?”

Jasper sighed and tweaked the controls until the radar flashed, indicating that they were in a sky-lane.  He gently eased back on the anti-gravity and increased the impulse speed and the car started moving smoothly through the air.  With that done he relaxed a little.

“AI’s just another name for Expert System,” he said.  “If it was just reacting to what’s around the car it’d be fine.  But all the attempts to make it clever, to have it do what you say when most people can’t even say what they’re thinking… it’s not working.  They’re taking the AI out of everything now.”

“I didn’t understand any of that,” said Honoré.  “How long until we get there?”

Interview for an engineer

 “I have a question, if I may?”  Threndall was looking around the engine room a little wide-eyed and, being a native of the Oatmaker worlds, that meant that it had eight of them, two on stalks, that were staring.

Kimbull, mostly human with a little bit of doubt on his mother’s side of the family, stuck his thumbs in the pockets of his overalls and nodded.  “Normally we ask for questions to be kept to the end,” he said, “but there’s a lot going on in here and I’m not surprised you have questions.  Go ahead, but remember that we’ve only got an hour for the interview and the HR folk do insist that I do their questions too.”

“Right, yes,” said Threndall.  It was three metres tall though its eyes ranged from one metre above the floor to the two stalks that emerged from the top of its body.  Its head, for want of a better term, was a roughly egg-shaped mass that housed its mouth and olfactory sense buds that stuck out of its torso and could move up and down the full length of it.  Four limbs also had the freedom to slide around its body and could extend to nearly three metres in length as well, but they were currently tidily folded up against its body.  Instead of legs and feet it had many cilia that rubbed against the floor and, given enough friction, could move it as fast as a sprinting human.  Its exposed skin was a pale green, shading through turquoise into blue in places, but much of it was wrapped up in a sari-like fabric that twisted around it and had holes for arms and eyes to poke through.  “I noticed that the engines are baseline human tech—“

“Good for acceleration,” said Kimbull.  “I love me some Derlethian tech but their engines would leave a grandmother screaming for you to get on with it.”

“I don’t really understand that metaphor,” said Threndall trying to sound polite.  Humans were known to use facial expressions a lot to convey information but they seemed to have trouble reading the equivalent muscular variation that the aliens of the Oatmaker worlds used.  Someone had tried to explain it to Threndall as being like trying to understand thirteen different kinds of shrug, which really didn’t sound that difficult.  “But the fuel lines and containment seem to be Aldebaran. Is that normal?”

Kimbull puffed his chest out, alarming Threndall momentarily.  When he didn’t attack, Threndall relaxed a little but remained wary.  “That’s our little experiment,” he said.

“Oh no!”

“No, it’s fine, we do these kinds of things all the time,” said Kimbull.  “I mean, you don’t make progress if you don’t tinker with things, do you?  And on a long voyage everyone needs a little project on the side for when there’s not much else to do.”

“But these are the engines!”  Threndall’s voice got deeper as it got more agitated and already the deck was thrumming in resonance.  “What if they break?”

“Then we fix ‘em,” said Kimbull.  “It happens, and you have to expect that.  I mean, what starship have you ever been on where there’s no breakdowns now and then?”

“All of them!”  Threndall’s eyes were as wide as they could get and were sliding up its body to the top, which was an Oatmaker way of showing distress.  The eyes on stalks were waving around as though caught in a severe wind.

“Really?  Bloody hell, how do you manage that then?” Kimbull sounded sincere to Threndall, which only agitated it further.

“By not tinkering with the engines mid-flight,” it said, its voice almost at its lowest bass.  It practically buzzed.  “By following the manufacturers guidelines on what to combine it with.  By valuing safety over speed!”

“Sounds dull,” said Kimbull after a moment’s thought.  “And what happens if you get pirated?”

“You contact your insurers!”  Threndall’s voice was so deep it was sepulchral and Kimbull wiggled a finger in his left ear as though trying to hear better.

“Right,” he said.  “Sure. But this is a human starship, right, and we get sent on the interesting missions.  The stuff where no-one’s ever gone before—“

“Or will ever go again!”

“— maybe.  Depends what we find there, really.  But yeah, we have to be able to react to new situations and you can’t do that if everyone knows what you’ve got and how it performs.”

Threndall waved all four of its limbs at the Aldebaran fuel lines.  “Those things are intended to push starship four times the size of this,” it said.

“Right, and our engines are built for speed.  We reckon we can probably double the warp speeds if we get it right.”

“If?!  IF!!”  Threndall’s thrashing limbs narrowly missed a passing engineer, and Threndall suddenly noticed that everyone else in the engine room was human, and it tried to calm down.  It was very, very hard to do.  “You could blow the whole engine up!  You could rip a hole in the fabric of space-time!  You could evert a gravity well if it goes wrong!”

“Done that,” said Kimbull.

“What?”

“Everted a gravity well,” said Kimbull.  “We were on the Princess Monocle when that happened.   Shook us all up a bit, I can tell you.”

“And what happened?  Were you all court-martialled and demoted?”  Threndall’s voice was as deep as it could go and from the look of concentration on Kimbull’s face it was clear he was having trouble understanding the words.

“Ah, no,” he said slowly as he puzzled the words out.  “We passed it on to the weapons division.”

Threndall just stared, all eyes now as high up as they would go and hurting from the strain.

“Your government is buying about sixty of them,” said Kimbull.  “As a deterrent, I hear.”

Threndall said nothing; there seemed to be nothing left to say.

“So,” said Kimbull.  “You seem a bit excitable, but I don’t think it’s a big problem.  Do you want the job or not?  ‘Cos if you do we’ve got to get through the HR questions as well.”

Defcon one

 “Defcon 1,” said Villeneuf.  His partner, Bobby-Joe, shifted heavily in the passenger seat of the patrol car and looked over at him.

“You what?”

“It’s a level of alert,” said Villeneuf.  “You know, like Hurricane Warning, or Yellow Alert, or Tesla.”

Bobby-Joe thought about that.  He was handsome, to a fault, and had been pretty good at baseball until he’d broken his leg in the last year of high school, and those two things had gotten him graduated and a job in the police force where his brain, poor, congealed thing that it was, couldn’t.  The thinking took a while.

“Tesla?”

“You know the only Teslas in Short County are driven by assholes,” said Villeneuf.  “If we see one it’s our duty to stop it and see what other asshole-age is going on in it.  So if you see one you call out ‘Tesla’ so we’re all alert for them.”

“Right, yeah,” said Bobby-Joe.  He wondered if he knew what a Tesla looked like and eventually decided that Villeneuf would let him know when it was important.  “Hurricane?”

“There’s no hurricane, that was just an example.”

“Oh right.”   There was another long pause while Bobby-Joe worked backwards through the conversation so far, and then, “Defcon 1?”

“Sheesh Bobby-Joe, don’t you listen to a word I tell you?  It’s an alert level!  Specifically, keep your eyes and ears open as we’re getting close the County Fair and I want to know that there’s no-one interfering with the Jam Slam.”

Villeneuf parked the car before Bobby-Joe worked his way fully through that information and they were getting out; Bobby-Joe heaving himself manfully up and wishing that he wasn’t putting on weight so fast, and Villeneuf slithering out of the driver’s side window like he’d been watching the Dukes of Hazzard again.  In fact the driver’s side door was rusted shut and Villeneuf had little choice — it was the window or wait for Bobby-Joe and then slide across and get out of the passenger side door too.  Villeneuf had no patience for waiting though.

“Why would anyone interfere with the jam?” asked Bobby-Joe.  He reached down and rubbed his bad leg, which he blamed entirely for his weight gain.

“Not the jam specifically,” said Villeneuf.  “The Jam Slam, the competition.”

“Marionette’s competition?”  Villeneuf shot Bobby-Joe a curious look; sometimes the boy homed in on an idea like he wasn’t as thick as pig-droppings.

“Right, I don’t want anyone interfering in her competition, so she can win it fair and square,” said Villeneuf.  He looked around the car-park and saw the attendant, Wilfred, hobbling towards them.  Rather than wait for him he set off to intercept him.  Bobby-Joe watched him go, then realised belatedly that he should be going too and tried to hurry to catch up. After a couple of stiff-legged strides he slowed, a grimace on his face, and forced himself to keep going faster than he liked until he reached Villeneuf.

“—sure we won’t be long; just checking on a report of trouble,” he heard Villeneuf say, and Wilfred nodded.

“It’s jus’ that everybody what parks here has to pay for a ticket,” said Wilfred.  He looked around.  “Every’un else has.”

“But we’re not parked,” said Villeneuf easily.  “We’re stopping, temporarily, not parking.  We’re only here because there’s been a complaint.  Wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“Yes but no,” said Wilfred.  He ran a hand through wiry grey hair and squinted at Bobby-Joe.  “Oh hi Bobby-Joe.  How’s your sister?”

“You talk to Bobby-Joe about it,” said Villeneuf.  “I’ll be back before you get finished, mark my words.  Defcon 2.”

“You what?” said Wilfred looking confused, and Bobby-Joe tried to explain.

“It’s like Teslas,” he said, “only there’s a hurricane involved too.”

“You what now?” said Wilfred, and as the two men headed down a linguistic dead-end Villeneuf slipped away across the field and towards the marquees.

The marquees were blue and white striped and pegged down firmly but not so firmly that Villeneuf couldn’t pull enough fabric up from behind them to slip underneath and inside.  It took only three tries to find the tent where the Jam Slam would be judged, and it was then a matter of moments to adulterate the jams belonging to Marionette’s competitors with a little of the pig-droppings that he’d been comparing Bobby-Joe’s thinking skills to.  Then he slithered back under the canvas of the tent and headed back to the car-park where Wilfred was pawing at whatever truth Bobby-Joe had failed to understand on the way there.

“Come on Bobby-Joe,” said Villeneuf clapping him on the shoulder.  “We can’t stay here debating with Wilf all day — he’ll think we’re parked and try and charge us for it.”

“What?” said Bobby-Joe, losing his train of thought completely.

“You can’t park without a ticket,” said Wilfred, happy to return to a conversation he felt he understood.

“Agreed,” said Villeneuf.  “We’ll be going right now, Wilf my man.”

“You do that,” said Wilfred.  “I’ll be watchin’!”

“What?” said Bobby-Joe.  “What happened to Defcon one?”

“All stood down,” said Villeneuf.  “Can you smell pigshit?”

“Yes,” said Bobby-Joe.  He stopped walking and looked around.  “And that’s odd, ‘cos the pig judging is over the other side of the Fair.”

Villeneuf kept walking and shook his head just a little.  How the hell could Bobby-Joe be so dim and yet spot something like that like Sherlock bloody Holmes?

Misanthropological psychology

Felicia liked the Mozart Café on Reichsgasse.  It had high windows that poured the afternoon sunlight across the black-and-white chessboard tiled floor, marble topped tables with a single, pedestal-style brass leg ornately curved and twisted to look like a gnarled tree-trunk, and a long, brass-railed counter where the employees served excellent coffee and not-quite-so-excellent cakes.  The employees wore anachronistic starched white aprons over pristine white shirts and black trousers and all seemed to have been taught to smile in the exact same way.  They stayed behind the counter, with the collection of empty cups and crumb-strewn plates handed to a middle-aged woman with a tied-back bun of greying hair and bright, darting eyes who rattled a tiny steel cart back and forth as she cleaned tables and reset expectations.  A separate cadre of waitstaff took orders and delivered them.

Cordelia, who arrived a mere thirty seconds later than Felicia, made a tiny moue when she saw that Felicia had taken the bench-seat leaving her with the high-backed wooden chair and her back to the counter.

“First come, first served,” said Felicia calmly.  She checked her watch.  “I was actually forty seconds late, myself.”

Cordelia waved a white-gloved hand as though fending off a wasp at a picnic.  “I said nothing,” she said.  “Though it wasn’t my fault.  At the metro there was an—“ she paused, clearly choosing her words, “—inconvenient woman holding up passage through the gates with her two children and her pushchair.  Instead of herding them through a gate ahead of her she’d given them their tickets to make their own way through while she wrestled with the pushchair.  So when the chair got stuck and the children mangled their tickets she held up the entire queue for whole minutes!”

Felicia nodded, waiting.  After a pause just barely long enough to allow Felicia to attempt to interrupt, Cordelia continued, “Obviously, since I was forced to be there and observe, I considered the likely psychological drive.”

“Of course,” said Felicia, who would have done exactly the same thing.

“I think it’s safe to infer that the woman intended this outcome,” said Cordelia.  “I mean, a normal person wouldn’t entrust getting through a metro gate to a four-year-old, let alone make them responsible for their younger sister as well.”

“I concur,” said Felicia, thinking this through and deciding that it sounded reasonable.  In her experience, which was limited as she felt that children were entirely other peoples’ problem, she had found children to be obstruent and obstreperous and largely incapable of holding a sensible conversation.

“So she deliberately acted to block the gates, and then used the pushchair to obstruct another.  This is an act of base misanthropy, which by itself would be unremarkable,” said Cordelia, warming to her thesis.  A waiter hovered at her elbow, order-pad at the ready and a pencil held delicately aloft.

“Coffee, thank-you,” said Felicia. “And… do you have any Dobostorte?  Then perhaps a half-slice, please.”

“Coffee also, no milk,” said Cordelia sparing the waiter a single glance.  “And something autumnal I think… perhaps a Bavarian cream?”

The waiter departed in a white-noise crackle of starched cloth and the sudden movement of air brought a breath of brewing coffee across their table.  Both women sniffed and smiled briefly.

“As I was saying,” said Cordelia.  “That by itself would be unremarkable but when the gate-guard attempted to help her things changed.  When the guard ushered the small child and its sister through she called them back, creating a problem as their tickets were now not only mangled but also expired.  When the gate-guard attempted to take the pushchair so as to extricate the woman from the worst of her predicament she shouted at him so volubly that we all took a step back.  Which, and I’m not sure this is a coincidence, caused an elderly man to stumble and fall down the escalator to the metro lines.  When the gate-guard turned to assist the fallen man the woman fell dramatically herself, barely keeping the pushchair above her head and from hitting the smallest of her children.”

“This is quite extraordinary,” said Felicia, intrigued despite herself.  “This woman seems like she demands attention.  A narcissist, perhaps?”

Cordelia nodded.  “That was my initial assessment too,” she said.  “I mean, it’s obviously only a first-glance and would need proper case-work to substantiate, but you can’t help but feel that the whole situation was largely her own fault and that when someone else was involved, however inadvertently, she immediately tried to bring the attention back to herself.  But….”

The waiter set the two cups of coffee down with the faintest chink of china against marble and disappeared again to bring the pastries separately.  Felicia tasted her coffee and permitted herself another smile.  “But?”

“The gate-guard returned their attention to the woman and her children,” said Cordelia.  She twisted her cup on its saucer, making a tiny creaking noise, but didn’t drink from it.  “And two other people started down the escalator to help the elderly man.  I stayed where I was, in part out of fascination with this scene, and in part because there were at least three rows of people between me and the escalators.”

“And in part because if you arrived here later than me you would have to take the chair rather than the bench,” said Felicia.  The waiter set her Dobostorte in front of her, accompanied with a starched napkin monogrammed with an M for Mozart, and set the Bavarian Cream in front of Cordelia.  “Don’t glare at me, you know it’s true.”

“You make me sound like a monster,” said Cordelia.  She unwrapped her spoon from her napkin and sampled the cream.  “This is still the best in the city,” she said.  “Anyway, when the woman realised that people were attempting to help the elderly man she started screaming that her leg was trapped and she needed medical aid.  That puzzled the guard, and to be honest myself, as we could both clearly see that it wasn’t, and she didn’t.”

Felicia’s mouth was full of Dobostorte so she widened her eyes a little and nodded at Cordelia.

“That’s when I started thinking,” said Cordelia.  “As the crowd regathered around the woman, probably hoping for some ghoulish spectacle, I realised that this couldn’t be simple narcissism.  This was planned and deliberate, and she had contingency plans if she wasn’t getting the attention she desired.  This was misanthropological psychology.”

“In the wild?”  Felicia was so startled that she forgot she was eating, and tiny crumbs of cake scattered over the table.  “I’m so sorry!”  She dabbed at the crumbs with her napkin, sweeping them up.

“Indeed!”

“But… you can’t confirm it, though,” said Felicia.  “Can you?”

“I lifted my phone,” said Cordelia, “and acted as though I was streaming the scene onto Tiktok, or Tactics, or whatever that app is that’s so popular with my teenage clients.”

“Facebook?” said Felicia who didn’t take clients under the age of thirty.

“I think it’s Chinese,” said Cordelia.  “But anyway, I did that, and all of a sudden the woman was shrieking and screaming and I think she even managed to cut herself on the pushchair a little.  But it confirmed to me that this was misanthropological psychology in the wild.”

“I see.”  Felicia set her fork down and reached for her coffee.  “This means that Dr Fraud’s theories are taking on a life of their own, doesn’t it?”

“It definitely means a lot more work for us,” said Cordelia.

 

The state of the alligator

“We propose starting in Florida,” said Jeronica, gently tapping her pen against her notepad.  Looking only out of the corners of her eyes at her audience she noted that Madame Celeste was observing this action with interest and Dr Enogi was pretending not to watch but any slight change in where she tapped caused him to adjust his head slightly to allow him to see it.  Terrence Pennifrock appeared to be ignoring it, though he was systematically trying his fingers, starting with his thumb, in his ear to see if he could dislodge whatever was irritating him.  “We took the liberty of running a couple of focus groups at the advice of our futures division — no cost accrues to you for this, of course.  This was advance research so that we could position ourselves aspirationally in this market stratum.”

“Excellent,” said Madame Celeste.  “Florida is a… an interesting choice of state, might I opine?”

“One would have thought of perhaps Kentucky, first,” said Dr Enogi.  He watched as Jeronica wrote that down too, and his eyes narrowed.  Jeronica wondered if he was starting to be curious that she was writing things down where they could see her.  “Or even Iowa.”

“They’re all Republican,” muttered Terrence.  “I don’t see what matters much outside of that.”  Jeronica wrote down ‘Republican’ as well to see who responded to that and was intrigued that none of the three seemed interested.

“We considered Louisiana,” said Jeronica, which was an outright lie.  All three of her clients had some background connection to that state though, so it gave her another opportunity to assess reactions.  “However we felt that there were strategic disadvantages inheriting directly from historic continental influences.”

“You mean the bloody alligators?” asked Terrence. He had cleaned his ear to his satisfaction and was now inspecting his finger to see what he’d removed.

“I suspect she’s thinking of the capital,” said Dr Enogi.  “We have, naturally, done our own research, Miss Jeronica, and in the area of that particular state we felt that the capital would be slow to accept our ideas and that developing a grass-roots movement in the more rural areas would be too slow.”

“The alligators were a concern,” said Jeronica, deliberately speaking slowly to allow her to hide her surprise that they had come up.  “And my name is simply Jeronica, thank-you, Dr. Enogi.”

“Are they?”  Madame Celeste sounded uninterested.  “Well.  Florida is… well, as I said, an interesting choice, but certainly not one we would shy away from.  Providing sufficient evidence is provided that this is, indeed, the best place to start.”

“There are four states that I think we could recommend launching Guncare in,” said Jeronica.  “Florida is the top of that short-list, but we have a case for each state and we will present that to you.  When you leave there will be a briefing pack for each of you so that you can review our findings ahead of our next meeting.  If you decide that there should be a next meeting.”  Madame Celeste and Dr Enogi looked at each other, clearly considering who should answer that, but Jeronica continued without giving them the chance to speak.  “But in brief, there is an adequately trained workforce, there are significant opportunities to influence the state legislature, and… mishaps?  Let’s call them mishaps; if they were to occur in the early stages of the project it is likely that they would be considered more acceptable than in other parts of the country.”

“You mean like the hospital falling down?” said Terrence.  Jeronica, who was aware that he had been behind the construction of six hospitals that had either collapsed of their own accord or had to be demolished for public safety, carefully didn’t smile as she met his gaze.

“I was thinking more of patients being eaten by alligators,” she said. “After all, residential Guncare patients should have the opportunity to shoot at things, and if they miss there is a chance that some of those things will fight back.”

Dr. Enogi’s eyes gleamed suddenly.  “Ah, so we could have hunting grounds as part of the hospital?” he said.  “I like that, that will sell well. I can picture the brochures now; we can offer a range of elective surgeries with two-day safaris!  Recuperate with a rifle!  Or maybe, Improve your aim and your health with our two-day intensive care offering!”

“I like recuperate with a rifle,” said Madame Celeste.  She sounded thoughtful.  “I wonder… I wonder if we should extend this a little further to clinics, as well as hospitals?  Health-care is such a broad-ranging word; we could increase its gamut just a little further, no?”

“Just tell us how far you’d like to roam,” said Jeronica.

Guncare

 The offices of Data Analytic Marketetic Normalisations were always shadowy and quiet.  The founder and CEO, Jeremy Diseased-Rat, preferred it that way though the rumours about it being because of a near-permanent hangover were quashed whenever they started up.  Reception was currently manned by a short, dark-haired man who was so thin that his suit would have hung better on a coat-hanger.  He was sat behind a curved zebrawood desk with two monitors and six phones in front of him and two photocopiers, an actual fax machine and some sinister black boxes with tiny blinking white lights behind him, and as Jeronica walked into the reception area to greet her clients he was holding forth, to their appalled fascination, on the subject of his keto diet.

“The key is fasting and then purging,” he said, making a gesture with one hand that caused Madame Celeste to raise an eyebrow so severely her eye twitched below it.

“Thank you, Ronald,” said Jeronica, cutting him short.  “I believe that Margoyle and Stephanotte are waiting for correspondance on the futures of Soft Furnishings in Antique Japan.  Perhaps you could check your inbox and see if they’ve arrived yet?”

“Oh no, they defini—“ started Ronald, only to be cut off by the discrete ping of an email arriving.  “Ah, well—“

“Excellent,” said Jeronica.  She turned to her clients: Madame Celeste, Dr Enogi and Terrence Pennifrock.  “Have you been offered refreshment?”  There was no overt censure in her voice but Ronald’s shoulders stiffened instantly anyway.

“Yes, thank-you,” said Dr. Enogi, a tall, dark-skinned man who was standing up.  “Though I doubt I, personally, will feel like eating again any time soon.”

Madame Celeste rose next, holding a glass of iced water.  “Your water is excellent,” she said as though commenting on the weather.  “I assume you import?”

Jeronica inclined her head slightly.  “We have a concession,” she said.  “We did a little work with the Fiji water brand some years back and in turn they provide us with a few bottles when they can spare them.  Mr Pennifrock, would you like anything else?”

Terrence was still sitting down and pressing a stubby, reddened finger down onto crumbs on a small plate with an intricate design painted around the edge.  When he had gathered all of them, he put the finger in his mouth and sucked it clean.

“I’m good,” he said in a broad drawl.  “Your pastries are amazing, darlin’, but if I eat too many I’ll put on more weight and the wifey won’t be happy.”

“My name is Jeronica, Mr Pennifrock,” said Jeronica with more than a little ice in her tone.  “I would become unhappy were I to be referred to in any other way.”

Whatever Terrence might have replied, his words were silenced by Madame Celeste’s gaze.  He met her eyes with his own and there was a moment of tension and then they both backed down together.

“This way, please,” said Jeronica and escorted them at a stately pace down a dimly-lit corridor.  On either side were wood-panelled walls, broken at intervals by doors and smoked-glass windows.  The floor was heavily carpetted and even Terrence, stamping his feet down as he walked, failed to make much more noise than the wind makes when blowing through long grass.  At the third door Jeronica waved a hand and the doors slid back silently admitting them into Meeting Room Gauze.

When they were all seated around a small beechwood table set with notepads, Mont Blanc pens and a carafe of still water Jeronica leaned forward very slightly, rested her hands flat on the table, and said, “Guncare.”

There was hesitation as Terrence and Dr Enogi looked at each other, and then Madame Celeste nodded.

“Yes,” she said.  “I had heard you were good.  The best, even.  I hadn’t expected that you would know our intentions before we even spoke them.”

“We’ve been anticipating this development for a while,” said Jeronica.  “Our future division considers this to be a strong natural development of current trends and had identified certain groups as the most likely to take the initiative.  We are, of course, extremely pleased that you are choosing to.”

“What do you consider ‘Guncare’?” asked Dr Enogi.  He was sitting perfectly upright and watching Jeronica the way a mongoose watches a cobra.  His hands were also on the table, but his fingers were interlaced and his two signet rings, both tourmalines, were resting against the tabletop.

“Healthcare mediated by guns,” said Jeronica.  “Our estimation is that access to reliable healthcare in your country is currently only available for certain strata of your society.  While this has worked for quite some time, and may continue to work for a while longer, it is inefficient and does not provide enough control over who has access to the healthcare and when.  Naturally, universal health coverage is desirable—“

“Sweden,” said Terrence with a sneer.

“— perhaps.  But to reach that, compromises must be made.  And since gun-ownership is a key principle of your society—“

“The right to arm bears,” said Terrence.

“— indeed,” said Jeronica, who was aware that Terrence’s second company had done exactly that, “we perceive that a move to guncare, where gun ownership and licencing provides fast-track access to healthcare, is not only natural, but desirable amongst a good 38% of the population already.  With a number that large, elevating it to a majority is quite straightforward; we have done similar things in the past for, for example, the Sweden problem.  There is an easy lead in for most people simply by noting that people who own guns are more likely to need emergency access to healthcare, and that by being licenced to own a gun they are already registered with the state, thus ensuring that tax-payers are prioritised for medical provision.”

Madame Celeste had been nodding along in each of Jeronica’s pauses.  Now she smiled, though it was the cold smile of an aunt informing unloved nephews and nieces that her will disinherited them all.

“Licencing is not… precisely… the key point,” she said.

“Please go on,” said Jeronica.

“Well,” said Dr Enogi, glancing at Madame Celeste as though to ask permission to interrupt her.  “Licencing might be a way to sell it initially.  We can downgrade it to membership later.”

“I… see,” said Madame Celeste.  “That might work.  But yes, ultimately we would prefer people to purchase membership in, say, a national society that promoted safe gun ownership and responsible behaviour.”

Jeronica drew a marble-white notepad to her and picked up a pen.  In careful, highly legible script she made a note on the pad and then carefully ignored the other three people reading what she’d written.  “For the sake of argument,” she said, “say something like the National Rifle Association?  Privately owned, so that changes to the membership regulations are not subject to governmental scrutiny?”

“For the sake of argument,” repeated Madame Celeste, a faint smile passing across her face and then being replaced by her familiar stony demeanour.  “We understood that might be difficult.”

“Not at all,” said Jeronica.  “In fact, it might ease a couple of other sticking points.”