Chapter 24
TIED-OFF TAILS
Some time later, he actually scores that job with HengZeico he’s always been angling for.
He sits down with Shojen to discuss a piece of business that has the Gehirner admin of the company reaching out across the city, rather than just keeping to their own.
It’s happening more and more these days, what with the changes.
The Changes. There’s a way that the word is said, in most argots, that implies the definite article.
These days, it’s harder for a guild or a corporation or any sort of employer to just take the devout service of its workers for granted. Skotch can’t imagine why.
Anyway, this translates to a lot more business for a freelancer with contacts on all sides, and so Skotch and his fellows start getting invited to a lot more places to talk terms. In this case it’s the B?renhaus again, and Skotch drinks good coffee while Shojen has sake because he has the hack to enjoy it.
Business nailed down, they get to chew the fat a little as the tourists goggle.
Shojen talks about how the company line is that the official Plangent ration they get from the humans is the proper stuff, and that street Plangent isn’t safe, might be cut with anything.
HengZeico employees are strongly recommended not to dabble in moonshine Planget that some random Gehirner has brewed up in a bathtub.
Plenty of other companies and guilds are trying the same tack, but it’s a dam that has a thousand leaks.
Mother Murnau and her fellows owned the early wave of homebrew that hit the streets, but by now even they’ve had to move on to other rackets.
The Maulers and Ratlabs and a hundred other small operations are just churning it out, cheap as you like.
So abundant that it’s not even worth having a turf war over.
Free thinking for everybody! And Shojen expresses proper condemnation of this riotous and ungovernable situation, and behind the words Skotch hears his secret glee.
After leaving the B?renhaus, he gets grabbed.
It’s been a while. He’s almost nostalgic for that short space of days when it seemed he literally couldn’t go through a doorway without one faction or another wanting a word.
This time it’s a pair of beefy raccoons and a possum, though, which narrows down the possibilities.
And they don’t even haul him all the way off to Uzco Towers.
Instead, there’s a nook nearby which does decent coffee and has a good bug-protein bar, and that’s where Benson is.
The old turtle in his tank, looking just as old and simultaneously no older, more than capable of outliving whatever turbulence Skotch has unleashed on the city.
The little red ember of his lit smoke glows like a sullen star.
It’s been a long time coming, this little interview. Not like Skotch paid a visit to file a report with his boss like a good boy, given how it all fell out.
“You are a goddamn pain in the ass, Skotch,” Benson says, hooking his claws over the edge of his bowl to haul himself up. His long neck cranes down at Skotch, who sits under the encouragement of his conspecifics’ heavy hands.
“Good to see you, chief,” he says, a diplomatically neutral offering, if not factually accurate.
“Happy with yourself, no doubt,” Benson rumbles. “I had you down for a lot of things, Skotch, but I never pegged you as a communist.”
“Honestly, chief, I was never a joiner for anything, company or cause. I’m just me.”
The turtle chuckles, deep in his hollow chest. “You certainly proved that being just you adds up to a lot of unwanted complications. You even turned Maria.”
No, you did that when you pissed on the body of her partner, Skotch thinks but does not say. “You recruiting, chief?”
“You’d sign up again?”
“Not me. Just wanted to know what sort of a chat this was going to be,” Skotch says. The two big raccoons are behind him, and it seems entirely possible that this is the sort of exit interview that terminates at the Separation Plant.
“You think you’ve struck the great blow against the company, Skotch?” Benson asks him.
“Not really, chief.”
“You think just because Plangent’s cheap as air, that screws us over.”
Skotch takes the risk of saying, “I think maybe your staff don’t live in fear that they won’t remember their own name after a few days off sick.”
Another bass rumble from the shell. “We adapt, Skotch. Better than the local guilds. Better than the Country Clubs and their aristocratic nonsense. So things are changing. The company changes with them. What’s that Jeffist mantra? Everything’s an opportunity. We’ll be fine.”
“I’m glad, chief.” And, to his surprise, Skotch finds he is. Because change is fine, but it’s nice to have landmarks to navigate by. Even toxic ones. Even if just to know where to avoid.
Benson gives him the look of a species that has identifiable fossil forebears that predate Skotch’s entire taxonomic class, and that isn’t planning on going extinct any time soon.
The motors in his tank whine as he prepares to move off.
“Drop by some time, Skotch, you’re ever short of work.
You didn’t do what you were told, but you did something.
You’ve got a year or two left in you. We can always use an animal of your resourcefulness.
Just don’t”—and the tank grinds forwards, and Skotch scrambles aside—“get in our way.”
After Benson and his goons are gone, Skotch reckons up the credit in his HengZeico payment tag, and the buttons in his super, his advance from Shojen.
A whisker away, there’s a busy human world where everything is catered for and nobody even thinks about a poor raccoon making his way in the world.
And Skotch thinks about that, and thinks about the fact that he can think about that, and how that’s suddenly a faculty that no random reversal of fortune is just going to rob him of.
And how that makes the world better without making it stop working or fall into anarchy, no matter how disappointed the Maulers are about that.
Or aren’t. He reckons they like having something to disagree with rather more than they’d like actually winning the argument.
He heads off, feeling that extra security in every step. Lulu’s waiting to buy him lunch and hear him talk. He owes her a story, and he has a damn good one to tell.