Hard Luck Hank Screw the Galaxy(65)

“Hank, can you come over? I really need to talk.” He sounded upset. But that was the general mood nowadays. The new normal.

I didn’t especially feel like it, but hopped on the train. I was curious to see how Deadsouth was handling the news of the Navy coming.

Based on the trashy streets and junkies leaning against buildings, they were handling it like they handled anything else. I’m not even sure they knew.

Grever checked his door and let me in. His apartment’s décor had changed somewhat since I had last been over. It was now absolutely filled with drugs. Piles of the stuff stacked a foot tall. You couldn’t even see the floor.

“Hank, thanks for coming,” he said, shutting the door immediately. He was still nervous, with darting eyes, and his hair was a perpetual grease spigot.

“What are you doing with all this?” I asked. “You’re supposed to get rid of it. You don’t think the Colmarian Navy is going to notice you have a couch made out of narcotics?

“Heh, good one. Yeah, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I know there’s places where we can hide stuff. But it’s just the luminaries who have access to it. They told me to shove off even when I offered to buy space.”

“So you figured I had access?” I asked.

“Well, you’re Hank, right?” He laughed.

Grever probably bought up all these drugs for next-to-nothing and now he was looking to use our tenuous connection to hide it when others couldn’t. Not a bad plan, that.

Except I couldn’t remotely hide this much. They had given me a closet to use and I was going to put my Ontakian pistol in it.

However.

Jyonal had knocked the whole city unconscious when he got drunk. He had shaken the city to its foundations when he got high. What would happen if he went into drug withdrawal?

It was eventually going to become pretty difficult to score a hit on Belvaille, and that might be bad for Jyonal—which might be very bad for all of us.

But did he even go into withdrawal with his homemade body? I suppose I could ask him, but I didn’t want him to get upset.

“I don’t have the room,” I said plainly. “No one does. Not in any of the protected containers.”

Grever jumped with excitement.

“Right, but I don’t need one of those high tech jars you all have. If they could scan for,” and he reached down and grabbed a drug, “Dysolinol at range, there wouldn’t be any drug dealers in the galaxy. Sure, they can scan it if they have it in their hand, but they can’t just zap waves out and know you’re smoking. These are the same compounds in everyday food, just rearranged. I mean, there are a few that can be detected, because they’re so oddball, but I didn’t buy any of them.”

So he just confirmed he bought all this stuff after knowing the Navy was coming. Jerk.

I hadn’t really kept abreast of what, if anything, was being stored in the hidden areas, the buildings that weren’t on blueprints and the secret caches underground. I’d heard they were even strapping cargo boxes on the outside of the station, though that seemed awful risky considering we’d be surrounded by warships.

“I don’t know, Grever. I can almost be certain you bought too much, regardless of where we hide it. You might have to burn it.”

And Grever clasped his hands together, pleading.

“Hank, this is all my money. Every credit. If I lose this, I’m on the street. I literally got nothing.”

“Yeah, but you made this play on your own, selling out once the city goes dry.”

“Hank, can you check? Can you try? I will cut you in. Whatever percentage you want.”

“Let me ask,” I said. I specifically had to find out what Jyonal needed, which scared me to death. And I had to ask Garm what I could use, which also scared me to death.

I hadn’t spoken to Garm in more than a week, I knew how slammed she was trying to get the city in order. To bug her over one drug dealer seemed incautious. But it might be necessary.

I figured I could always play it safe and stuff my own cabinet full of drugs and feed those to Jyonal as he needed. But with his appetite it might not last long.

“Thanks, man, thanks,” Grever said. He handed me a packet of drugs—in gratitude, I suppose.

I was about to return it, but then I thought this would be a good way to open the subject with Jyonal.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”





CHAPTER 25


I got an urgent tele from Delovoa as I was at the Belvaille Gentleman’s Club watching the Ginland glocken sports team lose for like the one billionth time. Foolishly I answered my tele.

“It’s following me now,” he whispered in a manic tone.