and a ‘Raxx.’ Are they in?”
“I’m Wentworth.”
“Ah… I see. Is Raxx in then?”
“No.
“…oh, well… Well then…” his eyes darted to the room, as if he thought Wentworth might be lying and that Raxx would be hiding in plain sight. Or maybe he was just seeking a way to escape the situation. Wentworth sighed mentally. Hassling the messenger was pointless, and besides, he probably had Vince to thank for this sudden interest in him — either that or Raxx was in trouble. He might as well find out exactly why the local Officials were feeling inquisitive.
“Raxx isn’t here, but I am. What is it you want?”
With Wentworth’s prompting, the clerk seemed to regain his pretension. “Ahem — the Mayor has sent me to request you attend his audience at the earliest convenience. If possible I am to escort you to City Hall immediately.”
“And why does he want to see us?”
“I am not full privy to that, but I believe it’s relating to an opportunity for employment. For the two of you.”
“Huh. Well, I guess I can see your Mayor right now, but I have no idea where Raxx is. If I like what I hear, I’ll pass it on to him later. How’s that sound?”
“That will be fine, sir. I shall escort you as soon as you are ready.”
The man was now eagerly polite, but his attitude was still annoying. Wentworth tuned him out on the walk over. A storm was moving in from the west, and the air was heavy. Underneath his jacket he was sweating and the humidity made his skin itch. The air had a metallic taste to it.
Jared took him to the town square. City Hall, it seemed, was in the library on the north side. The exterior wall was a series of large glass windows, still intact but filthy from the dust kicked up by the caravans. The walls were made out of the pebbled-concrete material common in old government structures throughout the region. After they entered Jared told Wentworth to wait in the lobby while he checked if the Mayor was free.
There was a secretary on Wentworth’s left, who observed him curiously, and a pair of doors on his right. Jared went through the further one. There were several chairs along one wall showing signs of wear, and a fake plant in semi-decent condition. He backed up against one of the walls, and crossed his arms.
At the back of the room was a set of glass doors which opened up onto the library proper; the area he was in was just some sort of foyer. Through them he could see a counter — the checkout desk. It was manned and the activity he saw showed that the library was still in operation. He guessed that City Hall shared the building for archival reasons.
After a short time Jared returned and indicated for Wentworth to go in. The Mayor’s office was smaller than he’d expected. It contained the Mayor’s desk, coated with a fake chestnut veneer, and a green filing cabinet. There were a couple of chairs for guests, and a real potted plant in one corner. Over the beige textured wallpaper hung paintings of boating scenes.
The mayor was an older man, hair greying, with thick-lensed glasses. He was wearing a sweater with a diamond pattern knitted into it; distinctly unstylish for Hope. To his right was a woman in her early thirties, with black hair and stern features. She wore a blue uniform with a kevlar vest, a utility belt, and an officer’s cap with a double gold braid going along the brim. Her bearing made it seem as if she was standing at attention, though she wasn’t. On her left hip was a semi-automatic pistol. Wentworth walked in and stopped at the desk.
“Welcome,” said the Mayor, “Thank you for coming on such short notice. I’m William Talbot, Mayor of Hope. This,” he indicated the woman standing next to him, “is Patricia O’Neil, Captain of the Constabulary.”
Wentworth shook the Mayor’s offered hand. He seemed anxious, the skin at the outside of his eyes was crinkling, but the woman was cold. He could tell that she didn’t care for his presence, but aside from that her face gave little away. Wentworth steeled his features, and slouched down in one of the chairs, crossing one leg over the other.
“Pleased to meet you. So why did you want to see me?”
The mayor’s face took on a businesslike expression as he leaned forward. “I wanted to see you and your friend Raxx about a situation which the city has run into. Jared explained to me that Raxx was unavailable, but that’s okay for now. Before I get to that, however, I want to confirm a few things I’ve heard about you. I hope you don’t mind? I just need to make sure that I’m dealing with the right sort of person. I understand you dealt with a banditry problem some ways east of here, town by the name of, uh—” he pretended to consult the papers on his desk, “by the name of Blackstock, yes?”
“If you’ve been talking with Vince he may have been exaggerating. But yes, Raxx and I dealt with the banditry there.”
“I just want to be clear, by ‘dealt with’ you mean…”
“That they’re all dead.”
“Ah. Yes. That would be consistent with the rumours I’ve heard about a ‘Wentworth’ from out East, wouldn’t it?”
“I couldn’t say. I haven’t heard them. But rumours gotta start somewhere, I guess.”
“Indeed,” the Mayor shuffled his papers and looked over at the Captain, “Patricia?”
She cleared her throat, “I understand that the two of you have a drinking problem?”
Wentworth stared at her for a few seconds. “So you’ve been following us around since we got here?”
“It’s standard operating procedure to keep track of foreigners who like to drink.”
“Then I guess our habit’s been employing twice as many people as I might of guessed. You should know that we didn’t start any fights, and that we paid for everything we drank. I don’t see what the problem is.”
“The problem is that, should you be hired, it will be a position of trust — we’d be putting the City on your shoulders. We don’t need a couple of drunks screwing it up, and leaving us in a worse mess than the one we’re in now. This is a sensitive job, and it demands somebody with a stable head. I’m not okay with my constables showing up hung over, and the same standards would apply to you.”
Her pretence of keeping the emotion out of her voice had given him a facial tick.
“O’Neil — first of all, you came to me with this job — not the other way around. I don’t even know what it is yet. So don’t chastise me because I’ve been spending money at your bars. And second — does your report tell you the aftermath in Blackstock? Yeah, we took out the slavers, but we were too late. The shit heads were living in a warehouse full of radioactive waste. We got to watch the whole damned town die of radiation sickness—”
Somehow he’d ended up leaning forward in his chair, engaged in a staring contest with the Captain. He forced himself to sit back, stretching out a kink in his neck. “So yeah, we were drinking. We overdid it. But we don’t have a problem. Does that answer your question?”
The Captain stared at him, her cheeks flushed. Wentworth matched her gaze, annoyed with himself, and the Mayor’s bemused expression. The Captain eyes flickered as she came to a decision. She looked down at the Mayor and nodded once. Wentworth toned down the glare, and waited to see what the Mayor would say next.
If she could piss him off so quickly, it probably meant that she was a good Captain.
“I’m glad to hear that Captain O’Neil approves of you.” He shuffled his papers out of habit, “The situation is this; as I’m sure you realize, the gated area which encompasses Hope doesn’t contain enough area to grow food for the population, and there are no ploughed fields nearby. You see,” he placed his elbows on his desk and steepled his fingers together, “Hope was founded as a partnership between urban refugees from the south and the local Mennite population, who have lived a rural lifestyle for generations. Our urban ancestors weren’t used to the same simplicity as the Mennites; and the Mennites, despite their ways, sill required the occasional product which only a city could provide; textiles, medical supplies, those sorts of things. I tell you this so that you understand how the two communities have come to rely upon each other. We provide an urban core which supplies the Mennites with the bits of tech they use, and they in turn provide us with a food supply from their many outlying farms. Anything that prevents them from farming directly affects us, so they are our concern even if they aren’t under our jurisdiction.
“Therein lies the nut of our problem: for some time the Mennites have been suffering at the hands of local bandits. We believe this group started off small a couple years back: theft and vandalism, that sort of thing, none of it amounting to any great effect. But as time passed they’ve gotten worse. They’ve upped their trouble making to raiding and murder; worse, their numbers seem to be growing. It’s beginning to have an impact on the crops
