Page 49 of Green City Wars

“Sometimes,” Shojen says diplomatically, “the knowledge of what a thing is can be as dangerous as the thing. The knowledge that a thing exists. The threat of it.” His eyes meeting Benson’s for a moment. A common understanding from two opposing poles of the corporate spectrum.

“I’d say that nobody wants the change that mouse will bring. How he’ll shake up everything. Spit in the eye of Rule One,” Benson says. “But you’ve met the sort of people who do. You happy with your new friends, Skotch?”

“So you’ve come down on the dead mouse side of things,” Skotch notes.

“It seems safest. And when someone at my elevation is worried about the stakes, that ought to give you pause,” Benson says.

Skotch is about to throw it all over then. He’s here, in this company, because he had a backup plan should Benson tilt that way. He looks to Shojen, his mouth already open to make the offer. You take the mouse, then.

The tanuki won’t meet his eye. Dad has some bad news for son. “My friend,” he says, “this is not a propitious time.”

A twisted moment. Skotch feels the ground shift under him. “Your people…”

“As a representative of HengZeico,” Shojen says, meaning not the human company but the guild of Henge that they engineered, “we would obviously be happy to receive the mouse. Most likely he would be offered a place back at our head office in Osaka. Most likely you would not see or hear from him again.” Shojen’s snout tilts lower. Ashamed, Skotch reads. Both at what he is and isn’t doing. “As your friend I advise you to seek other options.”

Benson laughs, a harsh, crooked sound from deep in his heavy body. “It’s a hard world full of moving parts, Skotch. You get soft, you get chewed up between them. You’re still on retainer. Bring in Meece and at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing those Country Club types won’t get him.”

Outside the window, tourists take pictures of the jolly animals having their picnic.

Skotch isn’t quite sure where he’s heading, when he leaves. Just away, mostly. Away from Shojen, who’s plainly been overruled by his own superiors. Away from Benson’s massive, grinding presence. And when he hears feet pattering after him, he reckons that one or other faction have decided that he’s become surplus to requirements and they’ll find the hidden mouse up his sleeve or something.

It’s Maria. They’re in the well-travelled spaces edging Embassy Square, plenty of respectable animals going about their business. Doesn’t mean she won’t shoot him down and take the consequences. Uzco has deep pockets after all.

He wavers at the point of just running for it. Knocking over all these good hard-working Gehirner in his panicked flight, the mad possum snapping at his heels. In the end he finds he just doesn’t have the energy for it. Life has made too many demands of him recently. He could do without one more chase. Instead, he turns to face her. Two Americans abroad. Not even standing tall, not bristling, no threat display. He’ll go calmly if it’s his time to go.

Maria stops, eyes him up and down. She doesn’t have her spiker actually out and in sight, but she could probably get it pointed in his direction before he reached her, if he decided to close.

“Did I leave my keys?” Skotch asks acidly. “Or you want to share a ride home?”

She scowls at him. Bared teeth, mad eyes, but that’s just resting possum face. Which means he has zero indication of whether she’s going to go for him or not.

“Benson’s going to have you offed,” she tells him.

It’s absolutely the sentiment he was expecting but it’s not the tense. “I mean, you’re carrying, and you’re right here in front of me. I don’t see that the situation needs this kind of formality.” Tensed to leap, if that’s all the option he’s given.

“Once he’s got the mouse, or once the mouse is dead. Because of what you know,” Maria says.

“I don’t know jack,” Skotch says, heartfelt.

“Sure you don’t,” she says, then adds, “and probably you don’t. But just in case the mouse told you. To stop it ever getting out. Doesn’t want you turning up and asking for a bucket of Plangent and buttons just to stop anyone hearing of what might have been.”

“And what might have been?” Skotch demands of her.

Possums aren’t really built to shrug, but the hunch of her spine implies it. “I don’t want to know, Skotch. Cos then I’d be on the list too. But maybe you ought to find out, given they’ll kill you for it anyway. Maybe that gives you some leverage.”

Skotch opens his mouth, closes it. Understands that he knew this was the deal, at some deep level, and that he could have pried down to the heart of the mystery if he’d wanted. But easier just to stomp around and ask questions of people he knew would never give him a straight answer. And probably most of the animals in this particular race don’t quite know what the trophy is, at the end; just that there is one. But those who know are jealous of it. He’d understood, at heart, that this was the sort of knowledge that gets you killed.

And now, like it’s paint or radioactivity, he’s been around it long enough that it’s on his fur. He’s marked as knowing too much even though he doesn’t know enough. The two untenable poles of the situation. So maybe Maria is right. Maybe he needs to take that middle ground of knowing just enough.

“Why even tell me this?” he asks Maria. “Not like you owe me.”

“They paid off Fitch’s gelt,” she says. “The stoat with the Country Club just turned up with a bag of buttons. So sorry we killed your man, here’s the fee. All quits now, no hard feelings.” And of course that was how it worked. You paid the gelt for a killing, and it was all clear between the two guilds or companies or whatever the factions were. That way, there weren’t ongoing vendettas getting in the way of everyone doing their jobs and keeping the city running. It was a good system right up until someone close to you got killed and you were supposed to take that bag of buttons and smile.

“Fitch was a mean, crooked, vicious son of a bitch,” says Maria. “But he was my partner and my friend. And I can’t just let that go because the Country Club has deep pockets.”

“And I thought you blamed me,” Skotch says.

“I blame you because it should have been you dead in that nook, and not him,” Maria says fiercely. “I blame you for still breathing, Skotch. They hand over a sack of buttons for your corpse, I’m shedding not one tear. But it ain’t your doing. You’re just bumbling cluelessly through all this. We’re not friends, but you’re not the one spitting in my eye right now and telling me I got to like it. So you take what I’ve got for you or not, but I reckon seeing you right is what I can do to piss off that stoat.”