Art Pact 193 - Cave Dwellers

Of all the niches, in all the caves, in all the mountain ranges, in all the continents, it had to walk into mine. I say walk, although it slouched in one its great tongue-foot, leaving a trail of viscous slime behind it so that passers-by toppled like nine-pins as they walked past outside. I was sat behind my desk, deep in a big fruit that had marinated in the heat for so long that it had begun to turn alcoholic. That's the way I like fruit - I don't like feeling as though I'm doing anything too healthy, but the addition of booze makes that scruple drift away one way or the other.

"Hello Brogan," it rumbled. "It's been a long time."

"Not long enough," I said, looking up. The beast had aged - and not well. Its skin was still just as slimy as always, but now I could see a sort of frail translucence underneath it, a thinning that hinted at wrinkles and forgetfulness. Its shell blocked the entrance to my office - well, I call it my office but really it's a cave within a cave, a little alcove set back from the main town opening and made business-like by the addition of a somewhat flat rock set in the middle of the room as a desk. I was sat on the far side of it from the door (well, from the opening), the way I liked it. I preferred to have my back away from any spears. I've made enough enemies in my time, but I've been canny enough to make lazy ones. None of them were going to come charging all the way in here to fight me hand to hand, but a few of them might be just energetic enough to thrust a spear into my back while I was sitting in my doorway. It's all safety nowadays. Once upon a time I could just do what I want, but now there were other concerns to think about.

"Is that any way to talk to your old partner?" the beast complained. One of its stalked eyeballs pulled back into its head and then sprung out again, directly at me, stopping within a few thumbs-widths of my face. I didn't flinch. I'd like to put it down to stone-cold cool and unflappability, but the truth is I was so sozzled I was unable to react. I stared in its eye, its cool black eye rimmed with gold. I could see a stye - an orange discolouration stretching from the pupil out to the edge of the eye. Another sign of age. I wondered what it could see in my eyes. "You should lay off the hooch, Dane. Your eyes are red like a baboon's ass in mating season."

Well, that answered that question. On to the next.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Why do I have to want anything? Can't I just come here to sightsee? Maybe I woke up this morning and I thought either I'd like to see an old lush, or visit my old friend Dane. Maybe I came up with a plan where I could do both."

"Very funny." I reached under my desk - well, beside it - for the spear I kept there. The beast must have seen me moving, because it withdrew his eye again and pulled some of his head and body back into it shell. Not much, just enough to allow it to make a quick escape in there if need be. "Now why don't you tell me what it is you're here for."

"It's business, obviously." it said.

"Obviously."

"Listen, if you don't want to make some money I can go elsewhere. I can find Tony the Axe. I don't want to work with him because - well, because he's a dick, and you and I go way back. But you know what? It's probably for the best. I mean, he is a dick, sure, but he got that way by being so good at what he does that it gave him that big ego. I like you. We got history. But you definitely don't have that problem of too much success. Thanks, Dane - you've helped me make up my mind, and that's probably the one good thing you've done all day."

"Don't try to reel me in with that phony-baloney Tony the Axe crap," I growled. "Why don't you just get to the point like a good customer."

"Customer? You hurt me," it said. "We're partners, Dane, partners."

"Keep saying my name," I told it. "I want it worn out. Worn out so that when anyone talks about Dane and Beast Investigations they don't have clue one who Dane is supposed to be. When are you going to get it into your thick shell that we aren't partners anymore? We haven't been partners since the Bernoulli job, and I'd like to remind you that when you stab your partner in the back and make off with the money and the dame, that's the kind of thing that makes you the bad guy."

The beast relaxed a bit, coming further out of its shell.

"We're going to be taking the moral high ground this afternoon, I see," it said. "Well perhaps I'd better cut straight to the one thing I know gets you off that elite hill faster than anything else. There's money in it, Dane, big money, but the only way we'll see any of it is if you help me out with a little job."

Well, that was the thinker. I've worked with the beast in the past, as you may have gathered, and if I know one thing about it, I know that it doesn't understand that there's no such thing as a little job - or maybe it does, and it just likes to fool me into thinking it doesn't.

But money was involved - and money I could certainly do with. I was running nicely short of cash, and I had been ever since... well, I don't want to talk about that. Not yet.

"Keep going," I told it.