Page 9 of A Light in the Dark
NINE
The Hunters could afford the bill.
Any other day, I would have settled into the serious business of relaxing, but I had a doorbell system to buy, a new cell number to add to my phone, a foundation shoring to book, and a great deal of thinking to do. I started with the foundation company, Sampson Sigils, which had a location not far from the home renovation store. I stepped inside armed with my contract, waited in line, and when it was my turn to deal with the woman at the reception desk, I plunked the folder down and said, “I’d like to add some wall shorings and weight-bearing beam shorings to my contract, please.”
The woman smiled, likely recognizing an easy sale, grabbed out my contract number, plugged it into her computer, and looked over the results. She made a thoughtful sound, picked up her phone, and said, “Mr. Dolanns, are you available to handle a contract? I have a walk-in requiring wall shorings and beam shorings added to her existing contract. ”
After a few moments, the woman read off my name and contract number, hung up, handed my folder back, and pointed at the hallway behind her. “Go to the end of the hall, turn left, and it will be the third door on the right.”
“Thank you.” I did as told, found the door marked with Mr. Dolanns’s name, and knocked. I waited for the muffled invitation to enter before letting myself in. “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Dolanns.”
An older man with graying brown hair and dark eyes, dressed in a suit that did a good job of conveying his company paid him well for his work, sat behind a large but plain desk loaded with papers, something I recognized from my own job.
Most often, the busiest and successful employees had some form of chaos on their desk as they juggled heavy workloads and tight deadlines. As the clutter hadn’t become unmanageable, I took it to be a good sign of the man’s skills.
“You’re welcome. May I call you Valerie?”
“Please.”
“I’m Garth. Have a seat. What level of work do you need to have done?”
“The neighbors sharing my walls haven’t been shoring to my general level, and I wanted to see about protecting the exterior walls from damage and flooding. I’m already shored on all four foundation walls, but I’m concerned about the living spaces. Someone on my street recommended that I have the extra work done.”
After tapping at his keyboard a moment, his printer, located behind him, offered a single sheet of paper, which he grabbed and gave to me. “When I saw your address, I suspected you’re Joel’s neighbor. You’re the only other client of ours on your section of street. You have a top grade shoring job. I remember when you had the work done; it was flagged as unusual, as most people in that area go for one of our competitors, who charge significantly less.”
“Well, yes, for significantly inferior work. I moved to Stonecreek well aware of the hazards, and as I got the house for a pittance compared to its real value, I invested in the foundation. I need that. It’s rather important, especially if I want my house to remain where it is during a bad flood.”
Garth chuckled. “Indeed you do. So, in good news, the shoring work you want isn’t nearly as expensive as the foundation itself. The underlying structure is already in place, so all we need to do is expand on what’s already there. That significantly lessens the cost. We can also reinforce your current work to extend your contract to fifty years at the same time. That costs two thousand a wall, as the main work has already been done. With this contract plan, we will do maintenance work on the wall yearly. We typically charge two hundred as our fee for the maintenance work, which covers the entire property and all work done.”
At two hundred, the checks and repairs likely took one or two employees an hour, which made it a fair rate. As any repairs were covered in the contract itself, I could accept a small maintenance fee in exchange for a lengthened contract.
Fifty years on my contract with those terms would transform my home into something I could sell for well over a million dollars if I decided to move.
I didn’t need to think long on it; two thousand a wall would save me a great deal of worry later. “That’s within my budget. How much will it be to shore the exterior walls? ”
“As we’ll be working on the foundation anyway, it would be five hundred a wall. It’s fairly trivial to extend the protections up a connecting wall. If you wanted coverage on the roof, that would cost ten thousand. Roof coverage is a little trickier.”
“Wait, you can do my roof?” I hadn’t remembered anything about them offering roof coverage.
“We only offer roof coverage to those who have full wall coverage,” he informed me.
Oh. That made sense, and as I hadn’t invested in wall coverage when I’d initially made my contract, I could accept the employee I’d worked with saving herself time explaining coverage I wasn’t eligible to receive. Ten thousand would stretch my savings more than I liked, but I could afford it. “Is it a fifty percent deposit today and payment on completion for this?”
“We can offer you a payment plan as you have an existing contract with us.” Garth grabbed a calculator and began punching numbers in. “A home your size usually has at least twenty load bearing walls, so we’ll do the estimate based on that number. We’ll have to go into the property to get a count of the walls we need to protect. But for this, twenty is probably a tolerable guess.”
I nodded, counting rooms in my home in my head. “If it helps, I have five rooms upstairs, six rooms on the main level, and the basement is currently open space. There are three bathrooms, a laundry space, and a pantry as well.”
“For a small amount more, we could just shore every room individually. It’s not much difference in work, although if you want to do renovations, you’ll have to get the shoring adjusted. The protection is better, however. ”
I did not foresee myself changing the room layout. “How much extra per room?”
“Five hundred plus any extra walls, but we tend to do a lump sum per number of rooms, so we’d use our chart for the size of your home and build our estimate from that.”
With a payment plan, I could afford it, and as long as I took care to monitor the weather, I’d be safe enough in my home.
With the shoring and additional protections, I could stay in Stonecreek despite my concerns regarding the refugee situation.
If I accepted compensation from the Hunters with them being aware I would use the funds to make my home safer, the finances would work out, I wouldn’t deal with quite as much guilt, and I could stick around longer to make certain no one else faced Gabriella’s fate.
The Hunters could afford the bill.
“Do you offer any services for yards? I am thinking about setting up a garden in my back, and I’d rather not lose it every flood season.”
Garth smiled, reached over, and plucked up a brochure, which he handed to me. “As a matter of fact, yes. If you have a drainage gully or similar, we can shore that for you and install a one way barrier. Water can get into the gully, but water cannot leave the gully. We can install those up to ten feet tall, after which you’ll have issues. That system costs fifty thousand to install, and we wouldn’t be able to handle the installation for three months.”
“Can I keep this?”
“Absolutely. If you decide you’re interested, give me a call, and I’ll get you booked. We can do the inspection to make certain your space is suitable for the system, and we can show you what we can do with your specific yard when we’re doing the other shoring.”
“That’s perfect, thank you.” I slid the brochure into my purse. “What would be the total cost for the work, excluding the yard?”
Garth returned to his calculator, and after a few minutes, he said, “The shoring work will cost fifty-seven thousand including the roof and taxes. Your first payment would have to cover the entirety of the sales tax, which would be roughly twelve hundred. That would make your monthly payment a little under twelve hundred a month for roughly four years. We don’t charge interest on contracts like this, and you can opt to pay off the contract at any time. We try to be flexible for cases like this.”
I dug into the depths of my purse, retrieved my checkbook, and slapped it onto his desk. “I’ll put down five thousand today, if that’s all right.”
“Let me print out the contract, get all the line items sorted, and prepare it for signature. It’ll take about ten minutes. Can I interest you in a cup of coffee in the meantime?”
“Please.”
“I’ll show you the break room. You can make yourself comfortable while I handle the paperwork. I’ll have you out of here within the next twenty minutes.”
If only the rest of the world moved as fast as Garth when determined to close a deal. “Thank you, I appreciate that.”
“You look like you’re running errands tonight, so why keep you loitering longer than necessary? We appreciate your business and value your time. ”
“If only we could convince the government of that,” I complained. “The last time I went in to deal with my property taxes, I lost two hours to the red tape.”
“I wish I could say we’re in the business of miracles, but alas, we are not.”
While it ate away three hours of my day, I finished all my errands, installed the new doorbells, and transferred my phone number to disguise the fact the Hunters had given me a phone. Once settled at home and my leftover chili simmered on the stove, I sent Roger a text informing him I’d acquired the doorbells and had invested in full shoring of my home, which offered the best protections possible in Stonecreek.
To my amusement, he asked for a copy of the bill. Using the phone, I sent it to him, and I even included the confirmation of the downpayment I’d made for the work.
Five minutes later, my phone rang.
Smiling, I answered, “Hello again, Roger.”
“That company really likes you. These protections are stellar. Would you allow us to finish paying off the bill as part of your compensation?”
“How would we handle the taxes on it?”
“That’s a Hunters of Moonriver problem versus yours. We’ll utilize some loopholes, and we’ll inform Stonecreek we’d done some damage to your roof with our helicopter. While repairing the roof, we would handle payments for the rest of the shoring. They won’t question it, as roof damage from helicopters flying close is not terribly uncommon when shingles are involved. We’ll make the arrangements. They know we compensate when someone helps a refugee, and they know we rescued one from your property. It won’t rouse any suspicions. If anything, it’ll be more suspicious if we didn’t offer compensation. We have a fund for this sort of thing from the charity drive.”
I took my time thinking about it, and when I couldn’t find a reason to refuse the offer that didn’t involve a stung pride, I replied, “Okay. I can accept that. My roof should be checked after a helicopter was so close to it. I can leave that matter in your care, and I’ll put you in touch with Garth so your roofing work won’t bother their shoring efforts.”
“Excellent. I’ll give the luna moth a call once I’m off the phone with you and inform him that you have a doorbell installed and can let him in for his checks. If you plan on going up the hill near the lake, see about taking him with you. I’d rather be safe than sorry. And whatever is going on in Stonecreek is happening close to that lake. We haven’t been able to check the water up there for bodies.”
With the size of the lake, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone used it as a dumping ground for corpses. While people fished in it all the time, the waters were deep and people worried about the levees breaking at unexpected times. Magic kept the waters at bay while the rebuild of the levees happened, and I tended to stay far away from the danger zones, listening for signs of floods coming when out on the streets. “Why not?”
“Stonecreek only allows residents near the paths, and we have no way to get around those blockades right now. Not safely. ”
“Are any of your aquatic shifters small enough to fit into a backpack?”
“We have a few, yes.”
“I’m game to go on a hike with the luna moth while carrying a backpack. There are a few picnic spots around the lake, so it would be trivial to set your shifter loose to check the water. They will have to be careful, but as long as they investigate quickly and came back before we have to leave, there’s no reason it couldn’t at least be confirmed if there are bodies down there. But with how turbulent the waters get up there during the floods, they probably washed down to the bottom.”
“That is a factor in our hesitancy to check. We doubt it’s worth the risk. However, if we build a case against Stonecreek, we’ll be able to gain access. This sort of crime violates planetary law, and because we have been overseeing the refugees on this world, we will get judiciary rights over the case. They might bring in some law enforcement from off world, as they have better forensics equipment than we do—and this sort of thing deserves the best the universe has to offer.”
That it did. “We can violate tech in that case?”
“We can. The analysis will take place in orbit, and we’ll use the results in our courts. I was disclosed on some of the specifics due to Gabriella.”
I worried for the woman, who had suffered through her life being turned upside down. “How is she doing?”
“She’s settling well. One of our factions has taken her in, and she’s adapting rather well. She won’t be a Hunter, but honestly, that’s for the best. She has a gentler personality. She might end up married to a Hunter, but we’ll see about that over time. She required some medical care, but she’s recovering nicely.” Roger made a thoughtful sound. “Once everything settles down, you can come to Moonriver and meet with her. She regrets she could not thank you properly for saving her life.”
“I’d like to visit Moonriver. I’ve never been there before,” I admitted.
“Make sure you have your travel documentation in hand, and in a few months, we’ll issue an invitation.”
Unlike a lot of people in Stonecreek, I kept my travel documents handy, renewing them as needed. While I’d never left the city-state, if I wanted to, I could. “I have my travel documents.”
“Send a picture of your documents to me just so we can keep track of you. We’ll inform Stonecreek that we’re doing it as a thanks for your assistance. That will give you a few extra protections.”
“I’ll do that as soon as I’m off the phone with you.”
“Good.”
“What do you want me to do in the meantime?”
“Lie low, act normal, and gather what information you can on refugees in the area, especially if they’re being pursued by businesses for tech and then being discarded. We had not considered the tech angle. We’ll check the records of victims to see if they had any relevant info someone might want and be willing to kill over. From time to time, city-states decide to get ambitious and try to violate our tech levels. They’re not smart enough to realize tech is far more advanced off our world, and they think they’re developing something new and interesting. They’re really not. While some tech has survived through the ages, the rest of the universe is far more advanced than we are. Rather than leave and pursue tech, they think they can violate our levels and progress us.”
How idiotic. “It’s not that hard to get clearance to leave the planet.”
“Oh, it can be hard, but with our status as a refugee planet, a lot of the red tape has been removed. There are some talks about slightly upgrading our tech level and starting a new preservation planet with our current level. With Earth destroyed, planets like ours are the last vestiges of purebred homo sapiens .”
I’d never put much thought into the other preservation planets, which were scattered across the universe, and everyone else generally treated us as elaborate terrariums with sentient lifeforms. For the most part, while aware I was one of the sentient lifeforms living in an elaborate terrarium, I hadn’t minded being part of a living experiment.
I enjoyed my life, even with its ups and downs. “We’re an endangered species now?”
“Compared to the other races? We are.”
“While I know there are other races out there, I don’t know of them. Do you?”
“I do. I haven’t met any of them, but I might need to during emergencies. For the most part, Mr. Stephans and his son are the ones who interact with the other races. Our tech level has not yet engaged with the rest of the universe. That’s a tech level above us. If they do increase our tech level, though, we’ll be in for a lot of changes.”
“Our planet would become open for visitation from other races.”
“That’s correct. We’d be a limited visitation planet, though. There’d be a lottery for who gets to come visit, and there’d be strict rules on what tourists can and can’t do. But it could be a boon for the planet itself. Preservation planets of that level are exceptionally rare. There are only five of them in the universe, and we’d become number six. But they enjoy a great deal of protections. There would be a twenty year program to adapt everyone to it, get vaccinations done, and so on, though. I don’t see a vote going through on upgrading our status for at least ten years.”
“Why are you telling me this, Roger?”
“Mr. Stephans thinks you need to know, as it could relate to the killings in Stonecreek.”
That made a sickening amount of sense. “I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all we could ever ask of you. Thank you for helping us. We appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.”