Page 68 of Xel: Broken Bond

“Yes, that’s right,” my master said, a frown on his face.

“And he owned the Ocean Breeze Resort in Silver Hill?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“And Xel, your friend, the housekeeping supervisor is Kathleen Norris, with an n for new.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Hm,” Torv said. “That leaves us with a rather interesting problem, then. The issue being that Kathleen Norris, according not just to Rendol population records, butAlliancerecords, does not exist.”

I sat up straighter at that. “That’s ridiculous. I worked with her every day for three years. Aidenmether. Have you called-”

“Yes, I’ve called Aiden,” Torv interrupted. “And yes, he’s confirmed that he met a human woman going by that name. But that’s not the only issue. As we previously discussed, Cole, I arranged for an accounting firm to go through the hotel’s accounts before the property is prepared for sale. And according to the financial records, the hotel is employing only about half the number of staff that would be plausibly required to keep the place running. So there’s somewhere in the region of thirty staff there who, according to official records, simply don’t exist.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means two things,” Torv said. “Firstly, it means that your uncle had been cooking the books, and there’s going to be alotof work to bring the place up to code. But the second thing it means is that Kathy – and a large number of the other staff – are likely illegal immigrants.”

“But how can they be illegal if they’re human?” I asked, thoroughly confused. “Humans are part of the Alliance, even if they were born on a different planet.”

“Not all of them, no,” Cole said. “There are four different human populations scattered across the galaxy, and plenty more loners and drifters. When we left our own solar system three hundred years ago, we went in a number of different directions. My ancestors were lucky to find the Denzogals and peacefully join their Alliance, but in other parts of the galaxy, humans are outcasts, or in some cases, they’re the instigators of massive wars. So it’s not uncommon for humans from other populations to come here, seeking to blend in with Alliance humans for the sake of a peaceful existence. But the Alliance has some pretty strict rules about who they’ll accept as new members, and most drifters and refugees don’t make the cut. So instead, they get themselves smuggled in and try to find work that will pay them under the table.”

I felt my heart sink as his explanation hit home. “So Kathy was breaking the law,” I concluded sadly.

“And my uncle was breaking the law by employing her.”

I sat in silence, trying to get my head around all that. “But that’s not fair,” I said, after a few moments. “Kathy was very kind to me at the hotel. And to all the other staff. She didn’t cause any trouble, and she worked hard… Everyone should be given a second chance, if they prove they’re willing to behave properly and contribute to society.”

“It’s not that simple,” Torv said, though he wasn’t meaning to be harsh about it. “A lot of people come here after committing violent crimes, or trying to dodge the justice systems from other star clusters. We can give her and the other staff a hearing, but it’ll be up to the courts to decide whether they’re admitted into the Alliance or not. But Xel… Do you happen to know anythingabout why she came here without proper clearance? Did she ever talk about her past?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, not in the sense of being smuggled anywhere, or talking about living on a different planet.” I wracked my brain to try and think if she’d ever said anything that could be useful. “She didn’t talk about herself much at all. Not what she did on her days off, or her family or… Well, she sometimes talked about the shows she watched, but I wasn’t allowed to watch the wall screens, so I didn’t know much about them. Before she worked at the hotel, she used to work in a café.” She’d mentioned that one day when the kitchen had been short staffed and one of the kitchen hands had asked her how she knew what she was doing. “But aside from that… Wait, yes, she did! She said she moved to Hon when she was ten years old. One summer when the massel blossoms were out, she said she remembered the first time she’d ever seen them, when she was ten years old and her parents had just moved to Hon.”

Torv looked oddly relieved by the news. “That might just be the loophole we need,” he said. “If she was smuggled here as achild, that would absolve her of any criminal wrongdoing. We might just be able to work with that.”

“What about the rest of the hotel staff? They shouldn’t get into trouble just because Mr Ronson was doing anything illegal.”

Torv looked at me sympathetically. “We’ll have to wait and see. But something you could do that would be a big help to us; can you contact Kathy and ask her to come and visit you at the sanctuary. Tell her there’s a job here that you think would be much nicer than the one at the hotel – which is true, if you’re concerned about lying to her. We don’t have any official contact details for her, and unfortunately, neither does Aiden. And since a couple of lawyers started hanging around the hotel in preparation for its sale, a lot of the casual staff have mysteriouslystopped turning up for their shifts. Short of staking out the hotel for the next week, we have little way of tracking her down.”

“I’m not calling her over here just to land her in trouble,” I said, not caring how much trouble that got me into. “She was a friend. She deserves better than that.”

Torv nodded, and I was relieved that he didn’t seem inclined to argue. “All right, I’ll offer you this: If she was brought to Rendol as a minor, I’ll fast track the membership process for her. If she came as an adult but doesn’t have a history of violent crime, then I’ll ask the Parliament for a special dispensation. If she does have a history of violent crime, then there’s not much I can do for her. That’s just the pragmatic reality. But if she’s being forced to work underpaid jobs with no security or stability, then there’s a very good chance that either of the first two options would make life decidedly better for her. It's not an iron-clad guarantee. But the odds are in her favour.”

I considered that for a long moment. I tried to imagine how Kathy would react to being asked to come here, only to find out I’d tricked her, albeit for her benefit. I considered how she’d react if shedidhave a criminal past, and ended up in jail because of me. And then I thought about what she’d do if she had to stop working at the hotel anyway, now that the legal team was sifting through the mess Cole’s uncle had left, and how she would feel if she ended up homeless because I hadn’t tried to help her. “All right,” I said in the end. “I’ll call her. But I expect you to hold up your end of the bargain,” I told Torv, with a stern look.

“Wait… How do you know her contact?” my master asked me. “You didn’t have a comm at the hotel.”

I shrugged. “She asked me to memorise it anyway. Just in case anything ever happened.”

“Huh. Seems like she was quite resourceful.”

“Which is why this project would benefit from her help.”

◊◊◊

It was two o’clock in the afternoon by the time my comm beeped, alerting me to a message that Kathy was just a few minutes away. I set down the broom I’d been sweeping the animal barn with and headed over to reception. Bo had been filled in on what was going on – she’d turned into something of a secret agent in the last week or so, putting on her usual calm and pleasant mannerisms for any visitors to the animal sanctuary, whilst also bending over backwards to safeguard all the secrets that we were hiding in the back paddocks. And from the comments she’d made, she was absolutely loving the occasional bouts of drama that those secrets created.

“Hey, Xel. Your friend is called Kathy, is that right?” she asked me, glancing up from her console as I arrived in the reception room.