Angry Jasper-Ten

First thing he needed was to turn in the fugitive's head and get paid his bounty, jazz docked the ship and took a rail car down to the surface. It was a short ride into town. The place had the look of small New England hamlet, circa 2012, just before the great world war. Folks went happily enough from small shops, sidewalk market stalls and pleasant little cafes It was always sunny and always a perfect 74 degrees. Like some little piece of god-damned heaven.

The assessor’s office was on Maple Street, just past the flower shop and Morty Zuckerman’s deli in a little red-brick storefront. There w ere bright white lace curtains in the large front window, and in the glass door. The letters were etched upon the door in gold lettering. It might have been a street circa Earth in the 1940s, except that the light was just a little off, a consequence of the Wheel’s solar filters. A little bell over the door tingled as Jazz entered. He glared at it for a moment, and damn near ripped it off the wall. The tiny office was empty. There were a row of old chairs along the window, far more than the place ever needed. Jazz went to the counter and slapped his hand down hard beside a small bell. It rattled loudly just the same. When no one answered he shouted at the back office.

“Growing old out here!”

“Hold your horses, fella.” An impish little man in suspenders and a visor shuffled through the door. Small round spectacles teetered at the edge of the man’s round red nose. A notepad was tucked under one arm. His shirt was ivory white, and cut sharply by heavy black suspenders. “Good golly, mister, where is the fire?”

“No fire,” said Jazz, upending the sack, spilling the head and associated mess onto the counter. “But my friend is gonna turn soon.”

“Lord! Excuse my French, but what am I supposed to do…?” The assessor jumped back against a desk, lifting his legs absurdly into the air, sparing his shoes a dousing of fugitive gruel oozing and splattering on the floor beneath him.

Jazz pulled the wanted poster from his jacket and unfolded it. “Got five thousand credits coming to me.”

The assessor made no effort to hide his annoyance with Jazz. Who did? He purposely took forever with the paperwork. After nearly an hour, minus the assessor’s fee, wheel tax, various Corporation taxes and the like the assessor transferred to Jazz’s account a cool twenty-two hundred credits?

“Got to be some miskake,” Jazz almost thought he might cry.

“No mistake, mister.”

Freakin’ taxes were strangling the working man, Jazz lamented. Twenty-two hundred wasn’t enough to even get the ship repaired. He was better off junking the thing and taking a nice boring janitor position on the wheel. Jazz grabbed the little man by the suspenders and hauled in off the floor.

“What are you trying to pull here?”

“That’s how it goes,” the assessor trembled. “I don't write the tax code.”

“Ought to pound you into a pulp just for fun.” Jazz reeled back mulling over whether or not to bust the guy in the face.

“Marge, help!” cried the assessor to the back office. Jazz couldn’t help but laugh. What a puny pathetic creature. Nothing he hated worse than a man who couldn’t hold his own in a scrap.

“That’s right, call your little wife, maybe she’ll…” the words trailed away as the biggest meanest woman he’d ever seen appeared in the door. She had a baseball bat in one hand, and look that told jazz she knew how to use it.

“Marge?” he swallowed hard.

“Oh. I’m gonna enjoy this!” Marge charged through the office like a pissed off buffalo. She chased poor Jazz the better part of a block before he managed to lose her, doing his best not to linger over the fact that it took him that far to outrun a fat old woman!