Resistance by John Birmingham

indicated by the parties of the . . .’
    He crumpled the paper in his hands.
    ‘What the fuck does this even mean? I don’t have any of these things.’
    He trailed off.
    ‘Your wife’s got a good lawyer,’ said Zach, shrugging. ‘Must’ve seen you on TV this morning. Saw the shout-out you gave the hotel and picked it up from there. Man that’s super fast work. They must have been on a hair trigger,’ he said turning to Igor, ‘if I ever get married, and then get divorced, I’m totally getting Dave’s ex-wife’s lawyer. Dude’s a monster.’
    ‘Gotta respect skills like that,’ Igor said.
    ‘No, no you do not!’
    A man was coming at them down the hallway, a man too short to contain the surfeit of energy that seemed to be powering him down the ornately carpeted corridor. Dave thought he recognised him through the drug haze. Same guy who’d waved a bunch of hundred dollar bills at him earlier. His suit was crumpled, as though he had slept in it, or perhaps driven through the night to get here. What was left of his hair floated around his head in an unruly shock, creating a mad scientist halo that was hard to discredit once the thought had occurred. His bald head seemed to be . . . what?
    Klingon.
    He had a Klingon head, Dave decided. But he was a sort of pasty-faced, short-ass Klingon in a crumpled suit.
    A few strides brought him directly to Dave and the SEALs where he held out his hand as if to take the papers from him.
    Heath moved to put one arm out, blocking the man, but Dave brushed it away. Like a drunk brushing away a friend who wanted to take his car keys.
    ‘Let the dude . . . er. Let him . . .’
    Man, Trinder had some good drugs.
    ‘Do you mind?’ asked the Klingon. ‘Of course you mind. You have no idea who I am. Let me put your mind at ease on that if nothing else for the moment. Boylan is my name. Just Boylan will do, although I have other names, of course. My parents were hippies, and although they approached most social conventions with a deplorably relaxed attitude, they did think to smooth my path through the world by providing me with more than one name. Professor is my other name. And X. Professor X Boylan. An impressive moniker, yes? But of course single initial names are always striking, and there are few letters in the alphabet more striking than X. It is both mysterious and foreboding. X implies danger, don’t you think? And promise too. X marks the spot, after all. And X crosses out all options.’
    He speed-read the legal papers as he spoke, never once looking up from the document to gauge the reaction of his audience. Dave’s reaction was mostly to be confused and very, very stoned.
    ‘You look like a Klingon,’ said Dave.
    The man called Boylan did not look up.
    ‘I have a prominent occipital crest,’ he said. As if that explained anything. ‘This!’ he declared then. ‘This is nothing!’
    He threw the sheaf of papers over his shoulder and they came apart in midair as the paperclip holding them together failed. ‘Pah! Don’t worry about that. I just did that for effect. I will gather up those papers in a moment when you are gone and no longer looking and it won’t be embarrassing for me to scramble around hunched over like some sort of helper chimp.’
    ‘Dave, seriously,’ said Heath. ‘We need to get going.’
    ‘No, what we need to do, sir, is crush M. Pearson Vietch like a bug. That is the plan, isn’t it? Crushing the insectile lawyer of your soon-to-be former wife?’
    ‘Dave,’ Heath’s voice sounded lower, and a little more dangerous.
    ‘Wait, what?’ said Dave, shaking his head as though to clear it of cobwebs, ‘No, I need to hear about the crushing.’
    ‘M. Person Bitch?’ said Igor, out the side of his mouth.
    ‘Lawyer,’ said Dave. ‘Annie’s lawyer,’ he added. ‘Crush Annie’s lawyer.’
    ‘Yes, I’m all about the crushing,’ said Boylan. ‘I will sneak back now and get those papers I threw over my shoulder to demonstrate my