Chang stared at me with the wide, unblinking eyes of scared youth. With shoulders slightly wider than his hips and a fair amount of hair on his neck, he appeared to be somewhere between ten and twelve, not yet inhabiting a man's body but on the cusp of the change, soon to begin the transformation into adulthood. His broad mouth hung open a centimeter, as if he were about to speak. He wore his fine black hair short, not quite a buzz cut but close. Aside from the copper hue of his skin nothing about him struck me as even remotely notable, and even that flesh tone would be common enough in any large city. He stood still, neither speaking nor moving, and I felt instantly bad for him, stuck as he was in an adult situation whose nuances were beyond his ability to understand, with an angry man—me—staring down at him.
"Are you hungry, Manu?" I said as I sat, again putting the weapons behind my chair.
He nodded but didn't speak, the fear not releasing its grip on him.
"Then please eat with us." The maître d' was, predictably, ahead of me: two servers appeared, hustled the boy into a chair, and composed a plate of food for him from the remains of the appetizers and two new dishes they brought for us all to share. Manu sat but otherwise didn't move. After I took a bite from the plate nearest me and Jack did the same, Manu followed suit. The boy swallowed the first bite as if it were air, consumed it so quickly he couldn't possibly have tasted it, and inside I winced at the waste of Choy's artistry.
I forced a smiled and said, "Good, huh?"
Manu nodded.
"Have all you want," I said.
I turned my attention back to Jack as Manu attacked the food in earnest. Jack was almost certainly manipulating me; he knows no other way to interact with others. The odds of my later regretting asking him a question were high, but I was too curious not to continue. I also had to admit that the boy's open, guileless gaze touched me—probably as Jack had intended. "Why do you want my help?" I said.
Though I was certain that inside he was smiling, all Jack permitted his face to show were concern for the boy and appreciation at my interest. "My answer will make sense only if I give you some context," he said, "so I have to ask you to grant me a few minutes to explain."
"Go ahead," I said, leaning forward and lowering my voice, "but, Jack, don't play me." As I heard my own words, which I meant and delivered as seriously I could, I grasped how well he'd hooked me. I was speaking nonsensically: Jack isn't capable of saying anything to anyone without having multiple angles at play, and, as he taught me, the mark who has to urge you to tell the truth already wants to hear the pitch.
He leaned conspiratorially closer, so our faces were almost touching, and whispered. "I know you're aware of Pinkelponker," he said. "Everyone is. But do you know why it matters?"
"Yeah, of course I've heard of it," I said, leaning back as if the name didn't matter to me. "It's quarantined. So what?"
Pinkelponker. Hearing Jack say it shook me far more than his appearance, more than the scared boy now sitting with us, more than any of the suspicions I'd felt since Jack had shown up. I did my best to hide my reaction. I was born on that planet, and I lived there with my sister, Jennie, an empathic healer, until the government shuttled her away from our home island and forced her to heal only those people it deemed important. I've never forgiven myself for not finding a way to rescue her, to bring her back safely.
Pinkelponker occupies three unique niches in human history.
It's the only planet successfully colonized by one of Earth's pre-jump-gate generation ships, its name the result of that ship's captain foolishly letting his young daughter choose what to call mankind's first remote, planet-bound colony. The ship ultimately failed to land properly, crashed badly enough that it could never take off again, and stranded its entire population until humanity discovered the series of jump gates that led to the two-aperture gate near Pinkelponker.
It's the only place where radical human mutations not only survived but also yielded parahuman talents, such as my sister's healing abilities. Never found elsewhere, these abilities were now the stuff of legends, stories most people consider on par with tales of elves and dragons.
And, it's the only planet humans have ever colonized that is now forbidden territory. It exists under a continuous quarantine and blockade, thanks to a nanotech disaster that led to the abandonment of all research into embedding nanomachines in humans.
What no one knows is that the rogue nanomachine cloud that ultimately caused the planet's enforced isolation came into existence as part of my escape from Aggro, the research prison that orbited above Pinkelponker. More importantly, to the best of my knowledge no one alive knows that I'm living proof that nanomachines can indeed safely exist in humans—and I very much want it to stay that way. Any group that learned the truth about me would want to turn me into a research animal. My months on Aggro as a test subject stand as some of the worst and most painful times in a long life with more than its share of pain; I'll never let that happen again.
I'd lost track of the conversation. I forced myself to concentrate on what Jack was saying. Fortunately, he didn't seem to have noticed that I'd drifted away for a moment.
". . . hasn't been open to travel in over a century and a quarter," he said. "If you haven't spent much time in this sector of space, you wouldn't have any reason to keep up with it, though obviously even you know about the quarantine."
"Who doesn't?" I said as casually as I could manage. Jack held my attention now, because far more relevant than my past was a disturbing question I should have considered earlier: was he telling me all this because he'd learned more about my background than I ever wanted anyone to know?
"It's tough to avoid," he said, his head nodding in slow agreement, "particularly for those of us who always plot the best routes off any world we're visiting." He smiled and pitched his voice further downward, speaking softly enough now that without thinking I again leaned forward to hear him better. "But have you heard the legends?"
"What legends?" I said. Playing dumb and letting Jack talk seemed the wisest option.
"Psychics, Jon, not grifters working marks but real psychics. Pinkelponker was a high-radiation planet, a fact that should simply have led to a lot of human deaths. Something about that world was special, though, because instead the radiation caused the first and so far only truly useful human mutations—something humanity has never seen anywhere else. The legends tell of the existence of all types of psychics, from telekinetics to healers to seers."
Jack sat back, his expression expectant, waiting for me to react. I'd seen him use this technique to draw in marks, and I wasn't about to play. As I now feared Jack might know, I hadn't come to Mund simply for Choy's cooking, as amazing as it was reputed to be. Mund was one of the worlds with a jump aperture to Drayus, the only planet with an aperture to Pinkelponker since the one on Earth mysteriously closed a decade after it opened. No other gate aperture had ever grown over and stopped working. New apertures appeared from time to time, and each one inevitably led to a system with a planet suitable for human colonization, but once open, apertures always stayed that way. Theories abounded, of course, as to why this one and only one aperture had closed, but as with everything else about the gates, humanity could know only what they did, never why they did it.
The Drayus aperture was now also closed, but not because it had stopped working. As far as anyone knew, it still functioned correctly. What kept it out of operation was the most potent and long-lasting blockade mankind had ever assembled: no human had successfully passed through it in a hundred and thirty years. All but one of the few ships that had made the jump before the Central and Expansion Coalition governments had cooperated in shutting down all access to the gate had never returned. The one ship that made it back had passed halfway through the aperture, just far enough that its crew could warn of the nanocloud that was dissolving it and then return in time to prevent the cloud from entering this system. No one is sure why the nanocloud itself couldn't make the jump, but neither is any government willing to take the chance of sending another vessel and possibly bringing it back. The CC and EC ships stationed at the gate make sure no private craft try, either.
Despite all that, the aperture was still there, still a possible way to my home, maybe even to Jennie, if she—or anyone—remained alive in that system. I visited this sector of space periodically, each time wondering how I could get back to Pinkelponker and see if Jennie still lived—and each time realizing with a gut-wrenching sense of failure that there was no way I could reach her, no chance I could save her even if by some miracle she hadn't died of old age on a planet whose medical science was isolated over a century ago.
I could only lose by giving away any of this knowledge about my past, so I waited. A pair of servers took advantage of the silence to whisk away our dirty dishes. Another pair replaced them with fresh plates, each a work of art combining greens, nuts, and small pieces of cheese. Manu immediately took a bite. He chewed quietly and steadily. I eyed the food but couldn't make myself eat.
After a minute, Jack realized he'd have to keep going on his own. He leaned closer again and, his eyes shining brightly, said, "Can you imagine it, Jon? In all the colonized planets, not one psychic—until Pinkelponker."
Jack was as dogged as he was slippery, so I knew he'd never give up. I had to move him along. "You said it, Jack: legends. Those are just legends."
He smiled, satisfied now that I was playing the role he wanted me to fill. "Yes, they're legends, but not all legends are false or exaggerated. In the less than a decade between the discovery of Pinkelponker's jump gate and the permanent quarantine of that whole area after the nanotech disaster, some people from that planet naturally visited other worlds. Some of those visitors never went home. And," he said, leaning back, "a very few of those who opted to live on other worlds were psychics." He put his right hand gently on the boy's back. "Like Manu's grandmother. Though she died, and though her only son didn't inherit her powers, her grandson did.
"Manu did. He's proof, Jon, that the legends were true. He's a seer."
I stared at the boy, who continued to eat as if we weren't there. I already knew the legends were true, because Jennie was proof of it. I was born with a mind that would never progress past that of a normal five year old's, but Jennie not only fixed me, she also pushed my intelligence way beyond the norm, made me somehow able to communicate on machine frequencies, altered my vision so I could see in the IR range, and enabled my brain to control the nanomachines the Aggro scientists later injected into me. She'd told me that others with special powers existed, but she'd never provided specifics, and I never met any of them. I didn't have a chance to question her further about them, because right after fixing me she boarded a government ship, and I haven't seen her since.
Though Jack's story of Pinkelponker natives visiting other planets seemed reasonable enough—the wealthy of all worlds move around readily—I'd never heard it before. More importantly, with Jack I couldn't trust anything to be true, and I couldn't assume that any tidbits that happened to be accurate were anywhere near the whole story. I needed to keep him talking and hope I could lure him into giving me more of the truth than he'd planned.
"I don't buy it, Jack," I said. "If the boy could see the future, he'd already be famous or rich—or the hidden property of some conglomerate. He sure wouldn't be with you."
Jack shook his head. "Wrong on all counts, Jon." He held up his right hand and ticked off the points on his long, elegant fingers. "First, his powers don't work reliably. I told you: he's two generations away from the planet. He sees the future, but in visions whose subjects and timing he can't control. He has no clue when they'll hit him. Second, his parents, until they died—" he glanced at Manu, whose face clouded suddenly and appeared near tears, "—bless them both, though not well off were also not stupid, so they kept him hidden. Third, and this leads me to why I'm here, the visions damage him. In fact, without the right treatments to suppress them, and without continuing those treatments indefinitely, well," he looked at the boy with what appeared to be genuine fondness and then stared at me, choosing his words carefully, "his body won't be able to pay the bill his mind will incur."
"You don't need me to go to a med tech," I said.
"Normal med techs can't provide these treatments," Jack said, "and those few that do offer them charge a great deal more than the meager amount his parents left him. The uncle who was raising him is a man of modest means who also couldn't even begin to pay for this level of care. The whole situation is further complicated by our need to keep Manu's abilities quiet."
"You said he's with you, and you mentioned doing well selling the faux weapons vehicles, so why not just foot the bill yourself?"
"Alas, Jon," he said with a wistful smile, "my lifestyle is such that little money from that brief interlude remains, so my own funds are also inadequate to the task."
"So you want to borrow the payments from me?" I said. Jack and I had covered this ground before, after the second time I was stupid enough to grant him a loan; somehow his limitation not to con good people didn't extend to his friends. He felt that any colleague who couldn't spot a con deserved to be plucked. He certainly knew that I'd vowed never to loan him money again.
He waved his hands quickly and shook his head; I was pleased to see he hadn't forgotten. "No, no," he said, "of course not. I'm simply helping Manu and his uncle get the money. I've arranged a way, but it has," he paused, giving the impression of searching for words I'm sure he'd already rehearsed, "an element of risk."
I motioned him to continue and looked at Manu. The boy's eyes were now dry and focused nowhere at all, as if he'd long ago become accustomed to people talking about him as if he weren't there. I've always found it puzzling how many people do that to children, even their own children. Manu continued to eat, now moving slowly and methodically, without pause, with the kind of determined focus common among those who never know how long it'll be until their next meal.
Jack nibbled at his salad, taking small bites and savoring each one.
I admired my plate, but I still had no stomach for it.
"Pinkelponker is, as you might imagine," he continued, "the object of considerable interest to certain mystic groups, as well as to many historians. One particular Pinkelponker fanatic, an extremely wealthy man named Siva Dougat, has set up a Pinkelponker research institute and museum—a temple, really—near the ocean on the northern edge of downtown Eddy. He's the leader of a group that calls itself the Followers, people who believe that the key to humanity's destiny lies in that long-forbidden planet. Dougat initially bankrolled the whole group, but like most cults it's subsequently amassed considerable wealth by absorbing the accounts of many of the hardcore faithful who've joined it."
He looked off to the right for a moment. "Didn't we run a cult scam once before?"
We'd made quite a few plays in our days together, but never that one, so I shook my head.
"No? Oh, well, I must have done it with someone else. My mind is clearly slipping. It was certainly profitable enough, and if I do say so myself, I made quite a grand religious leader, but I have to tell you, Jon: I couldn't keep it up. I could never respect anyone who would worship me."
"Dougat," I said.
Jack smiled, and then I realized how quickly I'd taken the hook.
"Yes, of course. He's interviewed every Pinkelponker survivor and survivor descendant he's ever found. He claims to make all the recordings available in his institute, though," Jack paused and stared off into space again, "I suspect he's the sort who's held back anything of any significant potential value. What matters most is that he pays for the interviews. I've contacted him about Manu, and he's offered a fee—just for an interview, no more—that's large enough to keep the boy in treatments for a very long time."
"So what's the problem?" I said. "You've found a way to earn Manu the money he requires. You don't need me."
"I don't trust Dougat, Jon. He's rich, which immediately makes him suspect. He runs a religious cult, so he's a skilled con man. Worst of all, you can hear the fervor in his voice when he talks about Pinkelponker, and fanatics always scare me. When I told him about Manu's visions, he sounded as if he were a Gatist with a chance to be the first to learn the source of the jump gates. He's not faking his interest, either. You know I've spent a lot of my life cultivating desire in marks and spotting when they were hooked; well, Dougat wants Manu badly, Jon, badly enough that I'm worried he might try to kidnap the boy."
"You're asking me to provide protection?" I said.
"You and that PCAV of yours," Jack said quietly. "I know what you're capable of, and real or faux, your PCAV makes an impressive presence. If I'm wrong about Dougat, this will cost you only a little time. If I'm right, though, then I'll feel a lot better with you beside me. You know I'm no good at violence."
Despite myself, I nodded. I don't like violence; at least the part of me under my conscious control doesn't like it, but the anger that's more tightly laced throughout me than the nanomachines emerges all too readily. I tell myself I do everything reasonably possible to avoid fights, but all too often the jobs I accept end up in conflict.
"You've already learned I'm a private courier," I said. "If you and the boy want to go somewhere, and if you have the fare, I'll treat you as a package and take you to your destination under my care. I'm no bodyguard, though"—I had no reason to assume Jack knew of the five years I'd spent being exactly that—"so I can't help you with the meeting."
"One day, Jon," he said, "just one day. That's all I need you for. We meet Dougat three days from now at the Institute. I wanted a safe, public place, but he wouldn't go anywhere he couldn't control the security. We compromised on meeting in the open, on the grounds in front of his main building, where anyone passing by could see us. All I'm asking is that you come with us, watch our backs, and if things turn bad, fly us out of there. That's it."
Jack wouldn't drop it until I'd found a way to say no that he understood, so I cut to the easiest escape route. "How much do you propose to pay me for this?" I said.
"Nothing."
No answer he could have given would have surprised me more. Jack always came ready to any bargaining table. I fought to keep the surprise from showing on my face. It was the first thing he'd said that made me wonder if he might actually for once be on the up and up.
"I don't have any money to pay you," he continued, "and I won't make any from this meeting; everything Dougat pays goes to Manu. I'm doing it for him, and I'm asking you to do the same. With all the dicey business we've worked, wouldn't you like to do some good now and again?" He leaned back, put his hands in his lap, and waited, an innocent man who'd said his piece.
The spark of trust Jack had created winked out as I realized there was no way he was doing something for nothing. "Why are you involved in all this, Jack? Skip the pitch; just tell me."
Jack looked at Manu for a few seconds. "I really am out to help Manu. His uncle's a friend, and I feel bad for the boy." He straightened and a pained expression flickered across his face. "And, Earth's greatest export has once again left me with a debt I must repay, this time to Manu's uncle."
"Poker," I said, laughing. "A gambling loss?" Jack had always loved the game, and we'd played it both for pleasure and on the hustle, straight up and bent. I enjoyed it well enough, but I rarely sought it, and I could always walk away. For him, poker held a stronger attraction, one he frequently lost the will to fight.
"It was as sure a hand as I've ever seen, Jon," he said, the excitement in his voice a force at the small table. Manu started at Jack's tone but resumed eating when everything appeared to be okay. "Seven stud, three beautiful eights to greet me, the next card the matching fourth, and a world of opportunity spread before me. He caught the final two tens on the last two cards—cards he should never have paid to see. Unbelievable luck. I mean, the odds against it were astronomical! A better player would have folded long before; he certainly should have. I put everything into that pot. It was mine." He paused for a few seconds, and when he continued he was back under control. "Honestly, Jon, I was willing to help Manu before that hand, but yes, losing it guaranteed my participation."
"Your debt is not my problem, Jack."
"I realize that, and I wouldn't be asking you if I had an alternative. Unfortunately, I don't. Dougat is the only option Manu's uncle and I have found, I'm committed to help, and I don't trust that fanatic. I'll go it alone if I must, and I'm confident I'll walk away from the meeting, because I hold no interest for the guy, but I fear—" he glanced down at Manu and then spoke quickly—"that I'll exit alone."
That Jack was in a bind was never news—he'd be in trouble as long as he lived—and my days of obligation to him were long over. I felt bad for the boy, worse than Jack could know, because my inability to save Jennie has left me a soft touch for children in trouble, but I learned long ago that I can't save them all. Worse, recent experience had taught me that trying to rescue even one of them could lead to the kind of trouble I was lucky to survive. If I wanted to avoid more danger, I not only needed to steer clear of Jack, I had to leave Mund soon, because I had to assume the same gate staff he'd bribed would be alerting others to my presence. Anyone willing to sell information for the sorts of fees Jack could afford would surely try to jack up their profits by reselling that same data.
The only reasonable choice was to walk away now and leave the planet.
As much as I fought it, however, I knew I wouldn't make that choice.
The problem was the Pinkelponker connection. Dougat's research center and the data he and the Followers had collected might contain scraps of information I could use. If Manu really were a seer, he might also be a source of useful data. In addition, I needed to determine whether Jack knew about or even suspected my ties to the planet, and, if he did, exactly what he'd learned.
Finally, I had to admit that because so many of the jobs I've taken have led to so much damage, the prospect of doing something genuinely good always appealed to me.
I stared into Jack's eyes and tried to read him. Their rich blue color was truly remarkable, and he knew it. He held my gaze, too good a salesman to look away or push harder when he knew the hook was in deep. Even as I stared at him I remembered how utterly pointless it was to search for truth in his face. Jack excelled at close-up cons because at some level he always believed what he was selling, and so to marks he always appeared honest. The only way I could glean more information was to accrete it slowly by spending time with him.
When I glanced at Manu, I found him watching me expectantly, hopefully, as if he'd understood everything we'd discussed. Perhaps he had; Jack hadn't tried very hard to obscure the topic.
I took a long, slow, deep breath, and then looked back at Jack. "I'll help you," I said, "for the boy's sake."
"Thank you, Jon," he said.
"Thank you, sir," Manu said, his voice wavering but clear. "I'm sorry for any trouble we're causing you."
Either Jack had coached the kid well, or the boy meant it. I decided to hope the sentiment was genuine.
"You're welcome," I said to Manu.
Jack caught the snub, of course, but he wisely chose to ignore it.
I now had a job to do and not enough time to prep to do it right. We had to get to work. "Jack, you said the meeting was in three days, so our mission clock is tolerable but far shorter than I'd like. I run this, and you do exactly what I say. Agreed?"
Jack smiled and nodded. "Of course. If I didn't need your expertise, I wouldn't be here, so you're the boss."
Even in victory, he kept selling. I sighed.
"Yes, sir," said Manu.
I forced a smile as I looked at the boy, then turned back to Jack. "Lay it out for me, everything you've agreed to, everything you fear." I sipped a little water. "Then, we'll need to get in some practice time."