SEVEN
Bernie the Rat. What a name, huh? You gotta love a guy who calls himself a rat. He was wearing grey silk pinstripe slacks—banker pants he called them—with red suspenders, just like the big shots. The look was…not spoiled, exactly, but certainly altered, by the faded yellow and red “Gearloose Star Tour” tee-shirt, some mechnod band that that been popular on Terra maybe a decade ago.
Bernie was mostly bald, but with a faint shadow of fuzz, cut so close you couldn’t really tell where the skin started and the hair stopped. That and the wrinkled face and deep-set eyes made him look older than I remembered, old enough that he was starting to look young again, like a baby.
Bernie had been an old-school shtarker, back when the world was younger, but he gave it up to run a fence and sell information. He had a reputation among the old guys as about the toughest son of a bitch in the Quarter, and he probably could have run the place if he’d worked hard enough at it, but instead he walked away. He told me once he just got tired of all the violence. I can relate.
One thing’s for sure, he’s still a wiry little son of a bitch, and impossible to kill—enough people have tried. After a while, they just get tired of hunting him, because once he goes to ground in The Quarter, forget it, and then he starts ratting out all your secrets. Everybody’s got ’em, and Bernie the Rat knows most of them.
I’ve never tried to kill him. I think it would be like burning a book because you don’t like what it says, and I’m not much into book burning.
“So, Bernie, you find out anything about two leather-heads trying to get off-planet?”
“Ooo. Very interesting. There’s this hot babe that Kolya wants to poke, she’s looking for a way off for ’em.”
“Yeah, that much I know. But who are they?”
He shook his head and frowned.
“Who are they…don’t know. But I think they got something to do with that shooting, up-canyon. Very weird. Very weird.”
I’d heard there had been some high-level leather-head gunned down, but I hadn’t paid much attention to the details. Arrie was right about that—didn’t give a mouse fart about leather-head politics, no matter how violent it got. It wasn’t just a species thing—they really do own everything, and much as I like Arrie, in a cautious eyes-open kind of way, they’re the problem for us down here in The Quarter. So when bosses start killing each other, smart slaves just look the other way.
“I heard a little about the shooting,” I said, “but educate me.”
“Okay. Sure. Leather-head with serious buckage—I’m talking stinking rich, like in the top ten of the e-Varokiim—named Sarro e-Traak, him and his driver got shot dead in his limo. Secure parking facility, all closed up. Very weird. Couple other leather-head bystanders killed at the scene. First reports were they were provosts, but not so. Just rubberneckers—wrong place, wrong time. Rumors like that…big guy gets shot, everybody starts grabbin’ for their ass and getting the information fucked up, you know?”
I nodded.
“So big hunt going on, ’cause his little kids were with him. No sign of them yet, but they’re dead too. At first Munies thought the Human body guard—guy named Bony Jones—was on the inside, maybe lined the whole thing up, ’cause he was missing from the scene, but they found him dead the next day.”
“Maybe he was on the take and his partners did him,” I offered, but Bernie shook his head.
“Don’t think so. Don’t think so. Ballistics on the slugs in him matched those in e-Traak, and Bony’s blood was at the scene, so it looks like he ‘died of wounds sustained,’ as they say. Haven’t found the bodies of the kids yet, but give it a day or two. I figure the killers took the kids’ bodies and hid them, ’cause long as there’s a chance they’re still alive, the Munies will make finding the kids the top priority, and every Munie looking for the kids is one less looking for the silencers. But the kids are dead.”
“Any reason to think the bodyguard was on the inside, other than going missing?”
“Just that he’s Human.” He looked at me as if that was supposed to be significant, and when I shrugged, he shook his head.
“You don’t know about the e-Traak fortune? Sasha, Sasha…you gotta pay more attention. E-Traak family money was behind AZ Tissopharm—the big chemical outfit that brought all us Human workers here forty years ago, and then pulled the plug on the operation, left us scratching dirt with the chickens. I don’t even know what the guy was doing on planet—usually I hear he stays a dozen or so light years away. It’s not exactly healthy for him here.”
No, apparently not.
I’d heard the name e-Traak before, but I didn’t get the association until Bernie filled in the blank. Over a hundred thousand Human workers had been brought here to open the big pharmaceutical operation based on the native Peezgtaan mold spores that were supposed to revolutionize Varoki medicine. The company went bust, but everyone here had return passage bonds to Earth as part of their contracts. Then it turned out the bonding company was bust, too. In both cases, e-Traak family money had been behind the companies, and in both cases they’d gotten their money out before the collapse.
And if that sounds as if it should be illegal in any sort of system that’s fair, then maybe you’ll understand why folks around here don’t have much love for The Cottohazz any more. Too many bony lizard thumbs on the scales of justice.
“Okay. So what do the two flight-prone leather-heads have to do with all this?” I asked.
He nodded rapidly, as if he were a bloodhound who’d picked up the scent again.
“Ballistics at the scene makes it two shooters, one for e-Traak and one for his driver. There’s also something weird about the weapons they were using—haven’t been able to find out the details yet, but it’s got the provosts sure these guys are real special killers. Connect the dots. A couple silencers get brought in from off-planet—real pros, good enough to penetrate a secure facility and take out old Sarro, his kids, driver, bodyguard, and anyone standing around watching. Anyway, they do the deed. What comes next? Time to leave.”
Maybe. But something just didn’t add up.
“We know the kids aren’t kidnapped?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Only fools are positive, but I’d say ninety percent. Blood of one of the kids was on Jones and at the original scene. Besides, no percentage in keeping them alive. This is a very, very rich family, Sasha. You never, ever kidnap kids from families this rich, because all that buys you is a life of running, and a very ugly end. If you’re going to fuck with them at all, better kill ’em and be done with it.”
“The family won’t do the same if the kids are dead?”
“No. No. You’re a hopeless romantic, Sasha, god love you. But the truth is, it ain’t a very romantic world.”
I already had that much figured out. But hell, everyone was a romantic compared to Bernie—with the possible exception of Kolya.
“See, with the kids dead, it’s easier to disappear,” he went on. “No contact for the ransom transfer, no buckage to trace, not as many leads without the kids to help. Kidnapping is a humiliation, and that you have to deal with if you want to stay on top. You know? But death…death is just a tragedy, and tragedies you endure, with dignity. Besides, now that the kids are gone, somebody else in the family inherits all that buckage. Very consoling. Very consoling.”
* * *
Bernie had given me part of the puzzle, but not a part that helped with my immediate problems all that much. I was holed up in a little flat in a building Henry owned. Shower, kitchenette, foldie-bed, and a desk with a viewer was about all there was. In a funny kind of way, I liked it. It was basic, and right now, basic was good. My environment was stripped down to bare essentials, uncluttered, and that helped my thinking. If you don’t think that your environment shapes the pattern of your thinking, you don’t know much.
If I was careful—and I was—I could still move around a bit during the day, like to find Bernie. I just dressed like a gutter bum, and nobody looked twice. I kind of liked the sense of freedom that gave me, but I wasn’t stupid enough to press my luck.
“So what’s our move, boss?” Henry asked, as I poured him hot tea.
Where would I be without his guy? He could have just stood back and watched, or could have turned me over to Kolya, but he’d gotten me out of Quann’s without anyone recognizing me, and gotten me here to this place, where I’d been able to sleep off the drug. Why? I’d asked him.
“Maybe I don’t want your job any more than you want Kolya’s,” he’d answered.
Yeah, maybe not. But I doubted that either one of us could afford the luxury of that choice much longer.
Kolya had scoured the city for me all last night. He’d regroup today, think things over, but he’d start beating the bush tomorrow at the latest. Beating the bush meant hurting my people, so what was our move?
“We punch,” I answered. “But if we punch now, we’re punching blind. We aren’t strong enough to punch everywhere, so we have to look for a soft spot. There’s something with these two leather-head silencers that’s mixed up with all this, but I can’t make it out. We’ve got to make somebody talk to us, and right now—tonight.”
“Archie?” Howard asked.
“No. Too hard to get to. Archie, Bear…everybody’s going to be bunkered up.”
“Okay, so who then?”
* * *
The “glass” on the balcony sliding door was actually a high density synthetic, but that was pretty standard on these up-scale lease units, and my ultra-sonic cutter went right through it. I reached in the hole and undid the latch, and then slid the door open, slow but steady. I hadn’t done any of this second storey stuff in quite a few years, but I was surprised how it all still seemed like second nature. I always used to cable down along the rock borders between units, like I did tonight, but—being young, dumb, and full of cum—I used to wear a parasail and just exit off the balcony instead of climbing back up. With all the weird cross currents, I was lucky I never broke my neck. This trip, I planned to use the elevator when I was done.
I was in a breakfast nook off the kitchen. Not big, but nice: pale carpet, off-white walls and ceiling, two paintings on the walls, one nice abstract statue on a shelf. Tasteful, but my appraiser’s eye told me there was nothing here I’d risk a jump off the balcony for—the real artistry was in the arrangement. The carpet wasn’t thick, but there was something so perfectly cushioned about it that it felt like the floor wasn’t hard and solid underneath. I looked around—its simple elegance whispered luxury and major buckage, and with a sixth-level bay balcony view of the canyon, the apartment itself was worth a hundred times whatever stuff was in it.
There was movement in the next room. I drew the gauss pistol and stepped back to blend into the shadow of the drapes by the sliding door.
She came into the dark room—alert and curious but not, as near as I could tell, alarmed. There was a little draft from the door and she went to close it. It was only when she saw the fifteen-centimeter circular hole cut in the glass that alarms started going off in her head, but it was way too late by then. Before she could react, I had my left arm around her neck and shoulder, hand clamped over her mouth, and the muzzle of the pistol pressed against her right temple. She froze, but I could feel the sweat break out on her face.
“No sound,” I said in a low whisper. “You understand?”
She nodded quickly.
“They’re here?”
She didn’t respond for a second or two, so I moved the muzzle of the pistol forward from her temple and let it rest in her eye socket. She tried to turn away but I held her in place.
“They’re here?” I repeated insistently, and she nodded.
“What room?” I loosened the grip on her mouth. If she was going to scream, she’d start with a big gulp of air, and that’s all the further she’d get.
“Please don’t kill them,” she whispered. “Just let them go, please.”
“Lady, I don’t know what that son of a bitch Arrie told you about me, but here’s the deal: I’m not smuggling a couple of paid silencers off this or any other rock—not when they knocked off a guy so big they’re going to have half the provosts this side of Terraspace looking for them.” I didn’t bother to add ‘and not when they got some little kids’ blood on their hands,’ because that was personal, not professional.
“I don’t know why you double crossed me with Kolya,” I went on, “and I don’t really care. I figure you’re just following somebody’s orders, and that’s who’s on my hit parade. The two leather-heads in the next room are as good a place to start as any. Either way, their murdering days are over.”
It felt like she was going to faint in my arms, but I held her up and pushed the pistol against her head harder.
“Now, which room?”
“They’re not the killers,” she whispered.
“No? Then who the hell are they?” But then the light came on in my brain like a magnesium flare at midnight, and I knew the answer before she said it.
“The children.”
* * *
She was pretty shaken up, so I let her sit at the dining table while I drew tea from her samovar. She’d been ready for bed when I made my entrance—hair down, no makeup, slippers and a big fuzzy white robe. I had to hand it to her, she regained her composure pretty quickly, since a few minutes before she must have figured she was just a second or two from a flechette in the brain. Hell, she got points in my book just for not wetting herself when I grabbed her from behind in the dark—lots of tough guys I know would have.
After I brought two tall glasses of tea over to the table she told me the whole, lousy story.
She’d been on Peezgtaan on a consulting gig, but not for the e-Traak family, it was for the Bureau of Economic Culture—something about the spiraling cost of importing fine art from Earth, alternate sources of supply, that sort of stuff. The fact that there is a prevalent mindset which considers art a commodity—like bauxite ore—is interesting, but I won’t go there right now. She’d been done with the assignment when the assassinations took place. During her survey work, Arrie had met her, in his capacity as a gallery owner and importer, and now he’d contacted her to help get the survivors off planet.
What survivors?
The driver and the father were down at the scene, as reported. The bodyguard took out both of the primary assassins—the two “bystanders”—but he took two bullets himself, and they were both Poisoned Pills—lead-lined composite hollow points with polonium kickers—which meant that the bad guys were very, very bad. That must have been the odd thing about their weapons Bernie had gotten wind of but hadn’t been able to nail down. No wonder.
Huh! I knew something Bernie didn’t. Now there was one for the record books.
One of the bullets in Jones had first gone through the open palm of the little boy—fortunately without encountering enough resistance to dump its poison—which accounted for his blood being on Jones and at the scene. Figuring that the primaries were not the only things to worry about, Jones got the two kids to Arrie before he died.
Why go to Arrie?
Because the primaries had had Co-Gozhak provost credentials. There was no way for the bodyguard to tell if they were genuine or not, but even if they were stolen or forgeries, if they were good enough to get them into a secure facility, then that probably meant at least a contact on the inside. That made it hard telling who was really clean and who wasn’t, or from how high up the mountain the boulder had started rolling—and so that’s when the smart move was to go below the sensor horizon, to crooks.
This guy Bony Jones, the bodyguard, figured all that out, and made the right move, with two radioactive cocktails spreading through his system, eating his organs up from inside. Knowing they were in for a real painful, ugly death, most guys would have just started looking for a lifetime supply of happy-drugs. Jones didn’t. He did the job, right up to the end. I wished I’d known him when he was still breathing.
“First thing,” I said, “this means the biometrics are wrong for the jump tickets.”
She nodded.
“We figured two children would trigger any data mines they had running, but two adults wouldn’t. The gender change for the girl wouldn’t really matter. Since the children are lighter than the reservation, there’s no problem with the physics, and a last-minute bribe should fix the administrative difficulties.”
Sure. Just like I was doing with the bodyguard biometrics—you can always ratchet them down.
“Okay, but you should have trusted me on that one. I’m going to have to scramble to get the phony passports changed in time. Now, what about the thing with Kolya?”
“Mr. Markov? After you and I talked—the evening after I gave you the money—Mr. Arrakatlak found out that Mr. Markov had discovered that I was helping the children. Mr. Arrakatlak already suspected that Markov was in the employ of the assassins. We—Mr. Arrakatlak and I—decided that the only thing to do was for me to go to Markov and ask him to arrange the escape.”
“And this actually made sense to you?” I asked.
“Yes, of course” she answered impatiently, becoming more confident as the shock wore off, confident enough that some of her hostility was beginning to resurface. “Mr. Markov already knows I am part of the escape, but he doesn’t know that I know that he knows…You understand?”
I nodded, doubtfully.
“He thinks I came to him by chance, and that he’s the one who’s arranging everything, so he stopped looking for us, and for anyone helping us. He knows he can take the children as soon as we show up to leave planet. So I gave him Bronstein’s World as a destination, because I knew there would be no shuttle for the Bronstein C-lighter until several days after the Akaampta departure. With luck, we should be gone before he realizes anything is wrong.”
I thought about that for a couple seconds. Two things occurred to me.
First thing, she wasn’t afraid of me anymore. She wasn’t trying to convince me that she’d actually done this thing—only that it was a good idea. So she was probably telling the truth.
Second thing was, much as I hated to admit it, this was actually an okay plan, or would be under most circumstances. It was a very gutsy move, but that’s what made it work. Kolya would never think that this pale and pampered thoroughbred with a PhD in something or other would walk right into the lion’s den unless she was as clueless as she looked. Pretty smart.
“Except for the part about not telling me,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We couldn’t right away. Mr. Arrakatlak found out that Mr. Markov has a data mine on your comm link, and there was no one at your office. Then you disappeared. I thought you were dead, but Mr. Arrakatlak said to wait, and that you would turn up.”
Now it was starting to smell like bullshit. A mine? Surgically implanted comm links like I have are all but impossible to mine, even with nanos, since you need to have someone physically close enough…like Cinti. Shit! Cinti could have planted nanos while I was sleeping. And, sentimental fool that I was, I’d figured she really had told me everything.
It occurred to me that if I didn’t start getting smarter here, and really quickly, I was going to die. At least Kolya couldn’t trace me through my link. Nobody could, data mine or not, unless I told somebody right where I was over an open circuit. I had too many dummy repeaters squirreled away in different parts of the city and all my signals went through them. Even if somebody was smart enough to backtrace all the electronic blind alleys to pinpoint a transmission—and I didn’t know of anyone working for Kolya that smart—by the time they did it I’d be long gone.
“Okay, but how did Arrie find out about the mine?” I demanded.
She shrugged, and I could tell it had never even occurred to her to ask. This was all black arts stuff to her, and one magic trick seemed as difficult or as easy as the next. But how the hell did Arrie find out about a comm mine that Kolya had planted on me? I was sure Arrie didn’t have Kolya’s organization penetrated—he was an operator, but on his own side of the divide, not on the Human side. I was his link to Kolya’s organization. Right?
But at the moment, I had bigger concerns. This changed everything, and I had to figure out the new patterns here—and quickly.
First things first. I triggered my embedded comm link and called Henry. He was waiting, of course; he was back in one of the under-the-rock plazas that adjoined the inside face of Marfoglia’s living complex, watching the entrances.
“Yeah,” he answered inside my head.
“Hey, what’s new?”
“Not much,” he answered, “You?”
“Nuthin’ worth mentioning, except I’m gonna bow out on dinner later. I think I got some bad curry at lunch.”
“You gotta watch that subcontinent stuff, boss. It’ll eat your guts out.”
I laughed.
“Yeah, but this was Thai, so go figure. See you later.”
I broke the connection. Marfoglia was looking at me with a mix of curiosity and disdain.
“Breaking a date with a girlfriend?” she asked.
“For you? In your dreams,” I answered. “That was my number two guy. ‘Bad Curry’ is my code phrase for compromised communications.
“We’re going to have to move you and the kids. Right now,” I added.
“They’re sleeping.”
“Then wake them up,” I answered. “They aren’t safe here any more, and neither are you.”
“But Mr. Arrakatlak…”
“Fuck Arrie!” I shouted, and she jumped in surprise.
“Arrie doesn’t know shit! He sure as hell doesn’t know Kolya Markov. All this double-cross pretend-your-hiring Kolya ying-yang might work most of the time. But Kolya’s tried to kill me twice in the last three days, and I’ve gotten away twice, and when things start going that bad, Kolya goes into Operating Mode B, which is, No Loose Ends.
“So wake the kids up.”
* * *
After about ten minutes, she came back with the two little Varoki. They were wearing purple silk robes, with Chinese characters embroidered on them in gold. Arrie was right about that—it really was pretty amazing how Terrakultur had grabbed hold of the imagination of the Cottohazz, especially the wealthy Varoki.
The Varoki are hairless—eyelashes don’t count as far as I’m concerned—and for us hair styles are a big clue to gender. But if you’re around them enough, you start noticing other gender differences, things like proportion of hips to shoulders, prominence of the jaw line, that sort of thing, even in little squirts like these two. Early physical and emotional development isn’t that different from Humans, either. The boy was older, maybe early teens, on the verge of adolescence, with his left hand in a clear bandage case. The girl was a couple years younger, about twenty centimeters shorter. Both of them were very frightened, but the boy was trying hard not to show it. His ears were trembling with the effort to keep them from folding tight back against his head. I was glad their last bodyguard had been Human; that would help.
“Hello,” I said. “My name is Sasha, and I’m going to keep you safe and get you back to your family. Do you understand?”
The boy nodded, but the girl looked to Marfoglia, who translated in what sounded to me like perfect aGavoosh—clicks and glottal stops like a native. The girl not speaking English was a problem; we’d need to work out some simple words so she and I could communicate in an emergency. Well, I had a couple words of aGavoosh, and it wouldn’t kill me to learn a little more.
“What are your names?” I asked.
“Barraki,” the boy answered. The girl must have figured out the question from his answer, because she said, “Tweezaa.”
I held out my hands.
“Take my hands,” I said. The boy took my left hand right away. The girl looked at Marfoglia, who said another couple words in aGavoosh and nodded, and then the girl reluctantly took my right hand.
“Barraki. Tweezaa. I’m not just something you see and hear. I’m something you can touch. I want you to feel my skin, how warm my hand is, and remember how it feels, so you’ll remember I’m real. And remember I’m going to get you home safely.” I squeezed their long, bony little hands, and Marfoglia translated, but the girl looked away and said something softly.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She said, ‘There is no home,’” Marfoglia answered, and her voice had a catch in it.
The funny thing is I don’t even remember deciding to go along as their bodyguard. I just knew I was. And all of a sudden, a lot of things started looking clearer. There just might be a way out of this mess for all of us.
Have you every noticed how often happy thoughts like that come right before a disaster?
My comm link tingled behind my left ear. Then it stopped. Then five seconds later it tingled again, and stopped.
“We’ve got company,” I told the three of them.