10,000 Bones

by Joe Ollinger

  Desperate, I grope with my free left hand for something. Anything that might work as a weapon. Spilled alcohol soaks through my sleeve as my knuckles brush against an overturned glass, sending it rolling away. I can feel the corrugated plastic work surface behind the bar. There’s a paring knife there somewhere, I know it’s near. If I can only reach it. My right arm is trembling, the strength in it failing, and the tip of the poison promise is so close now, just kissing distance away from the exposed skin of my neck.

  Glass shatters on the back of the man’s head, exploding in a sudden spray of gold-colored liquid.

  He goes instantly limp. With my last remaining strength, I shove him aside, letting him collapse unconscious and facedown on the bar. Brady Kearns stands over him, holding the jagged end of a smashed wine bottle.

  “Go easy,” he says, his voice betraying his own disbelief at what he just did. “A wine like that needs to breathe.”

  “Brady,” I say, short of breath as I jump to my feet. “You keep surprising me.”

  “I keep surprising myself.”

  I pat down the unconscious man. Finding only a phone in his black sport coat, I throw it to the ground and stomp on it, cracking it under my heel. I consider taking the poison promise from his finger, but decide it might be tagged and isn’t worth the risk, and so instead take the paring knife from behind the counter, fling the orange off it, and tuck it under my cap. “We need to go.”

  “Agreed.”

  The remaining diners stare petrified at us as we rush out, past the bar and atrium, through the thick wood and wrought-iron doors, and onto the bustle and multicolored lights of The NewLanding. Cops are already rushing toward The Eridani, pushing through the crowd, shouting amplified orders through earpiece megaphones.

  “Follow me,” Brady says, ducking his head low. We walk quickly to the nearest access alley, turn, and go past the auto-valet, where finely dressed customers of The Eridani wait anxiously for their cars. They don’t seem to notice us as we hurry by them, down another alley, off The NewLanding, away from the cops and the panicked people fleeing the restaurant, into a residential area packed with towering high-rises. Another block south, and we arrive at a long, high capacity auto-valet lane for one of the residence buildings, where a little blue two-door city coupe is pulling up. Brady must have called for it while we were walking.

  “This us?”

  “Yeah.” He pulls a key fob out of his pocket and pops the trunk open. “You’re going to have to ride in here.”

  I stare at the clean gray fabric lining inside, starting to feel very uncomfortable about all this. Brady planned further ahead than he should have been able. He probably rented or procured a car to keep from being tracked, and maybe he had the foresight to park over here because he knew it would be a quicker getaway, but something about all this seems too easy.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because we’re going straight to the spaceport. That opportunity might disappear if my connections there learn about what just happened.”

  I’m sure he’s right, and I can hear sirens. Again faced with little other choice, I climb in.

  Brady closes the trunk, shutting out the daylight. A few seconds later I feel the vehicle move. Curled up in a fetal position in the darkness, I wait, trying to enjoy the relative calm and quiet. It might be the last respite I get before I meet my end, but I can’t help but reflect back on the life I’ve lived, opportunities I’ve missed. What good have I done? What difference have I made? Somehow I never let myself acknowledge the possibility that I’d die in the line of duty, but now that the prospect of that feels imminent, I realize the irony of my savings sitting in the bank. All my life I’ve worked so hard and sacrificed so much in pursuit of my goal, and just when it’s within reach, I take too big a risk and lose everything. I’ve got no heirs, either, so my money will forfeit to the government after I’m gone. The few handfuls of chalky dust I’ve struggled for my whole life will go back into circulation, indistinguishable from the rest.

  I can’t think like this, I remind myself. I have no idea what will happen when the trunk opens, and I need to be ready for anything. This is not over. Not yet.

  I find myself tensing up a little bit every time the car comes to a stop. I’m clutching the paring knife when the trunk finally opens and lets in the light, but the first thing I see is Brady, a warehouse ceiling high above him.

  “We’re here,” he says, “but we’ve got to be quick.”

  I kick my legs over the bumper and climb out, putting my feet down on a bare concrete floor. Filling the vast space are packages, pallets, barrels, crates, all of it marked with the yellow-and-black SCAPE logo. We’re inside one of the Consortium’s shipping hangars at the spaceport, and Brady has not betrayed me. Not yet, anyway.

  “Take that side, I’ll take this one.” I start examining packages, overwhelmed by the amount and variety.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Calcium.” I cut open a tube of sealant gel, pull the test kit from under the rim of my cap, and swipe a test strip across it. Blue. Nothing. “Any powders especially, or gels. Call me over, and I’ll test them.”

  In a rush I go from item to item, opening containers, splitting apart pallets, popping lids off barrels, slicing through plastic wrap. Nothing tests pink, and I don’t have enough strips to go through everything. A path of ripped packaging and opened containers lies in my wake, but I’ve barely made a dent. This place is big, and it’s packed densely. Think, Taryn. Where would you put calcium, if you were trying to take it off-world?

  That line of thought is interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Evenly paced. Slow.

  Rising quickly to my feet, I look around for Brady, but immediately I see that the footsteps are not his.

  They are Aaron Greenman’s.

  16

  The richest man in a forty-five light year radius is walking toward me coolly, the barest hint of a smile on his face, a ceramic cup in one hand and an enormous brushed-metal revolver in the other. His thin silver hair is as neatly combed as ever, parted slightly to the side, and he’s dressed in a crisp, dark gray suit finished with a silver bolo tie and hard-soled leather shoes that click against the cement floor with each confident pace he takes. We’re about the same height, but he stands tall, moving with the self-assured calm of a man who knows that he’s already won.

  My heart sinks in my chest. Brady Kearns falls in behind the rich man without even a hint of surprise on his face. Rage and helplessness boil up within me. My grip tightens futilely on the little paring knife in my left hand, before I surreptitiously slip it and my testing kit back under the brim of my cap in the back.

  Both men stop a few paces away, facing me. Aaron Greenman takes a precise sip from his cup, which looks to contain coffee, probably thickened with real cream, the bastard.

  I shake my head, glaring at Kearns. “You set me up,” I tell him, if only for the sake of hearing it out loud. “You rat. I knew this was too easy.”

  The expression on his face shows no change. “I’m sorry, Taryn.”

  “I’d prefer if you’d call me Agent Dare.”

  Greenman’s smile brightens just slightly at that, but Kearns doesn’t react. “I apologize,” he says, “Agent Dare.”

  “But why?” I demand. “Why save my life just to lead me here?”

  “I did it for you,” Kearns answers.

  I almost laugh. “For me?”

  “It was the only way to save you and protect Brink,” Greenman explains. “You don’t need to die, Agent Dare, but if you do, I’d like to have as much control as I can get, which, as it turns out, is quite a bit of it.”

  “The big, powerful man is alone?” I say, growing frustrated at how calm he is, “Just you and the traitor auditor? I’m surprised you’re brave enough to face me down without an army of thugs or assassins in front of you.”

  “The army’s outside, Agent Dare. I’d rather no one hear the matters we n
eed to discuss. Even my employees.” He motions flippantly with his big gun. “Hands on the top of your head, please.”

  I comply, my right hand coming to rest close to the thin paring knife hiding underneath the fabric of my cap. Did Greenman see me put it there? Kearns knows I have it, but maybe it’s slipped his mind. He’s not built for this type of intrigue; the plan to get me here was probably not his.

  “So,” I say, trying to prod information out of Greenman. If I’m going to die, I may as well try to learn what this was all about. “It was you all along.”

  “You might say I have the most vested interest among those involved.”

  “How did you get the weevil eggs?”

  He gives a barely perceptible shrug. “It’s not so hard stealing from one’s self.”

  Of course it isn’t. He probably plucked them off the weevil shuttle. “And you paid Chan off in eggs because then his wrongdoing was tied to yours.”

  “A sound theory,” the rich man replies, noncommittal. “He’d go down if we did. That’s a tactic drug dealers have been using for centuries.”

  “And Myra? You killed Frank Soto and called her a bunch of times from his phone?”

  He takes a second, pursing his lips before he answers. “You’re referring to the fact that a number of calls were placed from Soto’s phone after he was reassigned to shuttle duty.”

  Why is he being so vague? Of course, I suppose I could also wonder why he’s giving me any answers at all. “I see,” I say, trying to stall.

  “Quite a complex scenario we find ourselves in, no?” He takes a deliberate sip from his coffee, indicating that it’s my time that’s running out, not his. “So many variables. How will the equation balance?”

  “So what is this? A negotiation? You tried to kill me.”

  “Do you have proof of that?” he asks, mockingly waiting for a response he knows I can’t give him. “Yes,” he admits, “we expected you to die in the aftermath of your actions at my bank. And you undoubtedly would have quickly met your end in jail, had you been apprehended. Your escape has indeed complicated matters somewhat. At the same time, though, if the authorities had captured you alive, you might have told them some troublesome things.”

  Several security cameras look down on us, mounted high around the walls. I didn’t bother trying to evade them when I was searching for calcium because I knew it wouldn’t matter. And now, it really doesn’t. “I assume you’ve killed the security cameras?” Greenman nods silently, to which I can only force a smile. “Either way, I’ve established a trail of proof. You kill me, they’ll find you out.”

  He scoffs at my bluff. “Please. If you had enough, you would have been to the authorities with it already.”

  I try to keep it alive. “Who says I haven’t?”

  “The authorities,” he replies immediately. “I must confess, Agent Dare, I’m a bit insulted at your underestimation of my wherewithal.”

  “Enough games, then. What do you want?”

  “I’m here,” he replies, transitioning effortlessly from the icy tone of a fiercely competitive businessman to the warmth of a kindly grandfather, “in the hope that we can all be reasonable.”

  I glance at Brady, who still stands quietly beside Greenman, his face blank. “Reasonable.”

  “I’m not the bad guy here, Agent Dare. I work with the Commerce Board, and the Commerce Board protects the economy of Brink.”

  His mention of the Commerce Board confirms my suspicions that SCAPE and the Board have been working together to take currency out of circulation, off the books. “Protect,” I respond, trying to provoke him into revealing more. “Interesting word for it.”

  He takes a long step closer to me, somehow both friendly and threatening. “What I want, Agent Dare,” he says slowly, “is to give you a chance to walk out of here. And, even more important, an opportunity to do the right thing.”

  “Sounds like a dream.”

  “The reason a multiplanetary company like SCAPE would want Brink currency out of circulation is obvious. Good exchange rates here mean bigger profits on the other worlds. But there is much more involved here than profit. There’s a greater good at stake. Are you familiar with the term ‘symbiotic relationship,’ Agent Dare?”

  “Sure. Like a parasite.”

  “No, no,” Greenman states. “In parasitism, only one party benefits. Symbiosis is beneficial to both. I’ll give you an example. On Earth, there’s an animal called the cleaner wrasse, a little fish that eats dead skin, and parasites actually, off of other fish. The wrasse gets food, the bigger fish gets clean. Everyone wins.”

  “Which fish is the economy of Brink in this analogy?”

  He cocks his head slightly, considering the question for a second before he answers. “Maybe another example would be more apt,” he says, thoughtful. “Consider the chalk weevil. Its relationship with human beings could be called symbiotic. We get an elegant, cost-effective solution for processing calcium from organic waste. On the other side of the equation, they get to exist. If at some point, for some reason, the little bugs stopped providing that elegant, cost-effective solution . . . or if something more efficient and more cost-effective came along . . . SCAPE would stop making them, and there would be no more weevils.”

  He takes another step toward me, the heavy brushed-metal revolver in his right hand still aimed vaguely in my direction. I can’t keep my eyes from glancing at it. He’s only a few meters away now. One more step and I might be able to pull the knife and cut him before he could get an accurate shot off.

  As if he knows what I’m thinking, he takes two long steps back, taking a more precise aim at me. “Solely for the sake of argument,” he continues, “if, for some reason, people suddenly think that the calcium supply has been artificially constrained, and that all that hidden currency is about to come flooding back into the system, what do you think will happen?” It’s clearly a rhetorical question, but he takes a significant pause for effect. “Hyperinflation, a run on the banks, the collapse of extraplanetary trade. The other colonies use us as a waypoint because of the exchange rate. Imagine what happens when that exchange rate is no longer so . . . advantageous. Your money will become nearly worthless overnight.” Pressing home his point, he asks, “Why do you think Brady agreed to help me?”

  I give him a bitter, accusatory look, and the Commerce Board auditor finally speaks. “He’s right. The economy can’t handle it.”

  “I know our system is not perfect,” Greenman continues. “There are winners and there are losers. But it could be much, much worse. Surely you know that?”

  So this has all been a sales pitch. Good. I don’t have to buy. “You think I can just step back and walk away from this?”

  “Your name can be cleared,” the rich man offers. “Who knows what evidence hasn’t turned up yet?” With a sly little half smirk, he adds, “Maybe even an actual bomb tuned to the frequency of the detonator they found in the hands of the man you shot.” He reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a small object, which he tosses to me. “Catch.”

  Against an instinct not to, I do. Opening my hand, I see that it’s a vial of dark gray powder.

  Chalk weevil eggs.

  “For your cooperation,” Greenman says. “That, and more.”

  “You think I would use these? I’m not some sick bastard like Marvin Chan.”

  “Black market buyers will pay well,” he replies. “And more importantly, your complicity ensures that you don’t go back on your word.”

  “You don’t know me,” I tell him. “All I’ve ever wanted is to get off Brink.”

  “Actually, Brady’s made me aware of that.” He takes a long, satisfied sip from his ceramic cup. “If that’s the out you choose, you could be on a ship next week. Fully paid.”

  I’m about to snap at him in anger, but I stop myself as his words sink in. A ticket off-world. For my entire adult life it’s been the very thing I’ve wanted most, the only thing I
’ve wanted really, the goal I’ve built my career around. For him to offer it with one offhand sentence almost breaks my heart, with both hope and hopelessness.

  Stop, Taryn. This is not worth being conflicted about. It’s not even a real offer. It can’t be. “Who’s to say you wouldn’t have me killed down the line?”

  “Why would we?” he answers. “Whatever flimsy proof you think you have at this particular moment will evaporate with time. A live body off-world raises fewer questions than a dead one here.”

  I look him in the eye, trying to read him. His head is tilted back slightly, his blue eyes cold but clear.

  Next to him, though, Kearns seems tense. “Taryn, I wouldn’t let you be hurt,” he says. “You have to believe that.”

  I glare at him, refusing to give credence to his supposed feelings. Greenman’s offer to ship me off-world appears to be genuine. Silence hangs heavy in the air. I want that ticket off-world, I do, but do I deserve it? If I accept these terms, can I live with myself? Maybe Greenman and Kearns are right, maybe the planet is doomed if the exchange rate drops, maybe it’s all symbiotic. Maybe Brink is fated to some level of misery no matter what. For most of my life, I’ve believed that to be true, and that resignation has only grown stronger in my years as a Collections Agent, immersed elbow-deep in the desperation and cruelty and despair of existence on this world.

  So why am I doubting this?

  “I’ve worked in Collections for nearly five solar years,” I think out loud, figuring that at this point there’s no reason to stop myself from speaking what I’m feeling. “In that time, I’ve seen people selling their teeth to pay rent, loan sharks taking femurs, people selling the bodies of their loved ones on the black market. Only reason I lived to adulthood is because my father did just that. Every damn day I go out and I take back calcium for the Commerce Board, and I bank my five percent. But if I cashed out my account, you know what I would have?”