#
Despite clearances, bribes, and threats, their charter from New Ganges to Mars could not overtake Meizhen's flight. Indeed, Meizhen landed a full six hours ahead of them.
Yes, they had closed the gap to six hours, but those were six hours that Meizhen had to position herself and her baby close to Snakeskin.
And yet, Meizhen had gone nowhere near Snakeskin. She and her baby had taken a taxi into town and had registered at a hotel. She'd sent out a batch of cleaning and had ordered room service.
According to Jimmy Fingers, one of the Association's "contacts" had spotted her, and he'd sent some "people" to keep an eye on her.
"Don't approach her," Daisy said. "We don't dare spook her. If she runs and we lose her, we'll have hell to pay."
Jimmy Finger chuckled. "Remember who taught you."
"My father taught me," Daisy said.
"Who do you think taught him?"
When their charter finally braked into planetary approach, Daisy commed the Los Angeles space-marshal station and ordered up a cruiser.
It was waiting for them when they came out of the terminal.
The "outside" air was hot and muggy and made Daisy's skin itch. She could already feel the grit grinding into the back of her neck.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
Meizhen's hotel would be the logical choice. It would allow Daisy to catch the murdering bitch before she did any more damage, especially to Snakeskin's baby. But Daisy was tired of being one step behind. It was time for her to steal a march on her uncle's runaway concubine.
"Take us to the Celestial Cybernetics and Robotics building."
"Yes, ma'am," the driver said, and pulled away from the curb.
They were halfway across town when Jimmy Fingers commed. "She's here," he said.
#
The elevator ride up to the offices of the Celestial Fraternal Benevolent and Protective Association was a swift, stomach-lurching glide. The air in the elevator shaft made a low whisper as the car sped through it.
Daisy watched the numbers light up in succession. She silently counted off the floors.
They'd left the driver with the car. If Meizhen bolted and made it out of the building, he'd at least be able to track her.
But now Daisy was having second thoughts. It might have been better to have brought him along. In a firefight three police blasters might prove to be handier than two. Still, Jimmy Fingers was bound to have people on hand.
As comforting as it was, that thought didn't help much.
The elevator car stopped. The doors slid open.
Jimmy Fingers was standing in the elevator lobby.
"Where is she?" Daisy asked.
"In the anteroom. A couple of the boys are keeping an eye on her."
"Rudy and Trudy?"
"Nah. Bitsy and Ralph."
"Is Snakeskin in his office?"
"Safe and sound. He's cooperating." Jimmy held out his hands, palms up. "You know the drill."
"Not this time," Daisy said.
Jimmy Fingers gave her a long, hard look. "I see what you mean," he said, and led them back into the heart of the suite.
"How is she?" Daisy asked. "Motherhood agreeing with her?"
"She's happier than I've ever seen her."
"How about Snakeskin?"
"Excited. Pissed off with us. He wants to see his baby. It's a boy, by the way. He's already making up excuses for why she took a powder like she did."
"He has to know better."
"Deep down where it counts, maybe; but not up top where he's making his decisions."
"We're doing our jobs," Daisy said. "That's why the man's paying us, isn't it?"
"Hell, Daiz, you'd do it for free."
"I am assuredly believing that you are correct, Mr. Fingers," Muffy said.
"Nah, I'm not Mr. Fingers. You don't get it. My family name isn't Fingers." He held up his hand, displaying the stubs where two of his fingers were missing. "Jimmy Fingers is a nickname, see?"
Muffy blushed and nodded that she most certainly did now understand.
In the anteroom they found the two gunsels clustered around Meizhen and the baby. The gunsels were cooing and making nonsense noises at the baby, which was wrapped in a powder-blue blanket.
Meizhen grinned like a hog in a full corncrib.
The air in the room smelled like her perfume, like her baby, like the men's aftershave, and like their freshly pressed suits. It smelled like death.
Daisy's first thought was to gun the bitch down, but she had no way to prove her suspicions, only a chain of suspicious circumstances. Daisy couldn't even prove that Meizhen had murdered Ray Gilmore.
The best Daisy could hope for now was to keep her uncle alive and to gull Meizhen into revealing her guilt.
Daisy screwed her face up into a happy smile and stepped forward to have a look at her newest bouncing baby cousin.
The introductions were made, and Bitsy and Ralph, two of the largest men Daisy had ever seen, stood off to one side.
Daisy renewed her shit-eating grin and looked down at the baby.
Meizhen folded back the blanket. "Here," she said breathlessly. "Isn't he beautiful?"
Daisy had a hard time keeping her grin in place.
Tiny scales covered the baby's body. They were brown and yellow, and rather than the random field one might have expected, they formed sharp-edged rings, swirls, and stripes.
"The doctors at the Willamette Genetics Foundry told me his colors will intensify over the next few months," Meizhen said proudly. "By the time he's walking, he'll look just like Snakeskin. He'll have his own patterns but the same vibrant colors. Father and son. Isn't it wonderful?"
Snake scales on a human baby. What else would develop? Fangs, poison sacks, a tail with a built-in rattle?
Muffy said, "Oh, but he is so cute."
The baby gurgled and opened his eyes wide.
Daisy and Muffy both gasped. The baby's eyes had vertical pupils, like a snake's.
Daisy shuddered.
The baby opened his mouth in a big reptilian smile. There were no teeth, not yet, but the structures where his fangs would come in were plain enough.
"I don't mean to be rude," Daisy said to Meizhen, "but why did you run away?"
Meizhen blushed. "Poor Dr. Lopez was clearly in over his head. I looked around and figured the people at Willamette could intervene and save our darling baby."
"Why didn't you tell Snakeskin you were pregnant?"
"I wanted to protect him from the disappointment of a third miscarriage."
"How thoughtful of you," Daisy said. "Did you enjoy your stay on New Ganges? I've heard so much about it."
"What a lot of questions you have," Meizhen said. She was graciousness personified. "I'll gladly tell you about it, but later. Right now, Snakeskin's son and I have come to reunite our family. That's what matters most. Wouldn't you agree?"
The woman was unbelievable. Daisy couldn't begin to square the buttery, sweet, oh-so-maternal, oh-so-cooperative Meizhen standing in front of her with the Meizhen who'd intimidated Snakeskin's household, who'd endured two miscarriages and had volunteered to risk a third, who'd bolted from his house, who'd endured untold pain and anxiety to bring her baby to term, who'd murdered Ray Gilmore, and who'd evaded Snakeskin's dragnet for months on end. Giving birth often changed women, but in Meizhen's case—
A buzzer sounded.
Jimmy Fingers said, "He's getting impatient. Maybe we'd better go in."
Daisy gave the baby a long, hard look, and then did the same to Meizhen Fitzgerald. Nothing. There ought to have been something, some trace, but there was absolutely nothing.
Daisy wished they'd done body scans.
Why hadn't they?
Because scans wouldn't have done any good. The Himalayan Android Works was too good to be caught out by something as pedestrian as a scan.
Bitsy opened the inner door, and Daisy surreptitiously dropped her hand onto her blaster. She gave it a l
ittle tug, enough to loosen it in its holster.
"My love and my child," Snakeskin said, and held out his arms to embrace Meizhen and the baby. His face radiated happiness and familial pride. "Welcome home!"
"Never, you son of a bitch!" Meizhen screamed, and hurled the baby at Snakeskin.
Ralph and Bitsy dove at Snakeskin, not in attack, but in order to knock the baby off to one side and to shield Snakeskin.
Daisy and Muffy drew their blasters, but they couldn't shoot. The baby, certainly rigged to explode, was hidden behind Ralph and Bitsy. Worse, even if Daisy and Muffy had had a clear line of fire, the baby was directly between them and Snakeskin. If they shot at it and missed, they were certain to hit Snakeskin.
Meizhen produced two miniature blasters. She spun and shot Jimmy Fingers, dropping him to the floor.
Daisy and Muffy opened up on her, space-marshal style. They aimed and fired, deliberately, making each of their shots count, refusing to waste any of them.
Meizhen swung around and began firing at Ralph, Bitsy, and Snakeskin.
She was taking hits from Muffy and Daisy, but she remained on her feet, shooting as though she were alone on target range.
Daisy was squeezing off her fourth shot when the room exploded in a white-hot flare of noise and heat. The blast wave hurled her against the nearest wall.
Her head spun and her vision tunneled down to a tiny point of light in a field of black.
The light winked out.
#
Daisy came to in a hospital bed.
Muffy was sitting in a chair by the window. A bandage covered the side of her face and her left arm was in a sling.
The air was heavy with the odors of machine oil, electronics, and illness.
"There was an explosion," Daisy said. "What happened?"
"Meizhen exploded."
Meizhen? Impossible.
"Are you sure?" Daisy asked.
Muffy gestured with her injured arm. "Oh, most definitely."
A dark wave of emotion swept through Daisy as the enormity of what Muffy had told her sank in. "What about the baby?"
"He was also rigged to explode, but our shots set off Meizhen's onboard suicide charges before she could detonate her baby. The doctors have defused him, and they've removed his explosives. He's down in the nursery." Muffy smiled happily. "Our exceedingly fortuitous shots are the only reason any of us are alive."
"What about Snakeskin? Did he make it?"
"He is two doors down. The doctors expect him to make a full recovery."
Daisy was afraid to ask the next question, but she asked it anyway. "How many dead?"
"Two. Bitsy and Ralph. They saved your uncle's life."
"Jimmy Fingers?"
"She barbequed him like a tong kebab, but he is very much alive and kicking up a storm. He is looking forward to a couple of days on life support and then a few weeks of reconstructive surgery. But he will be fine. Better than new."
"When can I see him?"
"In a few days."
Daisy's head was swimming, and the painkillers they'd given her had swaddled her mind in a chemical haze second to none.
"How long have I been out?" Daisy asked.
"You've been in and out," Muffy said. "Two days."
"Shit."
And then, unbidden, drugs or no drugs, the last three or four pieces of the puzzle fell into place. When Meizhen had gotten pregnant the third time, something inside her snapped, if it hadn't snapped with the second miscarriage. She'd decided she'd had her fill of Snakeskin's dreams of familial glory, and had vowed to take her revenge.
Fine, but revenge for what?
For two hideous miscarriages, for two repellent perversions of the natural order, for Snakeskin's expecting her to give birth to a human-reptilian chimera, for his expecting her to be its loving and doting mother, for using her.
But she'd needed a weapon, and not just a weapon, but the perfect weapon, a weapon whose significance would not escape him as he died.
And then—perhaps gradually or perhaps in a flash of insight—it had dawned on her that she was growing exactly such a weapon right there inside her. Her fetus. She couldn't have asked for a better instrument. She could shape Snakeskin's own baby into the perfect weapon with which to exact her revenge.
Muffy began chattering about the hospital, and Daisy realized that even here in the hospital she could feel the Martian grit. It floated in the air like motes of dust. Mars was slowly and delicately sandblasting her.
Rather than think about how much longer she'd have to remain on-planet, Daisy ran back through her train of events and suppositions.
From start to finish, the links held, all except one.
Interrupting Muffy's tales of the hospital's cafeteria, Daisy laid out what she believed to be the sequence of events.
Muffy said, "You can't be far off the mark."
"I'm not," Daisy said. "But what I don't understand is why Meizhen didn't leave after the first miscarriage. She had every reason to."
There was a scraping noise in the corridor and Snakeskin Wong pulled himself around the corner into Daisy's room. He was on his feet, but barely. His head was wrapped in bandages and one of his arms was in a sling. He and Muffy matched. He was dragging an IV stand. The unit swayed giddily.
Muffy ran over to him and helped him into a chair.
She said, "You should most—"
He waved her to silence. "She wasn't. . . . I had my own people examine the bits and pieces." He took a deep breath, exhaled raggedly. "They've just sent me over their report."
"What did it say," Daisy asked.
"It said that whoever that woman was, she wasn't Meizhen Fitzgerald. She was an android assassin."
Daisy felt the ground give way beneath her.
"Oh, no," she said.
"Oh, yes," Snakeskin said. "The real Meizhen is still out there."
Daisy had gotten it wrong at every turn. Yes, she'd identified each of the linkages correctly, but she had so thoroughly misread the motives behind the moves that she'd been floundering around in the dark the whole time—just as Meizhen had intended.
How could Daisy have been so far off the mark, so blind?
She refused to go down that road. If she did, she'd cripple herself with second-guessing and self-recrimination. No, it was better to blame it on the Martian grit. The grit had shifted into her mental gears and had brought them to a halt.
The truth, of course, was that Snakeskin had been the target the whole time. He'd been Meizhen's target from before her first pregnancy. Which explained why she hadn't left after her first miscarriage—or after the second. She had had no choice but to see her plan through to the end.
Snakeskin's gaze bored into Daisy's soul.
"Find Meizhen," Snakeskin said. "And find the people who hired her." His breath staggered, but he fought through his pain and emerged intact. In a strong, clear voice the boss of the Celestial Fraternal Benevolent and Protective Association said, "Find them and bring them to me."
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Freddi MacNaughton lives on the Oregon coast, within sight of the Pacific Ocean. This means she enjoys spectacular views of the ocean and gets rained on every time a storm blows in. She wouldn't live anywhere else and certainly not on Mars. Too gritty by half!
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Daisy Wong, Space Marshal: The Case of the Runaway Concubine Page 4
