“Well, do you want to go to Akdar, or the moon of Akdar?”
“I thought Akdar was the moon.”
“No, Akdar is a planet with six moons. The forest moon of Akdar is one of them. So do you want to go to the forest moon or to Akdar?”
Rex turned to Wick. “Is the base on the moon or the planet?”
Wick shrugged apologetically.
“How can you not know?” Rex demanded.
“I just work there,” said Wick.
“Sir,” I said. “The planet is called Akdar. The moons don’t have names. They are just referred to as ‘forest moon,’ ‘swamp moon,’ et cetera. So we can reasonably infer that the base is on the forest moon, which is easily recognized by its vast expanses of swampland.”
“If the forest moon is mostly swamp, how are we going to tell the forest moon from the swamp moon?”
“The swamp moon is almost entirely desert,” I replied.
Rex nodded. “OK, so we go to Akdar and look for a forest moon covered with swamps. Sounds easy enough.”
“How do we find the base?” I asked Wick.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“I mean, we can’t just land on the moon anywhere and expect to walk to the base. It could be thousands of kilometers away.”
Wick craned his head thoughtfully for a moment. “There’s a very tall tree nearby.”
“Akdar, swampy moon, tall tree,” said Rex. “Time’s a-wasting, Sasha.”
I could see that the conversation wasn’t going to produce any more helpful navigational data, so I returned to the nav station to rationalize a course to Akdar. We’d just have to hope we could find the base once we got there.
* * *
3 We did not in fact ever “leave” Euclidean space; we simply adopted a different geometry for navigational purposes. As it’s impossible for the human brain to conceptualize this change, however, the readoption of Euclidean geometry is colloquially referred to as “reentering Euclidean space.”
CHAPTER THREE
Once we were on our way to the general vicinity of Akdar and Wick was comfortably ensconced in one of the rear cabins, I inquired regarding Rex’s plans once we got there. As always, this was a mistake. Rex had no plans.
“You realize that you’re not going to be able to keep up this ruse,” I said. “A simple ID check will reveal that you are not Gavin Larviton. What do you think these rebels will do to you then?”
“You know what your problem is, Sasha?” Rex said. “You always want to have every little detail worked out in advance. You’ve got to leave some room for improvisation.”
“My concern, sir, is that you’ve given such a wide berth to improvisation that you’ve left no room for planning.”
“You wound me, Sasha,” Rex sniffed. “I’ll have you know that while you’ve been fiddling with dials and whatnot, I’ve worked out what you might call the broad outlines of a plan. Step one: scam as much money out of Princess what’s-her-name and this Frente group as humanly possible. Step two: wreak vengeance on Gavin Larviton by spreading the rumor that he’s aiding the rebellion. Step three: take a much-needed vacation, possibly in the Ragulian Sector. Steps one and two won’t necessarily occur in that order, by the way. Come to think of it, I may bump up step three a couple of notches. Yes, a vacation might be just what we need. Sasha, plot us a course to the Ragulian Sector!”
“You forget, sir, that we have no money and in fact are in hock to the tune of 1.6 billion credits. Also, we have on board a partisan of the rebellion.”
“Blast it, Sasha! All right, we’ll do it your way. Let’s hope this princess is obscenely wealthy. And stupid. And gorgeous. In that order.”
The Frente base turned out to be easy to find; there were so few trees on the “forest moon” that the sickly spruce in front of the rebel compound stood out like a bipedal vertebrate on one of the gas giants of the Q’Altzarian Rim. The naming conventions in this area of the galaxy evinced the characteristic illogic of Malarchian central planning; planets (and moons) were named with the same sort of attention to native features that characterized the marketing of early twenty-first-century housing developments on Earth. Thus a planet that had maybe fifty trees was declared to be a “forest moon,” and shortly thereafter forty of those trees were knocked down to make room for development. The bursting of the galactic real estate bubble in 3008 had indefinitely delayed any plans for development on the forest moon of Akdar, however; the rebel base was located in a massive underground structure that had been intended as the moon’s first car park. It was eighteen stories deep, but the bottom fifteen stories were constantly flooded due to shoddy construction and the structure’s location smack in the middle of an eight-thousand-square-kilometer swamp.
Roughly half of the Frente’s manpower was dedicated to running manual sump pumps nonstop to prevent the rest of the base from succumbing to the encroaching marsh. A few meters out from each of the four corners of the building were antenna-like structures that I recognized as repulsion barrier propagators; together the four propagators created an invisible energy barrier protecting the base from an aerial attack. The top of the building was cluttered with a ragtag collection of starships that had been pressed into duty for the Frente.
After giving us a brief tour of the rebel facility, Wick led us to our quarters, consisting of a plastic partition enclosing two parking spaces on the second level of the Frente’s underground compound. In an effort to be hospitable, Wick had dredged up a bottle of some locally fermented rotgut. He and Rex had started early, Rex having found Gavin Larviton’s booze supply aboard the Flagrante Delicto. It wasn’t long before Wick was passed out on one of the two cots in the makeshift room.
“It’s not like you were going to be using it,” observed Rex, flopping onto his own cot. It’s true. I don’t sleep. I also don’t drink. I do, however, spend a lot of time observing people doing both of these things. Five minutes later, Rex was unconscious too. Being a robot is a riot.
The next day, Wick, who was grumpy and hungover, took us to see Princess Wilhelmina. It struck me as we made our way to the meeting room that other than being forced to take up residence in an abandoned car park, the rebels seemed to live pretty well. If there was any shortage of food, you certainly wouldn’t know it to look at the obviously well-nourished Princess Wilhelmina, who sat regarding us from the other side of a large plastiwood table. Despite being about three times the size of the average human princess, Wilhelmina was not unattractive, although I doubted she qualified as “gorgeous” by Rex’s standards. Her pale skin was smooth and unblemished, and her long brown hair was done in the stylish cinnamon bun fashion that was currently all the rage among the interstellar aristocracy. Next to her was a member of the boar-like Nork species, dressed in a military uniform bedecked with a colorful assortment of medals and ribbons. Wick formally introduced us to the princess and the nominal leader of the Frente, General Issimo. After that, the meeting went rapidly downhill, as I had anticipated.
“You’re not Gavin Larviton,” declared the princess. She turned to the Nork. “General Issimo, have your men seize this imposter and throw him in the swamp to be eaten by the irradigators. And have his robot cannibalized for parts.”
The general nodded to Wick, who remained standing. Wick uncertainly drew his lazegun and moved toward Rex.
“Wait!” cried Rex. “Your Highness, I admit to executing a ruse in order to effect this meeting. I regret the deception, but it was my only option given the circumstances.”
“And what circumstances are those, imposter?” demanded the princess. Wick hesitated in his approach, but his lazegun was still trained on Rex.
“I have many enemies,” said Rex ominously.
“Is that so?” said the princess. “Who are you anyway?”
“My name is Rex Nihilo, Your Highness. I was once a business partner of Gavin Larviton’s. When I heard that
you were trying to contact him, I realized that I needed to intervene for the sake of your cause. You see, Princess, Mr. Larviton is not the man you think he is.”
The princess squinted at Rex. “You’re saying that Larviton is not a friend of the Frente?”
“A friend?” said Rex thoughtfully. “Perhaps. But ask yourself this: if Larviton is the sort of man you think he is, what other motivations might he have for giving you what you want?”
I’d seen Rex pull this ruse before. The trick is to employ diplomatic-sounding generalities to cover his near-total ignorance. You’d think that any reasonably intelligent person would see right through it, but Rex’s uncanny confidence can be downright unnerving. To be honest, I’m not entirely certain he realizes it’s a ruse. He may just be deluded enough to think that he really does understand what’s going on, and somehow he manages to extend that delusion to include those in the immediate vicinity. As the originator of the delusion, he then becomes a sort of expert guide to those lost in its fog.
“And what sort of man are you, Rex Nihilo?” asked the princess.
Rex chuckled. “Let me tell you, Princess. I just won a card game that left me in possession of a worthless planet and 1.6 billion credits in debt. Ask yourself what sort of man would do something like that?”
This is another time-worn tactic of Rex’s: focus attention on his own mistakes to prompt people to suspect that he can’t possibly be as stupid as he appears.
Princess Wilhelmina didn’t reply.
“An idiot?” offered the general.
Rex laughed again. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose it might appear that way to someone unaccustomed to thinking in terms of chaotic vector matrices.” He gave the princess a knowing wink. She smiled back. The general scowled.
“Is that true?” asked the princess. “Did you really do that?”
“Show her, Sasha,” said Rex.
I showed Princess Wilhelmina the deed and paperwork. A look of puzzlement came over the princess’s face. “But why?” she asked. “Why would you deliberately take ownership of a worthless planet that’s saddled with staggering debt?”
“Why indeed,” answered Rex.
“Unless . . .” said the princess, and Rex smiled knowingly. “Unless Schufnaasik Six isn’t as worthless as it appears.”
Rex’s smile grew.
“No,” said the princess, shaking her head. “It can’t be.”
“Princess?” asked General Issimo, confused.
“Or can it?” asked Rex.
“The Ferbuson Paradox . . .” the princess went on. “Everyone knows what happened . . .”
“Do they?” asked Rex.
“Ferbuson disappeared twenty years ago . . .”
“Did he?”
“Princess,” said the general, “what are you talking about?”
“Project Albatross,” said the princess, regarding Rex curiously. “The search for the perfect cloaking device. A way to hide something from any possible means of detection. I always wondered how it was that a financial genius like Gavin Larviton could invest eight hundred million credits on a technological boondoggle. Mr. Nihilo here would have us believe that perhaps the project wasn’t a failure after all, that Larviton has been keeping it a secret for his own purposes. Is that correct, Mr. Nihilo?”
Rex didn’t answer except to smile and shrug a little. “Call me Rex, Your Highness.”
The princess smiled back. “And you can call me Willie, Rex.” She continued, “So, Larviton discovered the secret of the perfect cloaking device. I suppose Emmet Ferbuson is still alive as well?”
“It’s best that I don’t say too much at this point,” Rex answered. “You understand.”
The princess nodded. “And now that you own Schufnaasik Six and the debt associated with the project, I suppose you possess the secret of Project Albatross as well. Probably there is a secret facility located somewhere on the planet? A perfect hiding place, considering that everyone knows Schufnaasik Six is worthless. No one would go looking there for the most sophisticated technology in the galaxy.”
“The reports of Your Highness’s mental acuity appear to be well founded,” said Rex.
“So where does that leave Gavin Larviton? Is he still running Albatross, or are you in charge now?”
“My relationship with Larviton is . . . complicated,” said Rex. “Let’s just say that he isn’t to be trusted. It’s fortunate that I was able to intervene before you were able to contact him.”
“I see,” replied the princess. “But you are in possession of the cloaking technology?”
Rex spread his hands. “Why else would I want a worthless planet like Schufnaasik Six?”
“And you . . . you’re willing to share this technology with the Frente Repugnante?”
Before Rex could answer, the general butted in. “Princess,” he pleaded, “you can’t actually be buying all this. We have no idea who this man is. He hasn’t said anything that makes me think he’s more than a con artist trying to run some sort of scam on us. While you’ve been talking, I took the liberty of running a search on the Galactic Hypernet, and I’ve found no record of a ‘Rex Nihilo’ whatsoever.”
This was probably a bit of an exaggeration on the part of the general—either that or he misspelled Nihilo. There’s plenty of information on Rex Nihilo available on the Hypernet—I know because I put it there. One of my responsibilities as Rex’s assistant is to plant misleading stories about him all over the Hypernet. I’ve gotten pretty good at making the disinformation display more prominently than whatever legitimate data might be out there. Depending on where you look, you might get the impression that Rex Nihilo is a master hydroponic gardener from Kra’an, the inventor of the hypersonic can opener, or a drink made from Ragulian vodka, parsnips, and tomato juice.
It helps that Rex Nihilo isn’t actually his real name; he does business under any number of fully documented aliases and rarely uses the same one twice. Nor are these aliases simply legal fictions; some of them are real people whose identities Rex has appropriated, while others seem to be entire personalities that exist somewhere in Rex’s fractured psyche. I doubt he knows which are which anymore. Presumably he once had a real name, but as far as I know, neither of us has any idea what it is. Every three weeks or so, he has his fingerprints professionally rewhorled and his DNA recoded. Usually the DNA modification is simply a matter of changing his hair or skin color, but occasionally he’ll give himself some rare congenital disease to make things interesting. The month he spent as an albino lesbian with microcephaly is probably best forgotten by everyone.
“My line of work requires that I keep a low profile,” said Rex, making his first true, meaningful statement of the conversation. He added, “Rex Nihilo is not, of course, my real name.” Two for two! I began to wonder if Rex was turning over a new leaf. My hopes were dashed, however, when he followed this up with “All I’m free to tell you at this point is that I’m a very wealthy and powerful man, and that I believe that we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
The princess nodded sympathetically, but the general was still dubious. “If you’re so wealthy and powerful, why do you travel with this beat-up old robot? It looks like it fell down three flights of stairs. And what is wrong with its face?”
People tend to talk about me as if I’m not in the room, on account of the fact that I’m not made out of meat.
“All part of traveling incognito,” said Rex, regarding me with mock pity. “The shameful appearance of my robot assistant, Sasha, helps to distract the undiscerning from my chiseled features and obvious aristocratic bearing. She’s more than she appears, however. She’s the only extant prototype of an experimental line of robots that was considered too dangerous to be mass produced.”
“Ah!” said the princess. “I’ve heard of these robots. Is it true that they cannot tell a lie?”
&nbs
p; “Indeed, Your Highness.”
“Fascinating. Robot, is your name Sasha?”
“Yes, Your Highness,” I replied.
“Is Rex Nihilo your master?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“You see?” said Rex, a hint of nervousness entering his voice. “Completely truthful, although perhaps a bit tedious. There’s no way around it—robots are lousy conversationalists. I’d suggest leaving Sasha out of the discussion from here on out, unless you want to be bored to tears.”
“Sasha,” said the princess. “Am I overweight?”
I hesitated. “‘Big boned’ is the phrase I would use, Your Highness.”
“Robots are hardly experts on human anatomy, of course . . .” Rex continued, his tone growing more insistent.
“It’s honest, but it doesn’t appear to entirely lack tact,” observed the princess. “Robot, is your master a very wealthy man?”
“ . . . and she has no business sense whatsoever,” Rex went on. “I certainly wouldn’t trust her judgments when it comes to financial matters. Robots, you know, don’t value material things in the same—”
“‘Wealthy’ is a relative term, Your Highness,” I replied, trying to be as tactful as possible. Why does Rex put me in these situations?
“You see, she can’t even comprehend what you’re—”
“Fair enough, Sasha,” said the princess. “A more specific question, then: are Rex’s assets in excess of a billion credits?”
“You don’t have to answer that, Sasha!” Rex said nervously. “My personal net worth is not relevant to the current—”
For a moment I said nothing. Then I came to the conclusion that it was best to override Rex’s instruction. “The statement that Rex possesses a sum in excess of a billion credits,” I replied, “is absolutely true.”
The princess smiled. “Thank you, Sasha. I apologize for my rudeness, Rex, but I had to prove to my friend General Issimo that you aren’t trying to pull a fast one. I take it you’re satisfied, General?”
Starship Grifters (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) Page 4
