by Timothy Zahn
“And why would you think that?”
“Because Arno Cameron himself was in town tonight. Offering me a job.”
Ixil’s squashed-iguana face turned to look at me. “You are joking.”
“Afraid not,” I assured him. “He was running under a ridiculous alias—Alexander Borodin, no less—and he’d dyed that black hair of his pure white, which made him look a good twenty years older. But it was him.” I tapped my jacket collar. “He wants me to fly him out of here tomorrow morning in a ship called the Icarus.”
“What did you tell him?”
“At three thousand commarks for the trip? I told him yes, of course.”
Pix sneezed again. “This is going to be awkward,” Ixil said; and then added what had to be the understatement of the week. “Brother John is not going to be pleased.”
“No kidding,” I agreed sourly. “When was the last time Brother John was pleased about anything we did?”
“Those instances have been rare,” Ixil conceded. “Still, I doubt we’ve ever seen him as angry as he can get, either.”
Unfortunately, he had a point. Johnston Scotto Ryland—the “Brother” honorific was pure sarcasm on our part—was the oh-so-generous benefactor who had bailed Ixil and me out of looming financial devastation three years ago by adding the Stormy Banks to his private collection of smuggling ships. Weapons, illegal body parts, interdicted drugs, stolen art, stolen electronics, every disgusting variety of happyjam imaginable—you name it, we’d probably carried it. In fact, we were on a job for him right now, with yet another of his secretive little cargoes tucked away in the Stormy Banks’s hold.
And Ixil was right. Brother John had not clawed his way up to his exalted position among the Spiral’s worst scum peddlers by smiling and shrugging off sudden unilateral decisions by his subordinates.
“I’ll square it with him,” I promised Ixil, though how exactly I was going to do that I couldn’t quite imagine at the moment. “It was three grand, after all. How was I supposed to turn that down and still keep up the facade that we’re impoverished independent shippers?”
Ixil didn’t react, but the ferrets on his shoulders gave simultaneous twitches. Sometimes that two-way neural link could be handy if you knew what to look for. “Anyway, there’s no reason why Brother John should get warped out of shape over this,” I went on. “You can take the Stormy Banks the rest of the way to Xathru by yourself. Then he can have his happyjam and guns and everybody can relax. I’ll look at Cameron’s flight path in the morning and leave you a message at Xathru as to where the most convenient place will be for you to catch up with us.”
“Regulations require a minimum of two crewers for a Capricorn-class ship,” he reminded me.
“Fine,” I said shortly. It was late, my leg and head were hurting, and I was in no mood to hear the Mercantile Code being quoted at me. Especially not from the one who’d ultimately gotten me in this mess to begin with. “There’s you, there’s Pix, and there’s Pax. That’s three of you. The details you can work out with the Port Authority in the morning.”
With that I stomped out of the living area—being careful to stomp on my good leg only—and went into the bath/dressing room. By the time I’d finished my bedtime preparations and rejoined Ixil I’d calmed down some. “Anything new?” I asked him.
He was still staring out the window, the two ferrets perched on his shoulders staring out right alongside him. “More aircraft seem to have joined in the activities,” he said. “Something out there has definitely piqued someone’s curiosity.”
“Piqued and a half,” I agreed, taking one last look and then heading for my bed. “I wonder what Cameron’s people dug up out there.”
“And who could be this interested in it,” Ixil added, turning reluctantly away from the window himself. “It may be, Jordan, that our discussion of Brother John’s cargo will turn out to be moot. You may reach the Icarus in the morning to find it already in someone’s hands.”
“Not a chance,” I said, easing my aching leg gingerly under the blankets.
“And why not?”
I lay back onto a lumpy pillow. Yet another lumpy pillow, at yet another lumpy spaceport, in what seemed to be an increasingly lumpy life. “Because,” I said with a sigh, “I’m not nearly that lucky.”
CHAPTER
2
The sky to sunward was gaudy with splashes of pink and yellow when I arrived at the spaceport at five the next morning. A crowd of spacers, humans and aliens both, was already milling around the gates, most of them impatient to get to their ships and head out on the next leg of their journeys. A few of the more impatient were making the standard disparaging comments about Ihmis customs; the Ihmis door wardens standing watch by the gates as usual ignored them.
There were no Patth in the waiting group, of course. Over the past few years there had been enough of what the diplomats call “unpleasant incidents” around spaceports for most port authorities to assign Patth ships their own gates, service facilities, and waiting areas. Port authorities hate dealing with the paperwork associated with assault and murder, and planetary governments are even less interested in earning the sort of sanctions the Patth routinely dish out for any affront to their people, real or imagined.
Which, come to think about it, made the three Patth I’d seen mixing with the common folk at the taverno last night something of an anomaly. Either they’d been young and brash, old and confident of local protection, or simply very thirsty. Distantly, I wondered if they’d run into any accidents on their way home.
At 5:31 the edge of the sun appeared over the horizon; and at that moment the gates unlocked and swung open. I joined the mass of beings flowing through, checking my collar once to make sure the tag Cameron had given me was still there. I hadn’t spotted Cameron himself in the crowd, which either meant he was waiting at a different gate or that whoever had been searching his archaeological dig last night had already picked him up. Either way, I still planned to check out the Icarus, if only to see which species was standing guard over it.
A heavy, aromatic hand fell on my shoulder. “Captain Jordan McKell?”
I turned. Two of the Ihmis wardens had come unglued from their posts and were standing behind me, impressive and intimidating in their ceremonial helmets. “I’m McKell,” I confirmed cautiously.
“Come with us, please,” the Ihmisit with his hand still on my shoulder said. “Port Director Aymi-Mastr would like to speak to you.”
“Sure,” I said as casually as I could manage with a suddenly pounding heart as they gestured to the side and we worked our way across the pedestrian stream toward the Meima Port Authority building just inside the fence twenty meters away. Our papers were in order, our cargo cleared, our fees paid. Had someone finally backtracked one of Brother John’s cargoes to the Stormy Banks? If so, we were going to have some very awkward explaining to do.
I’d never been in this particular Port Authority before, but I’d logged enough hours in Ihmis hotels and tavernos to have a pretty good idea what to expect. And I was mostly right. The friendly lighting, extremely casual furniture, and smiling faces were hallmarks of the Ihmis style, all designed to put visitors at their ease.
From what I’d heard, all those same friendly touches remained cheerfully in place right up to the point when they strapped you to the rack and started cranking.
“Ah—Captain McKell,” a deep voice called as I was led across the bustling main room to a large and cluttered desk in the corner. Director Aymi-Mastr was typical of the species, with bulging, froglike eyes, four short insectoid antennae coming up from just above those eyes, and costal ridges around the sides of the face and neck. A female, of course; with Ihmisits the females were generally the ones with the organizational skills necessary to run a zoo like this. “Good of you to drop by. Please sit down.”
“My pleasure, Director,” I said, sitting down in the chair at the side of the desk, deciding to pass over the fact that I hadn’t had much choice in the
matter. One of the other Ihmisits set my bag on the desk and started rifling through it; I thought about complaining, decided against it. “What’s this about?”
“To be perfectly honest, Captain, I’m not entirely certain myself,” she said, selecting a photo from the top of a stack of report files and handing it to me. “A message has come down from my superiors to ask you about this person.”
It was a picture of Arno Cameron.
“Well, he’s a human,” I offered helpfully. So it wasn’t Brother John’s cargo they wanted after all. At the moment I couldn’t decide whether that was good or bad. “Aside from that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”
“Really,” Aymi-Mastr said, dropping the pitch of her voice melodramatically. She leaned back in her chair and steepled her fingers in front of her—like the melodramatic tone, an annoying habit many Ihmisits had picked up from the old Earth movies they consumed by the truckload. “That’s very interesting. Particularly given that we heard from a witness not fifteen minutes ago who claims you were talking to him last night in a Vyssiluyan taverno.”
A family of Kalixiri ferrets with very cold feet began running up and down my spine. “I hate to impugn the integrity of your witness,” I said flatly, tossing the photo back onto the desk. “But he’s wrong.”
The frog eyes narrowed. “The witness was very specific about your name.”
“Your witness was either drunk or a troublemaker,” I said, standing up. That taverno had been crowded, and after my grandstand play against the three Yavanni there would be a dozen beings who would remember me, at least half of whom would probably also remember me talking with Cameron. I had to bluff my way out of here, and fast, before they started digging deeper.
“Sit down, Captain,” Aymi-Mastr said sternly. “Are you telling me you weren’t out last night?”
“Of course I was out,” I said, putting some huffiness into my voice as I reluctantly sat down again. “You don’t expect anyone to spend any more time than they have to in one of those Vyssiluyan hotel bug-traps, do you?”
She gave me the Ihmis equivalent of a wry smile, which just made her face that much more froglike. “A point,” she conceded. “Did you visit any tavernos?”
I shrugged. “Sure, I hit some of them. What else is there for a spacer to do around here? But I didn’t talk to anyone.”
She sighed theatrically. “So you say. And therein lies the trouble.” She picked up a report file and opened it. “Your word, against that of an unidentified and unknown informant. Which of you should we believe?”
“Wait a minute—you don’t even know who he is?” I demanded, feeling sweat starting to gather under my collar. I wasn’t particularly good with Ihmis lettering, but I’d made it a point to learn what my name looked like in most of the major scripts in the Spiral. That was my Commonwealth Mercantile Authority file she was holding; and nothing in there was likely to make my word compare favorably against anyone else’s. “What kind of scam is this, anyway?”
“That is what we’re trying to find out,” Aymi-Mastr said, frowning at the file and then up at me. “This photo doesn’t do you justice at all. When was it taken?”
“About seven years ago,” I told her. “Back when I started doing independent shipping.”
“No, no justice at all,” she repeated, peering closely at me. “You should arrange to have a new one taken.”
“I’ll do that,” I promised, though offhand I couldn’t think of anything that was lower on my priority list at the moment. For someone on Brother John’s payroll, it could be a distinct advantage to not look like your official photos. “I’ve been through a lot since then.”
“Indeed you have,” she agreed, leafing through the pages. “To be honest, Captain, your record hardly encourages us to take your word for this. Or for anything else, for that matter.”
“There’s no need to be insulting,” I growled. “Anyway, all that happened a long time ago.”
“Five years in the EarthGuard Auxiliary,” Aymi-Mastr went on. “Apparently a reasonably promising career that went steeply downhill during the last of those years. Court-martialed and summarily drummed out for severe insubordination.”
“He was an idiot,” I muttered. “Everyone else knew it, too. I was just the only one who had the guts to tell him that to his face.”
“In most colorful detail, I see,” Aymi-Mastr said, flipping over another page. “Even knowing only a fraction of these Earth words, it’s an impressive list.” She flipped over another two pages—highlights of the court-martial, no doubt—and again paused. “After that was a four-year stint with the Earth Customs Service. Another potential career ended with another sudden dismissal. This one for taking bribes.”
“I was framed,” I insisted. Even to my own ears the protest sounded flat.
“Protests of that sort begin to sound weaker after the first one,” Aymi-Mastr said. “I see you managed to avoid jail time. The note here suggests the Customs Service decided you were too embarrassing for a proper trial.”
“That was their excuse,” I said. “It also conveniently robbed me of any chance to clear my name.”
“Then there were six months with the small firm of Rolvaag Brothers Shipping,” she continued, flipping more pages. “This time you actually struck someone. The younger Mr. Rolvaag, I see—”
“Look, I don’t need a complete quarterly review of my life,” I cut her off brusquely. “I was there, remember? If there’s a point to this, get to it.”
The Ihmisit who’d been quietly searching my bag sealed it and straightened up. He exchanged a couple of words with Aymi-Mastr, then walked away, leaving the bag behind. I wasn’t surprised; there was nothing in there that could possibly be construed as improper. I hoped Aymi-Mastr wasn’t too disappointed. “The point is that you hardly qualify as an upstanding, law-abiding citizen,” Aymi-Mastr said, returning her attention to me. “Not to file too sharp a point onto it, but you are the sort of person who might indeed give aid and assistance to a murderer.”
The word was so completely unexpected that it took a couple of turns around my brain before finally coming to a stop. Murderer? “Murderer?” I asked carefully. “This guy killed someone?”
“So says the report,” Aymi-Mastr said, watching me closely. “Do you find that so difficult to believe?”
“Well, frankly, yes,” I said, feigning confusion. I didn’t have to feign too hard. “He looks like such a solid citizen in that picture. What happened? Who did he kill?”
“The director of an archaeological dig out in the Great Wasteland,” Aymi-Mastr said, setting my file aside and steepling her fingers again. “There was a massive explosion out there early yesterday morning—you didn’t hear about that?”
I shook my head. “We didn’t make landfall until a little after local noon. I did ask what the slowdown was, but no one would give me a straight answer.”
“The blast sent large gales of mineral dust into the atmosphere,” Aymi-Mastr explained. “Our sensors and guide beacons were disrupted for over an hour, which is what caused the backup in traffic. At any rate, when investigators went to look, they located the severely burned body of a Dr. Ramond Chou hidden in one of the underground grottoes the group had been exploring. The order was immediately given to round up all those associated with the dig for questioning.”
She picked up Cameron’s photo from the desk and handed it to me again. “This man is the only one still at large. Others of the group have identified him as the murderer.”
Which explained the big search out in the wasteland last night. “Well, best of luck in finding him,” I said, eyeing the photo again. “But if you ask me, he’s long gone by now. Probably took off under cover of that sensor scramble you mentioned.”
“That may indeed be the case,” Aymi-Mastr conceded. “There was an unconfirmed report that something may have lifted out through the cloud of debris.” She waved a pair of antennae at the photo. “But on the other palm is the statement that you we
re seen with him last night. Look closely, Captain. Are you certain you didn’t exchange even a few words?”
She was making it so easy for me. All I had to do was say, yes, he’d hired me for a job, but that that was before I knew he was a murderer. Aymi-Mastr would ask what I knew, I would hand over the tag Cameron had given me, they would pick him up at the Icarus’s landing ramp, and I could walk away free and clear.
And best of all, I wouldn’t have to face Brother John about this disruption in his precious schedule.
With a sigh, I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Director Aymi-Mastr,” I said, laying the photo back on the desk. “I wish I could help. I really do—I don’t much care for murderers myself. But I didn’t talk to him, and I don’t even remember seeing him go by on the street. Whoever your anonymous witness thinks he saw, it wasn’t me.”
For a four-pack of heartbeats she just gazed at me. Then, with a shrug as human and as ridiculous-looking on her as the finger-steepling thing, she nodded. “Very well, Captain, if that’s your final word.”
“It is,” I said, deciding to ignore the sarcasm of that last comment as I stood up. “May I go now? I do have a schedule to keep.”
“I understand,” she said, standing up to face me. “Unfortunately, before you leave Meima we will have to perform a complete search of your ship.” She held out a hand. “Your guidance tag, please.”
I frowned, suddenly acutely conscious of the Icarus tag sitting there in plain sight in my collar slot. “Excuse me?”
“Your guidance tag, please,” Aymi-Mastr said; and though all the genial trappings were still in place, I could sense the sudden hardening of her tone. “Please don’t require me to use force. I know you humans consider Ihmisits to be laughable creatures, but I assure you we are stronger than we look.”
For a long second I continued the face-off. Then, muttering under my breath, I reached up and slid both tags from the slot. “Fine,” I growled, palming Cameron’s tag and slapping the Stormy Banks’s onto the desk. Brother John’s cargo, I knew, would be well enough disguised to weather even a serious Ihmisit customs search. “Help yourselves. Just don’t leave a mess.”
