"My dear sir," Herbloc protested, "I must say, you jostled me. Quite by mistake, I'm sure. But my drink is, alas, spilled, gone, kaput," he said, a plaintive tone to his voice.
The big man turned and glared down at Herbloc. "Speak English, you fat fart," he said, and shoved the little man hard. Again Herbloc bounced off Gunsel's shoulder.
"Hey!" Gunsel protested.
The miner swiveled on his stool, grabbed Herbloc under both arms, lifted him bodily and tossed him to the floor like a sack of rags. The old man sprawled in the filth and lay there stunned. Someone nearby laughed but none of the other patrons took much notice. "You're next," the big man said and half rose off his stool.
Gunsel blanched, then whipped out the knife he carried in his boot and buried the blade about four inches below the big man's sternum, thrusting upward. The man shrieked and staggered away from the bar, his hands clutching the gaping slit in his middle. He made a sound like "Gaaaaw, gaaaw," and stumbled over a nearby table, sending the occupants sprawling. Several men laughed and someone cursed, but only a few other heads turned.
Gunsel stooped down and helped Herbloc to his feet.
"Damned impertinent of the rascal!" Herbloc said, brushing himself off. Then he noticed his assailant lying beside the overturned table, a large pool of blood forming on the floor. "Oh," he muttered, and Gunsel had to hold him up as he vomited.
"Time to go, Doctor," Gunsel whispered. Trying to wipe the last of the vomit from the old man's mouth, he hustled Herbloc away, through the crowd and out the door. No one followed them and nobody sounded the hue and cry. It was Bowietown after all. Firmly gripping Herbloc by the arm, Gunsel walked him swiftly away from the bar.
"You're hurting me," Herbloc protested.
"Sorry, Doc. Damn, that was a good knife," Gunsel said, wiping blood on his trousers as they hurried along.
"Art! Gunsel!" someone shouted from behind them. Gunsel turned. It was the chief engineer from the Marquis de Rien. "Back to the ship! Henderson says we're leaving! I've been looking all over for you two. Come on, come on!" He took Herbloc's other arm and helped him along.
"Where we going?" Gunsel asked.
"Back to Avionia," the engineer replied in a low voice, his eyes wide with trepidation. Then he noticed Herbloc's condition. "Boy, Doc's sure tied one on, hasn't he?"
"Not at all, dear sir, not at all! I am only marginally incapacitated. So, it is ‘Once more into the breach, dear friends, Once more!’ as the noble King Hal once said. Once more into the shit, dear friends, once more! But remember this: under each pile of birdshit there is—more birdshit!"
Madam Piggott Thigpen lolled in her enormous bath, luxuriating in the warm water, absorbing the delicious aroma of the various salts and soaps the servo had mixed for her. The water was beginning to cool. "Two more degrees," she muttered, and swiftly the temperature of the water increased by two more degrees centigrade. The infusion of warm water caused her skin to flush a rosy pink. She sighed. Supported by the water, liberated from the tyranny of gravity, her enormous bulk floated lightly in its warmth. Sometimes she wallowed in the tub for hours. Not even sex pleasured her as much as one of those baths, and sometimes she even thought a bath might be preferable to the ultimate physical indulgence of her life—food.
Piggott Thigpen allowed herself to engage in a brief moment of whimsy. What if she slipped giving verbal orders to the computer that controlled the bath and said, "One thousand degrees"? She laughed aloud at the thought of being boiled alive in her own bathtub. That could never happen, of course, because the computer had been programmed to shut down automatically if ever given a command to produce dangerously hot water. Nevertheless Thigpen, always the plotter, wondered if somehow the program could be sabotaged. She made a mental note to find out. Such information could be useful, if it turned out an enemy owned a tub like this.
Piggott Thigpen chuckled. Sex? Food? Long, hot baths? Wonderful. But power and money were her ultimate pleasures. Time to go to work, she thought, and commanded the tub to drain. As the water flowed out, plastic cushions gently inflated about her body as it settled toward the bottom, slowly adjusting to support her weight as gravity reasserted its imperative. Like the orthosofas she loved so much, the bath cushions slowly shifted and adjusted to stand the big woman upright without the expenditure of her own energy. As she stood naked on the tiled floor, soft breezes sighed up through carefully disguised vents and caressed her gently, drying her thoroughly and effortlessly. A servomechanism rolled from its niche and draped her with a huge terry-cloth robe. Fastening it about her girth, she strode heavily into the living room.
Thigpen could have taken advantage of several different proven and completely safe medical procedures to rid herself of the fat that encased her body. That she did not was due to her desire to be bigger than life. Her physical size, she believed, should match her power and influence in the political life of the Confederation. And she was very powerful in politics.
So Patch had gone back to Avionia himself, to oversee operations there? Her informants had done their work well. That would mean he planned a quick grab to supplement what Henderson and his crew had managed to collect and then he would pull his coup, screw everyone at once. Very well, it was time to put her own plans into motion. Thigpen laughed aloud. Oh, this game was a good one! How dearly she loved matching wits with worthy opponents. Patch was worthy, very worthy. But she'd seen through his schemes from the first and—
"Madam?" Thigpen started. It was Michelle, the security servo. "A gentleman has requested entry."
"What? Who?" She did not remember scheduling a visitor at this hour.
"A technician from the Brooklyn Orthosofa Company, Madam. The sofas are due their six-month maintenance check, he says. "
"Call Brooklyn. Verify his ID. Then let the bastard in. But wait until I am in the bedroom suite. I do not want to see him." Damn! Maintenance men always picked the most inconvenient time to do their work. But it was in the contract, and the maintenance had to be performed to keep the sofas in tip-top condition.
Juan Borders, Brooklyn Orthosofa's senior technician, waited patiently in the hallway outside Thigpen's suite. At five feet eight inches tall and carrying 140 kilos, Borders understood why people like Thigpen loved the orthosofa so much. Thigpen could afford them. Well, Borders reflected, he would very soon be able to afford several—and a one-way ticket to New Brooklyn and retirement. Sam Patch had paid him well—and in advance—for the work he was about to perform.
The door to Thigpen's suite hissed open and Michelle invited Borders in.
"Madam would like to know how long this will take."
"Oh, about an hour. Show me where the orthosofas are."
Borders waddled to the nearest one and began to unpack his equipment, a tiny laptop computer and a small kit of tools, spare parts, and lubricants. Michelle stood silently by. "You are disturbing my concentration. Leave," Borders ordered.
It took seventy-two minutes to maintain and reprogram the orthosofas and install eavesdropping devices. By the time anyone detected his unauthorized modifications, Juan Borders, fifty kilos lighter, with a new set of fingerprints and retinas and a new identity, would be living comfortably far, far away.
As he waddled happily toward the elevators, Borders could not help snapping his fingers and whispering the lyrics of a hit tune from Dagon:
"I am the very model of a literary critic
I have a nasty temper and a wit that is acidic.
I do not care a whit for
Writers just a bit more
Talented than this nasty-tempered literary critic."
Chapter 19
"It was peculiar," Corporal Kerr said, shaking his head at the memory of what he'd seen. He had reported the Cheereek sighting to Gunnery Sergeant Bass, who then took Kerr and his fire team to Captain Conorado to repeat the story. "He's not human, so I can't say what was going through his mind or what he was really doing. But if he were a man, I'd say he was trying real hard to act l
ike he didn't see us."
"How could he have seen you? Were you in the open with your helmets off?" Conorado asked. Everyone in the group—Kerr's fire team, Conorado, Lieutenant Giordano, Gunny Thatcher, and Charlie Bass—had their helmets off so they could see one another's expressions. All the other Marines in the secured area wore their helmets, and most of them had their chameleon shields down as well, so not even their faces were visible.
"Negative, sir. Our helmets were on and we were mostly in defilade." He considered, then amended his statement. "We had our shields up at first."
"So it's possible he saw your faces?"
Kerr nodded uncomfortably.
"But he kept going and you didn't see him again after he passed the end of the next ridge?"
"That's right, sir."
"Sir," Bass interjected, "Corporal Kerr called me right away. I was there in time to see the nomad. He disappeared beyond the next ridge, just like Kerr said. We waited for fifteen minutes and didn't see him again. Then I called in a replacement fire team to cover the OP and brought these men to you."
Conorado nodded. He hadn't needed that; Bass had reported the sighting to him as soon as he got it. The rest of what Bass just told him had been done under his orders. He asked Kerr, "What did he do that made you think he was acting like he hadn't seen you?"
"It's hard to say, sir. He didn't make any sudden movements, or stare at us, nothing like that. Even though his head occasionally swung in our direction, it was more like he was trying real hard to look everywhere but at us."
Conorado looked at Claypoole and MacIlargie to see if they had anything to add to Kerr's account. Both kept quiet, more than content to let Corporal Kerr give the report. Both of them respected and admired Captain Conorado, but he was an officer. Even though Marine officers always started off as enlisted men, just like them, when a man got that commission it did strange things to him. No matter how good an officer was, you could never tell when he might get some strange idea in his head and take radical action. No officer, not even Captain Conorado, could be fully trusted. It was better to avoid saying anything to officers if at all possible.
"Describe him."
"He looked just like the pictures we saw on the station. Hard-looking mouth, very long neck, fleshy crest laid back on his neck, a protrusion at the base of his spine that looked like a knobby tail, very thick thighs, skinny lower legs." Kerr shook his head. "The pictures we saw showed them wearing shiny clothes, sort of shimmery. His were dull, matte. He looked like he could blend into the background if he wanted to. He was carrying one of those projectile rifles and a short spear."
"What do you think he was doing?"
Kerr shook his head. "I don't know enough about these creatures to hazard a guess."
"What would you guess if he were human?"
Kerr shrugged. "Either hunting alone or scouting for something."
"And no one else came along?"
"That's right, sir. Not while we were there. We used all three visuals to improve our chances of spotting anyone. I was using naked-eye, Claypoole used his infra, and MacIlargie used his magnifier." That was standard procedure for a three-man OP.
Conorado looked at Bass.
"Lance Corporal Chan's fire team is manning the OP. They haven't reported seeing anything."
Conorado knew how conscientious Chan was. If he hadn't reported anything, there was nothing to report.
"Thank you, Corporal Kerr. Carry on. Charlie, stay here."
"Aye aye, sir," Bass said. Then to Kerr, "Report to Staff Sergeant Hyakowa."
"So what do you think?" Conorado asked when Kerr and his men were gone.
It took a moment before anyone said anything; nobody knew what to think about it. Bass was the first to come up with anything.
"Maybe the Avionian saw a face. If it saw a hovering face, it might have thought it was hallucinating."
"Say ‘he,’" Conorado interjected. "They're sentient, not dumb animals."
Bass nodded. "Maybe he saw a face and thought it was one of the smugglers," he continued as though he hadn't been interrupted. "This site is pretty remote from the Cheereek village. Maybe they aren't supposed to know where it is, and he didn't want to give away that he'd discovered it. Maybe he saw something else that he didn't want to look at." He shrugged. "They're plainsmen. Maybe that's the way they always act near mountains."
"Any other ideas?"
Neither Bass, Thatcher, nor Giordano ventured any.
"Well, I guess that covers the spaceport. Make sure everybody knows Cheereek might be in the area and we need to avoid being seen." He looked at Thatcher. "Get some passive sensors out. That is all." They put their helmets back on and split up. Bass went to rejoin his platoon and give them the word. Thatcher took off to talk privately to each of the platoon sergeants and see to the placement of sensors. Giordano turned to tell the enlisted men in the command group—needlessly, as they had eavesdropped on the meeting. Conorado flicked on his helmet radio's command circuit to pass the word to the other platoon commanders.
"Demons," Guard Captain Cheerpt sneered. "There are no demons. Demons are stories told by old hens to make fledglings behave."
"There were demons at the Clumsy Ones' roost!" Kkaacgh snapped.
Graakaak was perched in council again. This time Cheerpt was on the long perch with Chief of Staff Oouhoouh and Chief Councilor Tschaah; Kkaacgh squatted alone on the side perch, facing between Graakaak and the other councilors.
"Describe them again," Tschaah interrupted when he saw Cheerpt's shoulders begin bunching to move into threat posture.
Kkaacgh took a deep breath to steady himself. He wanted to ruffle his shoulders but didn't dare, it could be taken as a challenge, and he didn't want to provoke a fight with the Captain of Guards.
"They were very hard to see," Kkaacgh said. "They had no true colors to them, just a red that flared slightly and faded almost to invisibility as they moved. Neither did they have true forms, instead they blurred around the edges, like they were halfway between here and the nether world. They seemed to have no necks, but had large lumps above their shoulders that I took for heads. Most of them carried objects that slightly resembled the Clumsy Ones' weapons, but had no more color or form than they did."
"How many were there?" Oouhoouh asked.
"I counted more than a hundred."
"You watched long enough to count that many?" Tschaah asked in awe tinged with fear.
Kkaacgh stretched his neck to its full height to emphasize his reply. "Yes."
"You are either very brave or very foolish," Tschaah said. "If you watched that long, I'm surprised the demons didn't see you and kill you for seeing them."
"I am a good scout. When I know the location of who I am scouting, they do not see me."
"But some of them did see you."
"Yes. When Guard Captain Cheerpt told of how he went along that Bower Bough to the Clumsy Ones' roost, he said there was nobody watching, nobody outside their tree. I had no reason to expect anyone to be there." This time his shoulders ruled before he could catch himself. "I had no reason to expect demons."
Cheerpt hissed. "Demons! You went and saw the strength of the Clumsy Ones' tree and it frightened you. You fear what you think their weapons might be like. So you come back and tell us stories of the tree not being there anymore, and stories of demons in its place so we will not attack and expose your fear by our victory."
Kkaacgh hissed back at him. "I do not lie! Three of my scouts saw demons as well. You can ask them. They will tell you the same."
Cheerpt began to say the scouts would give whatever report their captain told them to, but Chief of Staff Oouhoouh cut him off.
"There was no sign of the Clumsy Ones' tree?"
"No. There was only burned ground where it had been."
"The demons destroyed it with their hellfire?" Tschaah asked.
"I cannot say, but that's what it looked like."
"The demons do not like the Clumsy Ones," Tschaah s
aid, addressing Graakaak. "We must take care they do not come after us for trading with them."
"What do you propose we do so that the demons do not come for us?" the High Chief asked his chief councilor.
"Get rid of the weapons. Hide them someplace away from our rookery. Then if the demons come to see if we have anything from the Clumsy Ones, they will find nothing and leave us alone."
Graakaak stroked the many-tiered necklace of shinies that hung over his chest, the shinies that were left over from the Clumsy Ones' ammunition. If he followed Tschaah's advice, he would have to hide it as well.
"Do you say I give up my weapons and my conquest of the world?"
"No, High Chief." Tschaah smiled. "After the demons go away we can retrieve the weapons."
"No! " Cheerpt bolted upright on the perch and thrust his body toward Tschaah, arms spread wide. "We do not hide the weapons from demons that do not exist. We attack the Clumsy Ones' roost and take all of the weapons. Then we conquer the world!"
"Cheerpt!" Graakaak bellowed, jumping to threat posture himself. Several guards aimed their Clumsy Ones' weapons at their captain.
Cheerpt looked at Graakaak and quailed; he had just done something very wrong, something taboo. Graakaak could have him killed for his outburst. In his peripheral view he saw the weapons pointed at him and knew he would stand no chance if he launched himself at the High Chief. Shivering, he raised himself from the threat posture and stretched his face toward the roof of the tent.
"I beg your pardon, High Chief. I think only of Cheereek conquest—and the greater glory of the great High Chief Graakaak."
Graakaak maintained his threat posture for a long moment before settling back and saying, "Sit, Cheerpt."
Cheerpt eased down.
Graakaak thought of all that had been said. Oouhoouh and Tschaah believed what Kkaacgh said about demons. Tschaah said they should hide the Clumsy Ones' weapons and all the shinies that came from them until the demons went away. He again fingered the glittery pectoral he wore so proudly.
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