Catalyst

by Jody Wallace

  “You said you had people you can’t find?” Wil asked Su. “Can you tell Casada you can’t find me?”

  “Great minds think alike.” She peered at him around Nan. “I tried that. Told him you were dead. He didn’t believe me.”

  “Huh.” And showing up here, at Hoff’s factory, where a number of folks had recognized him, would ruin that lie anyway. But it was a thought.

  Tama approached the table with two small plates of fruit and bread in her hands. Without a word, she set them down in front of Wil and Su and hustled back to Scrapper across the room. Scrapper caught Wil’s eye and tapped his comm device, and Wil sent him a thumb’s up.

  “So how can I be of service to you and Wil Tango?” Hoff asked.

  “I want to hire you to take Wil to another part of the Rim in secret,” Su said, while Wil said, “I need to get a Gizem scum lord by the name of Drejo Casada off my tail once and for all.”

  “He needs killing?” Hoff frowned. “I’m not an assassin. You’ll want a merc for that job. But I might know a guy.”

  “He needs to leave me be,” Wil corrected. Trash Planet had a way with final solutions that bore more similarity to the Gizem Station underworld than the dance world, for sure. “Do you know how to fake a corpse? If he thought I was dead…” He let the sentence trail off meaningfully.

  “Nothing that would withstand the kind of tech a richie rich like that has access to,” Hoff said. “Why’s he so bent on you?”

  “I have something that he wants, but it doesn’t belong to him.”

  “A cat,” Su explained. “It’s a cat. The cat may show up at some point. Don’t, uh, let anyone shoot him.”

  “Why would anyone want to shoot a cat?” Nan asked, startled.

  Wil fumbled for a response. “Well. He can be annoying.”

  Nan laughed. “So can my son, but people only try to shoot him every now and again.”

  Pumpkin’s absence might mean the cat was busy with Su’s crew, taking a nap, or unable to skip into the building or across the planet. But Wil did believe Pumpkin had meant it when he’d promised to return. A lot more was at stake now than simply moving on to the next casino before people got suspicious.

  Would Pumpkin allow Hoff Abfall to learn the truth about him or would he hide it? If Pumpkin didn’t consider Hoff to be “clean” enough, would he cooperate at all? Considering Su’s grievance against her uncle and his stubborn insistence that she forgive him anyway, Wil doubted the guy would meet Pumpkin’s standards. But hopefully he could be trusted to transport them out of the sector.

  “And how might a cat just show up?” Hoff’s eyebrows drew together. “Did you sneak it through the front door? It’s not safe for it to be wandering around. The forecasters say we’ve a hailer on for tomorrow.”

  “It’s a long story,” Wil said. “But the essence of it is that Casada may be able to locate us, and he’ll have access to reinforcements.” However many he could wrangle without Zev noticing that one of his managers was up to something even more underhanded than usual. “He won’t hesitate to go to war with you.”

  “He hid a tracker in you?” Hoff asked. Wil appreciated that the other man didn’t require the whole story, didn’t want to know more about the cat, didn’t ask how he’d been captured and wound up on Trash Planet. But those questions might come later in the negotiation process—and once Hoff learned the answers, the price would go up.

  Pumpkin was wise to tell so few people about himself. But it did make some situations more difficult.

  “Su took the tracker out.” That being said, word of mouth traveled nearly as fast as light. Someone would have told someone that Wil Tango, of all people, was right here in the Hazmat District Visitor’s Center, along with Hoff’s estranged niece in the wake of an attack on her factory.

  “And he only put one tracker? Amateur,” Hoff said. “We should stick you under the medical scanner and—”

  “Javier is still with me, as you probably know,” Su interrupted. “He verified.”

  “Oh. Right.” Hoff uncrossed his arms and rubbed a finger over an imperfection in the table surface. The comment about Javier seemed to have made Hoff uncomfortable. Deep waters there. “How is the old man?”

  “Happy to tend the illnesses in my factory and not yours,” Su said with a smile.

  Hoff flicked the table as if brushing away Su’s jab. “Can’t imagine Casada will come at us here. Only a fool would go blasting around near hazmat with EE-torpedoes. Does he realize what types of chain reactions he could cause? How much valuable property he would devastate?”

  Wil looked at Su, whose lips turned down at the corners. “He didn’t hesitate to shoot torpedoes at the box factory,” she said. “I suppose we just lack value.”

  “You’re not that explosive,” Hoff argued. “You just have plastene, fabricators, rewirers, conductors, pulp processors, the scow, some generalized waste recyclers…”

  “The amount of information you have about my factory is bizarre.” Su seemed as puffed up and skittish as Pumpkin at his most indignant.

  “We’re all very proud of what you’ve accomplished, baby.” Nan patted Su’s arm. “Even if some of us are too bolshie to say it. It was so clever to capture a niche market.”

  “Not proud of anyone who deserts their family,” Hoff grumbled, but he deflated and returned his attention to Wil. “If this Casada can find you on Trash Planet, where do you think my Q-ship could take you that you’ll be safe? One of the primitive planets? Lots of them don’t approve newcomers. And he’ll have ears everywhere half-civilized.”

  “I’ll change my name.” Wil shrugged. “This one’s used up.”

  What he would do for income without attracting attention he wasn’t sure yet. One had to inhabit the right circles to make a living at dance, and in those circles everyone already knew him. It depended on where they decided to leave him. And it depended on what Pumpkin wanted from him now that gambling was compromised.

  “You can’t change your fame or your DNA. Why, people all around the Rim are still talking about that performance of The Celestial Eons of Vorona that was holo-recorded on Sendat.”

  “Oh, I hardly think so.” Dance might be an art form, but the professional level was mostly practiced by elites, the people who could afford the lessons, the time, the extravagance. He’d never noticed that “people all around the Rim” knew or cared what dancers like himself achieved—or about dance in general. It was unfortunate. Life was too hard in too many places for people to indulge in their heritage, but humans had always danced, from common reels and contra dance to the twists and leaps of stage presentations.

  “We watch it once a month.”

  Wil blinked. “That’s dedicated. Who’s we?”

  “A good half of my crew in the warm zone. That’s here, outside the hot zone, which is where we do the challenging part of our jobs,” Hoff explained.

  “By challenging, he means radioactive, toxic, and deadly,” Su said in a faux-whisper. If her uncle had been this invested in professional dance, if her grandmother had been a dancer, why had Su not mentioned that she knew a little bit about dance? Then again, she never said she didn’t, just that she didn’t recognize Wil.

  “You did a lovely job in that performance, dear,” Nan told Wil. “On the fouettes in particular. You didn’t travel during them at all.”

  “I appreciate that,” Wil said. “Not many would understand how hard that is. Would I know your work?”

  “Oh, I was more of a chorus member,” she said modestly. “A…bone deficiency kept me from excelling the way I might have wished to do.”

  “That’s all you want, then?” Hoff said, bringing the subject back to the discussion at hand. “A ride to somewhere you can disappear?”

  That wasn’t all that Wil wanted now that he’d met Su. But it was the best course of action, though it was difficult to plan without the cat here to insert his demands.

  This might be, he realized, when he parted ways from the cat. Casada
and his people would be looking for any gamblers with cats in the future, so Pumpkin would still be barred from the casinos. Did he realize that? Did he have any backup plans for generating income?

  “Vanishing seems to be the smartest move,” Wil said. “Since we can’t fake my death.”

  Hoff studied him and shook his head. “It’s a shame, if this Casada fellow has scared you into hiding, that you can’t just stay with us. Could offer you a good salary to teach classes.”

  He would never have expected to find students on Trash Planet, or anywhere that the population had minimal leisure time or money. Before he could ask what Hoff considered a good salary, Su leaned across Nan and said, “So, Hoff, you’ll do it? You’ll transport him?”

  He’d rather she ask what the salary was, and how to keep him on this planet after that kiss today, but they were adults, not adolescents with foolish fantasies. His being here endangered her people. Who knew what his being here meant for Pumpkin? Lack of income, for certain. Wil had to go.

  “I’ll do it,” Hoff replied. “I can mask it as a routine pickup run. But I have one condition.”

  Here it came. Wil didn’t allow his trepidation to show on his face. “What is that?”

  “I want you to teach us all a dance.” Hoff indicated the happy crowd in the dining hall. Though it had thinned out once the fresh food had been eaten, a number remained. Many were keenly focused on the action at Hoff’s table. “Nothing would be more of a treat for my people and me than to have Wil Tango instruct us.”

  “You ask too much. We need sleep,” Su said. “We fought a war today.”

  “I can prepare a dance tutorial by tomorrow,” Wil agreed. “Folk dance, I think, for all levels of performers. As long as we have the time.”

  He’d never seen a dancer as big and burly and three-armed as Hoff, but the man glowed with anticipation. He felt some glimmer of it himself, as he hadn’t danced in weeks or taught students in months. Not much was as satisfying as sharing the art of dance with excited performers and audiences.

  “Will we stage a show? How many days will you need? We’ll have auditions.”

  “Ah.” Wil glanced at Su. He hadn’t intended anything so complex. “It will depend on how long before Casada finds us. He had no trouble locating Su’s factory, and if he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll continue to harass her people. It’s not fair to endanger them.”

  Su set down the rind of a melon slice. “That ratlicker gave us a one day deadline, but if the hailer comes to pass, could be longer.”

  “Hailer?” Wil asked. He’d heard them discuss the weather but not in detail. Then again, he hadn’t been here long enough for lectures on climate and ecosystems to sink in.

  “The hailstorms—the reason why only factories and pickers can tolerate this planet,” Hoff explained. “Temperature drops, lightning cracks, and the hail falls like rain. It’ll snap any smaller airships right out of the sky. Even the creatures don’t like to be out in it. Some hailers will bury a vehicle or a building in a day, crush it right to the ground.”

  Wil had noticed everything was armored, from buildings to trucks, and that explained why. That and the bristlebacks.

  “This isn’t the dark season,” Su said, not exactly contradicting her uncle. “It won’t be as bad as that, if we get one.”

  “Enough that if nobody were to tell Casada about it, he might fly out into it and crash,” Hoff said with a smirk. “Of course, we can’t take off in it, either. So you’ll be safe here. He might not even figure out where you are.”

  “Word about Wil will get around,” Su said. She and Wil had evidently reached the same conclusion, just like they had with telling Casada he’d accidentally killed Wil. Though they were very different, their agreements were more frequent than their disagreements, which gratified Wil to the bone. “Casada will come, and he won’t be foolish enough to ignore the climate.”

  “He won’t hear about Wil from my people,” Hoff protested.

  “Some of your people have no doubt already told other people that Wil Tango is right here in this building,” Su said dryly.

  Hoff opened his mouth to respond and closed it. “If you had warned me you were bringing a superstar here, I could have kept a lid on it.”

  Su tilted her chin down, and for a moment, as uncle and niece glared at each other, Wil could truly see a resemblance. “I know. You certainly kept a lid on the real reason for the explosion twenty years ago and avoided some huge fines.”

  Hoff spluttered. “I needed that money to buy your leg.”

  “We can arrange for a sighting of me somewhere else before I disappear for good,” Wil interjected before they could quarrel again. “In a casino, but not Gizem.” The art of distraction—sleight of hand—was useful during performances when a dancer needed to change costumes, positions, or roles.

  “That should do it,” Hoff agreed, seemingly glad the subject had changed. If what Su said about him hiring subpar contractors who’d boffed a critical repair was true, the man had no room to be arguing about it. A poor stage manager couldn’t keep the best talent just because he could pay.

  Su frowned. “Will that be safe for you, Wil?”

  With Nan between them, Wil couldn’t grab Su’s hand under the table. “Probably not. But it’s an extra layer of protection for you, if he knows for sure I’m not here anymore.”

  “I did put my hacker on your frozen accounts,” she reassured him. “If they open up, she’ll transfer it all somewhere that fuckhead can’t find it.”

  “It won’t allow him to detect her, will it? That’s the last thing you need—Casada with more of a grudge against you.”

  “Amatist knows what she’s doing,” Su told him before giving him a smile. “And yes, we’ll hold back the agreed-upon fee before the transfer.”

  “And for repairs to your barracks and factory,” he added. “Medical for anyone who needs it.”

  She pursed her lips. “That may leave you with very little to live on.”

  “I don’t really care,” he said, and it was true. If he regained access to his accounts, he’d just wire them to her anyway. “I’ll figure something out.”

  Scrapper approached the table with his comm in hand. “Nan. Hoff. I need a moment with Su.”

  While Nan took Scrapper’s hand and smiled up at him, Hoff greeted the man with a glower. “Scrapper. Anything you have to say, you can say in front of us. We’re family.”

  Su regarded her uncle with an equally sour expression. Her scar reddened against her otherwise smooth skin. “First I’m disowned and now I’m family? And to think, all I had to do was bring you a dance teacher.”

  “All you had to do was come back and say you were sorry.”

  Su barked out a laugh. “I’m not sorry. And I’m not back.” He wouldn’t put it past Su to hoist her uncle up and fling him out of the room like she’d done Pumpkin. The man had best watch his step. The smaller the dancer, the faster the spin. “Wil deserves help completely separate from our mess.”

  “On that note, I believe I’m going to turn in for the night,” Nan said. “Wil and Su will be sleeping in my guest chamber, so Wil can walk me to my room and let these cranky fools have their squabble.”

  Su’s eyebrows didn’t so much as flicker when Nan mentioned they’d be sharing a room, so Wil offered his arm to the older woman without comment. While he would prefer to remain with Su, he had to take into account she might want to talk to Hoff about things that were none of Wil’s business.

  Never mind that he wanted all of her business to be his. He wanted to help with the reconstruction of her barracks, he wanted to punish Garza and anyone who treated her badly, he even wanted to drum up some way he could be useful at a box factory. But he’d brought her enough misfortune. The least he could do was leave as quickly and noticeably as possible, luring Casada away from her for good.

  Chapter 13

  Su reached no détente with her uncle about the past and hadn’t expected to. But it was a relief to l
earn that the lost members of her crew had been found, and Javier had managed to preserve the lives of the wounded.

  As for her and Hoff, she had the sense he wanted to help Wil and also wanted her to forgive him—and come back. She wasn’t thrilled he hadn’t let Nan contact her, but she hadn’t exactly been keen on Scrapper hanging out with Hoff, either. Choosing sides when you still loved some of the enemy required sacrifices.

  “The cat is orange,” she told Hoff before heading to Nan’s guest chamber. “He’s a very unusual cat. All I can say is…” Should she tell him? Could she trust him, since selling Pumpkin out would mean the kind of money that would make Hoff drool? “He’s got a mind of his own. I think the galaxy has forgotten what cats are really like.”

  That should, hopefully, cover Pumpkin’s hairy ass if he showed up in the secure Visitor’s Center out of nowhere. It was a conceit to call it a Visitor’s Center when it was really just an office and barracks positioned as far away from the hot zone as Hoff’s property allowed, but Hoff’s conceit had grown the longer he’d been in charge of the business.

  “There’s more,” he said, fiddling with his plate. “I can always tell when you’re lying.”

  She’d eaten her bits of fresh food without tasting them, but she never let nourishment go to waste. “Then you’ll know this is true: that’s all I’m going to say.”

  Hoff studied her with sadness in his gaze. The two of them were the only people left in the cafeteria except for the cleanup crew. “I could…I could help with the repairs. Send some people.”

  Was this an offer she could afford to take? Could she afford to refuse it? The kind of destruction Casada had inflicted was far outside the realm of normal. A union that behaved like Casada would find itself shunned by everyone, cut off from fuel, roads, barter, and food.

  Su dug her fingers beneath her heavy hair and rubbed her scalp. If Bart hadn’t warned them, risked himself, they wouldn’t have had time to get the children into the shelter. “No contractors from the Tank Union.”