The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  Ross said. "IR. Don't trust the wire. Stay here."

  "The hell."

  Infrared blurred the wire-schema. But he brought his sensors up high-gain.

  "No sonar," Ross said. "Cut it, dammit!"

  "What the hell are we after?"

  "There he is!"

  He didn't half see. Just a blur, far across the dark. Ross burst ahead of him, onto the steps; he dived after, in a thunder the audios didn't damp fast enough.

  "Dave." Sheila's voice again, very solemn. His ears were still ringing when they got to the bottom. "Department's still got nothing. I never saw a jam this long . . . I never saw a rig like that."

  They kept moving, fast, not running, not walking. The mech beside him was Company or some government's issue, a MarsCorp exec was stone dead, and you could count the organized crazies that might have pulled that trigger. A random crazy, a lover—a secessionist. . .

  "Lab's on it," Sheila said. "Dave, Dave, I want you to listen to me."

  He was moving forward. Sheila stopped talking as Ross moved around a bundle of conduits and motioned him to go down the other aisle, past the blowers. Listen, Sheila said, and said nothing. The link was feeding to Ross. He was sure of it. He could hear Sheila breathing, hard.

  "Mustard," Sheila muttered. "Dave, was it mustard you wanted on that burger?"

  They'd never been in a situation like this, not knowing what was feeding elsewhere, not knowing whether Downtown was still secure with them on the line. "Yeah," he breathed. He hated the stuff. "Yeah. With onions."

  Sheila said, "You got it." Ross started to move. He followed. The com was compromised. She'd asked was he worried, that was the mustard query. He stayed beside that ghost-glow, held to the catwalk rail with one hand, the other with the gun. The city gave you a fire warrant; and your finger had a button. But theirs overrode, some guy Downtown. Or Sheila did. You didn't know. You were a weapon, with a double safety, and you didn't know whether the damn thing was live, ever.

  "Dave," Sheila said, totally different tone. "Dave. This Ross doesn't have a keyman. She's backpacked. Total. She's a security guy."

  Total mech. You heard about it, up on Sol, up in the Stations, where everything was computers. Elite of the elite. Independent operator with a computer for a backpack and neuros right into the station's high-tech walls.

  He evened his breath, smelled the cold air, saw the thermal pattern that was Ross gliding ahead of him. A flash of infrared out of the dark. A door opened on light. Ross started running. He did.

  A live-in lover? Somebody the exec would open the door to?

  A mech could walk through a crime scene. A mech on internal air didn't leave a presence—nothing a sniffer would recognize.

  A Company mech had been damned close to the scene—showed up to help the city cops . . .

  "Sheila," he panted, trying to stay with Ross. "Lots of mustard."

  Infrared glow ahead of them. A shot flashed out, from the Company mech. It explored in the dark, leaving tracers in his vision. Ross wasn't blinded. His foot went off a step, and he grabbed wildly for the rail, caught himself and slid two more before he had his feet under him on flat catwalk mesh—it shook as Ross ran; and he ran too.

  "She's not remoted!" he panted. As if his keyman couldn't tell. Nobody outside was authorizing those shots. Ross was. A cartoon door boomed open, and he ran after a ghost whose fire wasn't routed through a whole damn city legal department. "Fold it!" he gasped, because he was busy keeping up; and the corner ahead compacted and swung into view, red and green wire, with nobody in it but the ghost ahead of him.

  "Slow down!" he said. "Ross! Wait up, dammit! Don't shoot!"

  His side was aching. Ross was panting hard, he heard her breathing, he overtook in a cartoon-space doorway, in a dead-end room, where the trail showed hot and bright.

  "We have him," Ross said. The audio hype could hear the target breathing, past their exhaust. Even the panicked heartbeat. Ross lifted her gun against a presence behind a stack of boxes.

  "No!" he yelled. And the left half of his visor flashed yellow. He swung to it, mindless target-seek, and the gun in his hand went off on Ross, went off a second time while Ross was flying sideways through the dark. Her shot went wild off the ceiling and he couldn't think, couldn't turn off the blinking target square. Four rounds, five, and the room was full of smoke.

  "Dave?"

  He wasn't talking to Sheila. He wasn't talking to whoever'd triggered him, set off the reflexes they trained in a mech.

  Shaky voice from his keyman. "If you can walk out of there, walk. Right now, Dave."

  "The guy's in the—"

  "No. He's not, Dave." The heartbeat faded out. The cartoon room had a smudged gray ghost on the floor grid at his feet. And a bright red lot of blood spattered around. "I want you to check out the restroom upstairs from here. All right?"

  He was shaking now. Your keyman talked and you listened or you could be dead. He saw a movement on his left. He swung around with the gun up, saw the man stand up. Ordinary looking man, business shirt. Soaked with sweat. Frozen with fear. The sniffer flashed red.

  Sheila's voice said, from his shoulder-patch, "Don't touch anything. Dave. Get out of there. Now."

  He moved, walked out, with the target standing at his back. He walked all the way back to the air-conditioning plant, and he started up the stairs there, up to the catwalk, while nothing showed, no one. Sheila said, "Dave. Unplug now. You can unplug."

  He stopped, he reached with his other hand and he pulled the plug on the gun and put it in its holster. He went on up the cartooned metal stairs, and he found the cartooned hall and the cartooned restroom with the real-world paper on the floor.

  "You better wash up," Sheila said, so he did that, shaking head to foot. Before he was finished, a b&w came in behind him, and said, "You all right, sir?"

  "Yeah," he said. Sheila was quiet then.

  "You been down there?" the cop asked.

  "You saw it," Sheila said in his ear, and he echoed her: "I saw it—guy got away—I couldn't get a target. Ross was in the way . . ."

  "Yes, sir," the b&w said. "You're on record, sir."

  "I figured."

  "You sure you're all right? I can call—"

  "I can always call, officer."

  The guy got a disturbed look, the way people did who forgot they were talking to two people. "Yes, sir," the b&w said. "All right."

  On his way out.

  He turned around to the mirror, saw a plain, sick face. Blood was on the sink rim, puddled around his boots, where it had run off the plastic. He went in a stall, wiped off his rig with toilet paper and flushed the evidence.

  Sheila said, "Take the service exits. Pick you up at the curb."

  "Copy," he mumbled, took his foot off the seat, flushed the last bit of bloody paper, taking steady small breaths, now. They taught you to trust the autos with your life. They taught you to swing to the yellow, don't think, don't ask, swing and hold, swing and hold the gun.

  A mech just walked away, afterward, visor down, communing with his inner voices, immune to question, immune to interviews. Everything went to the interfaces. There was a record. Of course there was a record. Everyone knew that.

  It was at the human interface things could drop out.

  He used the fire-key, walked out an emergency exit, waited in the rain. The cruiser nosed up to the curb, black and black-windowed, and swallowed him up.

  "Saved the soft drink," Sheila said. "Thought you'd be dry."

  It was half ice-melt. But it was liquid. It eased a raw throat. He sucked on the straw, leaned his head back. "They calling us in?"

  "No," Sheila said. That was all. They didn't want a debrief. They didn't want a truth, they wanted—

  —wanted nothing to do with it. Nolan's body to the next-ofs, the live-in . . . to wherever would hide him.

  Another mouthful of ice-melt. He shut his eyes, saw wire-schemas, endlessly folding, a pit you could fall into. He blinked on rain and refra
cted neon. "Ross killed Nolan."

  "You and I don't know."

  "Was it Ross?"

  "Damned convenient a Company mech was in hail. Wasn't it?"

  "No presence at all. Nolan—Nolan was shot between the eyes."

  "MarsCorp exec—her live-in boyfriend with no record, no visa, no person. Guy who knew The Arlington's underground, who had a pass key—"

  "He was keying through the doors?"

  "Same as you were. Real at-home in the bottom tiers. You see a weapon on him, you see where he ditched one?"

  "No." Raindrops fractured, flickering off the glass. He saw the gray ghost again, the no-Presence that could walk through total black. Or key through any apartment door, or aim a single head-shot with a computer's inhuman, instant accuracy.

  He said, "Adds, doesn't it?"

  "Adds. Downtown was seeing what I was. I told them. Told them you had bad feelings—"

  "What the hell are they going to do? We got a dead mech down there—"

  "The live-in shot Nolan. Shot the Company mech. That's your story. They can't say otherwise. What are they going to say? That the guy didn't have a gun? They won't come at us."

  "What about our record?"

  "Transmission breakup. Lightning or something." Sheila's face showed rain-spots, running shadows, neon glare. "Bad night, D-D, bad shit."

  "They erase it?"

  "Erase what?" Sheila asked.

  Silence then. Rain came down hard.

  "They want to bring their damn politics down here," Sheila said, "they can take it back again. Settle it up there."

  "Settle what?" he echoed Sheila.

  But he kept seeing corridors, still the corridors, folding in on themselves. And sipped the tasteless soft drink. "The guy's shirt was clean."

  "Huh?"

  "His shirt was clean." Flash on the restroom, red water swirling down and down. "He wasn't in that room. Nolan knew Ross was coming. The guy was living there. His smell's all over. That's why the ammonia trick. Nolan sent him for the stairs, I'll bet it's in the access times. He couldn't have hid from a mech. And all that screaming? The mech wanted something. Something Nolan wasn't giving. Something Ross wanted more than she wanted the guy right then."

  "Secession stuff. Documents. Martian Secession. Not illegal, not in Dallas . . ."

  "The mech missed the live-in, had to shut Nolan up. Didn't get the records, either. A botch. Thoroughgoing botch. The live-in—who knew the building like that? He wasn't any Company man. Martian with no visa, no regulation entry to the planet? I'll bet Nolan knew what he was, I'll bet Nolan was passing stuff to the Movement."

  "An exec in MarsCorp? Over Martian Transport? Ask how the guy got here with no visa."

  "Shit," he said. Then he thought about the mech, the kind of tech the rebels didn't have. "They wouldn't want a witness," he said. "The rebels wouldn't. The Company damned sure wouldn't. Ross would've gone for me, except I was linked in. I was recording. So she couldn't snatch the guy—had to shut the guy up somehow. They damn sure couldn't have a Company cop arrested down here. Had to get him shut up for good and get Ross off the planet. . ."

  "Dead on," Sheila said. "Dead for sure, if he'd talked. Washington was after the Company for the make and the Company was stonewalling like hell, lay you odds on that—and I'll bet there's a plane seat for Ross tonight on a Guiana flight. What's it take? An hour down there? Half an hour more, if a shuttle's ready to roll, and Ross would have been no-return for this jurisdiction. That's all they needed." She flipped the com back to On again, to the city's ordinary litany of petty crime and larcenies, beneath an uneasy sky. "This is 34, coming on-line, marker 15 on the pike, good evening, HQ. This is a transmission check, think we've got it fixed now, 10-4?"

  2002

  THE SANDMAN, THE TINMAN, AND THE BETTYB

  CRAZYCHARLIE: Got your message, Unicorn. Meet for lunch?

  DUTCHMAN: Charlie, what year?

  CRAZYCHARLIE: Not you, Dutchman. Talking to the pretty lady.

  T_REX: Unicorn's not a lady.

  CRAZYCHARLIE: Shut up. Pay no attention to them, Unicorn. They're all jealous.

  T_REX: Unicorn's not answering. Must be alseep.

  CRAZYCHARLIE: Beauty sleep.

  UNICORN: Just watching you guys. Having lunch.

  LOVER18: What's for lunch, pretty baby?

  UNICORN: Chocolate. Loads of chocolate.

  T_REX: Don't do that to us. You haven't got chocolate.

  UNICORN: I'm eating it now. Dark chocolate. Mmmm.

  T_REX: Cruel.

  CRAZYCHARLIE: Told you she'd show for lunch. Fudge icing, Unicorn . . .

  CRAZYCHARLIE: . . . With ice cream.

  DUTCHMAN: I remember ice cream.

  T_REX: Chocolate ice cream.

  FROGPRINCE: Stuff like they've got on B-dock. There's this little shop . . .

  T_REX: With poofy white stuff.

  DUTCHMAN: Strawberry ice cream.

  FROGPRINCE: . . . that serves five different flavors.

  CRAZYCHARLIE: Unicorn in chocolate syrup.

  UNICORN: You wish.

  HAWK29: With poofy white stuff.

  UNICORN: Shut up, you guys.

  LOVER18: Yeah, shut up, you guys. Unicorn and I are going to go off somewhere.

  CRAZYCHARLIE: In a thousand years, guy.

  Ping. Ping-ping. Ping.

  Sandwich was done. Sandman snagged it out of the cooker, everted the bag, and put it in for a clean. Tuna san and a coffee fizz, ersatz. He couldn't afford the true stuff, which, by the time the freight ran clear out here, ran a guy clean out of profit—which Sandman still hoped to make but it wasn't the be-all and end-all. Being out here was.

  He had a name. It was on the records of his little two-man op, which was down to one, since Alfie'd had enough and gone in for food. Which was the first time little BettyB had ever made a profit. No mining. Just running the buoy. Took a damn long time running in, a damn long time running out, alternate with Penny-Girl. Which was how the unmanned buoys that told everybody in the solar system where they were kept themselves going. Dozens of buoys, dozens of little tenders making lonely runs out and back, endless cycle. The buoy was a robot. For all practical purposes BettyB's sights, he'd always swear he was going to stay, and by the time six months rolled around and he'd seen every vid and drunk himself stupid and broke, hell, he was ready to go back to the solitude and the quiet.

  was a robot, too, but the tenders needed a human eye, a human brain, and Sandman was that. Half a year running out and back, half a year in the robot-tended, drop-a-credit pleasures of Beta Station, half the guys promising themselves they'd quit the job in a couple more runs, occasionally somebody doing the deed and going in. But most didn't. Most grew old doing it. Sandman wasn't old yet, but he wasn't young. He'd done all there was to do at Beta, and did his favorites and didn't think about going in permanently, because when he was going in and had Beta in He was up on three months now, two days out from Buoy 17, and the sound of a human voice—his own—had gotten odder and more welcome to him. He'd memorized all the verses to Matty Groves and sang them to himself at odd moments. He was working on St. Mark and the complete works of Jeffrey Farnol. He'd downloaded Tennyson and Kipling and decided to learn French on the return trip—not that any of the Outsiders ever did a damn thing with what they learned and he didn't know why French and not Italian, except he thought his last name, Ives, was French, and that was reason enough in a spacescape void of reasons and a spacetime hours remote from actual civilization.

  He settled in with his sandwich and his coffee fizz and watched the screen go.

  He lurked, today. He usually lurked. The cyber-voices came and went. He hadn't heard a thing from BigAl or Tinman, who'd been in the local neighborhood the last several years. He'd asked around, but nobody knew, and nobody'd seen them at Beta. Which was depressing. He supposed BigAl might have gone off to another route. He'd been a hauler, and sometimes they got switched without notice, but there'd been nothing on the board
s. Tinman might've changed handles. He was a spooky sort, and some guys did, or had three or four. He wasn't sure Tinman was sane—some weren't, that plied the system fringes. And some ran afoul of the law, and weren't anxious to be tracked. Debts, maybe. You could get new ID on Beta, if you knew where to look, and the old hands knew better than the young ones, who sometimes fell into bodacious difficulties. Station hounds had broken up a big ring a few months back, forging bank creds as well as ID—just never trust an operation without bald old guys in it, that was what Sandman said, and the Lenny Wick ring hadn't, just all young blood and big promises.

  Which meant coffee fizz was now pricey and scarce, since the Lenny Wick bunch had padded the imports and siphoned off the credits, which was how they got caught.

  Sandman took personal exception to that situation: anything that got between an Outsider and his caffeine ought to get the long, cold walk in the big dark, so far as that went. So Lenny Wick hadn't got a bit of sympathy, but meanwhile Sandman wasn't too surprised if a few handles out in the deep dark changed for good and all.

  Nasty trick, though, if Tinman was Unicorn. No notion why anybody ever assumed Unicorn was a she. They just always had.

  FROGPRINCE: So what are you doing today, Sandman? I see you. . .

  Sandman ate a bite of sandwich. Input:

  SANDMAN: Just thinking about Tinman. Miss him.

  FROGPRINCE: . . . lurking out there.

  SANDMAN: Wonder if he got hot ID. If he's lurking, he can leave me word.

  T_REX: Haven't heard, Sandman, sorry.

  UNICORN: Won't I do, Sandman?

  SANDMAN: Sorry, Unicorn. Your voice is too high.

  UNICORN: You female, Sandman?

  T_REX: LMAO.

  FROGPRINCE: LL&L.