The phone lit up with a purple flash. Security code. He stared a moment—could he really stand another conversation with the Morgooze? Then he opened the line. To his surprise the features of Melissa Baltitude appeared on the screen.
"Mr. Iehard, I finally caught you in!" she exclaimed a little breathlessly.
On the spot Jon decided she was rather an attractive young lady. "You're out of the hospital."
"Oh, for hours, such a dreary place. My arm's in a sling, my foot's in a big rubber bandage, and I can't go out to the Orbiters' Ball." She sounded quite distressed.
So she was bored and lonely and interested in a little rough trade to keep her occupied? Rich girls had done this to him before. Jon sighed. "I'm sorry about that."
Wait till you see the scars the stupid assistant surgeons left on my ass when they cut out Magelsa's brand. His thoughts rolled down a slightly bitter track.
"So, I had a great idea. I thought I'd call you up and ask you over to dine with me, and you could tell me about yourself and your dangerous life."
"Exactly."
"What did you say, Mr. Iehard?"
"Very dangerous life."
"Yes, I'm sure. But now it's so late that I've already had dinner and I'm just sitting here alone, sipping wine and looking out the window."
"You're not a big one for Masque then?"
"I hate computers, Mr. Iehard. I prefer my people real."
Jon had a sudden idea. Galvanized, he got right to the point.
"What would you say if I came over to see you right now? And we sipped some of this wine together and looked out the windows."
She would be delighted, she said.
A few minutes later he hurried away down the corridor, picking up his Superior Buro tail and leading her to the transit stop. There he paused a moment, entered a car ascending to the higher-numbered octagons. A woman in a blue suit had followed him on. He sat down. So did she. He stood up and jumped out of the car just as its lights flashed to signal the door was closing.
The woman in blue had jumped, too. He entered the car going down to the low numbers and rode two stops. He got off and ran across the platform and into the train going up. He noticed the woman in blue and a man in a tan leisure suit and white shirt.
He rode back two stops and jumped out, ran out of the station, and immediately dived over the retainer wall of the ramp into a huge ornamental pot of ivies.
A few moments later the woman in blue puffed up the stairs and paused. She looked up and down the ramps in bafflement. The man in tan appeared. They conversed together in low tones, then separated, she going up ramp and he going down.
Jon waited, however. After another minute a third figure appeared, a man in a set of maintenance overalls with the logo of the transit line on the back. He stared around him and then spoke into a wrist communicator. A few moments later he turned and went back into the station. Jon continued to wait. A car for uptown finally pulled in. He scrambled from concealment in the ivies and sprang down the stairs and into the car without being seen by the man in the maintenance overalls, who was talking into a phone plate on the platform.
The car whistled away.
At Octagon Fourteen he headed up ramp for the high-rent sector. At the guardhouse below Magenta Mall, he showed them his card and told them to call Miss Baltitude.
The guards' faces shifted from alarm to resentment within seconds. They let him pass with a surly contempt that made him want to laugh. If only they could get invited into the deluxe homes on Magenta Mall by lissome young daughters of the very rich!
At least they hadn't noticed his forehead scars. If they'd known he was laoman he could be sure they'd have tried to hold him. A call to Baltitude Senior, the police, anything to keep him out of their bailiwick.
Magenta Mall was set atop a row of high towers. Grass and bushes dominated the scene. The windows of the manses of the wealthy humped up here and there out of the vegetation like big yellow eyes. Above was the night sky illusion and the curve of the habitat. It seemed a long, long way from the crowds of the corridors below.
He presented himself at the Baltitude mansion. The butler gazed at him with an expression of veiled disgust. He suggested that Jon should go round to the side entrance, where all deliveries could be made.
Jon snorted, half amused. "Tell Melissa that Jon Iehard is here."
Stony faced, the butler did so, after closing the door. Then, with poor grace, he conducted Jon into a room with a wide panoramic view of the habitat spread out below. Melissa Baltitude was propped up in a chair with a phone and a bottle of wine on a table carved into the shape of a man's head. On the floor was an antique carpet of considerable artistry. Pale pink lamps in sconces lined one wall. On another was a complex graphic with lines that shifted, constantly exposing new lines of sight.
"Mr. Iehard, welcome." She turned to the butler. "That will be all, Boomes."
The wine was pleasant, the view marvelous. They discussed the Kill Kults briefly and when she asked him where he'd been born he told her frankly.
"Hut 416, North West Alley, on the estate of Castle Firgize, planet Glegan."
She became a little uncertain. "My goodness, where's that? I've never heard of it."
"Subdirectorate five of Blue Seygfan. It's about thirty light-years away, I think."
"A laowon world, one of those they stole from us!"
"I don't think they would agree with your description, but yes, it is a laowon world."
Her face froze up for a moment. "So you are a laoman."
"That's not quite how I think of myself actually, but in the popular conception—"
"I'm sorry, it's just that—well, you are the first I've ever spoken to. Not that it really matters. I don't see any difference between you and anybody else."
He smiled, bitterly. If she looked closely enough, she would see the marks. "Believe me, I understand," he said.
"Oh, dear, and I so wanted to ask you out to visit our real family home, on Gloaming Splendor."
His eyes widened. The Baltitude manse on the luxury megahabitat would be an experience indeed. "I'm sorry, I think I'd have liked that."
Her expression became conspiratorial. "Perhaps we'll just keep it a secret between ourselves. If they don't know they can't go getting excited about it. Speaking for myself I don't care one bit whether you were born laoman or not. You saved my life and I feel very grateful for that fact."
He decided he rather liked her. She seemed to mean well anyway. She was perhaps too young to have picked up the near-universal prejudice. "I've been on Grandee for nine years now; I'm acclimatized. Your skin gets thickened after a while." He smiled.
"Have you seen the other habitats of the system?"
"One or two."
"Oh, which ones? Bentley? Versailles? Or Shangri-La? The hanging gardens there are the most beautiful place in the galaxy: it says so in Albein's Directory."
"Afraid not. I've only been to Nostramedes and Everton."
Her face registered shock, as if he'd suddenly made a bad smell. "Oh, dear. Well, we never go to those places."
"No, of course not. But they too are afflicted with random killers sometimes, and then they send to Grandee for a team of our operatives."
They sipped wine thoughtfully.
"I just asked because, you see, I have a space-boat, a four-berth Dove."
Jon whistled. A superb luxury machine.
"And I was thinking of skipping Winter Month this year on Grandee and going out to the Splendor and relaxing in the forest."
Forest. The word did strange things to Jon's psyche. It had been so long since he'd seen any trees but those familiar ones that grew in the park. How nice it would be to relax in a forest with Melissa Baltitude!
"A Dove, which model?"
"It's a Classic B. It's an heirloom. Left me by my Aunt Rose. If you like we could take a trip, go over to Shangri-La and then to Gloaming Splendor. I know you'd love it at Baltitude Rancho."
He nodded: he w
as sure he would too.
"Out by the swim hole, with cold drinks and lots of sun. We can go riding: my father maintains a stable of a dozen horses there."
Jon boggled at the thought, then remembered that Baltitude Rancho was probably twenty square kilometers in extent. Out on the megahabs life was pretty damn good they said, though of course Jon had never seen it except in movies. "I'd like that," he said. A frown came over his face.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm wondering if I dare ask you something. It might be a big help to me."
"Oh, do ask. I'd love to help."
Briefly Jon explained that he needed to find out when a certain warehouse owned by the Baltitude Security Company had been emptied and the lease given up.
She thought for a moment, then picked up the phone. "Where is the warehouse?"
He gave her the address. A moment later she spoke a series of code syllables into the phone and was rewarded with an access menu to Baltitude Corporate computer files.
In a few more seconds she had it.
"The lease was terminated yesterday and the contents shipped. Funny, there's no destination for the contents although there is for every other listing."
Jon nodded. It fit. And he had been close. But, of course, yesterday he had been hunting Arnei Oh, not this Elchite chimera that constantly receded into the mist.
"You're disappointed. It's not what you were hoping to hear?"
"Well..." He grimaced. "It doesn't matter, I've been fooling myself all along on this case. Just one more false lead. Thankfully I didn't spend too much time on it. Thanks very much. You've probably saved me a lot of trouble."
He could see that she was pleased, from the toss of her dark glossy hair. "Some more wine?"
The time went by magically swiftly, and Jon had just got to the point of kissing Melissa Baltitude for the third time, when the door burst open and in stormed her father, Jason Pauncritius Baltitude himself.
"How dare you!" he bawled at the top of his lungs.
"Daddy! Why aren't you at the ball?"
"Because, my dear, I was informed that you and this laobreed creature were in here together. We can thank Boomes for the fact that I returned in time to prevent anything worse happening."
"Mr. Baltitude, you don't seriously believe that I would harm your daughter."
"Young man, simply by being here you are irreparably damaging my daughter. She is a leader, a member of the Orbiters' club. She can't be going around rutting with the genetic rubbish of the laowon worlds."
Jon's face tightened.
Melissa burst into a wail of rage.
Baltitude Senior called out behind him. "Gosax, Boomes, get in here."
"Mr. Baltitude, I have no intention of damaging even your daughter's reputation. She asked me by to thank me for saving her life. That she has done, most sweetly. I have no claims upon her, nor upon you. And I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head when you address me."
Baltitude sniffed loudly. Boomes and another man, dour faced, big nosed, and heavily built, wearing a black suit, appeared in the door.
"Ah, Gosax, I want you to throw this interloper out onto the ramp. Give him a good drubbing to make sure he gets the message."
"Daddy, don't you dare do this!" Melissa screamed and tried to get to her feet. Jon put out a hand to steady her since she was favoring her bad ankle so heavily. She sat down again with a yelp of anguish.
"Be quiet child, this is for your own good."
"Really, Mr. Baltitude, is that all?" Jon said. "Isn't there some tiny element of personal pleasure in this? Don't you enjoy sending old Gosax here into combat, bashing up the people you don't like? Throwing your weight around like the megabuck you are?"
"Gosax, be quick now." Baltitude was furious.
Jon prepared to defend himself. Gosax noted the positioning of one trained in martial arts. The bigger man lunged, confident of his own powers. Jon evaded, they whirled together, legs snapping high, punches and blocks slipping off with explosive smacking sounds. Gosax missed a swing, Jon went inside and kneed him in the crotch. Gosax, however, wore protective garments and the blow did no more than push him away.
"A tricky one, eh?" he snarled and produced a small shock rod from inside his suit. It was the illegal kind. They could all hear it sizzle in the still air.
Jon also sensed a burst of explosive rage directly behind him. Rage and fear. The combination often produced mental images for him and this time it gave him the "sight" of the back of his own head. The cane was rising, Baltitude's fury along with it.
Jon lashed out with a back kick and drove Mr. Baltitude to the floor. Boomes went to assist his fallen master. Gosax leapt at him with the high-energy shock rod, Jon barely escaped a smack with it and was forced to defend himself against a furious onslaught. He rolled with it into a wall, and then ducked one blow but took another in the shoulder. That stung him and he was moved to grab Gosax's lapels and butt the man, very hard, his forehead mashing the big meaty nose.
Gosax stumbled back bubbling blood and Jon kicked him in the belly. The nasty little shock rod spilled to the floor and burnt the expensive carpet. Jon retrieved it and swatted Gosax across the face with it, knocking the big man head over heels in a shower of bright blue sparks.
Gosax didn't get up. Jon prayed he hadn't killed the fool. Boomes alone stood between him and the door.
"Well, Boomes, how much do they pay you around here?" Jon motioned with the shock rod. "Enough to make you want to get in my way?"
Boomes darted aside. Jon blew Melissa a kiss.
"My apologies, Melissa. Thank you for a delightful interlude and for your assistance. Good-bye." Jon made his way to the front door, smashing the shock rod on the marble pate of a statue of Pauncritius Baltitude III, founder of the Baltitude Gas Company.
CHAPTER NINE
Climbing down from the heights of Magenta Mall, Jon rode transit round the habitat curve to Octagon One. He exited onto the Blue Moon Plaza. He needed to think and he wanted somewhere nice that wasn't his sleazy little home. He slipped into the Bird o' Paradise. The Bird was a quiet spot known for a clientele that was mostly spacecrew.
Of course spacers were desperately gregarious, hard-drinking fools who attracted a thick crowd of hustlers, whores, and smugglers, but in the Bird, they drank quietly. That was the trademark of the place—it was somewhere to go when your hangover was too bad for Vio's or The Tubs or the other spacer bars. Still, like the rest of the Blue Moon bars it had a lot of anxious, sometimes plain terrified people, playing bad games with the Hyperion Grandee Export Import Police.
Jon accepted a beer from the robot and paid with his card in the function box. He wondered whether to call Petrie, resign from the case, and maybe look to emigrate to another big habitat with a need for psi-able people who were good with guns. It was clear that he faced some problems just ahead.
Gloomily, he watched a pair of spacers in Baltitude Gas Company suits, silver and yellow, on their way to the doors.
For all he knew in the very near future he was going to be fighting for his economic existence against a horde of Baltitude legal sharks. Unless Coptor could swing some leverage on the board of the gas trustees.
Of course that wouldn't help much when it came to dealing with the Morgooze of Blue Seygfan.
Jon decided that at the least, it would be wise if he moved apartments again in the very near future. He wondered about trying Low Rent again, somewhere that didn't even have an address!
He sipped the beer and tried to relax. Almost immediately he began picking up a very strong fear signal.
Someone quite close by was absolutely terrified. But what rocked him was that instead of the image of paraheroin or prisonhab that he expected, there was an image of sly laowon faces, the Superior Buro!
It was from close behind him, in the next booth. A woman, on the verge of hysteria. He got up and examined her briefly as he slipped past.
Her eyes flicked up and down the room, constantly checkin
g for "Buro."
He recalled her face. A blond woman, slightly built, fragile in appearance with wide cheekbones and eyes that were peculiarly large and haunting. She was one of those identified by the DAex Ram from the Illustrious's file search. She even had on the same gray spaceline-style jumpsuit, with a small device marking the collar.
Two Pan-Nocan pilots got up from the bar, Jon took one of their seats. Kept the woman under observation.
His psi sense could feel her fear, very strong. That constant image of "Buro," and others, more fleeting, such as one of a bird that flew against a background of stars.
He sat very still, trying to absorb as much as possible from the woman's thought vistas. For a while there was nothing, than came a dreadful image. A great man, a hero to his race, being torn to pieces on a rack by cruel machine pincers that lanced down upon him from a battery of bright lights.
It was the Elchite, he had no doubt. And she was terrified that something awful was going to happen and that it was somehow her fault. Abruptly she panicked and got to her feet, paid clumsily for her unfinished drink, and rushed past Iehard to the door.
Jon followed, slipping through the crowds with all the tricks in the tracker's book, which turned out to be essential since she was as nervous as any mass killer he'd ever followed. She kept stopping and looking behind her, then running on. She left Blue Moon Plaza and went down the connector to the ramps.
She turned onto a down ramp and he followed but found her waiting at the first bend, scanning the crowd coming down. He passed her and saw her heading up and crossing to the entrance to the departures terminal.
He ran after her, although now she was sure to notice him if she turned and looked back.
He realized he had to call in Petrie, get some Military Intelligence people to help.
But the woman was already through the doors of the docking terminal and there was nothing to be done but to sprint after her and try to keep her in sight.
He burst through the doors, quickly scanned the lines of people around the spacelines' counters. There was no sign of her. Then he felt a nova of fear go off somewhere above him. He looked up. She was on the departures platform, checking the crowd below. Their eyes met. She turned and ran through the departures gate.
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