I hastily jumped between her and the towel-wrapped fox-cube. The forklift had leant Risk upright against the wall of my living-room. “That’s not the present, sugar. Sorry.”
“Oh,” she said, crestfallen.
“It’s only a towel. What’s interesting about a towel?”
“But it changes colors. I saw it on the holovision. It becomes the same color as anything you put under it.” She reached around me to wriggle her hand inside a fold of towel. A blush of tawny pink spread across the terrycloth. “Look, Nanny!” She was enraptured.
I questioned whether bringing Risk home with me had been the smartest thing to do. But I couldn’t have left him in his apartment. The villains would have come and grabbed him as soon as Dolph and I turned our backs. They might well have followed me here, but I had confidence in Majesta Gardens’ security systems.
I also had confidence in Nanny B.
“Do not let her touch that … those towels,” I said in an undertone.
“As you wish, Mike.”
The nice thing about having a bot for a nanny is that it never asks why.
I opened the plastikrete crate and invited Lucy to pick a Barbie. Unenthusiastically, she took the topmost one and shelled off the bubble wrap. “Hello,” she said to it. “Why do you look so stupid?”
“Meeeeehh,” said the Barbie.
“Daddy, it’s not working.”
“Let me try.” I took the Barbie. “This is Lucy,” I said. “You are going to be friends.”
“Urrgggghhhh,” said the Barbie.
“Hmm,” I said.
“Daddy,” said my daughter, “you should tell your suppliers that these are stupid. Even aliens do not like things that don’t work.”
She should be running the company.
“Let’s try a different one,” I said.
The next doll worked properly, but Lucy lost interest in it after only a few minutes. I mentally compared her reaction with Mia’s delight, and decided that half a year makes a big difference at this age. Lucy had also had a much easier time with the bubble wrap than Mia had had. She had greater dexterity, and the emotional intelligence to tell real things from fake ones.
Privately proud of my daughter’s discriminating taste, I rang Dolph while Nanny B was fixing supper and Lucy was giggling at Lil’ Hellraisers. “These Barbies ain’t gonna fly in the Isaw Threnis system,” I said. “Unless the natives all have a mental age of three.”
“Where are you?”
“At home, of course.” I lowered my voice. “Risk’s in my living-room. He doesn’t go with my wallpaper. As soon as Lucy goes to bed I’m gonna get in touch with Craig.” I referred to a guy we both knew, who lived in a Shiftertown basement and had two claims to fame: that he spent all his time in his animal form as a man-sized duck, and that he had once hacked into the EkBank. If anyone could bust the encryption on Risk’s deactivation tag, it was Craig the Duck.
“Yeah, Craig, uh huh,” Dolph said distractedly. “Can you get downtown?”
“When?”
“Now. I was just gonna call you.”
“What’s happening? Where’re you at?”
“Wally’s.” I could hear laughter and loud yelping barks in the background. “I figured I’d go and see if any of the regulars looked guilty.”
“And do they?”
“I dunno about guilty,” he said. “But one of them looks a hell of a lot like Risk’s upstairs neighbor.”
“King of the Beasts?” I was surprised. I’d never met the guy before today. How would Dolph have?
“No. The chick. Irene.”
*
Wally’s is a weathered, neon-crowned wart on the end of St. Andrew’s Pier. My truck dropped me off on Shoreside. It was mayhem, as usual. I jaywalked across six stop-and-go lanes, between cars arguing and flirting for right-of-way. The ferris wheel on the pier turned sedately above the cacophony of the tourist strip. The real sound and light show, of course, is Mag-Ingat Spaceport, on its own island at the harbor mouth. Ships speared into the night sky, or fell out of it like tightly controlled meteors, every ten minutes. Their engines reverberated faintly across the water, as if a thunderstorm were threatening the city but never quite getting here. It was still sticky-hot.
I zigzagged along the pier, between fairground rides, stalls of stuffed animals struggling for freedom, laser shooting galleries, and make-your-own candy shops. Carnies mugged in furry costumes. Tourists wandered in nervous, excited groups. Visiting Shiftertown at night is regarded as a risky adventure. They don’t know the half of it.
Outside Wally’s, I had to decide whether to go in on four legs or two. Dolph was in human form, he’d said. But Irene had only glimpsed him for a moment, whereas she’d definitely recognize me. All the same, I opted for staying as I was.
The doorman looked me sourly up and down. “How ya doing this evening?” I gushed, pumping his flipper.
“All right,” he grunted, and waved me in, while sliding the 100 GC I’d just passed him into his money belt. He was very dexterous for a walrus.
They do let mainstream humans in, of course. Just not ones in my income bracket.
The interior of the restaurant formed a horseshoe, sunk into the end of the pier. I had entered on the topmost of three terraces. The lowest terrace was the VIP floor, just a couple of meters above a pool of floodlit sea. They have an underwater fence to keep out krakens and other nasties, and to prevent guests from swimming off without paying. A toothsome smell of grilled fish tinged the air.
As I edged along the top terrace towards the bar, sleek bodies and whiskered heads churned the sea pool below. Every other minute a seal, or a sea lion, or a walrus, would waddle up the access ramp, grasping a fish in its jaws. Wally’s slogan is Catch Your Own! They mean it literally. That was one reason I’d stayed in human form. It’s not a hard and fast rule, more of a policy, but Wally’s is a place for Shifters who favor marine forms.
Me, I have a lot of forms. But none of them are fond of water.
When the flippered folk emerged from the pool, they entered a tent-like changing room at the top of the ramp, so they could Shift back without flashing the whole restaurant. The fish went straight onto the grill, or onto the sashimi chef’s chopping board. You don’t come to a restaurant to gobble your fresh catch with the scales on.
Some of the Shifters would be locals—date night, birthday party, fun for the whole flippered family. Others worked at the restaurant, catching fish for the mainstream human customers, mostly well-heeled tourists. You could call it prostitution of our unique abilities. Wally calls it damn good business.
I spotted him down at poolside, working the secret traps that restock the pool with fish. With his bald head and droopy mustache, he looked a bit like a walrus even in human form. He probably cleared several multiples of what I do annually. That’s what I get for trying to distance myself from Shiftertown and compete in a mainstream human industry, on mainstream human terms.
Yet here I was, back in Shiftertown again, because of Risk.
On a quick scan of the restaurant, I couldn’t see Irene. I slid onto the bar stool Dolph had kept for me. “She left?” I said in an undertone, after ordering a beer.
“She’s down there.”
The mirror behind the bar reflected me and Dolph: my square face, with cheekbones like doorknobs and floppy brown hair; his thinner, longer face, sallow, almond-eyed. His black hair was out of its usual ponytail and hanging in a lank mass, in what I guess was an attempt to look different from this afternoon. His eyes met mine and flicked up.
I followed his gaze to the curved mirror on the ceiling of the bar, and saw, between the optics, an upside-down Irene sitting with an upside-down man in the VIP section, right at poolside.
I hadn’t even thought to look for her down there.
“She got here first,” Dolph murmured. “She was all by her lonesome, sipping a glass of wine. That guy showed a couple of minutes ago.”
“Didja get a look at his
face?”
Dolph shook his head. Irene’s dinner partner, a thick-set guy, sat with his back to us. There was something familiar about the back of his head, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Left Rex at home with the kids,” Dolph said, tutting. I had told him about Irene’s domestic situation. “That’s pretty cold.”
“Rexipoo probably hasn’t even noticed she’s not there,” I said. “The question is, does this have anything to do with Risk?” Just like when we were in the special forces, Dolph tended to go off on any tangent that seemed juicy.
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”
I sipped my beer. I was gonna be pissed if Dolph had dragged me away from Lucy just to spy on Irene’s extramarital hijinks. Her life was none of our business, anyway.
A course of sashimi was delivered to their table. “How does she afford this?” Dolph said. “I can’t even afford a plate of calamari at this place. Oh, never mind. Mr. Big’s paying, of course.”
Irene’s companion turned to thank the waiter, and I saw his face.
Fleshy, cleft-chinned. Malevolent even when arranged in a condescending smile.
Both Dolph and I instinctively ducked, although the man was looking nowhere near us.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said as lightly as I could manage. “What’s she doing with Buzz Parsec?”
*
A few things about Buzz Parsec:
He’s the only other Shifter freighter captain that I know of flying out of Ponce de Leon.
His favored animal form is a grizzly bear.
His ship masses twice as much as mine, and he makes ten times as much money, not all of it legally.
That just about sums him up, but I’ll add one more pertinent factoid: he’s an asshole.
Dolph and I slouched at the bar, eaten up by resentment and curiosity. The bartender slid another beer in front of me. I passed him a hundred. This was turning into an expensive night. “Wally let him in?” I jerked my chin poolwards to indicate who I meant.
The kid took my meaning, sort of. “Money talks, don’t it?”
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” I parried his cliché.
“Just as long as he don’t go grizzly and start fishing salmon out of the pool with his paws,” the bartender said.
I chuckled appreciatively, thinking how awesome it would be if Irene’s lion husband were to charge in here right now and savage Parsec’s expensively suited ass. Of course, that wouldn’t happen. Rex didn’t even have the motivation to get off the couch. Which was probably why Irene’s gaze had wandered elsewhere.
I stole a peanut out of the complimentary bowl of stale nibbles. “Parsec come here often?”
“Sure. He was in here just a coupla days ago.”
“With her?”
“Her and some canine-looking dude.”
I felt a jolt of adrenaline. Canine, vulpine … these flippered folks often can’t tell the difference. “An older guy?”
“Yeah. I guess it’s a safe place to talk business, seeing as we don’t regularly allow four-legged folks in.” The bartender wiggled his multiply pierced eyebrows, asking an unspoken question. He was a friend of Dolph’s, so he knew who I was, but he didn’t know as much about me as he wanted to.
And I wanted to keep it that way. “When the moon is full,” I answered him, “I Shift into an orca and eat seals.”
The bartender laughed and drifted away to serve other customers.
“Actually, how did you get in?” Dolph said.
“Like the kid said, money talks.”
I didn’t have near as much money as Parsec.
But I now had a hypothesis. It was incomplete but plausible enough to make my blood boil.
“Freaking Parsec was trying to headhunt Risk,” I said, grinding my teeth.
“Right, because ol’ fox was the best weapons officer on the PdL. Not.”
“Actually, he was in the top five,” I said. I noticed that we were talking about him in the past tense, and corrected myself. “He is. Sure, he has issues. But when the excrement hits the air circulation, he can make the guns sing. You’re not gonna deny that. Remember when we tangled with those Travellers in the Cloudworlds? It was Risk who got us out of that alive. I would have wanted him in a foxhole with me on Tech Duinn.”
“Not me,” Dolph said. “Guy’s name is Risk. That tells you something.”
I shrugged. “Only that Shifters have a thing for picking stupid names.”
Dolph did that thing with his eyebrows that I find so annoying. I knew what he meant: Risk was in his sixties and had been fired from his last two jobs. I’d given him a chance because he was a Shifter, like us. Who me, inconsistent?
But I was now carried away by the idea that Parsec had been trying to steal my crew. “They were here together. It fits.”
“So where does Irene come in?”
“She’s a marine mammal,” I guessed. “I can see her as a leopard seal. She did Risk a favor, came with him so they’d let him in.”
Despite the fact that she hadn’t even admitted to knowing him.
“I can’t see her as a leopard seal,” Dolph disagreed. “A harp seal, maybe.”
“Or a dolphin.”
“I don’t think so. Anyway, if Parsec was trying to headhunt Risk, how does that end up with Risk frozen in cryonite?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But we’re going to find out.”
3
It wasn’t over half an hour before Parsec called for the check. Irene sat icily immobile while he paid. As they moved to the exit, I slid off my bar stool.
Dolph was already gone. Sidling around the top terrace, I glanced at the pool. Brown backs, spotted backs … and one hairless gray one.
I shortened the strap of my bag, so its bulk wouldn’t swing around when I moved. I stepped out into the humid night twenty seconds after Irene and Parsec. I glanced around, certain they’d still be close by—vehicles aren’t allowed on the pier.
But boats are.
After panicking for five seconds, I remembered the moorage. I quickly circled the restaurant and saw Irene and Parsec descending the steps to the jetty that stuck out at right angles to the end of the pier. Dozens of boats bobbed on both sides of the jetty, ranging from Wally’s two live-catch trawlers to sleek carbon-fiber sailboats.
I was kidding about having an orca form. I don’t care for the sea. Especially not when it’s surging around the end of the pier and foaming under the jetty like the Devil’s cappuccino.
However, I settled my Panama on my head, to shade my features, and went down the steps.
Irene and Parsec stopped in front of a blinged-out speedboat at the end of the jetty. If she got aboard that boat with him, she was a bigger fool than I’d taken her for. But although he gestured as if inviting her to jump aboard, she folded her arms and stayed put.
Halfway along the jetty was a shack where the boat rental guy sat during the day. I stepped into its shadow and eased to the corner, where I could see them and almost hear what they were saying.
It was incredibly frustrating. Every time a swell passed under the jetty, the noise of the water drowned out their voices.
Parsec: “… money.”
Yeah, it was always about money for him. Well, it is for me, too. But I try not to be an asshole about it.
Irene: “I will get it.”
So she owed him money. Why?
Parsec: “… sold it already?”
Irene: “I swear to you, OK? I haven’t sold it. It was—”
Another wave crashed on the pier just as I was about to find out what it was. My imagination ran wild, trying to connect this conversation with Risk’s icy misadventure, and failing. This was probably some completely unrelated pickle Irene had got herself into. None of my business.
Parsec took a threatening step towards Irene. She backed away. His huge hands hung at his sides, but his face, in the light from the pier, was demonically contorted with anger. “If you even think about ri
pping me off—”
As the next wave hit, I dropped my bag and unbuckled my belt. I pulled my shirt off over my head and stepped out of my jeans and boxers. This took approximately 3 seconds.
The next bit took a few seconds longer.
“—bury you and your useless slob of a husband,” Parsec ranted, “and sell your kids to the Travellers.”
I’d seen Parsec work himself up like this before. Irene, whatever her financial troubles, did not deserve what would come next. I dropped to all fours.
“Are we clear? Are we clear?”
“What’s clear,” I growled, “is that your mom shoulda flushed the toilet after she crapped you out, Parsec.”
I stalked out of the shadow in the form of a jaguar.
Both Irene and Parsec turned to me, stunned.
Irene’s financial troubles may not have been any of my business, but I couldn’t let Parsec threaten her like this.
“Leave the lady alone,” I said.
Parsec’s dropjawed expression quickly resolved into a sneer. “Says who?”
“Your face is about to find out.” I hunched my shoulders low and let out a deep jaguar growl.
Parsec chuckled. “Take your white knight act on the carny circuit, Spots, ‘cause we’re not buying it. We’re fine.” The menace had melted out of his body language. If I hadn’t just heard him threatening Irene, I wouldn’t have believed this jovial gentleman capable of it. “The lady’s fine.” He moved towards her, as if to drape his arm around her shoulders.
She dodged his arm, nimble on the balls of bare feet.
She had been wearing high heels, but when she moved away from Parsec, she’d stepped out of them. She had been preparing to defend herself.
Now, lightning-fast, she scooped up one of her shoes and stabbed its heel into Parsec’s face.
He raised a hand in time to save his nose, but the heel ripped his cheek open.
Irene took off down the jetty, passing me in a thrum of bare feet and a hint of perfume.
Parsec grunted in fury and started after her—
—only to find his way blocked by an 80-kilogram package of claws and rippling muscle.
The Cryonite Caper Page 3
