“Do you mind? I’m trying to eat,” I groaned.
“Nuh uh,” Dolph said. “Think about the angle of attack. That wouldn’t work unless Ek dicks point backwards.”
“You guys. Do you have to be so crude?” Irene pushed Dolph aside to get out of the galley, an open packet of mice in her hand. Most Shifters do not eat the things that animals eat. Irene made an exception for mice. The barbecue-flavored ones were her comfort food.
“Come on, Irene,” Dolph said. “No one’s ever had sex with an Ek. At least, I would hope present company hasn’t. It’s only natural to speculate.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s sick. You’re as bad as MF.”
“What did I do?” MF said.
Irene rolled her eyes and shoved past him. A moment later an enraged cry came from the lounge. “Mike!”
I hurried down the corridor, already guessing what I’d find. MF and Martin had a bad habit of watching porn on the big screen when the rest of us were out. Sure enough, the screen displayed a paused image of a wolf and a human woman, copulating doggy-style. I switched it off, feeling embarrassed, implicated, just a little bit turned on, and even more embarrassed because of that. I haltingly apologized to Irene. “It’s not fair that you have to put up with this. I know you wanted me to hire another woman to take Kimmie’s place, so you wouldn’t have to take the brunt of MF’s crap all on your own, but I … didn’t.” I shook my head, irritated at myself. “I’ll talk to him—”
She cut me off. “It isn’t just MF, it’s all of you. But forget it, Mike.” She stuffed another mouse into her mouth. “It doesn't matter. None of it matters. That poor kid had to marry an Ek to end the war. He’s basically crucifying himself for his people, and all you guys can do is make fun of him. But it doesn’t matter. Let’s just fucking go.”
Dolph leaned in the doorway. “We didn’t visit Artie’s grave.”
“Do I care about your junkie friend who’s been dead for twenty years?” Irene yelled at him. “I do not! I care about the job! What do you care about, Dolph? Anything?”
Justin Kventuras had gotten to all of us. Irene had not known him when he was a kid, but he’d gotten to her, anyway. So we were all hurting. When Dolph was upset, he started talking shit. When Irene was upset, she got grumpy. I pushed the rest of my sandwich into my mouth. “Fucking quit it, guys. Prepare for launch.”
18
It took us just six hours to reach Yesanyase Skont. The only Hurtworld reserved exclusively for humans, Yesanyase S lies one light year closer to the Core than Mittel Trevoyvox, and also closer to its own sun. This ageing star had begun to expand into its red giant phase. Orange-tinged, it spanned the width of my palm in the sky.
Yesanyase Skont may once have been a green Earth-like planet, but for the last thousand years or so, its middle latitudes have been baking deserts. Only the southern polar continent is still inhabited.
The spaceport, located near the south pole, covers a vast area of 80 square kilometers. Plonked on top of an oasis, it encloses several lakes. At the sprawling bazaars, you can buy and sell anything from spaceships to antique books and live fuzzy-wuzzies. The air is hot, but bone-dry, so it’s cool when you stepped into the shade. On the porches of the hullabas—the lounge bars built in the reeds around the lakes—men and women from all over the Cluster exchange news, views, and war stories. At night, the Core hangs at the zenith like a fuzzy full moon, turning the sky a dark shade of blue, and sweet, druggy smoke wafts from the nightclubs. Music rolls out across the desert, so loud that when a ship takes off from somewhere, it’s just a rumble in the bass.
We all needed to decompress after Mittel Trevoyvox. That’s what I told myself, until, sprawling in a couch made from the shell of an extinct giant turtle, along with several partially clad people I didn’t know, I reached the bottom of a glass of glacier rak and suddenly realized I was wasting time.
I stumbled to my feet and went looking for Dolph. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been gone. It was still dark; meant nothing. The day on Yesanyase Skont is 33 hours long. I left the nightclub and wandered along the lakeside.
Strangely, although I knew that I should be in a hurry, I felt no gut sense of urgency. A cool night breeze caressed my face and arms. The reeds whispered and rustled, their feathery plumes swaying in unison. The Core shone like God’s lighthouse. The music faded behind me. Loved-up couples and threesomes staggered past, bombed out of their minds.
I wanted to be alone, and to get nearer the water. I took a path that angled into the reeds. The clicking stems smelled fresh, woodsy. The water around their roots gurgled. I came out on a wooden promenade that cut across the lake like a bowstring.
The promenade was dotted with people strolling or making out in the Corelight.. But my eyes immediately went to a single lanky figure which was moving oddly. Dolph.
I walked out to him. Oblivious, he didn’t notice me. He was either dancing or fighting with an invisible opponent. Shadowboxing. His fists jabbed air.
“Dolph?”
His eyes were closed. His arms curved, embracing an invisible partner. Slow-dancing. I felt a chill.
“Dolph.” I clamped my hands on his shoulders.
His eyes opened, but he wasn’t seeing my face. “Take my money,” he said.
“Dolph. It’s me.”
“Mike.” Now he saw me. He laughed emptily. “It just slips through your fingers, don’t it? Everything—slips—away.”
I shook him. “You’re fucked up.”
“Get your hands off me,” he said, clawing at them.
I shoved him. He hit me back. No strength or accuracy in it. That frightened me more than if he had landed a haymaker. We staggered against the railing of the promenade, and went over it, into the lake. Fortunately, it was only thigh-deep, with a layer of fine silt at the bottom. I sat up, spluttering—it was cold. Dolph floated on his back, gazing up at the Core. His wet face looked like a glistening skull. I floundered over to him and hauled him to his feet. “Get up. Get the fuck up!”
Stargend cilia coiled down over the railing and politely tapped me. These aliens look like walking octopuses with translucent hides. They have the best manners in the Cluster. They helped us back onto the promenade. I thanked them, hiding my fury and consternation. Dolph and I were both soaked to the skin, our shoes full of silt.
I dragged him on around the lake until we came to a jehoula. These are hotels built inside the shells of another species of extinct turtle which once roamed the planet. They must have been the size of battleships. This shell had numerous holes cut in it, with light spilling out around the edges of cunningly fitted doors. I banged on each door in turn until Martin’s sleepy voice said, “Yeah, what?”
I threw the door open. Martin lay in python form on linen sheets. A large, oddly shaped lump twitched in his mid-section. I hadn’t needed to see that. On the other hand, it meant he would be too out of it to notice that anything was the matter with Dolph.
“We’re wasting time.” My voice cut the air like an axe. “Enough of this bullshit. Meet us back at the ship at dawn.”
*
There were still hours to go before dawn. I spent most of them walking Dolph around the lake, sobering him up. After I forced some hot coffee and a steamed bun down him, he started making sense again, but he didn’t say much. Nor did I. We never talked about his issues. Never had to. It had been years—decades—since he had fallen down a pharmaceutical rabbit hole like this.
Shabu, I figured, or whatever they were calling it now. Amphetamines plus some other stuff. If the formulation was the same as in the old days, it made you feel like a god, and act like an idiot. OK if you’ve got a commanding officer pulling your strings. Not so OK if you’re out in the Cluster on your own.
Just going near Artie’s grave had been enough to set Dolph off. And hadn’t I reacted in the same mindless way? Drinking to excess at seedy bars and clubs, as if I could recapture my self-destructive youth? But drinking to excess was nothing unusual for me, sad
to say. I could handle it. Dolph and drugs were a different story.
Dawn blistered the horizon. As we were trudging back to the ship, MF called me.
“I have located Pippa,” he announced ebulliently.
“No shit?” Adrenaline speared through my chest, lifting my mood.
“Yes! At my request, Irene purchased a complete data dump of the Yesanyase Skont internet, going back a month. I have analyzed all the arrivals and transport data, and determined with a high degree of certainty that Pippa is at Camp 32!”
“Where’s that?”
“Five hundred kilometers from here.”
“So we need wheels.”
“Yes! That is why I called you! Hurry up. Irene is impatient.”
“I’ll bet. Tell her we’ll be back soon.”
Now, at last, urgency set in. I hailed one of the local pedicabs, operated by a insectile aiora. We rode out to the auto bazaar. It was bedlam. I picked a rental yard run by a family of stargends, knowing that they wouldn’t try to rip us off too badly.
“I’m not going,” Dolph said.
“Why not?” I realized that I had been expecting this, at least since last night.
“Someone needs to stay here that knows how to fly the ship.”
“MF can do it.”
“He’d crash her while watching bestiality porn.”
Around us, sparks flew and sledgehammers swung, gripped in deceptively frail-looking cilia burnt purple by the sun. Dolph sat on the bumper of a wrecked fuel tanker, smoking a cigarette. I rubbed my aching temples. “I need you.”
“Take Irene.”
“I didn’t say Irene, I said you.”
He just smiled at me, the saddest smile I ever saw from him. “I’ll stay outta trouble.” He held up two fingers crossed, the way we used to swear in the army. “Get that one; it’s got the best gun.”
That one was what they called a Hurtworlds special, a technical built on the chassis of a pickup truck. It had armor plating, a cow-catcher plate, rugged wheels half as tall as I was, and a .50 cal machine-gun mounted on top of the cab. I gave in, dickered with the stargends, got a good price on the rental, and drove it back to the St. Clare. After Mittel Trevoyvox, I felt confident driving a diesel. This one was sluggish to handle, but I liked the power of the engine, even in a high gear. You just don’t get that with electric vehicles.
The St. Clare stood like a beached plesiosaur on a piece of desert, nothing in sight except some warehouses. Irene paced outside the ship, impatiently awaiting our return. She had not wandered off to get fucked up.
Instead, she had—
“Bought the entire freaking spaceport?” I said, gaping at the small mountain of boxes and suitcases on the ground.
“It’s for Pippa,” Irene pointed at boxes. “Clothes, shoes, electronics, chocolate and dried fruits, protein snacks, medicines, a camp bed, a high-end holobook with an AI assistant—”
“How much was all this?” I checked the Uni-Ex Shipping corporate account on my phone as I spoke. Justin’s payment had not yet gone through. I didn’t expect that for another couple of days. “A hundred KGCs?”
“Only twenty-five,” Irene snapped.
“Well, we’re down a hundred.” Mary, back on Ponce de Leon, must have made some withdrawals.
Irene scowled against the sunlight. She was all ready to go, wearing desert camo pants and a visored cap, carrying her rifle. “What are you riled up about? I thought we were here to help Pippa.”
In that moment I knew for sure that I couldn’t take Irene with me. She may not be consciously planning to harm Pippa … but this egregious overcompensation betrayed her intentions. She was planning to steal the TrZam 008, by force if necessary, and make it up to Pippa by giving her presents.
“OK,” I said. “This was a good thought, Irene. Thanks.” I heaved a crate from the Human Food Emporium into the back of the technical. Irene had also brought out my backpack, water and food for the drive, and our portable HF radio. We could use that here, as there were no shady radio blocking protocols in effect. She had thought of everything. I already felt bad about leaving her behind. But I just couldn’t trust her.
Who did that leave?
I found Martin not far away, basking in the sun behind a rise that sheltered him from the wind. The lump in his midsection had shrunk some, and no longer twitched, to my relief.
“You’re with me,” I said. “So’s MF.” I’d never taken the bot on a field trip before, but he was the one who knew where we were going. Besides, I didn’t have any other options.
“Woohoo!” MF cried. “All aboard!” He swung himself up into the technical. “Come on, Marty!”
“I’m not done digesting,” Martin complained.
“Stay like that, and Shift back when we get there.” Crap. I was stuck with the python and the robot. This was not going to go well. Ignoring Irene’s confused stare, I strode over to Dolph. He had collapsed into twitchy stasis on the lowest rung of the airlock ladder, smoking yet another cigarette. My shadow fell on him. “You sure?”
“I already said I’m not going.”
For a second, looking down at him, I suspected him of fucking this up on purpose. Fucking himself up on purpose, so I couldn’t make him go. He had to know that without him, I was much less likely to succeed. But no—Dolph didn’t calculate things like that. He just didn’t want any part of this.
“Why aren’t you going?” Irene said to him.
Dolph didn’t answer, and neither did I. She had eyes in her head, didn’t she? But in some ways, Irene was oddly naïve. She wouldn’t notice that someone was tweaking unless they overdosed at her feet. I turned to her. “You’re not going, either.”
She tensed. “No way. I’m not staying here. This is it! This is why we came!” She flung out a hand at Martin and MF, waiting in the technical. “You’re taking those two jokers, instead of me? Give me a break!”
Dishonesty put a bad taste in my mouth. I reached for a good reason she had to stay. “Don’t forget about the Travellers. There might be more of them here. We have no way of knowing how far they’ve infiltrated the Hurtworlds Authority. So your job is to keep the barrels of the Gausses clean, so that if necessary, we can perforate their asses.”
She searched my face to see if I might change my mind. Saw that I wasn’t going to. “You’re the captain.” She kicked Dolph out of the way and climbed the ladder.
I heaved the rest of the stuff into the technical, angry with myself for deceiving her, angry with her for trying to deceive me. What was happening to our crew?
“Hurry up!” MF chirruped, bouncing in the passenger seat of the technical. “Let’s get rolling!”
19
I drove for an hour, across stony desert dotted with spaceships and refueling facilities, all veiled by the dust and sand blowing on the wind. Martin slept in the back, coiled around the jerrycans. MF, beside me, babbled about how pretty this planet had been a thousand years ago. At last we reached the spaceport perimeter. It was a rusty double fence festooned with warning signs. Soldiers manned the only gate to be seen for miles.
On other Hurtworlds, the Hurtworlds Authority provides its own spaceport security, but Yesanyase Skont is a human planet, so here it’s the army. I appraised the young grunts on guard duty as inexperienced, sloppy, and overconfident. They rolled around the technical on offroad segways, each one shimmering with a force field that surrounded the rider and would stop bullets.
“What’s up,” I said, leaning out of the cab with a big smile. “Hot enough for you?”
“Where ya going?”
“The camps.”
“What’s your business out there?”
I indicated MF. “Got this bot I’m fixing to sell.”
“You work for the HA?”
“That’s right,” I lied.
“Gotta see your ID, sir.”
I gave them a carton of cigarettes and two bottles of Scotch.
“Obey the warning signs,” they said. “Don’t l
eave the road until you’re through the minefield.”
The barbed-wire gate swung open in front of us, and I drove though it.
Martin said from the back, “Is it just me, or have military standards gone downhill?”
“It’s always been like this,” I said. “But in my day, we wouldn’t have been caught dead on those segways.”
I was exaggerating to hide my dismay at the grunts’ lack of professionalism. The army—a division of the Fleet, organizationally speaking—draws its recruits from all planets that are signatories to the London Charter. Kids get a choice between doing two years of government service and going in the forces. Obviously, you get a different caliber of recruit depending on whether there’s a war on. Right now, we had been at peace for almost twenty years, and it disturbed me to see first-hand just how lax the infantry had got … even though it had worked in my favor.
The fence, the soldiers, and the segways vanished over the horizon. I drove along a worn-down streak across the desert. I was wearing my flak vest over a t-shirt and cargo pants. My sunglasses turned the desert sepia. Swaths of fossil seashells from a long-vanished ocean crunched under the wheels. Martin went back to sleep, while MF watched porn on a portable screen he had attached to the dashboard. At my request, he angled it out of my line of vision. The incongruity was just too much.
A square of sunlight fell through the hole cut in the roof for the .50 cal gunner. It moved across the seats, centimeter by centimeter, as Yesanyase Skont’s long day dragged on. At nightfall MF took the wheel, and I slept in the back with my head pillowed on Martin’s coils. The next morning, the desert looked exactly the same, except that we could now see the blue peaks of distant mountains.
Irene radioed us on the HF. “Dolph went off somewhere,” she said.
“Did he say where?”
“No.”
“That’s helpful.” Worry festered in my heart.
“Also, some HA people came out to the ship this morning.”
“And?”
“They asked about Mittel T. Wanted to know what we were doing there.”
Dirty Job Page 11
