Dirty Job
Page 16
“Nope.” It is hard for a snake to look distressed, but Martin managed it.
“She’s still in there?”
“MF tried to fetch her out …”
“I’m sure that helped. Couldn’t you at least have kept him away from her?” I flew to the forward bulkheads, and peered into a small square opening. “Pippa?”
When the Fleet officers came aboard, Pippa had squeezed into the cable trace that carried the electrical lines forward. And now she wouldn’t come out. Guess I wouldn’t, either, if I was her.
“You can’t stay in there forever,” Martin called over my shoulder. “There’s no fans in there! See, in freefall, air don’t circulate like it normally does, so you’re gonna end up in a pocket of CO2 from your own exhalations …”
“Marty,” I said, “go away.” I reached into the opening, breathing in the smell of hot insulation. Static cracked up my wrist as my fingers brushed the back of a small, bony hand clinging onto the lines. I tried to grab it, but she pulled back out of reach. “Pippa, please come out.” I flashed on memories of fights with Lucy, prying her out from under her bed. “If you come out and tell me what you need, I’ll see what I can do.”
No answer. I heard the lie in my own words. I couldn’t give Pippa what she needed, because what she needed was to not be dying of IVK. The same thing I needed my own self. I sucked on my bulb of coffee. Everything seemed futile.
“Is that coffee?” A tiny voice came from the cable trace.
“Yes,” I said. “Want some?”
“Is there anyone else there?”
I scanned the engineering deck. It was pretty cluttered, and dark besides. But it looked like Martin had taken my advice to make himself scarce. “No.”
Pippa floated out of the cable trace. Her hair stood out like needles from the static. A visible spark cracked between our hands. We both said “Ow” and laughed, breaking the tension. I edged her over to the nearest fan, to get some better air into her, and fed her my coffee.
“This is good,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
“Got more in the galley if you want.”
“Thank you … for everything.”
She trusted me. It gave me a good, warm feeling. “Think nothing of it.” The warm feeling faded as I thought about the news I was going to have to break to her.
“I remember this ship so well. I remember being on board with Jan and Leaf.”
Jan and Leaf. Her cousins. I had rescued them from Gvm Uye Sachttra along with her.
“Where are they now?” she said. “Do you know?”
“They received asylum on Ponce de Leon, but I don’t know exactly where they are now.” It ashamed me to admit that I hadn’t kept track of them. “I figure they’re in a resettlement center. They’ll be properly looked after. They’ll be going to school and everything.”
Pippa sighed, not a sad sigh, but a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad. As long as they’re safe, I can die happy.”
“You’re not going to die.” It came out automatically.
“Yes, I am. I have IVK.”
Not much I could say to that. I do too? That wouldn’t make it any easier for her. I could still return to Ponce de Leon, and she could not.
“Tell them that I love them,” she said, “and we will meet again. In—in Heaven. Will you tell them?”
She knew. She knew I couldn’t take her home with me. I felt relieved that I wouldn’t have to destroy her expectations, and then disgusted at myself for the relief.
“I’ll tell them,” I said gruffly. “Anything else you think of, write it down. Record a v-mail. I’ll give you a tablet. I’ll make sure they get it.”
“Thank you. I wish I could repay you somehow.”
I hesitated. We were floating side by side. The TrZam 008 floated in the air above Pippa’s chest. What-ifs tore at me. “You could let us examine that …”
Her hand closed around it. “No.”
“It’s special to you, huh?”
“It came from Old Gessyria. My grandmother told me to never let anyone else touch it.” She gulped. “I miss Gran so much. She’s the only family I had, apart from Jan and Leaf.”
“What about your other cousin?”
“What other cousin?”
“Rafael Ijiuto.”
There was a reaction, I was sure of it. She flinched at Ijiuto’s name. But she shook her head. “I don’t know who he is. I don’t know anything. I’m going to die without ever finding out why.”
That was exactly my own fear. I cursed myself for pushing too hard. I felt sure she knew more than she was saying, but she was only a kid. I’d try questioning her again when she was less stressed out and frightened.“Come on. Let’s get you into a bunk. I want you to recuperate the best you can. Watch a movie, write to your cousins. Eat. Rest.”
I took her to my own berth, via the toilet and the galley. My sheetbag was covered with animal hair. “Sorry about this,” I said, sniffing it. “I would change the sheets for you, but clean laundry is a luxury we don’t have on this ship.”
“In the camp, I didn’t even dare to go to sleep in case someone might steal my necklace. Anywhere is better than there.”
I showed her how to get inside the sheetbag and fasten the straps, so she would stay on the bunk instead of floating away. I showed her how to drink cocoa from a zero-gravity mug. I set her up with my holobook and some classic movies. We did have other things besides bestiality porn on board. Moving to the door, I hesitated. “I’m going to lock the door, Pippa. Don’t let anyone in unless you’re sure it’s me.”
“What if I need to go to the toilet again?”
“Then call me. This is the intercom. Push this button here and I’ll hear you anywhere on the ship.”
I floated up to the bridge to fetch Dolph.
Maybe Pippa had the answers I needed … or maybe she didn’t.
But I knew someone else who might.
27
“These things are sharp, huh?” I had made Zane Cole detach his hook. The end of his right arm was a flesh-toned polymer socket studded with synaptic connectors. I manipulated the blades with my hands like a pair of scissors, floating across from him in the lounge. Snip. Snip. I was cutting his Traveller coat up.
His eyes tracked the strips of leather through the air. “I got the hook on Valdivia. There’s more of a cybernetics market there than you would expect. Ranchers, farmers, mammoth herders—the casualty rate for those guys makes Travelling look safe.”
“So you had this rendezvous on Valdivia all planned out ahead of time.”
“Yup. I nulled my tats and hitched out there from Gvm Uye Sachttra with some stargends.”
“And Sophia was there.”
“We were supposed to meet in this little town on the Trevasse. You ever been there? It’s all grass, far as you can see. The mammoths look like herds of little brown hills sticking up out of it. You walk ten minutes away from the railway station, you’re lost to the universe. I bought the hook from the local clinic, spent a few days strung out on the anti-rejection meds, fighting off the tumbleweeds. Then she walks off the train, wearing a Diwali fashion wig and green contacts. She tells me the client got arrested. Basically, the whole job went to shit, because of you.”
“Our pleasure,” Dolph said. “Anytime.” He was hanging by his knees from the resistance machine, eating a smoked antelope sausage.
Zane watched him for a moment, judging whether he was going to get hit or not, and then went on. “When Sophia’s mad, she takes it out on whoever’s closest. You might have experienced that.”
“From time to time,” I said.
“She took my 5.56 and my hornet gun—”
“With the proximity fusing rounds?” Dolph said, cranking his eyebrows. “You don’t even have to aim? The hornets automatically fuse themselves into a shell if they get anywhere near a warm body?”
“I got the non-standard load. They fuse into buckshot, and the proximity sensors are good out to a meter.”
“Sophia can’t shoot for shit,” Zane said. “She don’t like anyone pointing it out, but it’s true. She didn’t want me coming with her. We got into it some. Then she rents a dirt bike and vanishes into the grass. About twelve hours after that, I wake up thinking I heard thunder. It was the sonic boom from a ship landing out there on the prairie.”
“You were expecting a pick-up?” I said.
“I wasn’t expecting it anymore, after the client got arrested. Couldn’t believe it—they came through. I packed my shit and headed out of town. You get these sickle blades on the sides of your front wheel, cut down the grass like a machete. I felt like a one-man combine harvester.” I remembered that Zane came from a Farmworld himself. Rodas, if I recalled correctly. This farm boy sure had come a long way. “I get to the location and there’s Sophia standing in the ship’s scorch zone. Starlight lighting everything up like day. I get off the bike, my feet are going squelch, squelch. She says, ‘Get in the fucking ship, just get in the fucking ship.’ She was so wired, I thought she was on drugs. Squelch, squelch. I thought they must have sprayed the scorch zone, you know? To stop the fires from spreading. Then I get in the ship, where it’s light, and I look at our feet and legs. Blood, man. Blood and ash to the fucking knee.”
“She killed the people who came to pick you up.” I closed the scissors on the floating sleeve of Zane’s coat. Snip.
“Yeah, man. All of them.”
“Who were they? Darkworlders?”
“I don’t know. Couldn’t exactly ask them, could I? They were dead.”
“Those hornet guns are badass,” Dolph said.
“Couldn’t you tell where the ship came from?”
“That was interesting. It had no markings. Arrowhead passenger cruiser, no cargo capacity, fifty square meters of crew space on top of fifty million gallons of water and a high-end drive. But I figure it came from the Darkworlds. It had the tankage. Got us all the way to Mittel Trevoyvox.”
“Wait,” I said. “Valdivia has a Fleet garrison. What were they doing all this time? Playing gin rummy?”
Zane shrugged. “Sophia didn’t let me on the bridge during takeoff and landing. Guess she spun them a story. Or she paid them off with some of the funds left over from the job.”
“I used to respect the Fleet,” Dolph said.
“Me, too,” Zane said.
I captured a handful of the strips I had cut off Zane’s coat and began knotting them together. “Why Mittel Trevoyvox?” I thought I already knew the answer to that, but I wanted to make sure.
Zane flushed. “That asshole Burden.”
“We met.”
“I think they went to school together.”
“Yeah, I got that vibe.” Burden probably had a Ph.D in economics or something. Useful for putting together a massive scam to defraud the Hurtworlds Authority.
“Sophia talked to him. He gave us a HA ship, some of his warm bodies. He’s got dozens of novices hanging out at that spaceport on Mittel T, living easy on payroll.”
“A few less, now,” Dolph said.
I shook my head. “Why would he do that for her? She’s the most-wanted woman in the Cluster. That’s a big risk to take …”
Zane started to laugh. I remembered how he’d laughed at me in the desert. This was like that. Helpless guffaws. His eyes actually got wet. “Un-fucking-believable. You got the girl and the device, and you still ain’t worked it out. That shit is revolutionary. It’s going to change everything. Right here on your spaceship, and you still don’t know …”
“So tell us.”
“Nope.”
I floated up closer to him. “I already took one of your hands. I could take the other one, too …”
I didn’t deliver the threat with enough conviction. Zane wiped his eyes with the forearm that ended in a stump. “Think you’re something, huh? Shifters. You can turn into an animal and bite a man’s hand off, and that makes you special. Riiiight. I’ll tell you this much. Y’all have had a good run, but your time is up. Things are about to change in the Cluster.” He stared at me and Dolph vengefully. “The Temple is going to come down, with you inside it.”
The Temple is what they call civilization. I had thought we might be able to deprogram Zane, break his allegiance to the Travellers, but I had been in too much of a hurry, or I hadn’t gone the right way about it. His hatred for us had grown roots too deep to come up in an afternoon.
I held up the rope I had knotted together from the strips of leather. “Question of the day, Dolph: How do you tie up a one-handed man?”
“Easy,” Dolph said. “Tie his other hand to his feet, and leave the stump free. He can’t do anything with it, after all.”
That’s what we were doing when we heard screams.
Pippa.
28
I flew out of the lounge like a bullet, leaving Dolph to finish securing Zane.
The door of my berth was open. What the heck? I’d locked it!
But MF had built this ship.
There was no lock on board he couldn’t open.
Braking with my feet on the edge of the door, I struggled to make sense of what I saw.
Pippa, still strapped into my bunk, bucked and screamed. Martin, in python form, coiled around her, sheetbag and all, pinning her arms— “It’s OK, honey, it’s OK! We ain’t gonna hurt you!”
MF blocked my view of Pippa’s head. His wirecutters attachment fumbled at her throat.
Something hit me on the back, knocking me into a somersault. I bounced off the floor. Crumbs of snack food and globules of coffee spun through the air. A black panther sprang at me, forepaws spread, muzzle wrinkled in a soundless snarl. Irene had been clinging to the ceiling, out of my line of sight. She’d dropped down on me panther-style. Even velveted, her paws felt like sandbags, clouting me on the head and shoulders, driving me back from the bunk.
While Dolph and I were busy in the lounge, the rest of them had got together and planned this … this betrayal.
I collided with MF. Wrapped my hand around a gripper. We both floated away from the bunk, while Pippa kept screaming like she was being tortured. The chain floated in another of MF’s grippers, with the TrZam 008 sliding off the end. I reached for it, but I wasn’t fast enough. MF retracted the gripper into his chassis, TrZam 008 and all. The material of his housing, which looked like brushed steel, was actually something unknown to human science—it melted open and closed again without leaving a visible seam.
Dolph flew into the room, gripping Zane’s hook like a knife.
“He’s gonna give it back!” Martin yelled. “No one’s gotta get hurt!”
“You—you fucking animals.” Dolph’s face wore a look of stunned fury I knew too well. It reminded me of his bottlenosed dolphin. It reminded me of Tech Duinn, where guys used to call him Psycho. He slashed at Martin with the hook.
Red human blood welled from the python’s hide, and joined the globules of cocoa in the air.
“Stand the fuck down!” I bellowed. “Y’all mad?”
Martin was too hurt and mad to listen. “Now you’re asking for it, dogface.” He coiled himself up and explosively uncoiled, like a spring, driving his head at Dolph. Few things in the animal kingdom equal the power of a python’s strike. The blunt black head hit Dolph in the ribs and hurled him into the wall, while Martin rebounded the other way.
Squeaking victoriously, MF flew out of the berth.
I tried to follow him. Irene got in my way, boxing me with her paws, growling. I instinctively tensed myself and hunched my shoulders, preparing to Shift.
Dolph came off the wall, wiping blood from his nose. His eyes narrowed into a murderous glare. He ripped his sweats off and threw them at Martin to tangle the python up, while his head lowered and his face began to lengthen.
Bloodlust surging through my body brought me to my senses, just in time. While Dolph and I remained hu
man, this was containable. If we Shifted, too, all bets would be off.
“Don’t Shift!” My yell came out as a lupine howl. My head was already changing shape. But I pulled my Shift. Reversed the process. Like aborting a spaceship launch halfway off the ground. Not really possible. But I could do it, and Dolph could, too. He shuddered, yelped, and reverted to human form.
Pippa had hidden in the gap under my bunk. Only her feet stuck out. She was sobbing in terror and shock.
“Shift back,” I said to Irene and Martin in a dangerously quiet voice. “Marty, you’re bleeding. Get a bandage on that.”
I flew out of the berth. I was going to space that robot. He had put them up to it. I was going to throw him out of the airlock and use him for target practice—
MF floated in the trunk corridor, grippers drifting limply. His neck drooped parallel to his housing. His optical sensors were dim, unseeing.
“MF?” I said uncertainly.
Had the TrZam 008 been … malware? Had it corrupted his operating system? Was he … dying?
He raised his eyes. Dull light flickered and steadied in them. His housing gaped. I got a glimpse of the organic-looking crags of components inside him, and then his gripper emerged with the TrZam 008 in it. “Here.”
As I reached for it, Pippa flew past me. She snatched the TrZam 008 like a feral cat snatching a mouthful of food. Her momentum carried her past him at an angle, She hit the floor and clung to a handhold.
“It is not what I thought it was,” MF said in a low voice.
“You mean all this has been for nothing?” Irene was right behind me, but I didn’t look around.
MF pointed a gripper at Pippa. “I advise killing this juvenile. But she already has IVK, so that is not necessary. I also advise destroying the device, but I am the only one who can read it, so that is not strictly necessary, either.”
“So what’s on it?” Irene demanded.
“Nothing good.”
“That’s not what I asked! Is it worth anything?”
“I have no doubt that certain humans would pay obscene amounts of money for this information. But it would destroy them. It would, in the end, destroy humanity. So I am not going to share it with you. In fact, I am going to delete it from my own memory.” MF’s eyes dimmed again for an instant. “There. I have retained only metadata. That is enough to assure me of the magnitude of the threat. Again, I advise the destruction of the device and the elimination of the juvenile.”