John Rankine - Dag Fletcher 01

by The Ring of Garamas

  Working round to the downtown area, where a car for a run outside the city could be hired without question, he took his lush Semite into an actualities arena. On the huge oval stage the 3-D projections were working diligently through a complicated orgy sequence that would have had De Sade clapping his hands with childlike glee.

  Fletcher said, “Do you notice anything?”

  “What am I supposed to look at, Harree? Ees eet som special trick you laike me to remembaire in case we make love? Thees ees a naice new side to your nature. I thought you Earthmen were prunes.”

  “Not on the stage. Round about.”

  “Menee Scotians.”

  “That’s so. This would draw them in. Like setting a jam pot for wasps.”

  Three metres off a Scotian turned slowly in his seat and stared at Xenia; a satanshape for any Walpurgis night. His face was a set mask with a dribble of thin liquid from the corners of the mouth. He had obviously suspended disbelief and was getting his catharsis in the best tradition of dramatic art, but something had disturbed concentration.

  Fletcher put his arm casually round the girl and walked her away towards a refreshment buffet.

  He said, “There’s a thing. They can give you a new contour, but they can’t alter your metabolism. That one had picked up your high-grade, thermal agitation. You should be kept strictly on ice. We must remember that. Scotians have long range radar for little, hot-blooded females.”

  “But not Earthmen, Harree? How do you get to be so cold and calculating?”

  “It’s just a knack.”

  “Knack? What ees thees ‘knack’?”

  “Never mind. Maybe I’ll let you see it sometime.”

  “Don’t trifle with a defenceless girl, Harree.”

  It was all good knockabout stuff, but Fletcher reckoned they ought to get on before she reached out for a custard pie.

  They circulated slowly for the far exit and picked up a shuttle from the rank. Xenia did some quick dialling on the auto setter and they sat in the rumble under an observation dome.

  Every architectural style in the Galaxy had been tried out in Kristinobyl. Out of the centre, which was being redeveloped as tower cores with plug-in capsules on a basic lattice, there was a time gap in every suburb. Heavy mastabas in the traditional Garamasian style, blank to the street, with a maze of alleys in the rear; slender Fingalnan accommodation units like minarets; even a quarter of bizarre, black and white cottages with twisted chimney stacks. They had tried to be all things to all men.

  Outside city limits, they crossed a belt of mauve erichthonius, spread out below like an embroidered cloth. They were in the flight lane for the nearest city to the capital, the manufacturing centre Bunomion, twenty kilometres distant and concealed by a low range of hills.

  Conscious that any general duty car would be monitored Fletcher said, “What’s at Bunomion, then? Do we want to spend our golden hours looking at Garamasian-style industry?”

  “There ees som leetle park over the hill. Veray prettee. We can walk about and you can hold my hand.”

  As if on cue, the car rose ten metres to clear a spur and planed down into a parking lot, with a long streamer banner bearing a legend in gobbledegook Garamasian, which was already two-thirds full of private, family shuttles. Close by the terminal, there was an entertainment area and a milling crowd of Garamasian children moved jerkily through sequences leading to the illusion of having a carefree time.

  Outside the air-conditioned car, they were struck by a wave of heat as though opening the door of a furnace.

  Xenia said, “The car will wait two hours for us. So we must watch the time. Otherwise eet ees som long walk back, I guess.”

  She led off at a brisk walk for the open heath.

  Narrow paths crisscrossed the reserve. From the flank of the hill, they could look down to a natural lake, maybe a kilometre long and half that broad. The mauve erichthonius plant, which was the standard growth on every open space on Garamas ran down to the water’s edge. More mature citizens were finding simple pleasures under the sun, dotted here and there on the grass in entwined units of two. In this enclave, sexual inequality was in abeyance.

  In the centre of the lake was a small, irregular-shaped island, heavily wooded with pale yellow cycads.

  Electric power boats were weaving about in silence, as though drawn by underwater cables.

  In fact, silence was the dominating feature on the set. Remembering Coney Island play areas on Earth planet, Fletcher told himself that the Garamasian ethnic type was way ahead on some counts. Close your eyes and you could imagine you were alone. Which was how many, no doubt, were playing their tape.

  He checked it out and stumbled over a small rock.

  Xenia said, “What ees eet, Harree? Does eet worree you to be alone with me in this Venusberg?”

  “It worries me to know why we’re here. Any clandestine meeting around here would be strictly for one end and that non-political and do you have to go on calling me ‘Harree’, when any pick-up would have to be mounted in a bluebell?”

  Xenia looked hurt. “I have to get eento the part. You don’t appreciate me. Do you think I laike spending an afternoon with a great, cold Earthworm? We walk along by the shore. Then we must cross to the island. That ees where they meet. At night thees place ees veray busee. All leet up with coloured lights and they have fireworks. Eet was not so easy then, I can tell you.”

  He could imagine it. Working alone in the semi-dark, liable to be taken as fair game by any pleasure seeker, she must have needed an iron nerve.

  He said, “I take it back. Call me ‘Harree’ as much as you think necessary. How do we get across as of now?”

  “We sweem.”

  Fletcher thought, “Ask a silly question and you get a silly answer,” but it was clearer as they followed the edge of the lake. Heavily indented with tiny coves, it was a natural for semi-private bathing parties. Four hundred metres of picking a devious path through preoccupied couples and they made out to a narrow promontory which ran towards the island.

  When they reached its tip, Xenia kicked off her sandals and dabbled her feet in the water.

  A Garamasian pair, who had been swimming and were drying off in the tropical heat, looked at them with blank, incurious stares. Xenia, who had the Fingalnian unconcern about nudity, stared back. Fletcher, even after recent conditioning, felt a prickle of discomfort under his mask.

  Xenia said, “Harree, thees water ees lovelee. We should take a sweem.”

  If it was a handout for Garamasian ears, the obsidian eye disks showed no interest. Ongoing action gave the text a running illustration. Xenia had her tabard off and was wriggling athletically out of minimal apricot briefs before Fletcher could get a warning past his epiglottis.

  He need not have worried. Skin treatment in a pale coffee tan had been carried out on a full-figure basis and when she turned round to say, “Hurree, Harree,” he could see that frontal treatment had been engineered by the same careful hand. She was still European on all counts.

  Dag Fletcher took a moment off to consider that in all the vagaries of service commitment, he had not been on any more bizarre mission and wondered where along the line he could have made a stand.

  Certainly not at this point. He left his city gent’s outfit in a tidy pile and followed slowly into the water.

  It was clear and warm shelving rapidly to a uniform two-metre depth, where the mauve plant-life gave way to glass-smooth green clay and outcrops of white marble. He caught up with Xenia and swam alongside.

  “I take it your dye stays fast.”

  “Eet needs som special solvent to take eet off. Just relax Harree and enjoy yourself.”

  She flicked a palm-sized gobbet of lake water into his open mouth and dived like an eel. Fletcher whacked down hard on her neat buttocks before they disappeared and dived in pursuit.

  He found her on a white plinth, a drowned figurine with black hair floating up in a spiral eddy and for a count of three, they considered e
ach other, faces only centimetres apart. He was getting a new slant on the Fingalnan psyche. At least this example of it. Group judgements were always wrong. Maybe there was no such animal as the national type, beloved of sociometrics. Only individuals. Eyes looking out on the world as his own did.

  Though even conceding that, you had to admit that Scotians were all of a piece. But then they were specially trained for the military role, like Spartans of another age and they hardly classified as human.

  Something had been left out of the biological kit.

  All this camaraderie and tough professionalism of Xenia’s now? Good qualities, but how would she rate as an individual? Where would her loyalties finally lie? To a friend or to the system?

  For that matter his own position was left with a question mark at the centre. In the last analysis, he would be hard put to it to know which way he would choose between individual values and the I.G.O. code which he had accepted on oath.

  Overhead, the surface was a corrugated aluminium roof. Xenia grinned showing even, white teeth and launched herself upwards, brushing his face with satin-smooth thighs. Then she settled down to a steady, purposeful crawl.

  When he caught up again, she said, “Well, Harree, you will just have to wait and see what I do. Let us hope we nevaire have to make thees choice.”

  It was clear enough that water was no barrier to communication. She had followed its private argument at least on the main count.

  On the island, heavy vegetation ran down to the water line. It had been planted out to be a landscape feature in the lake. They crawled ashore into a hot yellow twilight and two metres from the lake could stand erect, screened from the shore.

  Again, he marvelled that she had come here alone in the dark. Whatever else, she had formidable will power. Silversilk over steel.

  Currently, professionalism was raising its head. There was no element of banter, when she said shortly,

  “Thees way,” and led into the wood.

  It was a trim back to follow through any grove and the pay off came as an anticlimax.

  Twenty metres on she stopped dead and he had to fend off from smooth shoulders, slippery with sweat.

  Dead ahead was an overgrown clearing. Instead of a gothic folly, which would have fitted the script, the complex of small buildings in the centre was square and functional. Angle-framed with grey corrugated cladding. A two-floor oblong in the centre, with lean-to extensions on every face. The nearest was partly glazed and filled with a jumble of empty seed trays.

  Xenia said, “I observed eet for som time. Eet ees always emptee at thees hour. Later the park workers prepare for firework deesplay on the lake.”

  Fletcher felt very vulnerable. Every military precept told him that he should have fire cover at his back before crossing an open space. But Xenia was already running lightly for the nearest blank wall.

  So far, it was as she said. Ear to the hot cladding he listened for a count of ten. Nothing stirred. He nodded and they went on.

  Round the far side, there was a paved slipway and the square transom of a long boat lying on chocks on an eight-wheeled trolley poked out from the miniature jungle.

  Double-leaf doors, with deep ventilation louvres gave access to the building. Xenia went further on to a small window set high in the wall. It was obvious what she intended and Fletcher stood with his back to it and made a stirrup to lift her over his head.

  She was feather light. Close enough to see the fine grain of her skin and check out an identity symbol in the soft crease of her groin, a small star-shaped silver mole which had not reacted to the dye treatment.

  Then he was alone for half a minute, until she had made her way through the inside to open the main door.

  Round aluminium bins were stacked in tiers. A long work bench was littered with card cylinders, where the park staff had been preparing for the evening session. Boxes of finished fireworks stood ready for loading on the boat. On one wall, a framework made up for a finale tableau was leaned in metre wide sections for easy handling.

  In the centre, an open aluminium ladder led aloft to top deck. Xenia signalled for up, with an expressive forefinger and mounted the narrow treads like any cat.

  Fletcher followed more slowly. Long habit of weighing a situation in military terms made him cautious.

  There was no escape route. If she had miscalculated the time or some eager beaver groundsman appeared early for his stint, they would be cut off.

  Xenia had shoved away a hinged trap with a nice contraction of gluteal muscle for the chore. Head level with the back of her knees, he heard her quick intake of breath, before she was plucked through the hole.

  There was no time to make a judgement. He was heaving himself after her with a total mobilization of power, before he could decide whether the true strategy would have been to get out, while there was half a chance.

  He whipped up into a dim light. There could have been a circle of patient fishers round the seal hole, but in fact there had been only one, a short, barrel-chested Laodamian, ungainly in a gavotte, but custom built for this exercise. Xenia had clamped herself to his chest like a poultice and was in process of being choked. Only frenetic rolling of the head had stopped the man finding the right pressure point.

  Fletcher took him behind, chopping into his thick neck with linked hands. Even then it was touch and go whether the fingers on Xenia’s windpipe answered the blacked out brain before they had done their work.

  Fletcher kept the composite bundle upright and prised them loose one at a time. She fell away and for his money could be dead. His immediate problem was how to make a lasting impression on a smooth hairless head with the thickest bone structure in the galaxy, a flat spread nose of pure gristle and deeply recessed eye sockets.

  A Laodamian. That figured. As well as being ahead on mind control techniques, they were as suggestible as Pavlov’s dog. Once talked into it, they had a tolerance for long vigils that would send any other human type cafard. He backed his zombie to the nearest wall and slammed its head on a handy cross-girder.

  Xenia lay where she had dropped. Before he went near, he checked round the set.

  It was stacked with metre-cube crates with only a rough, clear oblong round the stair head. Along one wall there was evidence that some unpacking had been done. Maybe units had been assembled and despatched elsewhere. An overhead hoist powered by a small linear motor running on a T-beam led to a sliding panel on the rear outer wall and showed how the gear had been swung in. Heavy merchandise at that. It could not have been imported without the say-so of many Garamasian officials.

  On the other hand, the island maintenance centre was a good cover. Consignments of powder would be regularly shipped across.

  He followed round every wall and walked through every alley between the rows of crates. There was nobody else. They were alone. Or he was alone. He went back to the stairhead and knelt down beside the girl.

  Some cynic had said that the most frightening thing in his book was the false complacency of a sleeping face. Xenia’s was smooth and regular as a mask. He straightened her out and put his ear to her chest.

  There was a precise and regular beat.

  Lying beside the nearer crates was a low bed on trestles covered with rugs. She would be more comfortable on that while he took a look at what the crates held.

  Skin was warm and resilient. Hands and feet very delicate. When he put her down, he spent a minute arranging her borrowed hair in a symmetrical fan and leaned over with a hand on either side of her head.

  He imagined her without the make-up. A very remarkable piece of biological engineering. The small, silver princess of a Scandinavian folk tale, unexpectedly made flesh; but tough as high-tensile steel.

  She spoke without opening her eyes and he knew she had been conscious for some time, long enough, anyway, to beam in on that last thought sequence. “You killed the dragon, too, Harree. You should claim the standard reward. Or does your Earth type sense of proprietee rule eet out?”


  Fletcher knew he was dodging a decision which would have to be faced again, “As of now, we have work to do. Get yourself out of bed and check out the gorilla. See if he has anything useful. I’ll open a crate and take a look. Hurry it up. There’s a time line on that car. Also, in spite of your delightful company, I’d like to get some clothes on.”

  “I can see that might begeen to worree you. But I am broadminded. You don’t have to mind about me.”

  “Just get a wriggle on.”

  In the end it was Xenia who became anxious about the time. Having nothing to do except watch, she was more conscious of it.

  Working quickly and methodically Fletcher opened six crates in turn, carefully repacking every item as he finished with it, storing away detail in his mind and getting Xenia to look at pieces of equipment which her memory could help to identify.

  In the end, he was satisfied. Without knowing precisely the form of the finished product, he could say that over the six crates there was enough duplication to build three sets. At a rough count there would be thirty crates.

  Whatever it was, had a short range and needed repeaters or numerous broadcast points.

  Eyes unfocused in speculation, he found he was looking at Xenia across a small mound of equipment.

  She was squatting unselfconsciously, knees apart with a straight back, a powerful retinal image that had made its impact like a subliminal stimulus. Suggestion below the threshold of consciousness. That was what the equipment was all about.

  “What ees eet, Harree? Have you feeneeshed with thees? We must go.”

  “You gave me an idea.”

  “There’s no time now. You had your chance. Even thees Earth type feection does not offaire a reward twice’”

  “You have a one-track mind Xenia. Get this stuff back. I have something to do down below.”

  When she joined him, he had the Laodamian crumpled realistically at the foot of the ladder. Like Elpenor, on another island, he had clearly missed his footing and taken a short cut to oblivion.