Vigilant lop-3

by James Alan Gardner

  Making the report only took a few minutes. High-speed downloading. When I opened my eyes, Festina was perched in the chair where Iranu had been, toying with the invitation card he’d left.

  "Thinking of going to the funeral?" I asked. "When is it?"

  She tossed me the card. I caught it… then found myself thinking how I hoped Festina noticed what a smooth deft catch it was.

  Sure. Trying to impress her with my athletic ability. What was I, a guy? Read the card, Faye.

  THE FAMILY OF THE LATE KOWKOW IRANU

  INVITE YOU TO REMEMBER HIS SPIRIT

  AND CELEBRATE THE GIFT OF HIS LIFE…

  My eye skipped over the blah-blah-blah, past the date/time to a tiny inscription at the very bottom.

  (EVENT PRESENTED BY DIGNITY MEMORIALS,

  A PROUD MEMBER OF THE IRANU GROUP)

  Trust the Freeps to put advertisements, even on funeral invitations…

  Wait a second. Dignity Memorials? The folks who sent androids to lug Ooloms out of our mass grave? Two dozen androids went down the ancient "mine" where we’d stored the corpses…

  Except it wasn’t a mine; it had to be another Green-strider bunker. And the Iranu group sent androids into that bunker… to do what?

  What was down there?

  Addendum to Proctor’s Report, I sent out through my link-seed. Urgently recommend that authorities investigate a site near Sallysweet River…

  I stopped. My transmission felt like shouting into a pillow. Jammed. Cut off from the world-soul.

  Not again.

  I had time to shout, "Dipshits!" Then a stun grenade crashed through the window.

  Lucky me — I was already lying down.

  NANO SLUDGE

  Another hangover headache. I rated this one a honking great 7.2 — either I’d got hit with more stun power than’the last time, or I was slipping out of shape. There’s a downside to not getting blind drunk at least once a week.

  This time, my hands were lashed up behind my back: one of those plastic slide-ties, cheap, common, unbreakable. The only way to get the blasted thing off was to cut it.

  Of course, that brought to mind the scalpel in my purse… except that I wasn’t wearing my purse anymore. Big surprise. The dipshits were chumps, but not quite so witless as to leave me an obvious weapon. At least they hadn’t stripped me buck naked… which I’d half expected, considering how Mouth in particular had a love for the melodramatic. Thank God, the Muscle was around to keep things on a more professional kidnapper-kidnappee basis.

  Forget that now, Faye. Assess the situation.

  All I could see at the moment was a blank wall, painted forest green, bang in front of my nose. I was lying on something soft, a bed with musty unaired blankets. When I tried to roll away from the wall, I bumped into something thud behind me; after some wiggling, I got myself turned enough to see Festina lying on the bed too. She was unconscious but her breathing sounded healthy — just stunned harder than I was, because she’d been closer to the window.

  Speaking of windows, there was one not far from the foot of the bed. Our kidnappers had stashed us in a smallish but comfortable room, not so different from the hotel room at the guest home: a nancy-pine dresser, a frilly little table and chair, windows on two walls. The windows had slat-shutters closed over the outside, and the window glass had been set to frost-opaque; still, sunlight managed to sneak its slatty-frosty way in. The whole bedroom had that "afternoon-nap" feel, darkened but not dark. In other circumstances, it might have come off as a fair cozy ambience… if my head hadn’t felt crawling-full of beetles.

  So? Get the obvious over with.

  World-soul? I called on my link-seed. No response.

  Peacock? Nothing there either.

  Festina and I were on our own.

  I nudged her with my knee. She didn’t react; and now that I moved my legs, I realized they were hobbled up with a short strap of plastic, ends cuffed around my ankles leaving a stretch of half a meter between. Enough to let me shuffle like a person in leg irons, but no chance of kicking any more knees to splinters.

  Pity.

  The door opened. My old friends, Mouth and Muscle, swaggered in… which means the Muscle swaggered, while the Mouth only managed a swaggery-staggery limp. His one leg was locked stiff, though the knee cast was hidden by his uniform.

  "Surprised to see us again?" the Mouth asked.

  "Not under the circumstances," I told him.

  "But you didn’t expect us to be hanging close to the guest home," he gloated. "You walked straight in without the slightest suspicion. And we knew you’d end up there eventually; you had to come back to Sallysweet River, and we were waiting, tapped into the police database. As soon as you filed your report, we knew where you were."

  "You knew I’d head back to Sallysweet River?" I sure as sweat hadn’t intended to see the place again — not with pictures of Dads staring out from every shop marquee.

  "We couldn’t be certain you’d come," the Muscle said before the Mouth thought up another boast. "But when you got away from the smuggler’s house, Sallysweet River was the closest place you might run. And the safest place for us to wait for you. Your home in Bonaventure has cops all around it."

  "If you picked up my latest report," I said, "you know the peacocks are gone. So there’s no earthly reason for you to keep after me."

  "Come on," the Mouth scoffed, "you think we believed that crap you told your bosses? Lovey-dovey Sperm-tails reunited after three thousand years, then vanishing into the sunset? Sperm-tails are physical phenomena, not conscious beings."

  I wished the peacocks were still around. They could have transported this clot-head into an active volcano.

  "My report was the truth," I said. "It doesn’t matter whether you believe it."

  "It doesn’t matter whether you believe it," the Muscle answered, dead calm. "As we’ve said before, Ms. Smallwood, with that link-seed in your brain, your thoughts may not be your own. Enemy powers may have implanted false experiences into your mind, to sow disinformation with the Admiralty."

  Enemy powers? Disinformation? Christ Almighty. What fairy-tale universe were these guys living in?

  "When Admiral Ramos wakes up," I said, "she’ll confirm everything I reported."

  "So what?" the Mouth sneered. He did love to sneer, that boy. "Ramos is hardly a reliable witness. She’s always been openly hostile toward her superiors. For all we know, she may be the one plotting insurrection — using you as a pawn to shake public confidence in the fleet. Not to mention the navy’s confidence in itself. After all, how can we trust starship security if any of our Sperm-tails could be telepathic aliens, tapping into the minds of fleet personnel?"

  Fleet personnel with minds? These guys were living in a fairy tale. "So I suppose we’re back where we started," I said. "You want to rip open my brain, hack inside, blah-blah-blah."

  "That’s the only way to be sure," Muscle replied. "If Ramos has been filling your head with false input, we’re doing you a favor finding out."

  "Some favor," I muttered. "I’ve got a better idea. Suppose I show you real evidence."

  The Mouth gave a beady-eyed glare. "What do you mean?"

  "Are we still close to Sallysweet River?" I asked.

  "A tourist chalet on the outskirts of town," Mouth replied. "It’s secluded, the owners aren’t home, and the security system was a joke."

  "Then I’ll show you a Greenstrider bunker," I said. "Just minutes away. And I’ll bet it’s the bunker where the Peacock kept his headquarters three thousand years ago. The best place on the planet to find peacock information."

  "If you mean the bunker by Lake Vascho," Muscle said, "it’s still crawling with police."

  "No," I told him, "this is different. Once the Peacock fused with that Greenstrider, he dug bunkers all over Great St. Caspian — maybe to house his people, maybe just decoys, I don’t know. But I’ve figured out where the real central headquarters was… and I didn’t mention it in my report."

&
nbsp; "Why not?" the Mouth asked.

  I looked back and forth between them, wondering if I should tell the truth — that I’d just doped out the solution a moment before they attacked. No. The truth was too innocent. These chumps were only going to believe something sordid.

  "This site is the mother lode," I said, hushing down my voice. Mom-Faye telling goblin stories to the tots. "In the Greenstrider war, how do you think the Peacock kept charge of his tribe? How do you think he intended to make ‘peace’ with enemy factions?"

  Muscle looked at Mouth. Mouth looked at Muscle. "Weapons?" the Mouth asked.

  "What else could it be?" I lowered my voice more. "Think about it: after the Peacock locked up Xe, why did he keep cooling his heels on Demoth for thousands of years? Especially since it was centuries between the last strider dying and the first Ooloms showing up to colonize. Why did the Peacock hang around, with nothing to Ride but leaners and siren-lizards?"

  I waited for them to make a guess. They didn’t. Unimaginative sods. "Because," I finally said, "the Peacock couldn’t leave for fear of the League! He was every bit the murderer Xe was. They were two of a kind, making weapons to slaughter each other’s people. The only difference is, Xe beat my Peacock to the punch; she cobbled together her germ factory, after which everything else meant bugger-all. But the Peacock’s whole arsenal is still intact. Practically under our feet. When I show you this bunker, I guarantee you’ll find a whole slew of goodies you can commandeer for the Admiralty."

  "Why should we believe you?" the Mouth asked. Not "I don’t believe you." He damned well wanted to believe; he just needed an excuse.

  "Because I don’t want you prying my brain open," I replied. "And because it’s dick-easy for you to check whether I’m telling the truth."

  "How do you know about this place?" the Muscle asked… just as eager to believe as Mouth was. The two must be panting-desperate for something to show their superiors; they’d screwed up and given the Admiralty a bad name, not just on Demoth but on every planet that hated the idea of military bullyboys running roughshod over civilians. The High Council had bailed Mouth and Muscle out of jail because admirals are obliged to stand by their people… but my captors were in deep dip-shit with their bosses, and finding a cache of high-tech goodies would go a long way toward saving their rumps.

  "I’ve known about this place for a long time," I lied. "You’ve checked my reports. How did we learn about Maya in the first place? Because she wanted Chappalar to help her get an excavation permit. But why did she care about a permit? She and Iranu were already working plenty of sites illegally — they didn’t mind breaking laws when they were hot on the scent. So why was a permit important this time?"

  I waited. Neither Mouth nor Muscle had a guess. Christ, when I made up stories for the kids, they always had a guess.

  "Maya needed a permit," I said, "because she wanted to work a site in a reasonably public place. Somewhere folks would see her coming and going, and wonder what she was up to. Her letter to Chappalar said the site was owned by Rustico Nickel… and the only mine that fits all the criteria is a place I know, out on the edge of town."

  "You never told anyone about this?" the Muscle asked.

  "A smart woman always keeps an ace in the hole."

  The Mouth gave a short chuckle… and it galled me to hear how it was tinged with admiration. "You’re a shark, Ms. Smallwood. I knew you couldn’t be the goody-goody you pretended. Not with your previous history."

  Bastard.

  Mouth put a hand on his partner’s arm and drew him back toward the door. They both went outside to discuss their next step. Me, I didn’t even try to overhear what they were saying — I was too dazed, half by the rampaging headache banging the inside of my skull, and half by the words that’d come out of my mouth on the spur of the moment.

  Why had it taken me so long to figure out what Maya’s letter meant? The story I told the dipshits had completely nailed the explanation; she wanted to investigate a bunker that was so public she knew she’d need a permit. The only possible site was the mine where we’d buried the Ooloms during the epidemic.

  I’d gone down that mine dozens of times playing little-girl Explorer, and had never found bugger-all. But that was before we’d filled the tunnel with corpses, and some drunk touched off a gas explosion. What did the kaboom open up? What had the Dignity Memorial androids seen the day they carried out the dead?

  Iranu senior must have suspected they’d find something; that’s why the Iranu group sent the androids in the first place. But our local authorities had closed up the shaft as soon as the bodies were removed, to make sure no more little-girl Explorers risked their lives down there. After that, no archaeologist, Maya or the Iranus, could do much around the place without attracting attention. Maybe a few forays in the middle of the night, but even that was risky — in a town full of miners, people working odd shifts might well go for a stroll at four in the morning.

  Which is why Maya needed a permit. I should have figured that out long ago.

  As for what I said about the Peacock — that he’d made weapons, that he didn’t dare leave Demoth, that my noble protector was as much a murderer as Xe…

  I thought of that moment beside Lake Vascho, snow falling thick, when the Peacock appeared gloomy as a ghost above the water.

  "What are you?" I asked.

  Botjolo.

  Cursed.

  Damned.

  The Mouth and the Muscle came back into the room. They looked as iron-jawed serious as ever, but now it seemed put on — as if they were gleeful little boys pretending to be rough-tough customers. The dipshits were all bubbles, now that they saw a chance to get out of the Admiralty’s bad books: open the Peacock’s bunker, find tech that would dazzle the High Council. For all Mouth’s talk about Festina planting disinformation in my brain, neither of these pissheads believed their own conspiracy theories; they’d just been grasping at straws till I offered them something better — a whole bale of hay.

  "We’ll go to this bunker," the Mouth said. "Tonight, after dark. And you’d better not be lying."

  "I’m not," I replied. "Can you handle a Class 2 security lock? The Mines Commission bolted a steel cap-shack over the entrance to the bunker… like a hut sitting plunk on the tunnel mouth, and you have to open the door before you can head down. Of course," I added, "if you can’t open the lock, I can do it myself with one call to the world-soul. Any door the government locks, the Vigil can unlock."

  "That won’t be necessary," the Muscle said, giving me a "How stupid do you think we are?" look. "We can open any lock up to a Class 5."

  "In our sleep," the Mouth added, never one for a simple statement when he could twist it into a brag. "And speaking of sleep…" He drew a stun-pistol and aimed it at me. "Nighty-night."

  In the last second, I pictured my fist connecting with his face. Maybe the image would give me sweet dreams.

  Clawing myself awake was harder the second time — like a trick I’d forgotten how to do. I kept fumbling to get it right, then flopping back into blackness.

  When I finally managed to grapple up to consciousness, I fiercely regretted it. It’s flat-out amazing how many ways you can feel god-awful at the same time — the hammer-thud headache, the rock-in-your-gut nausea, the scritchy-knife stab in your bladder. Festina had told me the average stun-blast put you out for six hours… which meant I’d gone twelve hours with no water, no bathroom break, and damned if I could remember the last time I’d eaten. Not that I wanted to eat; the thought of food brought me close to the heaves. But my body was running toward empty on blood sugar, and I felt like a mashed dog turd.

  "Guys!" I shouted. At least it rasped like a shout in my croaking throat, and sounded loud to my headachy ears. I rolled onto my back and tried again. "Guys! Come on!"

  Seconds crept by. As I lay staring at the ceiling, I could see the room was dark again. Night. Festina lay beside me, still breathing but now with a sandpaper edge when she inhaled. I wondered how often
you could have a stunner frazzle your neural connections before you developed permanent nerve damage.

  "Peacock?" I whispered. Silence.

  Then Mouth and Muscle came through the door, and I tried not to sound whiny as I demanded a trip to the toilet.

  We’ll skip past the hot-cheek/hard-face indignity of pouring pee while two men watch and you’re bound hand and foot… except to say I was glad the Muscle was there. He kept the whole operation businesslike; unlike Mouth, who was precious near licking his lips with the urge to play lord-and-master games while I was manacled. Sick-minded toad. If I got a chance to break his other knee…

  Cherish that thought.

  After my one-woman show on the John, the dipshits gave me water and some protein jelly… all my stomach was likely to hold down. They were dash-ahead eager now to make for the bunker as soon as possible, but Festina was still out cold — put down hard by two heavy stun-blasts, and a willowy little thing compared to yours truly. Gymnasium-tough, but not hardened by boozing, brawling, boozing, brawling. The Muscle wouldn’t leave her behind unguarded and the Mouth refused to lug her unconscious body around the countryside. They began to whisper together in the far corner of the room; and with a cold jolt of dread, I knew they were debating whether to kill her.

  "Don’t be witless!" I snapped. "If you cork her in cold blood — if you even consider it seriously — the League will never let you off Demoth. Which means a heap of trouble, not just with the police; there’s a plague coming, and it’s going to be a vicious old bugger. You don’t want to be trapped and go Pteromic, just because you didn’t wait for someone to wake up."

  "Admiral Ramos is already infected," Mouth said. "Isn’t that right? So putting her down painlessly now is just a mercy killing."

  "Odds are that you’re infected too, you crazy buggers. You’ve been breathing our air, haven’t you? If you’re hot for a mercy killing, start with yourselves."

  Mouth turned away from me and whispered something to Muscle. Despite input from our esteemed Proctor Smallwood, the proposed homicide was still on the table, being discussed in committee.