Masters of the Galaxy

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  “Vibes?”

  “Never mind. Just find a way to clumsily impart the information to her.”

  “Yes, Jake.” Then: “I’m sorry if I’ve made it more difficult.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “You found the only difference in the two rooms. You were just doing what I told you to do.”

  I poured myself a glass of water, then went back to the main room. After a few minutes Ktee and Kchang announced they were going to bed, and Malcolm Shea followed suit a minute later. Bdale was the next to leave. Then, when Kmorn went into the kitchen to hunt up a snack, I followed him and engaged him in some meaningless conversation, leaving Max alone with Ktamborit. I kept Kmorn in the kitchen for a good ten minutes. When I came back, Max actually winked at me to show me he’d dropped the info on Ktamborit.

  I explained that Max, the Order Keepers and I were all staying by the subspace radio, waiting for definitive word from my expert on Bramanos, and that should any of us feel the need to sleep, we’d hunt up empty rooms on the main level so as not to disturb any of the executives, who were all housed on the second level.

  Ktamborit went off to bed about five minutes later, and Kmorn followed suit a few minutes after that.

  “All right, Max,” I said. “All the groundwork has been laid. There’s only one more thing for you to do.”

  “What is that?”

  “At some point Ktamborit is going to come back down to this level, ostensibly to get something from the kitchen, or to retrieve something she left down here. And then she is going to very quietly sneak off to the computer room and deactivate the retreat’s security system, with the intention of coming back down in another hour or two to reactivate it. I want you to keep all your agents in the main room and let her do it.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Almost,” I said, giving him his final instructions.

  I waited until all the executives were in their rooms, then went to the computer room, made a quick adjustment, and took the airlift up to the second level. I tiptoed down the corridor to Toblinda’s room, waited for the door to iris and let me pass through, then ordered the lights on just long enough to find a nice comfortable corner and sit down with my back propped against the wall. I pulled my burner out, laid it in my lap, ordered the lights out, and waited.

  I was afraid I might fall asleep before anything happened. I’d been up a long time, and there aren’t many things duller than sitting on a plush carpet in a dark room when it’s been a day and a half since you had any sleep. In fact, I think I did nod off once or twice, but each time my body would start to relax I’d wake up with a start.

  And then, finally, the door irised again, and I saw the figure of a Gaborian silhouetted against the light in the corridor. It walked over to a small table. I couldn’t see or hear what it was doing, but it didn’t matter. My hand closed on the burner, and when I sensed the Gaborian started to walk back to the door, I said, in a loud, clear voice, “That’s far enough, Ktamborit. Lights on.”

  It took both of us a few seconds to adjust to the flood of light. I’d expected her to panic, or at least look surprised, but nothing affected her calm.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded coldly.

  “Waiting for you.”

  “It will do you no good,” she said. “It is just your word against mine, and I am the Chairman of the Braaglmich Cartel.”

  “For another few weeks,” I said. “Then you’re just another inmate.”

  “I heard you moving around in here. I know that Toblinda is in one of the outbuildings, so I entered to see what was happening, and I came across a common thief.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “But I don’t think it’ll play in court.”

  “Oh?” she said with an expression that was as close to a smug smirk as a Gaborian can come. “Why not?”

  “It’s not your word against mine,” I said. “It’s your word against everything that was captured by the infrared holo camera.”

  “That camera is not working,” she replied.

  Suddenly Max’s image appeared before us. “Oh yes it is,” he said.

  “Damn,” I said apologetically. “I guess we forgot to tell you that we got the security system codes from the manufacturer.”

  “It makes no difference,” she said, still cold as ice. “The record will show that I have transported nothing lethal or criminal to this room.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you brought,” I answered. “Your presence here is enough to incriminate you.”

  “Your case will never hold up,” she said.

  “Ready to bet your empire on it?” I asked.

  A long pause. “Name your price,” she said. “We can deal.”

  “Before or after we turn off the camera?”

  She uttered some obscenity that the t-pack couldn’t translate, as we both realized she’d blown it, that beneath the icy calm exterior she’d been caught so off guard that she forgot the security system was capturing everything.

  I contacted Malcolm Shea’s security team, which was orbiting the planet, deputized them—it was probably illegal, since I myself wasn’t an officer—and had them transport Ktamborit and a pair of Max’s agents off to Bramanos for trial.

  Then we brought Toblinda back to the retreat and told him what had transpired while the other executives and Bdale, all of whom has been awakened by the commotion, gathered around and listened.

  “Did she really think that anyone would believe a Thrale would use that disgusting powder?” asked Toblinda.

  “You know,” I said, “I was so concerned about taking her into custody that I never even looked. Max, was she planting the powder?”

  “No, Jake,” he answered. “Actually, she planted a form of hand cleanser.”

  “You mean like a bar of soap?” I said, surprised.

  “The equivalent. Evidently each room has its own distinctive cleanser—different color, different scent—”

  “And of course different chemical make-up,” added Toblinda.

  “So she probably disabled the suit with her bare hands,” I said, “or at least some bare flesh may have touched it, or she thought something may have touched it, and she figured that was what our expert had found or would find.”

  “She appropriated Toblinda’s cleanser and replaced it with her own before you turned the lights on,” said Max, “but of course we captured it all on infra-red holo.”

  “Well, when you get right down to it,” I said, “I don’t suppose a bar of soap is any dumber than a tube of powder. If she’d just sat still and not worried about it, we’d never have nailed her.”

  “She could have doubled the size of the company,” said Kchang bitterly. “Kdin was on his way to the grave anyway.” He glared at me. “Why did you have to ruin everything?”

  “It’s my nature,” I said. “I can’t stand rich executives.”

  I think my sarcasm was lost on the Gaborian, because he began calling me every obscene name the t-pack could translate and more than a few that had never been programmed into it.

  I’ve been cussed out by experts, so I just let it roll off my back, and I could see Max getting more and more upset, and finally he took a swing and decked the executive.

  “Don’t you ever speak that way to my friend again!” he bellowed. In just a day and a half he’d come a long way from the nervous little alien who shook like a leaf at the mere thought of contradicting someone.

  We stuck around another day, did some paperwork—I don’t know why we call it that, since no paper was involved—and finally boarded Max’s ship (but not before I’d made arrangements to meet Toblinda for drinks once a year on a neutral planet.)

  Max was silent, even morose, for the first couple of hours. Finally, just after we entered the McNaughton Wormhole, I asked him what was bothering him.

  “I should never have struck Kchang,” he said.

  “Feeling guilty?” I asked, amused at his discomfiture.

  “Certainly not!�
�� he replied heatedly. Then he seemed to collapse within himself. “But it was reported to my superiors, and I have been terminated.”

  “They sacked you for hitting the little sonuvabitch?” I demanded.

  “Yes,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I loved my work, and the past two days have been the most fascinating of my life. Now I shall have to learn another trade.”

  I stared at him for a moment. “Maybe not,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “You didn’t hit the Gaborian because of what he was saying about you,” I said. “I could use a partner I can trust, one who isn’t afraid to back me up.”

  His alien face lit up. “Do you mean it, Jake?”

  “I only lie to the Bad Guys,” I said, extending my hand.

  He took it, and this time he didn’t tremble a bit.

  HONORABLE ENEMIES

  When I got to the office, I found the message waiting for me. I clicked it on, and the image of an animated beachball popped into existence right in front of me.

  “Jake, I think I’m in a little over my head,” said the beachball, who happened to be my partner. He sounded worried. Hell, he sounded more than worried; he sounded scared. “I’m heading back to the office. I’m going to need your help on this one.”

  That was it. My ship had to avoid a meteor swarm once it braked to sublight speeds, so I arrived back home on Odysseus almost three hours late. I landed at the spaceport just outside Homer, and then it took me another twenty minutes to clear Customs and make it to the office. There was no sign of Max. (That isn’t his name, but it’s as close as I can come to pronouncing it.) I checked my messages. The power company wanted to be paid. The landlord wanted to be paid. The laundry wanted to be paid. And then I found Max’s first message.

  “Hi, Jake,” said his holograph. “I know you don’t want me going out alone until I’ve had more experience, but there’s a client who’s in a hurry, and I have to come up with an immediate answer. And”—he tried not to look embarrassed—”I know we’re a little short of money this week.”

  “And this month, and this year, and this decade,” I muttered.

  “It’s a simple tail job,” continued Max. “I just have to follow someone and report back. It seems pretty basic, so I’ve decided to take it. I should be back in the office well before you return to Odysseus.”

  Sure, I thought. There probably aren’t four beachballs from Alpha Gillespie in the whole Iliad system, and you think you’re going to tail someone without being spotted in the first ten seconds.

  Max’s image vanished, and I looked through all the dunning messages from creditors to see if he’d left any others. He hadn’t. I decided there was nothing to do but sit and wait for him, and hope whoever he was following didn’t have much of a temper. It was a little past midnight, and according to the message machine he’d called in five and two hours ago. I took a hit from the office bottle (well, the office canister), spent another hour counting the cracks in the wall and waiting for Max to show up, and then started checking all the hospitals.

  It was just before I tried to contact the fourth that the call came in from Lieutenant Selina Hernandez. Even the police uniform couldn’t hide her curves. She didn’t look happy.

  “Hi, Jake,” she said.

  “Hi, Selina,” I replied. “How are things down at headquarters?”

  “About the same,” she said. “Nothing much ever changes around here.” She paused uncomfortably. “I’ve got to ask you, Jake: you’ve got a new partner, right?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “I hired him after that mess on Graydawn. He’s been with me about two months.”

  “Kind of blue, looks like a huge balloon?”

  “Like a beachball with limbs, right. Why?” Useless question; I could see the answer on her face.

  “I’ve got some bad news for you, Jake,” she said slowly.

  “Dead or wounded?”

  “Dead.”

  “Damn!” I said. “He should never have gone out alone. He knew that!”

  “Why did he?”

  “He probably wanted to prove himself to me.” And he knew I needed the money.

  “Why didn’t you stop him?” she asked.

  “I was hunting down a runaway kid out in the Albion Cluster,” I said. “I just got back an hour ago.”

  “I’m sorry, Jake,” said Selina. “You want to come down and identify him? Not that there’s any doubt. We’ve got his ID, and how many blue beachballs can there be on Odysseus? If you’d rather get some sleep, you can come by tomorrow.”

  “No, I’ll do it now,” I said. “Where’ve you got him?”

  “He’s in a holding area down in our basement,” she replied.

  “You don’t take ‘em to the morgue anymore?”

  “They don’t leave here until forensics is done with them, and they were starting to pile up. We didn’t want them where anyone walking into headquarters could stumble over them, so we took over half the basement.” She paused. “The lab’s done with him. We’ll move him to the morgue after you make the identification. Do you know if he has any family on Alpha Gillespie, anyone who will want to take charge of the funeral once we ship him home?”

  “Hell, I don’t even know if beachballs have funerals,” I said. “He never mentioned parents or siblings or a life partner. I’ll need a couple of days to check that out.”

  “No problem,” she said. “We can hold him indefinitely if need be. Forensics is going to have to do an autopsy before we release him anyway.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Thanks, Jake,” she said. “I’m sorry this had to be waiting for you when you got back.”

  “Not as sorry as someone else is going to be,” I promised.

  Police headquarters was a nondescript building, maybe twenty years old, all squares and rectangles where most of the newer buildings were curves and angles. It was stone and concrete where they were glass and glittering translucent alloys. The windows were just slits, but even so, a few had bars over them, and all of them were surrounded by crackling force fields. Selina met me at the door and escorted me down to the basement.

  “You want a coat?” she asked as we reached the holding room. “We keep it pretty chilly.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going to be here that long.”

  She shrugged, uttered the proper code, and the door irised to let us through. She was right. It was a damned cold room. There were six tables. Two held dead men, one held a dead woman with her throat slit, one held a dead Canphorite, one was empty—and Max was laid out on the sixth table. There was a spotlight over each table, but the room felt dark anyway. I walked over to Max. He didn’t look any more dignified in death than he had in life, but he’d put that life on the line for me back on Graydawn, and people who did that were few and far between. I didn’t need the light to know what had killed him. I could see that his skull had been crushed the second I entered the room.

  “Did he die right away?” I asked.

  “The pathologist says death was instantaneous,” she said. “At least he didn’t suffer.”

  “You got the killer in custody?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “But at least you know who it is?” I persisted.

  “No, Jake, we don’t.”

  “Come on,” I said irritably. “Ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, your forensics team identifies the killer within an hour. Then it’s just a matter of tracking him down.”

  “Not this time, Jake. It was a professional job. This guy knew his stuff.”

  Professional jobs have changed over the millennia. Once it was simply the work of a hired gunman. Then it was a murder committed with an unregistered weapon, usually by a killer from out of the area—and still later, from out of the planetary system. But as forensic science got more and more precise, any weapon could be traced and identified.

  “Blunt object?” I said.

>   “A rock,” she replied. “It’s in the lab, but they’ve come up empty. No DNA except for your partner’s, no trace evidence, nothing.”

  “The killer wore chamicha gloves,” I said. It wasn’t a question: chamicha gloves cost a bundle, but they never left a trace, and were the choice of most professional hit men who worked in close with knives or blunt objects.

  “Like I said, a professional job.” Selina grimaced. “Kill someone with a club or a big rock. It’s always been the hardest murder to solve.” She turned away from Max’s body and stared at me. “What was he working on, Jake?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He left a message that he was hired to tail someone…”

  “And he thought they wouldn’t spot him?” she said disbelievingly.

  “He was new to the business,” I said. “He left a second message saying that he was in too deep, and was calling it off. That’s the last I heard from him.”

  “Who was he working for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So you don’t know who he was tailing either?” she said.

  “Not yet,” I said. “But I will. I’m the guy who talked him into joining me in the detective business after he was forced out of the force on Alpha Gillespie III. I’m not going to say some damnfool thing like it’s my fault he’s dead—but I’m sure as hell going to make sure the guy whose fault it is pays the price for it.”

  “We’ll be happy to work hand-in-glove with you, Jake,” said Selina. “Any murder on Odysseus is bad for business—your business and ours.”

  “I have no problem with that,” I told her. “You give me whatever you’ve got, and I’ll keep you up to date on any progress I make.”

  “Why not work on it in tandem?” she said. “You still owe me a dinner from that mess by the stadium. If we work together maybe I could get you to finally pay it off.”

  I shook my head. “The police department has got hundreds of cases. Until I nail Max’s killer, I’ve got only one. Or were you thinking of putting a team on it full-time?”