Balance Point

by Robert Buettner

  A lone figure stood in the dimness, shifting weight, foot to foot. Polian recognized the provi cap, then exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and spoke into the microphone beneath the screen. “Varden!”

  Polian safed his needler, then rubbed his wrinkled forehead. Had he somehow forgotten something? It was hell to age. “Varden, by some chance did I tell you to bring the slider?”

  “Uh, I pick you up on the odd days, sir, and today’s even. And it’s actually much earlier than pick-up time.”

  Polian closed his eyes, shook his head. “Why, thank you, Varden. I hadn’t noticed the hour.”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, sorry, sir.”

  “You should’ve called. I could have mistaken you for a forager and shot you through the door.” Not really. A needler couldn’t penetrate a Yavi door like a gunpowder pistol could. But if he could frighten Varden a little, the boy might think more clearly next time.

  “Sir, I couldn’t have called. Your bed was on do not disturb. Sir, may I—?”

  Polian squeezed his eyes shut again for a beat, then opened the door.

  Varden stepped in.

  “I take it you didn’t come over to tell me to turn on my bed?”

  “Uh. Not exactly, sir.”

  Polian shuffled back in to the living space, waved on the lights, then sat on his divan, bent forward, elbows on knees.

  “Then what, exactly?”

  Varden stood there, fumbling a folded handheld. “Sir, an hour ago air flow out of Stack Fourteen Eastern dropped two percent.”

  Polian flattened both palms across his eyes, rubbed his face, exhaled. It was an unconscious movement he had made a thousand times. Now he realized why. He hoped that when he removed his hands from his eyes Varden would be gone.

  He said to the boy, “Next time you get a call that should have gone to the Directorate of Industry, just transfer it.”

  “Uh. I didn’t get that call. Industry did get it. So they sent an inspection crew with a wall crawler ‘bot to check.”

  “That sounds appropriate. And still nothing that concerns Internal Operations Directorate.”

  “The ‘bot found an aircraft in the stack just above Ninety-six Lower.”

  That surprised Polian. But then he nodded.

  Smugglers used aircraft more often out in the hick stacks, where over-water travel made flying the practical way to transfer inventory. But crickets full of junk had crashed and burned inside the stacks of Yaven before. Once maintenance dragged out the wreck, he’d send an investigator to have a look. “Varden, next time tell them to just call you the following morning.

  “Actually, Industry didn’t call me, sir. They called External Operations.”

  “Gill’s people?” Polian dropped his hands into his lap.

  Varden nodded.

  Polian stiffened. “What the hell for? Inter-city smuggling’s our jurisdiction.” He hadn’t expected Gill to be a turf poacher.

  Varden opened his handheld, clicked a flat image then rotated the device so Polian could see its screen. The image was a still frame from a ‘bot feed.

  Polian leaned close, squinted at the grainy frame. “This is the best image you can bring me, Varden?”

  “It’s the only image, sir. The ‘bot’s insulation failed. Apparently it’s over two hundred degrees inside a stack.” The boy shrugged. “I never thought about how a city works. I suspect most of us never do.”

  “But why External Operations?”

  Varden said, “Somebody thought it looked like something.”

  “Well. There’s a reason.”

  “External applied some of their software to the image.” Varden reached and keyed the display.

  A green, teardrop-shaped, three-dimensional, skeletal outline faded in, then rotated itself and settled over the grainy image. A red label flashed on screen. “Identification Positive. Probability ninety-nine percent.”

  Polian’s jaw dropped and he gripped the handheld and stared. “That’s impossible.”

  “External Operations claim they used the same image-matching software for after-action reconnaissance of that wreck on Dead End last year. The mass and the shape are laydowns. The ‘bot did get a mass and motion reading before it failed. There’s nothing alive inside the aircraft.”

  Polian stared at the grainy black teardrop that hung in thin air while smoke and flame roared up past it, his mouth still agape. Then he turned to Varden. “A Trueborn Scorpion falls in my lap and that son of a bitch Gill doesn’t even call me?”

  “He tried, sir. When he couldn’t get you, that’s why he called me. Remember? Your bed was on do-not—”

  “I remember. What did he tell you, precisely?”

  “Precisely?” Varden shuffled again.

  “I’m old, Varden. Best make your points before I die.”

  “Director Gill told me I had ten minutes to get my provi ass over here and bring you up to speed. Or he would put a field boot up it. I think he meant figuratively.”

  Polian coughed into his fist.

  So Gill realized the importance of this development to their plan, and wasn’t withholding information. Good.

  Polian looked up at Varden. “So what’s Gill doing now?”

  “Trueborn hardware’s External Operations’ exclusive jurisdiction. The Director’s scrambled a wreck-recovery team with a mobile inspection unit to Stack Fourteen Eastern. They’re shutting the stack down.”

  Polian sat a moment, narrowed his eyes. “Wreck? No, Varden. Trueborn case officers sometimes insert themselves into hostile environments in Scorpions. A C-drive craft, whether it’s a Scorpion or a starship, can simply hover indefinitely. That ship’s not wrecked, it’s parked.”

  Varden shook his head. “No, sir, the Trueborn case officer didn’t park it. Remember? The way we got the transponder on him was when he went through customs.“

  Polian cut Varden off with a raised palm. “Parker. The lightbulb salesman’s real name is Jazen Parker. He’s a Trueborn junior case officer.”

  Max Polian’s normal business had always been maintaining order within Yavet. Securing her against external threats had been the business of others. Until the Trueborns killed Ruberd. Max now knew Trueborn covert operational methods as well as any counterespionage instructor knew them.

  “Parker didn’t park that Scorpion, his partner did. Trueborn case officers work in two-officer teams, a junior and a senior. The book on this Parker was that his personal emotional compass overrode his professional compass once too often. He resigned his commission after his senior case officer downchecked him. He was too sentimental. Protected her to the detriment of accomplishing their missions. He reentered service only to rescue her when she was stranded on Tressel. Our plan assumed he would follow his heart again if the bait was strong enough, and come here alone.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  Polian nodded. “Present evidence suddenly suggests we underestimated the Trueborns’ ability to keep Parker on their leash. He didn’t come here on his own. He came here as a decoy.”

  “Then what do we—?”

  “Lock down a cubic three vertical levels and four horizontal blocks centered on that hotel room you said his transponder’s stationary in. If either he or she tries to get in or out, pick ’em up.”

  “She? Sir, about the woman, I also need to tell you—”

  “That Parker’s senior case officer partner’s a woman? Oh, I know that, Varden. I also know that, among other things, she’s a pilot. I’ll bet my pension she’s the one who flew that Scorpion in here.” Polian shook his head. The Trueborns were a devious lot. “We think we’ve got their presence under control because we’ve got Parker tagged. And all the while, he’s a decoy, so his partner runs free, doing God knows what.”

  “What would she do, sir?”

  “Nothing good. She’s already confessed to more war crimes than a Trueborn Nazi. We know that because Director Gill’s staff intelligence officer—” Polian paused, swallowed. The officer was Po
lian’s son. “—interrogated her on Tressel. But the Tressens let her get away.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know about any of that, sir.” He shifted, foot to foot, again. “When I mentioned the woman, I meant the other woman. The older one. The one we couldn’t find, who you’ve been so concerned about.”

  Polian’s breath hitched, and he reached out and grasped his aide’s forearm. “What about her?”

  “Well, the detail just came in from the surveillance team that dogged Parker’s worm transponder. He was down and up and all over the place. Slippery as a peep. He knows the utilities like he was born here.”

  “He was. That’s beside the point right now.”

  “Frankly, he embarrassed his surveillance team a little. By the time they finally got a visual on him, he was in the vicinity of this hotel, and in the company of a middle-aged male big. The two of them entered the hotel room when a middle-aged female big opened the door. If the team hadn’t been looking for something out of the ordinary, nothing would have seemed unusual. But all of the subjects’ movements were executed tactically. Not the way a lightbulb salesman and a middle-aged tourist couple would behave.”

  “Tourist couple?”

  “The room was taken by a medical technician and a bank vice president from Rand. They arrived on a cruiser a week ago. We’d never have looked at them twice. They just got fifty-hour bugs implanted in their clothing, like normal arrivals. Their bugs have already died. Even knowing what to look for, their legend’s impeccable, right down to the retinals.”

  “I told you it would be. That’s why we needed to get Parker the lightbulb salesman here in the flesh. To bring us together with them. Did the surveillance team check with the hotel?”

  “Yes, sir. The couple prepaid their stay in cash. Smugglers sell out of that hotel, so the management saw nothing unusual in that. All the desk personnel remember is that these two carried in all their meals. And the man went jogging every morning.”

  “But the only tail he had was a snitch tail, who lost him. So we have no idea what he was up to.”

  “Why, yes, sir. Also, the couple called down for a foldaway, but the desk clerk says a lot of their guests rent foldaways to display goods that they sell out of the room.”

  Polian raised a hand, smiled. “Don’t tell me. The day they rented the foldaway is the day Orion Parker slipped her tails and dumped her bug.”

  “Why, yes, sir. Exactly.”

  Polian shook his head. “We lost a dying she-gnome older than I am. Varden, tomorrow get me the files of the officers who lost her. No. The former officers.

  Varden swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

  As Polian sat on the divan and thought, he realized that he still hadn’t urinated.

  Varden sat patiently, finally said, “Sir, it looks like we’ve got the high-value old woman, and Parker the case officer, and maybe even Parker’s partner the war criminal, and the old midwife all in the bag right now. Shouldn’t we mobilize a horizontal tac squad, and a punch-down team to blow the roof, and a punch-up team to blow the floor, and go pick ’em all up? Before something changes?”

  Polian smiled.

  Maybe he had underestimated Varden. From most perspectives, the provi’s plan had things just about right. But the only perspective that counted right now was Max Polian’s own.

  He stood and shuffled toward the bedroom.

  “Sir?”

  “Varden, what I want you to do is to go liase with Gill’s team that’s pulling that Scorpion out of the stack. But keep your distance. They won’t know a Scorpion from a bathtub, and the thing’s undoubtedly booby-trapped to blow itself to hell and take them with it.”

  Varden’s mouth hung open. “Alright, sir. But what are you going to do?”

  Polian looked back over his shoulder. “Me, Varden? I’m going to go take a leak.”

  The boy stood like a statue once again, until Polian shooed him, with a hand that Max thought suddenly looked less old and less bony. “Off you go, Varden!”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Mort felt Kit peek around another corner, again, with the technique employed by a nervous coot.

  “Sonuvabitch!” She whispered it aloud.

  Two humans, backs to her, stood thirty human paces from Kit. They were wrapped in hard shells, similar to the type John Buford, who brought his meals, wore. These two also carried the long black stingers that frequently went together with such shells. Small humans surged around them, but the two blocked the way such that Kit could not pass them without being seen. And the hard-shelled pair intercepted all larger humans who attempted to pass them.

  “What has happened, Kit?”

  “Dunno. This is the fourth passage I’ve tried. The Yavi have locked down the area above and below and around Jazen’s location. They’re pulling over all the regular-size pedestrians. That either means they know where Jazen is, or they know I’m here in Yaven, or probably both. I’m good at disguises, but I can’t shrink. That was Jazen’s problem once he got grown up here.”

  “It is no longer a piece of pie?”

  “Now it’s a piece of something else. I’m two hundred yards from Jazen, and I still have twenty minutes to get to him and get him out and headed back to the Scorpion. But I might as well be two hundred light years away. Goddamn it, I’d kill for a phone that worked in this goddamn hive. And Jazen’s number.”

  “You do not seriously mean you are going to kill not for food?”

  “Correct. A gunfight would just announce me. A couple hundred thousand Yavi wearing body armor against one Trueborn wearing clothes that aren’t even her color are bad odds. You’re sure you can’t phone Jazen for me?”

  “As you say, one among hundreds of thousands are bad odds. It is certain that I cannot contact him soon enough. But if I could contact him, what would you have me ask?”

  “He knows his way around. Ask him where I can get a piece of pie.”

  “Ha-ha?”

  “Yeah.” Mort felt in Kit a surge of hope, an idea that came, and was stored, before he could understand it. But then, emotionally, she plunged again.

  “Mort, I could never have gotten this far without you. But I think we’ll both be happier if you stay out of my head from here on out.”

  “But I may be able to assist! And I wish to know how this matter resolves. Have I not earned that?”

  “You’ve earned the right not to know. Just leave me alone!” Kit turned and followed the throngs of small humans who were moving away from the Yavi with the stingers, rather than toward Jazen. It was as though Kit had given up trying to reach Jazen.

  Her anxiety pressed against him now. He knew few jokes to lighten a human’s mood, so he thought, “Kit, if you cannot be good, be careful.”

  She continued her progress with a huntress’ singlemindedness that kept him from reading her intentions clearly. Rather than lightening her mood, the restated joke had turned her sullen and angry.

  Exactly as it had the last time he had made the same joke to her.

  He felt a woog nearby, and began to stalk it. He remained weak, and hunting was that which he did best. Kit, also, knew that which she did best. So had Mort’s mother known. He had always done as his mother had bidden him, because she knew best. He remained puzzled and disappointed at Kit’s secrecy and remorse. But he decided to do as Kit had bidden him.

  So, despite reservations, he left Kit alone, as she had demanded, and resumed his pursuit of the woog.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Once Varden had left and Max Polian had relieved himself, Max walked to the utility closet off the study, opened the double doors wide, and unloaded cartons until his back ached. When he at last uncovered the wheeled, sealed plastek he sought, he dragged it into the center of the room, unlocked the lid, then stood, stretched and rested.

  He hadn’t worn his tactical armor since he had been promoted to his first desk job twenty years earlier. But the container had preserved even the seals and the batteries, which winked green on the tester, as though the suit
had been hanging in his closet overnight, waiting for him to slip it on like an old friend, and begin pounding his beat.

  As soon as he lifted his helmet out and turned it in his hands, memories, both muscle memory and the other ones, washed over him like the sea had the day he first took Ruberd to stand waist-deep and feel the water’s chill through his resistant waders.

  Baryl hadn’t been there to see it, of course. She had never seen their son at all. She had never regained consciousness after Ruberd’s birth, leaving Max to raise the boy alone. Sometimes it seemed almost wrong that a man whose wife had died giving birth to a legal child spent his own life hunting down women because they gave birth to an Illegal.

  He lifted the first-aid pouch, checked its contents. Even in so menial an object Polian saw the contradictions in his life. The Expansion Compress was intended to stop the bleeding that a needler was built to maximize. But it was more commonly called a smother pack because it worked so well when repurposed to smother newborns. And so Max Polian had learned to keep his personal life and his professional life sealed in mental boxes as perfectly insulated as the one he had just opened.

  Until now. Now was a time to serve Yavet, to do his duty. But it was also a time to avenge his son’s murder.

  Max lifted out his old needler, charged the cylinders, cleared, locked and loaded. Then he raised the weapon until its receiver rested cool against his cheek, then sighted down the barrel. He flicked the selector to “Test,” then squeezed the trigger.

  The familiar hiss and accompanying blue flash lit the dim room, then faded. The single zeroing dart quivered in the scarcely damaged far wall, an inch left of his point of aim.

  Max dialed the windage knob right one click, then set about shrugging into the rest of his uniform.

  Unlike the brutal gunpowder bludgeons the Trueborns still wielded, needlers were the elegant weapons of disciplined warriors. That was what he had been, what Ruberd had been, what the Trueborns could never be.