How Dark the World Becomes

by Frank Chadwick

“He gave me a code word, which he said would make that clear to you.”

  That was interesting. Arrie and I didn’t have a code word worked out. What was she trying to sell?

  “Okay,” I said with a shrug. “What’s the code word?”

  “Yanni.”

  I laughed.

  “Does it mean something?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Okay, you’re from Arrie. What was thing two?”

  “Mr. Arrakatlak suggested—no, he was quite insistent—that a Mr. Markov not be told any of this.”

  I laughed again, but with less humor. I laughed because sometimes things just get so completely hopelessly fouled up that the only thing you can do is laugh. And yet . . .

  And yet, there is an enormously liberating sensation which comes with the realization that you are completely screwed. When all roads lead to pretty much the same place, why not take the one with the best view? And if this particular road was a thumb in Kolya’s eye, I was in the mood. I sat back up.

  “Okay. Forty-five thousand, and I’ll need all of it tomorrow morning.”

  “Half tomorrow and half when we are ready to depart,” she said.

  I laughed again.

  “How about this instead? Nothing tomorrow, nothing on departure, and you take your business to the next guy on your list.”

  She looked down for a moment, and I was afraid that she was going to turn on the water, but when she looked back up, it was with barely controlled rage.

  “And what if your arrangements fall through? Are we supposed to just trust you to return the money?”

  “What difference does it make?” I asked. “Lady, if my arrangements fall through, money’s going to be the least of your worries. Am I right?”

  Of course I was right.

  FIVE

  I loved sitting by the windows at H’Tank’s Six-Star Club. I didn’t get by there as often as I liked, and it was usually night when I did, so seeing the Crack in daylight—or at least the mid-morning twilight—was a special treat. H’Tank’s was five levels up from the river—about 150 meters. The club was mostly back in the interior of the canyon wall, of course, but the window tables were in a bay that hung out over the river, and the windows wrapped around the bay, top and bottom—it wasn’t the best place to eat if you suffered from vertigo.

  Peezgtaan is a fair-sized planet, but the only habitable part is the Crack, a canyon that makes the Grand Canyon back on Earth, and even the Coprates Rift Valley on Mars, look like little ditches. The Crack’s over two thousand kilometers long, and almost twenty kilometers deep. With the surface nearly a vacuum, there wasn’t any wind or weather to cause erosion, so living in the bottom of a rock-walled canyon wasn’t as dangerous as it would have been other places. Most of the rocks that were going to fall already fell about a hundred thousand years ago. Of course, it would be a death trap if the planet was still seismically active, but Peezgtaan was old, so old its core was as cold as a woman’s feet.

  Don’t get me wrong, women’s hearts come in all different temperatures, from cool to sizzling; but their feet are all cold enough to leave scar tissue. Why is that?

  I was so wrapped up in the view, I didn’t hear her come up until she cleared her throat.

  “Dr. Marfoglia. Have a seat.” I snapped my fingers and across the room the waiter’s head came up.

  “The g is silent in my name, and do people really still snap their fingers for service here?” she said as she sat down.

  “I do.”

  She sounded irritated. Hard telling if it was from me snapping my fingers or from her having to fork over 45,000 Cottos. She had a small leather case that she put in her lap.

  “Is it in there?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said as she took a menu from the waiter and frowned at its thickness.

  “Flip to the back page,” I advised.

  “I think I can decide for myself.”

  I shrugged and looked out the window.

  “Oh,” she said as she realized that most of the menu was for non-Human consumption.

  “Six-Star Lounge isn’t its rating. Its cuisine serves the races of all six home stars. Sol is the last page.”

  There were five intelligent races before they found us. We made it six, and we’ve been stuck at six ever since. The Varoki were the first race—that we knew of—to get to the stars, the ones that first contacted all the rest of us, and they didn’t come along with guns or threats or anything. They shared power and knowledge. They shared markets. They helped everyone out. They backed most of the deep space survey missions to potentially habitable worlds, and when somebody found a world with protein chains compatible with one of the other six races, they even brokered the territorial swaps and resettlement. Advancing the interests of all six races of the Cottohazz, that’s all they wanted. But somehow they always ended up on top. Pretty smart.

  A century or so ago, when there was all this talk about alien invasions and interplanetary wars, who knew it would be just too damned expensive? Not that common sense always stopped people from killing each other, but out here the bottom-line meat-heads were pretty firmly in charge.

  The biggest section of the menu, the first eight pages, was devoted to the star Akatu—which meant Varoki cuisine. Then there were three pages of Katami food followed by two each for the Trand and Buran. Humans got one page, at the end, right across from the one page of Zaschaan black and green sewage noodles—at least that’s what they smelled like. This shows you exactly where we stood in the pecking order.

  All the food proteins grown on Peezgtaan were poisonous to Humans, but that was the story everywhere we’d been. The other races had found a world or two where the proteins were compatible with their body chemistry—or they’d forced the issue, like the Varoki had here on Peezgtaan—but we’d come up dry. Even on Bronstein’s World, the biggest Human extra-solar colony, all the Human-edible protein was vegetable-based and grown hydroponically, just like here in the Crack.

  I glanced around the dining room. H’Tank’s was an inn at a crossroads, and the roads led everywhere—to every race, world, occupation, and greed-fueled dream in the Cottohazz. This is where people met to figure out how to steal stuff: politicians the next election and the corporate types everything else. Guys like me were pikers.

  Most of the tables had two or three customers, almost all of them Varoki. Eight excited, chattering Katami crowded around a six-top, feathery cranial membranes flaring and swaying with nervous energy, like a jungle bird’s crest. The oxygen mix was a bit rich for them here. A table back in the corner had two big, sour-looking Zaschaan, troweling some kind of baby-shit-brown sludge into their lower mouths while a middle-aged Varoki, smelling of money and desperation at the same time, made his animated pitch to them, ears fluttering almost as much as the Katami’s crests. The Katami were obviously visitors from off-planet; the Zaschaan looked like they’d been here awhile—just the way they weren’t very interested in what was going on around them. Travelers—even Zaschaan—are usually more engaged with their surroundings. There were uniforms here and there—mostly private security outfits. There were more and more of those around these days.

  There were also a couple Human customers scattered here and there. Of course, the entire service staff was Human—fashionable and cheap was a hard combination to beat.

  The waiter came back. Marfoglia ordered a tofu and green salad. I had the hutsul omelet, egg whites only, with soy nuts, and Thai chili sauce on the side. One nice thing about the Crack being half-full of bullet-headed Ukrainians was that you found hutsul cuisine all over the place.

  Another nice thing about it was me, although opinions on that vary.

  Once the waiter left, I nodded to the leather case.

  “I’ll take that now,” I said.

  She looked around the dining room and frowned.

  “Don’t you want to do some sort of . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “Secret transfer?” I whispered, leaning forward. She colored with embarrassme
nt and irritation, and pushed the leather case across to me. I put it on the table, on the side closest to the window, where it was in plain sight, but nobody could get to it except over me.

  “Aren’t you going to count it?” she asked.

  “Why? Can’t your bank count?”

  That got me a much deeper, angry frown.

  “That’s interesting,” I said. “When you scowl like that, it makes you look heavy . . . sort of jowly in the face.”

  And that earned me a look of pure hatred, but it was all in her eyes, not in her mouth anymore.

  I love to annoy assholes. Provided they aren’t armed, of course. That would be stupid.

  The conversation sort of died out after that, which was fine by me. I was here for the cash, the food, and the view out the bay windows anyway. After a few minutes, the waiter brought our meals and I dug in.

  “Now that you have the money, how soon can you make the travel arrangements?” she asked.

  “Already done,” I answered between bites of omelet.

  “Done?” she asked, lowering her fork. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s no direct jump to Akaampta for three weeks,” I started.

  “Three weeks?” she said, her voice rising. “That’s too long!”

  “Hey, quiet down,” I said, motioning her to lower her voice. “You’re gonna have half the people in the restaurant interested in your trip.”

  She looked around and then leaned forward.

  “That’s too long,” she whispered.

  I laughed.

  “Yeah, I figured. I can get you off-planet in six days. Better?”

  She nodded and sat back in her chair, her composure returning.

  “Like I was saying, there’s no direct jump to Akaampta for three weeks, but there’s a jump to Seewauk and a connecting jump from there to Akaampta.”

  I sketched out the itinerary for her. The deep-space jumps between stars are pretty quick; it’s moving around in orbital space that takes time. In six days, the four of them would lift to high orbit and board the shuttle that would take them out to the system’s main gas giant, where the C-lighter—the jump ship—was in a parking orbit. The gas giant was critical to in-system travel—the Newton tugs use it to replace reaction mass burned to move the C-lighters in and out of gravity wells, and the shuttles do the same for the round-trip burns to and from Peezgtaan. The C-lighter uses the gas giant’s gravity source as a J-space vector terminus—sort of a big astrogation beacon. Stars stand out better, but shuttles and Newton tugs can’t refuel at a star.

  At the gas giant they’d transfer passengers and cargo to the C-lighter, a Newton tug would accelerate it out of the gas giant’s gravity well, and then it would make the jump to Seewauk. The shuttle ride out to the C-lighter would take twelve days, then the better part of two days for the C-lighter to get clear of the gas giant’s gravity well, a quick fall through J-space to an empty intermediary system, a day to recharge the jump capacitors, a second jump to the Seewauk system, and then two days in to the gas giant.

  There was actually a fully staffed orbital station there, since it was a fairly common jump nexus, and there were layover quarters for people making connections. The schedule showed three days there at Seewauk, then board a connecting C-lighter for the jump to Akaampta. With the jump and everything else, say four more days to the gas giant in Akaampta system, and then a fourteen-day shuttle glide to Akaampta itself.

  “So that’s over thirty days’ travel time, but it gets you out of here as quick as I can manage,” I finished. “It will take a couple days to get the travel documents dummied up—I don’t imagine your friends will be traveling on their own passports, and I’m getting one for you as well. I’ll need pictures and retina scans tomorrow or the day after.”

  “Why for me?” she asked. “I told you I’m not wanted for anything.”

  “I know. Just a feeling. The more we cover your tracks, the better off you are.”

  She accepted that.

  “What about the bodyguard?” she asked. “When can I meet him?”

  “When I pick him . . . or her. Or would you object to a female security specialist?”

  She shook her head. I gave her a line about how it was better to wait until the last minute to hook her up with a guard—less chance of a leak. But the truth was, at that time I wasn’t sure who to send. I didn’t have that many good shooters, and it was looking like I might need all of them. Of course, this might be more of a babysitting job than anything else. I had a couple younger guys without a lot of experience, but pretty levelheaded—they’d cover all the basics and wouldn’t do anything stupid. Yeah, maybe one of them.

  She snapped her fingers in front of my face. I jumped a bit, and it was my turn to scowl at her.

  “Wherever you were, it wasn’t here,” she said.

  “Thinking about taking a couple days and going fishing up-canyon,” I lied. I’ve never gone fishing in my life. Among other things, the fish here aren’t edible by Humans.

  “Want to go fishing?” I asked.

  She shook her head, frowning a little in distaste. No surprise there; I doubted that her wardrobe included the proper ensemble to wear while gutting and scaling a half-dozen long-jaws.

  “No, I won’t go fishing with you. And don’t get any other ideas, either.”

  “Ideas?”

  “Yes,” she answered, her jaw firmly set. “I’ve already been through my ‘bad boy’ phase.” She almost spat it out, and being the careful student of the Human condition that I am, I’d say as much of the contempt in her voice was for herself as for me.

  It made up my mind on one score, though: I’d send Paolo Riks as her bodyguard. When a woman tells you this emphatically that she’s over her “bad boy” phase, she either really is or she really isn’t. Either way, some young hotshot making a pass at her could end up in disaster. Paolo wasn’t going to make a pass—he liked guys.

  SIX

  I wasn’t crazy about a sit-down with Kolya, but if I had to do it, a public place was good as any, and Quann’s was the best. The place was usually crowded, between the bar and the supper crowd, and everyone knew everyone else, so it was hard for our guys to start trouble. Besides, Jerry Lopez tended bar nights, and he always took good care of me. I’d gotten him the job, and I tipped good, so he kept a bottle of orange food color under the bar for me. I always ordered bar scotch and seltzer. Jerry poured it real weak, and added a drop of food color to make it look stiff. Because of Jerry, I could match drinks with anybody all night long and keep my wits about me.

  Hey, any edge you can get, take it.

  I’d spent most of the previous afternoon—after the Marfoglia meeting—with Henry, making sure we’d drug plenty of brush over our tracks on the Ricky business. Maskirovka, they used to say in the old days. First we decided what we would have done if he’d really just vanished, and then we did all those things. That was a lot of work, and it might all be for nothing if Kolya decided to move anyway, but most times you live by covering every bet, not by figuring which bet is smartest and just covering that—which is why so many geniuses die young.

  I wasn’t used to going to bed alone, and I wasn’t sleeping all that well. Cinti always made breakfast and so it took me a long time to find everything in the kitchen that morning, and between that and sleep deprivation, I was in a real scratchy mood by the time I got to the office. Sophie’s abandoned desk didn’t improve my mood much, nor did the arrival about half an hour later of Henry, with Archie Nakamura in tow.

  “Archie says he wanted to talk,” Henry explained, “and I figured I’d tag along. You want me to wait outside?”

  “Nah,” I said. “This isn’t hush-hush business, is it? How you been, Archie?”

  We shook hands and he flopped into a chair, the way he always did, like he was double-jointed all over. I guess you’d say that Archie and I were peers, both mentally penciled in on Kolya’s organizational chart as captains. Archie handled most of the business in the far
west side of the Quarter, and he had some action in a couple Varoki neighborhoods, too. I knew he gave Kolya a bigger cut of his revenue than I did, which made him Kolya’s guy in my book. Vassalage is vassalage, and you can look it up.

  Archie was relaxed and smiling. A smiling thief is never to be trusted, which is why I make it a habit to smile as little as possible. Archie, on the other hand, always smiled, and today I smiled back—I was only scowling on the inside.

  “You mind if I smoke?” he asked and offered me a cigar from his plastic humidor.

  “Go ahead.” But I waved off the cigar. “You know them things are gonna kill ya, Archie.”

  “Well, it’s damned sure something will. May as well be something I like.” It was hard logic to argue with.

  For most of my life, all I ever smoked was the local weed, just like Archie. That’s all there was. Braka, they call it. It’s got something like nicotine in it, something that jingles you, and that was enough. Then when I hit some cash one time, I sprang for an imported cigar, shipped all the way from Earth.

  Perfect.

  Everything about it was perfect: the little brown wood humidor it came in, the way the leaf was rolled around it just so, even the cigar band was perfect. I lingered over that cigar for probably two or three hours, and never had to relight it once. It burned smooth and even and cool, and the flavor just got richer the longer it burned; it never got that sour taste the cheap local cigars did down toward the bottom.

  Perfect.

  But it ruined me for the local weed, and I couldn’t afford to smoke imported cigars for the rest of my life, so I just quit.

  We talked about this and that for a while. He asked where Ricky was; I said he’d apparently split, but maybe the provosts had picked him up—nobody knew for sure. We were firewalling all his operations so they’d be hard to come back on, even if he talked. They could pick up a couple of the guys, but the banks were safe and we’d moved a couple Lotto counting rooms to new locations. His two top guys—the first ones the provosts might pick up—we’d already pulled out of the loop and put up in safe houses for a while, just till things cooled down.