by Chris Bunch
“Not at all,” Wolfe reassured him. “Before I decided to visit Trinite, I discussed matters with some of my colleagues, particularly as to men they knew on this world who might be fond of some exclusive action. He was but one of the names given me.”
“Exclusive action.” Samothrake mused. “That would mean, to a man in your evident profession, someone who likes a high-stakes game and isn’t that quick at calculating the odds.”
Wolfe inclined his head, said nothing.
“I’ll give you this, Mister Wolfe. Your friends advised you poorly. Mister Sutro is quite a capable sportsman. I can attest to that by personal experience.”
“Thank you for the information. While not questioning your word, I’m well aware each shepherd prefers to have his own flock to shear.”
The two men exchanged wintery smiles.
“Feel free to test the truth of what I said when Mister Sutro returns to Trinity.” Samothrake rose. “Now, I’m afraid I have problems more complicated than yours. Thank you for coming to see me, Mister Wolfe. Please feel free to continue using our facilities, although I will caution you that the next set of unusual events may be seen in a less forgiving light.”
* * * *
The Dolphin cut its drive, and Thetis tossed a line around a mooring cleat on the Grayle’s loading platform. Her only passenger was Candia, who wore a translucent wrap of swirling colors, sandals, and a beach hat. It was exactly one.
“Good afternoon, my brave knight,” she said. “You look rested.”
“Candia. Thetis.”
The girl’s greeting was a bit clipped, and she turned away, busying herself with a rag on the instrument panel’s brasswork.
“Shall we be on our way?” Candia asked. “I have all that could be desired by the hungriest dragon slayer.” She indicated a large cooler behind her seat.
“I didn’t know what you’d planned,” Joshua said. “Am I dressed appropriately?”
Candia eyed his sleeveless cotton vest, shorts, and ankle-strapped sandals.
“You are perfect. Now get in.”
The Dolphin nosed into the beach and grounded with a slight scrape. Joshua leapt over the side. The water was cool, perfectly clear. Candia struggled with the heavy cooler, and Joshua took it from her, waded to the islet’s beach, and came back to help her out of the boat. Candia had a small mesh bag in her hand.
“I’ll be back when you told me to, Miss Hsui,” Thetis said. “I hope you two have fun.”
Without waiting for a response, she moved controls, and water frothed as the Dolphin backed off the beach, turned, and headed back toward Morne-des-Esses.
“That one does not like me,” Candia said.
“Why not?”
“Because she sees me as a rival.”
Joshua blinked. “But she’s just a kid.”
“I know some men who would think that an attraction,” Candia said. “And what if she is? When you were young, didn’t you ever wildly love someone who did not know you even breathed?”
Joshua’s face softened. “Yes,” he remembered. “She was nineteen. I was sixteen. She was the daughter of the Federation secretary of state.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. I was trying to get courage enough to ask her to my academy’s formal ball. Of course she would have laughed. She was a very cool one with an eye for the main chance, and my parents were vastly outranked by those of the boys who usually came calling. But I was lucky, and my father was transferred to a new post, off Earth, so my heart was only chipped a little bit around the edges.”
“So you have been on Earth?” Candia’s eyes were wide.
“Born there. Grew up all over the galaxy. My parents were career diplomats.”
“How interesting. I shall be interested in hearing your stories and seeing if perhaps we have visited the same worlds.”
“Now, come.” She took a small clock from her bag and put it on the top of the cooler. “There is much to be done before the young one returns to make sure I have not stolen your virginity.
“First a swim. That is good for the appetite.”
Candia stripped off the robe. She wore a black fishnet one-piece suit that had a silver-looking fastener strip down the front. She ran to the edge of the water. “But I hate the feel of clothes when I am swimming,” she called back. Her fingers opened the fastener, and she pulled the suit down to her thighs, side kicked it off, caught it with one hand, and tossed it back at Joshua.
“You have my permission to be equally immodest,” she shouted. She ran three steps into the water, flat dove, and vanished.
Joshua shook his head, smiling, then took off his clothes and went after her.
The world was calm, blue, at peace. A small fish looked skeptically at Joshua; its tail wriggled, and then it was gone. Joshua kicked toward a brightly striped mass of seaweed growing from the sea bottom. It was shallow off this nameless island, no more than fifteen feet deep.
He’d looked for Candia but hadn’t found her, above or below the surface, and so swam happily about, with Trinite, Al’ar, violence all of another world and time.
Something tickled his toes, and he jackknifed and was face to face with Candia. She stuck her tongue out and swam for the surface.
Joshua broke water a second after she did.
“You are careless,” she chided. “What if I were a man-eating fish?”
“Then I would have been doomed, and you would have had to eat the whole lunch yourself.”
“What a tragedy,” she said, and swam close to him, floating effortlessly. She put her arms around him.
“It could be I am a man-eater. Be warned.” She giggled. “I was watching you swim. You are very graceful.”
“Thank you.”
Her eyes closed, and her lips opened. Joshua kissed her.
“Perhaps the reason you swim so well,” she said, “is the excellence of your rudder.”
She brought her legs up around his thighs and pulled him close against her. Joshua felt his stiffness against her warmth. He thrust gently, experimentally.
“Ah ah,” Candia said. “If I let you do that, you will not be able to steer yourself and will never navigate back to our lunch.” She broke out of the embrace, eeled backward, and swam hard for the beach.
“I would say we did very well,” Candia said, surveying the ruins. “The artichoke hearts and olives are gone, as is the caviar. The cheeses have been destroyed. There’s a bit of the pâté left if you have not made a sufficient pig of yourself.”
“I’m so full, I’ll never move,” Joshua said.
“Ah? Not even for some more champagne?”
“For that I can move.” Joshua lazily extended his glass.
Candia picked up the bottle and leaned back on the picnic cloth. She wore only the rainbow robe.
“Perhaps m’sieu would wish a new glass,” she murmured. She opened her robe and let a bit of champagne trickle into her navel.
“M’sieu wishes,” Joshua said, a bit hoarse, and slid over to her. His lips caressed her stomach, moved up, his hands slipping the robe aside, and his teeth teased the nipples of her tiny breasts. Then he moved downward, and Candia opened the robe for him and spread her legs.
His tongue fondled, entered her, and she gasped and lifted her legs around his shoulders.
“Next,” she managed, “it will be my turn for dessert.”
* * * *
“I feel,” Joshua said, watching the Dolphin approach the beach, “like I’m coming home from an evening out and my mother’s about to decide if I was a good boy or not.”
“Don’t worry about her.” Candia laughed. “Of course she knows.”
“How could she?”
“She is a woman, is she not?”
Thetis looked at them both, her lips pursed angrily, and had even less to say on the ride back to the Grayle.
“It doesn’t feel like a woman has ever lived here,” Candia announced after Wolfe had shown her around the ship.
&n
bsp; “No. Not for long. But how did you know?”
“It is comfortable but stiff. A man’s place. But that is good. Are you coming to see me dance tonight?”
“I hope so. Are you now a solo act?”
“No. I gave Megaris another chance. I am always doing that, I fear.”
“Afterward, do you want to come back here?”
“Of course.”
“You know, if you wish, you could bring your luggage with you.”
Candia looked surprised. “I know I am quite good in bed, but this is quite sudden.” A cunning look crossed her face. “Ah, but perhaps I think too much of myself. Tell me the truth, Joshua Wolfe. I know you are not on vacation here, nor do I believe you are a gambler.
“The men I have known who were could never absent themselves from the tables for long, nor did they have the ability to relax and enjoy a simple picnic and swim.”
“Could I be right in thinking that my presence here, with you, might help you do whatever you are on Trinite for?”
Joshua hesitated, then remembered what he’d told Lil back on Platte. “You’re right, Candia. And yes, you could help.”
“Will it be dangerous?” Without waiting for a reply: “I hope so. I have been living such a dull life of late. That was another complaint I had about Elois. He kept me well clear of his business. All I was good for was as a bed partner, that for not very long, then someone to get angry with and finally strike.
“So excite me, Joshua. I shall try to do my share in return.”
* * * *
Joshua had just finished dressing to go out when the ship told him the Dolphin was pulling up at the platform. He’d eaten on the ship after Candia had left, not wishing to test his digestion against the casino’s efforts again.
Thetis was the only one aboard. She had a large plastic envelope under her arm. Wolfe hesitated, then invited her inside.
“I’m a butt,” she said.
“Nice opening. Why?”
“Oh… I was rude this afternoon. I wasn’t professional. I’m sorry. I thought—anyway, I didn’t have any right.”
Wolfe started to say something, remembered sleepless nights and the Federation official’s daughter, and changed his mind. “Forget it. Everybody’s entitled to a mood every now and then.”
Thetis brightened. “That’s good. Thanks. I won’t do it again. The main reason I had to come out was I’ve found your Mister Sutro! And I know an awful lot about him!”
She beamed, and Joshua grinned.
“Sit down,” she ordered, and touched the fastener on the envelope and took out papers. “Now the Sibyl of Cumae will hold forth. Knows all, sees all, and will talk your ear off about it.”
“Sutro. First name, Edet. Naturalized citizen of Trinite for about ten years, since right after the war. No police record. Nobody knows where he came from before that. Grampa got that,” she explained, “from a fishcop he used to be friends with who doesn’t know things are different now.”
“I’ll get a picture of Sutro tomorrow. He’s big, people said, and has a beard.”
“He calls himself an expediter, which Grampa said can mean almost anything. He owns an island he’s named Thrinacia. I had to look that up—”
“I know what it was. He has a nasty choice of names.”
“I think he’s probably nasty in other ways,” Thetis said. “Anyway, Thrinacia is one of the Outer Islands, about forty miles off Morne-des-Esses. I’ve been out to the islands three or four times. We could get to Thrinacia with the Dolphin on a calm day, or you could rent a lifter. I looked it up on the chart, and it’s about a mile long by two miles wide. It’s got its own robot instrument-approach spaceport, two or three separate mansions, and a sheltered docking area. The island’s surrounded on three sides with cliffs. They’re not very high, no more than fifty feet, and I think you could climb them if you wanted. The other side, the one with the dock, has some beaches.”
“Let’s go back to this cliff climbing for a minute,” Joshua said. “What do you think I am?”
Thetis looked at him wisely, then back to her papers. “He has twelve men working for him. I found that out. Do you know how? I’m real proud of myself.”
“Tell me.”
“There’s only about three groceries that cater to the people who live off Morne-des-Esses. Naturally, since I do a lot of the deliveries, I know all of them pretty well.
“Mister Sutro does his shopping at Sentry Markets, and I found out from the manager there’s an open charge account with thirteen authorized signatures. I double-checked, and there’s twelve different kinds of liquor they keep on hand, so I figured that was a pretty good confirmation.”
She grinned excitedly at Wolfe. “Wouldn’t I make a great spy?”
“No,” Wolfe said. “You’re too pretty and not loony enough.”
“That’s what Granddad said. About not being crazy enough. Thank you.”
“Mister Sutro has a big fishing boat, a speedster, and two lifters registered. One of them is a heavy grav-lighter; the other’s a sporter. All of them are on the island.”
“He’s gone—offworld—about six months out of the year, maybe more. He’s gone right now, by the way.”
Joshua grimaced, said nothing.
“I thought you might be interested in when he leaves the island,” Thetis went on, “so I talked to the harbormaster and checked the log.”
“He generally comes ashore once a week or so when he’s on Trinite. He always comes to Diamant within a day or two after he’s come back from offplanet. Grandpa checked the logs against Diamant Subcontrol’s history of landings. They clear all approaches for the islands as well as here. He never lands at Wule that I could find out.”
“His men do the shopping and so forth, and they generally use the cargo lighter.
“When he comes in, he does the same thing. He brings a bunch of his guys with him. I found out they’re pretty mean-looking people, like some of the rich folks here use for bodyguards.”
“That’s exactly what they’d be,” Joshua put in.
“I asked some more questions, but people started giving me strange looks and I had to stop. But I found out that he likes to gamble, like you told me. Generally he gambles up at the Mushroom Tabernacle.”
“The what?”
“That’s what we call the main casino,” she explained. “Sometimes he goes to the Palace—that’s the second of the big gambling places—but not very often. I couldn’t find out what kind of games he likes to play.”
“I even went to one of the girl places,” she said. “I asked about Mister Sutro, and the madam told me I was quote way the hell too young to be caring what Sutro does with his diddlestick and get the hell out of her front room, so I struck out there.”
“Thetis, you are too young to be doing things like that,” Joshua complained.
The girl stared at him. “Maybe you’d be surprised, Mister Wolfe.” Then she turned pink and started stuffing the papers back into the envelope. “Anyway. That’s all I’ve got.”
Wolfe got up, went to his cache, and took out bills. Then he remembered something, went up from the living area into his trip cabin, and fumbled through drawers. He found a long case that held something he’d meant to give a woman who’d turned out not to be what he’d thought and went back to the main room.
“Here.”
He gave her the sheaf of credits.
“Hell!” she gasped. “That’s too much money!”
“No, it’s not. You earned it, plus it comes out of expenses. Your grandfather gets half. I’ll be needing him for some night work if he’s available.” He gave the case to Thetis. She looked at it, then at him suspiciously, and opened it.
Inside, on a red plush nest, was a torque bracelet made of precious metals twined together until the ornament gleamed with a dozen different colors, though each appeared to blend seamlessly with the others.
“My. My, oh, my,” she managed in a whisper.
“That’s your tip.”
She picked up the bracelet, slipped her hand through it, and examined it. Then she lifted her eyes.
“Thank you, Joshua. Thank you.”
* * * *
He put on his formal jacket, tucked a small gun into its hidden holster, went to the casino, played half a dozen abstracted hands, and deservedly lost all of them.
He saw the Hofeis as they came in for dinner and thanked them enormously.
“Forget it,” Arabo said briefly. “Nobody should ever put hands on a woman.”
“And it was so exciting,” Dorena added. “Although I never dreamed a real fight was that bloody.”
“If you want to pay us back, you can make good on your promise to teach us a little about gambling.”
Wolfe grinned. “I have a question. Why would two people who don’t know anything about gambling buy part of a casino?”
Arabo looked puzzled. “I don’t see what that has to do with it. I know people like to make love, so if I wanted to buy a whorehouse, would I have to be a customer?”
“You’d better not,” Dorena warned. “Or you’d be wearing your knockers for a necklace.”
“I know people like to gamble,” Arabo went on, ignoring his wife, “especially rich people. There aren’t a lot of places in this sector of the Outlaw Worlds where it’s safe, and the Casino d’Or had the best balance sheet, a good reputation with the Diamant police, and their employees seem to stay on, which is always the sign of a good company.”
“What else did I need to know?”
Joshua decided he would never be able to fathom the mind of a businessperson and left them.
He sat through the show, including Candia’s dancing, without much registering. He was thinking about a large bearded man, twelve bodyguards, and an island.
Chapter Twelve
Candia moaned, leaned back, hands on Joshua’s knees, then leaned forward again and again as Joshua’s hand caressed her. Her body jolted, her head went back in a silent scream, then she sagged forward onto his chest, gasping for air. Her breathing slowed after a time.
