The Centauri Surprise

by Alastair Mayer

  “Not a chance,” the med-tech said, then added, “Ethanol is contra-indicated.”

  “Finish it,” Friday ordered, “then we’ll show you to your room.”

  Rico chugged the rest back. Maybe by drinking it quickly he wouldn’t have to think about the flavor. He handed the empty bottle back to the tech.

  The med-tech set it down and walked over to where a wheelchair was parked in a corner of the room. He pushed it back toward the traumapod and gestured for Rico to get off the traumapod cot.

  “Okay, into the wheelchair.”

  “I can walk,” Rico said.

  “Probably not very far,” the tech said. “Come on, into the chair.”

  “Just do as he says, Rico,” Friday added.

  Rico swung his legs off the traumapod bed and, holding on to the safety rail, carefully stood up to move to the chair. He tested his legs. Yeah, he could walk, but he feigned being weaker than he felt and let the med-tech help him into the chair. It never hurt to be underestimated; if there was an escape chance, he’d take it.

  That chance came soon. The door to the room slid aside, and the med-tech began to push the wheelchair toward the opening. Friday was behind the med-tech. As the wheelchair passed through the doorway, Rico took subtle glances right and left. The corridor was empty, and his two captors were behind him. He launched himself from the chair, pushing it back into the med-tech, twisting it so that it fell sideways. Rico spared a half-second to see if there were controls to shut the door behind him. There weren’t, curse the luck. He picked an arbitrary direction and took off running down the left corridor, ignoring the shouting and cursing behind him.

  The corridor came to a tee-junction, and after a quick glance left and right, Rico headed left. There were several doors along the corridor wall, all shut, and as Rico tried each in turn, all locked, or with no obvious way to signal them to open.

  There, at the end of the corridor, was that an elevator? The buttons on the wall beside the door suggested that it was. Rico dashed for it and slammed both buttons, not caring which direction he would go. He would figure that out as he went. As he waited for the doors to open, he felt an ache in his leg muscles, and an uncharacteristic light-headedness. He was weaker than he’d thought.

  He heard a muffled rattle behind the elevator doors, and commotion behind him. He’d wondered how long it would take Friday and the med-tech to get the wheelchair out of the way. The elevator door began to slide open, and Rico dashed into the gap.

  Straight into the arms of two burly guards.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The guards frog-marched Rico back down the corridor to where Friday and the med-tech were waiting with the wheelchair.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Friday said as they turned Rico and sat him down. As he was seated, the med-tech took each of his forearms in turn and, before Rico could react, fastened broad straps over them to secure them to the chair arms. They weren’t going to give him any more escape chances. “What the—?” Rico began.

  “For your own safety,” Agent Friday said, with a wry smile. “Although I do wonder where you thought you were going.”

  “Right,” Rico said, and relaxed to await whatever was next.

  CHAPTER 15: DINNER

  Sawyer City Spaceport

  HANNIBAL CARSON DIRECTED the autocab around to the small starship parking area, feeling decidedly uncomfortable, and not just because of the vehicle he was riding in. Most formal ceremonies on campus called for the traditional academic cap and gown, under which one could wear almost anything. Or, in the case of the occasional prankster student, nothing. Aside from the infrequent faculty dinners, he rarely wore a suit and tie. Funny how that ancient bit of men’s attire might undergo style changes with fashion but hadn’t gone totally obsolete. At least it wasn’t a tuxedo; Rick’s Place wasn’t that formal, although a white dinner jacket wouldn’t have been out of place.

  The cab pulled up on the Sophie’s starboard side. The boarding ramp was extended but the airlock door was closed. Carson got out of the cab and walked up the ramp. The small control panel had an extra button from what he remembered. A doorbell? He pushed it.

  Jackie’s voice came from a speaker as the door slid open. “Come on in.”

  The inner lock door was open, and as he stepped through it, Jackie called from her cabin. “I’ll be right out. You know where everything is, make yourself comfortable.”

  “All right. No rush.” He stepped back to the galley area, then opened the aft cabin door to check his appearance in the mirror there. He barely recognized himself; this was not how he usually looked when aboard ship. He stepped back to the galley as he heard Jackie’s cabin door open, and he turned toward her. And froze.

  “What do you think?” she asked. “Too flashy?”

  He barely recognized her. Her green hair, normally cut in pageboy bangs, swept up from her forehead, which somehow emphasized her green eyes. She wore a short-sleeved long dress with a mandarin collar, a cheongsam. Jackie stood taller than he remembered, then he realized she was wearing high heels, which together with the slit-to-the-thigh cheongsam, only emphasized her long legs. The overall style was conservative, although the opening below the collar was non-traditional, but flashy applied. The dark blue-black silky fabric was highlighted with deep-sky images of a starry nebula, and here and there individual stars twinkled with an understated flashing. She wore no jewelry; she didn’t need to. “Wow,” was all he could say.

  She smiled. “I’ll take that as approval. You don’t clean up too bad yourself.”

  “Thanks. And yes, I approve.” He looked her up and down again. “Heels? Can you walk in those?” He couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t worn either ship boots or hiking boots.

  “Zero-gravity reflexes help, but what helps more is the dynamic stabilization built in. Smart materials. If I need to run, the heels lower.”

  Carson grinned. “You should have just said yes. A magician should never reveal her tricks.”

  She smiled at that. “Fair enough. I won’t tell you what else I have hidden up my sleeves.”

  He looked at her arms, each in turn. The dress barely covered her shoulders. “What sleeves?”

  “Exactly. Shall we go?”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “You still haven’t told me what the occasion is,” Jackie said as the autocab steered itself through the streets of Sawyer City. “We already settled that it’s not my birthday. It’s not yours, is it?”

  “What? No. I’m sorry, I should have mentioned. There’ll be a couple of other people there. One of them, David Zhang, was a grad student of mine. I’m not his adviser, but he recently finished his thesis and is celebrating.”

  “Oh. So this isn’t a date. I’m just your plus-one.” Jackie felt vaguely offended, but told herself she shouldn’t be. That was just Carson being Carson. “How does a grad student manage to celebrate at Rick’s?”

  “I’m sorry, Jackie. I should have said something. But you’re not ‘just’ anything, and I wasn’t kidding about how you look. Can I say ‘wow’ again?”

  She smiled to herself. “Thanks, but you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Oh, right. It helps that his uncle owns the place.”

  “Yes, I’ll bet it does. But you said you weren’t his advisor, so why the invite?”

  “He and I always got along well. He was at the dig on Ransom’s Planet where Marten found that talisman. Uh, best not to bring that up; we uncovered a lot of other artifacts, there’s no reason he’d remember that one.”

  “Copy that. Who else is going to be there? His actual adviser, I assume?”

  “Unfortunately not. Dr. Iverson is off-planet; he submitted his final thesis approval over the net. David didn’t want to wait for him to get back to celebrate, so he invited me, and a guest. I’m pretty sure his girlfriend will be there, probably a few others.”

  “Other girlfriends?” Jackie said, teasing.

  “No. Well, maybe, I don’t know. But I meant ot
her students and friends, maybe faculty. I didn’t ask for the guest list.”

  “Of course not. Just curious. And wondering what I’ll have to talk about.”

  “Anything except aliens, pyramids, and maybe Velkaryans. You can mention our trip to Chara III—”

  “Right, as long as I leave out all the interesting details.”

  “Uh, pretty much, yeah. I wrote a paper on the stone fences we found, so if anyone was paying attention they’ll know I was there.”

  “Don’t worry. After a year as XO on the Arabella, I know how to make small-talk with the guests.”

  “Oh, that’s what that was?”

  “Watch it, Carson.” She said it with a smile.

  Just then the autocab pulled over to the curb, announcing “Rick’s Café. You have reached your destination.”

  CHAPTER 16: RICO'S ROOM

  Elsewhere

  AS “AGENT FRIDAY” had said, the room had no windows. Aside from that, it was pleasant enough. It could have been a small dorm or even hotel room. Unlike a prison cell, there was privacy in the attached bathroom. Or at least, it had the appearance of privacy. Rico had no doubt he was being monitored at all times. He didn’t even know if he was above or below ground. The room reminded Rico of the temporary quarters he’d had at Ducayne’s Homeworld Security, although there were enough differences in furnishings—or lack thereof—and layout that he was sure this wasn’t part of that.

  There being nothing else to do, Rico put his idle time in the room—or cell, as he thought of it—into exercising to rebuild the muscle he had lost while in the pod. He was in the middle of yet another set of push-ups when the door opened, and a large man Rico hadn’t seen before entered, followed by his earlier questioner, Agent Friday. The big man looked like a guard; tall, muscular, with a no-nonsense expression, although he too wore civvies, not a uniform. He took up a position just inside the door. Rico stood up, wary.

  Friday carried a data pad. He gestured to the bed. “Have a seat, Rico.”

  “Thanks. I’d offer you one but. . .” Rico waved his arm at the room; there were no other furnishings.

  “No worries.” Friday touched his pad, and a table and jump seat folded out from the wall. There’d been no obvious seam before that. Rico had seen the like before, but hadn’t expected it here. Friday sat and put his data pad on the table.

  “So. Do you want to tell me what you were doing on Earth?”

  “Not really.” Wait, were? So where was he now?

  “That might be the first truthful answer I’ve had from you, Rico. Let’s keep it up, shall we?”

  “You know the saying,” Rico said, “ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”

  “If you want to spend the rest of your life in this room, we can play it that way. But I already told you we’re the good guys. Why would you lie to me?”

  This interrogation technique, and that’s what it surely must be, was a new one to Rico. His gaze flicked to the muscle at the door. Good cop, bad cop? But the guard was standing impassively, apparently paying no attention to the proceedings.

  “Because I don’t know that you are the good guys,” Rico finally said. “I don’t really know who you are.”

  “I told you who we are, the good guys. Homeworld Defense. I want to know what a known smuggler is doing on Earth and apparently working for either the UDT’s Department of Homeworld Security or for someone else who knows how to do government DNA tagging. We especially want to know if it’s the latter.”

  “I’m not a smuggler.”

  Friday glanced at his data pad. “Known associate of Marrok Hopkins, sometimes known as John Stephens, a convicted dealer in illegal artifacts. Known associate of—”

  “So? I kept bad company. I never smuggled anything.” Well, not in the sense of illegal contraband across borders for resale, anyway. He’d sneaked weapons into places he shouldn’t, and he’d certainly been aboard ships that had carried illegal cargoes, but he hadn’t been in charge.

  “We’ll leave that for now. So, you don’t deny working for Homeworld Security?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t deny it. What were you doing on Earth?”

  “Getting shot at.” Again, were. Definitely not in Kansas, Toto.

  “I doubt you went all the way to Earth just to volunteer for target practice, especially not as the target. Why were they shooting at you?”

  “You said you were Homeworld Defense, but twice now you’ve implied that we’re not on Earth. Who are you really?”

  Friday jerked his head back in surprise. Rico didn’t buy it, surely the man must have realized what he’d said. Friday looked at Rico for a moment, then said, “Earth isn’t the only planet with a Homeworld Defense. We’re part of the Sawyers World government. Now, again, why were they shooting at you? Did you do something to piss them off, like shoot first, or did you have something they wanted?”

  Sawyers World? But . . . “What were Sawyers World defense agents doing on Earth? That’s a bit out of your territory, isn’t it? How would the Terran government feel about that? Or the American government, for that matter?”

  “Who said we had anyone on Earth?”

  Rico snorted. “What, you found me abandoned on your doorstep with a note saying ‘take care of little Rico’ taped to the traumapod? That’s a bit farfetched.”

  “Anyone backtracking your travel records would know you came from here.”

  Rico didn’t know what to think anymore. He knew he and Friday were playing a cat and mouse game, but he wasn’t sure to what end. Screw it.

  “Fine. I was on Earth on UDT business. That’s all you need to know. Now let me go, call the UDT, or charge me with something and then call the UDT.”

  Friday looked taken aback, but recovered quickly. “Who at the UDT would you like me to call?”

  Rico was too smart to fall for that. “Anyone you like. Call the embassy, tell them you have a UDT citizen in custody, recovering from gunshot wounds, and ask what to do with me. I’m sure that will go over well.” Rico had caught a slight change in Friday’s expression at his earlier use of the phrase “need to know”. He wondered just what sort of relationship the Sawyers World and UDT spook departments had with each other.

  The agent seemed to pull himself together. He stood up. “All right, Ricardo. If that’s the way you want to play it. Maybe one of these days we will give them a call.” He retracted the table and chair into the wall then turned and nodded to the guard. The guard opened the door for Friday then followed him out.

  The door closed and Rico heard the latch click locked.

  Well, he thought, that was interesting. Had that last comment from Friday been bravado, or had he really been pissed off? His use of Ricardo had clearly been meant to annoy.

  He got up from the bed and walked over to where the table had folded from the wall. As before, the surface was seamless. He rapped on the wall in a few places, but noticed no difference in the sound. He shrugged and went to lie back on the bed. He might be here for a while.

  CHAPTER 17: RICK'S CAFÉ

  Rick’s Café, Sawyer City

  THEIR HOST AND several of his other guests had just been seated when Carson and Roberts entered the restaurant. The maître d'hôtel greeted them and signaled to an Asian-looking man wearing a white dinner jacket with a black bowtie. The man smiled broadly and came over to them

  “Hello, you must be Doctor Carson. I’m Rick Zhang, this is my place. And who is this charming lady?” He turned to Roberts.

  “Rick, this is Captain Jacqueline Roberts of the Sophie, a good friend and my sometime pilot. And please, call me Hannibal.”

  “Delighted.” Rick shook her hand, then bowed to her. “Your cheongsam honors my heritage, Captain, and thus my ancestors. Although I doubt any of them wore one so well.”

  Jackie bowed in turn. “You honor me. But call me Jackie, I’m not on duty.” She looked around the restaurant, styled after the café from the legendary film. “Pleas
e, if I may ask, how does someone of Chinese heritage come to open a Moroccan-themed restaurant?”

  Rick grinned. He probably got that question more than any other. “A Chinese restaurant would be too cliché. Besides, not only is Casablanca one of my favorite films, but I lived in Morocco for several years before leaving Earth. I assure you, the cuisine is authentic, plus a few local variations.”

  He gestured for them to follow him. “Come, come to the table. My nephew is already seated, and there are still a few guests to arrive.”

  The nephew, David Zhang, stood as they approached the table. “Doctor Carson, I’m happy you could make it.” He began making introductions, starting with the young woman to his left. “This is my girlfriend, Avril Boutelle, she’s finishing up her master’s in xenoanthropology.”

  Carson nodded to her. “Yes, you were in my Archeology 501 class last year, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  David continued. “Beside her is Wes Archer, my roommate, studying astrophysics. His friend Andrea Ferguson, biology, I’m not sure how they ended up together. I’m still expecting Captain Gupta, I’m not sure if he’s bringing a friend. Folks, this is Doctor Carson.”

  “Just Hannibal tonight, or Carson. And this is my friend and some-time pilot, Jaqueline Roberts.”

  “Jackie, please. It’s good to meet you all. And congratulations on finishing your thesis, David.”

  They took their seats, and the young man David had introduced as his roommate leaned toward Jackie.

  “Pilot?” Archer asked. “As in starship pilot?”

  “That’s right. I own a Sapphire-class, the Sophie.”

  “Really? I’m envious. Wait, Roberts? Are you the Jacqueline Roberts who was born on the first Eta Carinae expedition?” he blurted out. His girlfriend, Andrea, elbowed him in the ribs. He looked at her as if to ask “What?” and she glared at him and nodded toward Jackie.