“So Filoo wants you to solve his problem,” she said after he told her about the meeting. “Which means you have your way in. If you succeed.”
“Has he had this problem before?”
“They’ve all had this problem. It’s not possible to avoid having it. They’re criminals, after all, what can they expect? But Filoo specifically . . . yes, he did. About five months ago, he purged four people from his organization. I never learned the specifics, I was getting pretty sick by then.”
“Any idea how he solved it?”
“Sure. Kar uncovered it.”
“Kar.”
She looked at him narrowly. “You’re not surprised.”
“No, but I can’t tell you why I’m not.”
“Lizard Sense.”
“What?” Masid laughed.
“The woman who trained me, old-time Special Service. Good cop. She told me that all the profiles, all the M.O. analyses, all the criminal psychology seminars—none of them worked half so well as what she called the ‘Lizard Sense.’ She said an experienced cop just knows. You develop it over time, if you pay attention, and you can just tell. A thousand little details all compressed into a single impression. You look at someone and you know they’re wrong. You saw it in Kar, even if you didn’t know what it was. Now that I’ve told you the important detail, you put it all together. You’re not surprised because you saw something about him that makes him suspect.”
“I still needed that piece of data.”
“Yes, and you would have found it, and something would go click! and you’d just know.”
“Where did Kar come from?”
“He’s from another district. I never found out. Frankly, I lost interest shortly afterward.”
“So how do I prove it?”
“Do what you told Filoo you would do. Run him down. Trace his connections. Do the math.”
“Then what?”
“Then . . . see what Filoo gives you. If it’s a way in, you follow it.”
“What if it takes me out of touch with you?” Masid asked.
“Did you come here to nurse a sick agent or find criminals?”
Masid grunted. “Hell of a choice.”
“Life is full of little inconveniences,” Tilla said wryly. “Get to work.”
Masid watched her as her eyes fell shut. Her breathing deepened into the now-familiar sonority of sleep and he left her.
Mia read the decrypted message, dismayed and gratified at the same time. Ariel’s back on Aurora . . .
But Hofton had convinced Coren Lanra to help. Surprises usually came in groups.
A new agent had been sent—or had come on his own initiative, depending how you looked at it. She found it doubtful whether bypassing channels on the assumption that someone within the security community was a mole would guarantee that he would reach the surface. But, if the coded transmission she had received from the surface could be believed, he had succeeded.
Masid Vorian. She did not know the name. According to Hofton, he had been attached to Sipha Palen’s Kopernik Station security, seconded from Settler Coalition Intelligence in a novel arrangement that had kept Masid out of the usual files. Mia remembered Sipha—novel arrangements were a given with her—and had been saddened to learn of her death. According to Hofton, Vorian had gone deep cover after Palen’s demise and only his destination was known.
She would have to trust what she did not know—how good was he?
Well, if he had managed to get down there alive and locate the last—presumed dead—team, then Mia assumed he was pretty good.
Coren Lanra had investigated the bookseller. Omne Mundi Complurium was, for the most part, legitimate, a dealer in rare books, works of art, and occasional unclassifiable antiquities. Unsurprisingly, they also dealt in contraband of various sorts, restricted imports and exports, even, on a few occasions, robotics. It existed on the edge, not quite criminal enough to be shut down, especially as a substantial part of its trade was to wealthy and influential citizens, several of whom were part of the Terran government. Lanra estimated that over eighty percent of their material traffic was legitimate, but that nearly half their profit came from illicit trade.
Three of their customers had drawn Lanra’s interest in particular.
The Hunter Group, which was a consortium of offworld businesses that owned, by extension, several large companies on Earth. They bought the largest quantity of old books. What they did with them after they left the planet, Lanra did not know.
Ambassador Gale Chassik had been a customer. Most of his purchases—books—had gone back to Solaria.
Lastly, Commander Reen.
Reen . . .
Mia forced her attention back on to the communiqué. Hunter, Lanra claimed, owned a good portion of the development on Nova Levis, or had until the blockade.
“We suspect Hunter to be the legitimate face of Kynig Parapoyos,” he said. “It would give him a legal presence through a huge segment of the Settler colonies.”
Kynig Parapoyos . . . Mia absently rubbed her left thigh, where bullets from rifles obtained from Parapoyos had torn open her flesh over a year ago. The dull ache all the way to the bone was more illusion now than real, but it still bothered her.
Mia wondered how the three were connected. Parapoyos, Chassik, and Reen.
But Chassik was dead now, killed by pirates. What had become of all his purchases from Omne Mundi Complurium? Were they even related to this?
It seemed a stretch, but she doubted Lanra would have mentioned it if he did not think a connection existed.
But Reen . . .
Mia read on. The books she had locked in her desk were all purchases Reen had made. He had an agent on Earth who bought them for him, whom Lanra was continuing to investigate.
So what had Corf been doing with them? And had Reen been aware of the encrypted tables in the endpapers?
Mia rubbed her eyes. She had to assume he did. Which meant he knew what they contained, which meant he was aware of the shipments, which meant—
Reen had been running his department ragged trying to find the source of the contraband shipments to Nova Levis. She had to admire his skill at making sure they intercepted just enough to make it appear progress had been made. She had likewise to be disgusted with herself for not recognizing the scenario.
If I hadn’t found those books, would I be any closer?
Mia opened her encryption program and began carefully composing a response to the new agent, Masid Vorian. She had no instructions for now, she only wanted him to know her name.
Hers and Reen’s.
Tilla was sleeping when Masid checked on her that evening. He ran down the numbers on her portable diagnostic and found a reassuring change in her leukocyte count, but not much else.
He entered the kitchen and found Kru preparing what was locally called a flatmeat pie. She glared at him the way she usually did, then ignored him.
There was always a certain amount of luck in every deep cover job, he knew, and it always centered on the people you simply had to trust. Time and lack of thorough knowledge about a place offered too little opportunity to run an operation as securely as good sense dictated. Judgment calls about the people you encountered meant risking error and, consequently, your life.
Masid had learned to trust his sense of people; he was good at sorting them into plus and minus columns and acting accordingly. Once in a while, though, he found himself with no easy answer and he had to go along anyway, hoping.
He had learned nothing useful about Kru other than that she was a superb scavenger and she was profoundly in love with Tilla. She had tentatively accepted Masid into their tiny circle because Tilla said to, but Masid knew he would never know when or if Kru would ever trust him. Not knowing, daily relying on her when he felt certain she would just as soon see him dead, added an edge to every decision he made.
Without a word to Kru, he took the back steps down to his own apartment.
A short woman in a
heavy jacket sat on his sofa, going through some papers on the low table in front of her. She looked up at him, then lifted a sidearm from the seat beside her and set it loudly on the table.
Masid’s right hand slipped into his coat pocket and touched the blaster.
“Marshal Toranz,” he said. “Do you have a warrant, or did I just forget that we had a date?”
She shook her head. “I don’t like humor when I’m working.”
“Ah. That assumes I’m joking.”
She looked at him blandly. “No, I don’t have a warrant. We don’t have a local magistrate—he died—therefore no one to issue such permissions. So, given that I’m the last official with anything like legal authority, I grant myself the necessary warrants to do what I think best to protect this town.”
“And right now that means letting yourself into my home?”
She jerked a thumb toward his cabinet. “That’s got an ID-sensitive explosive attached to it. What’s in there?”
“Nothing I intend to show you.”
Toranz stood, sighing loudly. “Look, I’ve done this job for the last six years. The last two have been under progressively worse circumstances and I’ve seen damn near all my staff die, either from disease or from being stupid. I’m still here. I say all this to impress upon you the fact that I am reasonably good at my job. I have a very simple policy: Screw with me and I kill you.” She looked significantly at the cabinet. “What’s in there?”
“You kill me for refusing to show you, you’ll never find out anyway.”
Toranz lifted the blaster.
“I have simple policies, too,” Masid said. “One is, never trust someone who’s too easy with a threat. I’ll tell you what, Marshal. Go away now and we can both live a little longer. All I do is what I need to get by. I’m no threat to you.”
“No, but you may upset some of the locals.”
“That was true a week ago. Two weeks ago. Why’d it take you this long to get around to me?”
“Big caseload.” She gestured toward the cabinet. “Open it, jackass, or the conversation ends now.”
Masid shifted his hand to the small wafer alongside the blaster. He pressed the contact.
A heavy scent of ozone filled the room. Toranz stiffened visibly and Masid flinched, unsure whether she had the safety on her blaster. No bolt came. She began to tremble a little.
Masid released the button and she dropped abruptly onto the couch, the blaster clattering to the floor. Her eyes began fluttering rapidly.
Masid kicked her weapon away. He found her cuffs and secured her wrists. She felt clammy now, her skin blanching from the aftermath of the stunner.
“Sorry about that,” Masid said. “I couldn’t find enough juice for a short burst that would do any good, so I rigged the field to just squeeze you. I’ll probably have to replace the batteries now.” He unzipped her jacket and searched for ID. He found her folder and opened it. A tarnished shield glowed dully in the halflight from the windows. Behind it, he found a thick sheaf of local currency. “Well, now, who pays your salary these days? If you’re the top official left in town, no one’s issuing payroll. Or do you just collect it as fines and fees?”
A soft beeping began from within the cabinet. Toranz was barely conscious, but her eyes drifted in that direction. Masid pulled her forward, then yanked the jacket up, over her head, covering her face.
He opened the cabinet. Within, his hyperlink chimed with an incoming message. He checked quickly, then shunted it into the decryptor and closed the cabinet door.
“You shit . . .” Toranz breathed when he bared her face.
“I am that.” He continued going through her pockets. He found a wallet of ampules and a hypodermic gun. “For you? Or do you deal on the side? Considering the environment of this place, there can’t be too much law enforcement going on.”
“How come . . . how come you didn’t . . . aren’t stunned, too . . . ?”
“Special underwear. Trade secret.”
Masid laid everything he had found out on the table, then pulled up a chair and sat opposite Toranz.
“Your shield, a palm stunner, hypo, some kind of broad spectrum antipathogen, a few hundred in currency, business cards, and a portable comm. Not much to go on, but timing counts for something. You work for Filoo, don’t you? Or you work for one of his agents.” Masid grinned. “That’s it, isn’t it? He’s worried about a leak in his organization. He wouldn’t send you to check me out, he’s already done that, I’m sure. You’re here on behalf of the thief in his house.”
“I’m an officer of the law.”
“That’s crap. There is no law, or Filoo wouldn’t be able to operate. So what was it you were supposed to do here? Find my supply and destroy it? Find out where I’m from? Set a trap for me? Plant evidence, maybe?”
She blinked rapidly, fighting the stun effect. Masid stood and went to his bedroom. He took a palm monitor from his pocket and set it to analyze for certain chemical traces, then increased the range. Within a few minutes he found a packet of ampules taped beneath his bed. When he brought them out, Toranz’s eyes widened.
“Thank you, Marshal Toranz,” he said with mock graciousness. “You have shown me the error of my ways. I promise I’ll lead a better life.” He sat down and opened the packet. Small black bands encircled each one. “Tagged, I’ll bet. Easy to identify. Of course, if I were the real thief, I’d remove these as soon as I got them. But how else would Filoo be convinced that these are really his? They are his, aren’t they? Shall we go have a talk with him and see?”
“Won’t prove anything. You still stole them.”
“Ah, but I have you. That changes things a bit.” Masid shook his head. “You might have waited a day. This was really clumsy. Unless . . .” He laughed.
“What?”
“Unless you were set up just like me. Odds were really good that I’d just kill you. Or you’d kill me and the whole problem would take care of itself. If I killed you, then all I’d have is a dead cop and Filoo’s property. If you killed me, well, we know how that would look. But whoever sent you probably expected me to kill you. Best would have been we killed each other. No explanations at all. But if you’d killed me, how long do you think you’d live?”
“I’ve lived this long.”
“With someone’s protection, obviously. And someone’s pharmacy, I’d say. That protection is now withdrawn. If I was dead and they found Filoo’s merchandise here, they would also find out who killed me, and Filoo would want to know what you were doing here and how really the whole scenario happened in the first place. The thief couldn’t defend you without revealing himself, so you’d be abandoned.”
Masid glimpsed doubt in her eyes. He remained silent for a time. Then he leaned forward. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?”
“Why don’t you sodomize yourself?”
“Ah, so I’m right. Well, that’s good enough. I can wait.”
She scowled. “For what?”
“Someone to come fetch you.”
Masid took a stunner from his other pocket and shot her. She convulsed for a few moments, then slumped over. Masid looked over her belongings again.
“Better check all this stuff for hidden surprises,” he said, going to his cabinet.
The decryptor flashed that the message was ready, decoded. He glanced at Toranz, then pressed OPEN.
18
DEREC WATCHED the robot handlers bring out the cases that contained everything of importance that he had brought with him. Bogard lay within one of them, and the bulk of Thales, mostly memory storage that enabled the RI to function at peak efficiency, filled several. He imagined—tried to imagine—what kind of relief Thales would experience after months of forced constraint within a too-small buffer on Earth.
Clearance through Auroran Customs had been disconcertingly simple. A robot scanned his passport and visas, asked a few perfunctory questions about his intentions on Aurora (when he had explained—or started to
explain—about the recall from the Calvin Institute, the robot seemed to hesitate, then moved on to another set of questions), and inquired about his needs. A human reviewed his manifest, asked about Thales, and then peremptorily accepted his answers and passed him through. Derec was used to the way Earth worked, with delays and inspections, and a pervasive paranoia that refused to accept anything just on the word of the subject.
Within minutes, he had been assigned a team of robots that brought him to this bay and began unloading his property. He still expected to be detained and waited for the error to be caught and police to fetch him.
“Derec.”
He lurched around, his heart kicking. CPO Craym stood at the top of the ramp from which cargo emerged. She wore her uniform this morning, but gave him a very nonregulation wave and smile. He waved back, flush with relief, and gestured for her to come down.
A pair of floating extensions accompanied her now, hovering above each shoulder, their dull bronzed bodies twisting through complex revolutions. Derec had seen them become more and more common among the Spacer passengers the nearer to Aurora the Wysteria drew.
“I’ll be off-duty in a few hours,” she said. “Did you need help?”
“Loading, no. Finding my new apartment . . .”
“Do you have an address?”
He handed her his visa. She pulled out a hand reader and slipped it in. She frowned. “They’re kidding, surely.” She looked at the crates piling up on the dock. “These are yours?”
“Yes . . .”
“Somebody moved you into a student facility on the outskirts of the Calvin. This will never fit. You’ll be forced to leave most of it in storage.”
Derec started. “I specifically requested—”
Isaac Asimov's Aurora Page 23
