by Chris Bunch
Cormac stared at Wolfe. “Eleven years since I’ve seen her. And even before I got the letter I kept thinking about her, and feeling like a dickhead because I should’ve gone after her way back then, done something, but I didn’t. So this time I’m going to.
“I’d already made up my mind before you showed up. When you did … I figured maybe I actually had a chance.”
Wolfe took a deep breath. “Are there kids?”
“No. She said that was one reason things went wrong.”
“Do you have a way of contacting her?”
“No.”
“So you want me to come up with a way for you to get your butt down on Nepenthe, get to her, tell her your idea, hope to Hades she wasn’t having a momentary fit of pique at the old man, and then haul ass out with your lovely like you’re a harpless Orpheus, right?”
Cormac nodded.
“You realize you’re going to get killed pulling this stupid piece of knightly virtue, don’t you?”
Cormac shrugged.
Wolfe picked up the glass of Armagnac and drained it.
• • •
“You are not going to like this,” Wolfe said to Taen. “I’m not sure I do myself. But circumstances have altered our plans.”
CHAPTER THREE
“This was a decision reached without logical consideration,” the Al’ar said. His neck hood was half flared.
“No question about that,” Wolfe agreed.
“I have more input on our dreams of insects,” Taen said. “I sense blue, I sense hazard, a danger that reaches beyond me, beyond you. That should be our immediate concern, not this person who may or may not desire to mate with your friend.”
“Your data,” Wolfe said dryly, still in Terran, “was derived from cold, logical analysis.”
“Certainly,” Taen said. “My brain has no other capabilities.”
“But what my brain does is … never mind.”
Taen’s hood slowly subsided. He stared long at Wolfe.
“Do you remember our first meeting?” he said, returning to Al’ar. “You were being tested by some Al’ar hatchlings until my presence interceded.”
“We’ll forget that I had just busted one clown’s ribs for being so interested in tests. Go ahead.”
“You called them cowards at the time, which there is no word for in Al’ar, because they had the sense to attack you in a group rather than singly. I did not understand the term then and am not sure I understand it now.
“But let me tell you of another occurrence I witnessed. During the war, after my special unit was dissolved and I’d been ordered to abandon my hunt for you, I was on the command deck of one of our ships, the kind we called a Large Ship Killer. We trapped two Federation probes and disabled one’s drive unit with a long-lance striker. The second ship would have been able to escape, most likely, while we delayed to destroy the first.
“Instead, it reset its pattern and came back almost certainly in an attempt to rescue those who were aboard the first, which any rational analysis would have determined was futile, since they were doomed. The result was we destroyed both ships and their crews.”
“Humans do stupid things like that,” Wolfe said.
“Is the thought process, or rather emotional pattern, because there is no way it can be of rational derivation, which occurred to the captain of that second ship similar in any way to why you wish to aid Cormac?”
“Possibly.”
“Could this sort of thinking, which no Al’ar could ever comprehend, have anything to do with the fact you were defeating my people before we chose to avoid destruction and make The Crossing?”
“Probably not,” Wolfe said. “We were just lucky.” He got up from his chair. “Come on, little horse. We have miles to go before we sleep.”
“I doubt if I shall ever understand.”
“That makes two of us.”
• • •
Wolfe knelt in front of the Lumina, naked, his hands on his knees. The stone flared colors around the padded room. His breathing was slow, deep.
I am in the void … I am the void … there is nothing beyond, there is nothing before …
He lifted his hands, brought palms together, clasped them, forefinger extended.
Fire, burn, fire enter, fill, bring wisdom …
His breathing slowed still further.
Quite suddenly, he was “above” the Lumina, “looking” down at it. He moved still higher, reached the overhead, passed through it, mind giving a “picture” of conduits, bare, oiled steel, then he was “on” the control deck.
His breathing quickened, and he was staring at the Lumina as its colors flamed. He turned his head and unclasped his hands; the stone cooled, turned gray.
“Well, I shall be dipped,” he said in considerable astonishment. “I didn’t know — ”
He broke off, centered his mind, brought control over his breathing. Once more, it slowed.
The Lumina came “alive,” colors seething.
Wolfe saw nothing but the stone, nor did his perception change.
After long moments, he stood, without using his hands. The Lumina’s colors subsided.
Joshua shook his head in bewilderment, picked up the Lumina, and went toward the fresher.
“In readiness for last jump before arrival off Garrapata,” the ship said.
“Stand by,” Wolfe said. He scanned the screen once more. “And now we go into the Federation itself and wiggle our butts.
“Let’s see how well it works in the real world. We want a physical transformation here, not just a spoof-job. Assume the characteristics of … a converted YS-class yardboat. I bought you after the war, did most of the conversion myself. I renamed you the, umm, Otranto. Respond to any calls to that designation as well as Grayle until ordered otherwise.”
“Understood. Stand by.”
Hydraulics hummed, and indicators on a newly installed control panel moved.
“Conversion complete,” the ship said.
“Now how the hell can I take a look at … extrude damage-inspection recorder fifty yards, give full angle of yourself.”
“Understood.”
After a few moments, a screen opened.
“Damn,” Wolfe said in some amazement. “I’d hardly recognize you myself. I’d say you were gorgeous, except that from your appearance I’m a pretty hamfisted makeup artist if I did the work myself. I better put a beeper on you when we land so I don’t get lost.”
“Your friend Cormac,” Taen said, “did excellent work. He is to be commended. It appears that your ship will serve us well.”
“He’s getting his paybacks. Ship, what do you think? I remember your last programmer decided you needed more of a personality.”
“Your statements I interpreted as showing pleasure. Therefore, I feel the same, although I know not what the term means.”
“Grayle, meet Taen. You’d make a great pair. We’ll resurrect ENIAC to perform the ceremony. Okay, Otranto. Jump when you’re ready.”
The world shifted, turned, and Joshua tasted strange spices, felt memories come to him. Then all was normal, and the screens showed new constellations.
“N-space exited,” the ship reported. “Garrapata two E-days distant.”
• • •
The office, and the little man sitting in it, smelled of failure that’d hung on so long it’d become his best friend.
“Here,” he said. “It’s quite a package. Well worth the price I named, Mister … Taylor.” The man’s nose twitched above his sparse mustache. He reminded Wolfe of a rabbit about to enter a carrot patch.
Wolfe took the microfiche, hefted it, felt it. “Who made the stonebucket?”
The little man tried anger, found it unfamiliar, gave it up. “You don’t think I did it?”
“I know you didn’t. Not enough time, for openers. But I don’t give a damn.”
“Okay,” the man said. “It was put together by a team from DeGrasse, Hathaway. I have a way in with somebody w
ho contracts for them now and again. I didn’t figure there was much cause for doubling the work they did. I’ve never heard anybody complain about their investigations.” The little man hesitated, then went on. “Plus Kakara’s little planet isn’t that far away, and he does a lot of business here on Garrapata. He’s got a reputation. It’s hard to watch your back when there’s only one of you.”
“Who were DeGrasse, Hathaway digging for?”
“Don’t know. Wouldn’t ask.”
Wolfe put the fiche inside his jacket, took out bills. “Here’s your fee. You said you preferred cash.”
“Who doesn’t?”
Wolfe left the tiny office, eased the door shut. Its click was the loudest sound in the dusty corridor.
• • •
Joshua stepped out of the shuttle, walked unhurriedly to a nearby dock, slipped around it, waited. No one was following after him.
He crossed back, past the shuttle station to a second dock, got into the smaller, personnel elevator, and touched its sensor. The lift went up to the deck of the oval dock. He touched the pore-sensor on the Grayle’s lock, entered.
Taen sat curled in the stand the two had welded together a day earlier in the Grayle’s tiny machine shop. A heavy blaster lay beside him, on its shelf. His eyes slid open.
“There is a message,” he said with no further greeting.
Wolfe went up the spiral staircase to the command deck and to the com.
The screen blurred as he played back. He saw Cisco’s utterly unmemorable face.
“I received your blurt-signal,” the Intelligence executive said. “I assume you have our mutual friend. I need to meet you. It’ll do you more good than me. The situation has altered since we last spoke as regards him … and yourself.
“We’ll meet on your terms, your turf. Contact me as to details through any of the usual channels. I guarantee your safety, but I know you don’t believe me.”
“You’re right,” Joshua said to the fading image. “I don’t.”
• • •
Jalon Kakara glowered at Wolfe. Joshua got up and walked around the holo, examining it closely.
“Did you notice,” Taen said in Terran, “how his eyes never quite looked into the pickup?”
“I’ll be damned. No.”
“Not in this image, nor in any of the others.”
“If I believed baddies had consciences, which I don’t, I’d suspect Jalon has trouble sleeping nights.” Wolfe went back to the controls, continued scrolling the microfiche.
“I have a thought,” the Al’ar said. “By the way. I think I should speak in Terran until we return to the Outlaw Worlds. Sound can sometimes travel much farther and arouse greater suspicion than what we see.
“I am sorry. I am interrupting your concentration.”
“No, you’re not,” Wolfe said. “I’m just cycling this and letting my subconscious do the scheming. Go ahead.”
“My idea was that perhaps I was wrong.”
“An Al’ar admitting he was wrong? You were corrupted by me, and I understand why your people abandoned you.”
“I define that as a joke and pay it no mind, nor will I allow the insult to require a response. Perhaps, in a way, we shall benefit from this idiotic side-turning away from our proper goals.”
“In what way?”
“Very few Al’ar ever left their own worlds and journeyed into the Federation. Possibly this is yet another reason we lost the war, since ignorance is always a weapon that turns in your hand.
“I shall pay close attention to what transpires, since I know we will not manage to reach our goals without interference from the Federation. I must know my enemy better than any Al’ar ever did.”
“Your enemy … and mine,” Wolfe said, suddenly grim.
He touched sensors, and once more Jalon Kakara’s eyes filled with casual disdain and enmity.
“No,” he murmured, and touched more buttons.
The alien and the man were suddenly in the middle of a party, Kakara the center of attention. Wolfe glanced again at the woman beside him, recognized her as Rita Sidamo, but only with a part of his mind.
His eyes were held by the inaudible conversation Kakara was having with a waiter. The man’s face was nearly as white as his antique boiled shirt. Suddenly Kakara’s hand shot out, sent the servant’s tray spinning.
Kakara was shouting now, and the smaller man began trembling.
Taen began to ask something, stopped when Wolfe motioned for silence. He ran the scene once more, then again.
“Oh, I like a bully,” he said softly. “Especially on toast.”
• • •
The bar was a quiet hush, its liquor almost as old as the money it served. It even had human bartenders.
Joshua Wolfe eased into a seat not far distant from one bartender, whose dignified face suggested he would be more suited on the other side of the long polished wooden slab.
“Your wish, sir?”
“Armagnac, if you have it.”
“We do. Any special label?”
“I’m impressed,” Wolfe said. “Rare enough to find any Armagnac. I’ll have Hubert Dayton.”
“I am sorry, sir. But I doubt if you could find that anywhere but Earth. Possibly not even outside of Bas-Armagnac itself.”
“It can be found,” Wolfe said. “I’ve had it.”
“You are lucky. I’ve never so much as tasted it. Would a Loubère be an acceptable substitute?”
“More than acceptable. With a glass of icewater back, if you please?”
The man brought Joshua his drink in a small snifter and set a pitcher of icewater and a glass beside it. Joshua held out a bill. The bar man didn’t take it.
“You’re new to the Denbeigh,” the bartender said. “I’ll present a bill when you leave. Also, this early in the afternoon I’ll have to get a note that large changed in the lobby.”
“This isn’t for the drink,” Joshua said. “I’d like to repay you for a few moments of your time, Mister Fitzpatrick.”
“Ah?” The white-haired man did not take the bill. “You have the advantage on me, sir.”
“My name’s Taylor. John Taylor. I was told you’re considered the … mentor, I suppose might be the word, for barmen here on Garrapata.”
“A compliment carries its own gold. Your money remains your own, Mister Taylor.”
“A Mister Jalon Kakara drinks here when he comes down from Nepenthe.”
“Common knowledge,” Fitzpatrick said. “He’s not a secretive man. Not in that respect, at any rate. That information is hardly worth the sum you’re offering.”
“I have heard it said that he is, let’s say, not the most congenial company when he’s displeased.”
“He would hardly be the first man of means who might be so described,” Fitzpatrick said.
“Let me make a couple of assumptions. Since he drinks when he’s traveling, I would assume that he drinks when he is on his home planetoid. Since he is rich, I would assume that he doesn’t mix his own drinks.”
“Again, your money remains your own.”
“I’d like to know whether you, perhaps, know of a fellow barman who might have been employed by him on Nepenthe. I’m sure such a man would have fascinating tales.”
“He might,” Fitzpatrick agreed. “But those tales might not reflect well on his former employer.”
“Particularly,” Wolfe said flatly, “if Kakara knocked him on his ass when he fired him, or maybe just screamed and generally treated him like a scut.”
“Are you writing a book, Mister Taylor?”
“I could be. But I am not.”
“You know,” Fitzpatrick said thoughtfully, “if you spoke to such a man, if I knew of such a man, you might end up with very damaging information. Someone who didn’t wish Mister Kakara well, someone who himself might have felt his wrath as an innocent, might relish such an event coming to pass.”
“I’d say so.”
Fitzpatrick picked up a pen and notepad
from under the bar, wrote swiftly, tore the piece of paper off, and handed it to Wolfe. “Here’s an address where you’ll find someone who’ll be helpful. Give him this note. He’ll tell you whatever you might be interested in.”
His hand picked up the bill, caressed it.
“Yes,” Fitzpatrick said gently. “Mister Kakara being a bit taken aback is something to relish, indeed. Your drink, by the way, Mister Taylor, is on the house.”
• • •
“So Jerry sent you along, eh?” The man yawned once again, then got up from the rumpled sheets that turned the narrow couch into a bed. “I need some coffee if we’re going to talk about a turd like Kakara. C’mon in the kitchenette.”
Wolfe followed the man through a doorway. There was just room for the two of them. The man filled a small coffeemaker and touched its start stud. Water hissed, and the tiny pot filled with brown liquid.
A starship lifted from the nearby field, and the tiny apartment’s walls shuddered slightly. The man turned his head.
“Two weeks, and I’ll be off on one of those,” he said. “The hell with the Federation. Things’re bound to be better out in the Outlaw Worlds. Can’t get worse, anyway.”
There was a bottle on the sideboard. The man lifted, shook it. “Hell. Isn’t even enough for an eye-opener.”
“Here. Try some of mine, Mister Hollister.” Joshua took a hammered-silver flask from an inside pocket and passed it to the man.
“That’s civilized,” Hollister said. He found a cup, hesitated, then rinsed it out at the sink, knocking over a couple of the unwashed dishes when he did. “Now, if there’s another cup around …”
“Just some water,” Wolfe said. “It’s a little late for coffee for me.”
“All right.” Hollister cleaned a glass that had a memory of Sheldon springs etched into it and gave it to Joshua. He unscrewed the cap of the flask, sniffed, looked surprised. “Lordamercy,” he said. “It’s almost a shame to pour this on top of the crap I’ve been drinking lately.”
He looked swiftly at Joshua, as if afraid Wolfe was going to agree with him, then poured until his cup was about half full. He added coffee to the mixture, gave the flask back to Wolfe.
Joshua poured two fingers into the glass, then added water from the tap.
