The Return of Nathan Brazil

by Jack L. Chalker

Mavra thought furiously for a moment. "I don't know. It's broad daylight and so far we've only seen him in places that are crowded. He could call the cops to complain he was being followed or something and they could escort him right back onto his ship!"

  "And what if he does?" the Olympian leader demanded. "What can we do then?"

  "Call in Obie and kidnap the whole goddamn two and a half kilometers of it," Mavra snapped angrily. She wasn't mad at Brazil—in fact, it restored her faith in him and his legend—but, rather, at herself for being taken in so. At one time she had been the greatest thief in the history of the Com, and it was galling to be taken in this way.

  They were still debating the mess when the electronic buzzer echoed through the empty warehouse. As they were yelling at each other, it was a moment before the meaning of the sound penetrated, then all fell silent suddenly.

  The phone was ringing.

  Mavra glanced over at a female Rhone crewmember and nodded. The Rhone shrugged and walked to the phone, which lay on the floor where it'd been placed as the only real furnishing. No videophones on Meouit, at least.

  On the fifth buzz the woman picked up the transceiver and said, "Durkh Shipping Corporation."

  "I'm sorry, I don't speak the tongue," a pleasant high-pitched voice came back to her. "Do you speak standard?"

  "Of course, sir," replied the agent in her best secretarial tones. "What may we do for you?"

  "We may put me through to Madam Citizen Tourifreet, if you will," replied the caller. "David Korf calling."

  "Ah—oh, yes, just a moment, sir." The Rhone turned to Mavra and raised her eyebrows questioningly, pushing the "hold call" button.

  Mavra turned to the others. "Well? What do you make of this?"

  "I'd say his curiosity has gotten the better of him," Marquoz replied. "Either that or his late-night sojourn was devoted to tipping the odds in his favor."

  "What should I do, though—considering?"

  The Chugach shrugged. "Go through with the original plan. After all, we only want to talk to him."

  She nodded and walked over to the phone, then pushed the button again, and said sweetly, "Tourifreet."

  "And a good day to you, Madam Citizen," Korf's voice replied pleasantly. "You wished to discuss some business?"

  "Just Tourifreet, please," she responded casually. "We use no titles. Yes, well, ah, I've been in touch with my father and I have all the particulars. Twenty standard containers, agricultural products."

  "Not much of a load," he noted, sounding genuinely disappointed.

  "I don't know about that," she replied coyly, "but we have no objection to your taking on other cargo than ours, I'm sure."

  "Destination?"

  It's amazing how he keeps up the fiction, she thought. He was the coolest operator she could remember, better, even than her long-dead thief of a husband. "Tugami—on the frontier. New routing, pretty far out, but it's in a fine location for going elsewhere, or so my father says."

  She could hear voices behind him in the background. It sounded like a busy office or marketplace. She also heard the rustle of papers and then he said, "Oh, yes. I see. I don't have all the frontier stuff in my navigational log. Yes, all right. I think I can pick up some minor Rhone sector cargo for intermediate drops. There's no rush?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Very well, then. Shall we settle terms and sign the papers today? I want to move tomorrow at six."

  She resisted the impulse to suggest they meet for dinner. Rhone dining was quite different from human, for one thing; and, for another, if he was still playing Korf's part he'd have his own kosher meals. "Why not drop over here when you're free? Anytime this afternoon or early evening," she suggested. "I haven't much else to do."

  "All right, if you'll give me directions," he said smoothly. "Shall we say in an hour? I assume you're near the port authority."

  "Very close," she agreed and proceeded to give him detailed directions. They signed off with the usual pleasantries and she turned to the others. "What do you make of that?" she asked.

  Marquoz gave a dry chuckle. "That was the most entertaining show in town. Imagine! You're a total fraud, he's a total fraud, both of you know the other's a fraud—and yet it was such a convincing conversation I almost believed the both of you myself! My, my, my!" He chuckled again.

  "Do you think he'll come?" the Olympian asked nervously.

  Marquoz nodded. "Oh, he'll come. Oh, yes indeed, he will. He's actually enjoying this, couldn't you tell?" His tone became suddenly more serious. "But he won't come blind. If he walks down that street over there and across the square right in the open you can be sure that he's armed and ready with a variety of tricks and that he also probably has friends already in place. This is a dangerous man—to walk so brazenly into a trap he knows about. We shouldn't underestimate him again."

  They all agreed. Mavra walked over to the doorway and opened it slightly. There was some wet snow about and it was still a little chilly, but the clouds had broken and sunlight streamed all around, so bright against the snow it hurt the eyes. She pointed as they looked.

  "Up on that roof is Talgur, armed with a stun rifle and scope. Over there is Galgan, same, and up on that steeple or whatever it is is Muklo. Plus us in here and Tarl and Kibbi shadowing him. Should be enough." She shut the door.

  "Too much," an Olympian voice snapped from behind them. Stun beams shot through the warehouse as well-placed Olympians easily cut down the crewmen, Mavra, and Marquoz. The Olympian leader looked around, then, satisfied, turned to the others. "The three on the roofs. You know what to do."

  They nodded and dashed to the second-floor exits they'd spent two days scouting and preparing. In less than ten minutes all had returned. "They'll sleep till dark," one of the Aphrodites assured her confidently.

  "Their vantage points were well chosen," the leader noted. "Take the far roof and the steeple—those are best no matter what route he chooses. Use the crew's rifles to pick off the shadows and anybody else who gets in the way. Full stun."

  "And if they have stun armor?" one of them asked.

  "Then kill them."

  "Where will you be?" another asked her.

  "Right in the square," she replied. "I shall become a statue until he is close enough to touch. Then and only then will I ask the Holy Question." She smiled broadly and there was more than a hint of fanatical rapture in her eyes. "And this time the answer shall be the true one, sisters! Salvation and paradise are at hand!"

  The leader looked across the square. All was ready, she saw; her sisters now held the high points and she blended herself to near invisibility in the shadow of a large statue. As long as she remained still, no one would be able to tell where she stood. She depended on the others for weaponry. The cold did not bother her at all; on Olympus Meouit's snow flurries would be considered high summer. She was satisfied to wait patiently, perfectly still. Her people had waited so very long for this that another forty minutes would be as a raindrop in a heavy storm. That stupid little lizard policeman and that arrogant bitch, spawn of the Evil One and their minions, were all silenced. Her word! As if one's word given to the Evil One was binding! The Holy Mother had been right, she'd planned it all carefully, and she and her sisters had carried it out. There had been no mistakes. All was perfect.

  In fact she'd made two mistakes. One was understandable; her religion did not permit her to believe that Nathan Brazil would use others to prevent unpleasant surprises, yet even now three very nasty spacers he had contacted the previous evening were sitting on other rooftops watching the show. The apparent disappearance of the leader in the middle of the square had surprised them, but the others, although they, too, were blended with the rooftops, wielded weapons trained on the square and those were clearly visible. Even using the weapons as points of reference you could barely make out the outlines of the Olympians holding them.

  The second mistake was in forgetting that the stun settings were established for human-average body-mass; Rhone,
which Mavra and all of her crew were now, were much larger and required a more powerful shot. What would have kept humans—and Marquoz, despite his bulk—out for hours had started to wear off in thirty minutes on the stunned Rhone inside the warehouse, Mavra included. It was kind of like waking up one cell at a time, but slowly awareness, pain, and mobility was flowing back into them.

  The man who pretended to be David Korf stood two blocks away looking down the street. I feel like Frontier Rabbi, two-gun sage of the Talmud, he thought crazily. He had removed most of the padding from the coat and it was on now so that it could be discarded in an instant. He'd cut his pockets so that when his hands were in them they rested on two highly efficient Com Police machine pistols, the kind you didn't even have to aim to shoot.

  The kind nobody but cops was supposed to have.

  He spoke into the portacom he held in his right hand. "How's it going, Paddy? What've we got?"

  "Well, no innocents if that's a bother," a thickly accented human voice said. Most old spacers were somewhat nuts; Paddy, whose hobby had been folk songs, had decided he was Irish long ago and acted it despite the fact he had one of the blackest African skins ever seen. "Looks like they really is a convention someplace."

  "No other ships in, either," Brazil noted. "So? Your other boys as good as you?"

  "You kin trust me to pick 'em, Nate," Paddy replied. "We got us some of the supergals, it looks like, on the rooftops."

  Brazil was surprised. "Olympians? Here? Damn! So it's that crazy cult after all!" He was almost disappointed. He'd been hoping for something more interesting. Paddy's reply raised his hopes again.

  "No, it looks like the babes moved in on your other folk. There's dead or knocked-out horsies all over the rooftops. Looks like ye got a lotta people after ye, Natty!"

  That was better. "You got the Olympians?" he asked. "How many?"

  "Three that we see on the rooftops; there may be more, but if so they ain't layin' for ye on high."

  That was manageable. Any others would be in the warehouse. If he was lucky the Olympians had done the dirty work for him and he had only to deal with them and not with the unknown enemy—if the two were different, as it now appeared.

  "Zap 'em, hard stun, as soon as you see me," he instructed. "They're not human and pretty tough, so give it all the juice you got."

  "And if that still don't get 'em?" Paddy pressed eagerly.

  "Do what you have to," Brazil responded. "Then take their positions and cover me in the square."

  "Righto. Come ahead," was the reply.

  Brazil put the portacom in an inside shirt pocket and started down the street. It's a kind of pretty day, he thought. Idiotic way to spend a pretty day like this.

  Ahead he saw the opening into the small square with a monument of some kind in the center—a huge Rhone of age-greened bronze pulling some sort of wagon, the god of commerce or somesuch. The statue was the only impediment, but it would provide cover for somebody, he thought. No, Paddy's men would have seen anyone.

  Or would they? He stopped just short of the square, just out of sight, and peered hard at the statue. How many Olympians could use it as a backdrop to fade into? he wondered idly. He put his hands through his pockets to the pistols. Well, superwomen or no superwomen they'd have to be unarmed. He swallowed hard, inhaled then exhaled, and stepped into the square.

  At that moment Paddy and his men fired. The Olympian women on the rooftops quietly stiffened and rolled over. Nothing was heard or seen in the square, but Brazil knew that his ambush had been successful; if not, there'd have been yells, screams—even possibly explosions, knowing Paddy.

  He glanced over the warehouses washed in the bright sunlight, spotted the Durkh Shipping Corporation sign on one, and headed toward it carefully, keeping half an eye on the statue. With the snow the green centaur looked like it had white mange.

  Inside the warehouse Mavra was the first to rise groggily to her feet and recover her wits.

  They'd been double-crossed by the Olympians, there was no doubt in her mind. That meant the women were laying for Brazil in the square! She reached the door, slid it open, and saw him approaching diagonally across from her. Quickly she reached for the transceiver and flipped it to all-call.

  "Talgur! Galgan! Muklo!" she called. There was no answer. She tossed the thing aside in frustration. She had to warn him, she knew, had to get him out of there— But how to do it without getting shot?

  It was cold, yes, but to hell with cold! She removed coat and long sweater so she was now unclothed. That would show him she had no weapons concealed or otherwise. Without thinking further of the risk she kicked off on her powerful equine hind legs and bounded full-speed into the square right toward the tiny black-clad bearded figure approaching casually.

  "Go back!" she screamed at him, all the time charging. "It's a trap!"

  He stopped dead, seemingly amazed by it all and taken slightly aback by her rush toward him.

  The Olympian leader, cursing, broke from her place by the statue and started running for Brazil, screaming, "Shoot her, sisters! Shoot!" As she did so, her shrill plea echoed eerily off the buildings on the square.

  Brazil saw the Olympian amazon rushing him to his left and the specter of Wuju charging across and was completely stumped. "Holy shit!" he managed.

  Paddy was quicker. As soon as he saw the Olympian break from the statue he drew a bead and prepared to fire. The Olympian leader beat Mavra to Brazil and screamed, "Lord, are you Nathan Brazil?" At that moment Paddy fired and she was knocked to the ground and lay unmoving, an amazed expression on her face.

  Mavra was taken by surprise by the shot but assumed that at least one of her people had managed to retain control of a rifle. Two Rhone crewmembers, Brazil's shadows, suddenly galloped into the square, guns drawn, from two different street openings. Mavra briefly felt reassured. She tried to stop but her momentum was carrying her past Brazil.

  More pulse-rifles fired from the rooftops, felling the Rhone. Again caught off-guard, Mavra swerved to avoid Brazil but he'd already shed his coat to reveal a large double-holstered gunbelt. One of the machine pistols was in his left hand. He didn't try to avoid her; instead, as she swerved and slowed, he jumped on her back!

  She almost buckled from the unexpected extra weight, but as she stopped and reared in an attempt to throw him, she felt the cold of a pistol in the small of her humanoid back.

  "Just don't try anything," he warned sharply. She knew his voice well from Obie's files. She stopped dead.

  "Head up the street toward the port authority building," he ordered. She calmed herself and started slowly in the indicated direction, completely confused about what had happened.

  "Who's up there?" she managed, pointing at the rooftops.

  Brazil laughed, enjoying his full control. "My people, of course! You should've covered the back alley and the window last night!"

  She was sweating now, and felt the cold very bitterly all of a sudden. She shivered.

  "Mind telling me where we're going? I'm freezing to death!"

  He laughed again. "Tit for tat. I damn near froze going down that brick wall in the snowstorm last night. You won't die. Just get to the port authority."

  She bent around a little and glanced at him. He was a ridiculous sight, a man in leather high-heeled boots, skin-tight smooth brown pants, a crazy thick gunbelt with two holsters. He wore a thin cotton shirt of red and white checks, a gigantic white beard, flowing white hair, and the porkpie hat.

  "Okay. Stop here," he ordered, just short of the heavily trafficked main street across from the port authority. "Now I'm going to dismount, but don't you think I can't shoot you where you stand. The locals take offense at seeing a human ride a Rhone, but this little pistol has a mind and will of its own."

  She'd caught a glimpse of the pistol and knew it to be true.

  He slipped off and she felt as if she'd shed a ton of weight. The sensation felt so good it hurt, and she stiffened up slightly.

  "Now,
the boys in the port authority have been paid pretty good not to notice us," he told her, "but since you're a native and I'm not, racial loyalty might yet overcome greed—although I wouldn't count on it. So what I'm going to do is holster this thing and we're both going to walk over there, into the authority waiting room where we met yesterday, and out Gate Four to the shuttle boat. Since they haven't finished unloading my ship yet they'll probably see no evil. I can't break orbit now, anyway."

  She nodded, knowing that he'd never be this confident unless his own people had them covered the whole way and everything was already set up. It didn't matter; all she wanted was a talk, anyway.

  She wished, though, that she'd allowed Obie to do an implant in her the way he'd done on Olympus. But she was still so angry with him for that trick with the Temple of Birth that she had adamantly refused this time. Now she missed his presence. She knew Obie could deal with Nathan Brazil better than she.

  They entered the building and, as he'd said, nobody paid the slightest attention, not even to her—and she thought she was reasonably attractive for a Rhone—bare as the day she would have been born if really a Rhone. And in the middle of winter!

  The pilot boat was automated and took no time at all to lift. She was thankful for the warmth and the chance to catch her breath. Brazil sat back and regarded her with a mixture of amusement and fascination.

  "So tell me, Tourifreet or whatever your real name is," he began, "are you the head of this conspiracy or just a hired hand? Who knew enough to make you look like that?"

  She managed a smile although still slightly winded. "Not Tourifreet, no," she wheezed. "Mavra. Mavra Chang. I'm your great-granddaughter, Mr. Brazil."

  He took out a cigar, lit it, and settled back against the bulkhead. "Well, well, well . . . Do tell. Anybody ever tell you you favor your great-grandfather?"

  Aboard the Jerusalem

  They'd said little after the initial exchange. The pilot docked quickly and they moved through the set of airlocks into the center of the ship. There was a lot of banging and shuddering aft, as the sounds of the ship being dismantled into containers by tugs came to them. He gestured and she walked forward on the catwalks, he following, until they reached the lounge.