by Scott Rhine
Max needed a shower. How had this happened? He took a deep breath. The whole room smelled of Lisa, which stirred him again. The accident with Lisa felt simultaneously wonderful and disastrous. Gina’s beauty had been an illusion, missing scent and heat. He wanted to talk to Gina … if he could face her after this.
Chapter 16 – Loose Lips
Clean and dressed in his best clothes, Max rushed for the elevator.
Reuben intercepted him. “We need to talk.”
Max wiped a hand over his hair. “Can it wait?”
The Goat clenched his jaw. “That monster chased me out of my own tent.”
“Jeeves?”
“The damn Phib!” Saurians at the table stopped talking or eating at Reuben’s outburst. “He prefers the pond to his bunk, and he rustles around the forest at all hours. I can’t sleep. I had to move to the janitor’s closet. I read out loud to the mimics. I think they may be getting smarter. At least the hunts are taking longer. I keep hoping another one will escape.”
Max pulled his assistant aside. “You should have said something sooner.”
“I tried, but you’re always with her.”
“Sorry. What do you expect me to do?” asked Max. “Isolchar has the same rights we do. I’ve spoken with him and his handlers extensively. He’s been a model non-citizen.”
The ancient Phib chatted with Max once a week, when they discussed poetry of all things. “Poetry is the one thing you space monkeys did right. My people have nothing like it. Writing that stirs the feelings against all logic.”
Sharing poetry with Lisa had led to … other things. Max shook his head. Focus.
“He’s up to something,” Reuben insisted. “I caught him searching my tent.”
Wincing, Max said, “Yeah. He may have been after the pepperoni. His heart is in the right place with this whole vegetarian philosophy, but I’ve seen him sneak meat when he didn’t think anyone was looking.”
“I think that monster is going to do something vile when he gets to the Turtle embassy.”
“Tell the governor or the captain.”
Reuben shook his head. “They’re as crooked as he is. After Isolchar does whatever he’s planning, he’ll get away scot-free, just like Tribbethwrop on Vegas.”
“Nobody just walks away from murder, not forever,” Max whispered. “I’ve got problems of my own today. This whole voyage is about you learning to be self-sufficient. What would you do if I weren’t around? Think about it, and we’ll talk when I get back.”
Turning his back on the Goat, Max rode down to the mirrored core chamber. This time, he saw no furniture. The lights were dim and the temperature cooler than Jotunheim Station. “Hello? Echo?”
Minder, the AI, responded. “Our astrogator is currently in stasis.” Max hadn’t asked the captain to signal ahead like usual. “Is this an emergency?”
Max chewed his lip. “Yes.”
The AI replied, “The astrogator has requested that no one be present when she emerges from her chamber.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t go back up the elevator, or I’ll waste my visit.”
“I must obey the parameters for my planner.”
“If no floor is selected, could we call it a waiting chamber and not a return?” Max asked.
After a prolonged delay, Minder replied, “As long as no one calls the elevator from another floor and the astrogator agrees to allow your reentry.”
Max paced around the round room until he forgot where the seamless doors hid. Every step, he worried that the elevator car would be summoned elsewhere. When the door slid open, Gina sat on the loveseat. Her face drooped, and she looked weary. Max walked gingerly to her side. “I have the payment for Zrulkesh ready in electronic form.”
“This is an emergency?”
“No. I—are you okay?” he asked.
“I am dying, Max. Every day, grief weighs more upon me.”
He chewed his bottom lip. “I may have found a partner. Lisa Troutwine, the diplomatic assistant, may be willing to marry us.”
Gina looked up. “You have asked her this?”
“I didn’t tell her anything about you. I wanted to ask permission first.”
“Why do you think she will be receptive?”
“She—we—I’m so sorry. I haven’t touched a woman in so long. I forgot what it was like. You opened me to possibilities. It feels wrong. Tell me what I should do?” Max rambled so much that he wasn’t sure what he had said.
Gina pulled his head to her chest. “Always full of knots.”
Max handed her his earpiece. “I’m tired of the captain deciding when we can talk. I’ll get another from Reuben so we can contact one another in an emergency.”
“Will it be safe?”
“If we don’t use it too often and wait until we’re close to Eden, Zrulkesh won’t suspect. The link is encrypted on Turtle military frequencies. He’ll assume any activity is due to the embassy. If I’m not around, you can talk to Reuben. We’ll take care of you.”
Gina inserted the earbud with a smile. “Tell me everything that has happened since our last visit.”
“Do you have enough strength?”
“For you, I will find it.”
He babbled for hours, into the night.
Gina seemed very interested in the characterization of Jeeves. “Are you certain she said protointelligence?”
“Yes.”
“You were right to wake me. That’s a very specific and important designation. Does Jeeves have thumbs?” she asked.
“I didn’t get a close look because he’s just beginning to trust me. I know he’s much more developed than the other mimics.”
“Try to devise subtle tests for his intelligence, the sort you might for a Human toddler.”
“Okay,” he said, a little confused. “What about the me-and-Lisa thing?”
Gina patted him on the head. “If she is to be your mate, you need to work this out on your own.”
“If?”
“You both have much hidden. There is too little disclosed for either of you to make this sort of decision rationally. Can you trust her?” Gina asked.
“I’m not sure. It’s all happening so fast. That’s why I came to you.”
“This is the beginning of wisdom.” She glanced at the ceiling for a moment. “You have a worse problem right now. Someone has harmed your friend, Doma Isolchar. He needs you.”
Cursing, Max rushed from the core to the pond, grabbing his doctor bag along the way.
****
He found Captain Zrulkesh at the Phib’s side under the gazebo. Lisa and the governor paced in bathrobes in the dark biozone. Guards held flashlights. The governor’s personal physician said, “I found no evidence of trauma. You’re the xeno specialist?”
The Phib’s computer pad lay on the bench, open to a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. “I met a traveler from an antique land.” Ozymandius—the old Phib has culture.
“Echo told me you needed my help. What happened?” asked Max.
“I came out to play a strategy game with our friend and found him thus,” said Zrulkesh. “Is it his heart?”
Max examined the ancient Phib’s eyes and tongue. Sniffing his breath, he shook his head. “Still alive, but he’s overdosed on narcotics.”
“How did he gain access?” asked the captain.
“He’s rich and escapes custody from time to time,” Max said. Several guards nodded. He put on latex gloves. “Back up while I induce vomiting.” He had been trained in this technique to retrieve and reattach Human arms and legs swallowed by Phib soldiers.
The results were not pretty. Everyone else stepped clear of the patch of grass where he worked. Isolchar had consumed all the goldfish in the pond, adding to his symptoms. Max found one lump of tar that resembled raw intoxicant but had no idea how much total narcotic had been ingested. “I’m going to give him a stimulant to counteract the drugs. We need to keep him awake until he metabolizes everything.”
When he noticed
the open latch on his bag, he froze. Someone had been rummaging through his drugs, someone who had access to his room. Unless the captain overrode the lock, that left only three suspects. Jeeves had no motive. When looking for a mild stimulant, he noticed that some of his ammonia capsules were missing. He held one in his fingers as the ramifications sank in. Is someone copying my kill style?
He snapped the ammonia capsule under Isolchar’s nostrils and the beast stirred. “Keep him upright and moving while I figure this out.”
The captain and a guard complied, wrestling the obese Phib into motion.
How would I poison a Phib suspect who had a secret meat habit? Max picked up one of the whole fish and sliced it open with a scalpel. More brown weed spilled from the fish’s stomach. He sniffed the mess, recognizing the tang from Vegas. Anger flooded through him. Reuben was the only person on the ship who hadn’t come out to watch this circus. “I have to find more equipment.”
He searched several places before he located his assistant huddled amongst the cages. Reuben stared into space, looking shell-shocked. He still held a set of the rubber leg restraints from the Turtle supply pod.
Max crossed his arms. “Not so easy picking on an innocent old man, is it? Every action has a price, especially for people who are in the collective, like you.”
Reuben finally noticed his presence. “No, that part was easy.”
“Then what stung your conscience?”
“None of your damn business.”
Grabbing the young Goat’s shoulders, he shook. “Make it my business. If you can’t stay inside the bounds set by society, MI-23 is going to put you down. I don’t want to see that happen.”
“Actually, MI-23 would love to hear what I found out from Governor-General Isolchar. He ruled the Human colony of Winedark for years during the occupation.”
Max narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t poison him to kill him. You used the drug to loosen his tongue.”
“Just like you,” Reuben pointed out. “It’s what you wanted. You gave me enough hints on how to solve my own problem, granted me access, and then left. What else was I supposed to think? This was just another test.”
After a long pause, Max released his assistant. “I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you. I’ve been selfish. What did Isolchar tell you that’s got you so disturbed?”
Reuben stared him in the eyes. “It’s personal, but that bastard Tribbethwrop was right. Mnamnabo … the Black Ram Xerxes in particular wasn’t an innocent bystander. He brought the war down on us, and I have to live with that knowledge.”
Max plucked the rubber restraints out of his hands and stuffed them into his medical bag. “Tell me you at least wore gloves.”
Reuben made an ‘o’ with his lips.
“Now I have to clean up your mess,” Max snapped. “Don’t say a word to anyone till I see you again.”
Soon after, he tapped on Lisa’s door. “How’s the patient?”
She shrugged. “They moved him to the loading dock for the lower gravity. Made it easier to hold all that bulk up.”
“Can I talk to you alone for a minute?” He wasn’t sure how he would break this news. “I need a favor and—”
She put a finger to his lips. “Just ask. Let’s go to your room.”
When she sat on his bed arranging her thin robe, he regretted the choice of venue. “Maybe I should have included the Governor.”
Lisa raised an eyebrow.
He slapped a palm onto his forehead. “Not like that. God. I’m bungling this. I don’t want you to think less of me, but I’ve done things in the pursuit of war criminals I’m not proud of.”
Alert, no trace of bedroom in her voice, Lisa said, “You’re responsible for Isolchar?”
“No. If it were me, you never would’ve found the evidence.” He paused. “That didn’t come out right. First of all, he wasn’t any small-town mayor. Isolchar was the military governor of the ocean world Winedark during the war.”
“How did you find that?”
“My assistant. He watched me work on my last assignment. Didn’t pay attention to all the details, but he figured out that the narcotic I used makes Phibs run off at the mouth, especially older ones.”
She stood, bordering on outrage. “You interrogated Claremont’s ward?”
“Not me—my assistant did without my permission. He slipped the drug into the koi. Even a couple would be enough to keep the old guy spewing secrets for hours.” He stood as well, pacing the cramped space and clenching his jaw. “This has the potential for a major interstellar incident. Nothing I’m about to tell you leaves this room.”
“I swear,” Lisa said, intrigued. “Only because it’s you, Max.”
He rubbed the side of his head as he spilled the secret of Reuben’s lineage, though not his specific gift. “He has to be protected through some sort of diplomatic immunity. I mean, his methods were wrong, but his instincts were dead-on. We were going to take a Phib war criminal into the presence of Sanderjee, the only Turtle survivor of the New Hawaii massacre.” Taking her hand, he said, “I need your help to make sure this all works out happily ever after for everyone.”
Standing on tiptoes, she kissed him. “I’ll speak to the governor. He listens to me.”
When Lisa returned to the room an hour later, Max asked, “Well?”
Again, she plopped onto his perfectly-made bed. “I called in every gram of my political capital, but he’s willing to look the other way.”
“A pardon?”
She shook her gorgeous head. “Like it never happened. Legally, this offense is the same as poisoning someone else’s dog who wanders onto your property. The dog is still alive, so no foul. Given what Goat boy discovered, he may even get a star in his file.”
“How can I repay you?”
She licked her lips. “Well, showing up at his bedroom door in my nightie drew some serious frowns from her majesty. You need to keep me out of her sight for the next week.”
“How?”
Lisa lowered him onto the bed in a kiss, and then she told him exactly what she wanted and how. She proved more educational than his anatomy class or any coed he had ever met. He also learned more about pushing his body to its limits that night than he had in boot camp.
Chapter 17 – The Elephant in the Loading Dock
Lisa officially moved into his room soon after. Max didn’t remember planning it, just the celebration in the shower afterward. The journey became a lot like a cruise: dominated by sleeping, eating, shared activities, and sex.
Max lay awake some nights, staring at the ceiling with his heart racing. He couldn’t move in the small bed for fear of waking Lisa. For her sake, he pretended to be whole and normal.
He never went anywhere on the ship without her. She talked for hours about her upbringing in a Lunar prep school and her numerous majors in college. “My father is a boring executive at an industry that’s trying to commercialize technology we discovered during the war. He’s always traveling to visit factories or customers. Mother is a computer science teacher. Her side of the family is the most interesting—patriots like you. I think grandma was a code breaker in the war, though she never talks about it. My grandfather died defending Venice from the Phibs.”
She had a hundred questions about every planet he had visited and the idiosyncrasies of the other races. He had never met the Bats personally but had witnessed demonstrations of their innate skill as pilots. Any anecdote fascinated her, even ones he sanitized to remove operational details. She seemed most curious about how he sparred during practices with the much stronger Kachur. Until he laughed about times with his old friend, he hadn’t realized how much the Saurian sniper had meant to him.
Over the course of the next few weeks, she began hinting. “There might be a position at the embassy for a man with your … talents.”
“I have a mission for Zrulkesh. He wants to track down his brother on Eden.” Max neglected the whole robbing and killing aspect of the reunion.
�
��He’s going through a lot of trouble to import you as a detective.”
“The brother is wanted on several worlds,” he admitted.
Rather than beg him not to endanger himself, Lisa obtained Max a bounty hunter’s license, signed by the governor.
By degrees Max told her about everything in his personal history except the two Ginas, and his headaches stopped. He had found his cure, although he still struggled with bouts of insomnia.
Near the end of the second month, Max was thinking seriously about marriage. He regretted not saving at least one stone from his stash. Eden had emerald mines but not durable diamonds.
He could think of only one person aboard who might have a spare gem to sell and the motivation to marry Lisa off—Helena Claremont. While Lisa was busy at work, double-checking the governor’s remaining food supplies and their safety seals, Max approached “her majesty.”
With just a hint of gray in her hair from the journey, Mrs. Claremont had a regal bearing, ingrained though generations of oligarch privilege. She sipped lemonade in the birch room under the gazebo and generously allowed him to approach. The dead koi had been cleaned up and replaced long ago.
“Thank you,” Max told her. “You’re very kind.”
Helena stared down her nose. “You mean, not at all like the harpy she told you about?”
“If you’re referring to Lisa, she never speaks ill of her employers. I find the best time to be out here is after first light. The birdsong is wonderful.”
“Since we are bound to be neighbors for the rest of our lives, it behooves me to be neighborly.” She sniffed and poured him a glass of lemonade. She waited for him to take his first sip before asking, “What separates you from the Trout’s vagina today?”
He almost spit. “You’re using shock value because you can’t sense me though the collective.”
“Yes.”
“Just ask me,” Max offered. “As a guest of the ship and future administrator of my home planet, I’ll answer anything I can.”
