Steward punched out of the phone network and frowned at the terminal as it flicked on a directory of the hotel’s attractions. Stoichko’s story seemed to be holding together. Maybe it was time to visit him and find out what he was after.
The Hotel Xylophone was a medium-priced hotel of the sort that catered to ships’ officers and traveling businessmen. The lobby was full of holograms of miniature ultralight aircraft darting overhead, recordings of real pilots who flew their ultralights in the low gravity of the central spindle. Steward looked up in surprise as one of the hologram pilots raised a hand to wave to him.
There was a brisk touch on his right shoulder. His nerves flickered as he turned to the right, then heard a laugh from his left side.
“Hi, buck.” Reese was grinning at him, holding a traveling ruck on one shoulder by a strap. She was wearing a photojacket that ran pictures of distant beaches, white sand, blue sky, Heineken greenies. He wondered if she’d bought it from the waitress at the Spindrift Hotel.
“Take my stock tip?”
“Not yet.” He looked at her with mild surprise. “I figured you’d be on the shuttle by now.”
“I’m shacking up. I ran into an old friend and decided to postpone my departure.”
“Well. If he gives you any more stock tips, let me know.”
Her eyes were bright, reflecting the blue ocean that patterned across her chest. “Getting any yourself, mystery man?”
“I found someone nice.”
“Good. I called you last night at the Born. My friend had a friend I thought you might want to meet. But she took off for Spain this morning.”
“That was a nice thought. Thanks.”
Reese poked him in the ribs. “Gotta go. I’m having lunch with my financial adviser.”
“See you later, billie.”
Steward watched as Reese walked toward the door with her assured long-legged stride. The photojacket beaches passed through the door, across the alloy street outside. Steward looked for a phone and called Zhou.
The chemist told him that he’d been searching the literature but hadn’t seen anything even resembling a description of what Steward had found. Steward told him that the hormone may have originated at Express Biolabs.
“That’s a hard one,” Zhou said. “Nothing gets out of there. They’ve negotiated a deal with the government giving them control of thousands of square miles of desert around them. It’s like a little piece of Vesta, right there in the middle of Africa, even though the land doesn’t officially belong to Brighter Suns. It’s a way of getting around Brighter Suns’ restrictions about having national territory outside Vesta. They’re also the sort of outfit you mentioned yesterday. Who don’t like competition.”
“I’m not surprised.”
Steward recognized the sound of Zhou sucking on a nicotine stick. “I’ll find out what I can. But I don’t think there’s going to be much to find out, buck.”
“See what you can do. I’ll call tomorrow.”
He called Stoichko, then took the stairs to the second floor, brightly colored holograms pursuing him as his feet padded on the carpet. Once out of the lobby, the corridor was silent save for the hum of a cleaning robot moving from one room to another. He found Stoichko’s door and knocked.
Stoichko was dressed in white canvas pants and a shirt with lots of buttoned pockets. The buttons alone told Steward the man had come from Earth.
Stoichko grinned. Steward found himself grinning back. Salesman genes.
“Come in. Sit down. Cognac? Coffee?”
“Coffee, thanks. Black, no sugar.”
There was a room-service automated tray with a heavy pot of coffee on the warmer. “Bulb or cup?”
“Cup. Thank you.”
“You drink Earth-style. Good.”
“I’m Earth-born. As you know.”
Steward took the coffee cup and sat on a chair with plastic cushions and a battered chrome frame. Stoichko poured himself cognac. “You may not believe this,” he said, pulling another chair close, “but I actually enjoy staying in hotel rooms. Just sitting away from everything in a quiet little place, watching the vid, listening to music, drinking good cognac.” He shook his head. “A nice change of pace.”
“Away from the hurly-burly of the latest ice mission.”
Stoichko laughed lightly. His finger circled the rim of his glass. “Something like that.” He nodded. “I’m not a specialist in ice work, though. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
“To get me to kill de Prey for you.”
“Not really. Whatever damage de Prey was going to do to Brighter Suns has already been done. We don’t care about him. He was just”—he raised an eyebrow—“an added inducement. Something to catch your attention.” He looked at Steward quizzically. “I wasn’t sure whether you’d have the same feelings toward de Prey that your Alpha did. Apparently you do.”
Steward laughed. “Curzon offered my Alpha a shot at de Prey in order to get him to spread contamination among Vesta’s Powers. Now you’re willing to give me a shot at him if I’ll do something for you.” He sipped his coffee. “If de Prey ever stays dead, what are you people going to use to get me to work with you?”
Stoichko leaned closer and winked. “Will money do?” he asked, and then he laughed. His laugh was hearty and smelled of cognac. It was the kind of laugh that wanted company, that set whole rooms of people to laughing without quite knowing why. This boy was good.
Steward restrained his mirth. “Depends on the job. Suppose you tell me what you want done.”
Stoichko frowned, then rose from his chair with a graceful movement that reminded Steward of Darthamae. Altered inner ear structure, maybe, for better balance, or jacked-up coordination. Stoichko paced the length of his room, then gazed out the window. Outside, Steward could see the tops of trees. There weren’t any green spaces in the new habitats.
Stoichko turned. He had a short cigar in his hand. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead.”
He lit it with a match—more evidence of his Earth citizenship, there—and puffed for a minute. “Lit a cigar on the Marcus colony, once,” he said, “and set off every fire alarm in the place. Got a face full of chemical foam from the automated system.” He peered carefully at Steward.
“How do you feel,” Stoichko asked slowly, “about the Powers?”
Steward waited a long moment before he answered. “I think they’re…better…than we are, somehow. I think”—he feigned an embarrassed laugh—“I think they may be our salvation.”
Stoichko nodded. “You may be right,” he said. He breathed in smoke, then exhaled. “Consolidated launched an attack on the Vesta Legation,” he said. “None of us know why. But the Powers there died horribly—you read the files, and you know.”
Steward nodded. “I know.”
“Vesta is afraid that this may be the first shot in a very unpleasant war,” Stoichko said. “We have to show Consolidated that this kind of cowboy behavior can’t be tolerated.” He sat on the bed across from Steward’s chair and leaned toward him, creating an intimacy. “It will mean a sacrifice. But the sacrifice will stabilize the situation. It will save lives in the long run, human lives and Power lives.”
There was a coldness in Steward’s chest. “A counterstrike,” he said.
Stoichko looked at him quizzically from under his eyebrows. “Does the idea horrify you? It does me.”
Steward swallowed. He had a good idea what he was supposed to say. “The Powers…they’ll die.”
Stoichko shook his head sadly. “Yes.” His fingers toyed with the rim of his coffee cup. “But it will be a sacrifice that may prevent an all-out war from developing. Better that a few should die now than there should be total war. We have to show Consolidated that their biologic defense isn’t perfect, that they can’t escape the consequences of their acts.”
Steward shook his head. “I’ll have to think about this.”
The other man put a friendly hand on Steward’s sho
ulder. “Take all the time you need. But I want you to know that the weapon that we’ll use is far more merciful than the one Consolidated used on us. Our Powers died in agony. They went mad and tore each other to pieces. Our weapon just makes them go to sleep. And it won’t hurt humans at all.”
Steward tried to look impatient. “That doesn’t matter as much.”
Stoichko shrugged. “And if you put the ice on de Prey, that’s another warning to their hierarchy. That we’re on to some of their tricks.”
Steward stood up and began to pace around the room. He wanted to get out from under Stoichko’s gaze, the sincerity that seemed so convincing and that yet was watching him so carefully. He took a breath, made fists of his hands, stuck them in his pockets. He didn’t know how to play this anymore. He wondered if, in the case he turned this down, he would leave the room alive.
He went to the window and gazed at the green space outside. Faintly, the shrieks of children passed through the window. The old Mitsubishi spindle had been built for people who were born on Earth, who wanted trees and grass. Nowadays such things were considered a waste of station resources.
“We should talk about money,” he said, playing for time while he thought about how to react.
“Ten thousand Starbright in advance,” Stoichko said calmly. “Thirty on completion.”
“Twenty-five in advance,” Steward said.
“Twenty.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Stoichko’s cigar stench filled the room. Steward sniffed. “We’ll also arrange access,” Stoichko said. “We’ll route a priority cargo to Ricot through Charter and make sure Taler puts it on the Born. We’ll let Taler make the insert. It’ll look much better that way.”
“Support? Backup?”
“We can get you plans of Ricot, of their security setup. We can give you weapons. But do you need anything else? If you handle things right, you’ll get clean away. They’d have no reason to suspect you.”
No way off the station, then, but the Born. “And a lone operator can be disavowed.”
“Of course.”
A young woman with dark hair was walking on the green below. She was bent over a small child, helping him take his first steps. There was a pain in Steward’s throat. He turned to Stoichko. “I can’t make up my mind about this now,” he said.
Stoichko nodded. Steward looked hard for a warning in his eyes, for some twitch, a narrowing of the eyes or dilation of the pupil that might mean Steward’s swift death, right here in the hotel. Steward tried to stand in a balanced way without seeming obvious, his arms and legs ready to lash out in the event of attack. Probably, he thought, his body was screaming readiness to Stoichko’s trained eyes. He tried to relax. Stoichko was stubbing out his cigar, his gaze fixed on the ashtray. He looked up. “It’s a lot to think about,” Stoichko said. “Could I see you tomorrow? Here, for dinner?”
“Yes. But maybe I won’t have an answer just yet.”
“That will be understandable,” he said. “If you think of more details, and need to know the answers, that will be all right. But there is something that won’t be okay with Vesta, and that’s if you tell anybody.”
Steward shrugged. “I’m not stupid,” he said.
Stoichko’s eyes were hard. Steward was looking at the real man now, he knew, not the salesman with the infectious laugh. “Don’t think your friends in Antarctica can peddle the information that we’re going to strike at Ricot without our finding out. And if we find out, that you’ll ever be safe.”
“Give me some credit, buck,” Steward said.
“I just thought it needed to be said.”
“It’s fair.” Steward ran his hand across his forehead, wiping away imaginary sweat.. He wasn’t going to die, not right now.
“Just so you know.” Stoichko smiled, and Steward felt the answering urge to laugh. Salesman genes.
“Did you find a good party?” Stoichko said. “Have fun with the inhaler?”
Steward grinned. “I used all of it,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to have any more?”
Stoichko laughed and walked to his suitcase. “Try and make this one last, okay?” he said. “It’s the last I’ve got.”
Steward accepted the chill flask in his hand. “Thanks.” He put it in his pocket, then began moving toward the door. He feigned hesitation, then looked at Stoichko. “You know,” he said, “I used some with a—a friend. And it didn’t work for her at all. Do you know why that’s so?”
Stoichko made a dismissive gesture. “Maybe she had a high resistance,” he said. “Chemistry isn’t my strong point.”
“Yeah. I guess.” Steward moved toward the door. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Eighteen hundred?”
“I’ll be here. Have yourself a party.” He put a hand on Steward’s arm as he opened the door. “Don’t worry about this thing. If you have any problems, we can work them out.”
All the way down the corridor and out of the hotel Steward felt an awareness like a cold draft touching his nape, his spine. Wondering if there was someone following, if he’d made himself a target. Wondering who else was tapped into the network in Marie Byrd Land, who else might be in search of Steward’s services.
Steward checked out of the King George V and went back to the Born. He decided that he’d feel safer there. He stretched on his rack, and took the inhaler out of his pocket. Metal chilled his fingertips. He held it to the light and wondered what the hormone meant, how it fit into the picture. High resistance? He should have felt something even so. He touched the cold metal to his upper lip, wondering if he should try the stuff again, and then the coldness seemed to move by conduction through his bones. A thought had chilled him to the marrow.
The flask might be filled with poison. Stoichko might have given it to him when he didn’t jump at the chance to massacre the Power population of Ricot. Steward restrained a sudden impulse to throw the inhaler across the cabin and put it respectfully on a shelf instead, snugging it out of habit with Velcro straps.
Run a mission into Ricot, Steward thought. Find de Prey. Find Curzon.
And while doing so, kill a lot of aliens who had nothing to do with him, with anything that happened to him. He didn’t want that.
He looked up at his totem, at the picture of the video with its blurry pattern of interference lines. The Alpha had taken a similar mission, taken the bait of de Prey and massacred the Powers of Vesta. He must have had reasons for doing that job—Steward hoped he had anyway—but Steward himself had no feeling for the aliens, neither the love that Griffith bore them nor any hate that would make him want to kill them.
Steward didn’t like Stoichko’s offer. But he wanted to know what was behind it, how much Stoichko knew about Consolidated, the relationship between Curzon and de Prey.
He’d try to talk to Stoichko, he decided. Fly with the Zen of it, accept or turn the mission down as the moment seemed to urge him.
He went to his comp terminal and punched up the departing shuttle schedules. There was an Earth-bound shuttle leaving at nineteen-thirty.
If he turned Stoichko down, he’d run for the shuttle. And hope he didn’t die en route.
*
That morning Steward phoned his robobroker and told the ’broker to sell Brighter Suns short, then buy if it dropped more than fifty points. Steward ate lunch on the ship and then visited Zhou. The contents of the second inhaler proved to be identical to the first: Stoichko hadn’t given Steward a pistol in chemical form. The chemist hadn’t found any information on the hormone or what it was intended for.
He looked up at Steward, his pale face striped with paint, and gave a cold smile. “We could pass some of this around at a party,” he said, “and see what happens.”
Steward shook his head.
Zhou’s smile twitched. “I didn’t think so,” he said.
Steward took both the inhalers and put them in his traveling bag. Then he went to the Hotel Xylophone and walked through the hushed lobby. Hologram ultralights flickere
d overhead as he walked to the stairs. None of them waved to him.
He moved quietly down the corridor. Stoichko’s door was slightly ajar, as if in invitation. A babble of vid came from the room. Steward smelled cigar smoke, warmth, wrongness. Heat flickered through his nerves.
He stood for a brief second in the corridor, then reached out a hand and carefully pushed the door in. Something told him not to walk into the room.
Stoichko was sitting on one of the chrome-and-plastic chairs, plainly visible from where Steward stood in the door. He had been shot in the heart and lungs. His head was bent on his chest, his eyes slitted with an air of cunning. Bright arterial blood was pooled in his lap. A cigar still burned in an ashtray near his hand.
Mission canceled, Steward thought.
Video colors ran over Stoichko’s face, shone dully in the dead yellow eyes. The impulse to run plucked at Steward’s arms and legs. The killer might still be in the room.
He thought of connections, of communication links running to Vesta, to Antarctica, here to Charter Station, of Tsiolkovsky’s Demon sitting in public-use computers throughout the solar system. Links that were in being now, that he could not touch, could not access, without information. He might be able to find things he needed to know here, in Stoichko’s room. Steward looked at the bag in his hand, then hefted it, ready to throw it in the face of anyone waiting.
Silently, he stepped inside.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Every so often, Steward thought, it’s possible to forget that all of this is real.
This was not one of those times.
He and Stoichko were alone in the room. On the video a woman dressed in leather was using a hand-flamer on a swarthy man in black leotards. Shrieks and flames echoed off the hotel walls. Steward lowered his bag and nudged the door gently shut with his foot. Excitement bubbled lightly in his veins. Reality, at last.
The mind a void, he thought. After Musashi.
He tried to remember what he’d touched the previous day. The door, the coffee cup, the chair, maybe the window. The coffee cups had been changed by the hotel service—two cups sat by the coffee machine, each still wrapped in paper. He took off his jacket and used it to wipe the window and its frame, then swabbed down the door and its knob. With his hand in the jacket he pressed the switch near the door that lit the red do not disturb light on the doorframe.
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