by Chris Bunch
“Or maybe not,” Lollypop said.
“It does sound,” M’chel said, “as if you have a problem.”
Lollypop looked at Riss scornfully, as if she shouldn’t have bothered to bring up the obvious.
“If I take the assignment,” Riss said, “which I’ll know after I do some research, there’ll be three others, minimum, plus myself. My rates — ”
“I don’t care about that,” Lollypop said. “Arn talks business for me — for us.”
“Just so you’re aware of the way things work,” Riss said. “That means somebody will be with you all day, every day, and every night. Plus we’ll use backup if we decide it’s necessary.”
“That’s going to put some kind of crimp in my sex life,” Lollypop said. “Try to have some cute guys with your team.”
There was a short laugh from Maln, and a very hateful look from Lollypop.
“No offense,” Riss said, meaning offense, “but my team will be there to keep you alive. We won’t want to even be your friend, let alone anything more.”
“That’ll put you with the majority,” somebody across the table said. Lollypop’s sweeping glower didn’t ID the voice.
“We’ll put our best efforts behind finding whoever’s after you, as well,” Riss said.
“Just keep me alive,” Lollypop chirped, and a bit of fear came into her voice.
“That’s our job,” M’chel said. “After all, dead clients don’t pay.”
Riss mentally doubled her price as Arn rose and beckoned her out of the room. He wanted to haggle. M’chel, who was already wondering why she wasn’t just passing on the job, didn’t let him.
The eventual rate was 200,000 credits per month, plus all expenses.
“Steep, very steep,” Arn said.
M’chel shrugged.
“What’s your client’s life worth?”
Arn couldn’t come up with any answer but a nod of concession.
“I’ll have my team in place within a week,” she said. “I need to study the situation. One of the women in the meeting was IDed as the group historian. I’ll need her full cooperation. And Folger’s as well.”
“Your timing is perfect,” Arn said. “The group will be going on the road in two weeks.”
“On the road?”
“Sorry. That’s an archaic term for touring.”
Once the contract was signed and a retainer check cleared her new bank, M’chel started doing her homework.
She rapidly discovered that the anonymous voice was right. Lollypop had all the best friends money could buy, and not one more.
There was good reason — not that M’chel got much help learning the negatives from the group’s PR man, a fat sycophant named Sonlev, to whom everything was wonderful (and if it wasn’t, he paid no attention). The true history of Lollypop came from Yalt, the band’s historian, a mousy little man with dozens of downloads on Lollypop, and Dimet, president of the group’s fan club, a heavyset woman with a tendency toward a mustache who insisted on using what M’chel thought might be youth slang. Lollypop was, to her, “the ginchiest,” which Riss assumed indicated some sort of approval.
Lollypop was actually named Miki Gubitosi, and started life as a minor star named Little Miki, all ringlets and flounces.
M’chel had enough morbid curiosity to dig out one of her recorded songs, a sentimental wallow called “My Heart and Family,” that made Riss’s teeth ache.
When Little Miki had the temerity to reach adolescence and developed breasts and an attitude, her career was history. She, in turn, dropped her family, who’d vampired her into stardom, and vanished into the jungle of her home planet’s runaways.
Those had their own music, which, as far as Riss could tell, was judged solely on how badly it disgusted adults.
Miki ended up as part of the Berserkers, which was successful enough to get a booking agent, a manager, and a recording contract.
Success of a sort came, but then the Berserkers peaked. Railing on about how everything sucks has, after all, a limited audience.
A normal group would have broken up at this point, but Little Miki, now calling herself Mik the Murderer, was unbelievably ambitious, having tasted a bit of fame, and wanting it back.
Either she was contacted by Music Associates, or she went to them. No one knew.
But suddenly the Berserkers were released from all contracts and were free agents.
Riss, very cautiously, asked how that had happened, feeling that toes must have been stepped on.
Even she knew that the music industry’s contracts were, for the talent, as ironbound as slavery.
Maln gave her the explanation: They knew some “hard boys,” from their days on the street, who didn’t mind “reasoning” with people.
Credits for these goons changed hands — ”Not ours, ‘course,” Maln said. “Folger was one of the thugs who went out and worked on people’s kneecaps. I’d guess that Arn and his partner put up the geetus for the goon show.”
And then the Berserkers were signed by Music Associates.
The contract also wasn’t for the usual fifteen to twenty percent managers charged. Their flat fee was forty percent, plus additional points for the choreographers, costumers, songwriters, and such.
Riss couldn’t find out how much the Berserkers themselves got, but estimated around twenty percent.
“But it don’t matter,” Maln said. “They do everything for us, from taking care of our houses to … to making sure we’re happy.”
Their material changed radically. Now all was mooning about lost lovers and new infatuations, prime interests to the subteen set.
The songs, Riss thought, truly sucked, being simplistic in both their lyrics and chord changes.
The group now made millions, both with recorded logs and in their tours. That figured, Riss thought cynically. Pop music never did go for the intellect.
Riss wondered to herself if the Berserkers, when the smoke cleared, had more credits in their pockets now than before, but didn’t say anything.
She also hoped they were saving what they made, pretty sure the Berserkers’ fame had about the half-life of a laboratory-formulated element on the very far side of the periodic table.
Part of the change to the group had been Miki’s deciding she needed a new name. Arn supposedly came up with “Lollypop.”
It made the band sound absurd, but M’chel thought she was maybe being too much of an adult.
Their new audience of prepubescent little girls loved the name, and buried Music Associates’s secretaries with requests for Lollypop’s picture and advice.
The Berserkers thought their audience was quite too dumb to reach adulthood, but their manicured press never gave a clue that the band didn’t think every person in their audience wasn’t a budding saint.
Lollypop herself became known as a harridan on roller skates, insisting on her way all the time, which included contracts for concerts that had specific clauses about what food was to be backstage, which depended on Lollypop’s latest fad diet; the color of the lims they were to be transported in; the number of temporary aides they were provided with, the precise number of backstage passes, and so forth, down, Riss suspected, to a description of their touring bed partners.
Lollypop was also infamous for discussing, the next morning, in public, just how incompetent her night’s lover, of whatever sex, had been. Of course, she’d already gone through her bandmates, and now only used them as pimps when the group was on the road.
Riss decided she definitely had no desire or talent for a career in music, and certainly not this method of being a wandering troubadour.
At least she’d had no trouble finding three solid backups. Two were women, which Riss thought was preferable, since they would be seen as less of an obvious threat. All of them had not only active military service, but field duty, and all of them had been seconded to various dirty deeds divisions.
Best of all, two of them had held civilian risk management jobs, but not
long enough to have bad habits thoroughly ingrained. M’chel thought she could train them the way she wanted in a short time, hopefully before the nameless assassin(s) tried again.
And she’d learned a good, solid reason why she shouldn’t tell Lollipop and Company to pack their asses with salt and piddle up a rope, as Chas Goodnight had been wont to say:
Music Associates had hired additional security after the first attempt on Lollypop — Cerberus Systems, who’d utterly failed to find the culprits, but had still charged an enormous fee.
The idea of being able to break it off in them, no matter how slight, even though Cerberus was unlikely to hear of her success, was like a shot of mother’s milk.
With ancient brandy.
Riss put that aside, and started trying to play detective, which she thought she was completely incompetent at.
She began with the assumption that the unknown enemy was either within the organization or without.
She found that appallingly brilliant, and her fee-bling around hadn’t produced anything by the time the tour began.
Lollypop and the Berserkers were flush enough to be able to charter a small liner.
Cabins were assigned by rank, M’chel learned.
Lollypop and Arn, being at the top of the pyramid, got the largest staterooms, the band the second largest; the “executives” of the various branches the third; the crew the fourth; and hangers-on — unless they were screwing or otherwise kowtowing to someone significant — what was left over.
M’chel was beginning to get the idea that in this “one big democracy” some people had more clout than others.
She herself and her three operators were given small rooms aboard ship, what Riss thought would be considered third tier. But that didn’t matter — she didn’t consider that part of real status, nor did she plan for anyone to have enough leisure time for anything other than eating and sleeping.
She also secured a largish storeroom for her group’s “tools.”
These ranged from tiny, easily concealable and nonferrous blasters to gas projectors to sniper weapons to antipersonnel radar and night vision to various scanning devices for unobtrusive searches.
An operator was outside Lollypop’s stateroom door or with the singer at all times.
One of her women reported that Lollypop had made a fairly serious pass at her. She’d been either drunk or in some sort of altered state at the time.
“What did you tell her?”
“Not what I wanted to,” the woman said. “Which was that I wouldn’t screw her with her own dildo.”
“Your reticence was fairly wise,” Riss said dryly.
“I told her I’d taken a vow of celibacy until the Shire was granted its rightful place in the comity of nations.”
M’chel laughed.
“Good on you.”
“Naturally,” the woman went on, “she had no idea where the Shire was.”
Riss laughed even harder.
• • •
The third performance was on Defelter VI, in the planet’s largest amphitheater.
Two local groups, the most popular among the teenies of Defelter, opened the gig.
Riss had the word “gig” defined to her, and looked up its origin out of curiosity.
She finally found something in a dictionary of archaisms that left her even more puzzled. Why a musical performance used the same word as an ancient term for a military criticism was quite beyond her.
The group carried its own sound system with it, which she’d been told simplified life no end. It was mounted on a double alloy tower that was bolted together by the crew.
This was something that had impressed M’chel. The grips took only a few hours to set up the huge structure, its myriad cables — more reliable and less bother than wireless transmission — and speakers and monitors and mix boards here, there, and everywhere. There were also cameras and lights scattered all over the tower.
Riss was a bit awed with how much all this gear had cost. Lollypop and the Berserkers, regardless of whatever else they were, believed in giving a hell of a show.
Maln set her straight: The tower and all equipment belonged to Music Associates. “That way, when we fall off the charts, they have things ready to go for whoever’s standing in line to replace us.”
M’chel now had an idea where Maln’s haunted look came from.
The band, short Lollypop, deigned to make a sound check, then retired to their luxury hotel, which of course had been paid for by the promoter.
For the performance, two of Riss’s team and M’chel danced attendance in the stadium. It was vital that they learn who belonged where and when, so anyone out of place intending harm could be quickly tagged and neutralized.
One operator stayed with Lollypop.
M’chel decided her command post would be atop one side of the tower.
That far up, it was very hot, very sweaty, and very loud.
But certainly nowhere as bad as combat, she reminded herself. And a lot safer — at least for anyone except Lollypop.
The two opening groups played hard, but not that hard. M’chel had heard that anyone outdoing the Berserkers would find it hard to get paid until much, much later in the tour.
The fact that they had to provide their own sound gear and were forbidden to use the group’s didn’t help them shine.
Riss put sound filters in her ears and scanned the huge stadium, concentrating on first the audience.
All she saw was the core listeners and a few bored or appalled parents. Neither group seemed motivated enough to be assassins.
Riss forgot about them, swept the stage.
Standard procedure, she’d learned, was for the Berserkers to play two numbers, and then, to the audience’s carefully choreographed screaming, Lollypop would bound onstage.
The group was halfway through its intro number when M’chel saw something. It was on the catwalk atop the other side of the tower, and if it was anything dangerous, as it appeared, she didn’t have time to go back down to the stage, push her way across and clamber back up.
Riss swore and swung out on the narrow lighter connecting the two parts of the tower, restraining an impulse to gibber, claw at an armpit, and look for a piece of fruit.
If anyone below saw her, they must have assumed it was part of the act.
M’chel reached the other side as the first number finished and the Berserkers, not waiting for the applause to die, launched into the second one.
The device was pretty impressive.
It was a cut-down blaster, mounted on a folding tripod.
The blaster was topped with a small radar set and camera, focused on the front part of the stage below. A radio contact was wired to the trigger.
It took only a moment to figure out.
The radar would track anyone forward of the group and the camera would remote the image.
Of an innocent dancer.
Or Lollypop.
The radio would be used to fire the blaster from a distance when it had the proper target in its sights.
Lollypop, of course.
M’chel wrenched a servomechanism linked to the radio free of the trigger, snapped the blaster’s magazine out of its slot, and defanged the chamber.
She sat staring at the weapon, ignoring the roars of girlish glee for the star below as she smashed into her set.
Lollypop was definitely not imagining things. Someone was surely trying to murder her.
THIRTEEN
Friedrich von Baldur suppressed a yawn, smiled as brightly as he could manage at the two other people at the table, and said, “If you’ll excuse me for a moment …”
Without waiting for a response, he stood, bowed to his opponents, then to the handful of spectators, and, accompanied by a security man, left the hall.
There weren’t any rules against taking a fresher break, even in middeal.
He’d checked before entering the tournament.
Von Baldur didn’t object to the security man goin
g into the toilet with him, nor lift an eyebrow when the man checked the booth to see if anyone had stashed a card for him.
Baldur used the facility with relief, pun only half-considered, his mind intent on the cards and the table behind him.
It hadn’t been that much of a pretext — this was the thirty-fourth straight hour of competition.
But he’d really gone out not only to rattle the two men still in the game a little — or so he hoped — but to freshen up.
He washed his face in hot, soapy water, dried carefully, straightened his fashionably off-white shirt and tucked it in, combed his thinning hair, and went back out, sat down, and picked up his cards.
He was in fairly good shape on the table, even though the other two still had about a third more money in front of them, and the rules were table stakes.
Von Baldur had taken three of the last four pots, all three without a bluff. The cards were running in his favor.
The tournament had some grandiose name, and the game was the archaic seven-card stud poker.
Baldur’s open cards were two tens and one jack. In the hole, he had a pair of jacks, and felt fairly comfortable with his full house.
One of the other players was, Friedrich was pretty sure, bluffing, with two low pair showing, who’d bet heavily on the last card, trying to convince the other two that he’d either made his own full house or had four of a kind.
God forbid.
The other player had played a very consistent hand, and had three kings showing.
The fourth king hadn’t materialized on the table so far.
All in all, though, it looked fairly good for him.
The first player gave von Baldur a hard look, and picked up the deck.
He dealt three cards, faceup.
As far as Friedrich could tell, no one had improved his hand.
Unfortunately, that included von Baldur.
He looked bland and checked.
The first player, ostentatiously not counting his stack of chips, shoved a pile into the pot, trying very hard to convince the other two he now had the winning hand. Friedrich didn’t think so, but couldn’t be sure. He didn’t think the first man was a very good player, but he was very lucky, and had a large stake behind him.
