by Chris Bunch
‘Just me. Ship’s automated.’
‘Heard they’d finally got that down. Haven’t been aboard one yet.’ They went up to the control room. Libanos studied the main station carefully. ‘Looks pretty easy to run,’ he observed. ‘All those damned gauges and readouts that did nothing but beep at you - glad to see them gone. All they did was clutter the mind, anyway. By the time they told you were in trouble, generally you were ’most dead.’
‘You have your papers?’
‘Commercial master, passenger master, the mate buttons to go with ’em. But it’s been a long time.’
Joshua waited for the man to volunteer his current occupation, but nothing came.
‘Let me ask you something, Mister Wolfe.’
‘Joshua.’
‘We’ll keep it mister for a while, if you don’t mind. Thetis . . . or maybe me . . . finds out about your Sutro, what happens then?’
Joshua didn’t reply.
‘I didn’t figure you’d answer that one.’ Libanos thought for a while, trying to stroke his mustache back into some sort of order.
‘All right. We’ll do what we can.’
Without saying more, he turned toward the port.
Joshua put one hand over the two cards, waited while the bettors made their decisions, then pushed counters across the line.
‘Carte,’ he said, and a card slid across the green baize. He looked at it calmly. ‘Non.’
The banker turned his cards over. He had seven. He took another card. A queen stared haughtily up.
Joshua turned his cards, showing six, and let the croupier’s paddle take away more of his counters.
The banker touched the shoe, and Joshua felt what would happen.
‘Banco,’ he said.
The banker looked pointedly at the small pile of credits beside Joshua. Wolfe reached into an inner pocket of his formal jacket, took out a small plastic card, spun it across. The banker looked at it, buried surprise, and handed it back.
Two cards whispered out of the shoe to Joshua, to the other man playing, and to the banker.
Joshua, without looking at his hand, flipped his cards over. He held a natural.
The banker lifted the corner of his cards and grimaced. The croupier carefully pushed the large stack of credits across, then ceremoniously moved the shoe to Joshua.
The man who’d been banker stood, bowed, and left the table. Another player slid into his seat.
‘Gentlemen,’ Joshua said, and waited for the bets.
Joshua cashed in his winnings, turned away from the cage, and noticed the beefy man. Joshua nodded politely, stepping around him.
He hesitated, then started for the dinner theater. ‘If you’re going to be one, be a big red one,’ he said to himself wryly.
The line stretched out the door of the theater almost into one of the main gambling rooms. Joshua saw his photographer friend and wife. They beckoned, and he went over.
‘Is the show that good?’
‘Supposed to be. Sold out an hour ago.’
‘Oh, well,’ Joshua said, putting mock sorrow into his voice. ‘Guess I’ll settle for plain food, then.’
‘Hang on a second, Mister Wolfe. We’ve got a whole table reserved,’ Dorena said. ‘Whyn’t you join us?’
Joshua smiled thanks and joined them in line.
‘More wine?’ Arabo Hofei said.
Joshua shook his head. ‘I’ll have a drink with the show.’
‘So what did you think of the meal?’
‘All right,’ Joshua said. ‘But it seems that places trying to feed your eyes don’t pay that much attention to the rest of you.’
Arabo laughed loudly. He was a little drunk. A couple at the next table looked over and smiled, pleased to hear someone enjoying himself. ‘Now isn’t that the truth,’ he said.
‘It wasn’t that bad,’ Dorena said, ‘but there sure wasn’t very much of it.’ She patted her stomach with a bit of pride. ‘I’d be a shadow if I had to eat here every night.’
‘So what are your plans when the show’s over, Joshua?’ Hofei had assumed first-name terms before the salad.
‘Have a drink at the bar. Maybe go back on the tables. Maybe go for a walk.’
‘You do a lot of gambling?’
‘A bit.’
‘Would you show me - show us - how that doggoned red-dog game works? I’ve always wanted to play it, but it goes so fast, I’m afraid,’ Dorena said.
‘That’s the way the dealers want it,’ Joshua said. ‘Keep the action going, never let people think, and you end up with a bigger piece. But you don’t want to play red-dog.’
‘Why not?’ Arabo asked.
‘Because the odds will eat you alive. They’re about fourteen to one, plus the house generally takes five percent or so off the top.’
‘I never understood numbers,’ Dorena complained. ‘It just looked like fun.’
‘Winning is fun. Losing isn’t,’ Joshua said flatly. ‘If you want, I’ll show you -’
He was interrupted by an orchestra fanfare. The dance floor opened like a gigantic clamshell, and dancers spun frenetically as the stage hydraulicked up.
There were acrobats; comedians blue, straight, and robotic; tigers; aquabats; jugglers; horses; giant sloths; singers; musicians; and women. Mostly there were women in every stage from nearly naked to spacesuited, dancing, posing, singing, and talking. Joshua guessed it was a very good show for those who liked that sort of thing.
His eyes kept roving the crowd, trying without luck to pick out a man who might match the description he had of Sutro. Once he saw the two Chitet, now joined by a friend, sitting near the stage, watching as intently as they might observe a spreadsheet run.
One dancer caught everyone’s attention. She was small, Afro-Oriental, Joshua thought, with long black hair and a pert figure. For a moment he thought she was nude, then realized she was wearing a bodysuit. Her partner was equally striking: tall, strong-muscled, white, platinum blond. The two of them performed alone with no music other than a metronomelike drum and a swirling synth-tone that might have originated on the Japanese long bamboo flute.
The woman floated, hung, turned, seemingly only to touch the earth or her partner’s waiting arms for a moment’s rejuvenation before taking off once more.
‘How does she do that?’ Dorena sighed. ‘I used to dance before I met Arabo and he told me it was all right to eat. But even at my best I never dreamed I could . . .’ Her voice trailed away, and she looked momentarily disconsolate. Hofei patted her hand.
The tune ended, and the two dancers took their bows and left the stage.
The next act, a hatchet-throwing comic, complete with blond and brunette barely missed ‘targets,’ seemed flat to Joshua and his companions. Joshua slipped a debit card into the table’s slot before Arabo could get his out in spite of the man’s protests.
They were in the lobby when they heard the woman scream, the scream choked off.
The tall white-blond dancer cowered beside the casino’s entrance. His partner, the small Afro-Oriental woman, lay sprawled on the concrete nearby.
There were three men in front of them. Two of them were heavy, hard-faced, half grinning, enjoying their work. The third was thin, average build, expensively dressed. He reached down, jerked the dancer to her feet, snarled something, and drew his hand back.
Joshua was across the lobby and through the door. ‘I’m sorry, sir. But artists aren’t permitted to mingle with the guests.’
‘Funny man,’ the small man snapped. ‘Now butt out or get hurt.’
‘Sorry,’ Joshua said, and strolled toward them.
‘Take him, Bej.’
‘Right, Elois,’ one of the goons said, and started toward Wolfe. His hand went into his pocket and came out with a whip club; he slashed as it sprang open. Wolfe ducked, let the lash go overhead, and rapped the man’s elbow with the heel of his hand. The man yelped, dropped the club, and grabbed his crazy bone. Wolfe raked a kick down the front of his leg,
crashing onto the arch of his foot, and the man screamed loudly, the scream broken into silence as Wolfe’s hammerblow struck the front of his skull.
The second thug came in, hands in a shifted cat stance. Wolfe took the same stance for a moment, ignored the other’s feint, blocked the following midsection punch, then snapped his blocking hand up, smashing the goon’s face with the back of his wrist, ripping his nose away from the cavity. The man gurgled agony, lost interest, and stumbled away.
The small man Wolfe had heard called Elois was backing away. His hand slid into his jacket and came out with a small nickel-plated gun, lifted as Wolfe’s hand blurred to the back of his neck, then darted forward.
A shiny dart of black obsidian protruded from the man’s wrist. He let go of the gun, stared at the bubbling blood, said ‘Oh’ in a surprised tone, and sat down on the concrete.
Wolfe stepped over, pulled the knife free, wiped it on the man’s jacket, and resheathed it. He paid the short man no further mind but turned to the woman. ‘You need an escort somewhere?’
The woman smiled shakily and touched a finger to the corner of her mouth, where the bruise was beginning to blossom. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You appear more dangerous than he is.’
‘No, ma’am,’ Wolfe said. ‘I’ve spent my spleen for at least another week. From now on out I’m a pink pussycat.’
The woman hesitated, then said, ‘All right. If you’d walk me to my lifter.’
‘My privilege.’
The woman gazed at her partner. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Thanks so much.’ The tall blond man shrank back as if she’d struck him.
Joshua looked about, saw the Hofeis standing wide-eyed, waved a farewell, took the woman’s arm, and led her away, leaving a crowd gathering around the two sprawled men. It had taken just a few seconds. There was still no sign of security or police.
Joshua concentrated on his breathing: in through the nose, out through the diaphragm. After forty breaths his heartbeat was normal.
‘You follow the Way,’ the woman said.
‘You have sharp ears,’ Joshua said. ‘One of them . . . and another discipline.’
‘I once became curious about things like that and studied enough so I could write a dance that would be realistic. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the effects rather than merely the motions.’
‘And perhaps,’ Joshua said dryly, ‘I should have paid more attention to the end product of the motions myself.’
‘You mean you should not have intervened.’
‘I won’t say that. But someone taking a quiet vacation doesn’t need the sort of attention I most likely just set myself up for.’
‘Yes,’ the woman said. ‘A “vacationer” mustn’t ever get in the spotlight.’ She put obvious quotation marks around ‘vacationer.’ ‘When you are not on “vacation,” might I ask how you spend your time?’
‘Traveling. Meeting people.’
‘That covers quite a range of professions,’ the woman said.
‘It does, doesn’t it?’ Joshua agreed. ‘By the way, we haven’t formally met.’ He introduced himself.
‘I am Candia Hsui,’ the woman said. ‘One-half of the Null-G Duo. I’m afraid, the way I feel at present, I may be all of the troupe. Damn Megaris, anyway!’
‘Your partner?’
‘At the moment. What a shit! You have no idea, Joshua, what it is like to look for a dance partner. I don’t care that they’re always boy-crazy or that they have the courage of bush babies.
‘What I just said is a lie, but I try to be content with what Allah wills. None of them seems to think they have to be strong. I’ve spent more time in clinics getting patched up because some wavy boy dropped me than anything else.’ Joshua realized she was babbling, a little shocky from the blow and the blood.
‘Shows what happens,’ he said, trying a mild joke, ‘when you take your job home with you. You should’ve left him at the office.’
Candia giggled suddenly. ‘You have humor in you,’ she said. ‘That is good. That is better than Elois or most of the men I generally choose.’
‘Elois is - was, rather - your companion by law?’
‘Choice only. I would never contract with anyone. Love does not live as long as lawyers.’
‘You have humor, too,’ Joshua said.
‘I think you must,’ Candia said, ‘especially when you are as long from home as I am. Here. This is my lifter.’
It was a sleek black-silver sporter. She touched the lock, and the bubble opened.
‘Let me ask you something,’ Joshua said. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Why -’ Candia broke off. ‘I was going to say back to my apartments. Which I share - shared with Elois. I do not think I am thinking clearly.
‘Hell! What a pain that will be. I’ll have to get my cases tomorrow and no doubt have to put up with another session from the bastard. Although he never struck me but once before.’
‘If you want to pick them up now, I’ll ride along,’ Joshua said, wondering why his tongue was behaving so foolishly. ‘I’ll help you get a room at whatever hotel you choose. If you’re short on a payday . . .’ He let the suggestion trail into silence.
‘No. Money is not something I am short of, but rather common sense. Get in. Let us go, get my things, and be gone before Elois finishes getting his arm sewn up or plassed or whatever they’ll do to him.’
Joshua went to the other side of the lifter and clambered in. Candia touched buttons, and the bubble closed, the drive started and the vehicle lifted off the ground.
The lifter went through the resort streets swiftly, past the still-raucous bars and restaurants, then into the hills, past the dark, blank-faced palaces of Trinité’s elite. She drove the winding roads fast, skillfully.
‘What was it you did to Elois? I thought I saw a knife, but it was black.’
‘It was a knife. Of sorts. I’m sorry I had to use it. Usually there’s an easier way.’
‘Pah! I hope the pigfutterer bleeds to death!’
Elois’s ‘apartments’ were a rather luxurious town house atop one of Morne-des-Esses’s peaks.
Wolfe looked at it. ‘Quite a place. What does Elois do to pay for it?’
‘Some of this, some of that. Mostly smuggle. Nothing seamy, he swore. Just papers that are worth money on other worlds that people wish to have in other places without handling them themselves. I should have known what he was, seeing his bullies always about him.’ She shrugged. ‘At least he was fun for a while.’
Candia touched the lock, swore when nothing happened. ‘He already took my porepattern from the lock! Now I will have to come back and listen to his bullshit!’
‘Maybe not.’
Joshua touched the tips of his fingers to the sides of the lock and listened. The lock clicked, and the door swung open. Candia looked at him in astonishment.
‘How did you do that? Elois said this lock was unbreakable! In his trade having a safe place is very important.’
‘Perhaps he should complain to the manufacturer,’ Joshua suggested.
Candia’s possessions were indeed no more than three cases. Joshua lifted the last of them into the baggage area of the lifter, slammed the lid closed, and got in the vehicle.
Candia climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Now, what hotel would you recommend, my fearless paladin?’
‘One with two big doormen,’ Joshua suggested. ‘Elois looks the type who doesn’t take no for an easy answer.’
‘Probably not,’ the woman sighed. ‘In which event I shall have the law take him by the balls and pull hard. Let me think. Perhaps the Diamant Novotel?’ She looked at him in a curious manner.
‘You know Diamant better than I do,’ Wolfe said. ‘I’ve only been onplanet a day.’
‘We’ll go there,’ Candia said, giving him the strange look once more.
There were two doormen at the Novotel even at that late hour, and both of them were very large. They hurried out as the lifter slipped up the drive
.
‘There is an advantage to an expensive toy like this,’ Candia said. ‘People scrape and bow when they see you come. I could be an ax murderer and no one would notice.’ She sighed. ‘What a bother it will be giving it back to Elois.’
The bubble opened, and the two men bowed Candia and Joshua out, then picked up her luggage.
‘I’ll wait until you sign in,’ he said, ‘then let you sort things out in peace.’
‘You know,’ she murmured, ‘I am starting to believe you might truly be sans peur et sans reproche.’
‘Don’t put big money on that,’ Joshua said. ‘Unless you change reproche to raison. But thanks for the compliment. Why?’
The doormen withdrew discreetly out of hearing.
‘You never suggested that a good place to stay might be your hotel and the safest place of all would be your room and your bed. I’ve not known many men who wouldn’t try to take such advantage.’
‘But I’m not staying in a hotel.’
‘Your villa, then.’
‘Nor there.’
Candia glared at him. ‘I do not know whether to stamp my foot, hit you, or laugh. Very well, then, Joshua Wolfe. Where are you staying?
‘My ship’s moored in the harbor. The Grayle.’
‘Thank you, Joshua. Perhaps your chivalry will be rewarded. We shall see.’ She came close, stood on tiptoe, kissed Wolfe on the lips, and went into the hotel without looking back.
Joshua stood, bemused, still feeling that butterfly touch. He realized one of the doormen was grinning at him.
Wolfe licked his lips, tasted something like jasmine, and went down the hill to the harbor.
ELEVEN
There were two scribed messages on the com when Joshua awoke: I would appreciate a few moments of your time at ten in the morning, in my office, if it would be convenient, so that we can both avoid possible problems.
Falster Samothrake
General Manager
Casino d’Or
