by Chris Bunch
Wolfe nodded, and they found a wall booth. Wolfe slid the privacy/sound one-way curtain shut and grimaced in the sudden hush. ‘I guess one of the drawbacks of the aging process is that music gets louder than it used to be.’
‘While everything else gets dimmer,’ Cormac agreed. ‘So the trick is to never get old.’
The menu glimmered to life between them. Wolfe studied it, then touched the sensors for a conch salad and curried crayfish brochettes.
‘You want wine?’ he asked.
‘Never developed a taste for it,’ Cormac said. ‘I’ll stick with beer.’
To accompany the meal, Wolfe ordered a half-bottle of a white whose description suggested it might resemble an Alsatian Riesling, and leaned against the back wall of the booth. Cormac touched his own sensor, and a mug of beer appeared from a trapdoor in the table’s center.
‘Joshua,’ he said carefully, ‘something I’ve wondered.’
‘Wonder away.’
‘The word was you grew up among the Al’ar. Is that right?’
‘Not quite,’ Joshua said. ‘My folks were diplomats. We were on Sauros for three years. Then the Al’ar jumped the fence, and we got stuck in an internment camp.’ He paid deliberate attention to the drink menu and found a claimed Earth brandy. The drink arrived, Wolfe tasted it, made a face.
‘Somebody’s chemist needs a trip to the home planet for research. Anyway, my folks died there, and I got off, and the Federation thought I was a hot item. And the war dragged on.’
‘What do you think happened to the Al’ar?’
‘They vanished.’
‘No shit! Every damned million or billion or trillion of them, zip-gone? I was out there, too, remember? Where do you think they went?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Can they come back?’
‘I . . . don’t think so.’
‘So we had ten years and who knows how many bodies so they could pull a vanishing act. Why did they start that goddamned war, anyway?’
Joshua considered his words. ‘Because they wanted the same thing we do. All the room in the galaxy plus two yards. I guess space can’t support but one hog at a time.’
‘So much for patriotism,’ Cormac said. ‘Sorry. I got the idea you aren’t real fond of talking about them.’
‘That doesn’t bother me,’ Wolfe said. ‘I don’t much like talking about the war, though.’
‘So what do you want to talk about?’
Wolfe considered, then smiled. ‘What about whether that redhead was real or not?’
The trapdoor opened, and their food lifted into view. Neither man spoke as they ate. After a time Cormac looked out.
‘Here she comes again. Why don’t you ask her?’
‘Maybe. After I finish eating.’
‘Looks like she’s got a question of her own.’
The woman came over to the booth and tapped. Wolfe found the OPEN sensor, and the music battered them.
The woman smiled and started to say something. Wolfe leaned closer.
‘Joshua!’ Cormac shouted, and went over the top of the table, knocking Wolfe back as a blaster beam crashed across the room and blew a hole in the booth’s back wall.
Wolfe was momentarily trapped between the back of the booth and the table. Cormac rolled away and Wolfe squirmed up. The redhead’s hand went into a slit in the shipsuit and flashed out with a tiny handgun.
Wolfe curled forward, smashing the table away, and his fingers snapped out and touched the woman’s gunhand. She shrieked; the gun went flying and she stumbled back as the first gunman fired again.
The blast took the woman in the back. Her body spasmed, and she flopped aside as Wolfe came out of the booth, gun in hand.
The gunman was on the other side of the band, running for the stairs that led to the upper deck.
Wolfe knelt, free hand coming up to brace the gun butt, elbow just on the far side of his knee.
Breathe . . . breathe . . . the earth holds firm . . .
His finger touched the trigger stud, and the gun bucked. The bolt took the gunman in the side, and he screamed, clawed at himself, and sagged, body slipping bonelessly down the stairs.
The room was screams and motion. Cormac was beside him, his own pistol out.
Wolfe glanced at the woman, saw dead, surprised eyes, and looked away. He went across the room, paying no attention to the hubbub, and kicked the gunman’s body over.
He was young, no older than the woman his bad aim had killed, sallow-faced, with the wisp of a beginning goatee. Paying no mind to the blood pouring from the hole in the gunman’s side, Wolfe quickly and expertly patted the body down.
He found no identification, but from an inner pocket took out a piece of paper that had been folded and refolded until its creases were about to wear through. He unfolded it.
WANTED
Joshua Wolfe . . .
He passed the paper to Cormac, who scanned it. ‘Somebody missed the part about alive, alive-o,’ the shipyard owner said. ‘It appears,’ he went on in a near whisper, ‘I didn’t scrub that file as clean as I thought I had. Or else word’s gotten offplanet about you being here.’
The room was deadly silent.
Wolfe felt no threat, and his gun vanished. A moment later, a woman laughed shrilly, tightly, and the volume went back up again.
‘Let’s go,’ Cormac said. ‘I’ll fix the local heat when we’re back at my grounds.’
Wolfe nodded, and they moved quickly toward the exit. Wolfe opened the door for his friend, who went out and flattened against the wall. The corridor was empty.
Joshua followed him.
‘I guess,’ he said, ‘maybe we do need to talk about some . . . further alterations.’
Joshua Wolfe’s face filled all three of the large screens. He sat in a chair in the middle of them, his expression blank.
‘Are you feeling anything?’
‘No.’
There was a hissing, and the screens clouded as gas sprayed out around Wolfe. His face turned frosty white. After a few moments, it began swelling, turning red, as if he were being systematically hammered by invisible fists.
The other man in the white room moved away from his console and walked to Joshua’s chair. He was big, imposing, and might, years earlier, before the muscle softened, have played some kind of a contact sport. He’d said he wished to be known as Brekmaker.
He walked around Joshua, stroking his chin, his eyes intent. Wolfe lay motionless in the chair, as he’d been ordered, but his eyes followed the man.
‘Are you experiencing much discomfort?’
Joshua’s eyes were no more than slits as the skin puffed up around them. ‘Not . . . that much.’
‘Good. In a few moments we shall proceed. This,’ Brekmaker went on, ‘is an interesting challenge. You certainly have a . . . lived-in face, my friend. Yes, I suppose that’s how I’d put it.’ His tone suggested he wasn’t used to anyone contradicting his observations.
‘Now, if we had enough time, of course we could build you an entirely new face, from the bones out. Turn you into a chubby, happy-go-lucky sort. Then we could take some bone, maybe an inch or so, out of your lower legs, shorten you.
‘Do some chemical alterations of your digestive system, and poof, after a few months and a thousand meals, you’d have the body to match your face. Rolo-polo, the grinning fat boy.
‘I’ve always wanted to do a perfect job such as that,’ the man went on. ‘But I’ve never had the time . . . or rather my clients haven’t. Nor have they properly understood my intent.
‘No, they all say they want to be different, but they seldom mean it. You can talk if you want to.’
Wolfe remained silent.
‘So what I intend to do,’ Brekmaker went on, without waiting more than a moment, ‘is to make you into the impossible man to your friends and enemies. First we’ll remove all your facial scars and marks, especially that one near your mouth. Fortunately, it’s not a keloid, so removal will be qui
te simple.
‘In the process, I’ll take all of the aging lines off your neck. Then I’m going to build up your cheekbones a bit, make them a bit more distinct than they already are. I’m going to rebuild that nose, which looks like it’s been broken more than once, am I right?’
‘Three, maybe four times,’ Wolfe mumbled.
‘In short, I’m going to be your Ponce de Leon. In case you don’t know - ’
‘I know who he was,’ Wolfe said.
‘Oh. Not many of my clients have heard about the Fountain of Youth. Yes, you’ll be the young man you once were, plus I’ll make some improvements the helix didn’t give you when you were born. I’ll also take some of the pouching off your eyelids, cut a bit of cartilage from the back of your ears and pin them back a little just because they’re a bit too batlike for my tastes.
‘You haven’t had significant hair loss, so I won’t need to do implants, but I will do a perma-dark so you won’t be a silver fox anymore.
‘Of course, you’re wondering right now how all this is going to make you unrecognizable to . . . to whoever you don’t wish to know you.
‘It’s very simple but devilishly clever, if I do say so myself. Imagine this, Mister, uh, Taylor you said your name was, I believe. Imagine you are walking down the street and you see someone who you recognize from your first time in prison, or in school, or whatever, twenty years ago. He looks exactly the same as he did then. You are about to hail him and then you stop yourself, barely in time.
‘You’re embarrassed, because you realize that all of us change in ten or fifteen or twenty years, and of course anyone who looked exactly like your friend of years ago cannot, simply cannot, be that man.
‘And so you hurry past, not really looking at this person again, because you’re deeply grateful you didn’t say anything and make an utter ass of yourself and also don’t think on the matter, for none of us wish to remember our momentary near foolishnesses.
‘Simple . . . yet very clever, isn’t it?’
Wolfe managed to make a noise that might have been agreement.
‘I feel that you’re experiencing a bit of pain.’ Brekmaker went to his control panel, touched sensors. Gas hissed. ‘There. That should take it away. Now we can begin.’
His fingers moved over other parts of the panel, and, from the ceiling, tiny projectors appeared and moved toward Joshua’s face.
‘Culan in a kennel,’ Cormac swore. ‘You look like ratshit on rye! What’d you look like yesterday when the quack got through? Couldn’t have been worse.’
‘Don’t be so polite,’ Wolfe said muffledly. He glanced in the mirror beside his bed, saw the yellow-serum-crusted mask that looked like an inflated balloon, then pointedly turned the mirror facedown. ‘Just think of me as about to begin my butterfly imitation.’
‘You need anything? You sure that bastard didn’t work you over with a bat or something?’
‘It feels like he did.’
‘You need more painkiller?’
‘No. I’ll handle it.’
‘What can I get you?’
‘Nothing. Just make sure Brekmaker doesn’t get offworld before this whole thing’s over with. I’m not real comfortable with having to pay him up front.’
‘Don’t worry about that. I disabled the drive on his ship, and I’ve got one of my boys watching him pretty close. But I don’t think we’ve got any worries, since we’ve got his pretty little portable OR set up in here and out of his ship. I’m sure he won’t skip without it.
‘He wanted to circulate, but I told him he couldn’t. Not until you said it was okay.
‘So he asked if I could set him up with a woman or two. The bastard likes to brag on himself. Couldn’t wait to tell the girls I sent him how great a surgeon he’d been and still was even if he’d been subjected to some terrible misunderstandings, how he’d done work on Earth itself, sometimes on some of the most famous people, and so on and so forth.’
‘That doesn’t sound like someone we want wandering around with his mouth at full drive,’ Wolfe said.
‘I suggested just that quite strongly, and he pissed and moaned, and eventually said it’d add another ten thou to his bill.’
‘I’ll pay it,’ Wolfe said.
‘I wish I’d been able to get somebody else,’ Cormac said. ‘But you were in a hurry.’
‘What’re the odds any other disbarred doc’d be different? At least he doesn’t have a jar in his nose or an injector in his arm.’
‘So far,’ Cormac said glumly. ‘Look, I’ve got to get back to it. If I bust ass, about the time you start looking like a human being, I might have something to show you. You sure you don’t need anything?’
‘I’m sure.’
Cormac left the apartment. Wolfe heard the outer door close, then lock. There was no sound but the soft murmur of music from the player in the apartment’s central room and the hiss of the air recycler.
Then he felt the presence.
‘May I enter your burrow?’
‘You may.’
There was a long silence. Then the other said, still in the same language:
‘How unusual. Using the same senses you have, I see there shall be a vast difference. But beyond, you remain as you were. I am curious to see, once you are healed, what your own seeing shall grant you. I must say, you are incredibly ugly at the moment, even more so than normal to me.’
‘I’m not trying to fool you,’ Wolfe said, changing languages. ‘Just all these goddamned people who want my ass on toast for wanting to help you.’
The other also changed to Terran. ‘I listened to what that Cormac said and assume he meant the ship will be ready.
‘I have been wondering something. I sought the Mother Lumina, even though I have, as yet, no concrete proof of its existence. Was I correct in that? Or should I have been searching for the handful of other Al’ar whom I must believe were left behind when my people made the Crossing? I bow to your wisdom in this.’
‘The Mother Lumina, or your Guardians?’ Wolfe said. ‘You seemed most convinced of the Guardians’ existence when you first explained your search.’
‘I was and am.’
‘I don’t know,’ Wolfe said.
He reached in the table beside his bed, took out the Lumina he’d taken from the cache of a thief he’d killed, touched it.
The gray stone came to life, and a thousand colors pulsed through the room, flickering over Wolfe’s ruined face.
Joshua came suddenly awake.
‘You shouted,’ said the one beside him. ‘Are you experiencing pain?’
‘No,’ Joshua said. ‘At least . . . not much. No. I was in a dream. No, not a dream. I was being attacked. By . . . I do not know what. I heard a buzzing, though. Such as insects make.’
‘There are no insects on this artificial world,’ the other said. ‘Or there should not be, at any rate. So of course it must have been a dream.’
‘I know.’
‘Look at your arm,’ his companion said suddenly.
Wolfe’s forearm showed red ridges, streaks.
‘What could that be?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe a reaction to the painkiller?’
‘But you have taken none since this afternoon.’
‘I don’t know.’ Wolfe stared at the marks. Slowly they began to fade.
Then he heard, in his mind, the sound of angry insects once more.
‘Actually, I would like to have some trumpets for a proper fanfare,’ Brekmaker said. ‘You have been an excellent subject. Now, take a look at yourself.’
Joshua looked at the three screens.
‘I look like me,’ he said. ‘Quite awhile ago. And I’m bright pink.’
‘That’ll change. I’m going to put you out again, and repigment the skin. One thing, Mister Taylor. I must caution you to work on your facial reflexes. If you frown as you always frowned, if you smile as you always smiled, then the lines will start coming back, and your resemblance to your former self will be
come far more marked than otherwise.
‘Now, lie back. You’ll be unconscious for perhaps half an hour or an hour while I finish up this last detail. I’ll revive you, then we can begin arrangements to reload my apparatus, and, well, the remainder of my fee, which I discussed with your associate.’
‘I’d just as soon stay conscious.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. Even though repigmentation is simple, it can be quite painful. Trust me on this.’
Wolfe stared at Brekmaker, grudged a nod.
‘Now, I’m going to give you the deep tan of a man who’s been in space, as you wished. Please put your head back on the rest.’
Wolfe obeyed. The doctor fingered controls; two projectors rose out of the chair, aimed at Joshua, and anesthetic gas hissed.
‘Breathe deeply now.’
A few seconds later, Wolfe went limp.
The doctor used other controls, and the projectors disappeared and other, similar devices emerged. Brekmaker moved slide pots, then fingered a sensor. He watched the screens closely as a thin mist came out, his fingers dancing across a keyboard. The sprayers moved obediently, and Joshua’s face darkened, changed.
‘There,’ Brekmaker said to himself. He got out of his chair, smiling oddly.
He reached under his console and took out a small tri-di recorder. He snapped an experimental picture, then went to Joshua.
Aiming carefully, he shot a series of pictures from several angles, whistling through his teeth. He frowned, then lifted the recorder for a final shot.
There was a slight sound behind him.
Brekmaker spun, one hand diving into the pocket of his surgical gown. He saw an open panel that he thought had been bare wall.
Nearly on him was a tall, impossibly slender snake-headed being, its skin color the dead white of a drowned man. Its eyes were slitted above the hood that flared around its neck.
Brekmaker’s hand came out with his gun, and his mouth opened, to shout, to scream. But as the gun lifted, the Al’ar’s grasping organ flashed out, touched the doctor in midchest.
The man’s face purpled. His frozen muscles tried to pull in air, failed. The gun fell limply to the deck.
