by Steve Perry
And the little voice in his head said, Which part of “So what?” didn’t you copy, dink-brain? Somebody die and leave you in charge of rescuing women from their stupid mistakes? Because if they did, you are gonna be a busy, busy man from here on out.
Weems was moving off, practically strolling, and that wasn’t right either. Weems wasn’t the kind of man who ordinarily strolled anywhere, from what Mourn knew of him.
So, he’s setting a trap. No worry, you’re leaving, remember? Can’t catch what isn’t here, can he? And she is not your responsibility.
Mourn shook his head. That wouldn’t be right, to leave her to Weems. He could go warn her off. Tell her she’d been spotted. At least that much.
Aw, fuck. You are gonna get us killed!
10
“This is perhaps, uh . . . not the, uh, wisest course of action, sir,” Bevins said.
Shaw grinned at the medico. They were in the infirmary, and Shaw was naked, sitting on the exam table, butt sunk into the biogel pad. Nice and warm, the stuff was.
“Don’t you mean, ‘This is extremely stupid’?”
Bevins looked uncomfortable but did not speak. It wouldn’t be in him to make that kind of comment to the man who held his reins.
Behind him, Dr. Tenae shook her head slowly.
“Something you wanted to add?” Shaw said.
She glanced at Bevins, then at Shaw.“‘Suicidally stupid’ would be closer to it, M. Shaw. ‘Moronically stupid.’”
Shaw laughed. He liked this woman. Ass-kissers were a demistad a dozen, people with balls—they were worth their weight in platinum.
“Barry is still alive and happy enough, isn’t he?”
“It’s only been one day,” Tenae said. “He could keel over tomorrow, next week, next month, next year—we don’t have any idea how this will affect him in the long term.”
“Dr. Tenae is correct,” Bevins said, sensing which way the wind was blowing here. “That the treatment did not kill the creature immediately is, of course, a major breakthrough, but hardly conclusive. We are years away from human protocols.”
“Nope, we are about five seconds away from testing it on a human being.” Shaw picked up the skinpopper, a small gun-shaped mechanical device that used highpressure compressed gas to inject medications through human or animal skin and into the muscle. Old-tech, but sometimes the old ways still worked just fine.
“Don’t do it,” Tenae said.
“Who authorizes the credit transfers around here?”
“Who the hell is going to authorize ours if we let you kill yourself?” she said.
Shaw laughed again. “Recorder, annotate and verify this, please. In the event of my death, Dr. Isura Tenae is to receive from my estate one million standards.”
“Annotated and verified,” said the recording computer’s deep voice.
“Happy? If I die, you get rich.”
“It’s still a bad idea,” she said. “You’re supposed to be a smart man—you know better!”
He smiled again. He was going to give her the money anyway, for that line. Because he wasn’t going to die.
With that, he pressed the popper’s muzzle against his thigh and squeezed the trigger. The resulting spat! was loud, it stung a little, and the stuff was cold, like being stabbed to the bone with a blade of solid carbon dioxide. He put the popper down and took a deep breath. “How long?”
Tenae shrugged. “We don’t have a clue. Nobody saw Barry make a fast move until several hours after the injection. But maybe he didn’t have any reason to hurry before then. You’re bigger, heavier, and a different species. We don’t even know if the stuff will work at all.”
“It’ll work,” Shaw said.
Both the medicos stared at him.
“All right. Let us hook you into the monitors—” Bevins began.
“Nope. It kills me, it will be while I am going about my business.”
Both doctors shook their heads at this.
Shaw started to dress. Tenae said, “Will you let the vouch follow you around, at least?”
“Sure. I’ve kind of gotten used to the little fellow dogging my heels.” He looked at his chronograph. “I need to get to a meeting. I’ll keep you apprised of the situation.”
As he walked away from the infirmary, the medical robot duly rolling along behind him a discreet three meters back, Shaw reflected that Bevins and Tenae probably thought he was insane. What billionaire would risk his life on an untried chem if he didn’t have to? Maybe if he were dying of some dread disease and there was only one possible cure and it might be fatal, sure, anybody could see that. But to inject something that could kill you just because it maybe would give you reflexes and speed faster than normal? And not even be sure of that?
Oh, yeah. Crazier than a spazhead on suckle.
But it wasn’t going to kill him. The little rock ape’s vital signs were perfect, and while it was possible that there might be some long-term side effect, Shaw didn’t believe that, either. Because he knew.
Sometimes he got these feelings. They were rare, had happened but four times in his life, he could remember each one vividly. There came a kind of tingling sensation in his body, as if he were being bathed in a mild electrical current. Combined with the physical effect was a sudden epiphany, a kind of déjà verité, a revelation of truth. It was the oddest thing. He had not read about anything quite like it in the medical literature; but each and every time it had happened, whatever it showed him, that thing always came to pass. When his mother died, when he took over as Chairman, when he knew a woman across the room would come over and say exactly the words she said. And now, not an hour past, with Reflex, that same certainty: The stuff was going to work. He’d bet his life on it.
He had bet his life on it, but he was not worried. If his gift let him down and it killed him? Well, fuck it, nobody lived forever. He had gone everywhere he had wanted to go, eaten the best foods, drunk the best wines, slept with the best women. He was a giant of industry, worth more than some wheelworlds, and the only goal he had not accomplished was to become a player and win the Musashi Flex. This drug was going to give him that. And afterward? Well, he’d worry about that later.
He was supposed to see Baba for his training in a few minutes. It was too much to hope for that the drug would kick in while he was training, allowing him to astound the shit out of Baba. The little old bastard would be impressed if Shaw did a drumroll on his head before Baba could blink; but if the rock ape hadn’t come up to speed, so to speak, for seven and some hours, a few minutes for Shaw wasn’t likely.
Well. Whatever. There would come another time.
Weems led them to a public schoolyard. Apparently the place was not in session, and there were only a few people around, kids playing on outdoor rec gear, swings, twirlers, bouncers, like that. It wasn’t an empty alley, it was a big, open space, and the far corner of a playing field under some big oak trees was enough away from anybody so that it was effectively private. Even if somebody saw them and decided to head that way, Weems would have plenty of time to break Sola’s neck and be on his way before help could get there. Not that there was anybody around here who, short of shooting him, could help her.
That left out Mourn, too, since he was too far back to catch her without yelling, and Weems wasn’t deaf . . .
Nothing wrong with his eyes, either, so he could also see anybody trying to follow him across the schoolyard. Tailing somebody on foot across a tagball field unseen in the middle of the afternoon was pretty much impossible unless the person being tailed was blind or stupid, and Weems wasn’t stupid, either.
Sola had some chops, Mourn already knew. She saw which way Weems was heading and circled away, using bushes and benches for cover, trying to flank him. But if he hadn’t known she was behind him yet, all he had to do was glance back, and he’d spot her fast enough. She couldn’t stay back far enough to be completely hidden and maintain surveillance. By the time she got to the edge of the yard, he’d be long gone.
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Mourn, once he realized what Weems was up to, backed off and ran, circling around the schoolyard out of sight, hoping to get to a hiding place where his quarry would emerge. It was risky. If Weems stopped and turned back, he’d be gone before Mourn could pick him up again.
Mourn made it around. There was a gate in the expanded-metal fence that surrounded the school; it was open, and that was where Weems would emerge. Mourn’s sense of time made it that he had thirty or forty seconds to find a hiding spot before Weems came through the gate. He spotted a big trash bin behind a cube complex and slid between it and the wall, crouched low.
Thirty seconds went by.
Sixty seconds.
Ninety . . .
Mourn swore softly. Weems could have hurried, gotten through the gate, and be six blocks away by now. Or he could have stopped in the yard, under the trees where he was hidden from Mourn’s view. Or he could have turned around and headed back the way he’d come, to catch out his tail.
Or he could have fallen down and broken his fucking leg and be lying there on the grass in pain, hey? Really have a use for that cane he carries?
Mourn smiled at himself. Yeah, right.
Okay, now what?
Only one way to figure it out. Go look.
Mourn moved from his hiding place and headed for the gate.
Inside the schoolyard again, he saw them fast enough. Weems, with Sola, fifty meters away. He had her backed up against one of the thick-boled trees, not touching her, but close. She was talking fast, Mourn could see that even though he couldn’t hear her, and maybe Weems was buying what she was selling—
Weems flicked a hand out and slapped her. It wasn’t much, enough to sting and rock her head a little; he was playing with her, but Mourn realized that Sola was in deep shit.
He took a deep breath and headed toward them.
Weems caught the movement peripherally, spared Mourn a quick glance, realized who he was. He grinned, real big. Reached out and patted Sola’s face where he had slapped her, a quick one-two. She swung on him, a hard right hand knotted into a fist. He blocked it, never taking his gaze from Mourn, slipped his hand forward and caught her by the throat. When she tried to punch again, he squeezed, enough to stop her struggles.
When he was five meters away, Mourn stopped.
“Hello, Mourn.”
“Primero.”
“She yours? Or are you just . . . passing by?”
“She’s mine. Let her go. Dance with me instead.”
“You aren’t as pretty. And you don’t have the steps.”
“Maybe.”
Weems laughed softly, released his grip on Sola’s throat.
Mourn said to her, “Once we get started, you take off.”
“You can call it,” Weems said. He waggled the cane in his hand.
“Bare.”
“Smart. But it won’t matter, you know.” Weems hooked the cane over a projecting nail or screw on the tree and took two steps to his left away from Sola.
“Want to warm up? Do a few push-ups?” Weems smiled broadly.
Mourn continued breathing deeply through his nose, reaching for the bottom of his lungs with each inhalation. He had the oxygen he needed, he had started as soon as he had seen them.
Weems moved toward him, as if he was walking over to turn on a light switch, no tension at all.
Mourn turned sideways, angling into the silat stance, right hand high, left low. Then he opened his right arm, giving Weems a clear shot at his head.
Weems laughed again. “Come on, Mourn! You came all this way to insult me?”
Mourn shook his head. How had he gotten himself into this?
The place on South Park Njia ya Mji had been a plain-vanilla office building, with a lot more security than it would normally rate. Azul discovered why when she got to the suite with a pair of heavily armed guards accompanying her: Newman Randall, the Confed’s PR, sat behind a desk, smiling. He’d gestured at the guards, who vanished, then at the couch. She’d sat, and he’d laid it out.
There was a man, Ellis M. Shaw, who owned most of the largest pharmaceutical company in the galaxy. Randall wanted UO Azul to get next to the man and find out everything she could about a new drug he was developing. It was called “Reflex,” and he wanted to know everything.
She had shrugged. Fine.
He was conducting some personal inquiries into this matter, he’d said. But he would keep any information he gathered to himself and check it against what she learned. He did not wish to influence her.
She shrugged again. Oh, by the way, did PR Randall know that somebody had put a tail on her when she’d arrived on this world?
No. He hadn’t known that. He would check into it. But what mattered was her assignment.
“That’s always what matters,” she’d told him.
He would contact her again soon, he’d said. He’d smiled, and she’d stood, nodded, and left. At least he hadn’t told her how to do her job. They sometimes did that. The more money and power they had, the more they tended to think that made them experts at everything. She recalled being fascinated the first time she met a really rich man and realized that he wasn’t particularly smart. You could be rich and stupid—a good lesson in that realization.
A few days later, after a lot of preparation, Azul had enough of a picture to begin working on ways to put herself into Shaw’s path in a manner that wouldn’t cause his, or his security’s, eyebrows to rise.
Having Confed Intelligence at your call to build you a plausible background was invaluable. CI’s ID Section could produce birth, education, job, and hobby records; they could fake holographs, a family, old friends; they could produce souvenir place mats from the restaurant where you ate lunch during your primary school trip to the San Carlos Zoo when you were nine years old, suitably aged and wrinkled and with notes on it in your undeveloped handwriting. This ersatz background would pass virtually any test because such history instantly became part of the official records available to anybody looking for them. The family or old friends were themselves operatives, and they would know your history and be able to offer it to anybody checking on you. It was as ship-hull solid as it could be: You became who you said you were, and nobody outside of CI who had set it up could tell differently. And if the CI op who had built your fake ID got into a traffic accident and died before she could log it into the proper system? You could become a whole new person and not even the Confed could see different.
Another good lesson to keep in mind against the day when you might need it . . .
For the moment, though, the trick was to build a character that would appeal to your target, and you had to assume that a man as rich and powerful as M. Shaw would check you out as a matter of course.
Shaw, it seemed, had an interest in the Musashi Flex. While Azul could certainly take care of herself in a routine physical encounter requiring self-defense, bare-handed or with a weapon, she was not skilled enough to fake being a high-level player. However, she could have a long-lost brother—she liked that idea—who had been, say, a Top Player in the Flex before he retired or died or whatever. Shaw was a student of martial arts, he had hired major players to come and teach him. It would be a connection of interest to him to meet a beautiful woman who was related to somebody he knew about. She’d never even have to make that claim, he would find it out on his own. And being beautiful? That was part of her biz. Normally, she could and did slouch around, dress down, and deliberately make herself less attractive. This was also part of the biz—you didn’t want the attention all the time. But when she needed it, Luna Azul could be a drop-dead gorgeous knockout. It was a big part of why she had been hired, and while all of her beauty wasn’t natural—there had been a couple of discreet surgeries to complete the package—most of her looks were innate, and such that, even unaugmented, they would open doors for her anywhere there were men—or women—who had eyes and lusts. It didn’t mean anything to her in particular. It was just a useful tool.
So,
there were two things: a brother who was an adept in something Shaw was into, and her own attractions. The third would be to have some professional knowledge Shaw might find of interest. CI could supply that. It could be in the pharmaceutical biz. He was also an art collector of some note. Maybe she could be an artist. CI had some of those at its beck, they could produce some first-class paintings or sculpture, make them hers. She had a list of the major works Shaw owned; she could become an adept at drawing or molding something that would catch his eye. The trick was in figuring out what, not in the actual production of it. An up-and-coming artist from a world far away, with a history, some shows, local glowing reviews in news stats or entcom, some works that would be created specifically to appeal to one man, this was another easy task for Confed Intelligence.
Then there would need to be some public event at which they could meet, through his action and not hers. A showing, some theatrical thing, charity event, whatever. She had a list of charities Shaw supported, and of events he had attended, or was scheduled to attend.
It was all in the preparation and the timing. That he was rich and well protected? Not a problem. She had done this sort of thing many times before. She expected to do it many times again.
Trolling for a particular fish might not be the easiest thing, but if you had the right bait, it raised the chances of your success. Azul was good at what she did, she had no false modesty about that. If he could be hooked by anybody, then she would the one who could do it.
She would get her information and ID. She wouldn’t tell ID Section what her mission was, nor would they ask. She’d be cleared for whatever she asked them to get, because when a PR wanted something, nobody downlevels wanted to stand in his path; neither did they want to be too close to it—if the deal went sour, better to be able to deny you knew anything about it. Covering one’s ass in CI was practically an art form . . .
