I was surprised to find it, figuring Jennifer would’ve discovered it during her own search. Maybe because she was on a time schedule, she hadn’t checked the body that closely.
Jennifer stood, wincing a little as she put weight on her bad leg. “Anything else you want to search for?”
“Do you know where my luggage is?”
“Yeah. Downstairs.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “Nothing else up here then,” I said, palming the earring and slipping it into my pocket. “Let’s go.”
Downstairs, Jennifer gave a nearly imperceptible nod to one of the security members and he and the others headed toward the elevator.
Time to feel out the NIO smokescreen, see if Jennifer knew anything. I bought her a drink. Her NIO credentials would keep the locals off our backs for a while, but I wasn’t sure how long I wanted to stick around.
“Have you been in contact with the NIO in the past few days?” I asked after we had sat down at a table near the Limbo cage. Brilliant question.
“No.”
“You going to tell me where my luggage is?”
“Your bag’s still in storage,” she said. “It was just one bag in there, no name on it, DNA-locked. Lucky for you I didn’t have the equipment here to open up something like that, so I told the owner you were okay, and had the doorman tell whoever asked about it that it had been taken upstairs.”
“Yeah, I heard his story. Not too convincing.”
“Got you up there, didn’t it?” She took a sip from her glass. “Where you staying?”
I held back a moment, staring at her eyes, getting a feel for her game. I waved at the bartender for a second drink. “With a friend.”
“Ah. You mean Cara Landry.”
I winced. “So you know who she is.”
“Of course. And where she is. Keeping tabs on Kristen meant keeping tabs on Cara.”
“Of course.”
The bartender brought me the drink. “There you go, Mr. Norton.”
Jennifer glanced at me, an eyebrow raised. “A borrowed hound with a borrowed collar, looks like.”
“Woof.” I guzzled half my drink.
“How many aliases have you used since arriving here?”
I clacked the ice in my glass and ignored her question. “Cara’s a suspect?”
She downed her drink in a couple of gulps and stood. “Naturally. She worked for our stiff upstairs after all. Kristen saw no more clients after Cara checked out for the evening. I haven’t mentioned Cara’s movements last night to the locals, but they’ll figure it out soon enough.”
I couldn’t disagree with her. If what Jennifer said was true, Cara may have been the last person to see Kristen alive.
I saw movement in the corner of the bar. At one of the back tables I spotted a Helk. Jesus, it was the one following me the night before. I gritted my teeth and fought the urge to jump up and go after him. He was someone I definitely had to talk to and running at him like a crazy person wouldn’t help matters.
“You’ll be telling Cara about what happened,” I said.
“Perhaps.”
“You’ll be gentle with her about all this.”
“If I can be.”
I nodded. “I suppose I’ll see you later, like it or not.” I realized we might be after the same person, but Jennifer’s classified status left a lot to the imagination.
“You’re part of my schedule now,” she said.
“Am I a suspect?”
“You’re not off the hook, that’s for sure. And there’s something on my code card about your disappearance from New York, and a pretty serious alert about you.”
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. So that was it. She knew. Although the NIO couldn’t monitor code card activity outside of Earth and the jump slots, NIO updates and alerts still got through. Would she turn me in? Would I have to make a break for it? She didn’t seem too concerned.
She narrowed her eyes again, that tough look coming back to her. “I didn’t implicate you here. Not yet. I’ll wait awhile. But I’ll need to talk to you more later about everything.”
“I figured as much.”
“I’ll be in touch. Don’t leave town.”
“And miss the skiing?”
She smiled, then left the Flaming Sea without another word.
Keeping my eyes on the Helk at the back table, I found a comm shield and called Cara. She was okay. Relieved that I’d called. I told her someone from the NIO was coming, but I didn’t say who, and I didn’t say anything about Kristen. The dead Helk was in the vacant apartment below Cara, but I didn’t really want her there when Jennifer and the locals started nosing around.
“Leave the apartment. Go somewhere for a while.”
“Where?” she asked. I heard the confusion in her voice.
“Where’s the nearest ski resort?”
“I don’t ski. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t really trust anyone right now, and I’d rather no one talked to you.”
“You don’t trust me either, do you?”
“No.” I said it quickly, wanting her to understand how serious I was. I’d forgotten about the Helk for a second, and I glanced back over there. Still there, nursing his drink.
After a pause, Cara said, “I’ll go to a resort then, hang out in the lodge. Should I find a fake cast for my leg? Find myself a ski bum who—”
“Cara.”
Another pause. “Fine. Do you want me to tell you where I’m going?”
“Not now. Call the WuWu Bar & Grille later in the day, leave a message for me. No, not me. Taylor Williams. I’ll get there and ask for messages later.”
Four aliases.
“All right.”
“How will you get there?”
“Remember the vacant apartment below me? The couple left their flier. Entrusted me with it.”
We said good-bye, and I felt a little better about Cara getting away from Kimson.
The next item of business would prove a bit trickier. How to approach a Second Clan Helk and accuse him of tailing me?
Easy. Oh, sure.
I was going to give him hell for tailing me, try to figure out what was going on with all that, but I noticed the obvious right away, and knew what to do.
Without regard for my safety, I strode quickly to his table.
The Helk growled and stood.
“Relax,” I said. “Believe it or not, it’s your lucky day. It looks like I found your earring.”
The Helk stared at the earring in my hand as he poked inside his right ear. “I think you’ll find this is a perfect match to the one in your other ear.”
He stared some more.
“This place is going to be crawling with local cops in a bit,” I added. “I’m surprised you’re actually sitting here, considering the circumstances, but we’re moving this conversation elsewhere.”
Twelve
Brindos’s eyes burned—a side effect of his paralysis, he assumed. Blinking to clear his vision, tears coating his cheeks, he tried to look at Plenko’s face. He heard the high-pitched hum of charged weapons; they would take no chances.
This was Plenko. If I could kill him—
All hypothetical of course. If Brindos sneezed or sweated out the wrong pore, he would be a body in search of its limbs. Then, as if on cue, Plenko stepped to within inches of Brindos and reached down, holding a handkerchief.
“The condemned usually gets a cigarette with his blindfold,” Brindos said. Not that they existed anymore.
Plenko smiled, and his voice boomed in the darkness. “No, it’s all right, please take it, you look like you’ve been slicing Helk onions without a mask.” And he continued holding it as Brindos sat, trying to assimilate everything, trying to look past the absurdity of it: Terl Plenko was offering him his hanky.
In the shadows behind Plenko, a tall, gaunt figure—human—walked forward, holding something in his hands that gleamed. He moved slowly, in no hurry. He edged closer, an
d he was holding Brindos’s umbrella. He turned the bloodied tip on its axis, testing it with a finger.
“Meet my One,” Plenko said.
Brindos had trouble maintaining consciousness, felt his awareness of the situation slipping. He wanted to be back on a ship, shooting back to Earth, sleeping, oblivious. When the human came close enough, Brindos recognized him immediately and stopped breathing for a couple of seconds.
Joseph.
No. That couldn’t be right. Not Joseph.
Joseph continued forward, stopping right in front of Brindos. He pressed the umbrella point into the flesh beneath Brindos’s jaw and drew him to his feet like an accomplished puppeteer.
“Joe?” Brindos said, barely a whisper. “What the hell is going on? You’re with Plenko?”
He didn’t answer, just stared without a shred of emotion on his face. Plenko knew Brindos, called him by name, so Joseph knew him. He’d known all along. Looking into his eyes, Brindos saw a truly frightening deadness there. No, he thought, you’re not with Plenko. Plenko is with you.
Meet my One.
“What is this?” Brindos asked. “Dinner at the restaurant. The story you told about what happened there. Goddamn it, I was out cold. What happened? What really happened, Joseph? What did you do to me? What did you do to Tom Knox?”
But Joseph didn’t answer. A hint of a smile crossed his face just before he turned and walked away, using the umbrella as a cane. A minute later, a small craft hovered above them. It landed with a scream, its reverse thrusters whipping up dust. The side door opened and Plenko, Brindos, and Joseph were taken aboard. Plenko maneuvered Brindos to a seat at the rear and let him sit unrestrained. Plenko sat next to him. Joseph, who Brindos was coming to see in a different light, sat in the rear-facing seat across from them, and at that moment Brindos found that he truly did fear him more than Plenko.
Joseph sat relaxed, his face impassive, his hands crossed loosely over the umbrella handle as though he were about to break into an old vaudeville dance number. Soft vibrations of the ship belied the fact that they were en route somewhere at a very quick pace. Brindos gripped the armrest tightly, his fingernails digging in to the padding. He looked out the window, then back to Joseph.
“Where are we going?” Brindos asked.
Joseph gave an almost imperceptible sneer. Then, without a word, he calmly lifted one hand, like a magician. Nothing up my sleeve. He spread out his fingers like the leaves of a fan and his neatly trimmed fingernails began to glow very brightly, a white searing light.
Brindos awoke in what he presumed was the Helk historical quarter of the city—more precisely, in the ruins of an old gutted warehouse, ground level. The low walls and ceiling were blackened by soot. Canals of water several inches deep snaked around the rutted dirt floor. An odor of spoiled meat made his nose itch and his eyes water.
How long had he been out this time? He was getting awfully tired of this shit. Still dark, maybe middle of the night. He tried to view the surrounding streets through the hard light of the broken windows. He had a killer case of cottonmouth and a headache pounding at his skull. On top of all that he had to pee so bad it felt like he’d wolfed down ten pots of coffee. What had Joseph done to him? Light had come from his fingertips, for Christ’s sake, like Zeus bringing down lightning on mere mortals.
Standing up, trying to figure out where he might relieve himself, something definitely felt wrong. In his haste, he was hard-pressed to put his finger on it. The ground seemed oddly distant, as if he’d stepped onto a chair. He reached down to loosen his fly, but it wasn’t there. He was covered by a rough one-piece suit. Only it wasn’t a suit.
Brindos was naked.
The realization started slowly, built steam, then crashed through his mind. He cried out, his hands grasping at his body as if it were covered with deadly snakes. In all his worst nightmares, his subconscious would never have dredged up a dream as despicable as this.
He was a Helk. The clubbed feet, the thick legs and torso, the massive hands, the unmistakable brown fur. Brindos touched his head with swollen, grubby fingers, finding no hair, no fur, just a stiff, leathery skin. He dropped to his knees and buried his face in those gigantic hands, the world around him spinning, shifting, dizziness forcing him to shrink down until he had pulled himself into a ball on the floor. He shook head to foot, and heard himself whimpering, breathing in ragged gasps, until consciousness left him.
When Brindos came to again, he tried his best to settle the nausea, but was unsuccessful. Hurling as a Helk hurt much worse than he could’ve imagined, and the smell—he didn’t even want to think about it. He crawled away from there as fast as he could, then crouched in a corner of the warehouse, his arms folded about him.
This was for real. Helk. Changed so much that he could barely comprehend the truth.
Maddeningly, on top of all that, Brindos still really had to relieve himself. He had a basic understanding of Helk anatomy, but hell if he could get a hold of his penis or whatever it was they used. Brindos willed himself to relax and think a moment. Okay. Their apparatus was hidden within the body cavity for protection. Still shivering, weak from whatever his body had gone through, Brindos fiddled around until he somehow found it about where a human stomach would be. Disgusted to the point of throwing up again, he released it and took care of business. Even that stung.
He sat down on a chunk of uprooted concrete, trying to settle his thoughts, get his bearings. As big as he was, Brindos felt unconsequential, somehow. Lightweight, as if he were a feather that might float away at any moment. A big, hulking beast, but fragile. He had a hard time trying to process this feeling.
Memories of himself—Alan Brindos, I’m Alan Brindos—seemed intact. How could they have done this? This was new tech, nothing he’d ever heard about before. Nothing in the known Union worlds. He didn’t imagine an easy way of getting back to normal would pop up any time soon.
Still, despite the extreme nature of his circumstances, despite his earlier despair, in his gut Brindos felt he was mentally in control. As he shook off the cobwebs, he realized he had never felt sharper.
His new body told him nothing about whether he had taken the place of an actual Helk individual or if he’d actually been altered. If he’d been altered, then to conserve mass, he had likely become less dense. Changed inside somehow.
Brindos didn’t have any natural inclinations to speak a fluent Helk dialect, but he didn’t speak the language in the first place. He didn’t have a desire to beat, kill, and eat another species either. He felt no alien instinctual urges, though he was becoming aware of his heightened sensory perception and physical strength. Still, there had to be something else in this alien brain mass besides himself. But how would he know?
Questions were whirling. Brindos’s size could only be that of First Clan. Why this body? Why here in the middle of nowhere? A partial answer came screaming up on the street just outside, sirens blaring. He suspected Joseph or Plenko had tipped the police, who were now out and about looking for some wayward Helk up to no good.
Car doors slammed, boots rushing over the pavement. Brindos quickly made his way through an interior door, marveling at the speed in which he moved, at the smooth gait that led him into a dark corridor. He reached another door. Locked. Forcing the door open with ease, he nearly wrenched it from its hinges. Even though he knew about it, the super strength surprised him, and he took a step back, blinking his eyes at the damaged door. He entered another large room, high walls, hospital green, covered with a coarse brown mold. Water an inch or two deep covered the worn checked tile floor, and wiring and plumbing gaped wildly from jagged openings in the floor and walls. Light leaked from a door on the far wall. He fled across the room and without thinking burst through it, knocking the door across a narrow alley.
A police prowler came screeching into view. Brindos fled across the alley and smashed through a door on the opposite side, rambled up a short flight of stairs, bursting through another locked door. This led h
im into another corridor, which ended in a door covered by steel security bars. With a few hard tugs he pulled them free and tossed them clanging down the hallway. He almost missed the trap door in the ceiling above him, almost invisible but for the rusty padlock, and an easy reach for his new found stature. He broke open the door in front of him, but instead of going through it, he ripped the lock from the trap door.
After batting the door open, Brindos pulled his weight up through the opening with some difficulty. It was a tight squeeze. Above the ceiling, a ladder led to a dingy skylight in the building’s roof. He shut the trap door and prayed the ladder would hold him.
Now on the roof, he knew it was a matter of time before they discovered the trapdoor. He peered down onto the street; police ringed the area. He sat down for a moment, scanning the rooftop and the city beyond. It was a nice view of a place he was dying to leave. He had to get off this planet and find Dave.
Brindos walked quickly to the far end of the roof. The roof of another building waited ten feet across from him. He jumped and started running the moment he landed. He crossed the roofs of five buildings this way and came to the end of the block.
Directly below, the street was empty but for one police prowler on the far side next to a boarded-up building. Brindos watched it for a few minutes and decided he had to risk it.
A fire escape made the descent easy. He dropped onto the ground at the rear of the prowler, peered through the back window, and saw no one inside. He made another check up and down the street, then walked up to the car’s passenger window, bent down, and took a look. A holo of the prowler’s owner, a young Authority cop, looked out at Brindos with a stern look, and a tracer below the holo silently displayed his whereabouts, which, if Brindos was reading it correctly, put the cop about a block away.
The Ultra Thin Man Page 12
