The Ultra Thin Man

by Patrick Swenson

  After one final sharp look, Joseph gave in and turned his attention to the phone.

  A moment later, he put it to his ear and they waited out the silence in the car. Outside, the nearby shuttle roared as it rocketed from its landing circle and climbed out of sight.

  “Bertram?” Joe said into the phone. “Joseph from the Orion. I need a little help locating a reporter of yours. Human named Melok.”

  Dorie and Brindos stared at each other as Joseph paid attention to the voice on the other end. Brindos couldn’t decipher any of the low scratchy words seeping out of Joseph’s receiver.

  “Yes,” Joseph said. Another pause. “No, I don’t know him personally.”

  Brindos edged closer to Joseph’s ear, watching his other hand tighten on the steering wheel. He still couldn’t make out anything from the other end.

  Joseph said, “Really? You’re certain? How come?” His voice sounded disappointed.

  “What?” Brindos whispered, getting impatient.

  Joseph waved him off. “Bertram, can you tell me where I could find him? No? Bertram, this is extremely important.” He waited, listening. “Privacy? What does he need with privacy? Maybe I want to offer something he needs.” Pause again. “No, no. I was just following up on something a client told me.” A longer pause. “Some time soon. Of course. When my schedule quiets down a bit.”

  Brindos heard the voice on the other end say a few words, then Joseph clicked off the phone and frowned.

  “What’s wrong, Joe?” Brindos asked.

  He puffed out his cheeks, then shook his head. “Apparently, Mr. Melok no longer works for Cal Gaz.”

  Brindos blinked. “What?”

  “They fired him yesterday.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Something about some stories he wrote. He wasn’t being a good team player.”

  “Wasn’t a good Helk,” Brindos said. “He wrote that sabotage article about the Conduit, I bet.”

  “Bertram said it was more than that, something a lot more serious. Something about putting Helks in a bad light. I asked where I could find him, but he wouldn’t give me anything. I figured it was better not to push it, not knowing who’s really who over there at the paper anymore.”

  “Your friend Bertram included,” Dorie said.

  Brindos had hoped Melok could get them onto a press shuttle somehow. He’d felt so hopeful before, and now the shuttle idea was out of the question.

  Brindos pondered Melok’s name, turning it over and over in his brain like an old-fashioned washing machine. Why did it seem so familiar? He had thought much the same upon first meeting him in the airport cafe.

  The three of them sat in the car, lost as to what to do. Pretty soon, some official at the airport would get suspicious about the little black car in the parking lot and they’d be on the run again.

  If Brindos wasn’t a Helk, he’d have no trouble getting on one of those shuttles. How the hell had Plenko managed to get around from planet to planet without capture? Transworld Transport’s best customer indeed. The truth was, he really hadn’t done a lot of planet-hopping. His aliases had done the work for him. The Kochs and Knoxes, all different faces.

  If he could change his face. If he could change his race.

  But he couldn’t, even if he knew how to do it, even if he braved the consequences. The Conduit might have put this face on him, and it might still be working, but trying to get to it somehow was out of the question. He didn’t have the kind of time he’d need to work that out. His gut squirmed as if acknowledging his thoughts, and he grimaced and closed his eyes.

  Anyway, to do the process again would probably kill him outright.

  You are a Thin Man now.

  Plenko’s name had an ominous, surreal quality to it, and the idea that Brindos had become one of his ilk made him sick to his stomach. Plenko had said Brindos would be dead before too long due to errors in the copy process, so was Brindos really one of them? Am I anyone? An orphan, left on his own most his life. This is what it came to, just going out of the world the way he’d left it. A stranger to himself and everyone around him, except maybe Dorie.

  Dorie who loved him without knowing him.

  Pain rippled from the top of his head to neck, a particularly sharp stab attacking his left cheek. The painful sensations didn’t seem to target any one area of his body, always moving, always unique. He tried to do his suffering in the backseat without alarming Dorie.

  Finally, Joseph said, “What now?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Brindos wheezed. “Anywhere. We’d need an army to get to any of those shuttles.”

  Dorie looked back. “Maybe we can find one.”

  “Sure,” Brindos said with a snort. “Joe, have any standing army contacts?”

  Joseph said nothing, but pulled out of the parking spot. Soon, he had them on a path back toward the business district.

  He hadn’t gone more than three blocks when Brindos spotted something and yelled for him to stop. Brakes screeched, the car fishtailed, then came to a halt in the middle of the street.

  “Wait,” Brindos whispered, fighting off a bit of nausea. The nausea gave way to a crunching pain through hips and legs. He closed his eyes, waiting a moment.

  He opened his eyes, saw Dorie and Joseph looking back at him, surprise on their faces.

  “Across the street,” Brindos said.

  They stared out Joseph’s window and Brindos wriggled around so he could get a better look out the passenger’s window. A tiny shop was placed in the middle of the block, a somewhat rundown building with a modest sign over its door that seemed out of place compared to the glitz and flash of the other stores surrounding it.

  “Temonus Tales?” Joseph said.

  “Yeah,” Brindos answered. “Media store, right?”

  He nodded. “Flashbooks, download hubs, DataNet visors and immersion specs, fiction rings, implant journals. Even some rare paper books and some old used electronic books. What are you thinking?”

  Brindos smiled, but even that hurt now. “Comics.”

  Brindos stared hard at the front door. He’d barely had a moment for the thought to gel in the intervals between pain and disappointment, but then it was there, triggered by the sight of the bookshop.

  “Comics,” Dorie said. “You … want to buy comics?”

  “One particular comic. In whatever media I can find it in.” He looked at her, excitement overcoming some of the pain now, knowing he was on to something. “Stickman.”

  Dorie shook her head. “Excuse me?”

  “I just remembered how I know Melok’s name,” Brindos said. “It’s Paul Melok.”

  “And you remembered his name how?” Joseph asked.

  “He’s the writer.” They both gawked at Brindos as if he’d told them he was pregnant. “Paul Melok writes the comic Stickman.”

  Twenty-seven

  Alan Brindos stood in the lodge’s restaurant, waiting me out, a tiny smile of amusement creeping onto his face. He had taken me completely by surprise.

  “Alan, what are you doing here?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Doing fine, Dave, thanks for asking. And how are you?” He waited a couple of beats before continuing. “Goddamn, Dave, relax.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “It’s good to see you. I’m relieved that you’re okay. I expected the worst.”

  I wasn’t relaxed because of all I’d seen since coming to Aryell. Meeting Cara. Jennifer Lisle. Forno. And then: Jennifer and Cara again, only they were not Jennifer and Cara. One of them now dead. And now here was Alan, on this planet, showing his happy face, which he rarely brought out for anyone.

  Alan? Really?

  No.

  Did this copy really think he could fool me? Would I be able to fool him?

  “The worst has happened,” I said, working in a response as quickly as I could. My brain whirred crazily, trying to come up with what to say next while continuing with small talk. “But I’m fine.”

  “Really?” he s
aid. “You’ll have to tell me, but it’s pretty urgent we get out of here. I’ve lots to tell you, and I’m still recovering from that little trip you made me take to Temonus.”

  I nodded and forced a little smile. “How’d that work out for you?”

  “Work out?”

  “I lost contact. Your code card. What happened to it? What happened to you?”

  He came up to me, hooked his arm in mine, and pulled me away from the booth toward the hotel’s main lobby. “Plenko.”

  I walked with him. “You found him.”

  “He found me.”

  “And you lived to tell the tale.”

  “I got away from him, but he had already taken my code card.”

  I nodded as we passed by the front desk, Alan gently leading me toward the large front doors.

  “So what about Cara?” he asked. “How is she?”

  Once again, he took me by surprise. I could tell he had no idea she was here at the resort. He’d wonder why I’d stopped, though, so I said, “Wait a minute. How’d you find me? Here, at Snowy Mountain?” It’s a question I would’ve asked the real Alan if he had made such an unannounced appearance.

  He made a gesture with his arms, hands palm out, shrugging a little. “Hey, it’s me. Aren’t I the sleuthy one?”

  I waited.

  He sighed. “The Flaming Sea. Your alias.”

  “My alias.”

  “Yeah, only you didn’t use your normal one. Neil Ryan. Good thinking, of course. The folks at the Sea, as usual, were very accommodating. Naturally, I know a number of your other names. Lancaster. Norton. Bouncer at the front door said you’d left, came back, talked to some folks, left again. I thought maybe you’d been under duress, because he mentioned seeing you with a Hulk. I did a couple of quick searches around town, threw in some official posturing, and turned up your Taylor Williams alias at the WuWu Bar and Grille.”

  “That’s why we pay you the big bucks,” I said, doing my best to act casual.

  “Gal there—Talia, I think her name was—said she heard you talk about skiing.”

  I’d thought Talia hadn’t been near enough to hear all that. She certainly hadn’t read the sealed safe-note.

  He smiled, motioning me toward the front door. “I know, I know. Bad stuff going on. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Outside, the sidewalks and service road that wound through the resort buildings were nearly deserted, since by this time most of the skiers were on the slopes, or taking lunch up at the cafeteria at the top of the mountain, or in the pub. A tractor of some sort rumbled, coming up the service road, its rear grooming attachment lifted so it wouldn’t scratch the bare and wet pavement.

  Almost deserted.

  Three Helks formed a triangle, one of them directly in front of me on the other side of the road, the other two on either side of me just inside my peripheral vision. I kept walking down the steps, Alan at my side, staring at the Helk in front of me. It was Tony Koch.

  A different Tony Koch, of course.

  I stopped and turned toward Brindos, but he had already looked away, toward the Helk on our right.

  Another copy of one of the supposed Plenko aliases. Knox..

  I looked left quickly. The Helk there stood about fifteen feet away. Chinkno.

  Back to the Brindos copy. I hadn’t done much fighting in a long time, but if I didn’t want to be taken, I’d have to try, and the timing would have to be dead-on perfect.

  “I know you,” I said to Alan’s back when the tractor had come close to where the Helk on the left stood. The muscles in the Brindos’s neck tensed. “And you know I know.”

  The Brindos turned back to me, smiling, holding up a hand in a calming manner. “Dave, relax,” he started to say.

  I narrowed my eyes and took a single step toward him.

  “Honestly, Dave, I don’t know these three—”

  “Bullshit.”

  Suddenly he lunged, and I took back my earlier step, retreating and leaning away from him as he swung at me hard with his fist. I stuck out my own arm and blocked most of the blow’s power. As I reeled backward, the Koch and Knox Helks slipped their stunners from their tunics and started to fire, the pulse beams slicing into the lodge behind me, the entryway, and the stairs. Warning shots, I supposed, due to the Brindos’s close proximity. The Knox copy, across the street, ran forward. Chinkno, behind me, had to be coming up too, and I wouldn’t have much time with the Helks’ lightning-fast speed.

  I leaned forward and twisted around, putting the Brindos in front of me. As he drew his own weapon, I smacked his face with my open palm. He staggered back and I grabbed at him to keep him from falling, latched on to his arm with the blaster, found the trigger finger, aimed, and shot Knox in his left side. He fell, and I had just enough time to round about with my leg and thunk it into the groin area of the charging Chinkno behind me, also catching the hand carrying the stunner. Pain raced through my leg, but Chinkno grunted and stopped a moment. Before the Brindos could recover, I elbowed him in the nose, and took that moment as he brought his hands to his face to wrench his blaster free. I spun and blasted Chinkno in the head.

  The driver of the ski tractor stopped the vehicle when he realized what was going on, and slipped off the far side and ran. The tractor was directly between me and Koch. He’d been waiting across the road, obviously not expecting me to have made it this far, waiting for some cue from the Brindos.

  I let the Brindos go in favor of racing toward Koch, the more formidable enemy. With almost careless abandon, I charged the ski tractor, which now completely obscured the Helk. With the blaster stiff-armed in front of me, I clambered onto the tractor and came up firing, surprising Koch, who’d been quickly sidestepping to the front of the tractor. I hadn’t had a chance to aim, and a few shots went wild, but two blasts caught his torso, and he went down.

  I leaped off the tractor, the pavement sending a jolting pain through my lower legs. I winced, but recovered and looked up quickly, trying to track the Brindos. He was running up the road to my right, toward the far ski lifts and the pub, and he had quite a jump on me. Taking a deep breath, I sprinted after him, the blaster held high in front of me. Screams sounded around me as the few tourists nearby ran for cover. Could I shoot a man I’d known so well for so long, if I had to? I aimed the blaster in his general direction and fired, but my intent was not to hit him. Chances would’ve been slim to hit him at this distance, with both of us on the run. Instead, I had aimed at the pub in front of him, mindful of the bystanders scrambling out of the way.

  At this point, I just wanted to hit the pub. I kept firing, the sonic beams lashing across the service road and ricocheting off the pub’s front facade.

  “C’mon, Forno,” I muttered as I ran. “A little help.”

  The Brindos glanced over his shoulder at me as he drew near the pub. If I wanted to now, I could hit him. Not kill him. I wanted him alive, see what I could get out of him. My blaster’s sonic beam could cut him down, trip him up. Making up my mind, I readied myself to aim, but just then, the Brindos copy stopped and spun, and in his hand was a Helk stunner. While I was vaulting over the tractor to get to Koch, he must’ve picked up the weapon from the dead Knox before racing toward the pub.

  He raised it.

  I dove to the road, rolling left just as he fired. The stunner’s beam struck next to me on the pavement. I rolled some more, trying to find cover. Another beam just missed my head, and my hair stood on end. I would’ve thought my rolling helped, but I realized he’d missed on purpose. He didn’t want me dead. Yet.

  I kept my sights on the Brindos, who had stopped firing and turned to the pub again.

  Then Cara ran out the pub’s front door, Tem Forno right behind her. She slipped on a patch of ice, lost her balance, and pitched forward—

  “Cara!” I hollered.

  —right into the Brindos copy’s grasp.

  She cried out a sound of fright and surprise as he kept her from falling, throwing his left arm a
round her neck, pulling backward and twisting her a little to put her in between us. At the same time, his right arm whipped up and he fired the stunner at Forno.

  I didn’t see where it hit him, but Forno stumbled backward, then fell in front of the pub’s doorway. He lay facedown, and didn’t move.

  I scrambled to my feet and put myself in position, blaster up, pointed toward the Brindos. Cara struggled, but he had a good grip around her throat. She couldn’t even speak.

  “Dave!” he yelled, swinging around with his weapon. “Not a good idea, Dave.”

  “Let her go!” I yelled back.

  He shook his head, stepped back, and put his stunner to Cara’s head. “I’ll kill her, Dave.”

  I blinked hard, realizing as I stood there that I could now feel the ache in my leg from kicking Chinkno, the pain in my feet from jumping down so hard from the tractor, and the hurt in my shoulder from hitting the pavement and rolling. I fought to keep my blaster steady. I was sure resort security was on their way, but I didn’t imagine they’d be prepared for this kind of standoff at a ski resort.

  I took four determined steps forward, blaster level.

  “Don’t,” the Brindos said.

  “What do you want?” I said. “Let her go.”

  “She’s not going anywhere. Not until she—or you, if you’re privy to the information—tells me what I need to know.”

  “I don’t know where your goddamn key is,” I told him.

  The Brindos laughed an eerie, not-Brindos laugh. “I think you do.”

  Somewhere above, close by, I heard the whine of a transport in the Aryellan sky, but I tried to stay intent on Brindos.

  “The key, Dave,” he said.

  “Don’t know. Don’t have it.”

  He jammed the stunner under Cara’s chin. “I suppose you don’t have it either?” he said to her. She shook her head, but her eyes stayed on me. Eyes wide with fear.

  I stared at this counterfeit Brindos, anger rising in my throat. Behind him, in the pub doorway, I saw Forno stir. He was alive, but I didn’t know how badly he was hurt. Didn’t know how much the stunner might have damaged muscles and tissue.