The Vastalimi Gambit

by Steve Perry

  Such an assumption could be wrong, of course. That he was staying in the house did not necessarily mean he was the owner of record; however, that was not as important as seeing what he did.

  “Crouch,” she said.

  The gray cart rolled past them. She allowed it to get a block or so ahead, then pulled out to follow them.

  There were tricks to following prey that might be looking over its shoulder for pursuit. The first was not to let them see or hear or smell you. The second was, if you had to get close enough so you might be spotted, to present a nonthreatening image. Crouching to look smaller, appearing to be uninterested in the prey and about other business, turning away. One could also trail on a parallel, or sometimes in front. A good hunter learned about her prey and did things to avoid spooking it.

  Tracking one of The People in a vehicle presented some problems more difficult than hunting a grasseater on the flats for one’s next meal. In a city with other vehicles, smell was useless, one had to be a sight hunter, so parallel tracking was difficult. The vehicle could turn, and if you couldn’t see it, it might be too late to recover once you noticed.

  The same thing could happen if you were too far behind or too far ahead. There were rules for operating carts, and while one could break those, there would be times when traffic flow would impede the ability to maintain visual contact with the prey.

  One had to be far enough away not to draw notice but close enough to stay with them.

  After a few minutes, Kay realized they were heading toward the northern edge of the city. They had passed through the warehouse district and were approaching the Mountain Road, a four-lane street that led northwest to the Gray Mountains. They were less mountains than gentle, rolling hills, but the highest natural point within a hundred kilometers. Traffic flow was moderate, which gave Kay enough cover, but they needed to be alert so as not to miss the gray cart exiting when it did.

  There were a lot of gray carts, Kay realized. She had not noticed such a thing before.

  “Looks like we are going for a ride in the country,” Wink said.

  “Indeed.”

  “How are we on fuel?”

  “The cell is three-quarters of capacity. The meter says we can travel for six hundred kilometers.”

  “Hope they aren’t going any farther than that.”

  “Unlikely on this road. There is an intersection ahead. The western turn leads to the Inland Sea, only fifty kilometers away. The eastern turn winds to the hills, and they are but thirty klicks from here. They could be going along the coast or past the hills, but this is not the ideal route—there are better paths.”

  “Maybe they are trying to see if anybody is following them.”

  “Possible, but who would be?”

  “Us?”

  “Were I them, I would not think so. We were kidnapped and managed to escape. In their fur, I would assume we had gone to ground, or to the authorities. They will probably have some way of knowing the latter—word would get out if the Sena were hunting kidnappers, and that won’t have happened. In their place, I wouldn’t think that we would circle around behind them.”

  “Maybe they are smarter than you,” Wink said. He smiled.

  “I doubt that. Were they, they would not have taken us as they did. They would have fed us enough information to keep us busy and unsuspicious. They showed their fangs too soon. This was not a smart move.”

  “Well, they didn’t expect us to get away; if we hadn’t, we’d be dead now.”

  “But that we are not means their revelations were a mistake.”

  “Good point.” He chuckled.

  “Something funny?”

  “An old Terran joke. In the entertainment vids, heroes are often captured by villains, and the villains, being overconfident, often make that same error—they tell the captured hero things they don’t expect him to be able to use since they plan to kill him. But he escapes and has the information to use against them.”

  “And . . .”

  “The joke is that the first rule in the School of Villain Training is that you never tell the hero anything; you just kill him and be done with it.”

  “That would be smart. Criminals, however, seldom seem to be such, at least in my limited experience.”

  “Let’s hope these people continue that.”

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  “I am showing all couch fields green,” Unico said. “Can I get confirmations, please?”

  “Green,” Cutter said.

  This was followed by a chorus of like responses from the others.

  “We are good to go,” Unico said. “Stand by for the jump. Me, I customarily take a deep breath about now, just for luck. In three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  Cutter felt that familiar ripple effect as the ship went into warp, as if a cold wave had passed through his body . . .

  After a moment, he heard somebody exhale.

  “Well, we’re still here,” Formentara said.

  “Thus far,” Em allowed.

  “Fems and males, we have achieved entry into the Super Subquantum Transit. You are free to move around the ship; however, please keep your safety field lit while you are in your seat as we here in the pilot’s chair do, in the event of unforeseen turbulence.”

  “What is he talking about?” Singh asked.

  Gunny shrugged. “Got me.”

  Gramps said, “It’s terrible how the young people today have no sense of history. Our pilot is offering the traditional instructions given by airship pilots to passengers in prespaceflight times.”

  “Sure, you know that ’cause you were there,” Gunny said.

  “Experience is the best teacher, Chocolatte.”

  “Uh-huh. I bet if we cut you in half, we’d find rings, just like a tree.”

  “Only on the part that gets hard as wood,” Gramps said. He smiled.

  Gunny shook her head and laughed.

  Point to Gramps, Jo thought.

  Unico was only a few meters away at the ship’s controls. He stood, stretched, and ambled back to where the others were also starting to move.

  Singh said, “What happens now?”

  “All things going well, we cruise along for the next 71.5 hours, then line up for our exit back into n-space. Should put us within spitting distance of Vast. We dock, you catch a dropper down into the gravity well, and I see if I can find some more passengers who want the thrill of a lifetime.”

  “You aren’t worried about the odds?” Singh asked. “I mean, if you have made scores of such transits and the chances are one in ten that you won’t come out during one, doesn’t that make you nervous?”

  “Nah, not really. I think the odds clock resets with every jump.”

  Gramps chuckled.

  “What’s funny, ancient one?”

  He regarded Gunny. “Back in the airship days on Terra, there was a period in which political terrorists would sometimes blow up passenger craft. Somebody would sneak a bomb into a piece of luggage or somesuch and it would go off, destroying the vessel.

  “So a frequent traveler, who was worried about this possibility, asked the ticketing agent about this. What, he wondered, were the odds of his getting onto a craft with a bomb on it?

  “‘Oh,’ the agent said, ‘very low. Maybe one in a hundred thousand.’

  “The traveler thought about that for a moment, then said, ‘Well, I fly a lot and those don’t seem like good numbers.’

  “So the agent said, ‘Okay, here’s what you do. Next time you travel, bring a bomb with you in your luggage. Chances of your getting onto a plane with two bombs on it are a couple million to one . . .’”

  The humans laughed.

  Em said, “I don’t understand the humor.”

  Gramps said, “It goes to the inaccuracy of statistics. Statistics say a man with one foot
on a hot stove and the other on a block of ice is, on average, comfortable.”

  “This also makes no sense.”

  Jo said, “You know the one about the young fem Vastalimi who breaks her leg, catches on fire, and falls into an abyss when she tries to trip her brother?”

  Em grinned. “Yes. That one is funny.”

  “Ever tell it to a human?”

  Em thought about that for a few seconds. “Ah. I see what you mean. Humans do have a strange sense of humor.”

  “There you go,” Jo said.

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  The ship had a small gym and a couple of treadmills. Gramps was on one, Gunny on the other. Though he was mostly a desk jockey these days, he did try to keep fit.

  He shook his head.

  “What?” Gunny said.

  “Just thinking about technology.”

  “About the time when your mama invented the wheel?”

  “That goes without saying, Chocolatte, but a little closer to home than that.”

  “Such as?”

  “Consider how we live. We came from primordial slime, spontaneously achieving life, and within a billion years, give or take, we evolved into complex beings who came up with science and machineries that allowed us to climb into boxes and zip across the galaxy. Moving through places where no human could live for more than a few seconds unprotected, to stand on worlds beyond our wildest imagination even a few hundred years ago.”

  “Civilization, old man. Is that the slowest speed the treadmill has?”

  “I’m in no hurry. Burn the same number of calories over distance if you walk or run.”

  “But you have so little time left.”

  He shook his head. “You think we are civilized in any meaningful way?”

  Off her look, he continued: “I mean, we have the high-tech toys, the ships, the hardware, the ability to make seven-league boots seem like nothing, but look around. What do we do for a living? You and I? We fly to new worlds, we dig in, we unship our weapons, and we spend a lot of time killing our fellow creatures, humans and others.”

  Gunny blinked. “So?”

  “So for me, the mark of a civilized species would be they don’t destroy each other in wholesale numbers. They would, you know, figure out along the way that sentient life is rare, precious, and whenever possible, they’d find a way to spare it. Our tools have outstripped our ethics. Instead of figuring out ways to lift ourselves to the next level, we have just come up with better ways to kill each other.”

  She shook her head. “Ah’ll be damned. A philosopher. Ah’d never have thought it. What brought this on?”

  He shrugged. “Always been there.”

  “And yet, here you sit, having just left god-awful Far Bundaloh where we punched holes in the opposition, on our way to Vast to help Wink and Kay, ready to punch holes in anybody there who gets in the way.”

  “Yep.”

  “No, uh, contradictions in your mind?”

  “Plenty of ’em. It’s like the whole grand-illusion thing, Maya. It might all be smoke and mirrors, but whatever it is, I’m part of it, and I have to recognize the boundaries and operate within them. I put down my gun, I don’t solve anything, I just get unilaterally disarmed and become an easier target. I don’t know how to wave my hand and make the notion of guns something we toss away as irrelevant.”

  She shook her head. “Amazing. Just when Ah think Ah have you pegged, you say shit like this.”

  He smiled at her. “My years of experience will keep you guessing, child.”

  She waited a few seconds. “So, assuming we don’t get killed out here in the Void, or after we land, what would you do if you decided to walk away? Ever thought about it?”

  “I have. I sort of don’t see it as likely, but the notion has crossed my mind.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “I’d like to retire to some semitropical world where there are thunderstorms and warm nights and open a school.”

  “Teaching . . . ?”

  “Stuff I’ve picked up along the way. How to stay alive when the shit hits the turbo. What money is and what it does. Funny stories about the planets I’ve been to, what I’ve seen and done.”

  “The Old Man’s Academy of Hard Knocks?”

  “Yeah, something like that.

  “Or, I could open a pub.”

  She chuckled.

  “What about you?”

  “Me? Like you, Ah ever figured Ah’d make it that far, to retirement. Expect Ah’ll step slow at the wrong time, run up against some dead-eye, hot-hand kid who’d beat me to the draw and plink me before Ah get her.”

  “What if you get lucky, too?”

  She considered it. “Maybe Ah’d ask for a job at your academy. Or bouncing at your pub.”

  “You’d be welcome, Chocolatte.”

  She looked at him. “Well. Let’s see if we get that far.”

  “There’s that.”

  “Me, Ah’m gonna have my ten klicks in pretty soon here, so Ah’m gonna go take a shower.”

  “Don’t use up all the hot water.”

  “Ah don’t see why not—time you get done crawling your 10K, it’ll be heated up again. Ah could take three or four showers, a nap, and watch a few vids.”

  “Slow and steady wins the race.”

  “Hell they do.”

  “Depends on what you are trying to get to. Times when long and slow are better than short and fast.”

  She grinned. “You talk a good show, don’tcha? Ah’m gone.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Twenty-nine kilometers outside the city, there was an exit road leading east, and the gray cart used it.

  “There they go. Do you know this area?” Wink asked.

  “Not well.”

  “Let me get a map up.”

  Wink lit the PPS and figured out how to get a map centered on their location on the holographic screen. It was harder because the language was Vastalimi and the cart’s translator was slow on visual input. Eventually, it sorted that out, but it took nearly fifteen seconds.

  He shook his head.

  “Now what?”

  “Any civilized planet, a com and the internets will synch. I could ask for a map in Basic, and it would just give it to me.”

  “You have the correction, right?”

  “Finally.”

  “You humans have no patience. It’s a wonder you ever survived as hunters long enough to achieve anything.”

  “We ate a lot of fruit and roots.”

  “I’m sure you must have. And had many species of prey laughing at you as they escaped.”

  “Tell that to the Vastalimi who captured us.”

  “Point taken.”

  He looked at the map. Their subjects were half a klick ahead of them, still enough traffic to cover them, albeit the road was now only two lanes.

  “There are several public roads or private driveways along this stretch for the next several kilometers. Hold on, switching to orbital view . . .”

  They drove in silence for several seconds.

  “Come on, you slow piece of crap . . . Here we go . . . There are a small number of what look to be country estates—large dwellings, big lawns, like that. I have the computer’s interpolation views at treetop height. Spendy-looking places.”

  “I recall before I left Vast there was some development out this way designed to appeal to rich people. We do have some of those who don’t mind being extravagant in their living styles.”

  “Most of these are information-blocked, no more than a grid number or address. Some of them have interesting names: Razor Ridge, Hunter’s Vista, and . . . what does ‘Limit Backpack’ mean?”

  “Kraj Naprtnjaca?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It means your hunting bag is full.”


  “Ah. I sense a theme.”

  “Rich people can still hunt,” she said, “but more often than not, they don’t have time for it. They sometimes compensate by naming their mansions something that offers to the world that they are still interested in chasing prey and blooding their claws.

  “It may also be that the dwellings were built on the sites of old hunting lodges, and the names kept.”

  “Well, unless they plan to drive through, I’d guess they are going to visit one of these rich folks’ homes.”

  “That might prove interesting,” she said. “What could possess somebody with great wealth to enter into the business of infecting Vastalimi with some kind of fatal illness?”

  “We can ask them that.”

  “That might prove difficult. Wealth carries a certain status, and rich people are treated differently by the law than those who are poor.”

  “My, my, another thing your people share with mine.”

  “If we can determine who Frow goes to visit, any approach to question them will have to be circumspect.”

  “Can’t just knock on the door and demand to know what the fuck is going on?”

  “No. Likely our bodies wouldn’t be found if we tried.”

  “Ah. So what do we do?”

  “Using such knowledge, we might be able to question Frowmasc in a more effective manner. Should that give us useful intel, we could then get official help.”

  “Finally put in a call to your sister.”

  “Yes. The rich have their shields, but the Sena can go anywhere if they have sufficient reason. We would need to give it to her.”

  “Works for me.”

  “Let’s see where they go. Once we know that, we can return to Frow’s dwelling and perhaps prepare a surprise for him.”

  “I like that one, too.”

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  “Welcome to Raptor’s Roost,” Wink said. “Which is about all I can tell you about it, the name.”

  “It’s enough. There are records detailing who owns it and the Shadows will be able to obtain them. Even they will have to be cautious in their approach, but an accessory to kidnapping, attempted murder, and blowing up buildings will merit investigation even if it must be done with care. We need to gather a little more information first.”