by Steve Perry
Finally, he said, “All right! I’ll help you. But only if you give your word you will stand ready to accept my Challenge when you finish your mission.”
“Done.”
“Tell your human to put away his weapon. We can talk.”
Kay inclined her head in Wink’s direction. “Wink? If you would?”
“Sure thing.”
Shan turned to see.
Wink did a fancy twirl, spun the pistol on its guard around his finger, one direction, then the opposite, tossed the spinning pistol free into the air, caught it, and tucked it away in the holster over the small of his back.
The offhand expertise to do that five-second routine must have taken many hours to achieve.
He returned his hand into view, then suddenly reached back, snatched the pistol free, whipped it in front of himself, then did another spin, this one with the gun held sideways, parallel to the ground, before he tucked it away again.
He showed Shan his teeth.
Now Kay did smile. Wink had just shown Shan that he was adept with the handling of his weapon and could get it back into play in a hurry.
Shan looked disgusted, but he was also impressed, Kay could tell.
“Fine. Let us move into the shade,” he said.
_ _ _ _ _ _
Wink realized as they were talking why Kay had him pull his piece on Shan. The young male had been about to Challenge her. She didn’t want him dead until she got what she came for, and Wink didn’t doubt she could beat Shan, probably with one hand tied behind her.
Always pragmatic, Kay.
“Somebody created this pestilence,” Kay continued, “and why they did remains a mystery. However, there aren’t that many places where such a complex thing could be done on-planet. And the kind of person who would do such a thing would eliminate many possibilities.”
“And this concerns me how?”
“You speak of honor. How honorable is to inflict a horrible death on hundreds when you are only after one, or maybe a few?”
“You know this to be so?”
“We do not know it for certain. But it has started to seem more likely. There are, I am given to understand, three things necessary to prove in the commission of a crime: means, motive, and opportunity. We have the first, at least some of it. And that second part, motive, usually ends up being one or more of but a few choices. Financial or personal gain; redress of injuries, real or imagined; emotional instability; madness.
“The most common motive is gain, either money or power. Maybe that is not the case here. Revenge might do it, though it seems a long and complex way of achieving it. Certainly one could argue that wholesale slaughter of one’s fellow beings requires at the least emotional instability and even madness.”
Shan looked at her. “You lecture like one of my professors. I don’t need to know all this.”
“But you do. If you are to live long and prosper as a member of our society, ignorance will not serve you.”
He shrugged. “I can pay people to know such things for me.”
“And can you pay someone to know when and what to ask of your hired help?”
“What do you want from me, fem?”
“Names. People you know who might have the means and motive to, say, kill your uncle.”
“And hundreds or thousands more just to throw off suspicion? I don’t know anybody that evil.”
“Maybe not. Tell us who might come closest to it. We will determine the rest.”
He shook his head. “These are the kind of people who will claw first and ask no questions until you are unable to answer them. Cross them, and you won’t be able to return for my Challenge.”
“I have stayed alive this long with serious people trying to kill me. You have seen recordings of Vial fighting.”
“Yes.”
“He might have been past his prime, but do you seriously think you could have beaten him?”
“I believe I might have defeated him.”
“I know I did. The names. I promise I will do my utmost to survive.”
He sighed. “All right.”
He looked at Wink. “Maybe you might show me how to do that gun-twirling thing you did? My skills in that arena could use improvement. My teacher isn’t a human.”
Wink grinned. Had to like this kid, really. “Sure, why not?”
“Shan,” Kay said.
“Yes?”
“Tell none of these people that we are coming.”
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know, but better that you do not.”
“Fine. As long as you come back after this is all done.”
“You have my word.”
“Then you have mine. I will tell no one.”
_ _ _ _ _ _
Heading away in the cart, Wink said, “You think this is going to be a good direction?”
“Maybe. But at least it is a direction, and it feels more right than not.”
“Leeth’s idea?”
“She has certain constraints, even given the severity of the situation. We are not bound by these in the same way. If we find something of use, Leeth can figure out a way to follow it up. Once the Sena have a trail, there are no hunters better able to track and catch their prey.”
“Okay. So we go and stir some shit up and see what happens.”
“Just so. Let me call Droc and Leeth and tell them of our progress.”
But when she got through to Droc, he had news. Wink’s com was connected to Kay’s, and he heard it, too. Droc had found something weird in the patients.
“We should go and see him first,” Kay said.
“I’m good with that.”
TWENTY-THREE
Formentara said, “This is really a much more sophisticated ship than it appears from without.”
“How so?” Jo said.
“Computer, control systems, life support, recreation, you name it, everything is top-of-the-line completely integrated, state-of-the-art.”
“Huh.”
“And disguised. The boards look like antiques, but they are spin-leveled, there are all kinds of functions you wouldn’t know were there by looking at them. Ship looks like a junker, but it’s an illusion.”
“Interesting. Wonder why?”
Formentara shook hir head. “I think maybe our Commander Unico wants to be underestimated. That antique weapon he sports is backed up by a modern pistol. His devil-may-care attitude might lead folks to believe he’s not very bright. That would be a mistake, and maybe a fatal one. Smart tactics.”
“Good to know.
“Unico says we’ll be transiting back into normal space at 1800 hours. If we don’t pop like a soap bubble or vanish into some n-space side pocket or whatever, we’ll be in the vicinity of Vast pretty quick.”
“Yeah, another world with nothing for me to do except sit around and stare at the walls.”
“You should get a hobby.”
“I have a hobby. It requires electricity and technology.”
“They have those on Vast.”
“Not so I noticed.”
Jo laughed.
_ _ _ _ _ _
“Here, look at this,” Droc said. “We isolated it, and it seems odd, but it doesn’t seem to be inimical in any way.”
The holographic projection floating in the air showed tiny particles that enlarged when Droc waved his hand.
“See, they appear to be small-virus-sized bits of organic material—there’s the breakdown, carbon, sterioisomers of this and that, skeletalized atoms, nothing that should cause illness, even at much higher concentrations than this.”
Wink and Kay exchanged glances. Wink said, “Where did you find it?”
“Marrow,” he said. “In the bones of the feet. It didn’t trigger any alarms
when we did spot it. It is not harmful in any way.”
Wink said, “What would it take to be harmful?”
Droc looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, assuming that you could add something to this . . . substance. What would make it pathogenic?”
Droc shook his head. “Who can say? Any number of things. But there isn’t anything else in the patients’ systems we can find that would have done that.”
“Wink?”
He looked at Kay. “What if we are looking at a combination of things? A bipartite agent that combines inside a patient to create a synergistic effect? Alone, this doesn’t do anything, but mixed with something else, it creates a causative agent?”
“Enzymatic?” Kay said.
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
“Droc?”
“Possible, but again, there’s nothing in the patients to show such a thing.”
“What about waste products?”
“Urine, feces, perspiration?”
“Maybe even exhaled gases,” Wink said. “Something that was in the patients but isn’t anymore. Did what it was designed to do and was excreted.”
Droc and Kay looked at him.
“That’s diabolical,” Droc said. “Who would think of such a thing?”
“Humans have used variations of it for centuries,” Wink said. “Two chemicals in separate compartments, mix them together, all kinds of useful effects. Light, heat, explosives, even medications.”
“We have lab results for those tests. We can check.”
“Might be a good idea.”
_ _ _ _ _ _
And in the end, that’s what it was. Simple, yet clever. Two different agents were used, both of which were harmless, but when combined, created an effect. Once the systems were damaged . . .
“See, here, that is a metabolite for a plasmodium, a carrier that can be absorbed through the skin. Probably the victims walked through it, which is why it shows up in the tarsals.”
Vastalimi did not ordinarily wear shoes.
“And there, in the urinalysis, that small waste product, almost below the test’s ability to notice, that is the metabolized dregs of . . . well, we aren’t exactly sure from what it was extracted, but extrapolating from that, then mixing the source with the sterioisomers and scaffolding, we come up with, at least theoretically, an agent that could produce reactions that would attack major organ systems. Once the process has started, it doesn’t reverse.”
“So it isn’t contagious,” Wink said.
“No. Somebody manually administered it to make it look like a vectored illness, but essentially, it is a recombinant toxin. Not a pathogenic life-form at all.”
“Somebody went to a lot of trouble to do this,” Kay said. “Such a process is complex and complicated. And would seem to be administered personally, a direct connection, the way the deaths have occurred. Somebody sprayed the stuff where it would be walked upon. That would explain some of the families who contracted it.”
“We’re still no closer to figuring out who,” Wink said.
“Actually, that’s not so. The technology necessary to create and produce such a thing is not common on our world. It gives us other avenues we can pursue,” Kay said. “As does knowing how it was probably administered.”
“We know how, but still not why,” Wink said.
“Nor who,” Droc added.
“We have the names Shan gave us. We need to go and talk to them.”
“Gonna tell your sister about this?”
“No need to bother her.” She looked at Droc.
He shrugged. “She won’t hear it from me.”
_ _ _ _ _ _
In the cart, Wink said, “We are getting closer, aren’t we?”
“One hopes. There is something odd about this; I cannot quite grasp it, but it niggles me.”
“Niggles?”
“Is it an incorrect use of the word?”
“Got me. I’ve never heard it before.”
“It means ‘a small annoyance.’”
“Lessons in my own language from a Vastalimi. Great. How smart am I?”
“Compared to what?”
He shook his head. “A rhetorical question. So you think this guy will talk to us?”
“Given the choice between us and the Sena, yes.”
“I have his bio here, on the infoweb. A lot of it seems to be speculation, not a great deal of hard information. Seems that Rillmasc’s claimed occupation is listed as ‘Hunting Guide.’ And apparently business must be going like an X-ray pulsar because he owns a lodge on a big patch of land near the western edge of Travnjaka, the Great Grassland.
“Judging by the scale, you could entertain a couple score people in the place without them feeling crowded. Big house.”
He brought the holoproj up larger. She glanced at it.
“There is an advertisement for hunting safaris, which include lodging and all the amenities. Expensive, these hunts, but even so, when your land is measured in square kilometers, you have to be leading a lot of folks out into the grass, unless land is cheap.”
“It’s not cheap. Look up the value of that parcel.”
He fiddled with the computer. “Ah. Yeah. Another rich Vastalimi.”
“We have a few.
“Rill’s would have been gained mostly through criminal activity, I don’t doubt,” she said.
“I don’t see any direct links to—ah, wait, here we go . . .”
“What?”
“Apparently our friend Rill is a patron of Healers. He endows a scholarship each year at some place called VHU.”
“That’s the central Healer school. I studied there.”
“On a scholarship?”
“No. I worked my way through doing various menial jobs.”
“I understand; that’s how I got through medical school myself. Sort of.”
She glanced at him.
“I was a fair cardplayer,” he said. “Gambling helped with the tuition—I won more than I lost.”
“A useful skill.”
“Risky. Where I went to school, the locals didn’t like to lose. Big winners sometimes wound up dead or vanished.”
“Why does that not surprise me? That you took such risks?”
He grinned.
“So Rill has a medical tie-in.”
“Which could be no more than coincidence. Two or three steps out, probably most Vastalimi have medical connections.”
He shrugged. “That’s what we are going to find out, isn’t it?”
“Enter the search term ‘Lazov,’ followed by a colon and Rill’s name.”
Wink did so.
The hologram bloomed. “Wow. There’s a lot more information here.”
“Which must be taken advisedly. This is the underground version of the net, and much of the information found here is based on rumor as much as reality. Vastalimi do not gossip as much as humans, but there is some.”
He nodded. Read silently for a moment. “Speaks to his criminal activity. Smuggling, gambling, drugs. Also says he likes particularly challenging prey and hints that some of those are illegal imports, rare animals not native to Vast.”
“Crooked on one end, crooked on the other,” she said.
“You don’t expect him to roll over and confess.”
“Certainly not. What he says will be circumspect. We will be looking and listening to how he says it.”
“That will help?”
“It might.”
_ _ _ _ _ _
Formentara found hirself sitting next to the Vastalimi fem as they prepared to exit the warp. It would be a few minutes yet; Unico was doing his thing at the ship’s controls.
Jo sat to her other side, the others strapped into seats aro
und the cabin.
Formentara said, “So, how is it you came to be working for a mercenary army if you don’t mind my asking?”
Em shrugged. “It’s not that interesting a story. We are not as curious a species as you humans, but I had an itch to see the galaxy. Vastalimi have a wide range of skills, but among your kind, we have value as fighters. At home, I was average. Out there?
“You know the old joke? How many Vastalimi does it take to change a biolume?”
Formentara shook hir head.
“‘Change it? Easier to claw down the wall and let the sunshine in!’ There are places where that attitude is appreciated.”
Formentara grinned.
“Relatively few of us take to interstellar travel. We aren’t particularly xenophobic though most of us tend to stay close to home, save for vacations or short trips of necessity.
“I wonder why Kluth left. From what I understand, she was a good Healer, a useful skill here. She left years before I did, and there was some kind of scat about it. I never heard the details, but the impression was that she had little choice.”
“Didn’t tell us, either,” zhe said.
“I look forward to meeting her.”
“You still have family on Vast?”
“Such that it is. My sire fancied himself an expert hunter, but was less adept than he thought. He was run over by a herd of cud-chewers who stampeded the wrong way. This is considered a less-than-honorable way to meet one’s end. He died when I was a cub, leaving only two litters behind. Half of those didn’t survive Seoba. You know the term?”
“Yes, a ritual trek in late cubhood. Kay told us about hers. You roam a big grassland, no tools, hunting for a couple of months. A coming-of-age thing.”
“Apparently, some of my siblings inherited our father’s slowfootedness. The survivors, six of them, grew up to become fairly normal citizens. Nobody rich or famous, no major criminals, working at low-to-mid-level occupations. Those to whom I was the closest didn’t come back from Seoba.
“My mother found another mate, one who wanted his own offspring. My mother supplied him with six litters in six seasons and died of a complication during the birth of the seventh litter. Her spouse is not unpleasant, but we have no depth in our relationship. My half siblings have their lives, and I know none of them particularly well.
