The Credulity Nexus

by Graham Storrs

  A dozen of his followers were with him; big, heavily-built men and women, who were all naked from the waist up. They each were tattooed on the chest, back and arms with the same colourful panorama: stone temples, desert landscapes and strange sigils.

  “You know this is Black Orchid territory?” Veb asked almost conversationally, as Turgu wafted over to the bar. At least, that's who they paid their protection money to, for all the good it had done the Drew sisters.

  “Fucking pagan bastards!” Turgu spat out his opinion of the local gangsters as if challenging anyone in the room to disagree.

  “Just saying,” said Veb. He didn't like being behind the bar, but at least he had a pump-action shotgun within easy reach. He'd rather have been out on the floor, where he could take these guys on if necessary. But he was doing what he could to keep the place running until Rik got back, and they were short of bar staff. Since two of them had been killed, none of the rest would come back to work.

  “Just fucking shut it, zombie.”

  Veb turned down the anger that was building up in him. He'd only just got the place halfway restored and he didn't want to have to clean it up again. Besides, he could see the Turgu were carrying some pretty nasty weaponry, stuff it would be better not to tangle with. There were two emergency call buttons under the counter; one for the Black Orchids and one for the UNPF cops. Decisions, decisions.

  “So do you want a drink, or what?” he asked.

  Turgu looked at him as if he was about to leap off his flying platform and throttle him. The image of the little guy hanging from his throat made Veb smile – on the inside.

  “I hear the Drew sisters was shafted.”

  Veb didn't respond.

  “That means this fucking dump goes to their heirs, dunnit?”

  Veb had already seen where the conversation was going. “These things take a while to sort out. Probate and such.”

  “Fuck probate. Where's that fucker Drew? He fucking owes me, and now he's got all this to pay me with. Where is he?”

  Veb was fascinated by the way Turgu's body and his contraption swayed beneath his outsize head, as if it was all dangling from his neck. Not fascinated enough to stop him from noticing Turgu's followers starting to jostle each other. Some of them hassled the customers, like a bunch of bored kids getting fractious. Time to wrap things up.

  He pulled the shotgun out from behind the bar and set it down in front of him, his hand on the grip and his finger on the trigger. He didn't know how many of the Turgu he'd get before someone got him but then, neither did they.

  “He's on a business trip,” he said, politely. “He can't be reached at the moment. I'll be sure to let him know you dropped by.”

  Turgu looked down at the gun and then up at the placid, android face, clearly calculating his chances of surviving. “What do you think you're gonna do, you zombie fucker?” he asked, coming to what Veb could only regard as the wrong decision. “You think I'm scared of a pile of nano-shit like you?”

  “I'm sure you're a very brave person.”

  Turgu and his dirigible wobbled closer. “I'm a fucking living god, you moron. I'm the living embodiment of the ancient kings of Babylon.” Behind him, his followers stopped messing about and formed up, murmuring some kind of chant and fingering their various weapons.

  “Yet you still want money from Rik.” Veb had decided that there was a fight coming, and nothing he could say would stop it, so what the hell? “Tell me,” he asked. “Were all the kings of Babylon as pug-ugly as you?”

  To Veb's surprise, Turgu didn't react. Instead, he waited, letting a small smirk cross his face. “I love it when some shithead I'm gonna kill makes it personal. I just really love that.”

  Veb tensed, waiting for one of them to make a move. He was sure it would be one of the followers that raised their weapon first, while Turgu himself dodged out of harm's way. But that's not how Veb intended it to go down.

  A second crawled past. Then another. Veb caught a movement among the followers – a shaven-headed woman was bringing up her buzz gun. Veb had the shotgun off the bar and its barrel hard against Turgu's chest before the ‘living god’ had a chance to react. Two seconds ticked by. Three.

  “Well, well, well!” This new voice was deep and strong.

  Nobody moved, and nobody turned their heads to look at whoever had just walked in.

  “Weapons down, everybody,” the voice commanded them.

  Still, nobody moved.

  “UN Peacekeeping Force, lunar Operations, Lieutenant Lincoln Eugene Burleigh at your service. And these outstanding heroes with me are the men and women of the 3rd Mobile Force Reserve.”

  Turgu's smirk turned to grim anger as the situation dawned on him. “You called the fucking cops, you zombie bastard.”

  Veb kept his eyes and his gun on his flying adversary. “Hey, nothing gets past you, does it?”

  The bar was filling with heavily-armoured police, and the Turgu were shuffling anxiously and looking to their leader for orders.

  “Kadashman Turgu,” the lieutenant said warmly, strolling up to the bar. “As I live and breathe. I thought you and your painted assholes were just some kind of sick joke the guys in the 12th MFR made up to lighten the burden of having to work way down there in that stink-hole. Yet here you are.” He stood close to Turgu and looked him up and down with distaste. “In the flesh.”

  Turgu's jaw worked as if he were grinding his teeth. Without taking his eyes off Veb, he said, “This... thing is threatening me with a loaded weapon, officer. I insist you arrest him.”

  Lieutenant Burleigh looked at Veb for a moment, then reached over and took the shotgun away. Veb let him. The lieutenant weighed it in his hands for a moment, then pushed the barrel up under Turgu's chin and growled into his face.

  “Get the fuck out of my precinct, you little pile of turds, before I throw you and your painted half-wits in a cell and charge you with disturbing my afternoon poker game.”

  Turgu tried to snarl some response, but Burleigh pushed the gun harder. The dirigible's fans whined, trying to compensate.

  “Don't talk,” Burleigh advised him. “Just go.”

  To make it possible, the lieutenant removed the gun and took a step back. Turgu glared at Burleigh, then at Veb, sharing his fury equally between them, and left in a whir of fans. His followers hurried after him.

  “How'd you know to turn up with a small army?” Veb asked the lieutenant as they watched the retreating cultists.

  The lieutenant smiled a big, slow smile. “It's an arrangement we had with the late Drew sisters. One press of the alarm means trouble. Two presses means big trouble. I reckon you hit that button a dozen times.”

  Veb blinked and said nothing.

  The lieutenant was a big man, not in the way Rik was, or Veb himself, but he filled up a room, and made everything in that room all about him. Veb was hugely grateful that it was Lieutenant Lincoln Eugene Burleigh who had answered his alarm. Anybody with less presence and authority, and Veb might have had to blow Turgu's head off. And then they'd have been collecting up Veb's bits and pieces in buckets and looking for his brain box under the bar.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “All in a day's work.” He bellowed an order to his squad and they left the bar at the double. He turned to Veb, drawing the upload closer with a gesture. “You know, this is the Wild West, Mr. Rea. Heinlein's just a dusty little frontier town when you get down to it, full of desperadoes and mean, gun-totin' outlaws. My job as Sheriff is to keep the lid on things here until everything settles down, and civilised folk move in and make the place respectable. Do you see what I'm saying?”

  Veb tried not to let his confusion show. “Er, yes, Sheriff. I mean Lieutenant.”

  Burleigh nodded to himself. “You'd better keep your finger near that button, you hear? I've a feeling your friends will be calling again, real soon.”

  Veb forced a smile and considered the possibility that there wasn't a sane person in the whole ci
ty. Satisfied that he'd made his point, the lieutenant followed his soldiers out the door.

  The warble of the bar phone made Veb jump, despite all his emotional dampening. He glanced towards it, and would have let the message service take the call if not for the name on the display: Maria Dunlop. Rik's ex-wife.

  “I need to talk to–” she said, stopping mid-sentence as she realised what she was talking to. “I need to talk to Rik, please.”

  She was pretty. Striking, in a blonde, English public school way. Ethereal. She had nothing of the earthy glamour of the Drew sisters. Not exactly a woman; more of a girl in an adult’s body. But Veb could see how a guy like Rik would think she was the be-all and end-all.

  That was one of the benefits of being an eighty-year-old in an android body. A beautiful woman turns up, and you see straight past the surface features that would once have had your hormones fizzing in your brain. You get to see the person behind the mask – with eyes that have seen a lot.

  “I'm sorry, but Rik isn't around. You could maybe try again in a few days.”

  There was a brief time lag, just enough to let you know you were taking across four hundred thousand kilometres. “A few days? No, no. I have to get in touch with him right now. It's an emergency.”

  “What can I tell you? He's away on a business trip. I don't know when he'll be back.”

  “Someone must know!” She was starting to sound a bit shrill. Whatever her problem was, Veb guessed it was pretty serious. “What about his wives? They must know.” She actually looked embarrassed just saying it, and Veb realised she would never have asked to speak to Rik's wives in a million years if it she wasn't desperate. There was still feeling there, then. Lots of it.

  “Rik's wives are...” He couldn't say it. “Look, when Rik turns up, I'll get him to call you, OK? It's the best I can do.”

  “He's definitely coming back then?”

  “Well, yeah.” What else would he do? This was where he lived.

  “Tell him I'm coming.”

  “What?”

  “To the Moon. Tell him I'll be there as soon as I can make it. I'll call again as soon as I can.”

  She looked as if the decision was as much of a surprise to her as it was to him. Yet he could see some relief in her face too, as if she hadn't known quite what to do, but now at least she had some sort of activity to focus on.

  “You will tell him, won't you?”

  “Sure. I mean yes, yes, of course.”

  “Tell him it's Maria, OK?”

  “Yes. I'm Veb.”

  “What?”

  “That's my name, Veb. I'm a friend of Rik's.”

  She looked at him for a moment, perhaps trying to take it in that her ex-husband had uploads for friends. Then she gave a quick little nod. “Thank you,” she said, and cut the call.

  Veb found himself staring at a service provider advert and stabbed the hang-up button. Where the hell are you, Rik? he asked the empty bar.

  Chapter 17

  Rik felt sick. He seemed to be underwater, his body surging with the ebb and flow of powerful tides. Panicking, he tried not to breathe, forced his eyes to open, struggled to move his arms and legs. But opening his eyes didn't help. Bright walls surged and whirled all around him, making no sense, making his nausea worse than before.

  He remembered the upload, Rivers, grabbing his gun. Forgetting the water, he called out, “Fariba!” But he didn't hear his own voice, just a distant, incoherent moan.

  He realised he was on his back and tried to sit up, but he couldn't move. Tidal forces moved him. Bright walls shifted across his vision. He could hold his breath no longer and gulped in a lungful of air. His relief at not drowning started him laughing.

  “He's coming round,” someone said. He tried to move his head, to see who it was, and sent the lights smearing across his vision.

  “He's secure,” said another voice. “Let's just get him on board and I'll give him another shot.”

  “Is that safe? He's already had more than–”

  “What do you care? Just keep moving.”

  Zero-G! That's why Rik felt so strange. He was strapped to a gurney and two men were moving him along a short corridor. And he was in space. He remembered the scramjet standing on the tarmac at LAX. Had they taken him up in that? If so, they must have docked with another ship in orbit. They were transferring him.

  He began struggling as best he could, but the straps were tight and his body was weak. And Fariba... What had they done with Fariba? He tried to call out again, but his tongue was fat in his mouth and his voice was a low groan.

  They stopped moving and a door shut behind them, metal on metal. His ears popped as the pressure changed. Airlock. The pressure was never quite the same on two different ships. It always took a moment to change from one to the other. He stopped struggling. Whatever ship they were taking him to, they were already inside it. If only his head would clear.

  -oOo-

  “That's it. He'll be awake in a moment.”

  Rik saw a woman in a jumpsuit step away from him and lower an infuser. His head ached, and he felt like he weighed a ton.

  “Fariba,” he croaked and this time his voice seemed to work.

  “He must really like this Fariba bitch,” a man said. “It's all he ever says.”

  Rik tried to raise his head to look at him, but his skull was too heavy. Hot pain shot across his eyes, making him squeeze them shut.

  “OK, can we take him now?” It was a different man's voice.

  “Give him a minute,” the woman said. “Unless you feel like carrying him.”

  The man laughed. “Not that big bastard. Not with the G we're pulling. He can damn well walk.”

  “Where am I?” Rik managed to say.

  “You're aboard a space cruiser named The Phenomenon of Man,” the woman told him. “I'm afraid you've been unconscious for quite a while, so it may take some time to get your strength back.” She stepped into his line of sight again. She was young and serious, and her jumpsuit had a medic's patch above her left breast.

  “How long?” he croaked.

  The medic fetched him a bottle of water that he could suck at through a plastic pipe. The water was wonderfully cool in his throat.

  “The woman who was with me. Is she all right?” With every passing second, his head felt a little less fuzzy. The pain, however, would not go away.

  The medic looked to one side, and a man answered him. “There wasn't no woman with you, you dumb, drugged-up fuck.”

  Rik pulled his head up to look at the speaker, and this time he managed to get a look at the guy before his head fell back. An ugly, grizzled man with a shaven head, a kicked-in face and flat, lustreless eyes that said 'hired muscle' as plainly as if they'd flashed it up in neon. He too was wearing a jumpsuit, but the only patch on it was the ship's logo with the words ‘The Phenomenon of Man’ around the outside.

  So Freymann wasn’t with him. Rik didn't know if that was a good thing or not. Maybe she was of no interest to whoever had snatched him.

  He hoped so.

  “What about the upload?”

  The muscle sneered. “Yeah? Which one? We got more zombies on this ship than in my great-granddad's book collection.” He thought he was a great wit, and laughed at his own stupid joke.

  “A delightful young lady. Looks like she's been dipped in oil.” Just talking was exhausting Rik.

  “Oh, that one.” Rik could tell from the change in tone that the muscle and Rivers weren't close. “She's around. Hey, is he ready yet?”

  “Help yourself,” said the medic.

  The two men unstrapped Rik and dragged him to his feet. The gravity in the ship was crushing, and he couldn't stand without help – which his captors gave with much cursing and complaining. They led him out of the medical ward and along narrow corridors to a room with toilet facilities.

  “Clean yourself up,” the muscle told him. “You stink like old fish.”

  Showering was hell. Just standing up was hard
enough, and doing it under stinging hot water while trying to move his arms was more than he could take. After a while, he let himself slump to the bottom of the stall, and sat there letting the water scour his body.

  The only clothing in sight when he got out was one of the ship jumpsuits. The fact that it fit him perfectly implied the ship was equipped with a clothes printer, and that it had unobtrusively scanned him at some point. Not that he cared. His head hurt so much he just wanted to curl up on the floor. Clothed or naked; it was all the same to him.

  The muscle turned up and led him back into the corridor, then back to the medical ward. He asked the medic for an aspirin, and she gave him a shot. Within seconds the pain started to ebb.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked, rubbing his temples.

  “The pain? Nothing to do with me. Maybe you had a bad reaction to the sedative?”

  “What about my cogplus? I've been getting headaches ever since I had it fitted.”

  “You want me to take a look?” She stepped towards him, but the muscle grabbed her arm and pulled her away.

  “What do you think you're doing?” He fixed Rik with a glare. “Get on that couch. This ain't your private hospital. Docking manoeuvres start in two minutes.”

  The medic shrugged and left the room. Rik sat where he was told, and the muscle strapped him in again.

  “Who are we docking with?” he asked.

  “You'll see.”

  “I didn't know the Chicago Mob had space facilities.”

  The muscle made himself comfortable on another acceleration couch. “I think your brain's still fucked. Why don't you shut your face?”

  The sickening feel of his stomach floating up into his chest told Rik the fierce deceleration was over. During the next fifteen minutes, long periods of free fall were interspersed with short, powerful accelerations that pushed him in unpredictable directions. When a longer push from the floor below ended in a solid thump that echoed throughout the ship, he breathed a long sigh of relief. They were docked, and feeling a steady one-third G force through the floor.