The Credulity Nexus

by Graham Storrs

  Chapter 22

  The governments of the world gave up on manned space exploration early in the twenty-first century. By then, private commercial groups were doing it better and cheaper. With the usual vigour of unfettered entrepreneurs seeing the possibilities of fortunes to be made, the 'final frontier' was blown wide open. Space tourism in low Earth orbit was followed quickly by micro-G factories, then asteroid mines and ore processing plants. The first space bridges and the advent of small, cheap focus fusion rockets turned the whole thing into a bonanza. Soon there were lunar mines and settlements, private space yachts, new rock-and-roller space stations and big industrial ventures on Mars and on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Space became the fastest-growing industrial sector in the system.

  Many fortunes were made, but it wasn't until the first off-world murder occurred – in what was then the small mining encampment of Heinlein – that anyone really worried about policing humanity beyond Earth's atmosphere.

  Several countries were quick to lay claim to the privilege. Too quick. Others were only interested in making sure their own nationals, working in space, would not be subject to foreign jurisdictions. In the end, it was agreed that space would be under the protection of the United Nations. Special units within the UN's Peacekeeping Force were established, equipped and sent to keep the peace among the fractious, previously lawless, space colonies.

  The UNPF was welcomed by the big corporations – who happily paid a small tax for its upkeep – and was grudgingly accepted by everyone else. The rough-and-ready mining and industrial camps began to feel more like small towns, and this in turn attracted a different, more permanent kind of settler, and all the service industries growing townships needed.

  But Lieutenant Lincoln Eugene Burleigh of UNPF, Lunar Ops, 3rd Mobile Force Reserve, knew it would be some time yet before things settled down to a level he might find acceptable. Towns like Heinlein were still mostly filled with young men trying to make a fast buck doing dangerous, dirty jobs. Colony towns everywhere were still infested with misfits and lowlifes left over from when they had no law at all.

  Lieutenant Burleigh knew how to deal with that kind of problem, and his superiors at Field Headquarters generally left him to it. But he wasn't sure what to do about this. His desk display showed a 'person of interest' alert for one Rik Sylver 3 Drew, citizen of the USA, citizen of Luna. Last known address: The Harsh Mistress, Heinlein. Current whereabouts: unknown. The instructions were to arrest and detain pending extradition. No reasons were given, but the initial request came from a CIA Director.

  His comm rang, so he punched a command and the alert was replaced by a text message from the UNPF, Lunar Ops’ top-ranking officer – Major Estoban Herez no less – advising him of the imminent arrival of two CIA agents who would be liaising with him on the Drew case.

  Burleigh started pulling up files on everybody who might have anything to do with Rik Sylver 3 Drew, working on the assumption that it was no coincidence that he had so recently responded to a disturbance at The Harsh Mistress. It was probably also no coincidence that the Drew sisters had died in a gunfight there a few days ago.

  Something odd was going on, right there in Burleigh's precinct, something big enough to have spooks flying up from Earth and Major God-Almighty Herez telling him to give them his full co-operation.

  “Right under my goddamn nose,” he growled, and people around the office glanced across at him. He didn't like it one little bit. This Drew character, he could see from Rik's file, was a two-bit, ex-cop PLEO, scratching around for jobs, coming up with barely enough work to keep up the renewal payments on his PLEO license. How did he warrant all this attention?

  He put in a call to his immediate boss at Field HQ, Captain Okeke, and went back to scanning files. When the scowling face of Major Herez himself appeared in the display, Burleigh almost fell off his chair.

  “What is it, Lieutenant?”

  “Er, sir, I didn't mean to...” His first thought was that it was a routing stuff-up. His second thought was how he'd explain to the Captain that he hadn't meant to bypass the chain of command.

  “Everything 3MFR does from now on comes straight to me, Burleigh. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir!” He really did not like the idea that the Major knew him by name. No good could come of that.

  “So what's on your mind, Lieutenant?”

  “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  Herez hadn't stopped scowling for a moment. Nevertheless, he said, “Go ahead.”

  Ah well, nothing ventured... “I would just like to know what the fuck is going on, sir. I'd like to know why two CIA guys are coming onto my patch, and why you signed an order telling me to pull down my pants and bend over for them, sir? And I'd really like to know what this guy Drew is supposed to have done before I truss him up, stick an apple in his mouth and throw him out the airlock.”

  It was hard to say whether the major's frown softened for a moment. “You're understandably protective of your jurisdiction, Lieutenant. I can respect that. And you're concerned that you are being asked to do something which might even be illegal.”

  Yes, Burleigh thought. It had crossed my mind.

  “Sir, speaking off the record–”

  “Nothing's off the record, soldier. Not when we're dealing with matters at this level – and our friends in the CIA may have asked their friends in the NSA to ensure that the record is complete.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So just rest easy, Lieutenant. Everything is under control, and everything you do is under my full and personal authorisation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  Well, well, well. Burleigh stared at the empty display shaking his head slowly. After a moment he stood up and all eyes turned to him.

  “Listen up, you worthless bunch of old ladies. Whatever you're doing, you better stop it right now before you go blind. From this minute on, we, the heroes of the 3rd Mobile Force Reserve, have only one single purpose in our miserable, misbegotten lives, and that is to find this man.” He punched Rik's picture up on the wall screen.

  “And to that end, I want to know who his friends are, what his dog's called, where he learned to dance, and how he has the nerve to wear that shirt in public. Don't let me hear about nobody doing nothing that is not directly connected with dragging this sorry specimen's ass through that door and laying his oversized carcass at my feet.

  “Do I make myself clear?”

  The room chorused a loud “Yes, sir!”

  “Then why is nobody doing anything about it?”

  As his staff hurried to make themselves busy, Burleigh took a seat and leaned back to look at Rik's image. “What have you done, you lucky sonofabitch, to earn yourself so much attention?”

  -oOo-

  Fariba Freymann's taxi whined laboriously as it rolled through the quiet London streets. In the back, animated ads – for beachside timeshares in Tenerife, and Holiday Inn's low-orbit weekend breaks – vied for Fariba's attention. They were not getting it. She gazed through the grimy windows as anonymous streets slid by, and thought about Rik.

  She was off the case. Suspended. Under review. In the opinion of her section head, she had demonstrated “a complete inability to do the simplest bloody thing.” She found it disturbingly easy to see his point of view. On the other hand, even looking back on it after several days of cooling off, she still couldn't see what else she could have done. Rik was a victim in all this, she was sure, not the scheming collaborator her boss thought he was. He was just a poor, dumb lug who had gotten himself caught up in something big and nasty – and had then made some really stupid decisions.

  He was basically a good guy. The kind of guy who would be fine, with a bit of looking after. She sneered at herself, realising she'd quite like to audition for the job. Don't you have enough trouble in your life already?

  The cab pulled up to the kerb, and she saw she had arrived. The anonymous street
s had been her own neighbourhood. The drab apartment block nearby was where she lived. She got out into a damp, chilly wind. The cab deducted its fare from her bank account while its speaker hissed and crackled something that was probably meant to be a thank you.

  It took a huge effort to keep moving up the steps to the second floor where her apartment waited, empty and cold. The bag of groceries she'd bought along the way dragged at her arm. Even her eyelids seemed to feel the force of gravity more keenly than usual. Weary, aching and depressed, she tried to decide whether she was too tired to cook and eat a meal, or too hungry to go straight to bed and sleep.

  Her cogplus took forever negotiating with the apartment door before it would open for her. She cursed the building's antique systems and pushed her way in. Lights came on automatically as she passed through the hall.

  The kitchen smelled of whatever was still in the pedal bin she hadn't had time to empty before she left. She couldn't face opening the fridge and figured the kitchen was cold enough to keep the groceries fresh till the morning. She pulled a pint of bourbon out of the shopping bag, poured herself two fingers and headed for the sofa. One drink and ten minutes of netvid to unwind, then she was going to bed.

  “Hello Fariba.”

  She jumped so hard the bourbon splashed all over her.

  The speaker was a man of about thirty, thickset and sharp-eyed. He was sitting in an armchair and had a stunner pointed at her. He must have been waiting there in the dark all that time. A slight movement in her peripheral vision told her there was another one to her right. She didn't turn her head.

  “Who are you?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady. He had a London accent, she realised, which ruled out a number of possibilities.

  “Don't ask stupid questions. Put this on.”

  He threw her a plastic tie, obviously meant for her wrists, and she caught it. For a moment she acted as if she didn't know what to do with the remains of her drink. Then she took a step forward to put it down on the coffee table. Just before it touched the glass top, she threw it at the seated man. Not waiting to see his reaction, she hurled herself to the right, straight into the second man.

  She heard the thwip! of the stunner being fired, but she had no time to worry about that. The man she had barrelled into was twice her weight and built like a wrestler. He barely moved when her shoulder hit his chest, but she was inside his reach and, for the moment, he couldn't shoot her. She saw his gun. Not a stunner, this one, but a big, semi-automatic .45 calibre monster. The kind of gun that her firearms trainer used to get all fluttery and poetical about as she spoke about its ‘stopping power’ and ‘penetration’. Fariba grabbed it with both hands, putting all her weight onto the wrestler's right arm and ignoring the other: the one that was reaching for her throat.

  She could see the seated man beyond the gun. He was getting to his feet, turning towards her, raising his stunner. With all her strength, she bore down on the wrestler's trigger finger. Snarling like an animal, she focused everything on forcing that beefy hand into pushing the trigger back.

  The gun went off with a roar. Just one shot. She flinched away as the flash blinded her and burnt her face, and so didn't see her target spin around, a hole blown right through his shoulder, and flop to the ground.

  The wrestler had a grip on her. His big fingers pressed into her throat and yanked her back. She let go of his gun-hand and reached back to find his eyes. But he didn't let her get near them. He pushed her down, almost breaking her neck, and pressed the hot barrel of the .45 against the top of her skull.

  “Stop fucking struggling, or I'll blow your fucking head off.”

  Shoved into the carpet, choking, her neck bent painfully forward and her hands unable to reach the vulnerable spots on her massive assailant, Fariba gave a strangled cry of frustration and let her arms fall. The other man was squirming in pain on the floor. At least if one of them was wounded, she might still stand a chance of escaping.

  “Who the hell are you people?” She could barely speak, but it didn't really matter. The wrestler wasn't in the mood for answering questions, it seemed.

  He dragged her to her feet, keeping the barrel of his gun firmly against her skull. So firmly, it was hurting more than the hand round her neck. She tried to guess who her attackers were, but she drew a blank. The upload's people, whom she still assumed were the Chicago Mob, already had Rik. Fariba was no use to them at all.

  It could be another government agency after the package, in which case it could be almost anyone – except the Brits and the Americans, who both knew she had nothing more to tell them. Or it could be Rik's employer, Newton Cordell, trying to get his property back. But, and she kept coming back to this, why would Cordell, or anyone, think she knew anything?

  “Can you walk, mate?” The wrestler actually seemed concerned about his fallen comrade.

  “That fucking cunt!”

  It was the first coherent thing the wounded man had said since she'd shot him. He was soaked in his own blood, but the hole his friend's cannon had made in him didn't seem to have opened an artery. Fariba couldn't help thinking what a shame that was, especially when he managed to grab the sofa and pull himself into a sitting position. He stared at her with wavering eyes, his face grey with pain and blood loss. He grabbed the stunner from where it lay beside him.

  “Hey, now, hang on a minute, mate!” The wrestler said, shifting Fariba so that she became a shield for him. “Don't be fucking stupid.”

  Fariba could see his point. The wounded man was barely conscious and the stunner was weaving about in front of his face unsteadily as he tried to aim. The big man holding her was a much easier target than she was. So, to help matters along, she tried turning herself sideways, to present a smaller profile.

  “Bastard!” the wounded man shouted, and fired.

  The twin ionising lasers struck Fariba on the left buttock and unleashed fifty thousand volts into her body. She felt the pain slash through her like hot, whirling blades. Every muscle tensed. The wrestler took a jolt too and released her as she bucked and jerked in his grasp. By the time she hit the floor, she was unconscious.

  Chapter 23

  After two more hours of punishing deceleration, Rik was glad to be back, however briefly, in zero G. The Phenomenon of Man was coasting in to dock at an orbiting transfer station, and Rik was waiting in an acceleration couch for the manoeuvres to be over and done with. He threw a couple more pain relief pills into his mouth and crunched them down, hoping this lot would have a better effect on his headache than the others he'd taken. The medic had shrugged and said nothing would really help till he had his cogplus seen to.

  Well, there was no time for that yet. He had to get downside and get on Maria's trail before anybody else found her.

  When the pilot gave the 'manoeuvres complete' announcement, Rik hurried to the airlock. He'd had enough of being cooped up and needed some action – even if it was just changing ships. A woman joined him at the door.

  “In a hurry, partner?”

  Rik stared at the stranger until it dawned on him who it was. Rivers had changed again, and was now a tanned flesh colour. What had thrown him was that she was wearing a ship's jumpsuit, boots, sunglasses and a hat. She'd even used a little lipstick so that her mouth looked almost normal.

  “How do you like the new me?” she asked, removing the sunglasses and smiling for him. The flesh-coloured eyes and teeth immediately dispelled the illusion of humanity.

  “You look like a robot in drag,” he said. “Does it have to be monochrome all the time?”

  She shrugged. “There's probably a load of apps I can get from the Net. Maybe one day I'll install a few and check them out. I haven't really had time, you know, what with chasing your ass all over the solar system.”

  “My heart bleeds for you. Just keep your shades on, OK? We don't want to scare any kiddies.”

  Rivers laughed. She seemed to revel in the more creepy side of being an upload. Something Rik was fine with – each to
his own, he always said – but he wished she could go somewhere else while she amused herself.

  They left the airlock, accompanied by two of Rivers' heavies, and crossed the apron to the terminal building. There they hooked onto a beltway that took them round to where the scramjet was waiting. As they rolled along, Rik glanced back, and got his first real look at The Phenomenon of Man through the station's clear plastic roof. It was bigger than he’d expected. Like most deep space ships, it was a flying saucer. Wide, round and shallow. It comprised a broad disc in which the crew and passengers lived, with the fusion engines beneath it, and the inflatable reaction-mass tanks hanging in a thick sausage just below the rim. Little robot service craft flitted around it, helping to prepare it for its next trip.

  The scramjet had them in New York in less than an hour: embarkation, air traffic control clearance, flight, landing, and disembarkation all included.

  They rented a car and let it drive them to the town of Oakland, New Jersey. Rik scowled at Rivers in silence for most of the way. She had made them all wait at the airport while she went round the shops buying herself clothes and makeup. By the time they set off again, she had ditched the jumpsuit in favour of a short Spandex dress, tights, heels and a couple of kilos of cheap jewellery. With her fingernails painted, makeup applied, and a spiky white wig, Rik had to concede she looked passably human, and disturbingly hot.

  “When we get there,” he said, “I go in alone. You and the travelling circus stay in the car, OK?”

  “Think again, partner. We're joined at the hip.”

  Rik thought about arguing, but didn't bother. His only argument was that he didn't trust her. Given how likely that was to persuade her, his only other option was physical restraint. He had enough bruises, on his body and his ego, to dismiss that option straight away.

  “All right, but I do all the talking.”

  Rivers shrugged her cute little shrug again, the one he was getting sick of the sight of, and smiled sweetly. She would do what the hell she liked and he would just have to live with it.