Pet Noir

by Katharine Kerr

  With the skimmer secure he leaves the roadside and finds a small path, barely wide enough for his massive shoulders, through the tangled chaparral that’s the only native vegetation in this part of the planet. Thorn tree and grabber shrub, low creeping dirt vine and the ubiquitous fleshy “grass” that crunches in a disgusting way when you walk on it—they grow twined together in a smothering blanket down the long ravines, dark stripes marking the presence of underground water in Hagar’s barren hills. In the tangle live insects, mostly, a few pseudo-reptiles, a few flying, warm-blooded creatures, and small rodents that bear such a startling resemblance to Old Earth gray rats that most people simply call them rats and leave the precision of fancy names to the scientists. Although the fossil record shows that the usual profusion of species once lived on Hagar, most died off when the planet lost the greater part of its water to the mysterious cataclysm that devastated it a million years ago. The comparatively few species that survived are thus oddly disparate, seemingly unrelated to each other and the planet’s ecology. Only the fossil record can show their proper relationships.

  The trail leads along the lip of a vast crater that was a lake bed before the disaster and that will, if the Republic gets its way, be a lake once again and soon. Way out in the middle of the crater under bluish-white maglev floods, Little Joe can see the work crews, cutting away the protective chemical film from huge chunks of comet ice, caught on the fly in orbit and brought down by grav-net to melt into the ground or evaporate into the air—the engineers don’t care which, just so long as the precious water molecules are back in circulation. After forty-seven years of hard going, the project is beginning to show some results; last winter it actually rained in the polar region for the first time in a million years, give or take a few. Although Little Joe went out with all the other citizens to stand solemnly in the brief drizzle as if they were getting blessed by Allah himself, he felt profoundly uncomfortable the whole time. He was born and raised in Polar City, and water falling from the sky strikes him as both wasteful and somehow frightening, an act against nature.

  About half-a-key onward the trail turns away from the crater and plunges downhill through a particularly rabid ribbon of chaparral to the long, dusty valley that’s the site of the original colony on Hagar. Now the extruded foam and slabbed stone structures stand in ruins, some thousand hectares of rubble, augmented by a hundred years’ and another thousand hects’ worth of dumped junk. As he picks his way downhill, Little Joe can see pinpricks of light moving around in the Rat Yard, as the area’s called. Beings of several races, maybe a hundred individuals all told, live out there in huts cobbled together out of old skimmer doors and left-over foam slabs, or dug-outs furnished with the leavings of the city nearby. Most of them are crazy; a few are on the run. Before he goes much closer Little Joe checks the laser pistol in his shoulder-holster. Although the Ratters know he has a legitimate reason to be there, it pays to be careful in the Yard.

  And yet, when it comes the trouble isn’t from the crazies in the rubble. He has almost reached the edge of the Yard proper when the sky brightens to a sudden silver; long beams of light sweep past, just barely missing him. All at once he hears the screeching whine of police airspeeders, a pair of them, slicing down from the sky and sweeping the valley. With a really foul oath Little Joe starts running, keeping as low as he can, zig-zagging back and forth as he desperately tries to get to the shelter of the Yard. Ahead of him he can hear screaming and howls of rage, the occasional metallic chink as one inhabitant or another heaves an accurate rock at the speeders. He finds himself panting for breath, his chest heaving in great sobs, his legs aching, but on he runs, feeling nothing but desperation—if they want him, they’ve got him now.

  A light beam catches him, hesitates, then sweeps on indifferently; the speeders curve, hover, then race away low to the ground, heading for the far end of the Yard, but as they sweep they fire a long burst of plastic slugs that—theoretically—can only stun, not kill, a sentient. Since Little Joe doesn’t trust the theory in the least he puts on one last burst of speed, heading for a two-meter pile of old plastofoam packing material. All at once he feels the ground bounce under his feet. With a yelp he tries to pull back, but it’s too late. Rumbling and sliding the ground caves in under him, dropping him at least three meters down in a long cascade of garbage. Grunting, swearing, he rolls to one side just in time to avoid being hit by the battered remains of an air conditioner.

  For some minutes he merely lies there, gasping for breath and feeling for broken bones. Although he’s going to have some spectacular bruises, he realizes that he’s basically unharmed and gets to his feet. Above him he can see the crackling splendor of Hagar’s night sky through a hole whose edge is a good three meters if not more above him. Since Little Joe is not quite two meters tall, that leaves a considerable gap to be accounted for. He finds his light pen, mercifully unbroken, switches it on narrow beam, then trains it on the broken lip of the hole above him. Through the dirt he can see rotting wooden planking; apparently some sentient roofed over this pit for shelter a long time ago, then abandoned it.

  Moving the narrow beam slowly and steadily, he looks over the pit, which smells of a hundred different rank things. Fortunately, there’s a lot of rubble lying around. Besides the air conditioner he finds several thick if shattered plastocrete slabs, a substantial hard foam carton, and a variety of rocks and remnants that can be piled up together to give him a way out of this trap. He decides that a pyramid shape would be the most stable and searches for a small niche or ledge in the wall where he can prop the light pen. Down in one corner, behind a lump of decaying rags, something shiny catches his eye. When he picks it up, rats scatter and rustle. He shudders.

  His find turns out to be a smooth metal box, painted gray, about twenty by twelve by four centimeters. Embossed on one side are letters in some strange alphabet; on one narrow end is a thin slit. Since Little Joe has never seen anything like it, he slips it into his shirt to keep it out of curiosity as much as anything. Then he finds a place to set up his pen, on wide diffusion beam now, and gets to work. The first meter or so is easy to build out of the slabs and the carton, which he fills with small bits of rubble for stability. When he stands on it, he can touch the edge of the pit, but the rotting boards crumble away as soon as he puts any weight on them. He climbs back down, picks up the air conditioner, and uses it as a bludgeon to clear away the cheese-soft rot until at last he finds solid wood.

  This hard edge, unfortunately, is now an awkward lean away from his pile of rubble. He gets down, swearing under his breath, moves the heap piece by piece into position, then adds the air conditioner on top. When he climbs back up, he can feel a nervous sweat running down his back. If he can’t get out of this pit, he might very well starve to death before anyone finds him—anyone sane, that is. Starving to death might be better than what some of the crazies would do to him if they decided to take his presence wrong. Although he can reach the edge now, his angle is still awkward, and he decides to have one last look around for something stable to add to the pile. In the same corner where he found the mysterious box is what appears to be a damp plastofelt carton. When he picks it up, it crumbles in his hands with a dry, musty stench like old mushrooms. He lets the remnants drop and steps back, wiping his hands on his jeans in disgust.

  “Oh shit! Mama, what’s that?!”

  The ‘that’ in question is lying on the ground in a pile of silvery ooze or slime that stinks like rancid vinegar. About a meter long, it looks like the leg of a giant insect, chitinous, jointed, ending in a pair of mandible-like pincers. Just above the pincers is a strap made of some sort of metal, and set into the strap is a circular object that looks a lot like a chronometer. Although Little Joe never went to college, he knows his world well enough to know that the leg, if leg it is, belongs to no known species of sentient in the Republic and its environs. Visions of three meter long insect men rise in his mind, nightmares crawling out of the bowels of the planet, old horrors b
ent on vengeance and a creeping death. In his youth Little Joe was a thorough-going fan of the cheapest kinds of holopix horror tales. Then he found them funny; now he’s lost his sense of humor.

  With a strangled sob he leaps onto the pile of rubble and heaves himself up, catching the edge, dangling there, struggling to get some purchase with his feet on the side of the pit so that he can work his way up and out. His arms are aching; sweat runs into his eyes. He can feel the edge slipping, threatening to crumble under his pain-wracked fingers, and from behind him he hears a rustling, a scraping: chitinous feet maybe, scrabbling upward through the earth. With all his strength he heaves again, managing to pull himself halfway up, head and shoulders into the cool night air, but the edge is giving way, and his aching arms refuse to pull any further. Groaning, half in tears, he falls back. When he looks over his shoulder, he sees the red eyes of rats, bright in the beam from his pen.

  Another grab, another heave—and this time something catches his wrists from above. Little Joe screams aloud.

  “It’s just me for chrissakes!” Sally’s voice, and she sounds amused. “Me and Ibrahim saw you and came to help. Now grab on. Grab onto me, you asshole, not the dumb boards and stuff.”

  Gasping and choking, Little Joe does as he’s told. A tall woman, especially for a Blanca, and hard muscled from long karate workouts, she’s kneeling at the edge and reaching down, and she tells him to grasp her arms just above the elbows. This time when he heaves himself up, he comes free of the pit, scrabbles with his feet on the side and walks himself up in Sally’s strong grasp. Behind her, clutching her tight around the calves for stability, is Ibrahim, whose sloppy fat has finally come in handy for something, ballast in this case.

  “She-it,” Little Joe says. “I mean, she-it, man.”

  “How the hell did you get in there?” Sally lets him go and sits back to dust off the sleek pleats on the front of her lavender shirt. “The police raid chase you in?”

  “The roof gave way, man, when I was running from the greenies. Someone must have lived in there once. Or something.”

  “We was looking for you,” Ibrahim says. “Saw you pop up out of the hole like a sandworm catching bugs. Figured something was real wrong.”

  “Yeah. Brilliant deduction, man. I mean, like really brilliant.”

  “We maybe can shove you back in again if we piss you off or something.”

  “Oh for chrissakes, you two, shut up!” Sally intervenes sharply. “You got the bucks, man?”

  “I do. Republic twenties, just like you wanted. Where’s the stuff?”

  “This way. I got a thermos of coffee, too. You look like you need some.”

  “May Allah bless you, yeah.”

  “Thanks. I need a cup myself. Been a gonzo night so far, man. When I was scoring, I saw some dude taking off his clothes right on the public street! He had another set on underneath, and it looked like he was planning on shoving the first set into this big old public recycler. Gonzo.”

  Little Joe nods his agreement. Although he considers telling them about the box with the strange writing and the insect leg, in the end he keeps it to himself. He’s been dealing dope with Sally Pharis and Ibrahim for three years now, but in Polar City it never pays to tell anyone everything you know, unless, of course, they’re planning on paying you for it.

  oOo

  The autopsy report on Imbeth Ka Gren is straightforward: the carli was in perfect health; there was no trace of any sort of drug in his system, not so much as a beer; there were no bruises, either, indicating that he was lowered to the ground rather than falling hard. His throat was cut from right to left by a very strong being (or, one might suppose if one had an extremely far-fetched turn of mind, an Alliance warbot,) who never wavered: the cut was straight and true. Since Bates could figure out most of this simply by looking at the corpse, he clears the comp screen in disgust and brings up the report from the admissions tech at the Morgue. Although most of the dead sentient’s possessions are perfectly ordinary, one detail stands out: he was carrying over a thousand bucks in Republic cash, shoved in a rather cavalier wad into an inner pocket of his robes. Since the Republic is the only place in the Mapped Sector where cash is legal, most citizens of other jurisdictions treat it carelessly, as if they refuse to believe that once lost or stolen it’s gone, unlike the electronic credits they’re used to.

  Bates considers briefly Ka Pral’s two speculations of gambling and espionage. The cash would fit either, but the chief is inclined to agree with Ka Pral’s hints and consider the cash a pay-off for some informant. Since the money is now in a sealed envelope down at the morgue, it seems obvious that Ka Gren was killed before he could connect with his contact, probably on the way to their meeting place. A line drawn from the Con embassy through the site of the murder points like an arrow straight into the worst part of Porttown. Bates sighs; he should have known, he supposes. As he clears comp, he finds himself thinking of A to Z Enterprises and Lacey, who always seems to know everything there is to be known about the action there in the mostly white ghetto. Out of simple pride, he’s determined to find out what he can on his own before he breaks down and goes to see her. He needs an undercover cop in the area fast.

  As he reaches for the comm unit, he hesitates, wondering whom he’s calling. Although his logical choice is the Vice Squad, since they know Porttown very well indeed, the entire unit is corrupt beyond his ability to clean it up—political appointees, mostly, rewarded by the higher-ups for sleazy favors with a chance to make an equally sleazy buck. When Bates was being hired for this job, the police commissioner made it clear in the very first interview that the Vice Squad was a department independent of his control. Then he remembers the special communication he received from the President’s office, and he smiles in gentle delight. So the PBI boys are supposed to have a hand in this case, are they? Fine. Let them hit Porttown and try to find out who was selling Ka Gren data valuable enough to be worth a sentient’s life.

  oOo

  This time of night Kelly’s Bar and Grill is just beginning to turn lively. Right on the edge of Porttown proper, it gets a mixed crowd: the more prosperous Porters on the one hand and on the other respectable black and lizzie businesspersons who enjoy both a touch of slumming and Kelly’s undeniably good food. In one half of the double room is the restaurant, rather nicely done with real cotton cloths and napkins on the tables and a wrap-around mural of asteroid belt yacht racing on the walls; the other is dominated by the bar, an expensive production of plastocrete hand-textured to look like wood. Kelly himself is a stout man frozen by rejuv at around thirty with just a trace of gray in the temples of his dark hair. As usual he’s pacing nervously around, adjusting tablecloths and napkins in the grill, glaring at the servobots behind the bar as if they could somehow break out of their programming, stopping to flick a bit of dust off the chewing spice dispenser here or to straighten a holo on the wall there.

  At the bar are a scattering of people Kelly’s never seen before—drop-ins, as he calls them—but most of the patrons are regulars, including a pair of under-assistant something-or-others from the In-system Revenue Service, each with their data-comps locked to their belts in a somewhat ostentatious manner. Like all of Kelly’s regulars, they are devoted to baseball, even the semi-pro teams of the Park and Rec League.

  “Hey Kelly,” Nkrumba says. “I hear Mac’s Marauders just signed Jack Mulligan.”

  “Jeez, you had to say it, dint you?” Kelly says, grinning to cover his very real disappointment. “I dint know he was available, or I would’ve gotten him for my team.”

  “I hear he’s a psychic. Maybe you can protest.”

  “Naw, who cares? So what if he reads the damn ball two seconds ahead? Still got to catch it, doesn’t he? Besides, you could look at it this way, it’s kind of a handicap, seeing what’s going to happen. You’ve got to keep your eye on the ball right now, not be thinking ahead.”

  “You’re right about that. Besides, I sure do like to watch him play. He
’s real good for a Blanco, real good.”

  Kelly’s smile turns thin. In his opinion Mulligan is as good a shortstop as any black player, but since he wants to keep the business of the ruling class, he declines to say so aloud. One of the drop-ins turns idly to listen, a Blanco and blond, about medium height but showing off his muscles in a sleek maroon jumpsuit; a spacer, probably, Kelly thinks.

  “Scuse, but what team just signed Jack?”

  “Mac’s Discount City Appliances Marauders.” Kelly rolls off the full name of his chief rivals in the Park and Rec League with a certain sourness. “Bastard. Mac, I mean, not Mulligan.”

  “Far out.” The stranger nods to himself. “When are they going to play next?”

  “Season no start for a week, pal. Where you been?”

  “Out on the Rock Belt.” The stranger flashes him a grin, a spacer, sure enough. “Next week, huh?”

  “Yeah, on Fiveday. We play’em, my Big Shots, that is. Should be a good game.”

  “Swell. I’ll try to make it.” He looks away with a smile. “I kind of know Mulligan. Be good to see him again, if I no catch up with him before that, anyway.”

  “He’s always worth watching,” Nkruma says. “Should’ve been in the majors, poor panchito. But if we’re talking white shortstops, there’s never going to be nobody like Wally Davies of the old Republican League.”

  Somewhere in the long argument that follows, the stranger in the jumpsuit pays his bill and slips away, leaving a slight unease in Kelly’s mind. Later he remembers what bothered him about the fellow; on his left sleeve were some stains that looked like spilled beer, maybe, or coffee. Since Kelly values cleanliness second only to a good slider, he shakes his head in annoyance. Damn spacers—they’re always slobs, and this one’s giving white folks a bad name, too.