“Yeah? Anyone meet him there?”
“No. But every night he came in, ordered one drink which he paid for immediately, then took a seat where he would have a clear view of the front window of the establishment. At times he would not finish the drink, merely rise from his seat all at once and hurry out. On other occasions, he would perhaps have two drinks before he would leave in the same precipitous manner.”
“So someone would walk by, give some kind of prearranged signal, and he’d follow them to some safe place.”
“Such are the appearances of the situation. We must follow these leads with a certain speed, Bates.” He pauses to arch his fingertips together. “Before your arrival I was speaking with the President on our confidential line. She’s in a state of some agitation. The Confederation has delivered some stiff notes to her, and they’ve been sending even stiffer ones to the Alliance Embassy. The Alliance ambassador has thus complained to her about the what he calls unwarranted suspicions of the Confederation. Some important clauses of the recent treaty remain to be finalized. We must endeavor to solve this mystery, or she will be forced to place Porttown under martial law.”
Bates’s stomach knots round the gin with a flare of pain.
“Send in troops? She-it, man! You’d have riots on your hands, and they could last for days. The folks on Sarah just no understand this town. Never have.”
“Oh, the President knows Porttown well enough. The question’s one of relative importance between Porttown and the treaty clauses. Come along, Bates, everyone knows you’re soft on the Blancos, but...”
“Now just you wait one Goddamn minute. They happen to be citizens of this Republic the same as the rest of us. Are you and the President forgetting that?”
“Of course not.” The conciliatory smile is too toothy to be convincing. “We’re merely speaking of emergency and final contingencies, not of a desired course of action. Do you want some sort of Alliance landing instead? No doubt the Confederation would then initiate a naval action for our so-called protection.”
“And just why would the Lies bring men dirtside?”
“I don’t truly know.” Akeli looks bitterly vexed. “The President doesn’t confide everything to my hearing.”
“If you ask me, that’s an idle threat and nothing more. Something else is going on, and I no like it. The dudes on Sarah have been trying to clean out Porttown for years. Where are they going to put the Blancos, in projects? She-it, man, they’re worse than a ghetto any old day.”
“That’s beyond my jurisdiction, el jefe.” Akeli shrugs with an open-handed gesture. “I’m not the Secretary of Housing. All I know is this: you find that killer, or this town will shut up tighter than a Main Station airlock. Do you understand me?”
“Oh, I hear you.” Bates uncoils himself from the chair and puts down his glass. “Now you listen to me, and you tell the President what I say. If she closes down Porttown, then she’ll lose out big, cause the Porters are hiding something that she needs bad, a whole new card to play, man, in this lousy little game between the Cons and the Lies. I’ll bet you that Lies know it, too, and they’re stalling for time because they’re desperate.”
“Indeed?” For a moment Akeli leans back in his chair, then with a wince of irritation gets up to face the chief. “And just what is this momentous matter?”
“How about a first contact? How about a member of an brand-new alien race in hiding right here in our own sweet town, because the Lies are tracking its ship out in solar orbit?”
Akeli goes very still except for one big drop of sweat that trickles down his jowls.
“Okay, man,” Bates says. “This is real delicate, right? I don’t even know yet just where this alien is. You boys piss off the Porters, and we maybe will never know. Get it now?”
“She-it.” Akeli is whispering. “I mean, um, indeed. But what if she just sends in the troops anyway? What’s going to stop her from simply taking the place apart, one block at a time?”
“You, that’s what. Hey, man, once the Army’s in here, who’s going to listen to the PBI? I know you got a network, got your contacts in Porttown, in the embassies—what’s going to happen to them when the military intelligence ops are poking around?”
Akeli swears with a foul oath to show that the point’s well taken. Bates allows himself a small smile.
“So you better talk to the President. Tell her whatever you want, man, but talk real pretty.”
“Er, yes, it seems most necessary, doesn’t it? Very well, I’ll do as you say, but we’ve only got three days before the troops land.”
“Three...?” Bates is too stunned for profanity. “Well, then, we better get busy.”
As eager as he is to talk to Lacey, Bates waits until he’s a good two kilometers away from the PBI and their scanning devices. He parks his skimmer in a quiet alley, then uses his private comm unit to hook up with Buddy.
“Chief Bates, I am glad you called. I have the results of the collation you requested. I am transmitting full data to your comp unit at the moment. Do you wish a summary?”
“Damn right. Gracias, Buddy. Go ahead.”
“Thirty-six years ago a controversial book was published, called Escape from Terror. The human author was a defector from the Alliance who claimed political sanctuary on the grounds that he had been forced to become a psychic assassin for the government. He had, or so he said, a change of heart upon being converted to the worship of the Galactic Mind. Alliance spokesbeings denied his charges and labeled him a money-hungry writer of fiction. Several holopix and one docudrama were made from his story. The theme of psionic assassins became part of popular fiction of the worst sort, causing the Alliance to bring over a hundred lawsuits in a reasonably successful attempt to close discussion of the subject.”
“Jeez, I remember now! I was just a kid. Any evidence, one way or nother, as to whether or not he was lying?”
“None, sir. He died shortly after the book’s publication. It appeared to be suicide, but then, it would.”
“If a professional had arranged it, you mean?”
“Exactly, sir. I am feeding the entire book into an auxiliary memory cube for your comp unit. You both will see that it contains much striking detail that has the ring of truth no matter how fantastic the premise.”
“Very good, Buddy. Bueno, bueno, bueno! Now we’ve got a peg to hang our shirts on, dunt we? Something for the President to throw in the Lies’ faces if she needs it.”
“Sir? I do not understand.”
“Sorry. Listen up, Buddy. I’ll tell you what’s going on first; then I want you to get hold of Lacey for me. She’s got to know that someone’s just upped the ante real high in this game we’re playing. Oh, and before I forget, the PBI knows that someone’s hacked into its files.”
“Thank you, sir. I will endeavor to cover my traces more completely in the future. I am now in reception mode and ready for your input of new data.”
oOo
Just as he promised, Sam is waiting at the bar in Kelly’s, idly watching the replay of a ball game while he nurses a tumbler of the local “tequila,” cut only by a slice of lime. Tall and slender, with black curly hair and richly brown skin, he’s a handsome man with that particular musculature of the veteran spacer, an artificial lean fitness that comes from doing scientifically designed exercises in a small space. As most spacers prefer to do, he’s wearing a jump suit, royal blue with one silver sleeve in this case. When he spots Lacey he falls on her with a whoop and a bear hug, to the amusement of the crowd of regulars.
“Hey, Lacey,” someone calls out. “What’s Mulligan going to say bout this, huh?”
Lacey ignores them with a regal toss of her head.
Kelly’s sports a couple of narrow booths in the back for those patrons who value privacy over comradeship, and Lacey takes Sam to the one farthest from the door. With an appreciative smile for the dark wood and crisp cotton cloth, he slides in opposite her and powers up the menu.
“Anything you wan
t, pal,” Lacey says. “My treat.”
“Hell, no! I’m paying!”
“The old coin toss?”
“Right, when we’re done eating.”
They both punch in their orders, soy steak for Sam, reconstituted salmon flakes for Lacey, then turn off the menu.
Kelly himself bustles over with the bottle of wine and two glasses to make a ritual fuss over pouring.
“Hey, Lacey, que pasa?” he says. “I hear your Mulligan’s going to be playing shortstop for the Marauders.”
“He’s no mine, pal.” She regrets the hostile edge to her voice instantly and smiles, pretending to tease. “What do you want me to do, ask him to throw games your way?”
“No that desperado.” Kelly laughs a little. “Bet we can beat’em good this season, real good.”
The wine poured, Kelly departs, wiping his perfectly clean hands on a spotless towel. Sam has a sip and gives her a wicked grin over the rim of his glass.
“Level with me,” he says. “So this Mulligan no is yours, huh? I’ve been hearing about him at the bar. Half of Porttown seems to think he’s a lot more’n your amigo.”
“He’s somewhere between a friend and a stray dog.”
“Yeah, sure. Tell Auntie.”
“He’d probably be more to your taste than mine. You always did like skinny blond dudes. But he no the type to return the favor.”
“Then he’s in love with you, no matter what’s going on in your stainless steel heart.”
“Shaddap!”
“I guessed right, dint I?”
Lacey is spared having to answer by a servobot rolling up with a tray of appetizers: on the house, it announces in its nasal voice. Lacey wonders why servobots are always programmed to sound like young humans with bad colds.
“Great.” Sam helps himself to a cabbage roll and goes on talking between bites. “Compared to most places Polar City food no is much, but it sure beats deep sky rations.”
“Some compensation, I guess.”
Sam looks up in sharp concern.
“Hey, amiga, que pasa? You really okay dirtside?”
“I dunt have a lot of choice, do I?”
“Well.” He reaches for another roll. “Look, if we both pulled the right strings, maybe we could get your papers back, and then you could sign on with me as my chief comp.”
“Do I have a hope in hell of getting them?”
“Probably not, yeah.” His voice drops to a genuine sadness. “Jeez, I feel like I ought to do something. My life was one of the ones you saved.”
“You no owe me one damn thing. I saved my own ass, too.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. You always say that, but still, if it no was for you, I’d be dead and five hundred God damned sentients with me. It still gripes my soul, the way they cashiered you for it.”
“Hey, man, by rights I should’ve been shot. Talk about pullin strings! If it no was for old Iron Snout and his admiral’s stars, I’d be dead.”
“That’s what I mean. We owe you.”
“Chinga tu madre.”
Sam winces and lets the subject drop. Lacey helps herself to a piece of toast covered with bright pink crayfish paste and eats it slowly, wishing that Sam would stop bringing up the reason that she was kicked out of the Fleet and can never space again. His gratitude, she supposes, must gnaw him every time they meet. Some sentients belong in deep space; others never quite adjust to being trapped inside a metal bubble driving through an endless swirl of stars. Captain Rostow of the RSS Avalon was one of the latter. Even after twenty years of service some part of his mind still fought with itself, still screamed out that trusting yourself to a thin shell of technology was madness out here in the vast drifts of interstellar dust and the sudden flares of passing stars. In a routine battle against pirates he cracked. Just when the Avalon had them on the run, he ordered the force-screens dropped in preparation for a full-power retreat. Without its screens the pirates could have reduced the Avalon to its constituent electromagnetic particles in one good shot, but in his panic all he could think of was reaching somewhere safe and solid, of escaping from the pitiless regard of the galaxy to hide under a blanket of blue sky.
Mutiny. It’s a nasty word, Lacey thinks, for a nasty crime. She was the only officer on the bridge who had the guts to set her laser on stun and turn it on Rostow. Once she had him locked in his cabin, as second officer she put herself under arrest and the ship in Sam’s hands. In private the high brass agreed that she’d done the right thing, but for the sake of discipline they were pressing for the death penalty until Admiral Wazerzis personally intervened. The best compromise he could engineer was that she would be allowed to retire quietly, her deep space papers sealed, rather than being forced into a dishonorable discharge.
What Lacey can never quite explain to anyone is that she agreed with the high command. Not that she wanted to die, mind; the night she heard the verdict of clemency she alternately laughed and trembled for two solid hours out of sheer relief. She had merely made her choice of death on the bridge when Rostow began sweating and raving. Her life for five hundred others had seemed a small and logical bargain at the time, one that she was prepared to honor for the sake of the same discipline that so troubled the investigatory board. One of the main safeguards against the same deep space fever that claimed Rostow is rigid discipline and routine, an artificial security of detail and regulations that soothes as much as it chafes. On a starship everyone is incredibly vulnerable to the actions of everyone else. A single crazed crewman with a laser could be a threat not only to the lives of the crew but to the very existence of the ship. She hates the thought that someday someone might find themselves thinking of her case and deciding that mutiny was once again justified—when it was an act of madness.
“Y’know,” Sam says. “Maybe one day you’ll be in a position to do a little blackmail. I’ll keep my ears open and see if I can find something that’ll get the high muckymucks on the run and make’em release your papers.”
“Gracias, amigo. Dunt seem likely.”
The food arrives, and they eat without talking until they’re almost finished, the etiquette of a starship’s officers’ mess. When every meal might be interrupted by the wail of a battle-siren, food takes precedence over chatter. At length Sam divides up the last of the wine and settles back in his seat to enjoy his share.
“You never did give me the hard copy on this Mulligan dude.”
“Did, too. Told you to shut up, dint I? There’s nada to say.”
“Then how come you’re so busy no saying it? Do I get to meet him?”
“Hell, you can have him.”
“Oh yeah sure. I remember the last time you said that to me over a guy. You were pissed as hell when I took you up on it.”
“I dint think he’d go for it, you bastard.” But in spite of the insult she smiles. “Well, no can win’em all, huh?”
“You won the only time it really mattered.” Sam turns suddenly melancholy, holding up his glass to let the light turn the sweet wine blood red. “Or it seemed to matter, then. Just like it seemed you won the big prize. A booby prize, huh? When I think of what that sonovabitch put you through!” The melancholy vanishes in a grin. “It served you right, snagging him away from me like that.”
“I was doing you a favor, and you know it.”
“Now I know it, yeah. Although it’s funny, how things work out. Soon as he dumped you I knew we were going to be friends, cause we were both loco enough to fall for a bastard like that. The classic triangle—I was in love with him, you were in love with him, and he was in love with him.”
Lacey laughs and turns on the menu to order more wine. After twenty-four years she can look back on the one great love affair of her life with a comic equanimity to match Sam’s, but at the time she seriously considered suicide. It was the strict discipline of the Fleet that saved her, she supposes, her conviction that an officer who killed herself would be disgracing not only herself but the corps as a whole.
; “Ohmigawd!” she says suddenly. “Sam, what was his last name? Alvarez or Alvarado?”
Sam pauses, glass in hand.
“Alvarez. Time flies, huh? I had to think a minute myself. I wonder what ever happened to our Jaime? I’ll bet you anything you want he’s still in the damn Navy. Madre de Dios, he was beautiful! Probably he still is. Damn rejuv! It keeps jilted lovers like us from getting our revenge. By rights he should be all over wrinkles, but he’s probably still breaking hearts somewhere.”
“Yeah, for sure. But it no was just his looks, man. That way he had about him, his damn swagger when he walked, even. It just always got me. Sometimes I used to feel like it was a privilege to hang around waiting for him even when he stood me up. And you always knew he was a hero. I mean, sounds stupid when you say the word aloud, but he was.”
“A chest full of medals, huh?” Yet Sam’s eyes are distant, remembering. “And he earned every Goddamn one. Can’t even be cynical about it, yeah. He earned’em.” He takes the opened wine bottle from the servobot and pops out the cork. “We going to drink to lost love?”
“Why not? Pour’em full, amigo.”
They salute each other with the full glasses, then drink half straight off, another gesture from the officers’ mess. Lacey is about to call a second toast when she sees Chief Bates striding down the line of tables toward the booths. The dead-eye grim look on his face brings her to her feet just as he reaches them.
“We found Sally Pharis. It’s no pretty.”
“I’ve been afraid of that for a long time now, chief. She die the same as the others?”
Bates swallows hard, gulping for breath in remembered disgust.
“Uh, look, sorry to spoil your dinner, but do you want to come with me to the morgue? We got to talk, Lacey. I’ll cop to it: we need your help real bad.”
If the chief would admit such a thing, the situation must be catastrophic.
“Okay, I’ll come with you. Hey, Sam, want to go back to A to Z and wait for me there?”
“If you need me now, I’ll go with you.”
Bates shakes his head no.
Pet Noir Page 13
