The Albino Knife

by Steve Perry

  The medex was slow; he tried to hit Sleel on the floor, but it was the matador's foot that found the man's belly, knocking him backward and into the wall.

  Sleel came up, twisting, and jumped to his right as far as he could. The mue sailed past, swiped at him with the stik, but missed him by a meter. Sleel turned. Stupid mistake had almost got him killed. He was glad nobody was around to see it.

  As the medex tried to get his wind back, Sleel slid in and thrust his good elbow into the man's throat, crushing his windpipe. The medex wasn't going to be breathing through that throat anymore unless somebody cut him a new airhole. The man gagged and fell, both hands clutching his ruined larynx.

  The mue made his run. Sleel twirled, ducked, and came up. The broken bone in his left arm grated and the throw was off, but the mue did a lazy half flip and slammed into the wall, head down. He slid, hit on top of his head, and peeled back from the wall. He was tough; he shook it off and came up, but too late.

  Sleel had snatched up the medex's weapon and now he moved in with the stik cocked by his right ear.

  He snapped his arm down, hard, and hit the mue squarely on top of the head.

  The stik broke. So did the mue's skull.

  Five full seconds passed while Sleel waited to see if anybody was going to get up and come at him again. Nobody did.

  He slowed his breathing and checked out the trio.

  The woman was dead. The mue was dead. The medex was about to be dead. You're getting old, Sleel.

  Five years ago none of these balloos would have touched you. Course you wouldn't have beenso stupid as to leave the field on, either, and fuck yourself up that way.

  Sleel wiped clean the broken stik he held and put it into the medex's hand. He turned the benchpress field off, and walked to the exit. Let whoever found these three figure that they killed each other. The matadors didn't hold with killing, but the way Sleel figured it, when someone tried to take you out, they lost their breathing rights. He'd worry about his conscience later. At least he'd be alive to worry about it.

  The rented flitter sailed through the ocean of night, Bork at ease with the manual controls.

  To the judge, Geneva said, "Do you know what Spasm is?"

  The man shook his head.

  Geneva took the magazine out of her right spetsdod. She paused,then pulled another magazine from her pocket, carefully clicking the replacement into place. She said, "Spasm is the old military load for this."

  She held the weapon up in front of the man's face. "It puts you into tetany, all your voluntary muscles locked, for six months. Can't move, can't eat, you have to be taken care of in a hospital until it lets go.

  No antidote; it's some kind of bioelectric virus, I think.Keeps replicating itself, incurable until it dies on its own."

  Dirisha watched the judge break into a sweat.

  "Of course, it's banned now. Spasm is. The Republic won't allow its use.Says it's barbaric."

  "The trial was legal!The evidence—!"

  "Was faked," Geneva said. "Let's assume for a second that you are an honest man and didn't know that.

  Not that I believe that, but just for the sake of argument. It doesn't matter. Our friend is going to be released on your order; that's the end of the program here."

  The judge licked dry lips.

  "Spasm is illegal, but you know how the black market is. You have enoughmoney, you can get just about anything you want." She pointed her right spetsdod at the judge's face. Her smile was that of a saint, of an angel, so sweet wasit.

  Dirisha suppressed her own smile. The brat must have been a cat an incarnation or two back.

  "Wait!" the judge said. "Wait!"

  Chapter Eight

  THE WARNING CLAXON hooted as the outer gate of the prison slid open. Sleel, bald, dressed in his prison coverall, stood there with four armed guards boxing him. There was a pregnant moment; then Sleel ambled away from the guards, as if he were on a stroll in the country.

  In the flitter across the street, Dirisha shook her head. Now that was a swagger.

  "He's hurt," Bork said.

  Dirisha saw what Bork meant. To somebody without their training, Sleel would have looked normal enough, but to the three of them, the matador was splinting, holding his left arm tighter than he should have been.

  "He's alive," Geneva said. "That's the important thing."

  Sleel arrived where the flitter was parked.

  "Hi, soldier," Dirisha said."New in town?"

  "How much you charge?" Sleel said.

  The flitter kicked up road grit as the fans came online and lifted the vehicle. Bork put into a tight turn and kept it on manual, heading straight for the port. The judge wasn't likely to be a problem for another day or two, but they wanted to be offworld as soon as possible, just in case.

  "I forgot to compliment you earlier on your great haircut, Sleel," Bork said. "Oh, and what happened to your arm?"

  "I ran into a door."

  "Really," Geneva said. Her voice was dry. "Lucky you're out of that place. The warden didn't want to let you go, you know."

  "I'm good company," Sleel said. "I can understand that."

  "I think maybe it had more to do with the three people who got killed in there last night," Dirisha said.

  "Seems a guard and medex and inmate somehow beat each other to death in the gym around midnight."

  "Pretty tough workout," Sleel offered. "How did you manage to get me loose?"

  "The judge who put you in changed his mind suddenly. And you're welcome, Sleel; think nothing of it."

  Bork chuckled. " Geneva threatened to shoot him with a Spasm dart."

  "I did not. I merely explained to him what Spasm was and what it did."

  "Yeah, while loading a fresh magazine into your spetsdod."

  "Plain old shocktox.Not my fault the man jumped to a conclusion."

  Sleel said, "Any chance of paying him a visit before we leave?"

  "Probably not a good idea," Dirisha said.

  Sleel raised an eyebrow.

  Good old Sleel. He never let go. Dirisha said, "The judge is about two hundred klicks from here, in the middle of the Nyoka Game Preserve. He's manacled to a tree about as big as Bork's arm."

  Sleel said, "Good. Maybe he'll get eaten by something before he starves."

  "Probably not," Bork said. "The only big animals in the preserve are plant-eaters. Besides, we left him a penknife. If he works at it, he could whittle through the tree in a couple of days, easy. Or he could cut his own arm off maybe a little quicker."

  "Your idea?"Sleel said, looking at Dirisha.

  " Geneva's."

  He looked at the blonde. "You might amount to something someday, kid."

  "Forget the judge, Sleel. We've got bigger players to find." Dirisha pulled a case from behind her seat and handed it to him. "Why don't you slip into something more comfortable? You look like a trash collector."

  Sleel opened the hard plastic case. Inside was a set of gray orthoskins to matchthose the other three wore, a pair of new spetsdods, and a short block of shocktox ammunition magazines.

  Geneva came up with a medkit as Sleel slipped the top of his coverall off."That ulna broken?"

  "Yeah.About eight centimeters above the wrist.Just cracked; the ends are lined up okay."

  "Give it here."

  Sleel extended his arm and Geneva put the medkit over the purple swelling. The machine hummed and clicked, and Steel's face tightened as jets popped medication and orthostat glue through the skin and muscle.

  "So," he said, "what's the scat?"

  "Somebody doesn't much like us," Dirisha said. "We thought we might go find outwho and maybe pay them a visit to find out why."

  "I got nothing better to do," Sleel said. He was silent for another few seconds as he dressed. As he seated his spetsdods, he said, "Uh, look,about getting me out. I, uh, well—"

  Bork laughed. "Shut up, Sleel. You're gonna ruin your image, you're not careful."

  Everybody joined Bork'
s laughter and Sleel's was the loudest.

  It was good to have something worthwhile to do again, Dirisha thought. And these people around her to do it with.

  Part Two

  Soul Of The Beast

  Chapter Nine

  THE LARGEST COLLECTION of formerly extinct animals in the galaxy is located in a fifty-kilometer oval of exotic grassland on a plateau in Old Brazil just east ofCuiaba , along the meanderingRio das Mortes. Many of the imported offworld grasses have gone to seed since the fall of the Confed, and the Planalto do Mato Grasso around the zoo has been mostly taken over by the giant variant known asjatte riz , with its unique layered structure that allows it to sometimes reach a height of ten meters.

  The people have long memories, so it is said, and so it is, but the group-mind of the people is not infallible. Before he was killed by a poison spew during the revolution, Marcus Jefferson Wall had a particular fondness for the South American zoo and its herds of elephants, mastodons and Spandle curlnoses, and he had spent much of his spare time among them. His visits had not been common knowledge, but there had been more than a few who had known of Wall's fondness for the proboscideans.

  Somehow, during the tumultuous time of the revolution, the zoo had slipped through the cracks, had been missed by those attempting to smash flat every last bit of Wall's handiwork. Perhaps it was because the late Factor Wall had taken care to have the creation of the zoo and its operation far removed from his name. Or maybe it was because the herds of lumbering herbivores posed no threat to anyone and therefore remained unnoticed. Or maybe in the end the zoo was simply so far down the list that no one had yet gotten around to it.

  No matter. The zoo was there, still run by the galaxy's foremost expert on the animals therein, an emaciated woman who had commanded the place since its creation. Operating funds from a special account were always sufficient to get things done. The revolution had not laid its angry grip upon the grasslands, and if the trunked animals living there noticed any change, it was not apparent. They foraged, they bred, they brought forth young,they passed on.

  It was difficult to reach the zoo through the swamps by ground travel. It was easy enough to get to by air, but few made the trip. The odd scientist arrived now and then to study, academic zoological types who drooled over the exotic animals, but mostly the staff had the place to themselves. The tropical heat and frequent thunderstorms offered little competition to a Republic intent on rebuilding an entire galaxy.

  What use were clumps of oafish animals when billions of humans and mues needed proper governing?

  Yes, the people had long memories, but the people were now and then shortsighted. And sometimes, the people were simply blind.

  In a building near the east bank of theRiverofDeath , the air coolers hummed as they struggled to keep the inside at three quarters of the tropical day's temperature without. The place was sparsely furnished; there were chairs, tables, beds and a small kitchen, as well as a fresher with shower and toilet and sink.

  Adequate, if not luxurious.

  Within the room were visitors. One of them was a colorless, average and easy-to-forget man called Tone. The second was a dark man with a long nose and thick muscles who went by the name of Cteel.

  The third was the Albino Exotic woman, Juete.

  The fourth visitor was invisible.

  And it was this fourth visitor who ruminated upon the zoo and its fate, and who listened at the same time intently to the conversation in the room. And who tended to several hundred other items of business simultaneously.

  "You are free to wander about the grounds as you choose," Cteel said. "You will find sunblock in your quarters, as well as an umbrella-field and a dogheel cooler. Don't bother trying to escape. None of the vehicles will operate without a code only I know; none of the communication gear will transmit; none of the staff will come near enough to speak to you. You must be in your room by nightfall."

  The Exotic woman inhaled slowly, inflating her chest and lifting her rather perfect breasts slightly under her dark thinskins. Her nipples hardened, easily visible through the cloth. She exuded pheromones, deliberately now, filling the air with a sexual call. No doubt she would be puzzled once again as to why the two men were not responsive. Albinos learned early of their ability to attract others and there were few who could resist the call when it was fully unleashed. Probably Juete had never met such a one, and her failure to lure either Tone or Cteel into an embrace or even a response must be frightening. It was her most potent weapon, and it had proved useless so far.

  It would continue to fail; the two men were infected with a tailored olfactory virus specifically designed to counter the albino's hormonal signals. More, if either somehow lost control and attempted without orders to have sex with Juete, a series of interlinked viral-molecular charges growing in their hypothalami, cranial nerve clusters, and higher brain, would receive an ultrahigh frequency radio pulse. The explosions resulting would be tiny, but of sufficient strength so that an intensely painful death would follow. The best surgeons who had ever lived could not stop it. Both Tone and Cteel knew what would happen; it had been explained to them in great detail. Neither would be seduced and sympathetic to Juete, no matter how hard she tried. Not if they wished to continue living.

  The fourth watcher knew the woman was frightened at her failure to sway them, for he had once been an albino himself. Had he lips, he would have smiled, but that was no longer possible. He was alive, after a fashion, but without flesh. He existed only as a viral matrix in a supercomputer that hung in high orbit over the Earth; half a dozen smaller computers on the planet supplemented the main one, and he had thousands of sensors feeding him. He was mind; he could think, he could act after a fashion, he could receive input. His multiple photomutable gel eyes were much sharper than any man's and they saw farther into the red and violet; his ears could detect sounds higher and lower than any ears born of natural life; he could hear radio, sense solar flares, could analyze Juete's organically generated perfume—but he could not feel , for he had no skin, no nerves, no muscles, no body. The fission furnace powering him would last for two hundred years, and he could survive on solar radiation indefinitely past that, if somewhat less actively. He could, in his present form, live virtually forever.

  It had not always been so. He remembered his own death, for even that recording had been pulsed to the computer along with the others. He had all the major memories from his former being and they had been coded into electromagnetoencephaloprojic records that occupied and nearly filled the supercomputer which was to become his new self. Hisessence was intact, and though he had no body—yet!—into which he could focushimself, he was mentally the same as he had been before. He had the thoughts and desires and hopes and dreams of a man, albeit he was now certainly something other than man.

  He had been, and was now again in his own unique way, Marcus Jefferson Wall, the man who had run the Confed at his pleasure. He had been brought low, assassinated by one he had once loved, and now he had enemies to repay and plans to bring to fruition. Death had slowed, but not stopped him. He grew stronger each day, his unwitting agents spreading his reach throughout the galaxy, and the time had come for retribution. And a fitting one it would be, too.

  For it was not only the people who had long memories: the memories of Marcus Jefferson Wall were now and forever eidetic, and those who had given him the worst ones would pay most dearly for having done so.

  Chapter Ten

  WHILE THE President of the Republic had by his own desire far less power than had the leader of the Confederation, his wishes still received a great deal of respect throughout the galaxy. If you received a com from Rajeem Carlos asking for a favor, chances were probably good that you would at least seriously think about it before refusing.

  Khadaji was not surprised, therefore, when doors seemed to magically open for him and his daughter upon the tightly regulated pleasure world of Vishnu. The gas giant Shiva blocked the sun now so that it was both shade- and spin-
night, but the huge moon's civilization had been designed to run in day or dark, and myriad colors of generated light—neon, biolume, halogen, incandescent— kept the dark at bay wherever man or mue built their houses of joy. When they arrived at the casino where Juete had worked and lived, it could have as easily been midday, to judge by either the crowds or the illumination at ground level.

  The casino owner would be dining on the story of his White Radio com from the President for a long time, and he gave Khadaji and Veate scan rings that would admit them anywhere they wanted to go.

  Anything for my friend Rajeem Carlos.

  Khadaji and his daughter moved toward Juete's room. The young woman wore a set of plain, tan coveralls, tight clothing that disguised little of what she was. She had the build of an athlete, and he noticed once again how well she moved, with an easy grace. Where did those easy and balanced motions have their base? Was she a dancer? He assumed she could ski, from her story of where she had been when her mother went missing, but he realized how little he knew about her. And Veate had not been particularly forthcoming.

  As for himself, Khadaji wore his gray orthoskins and spetsdods, and the soles of his spun dotic boots were new, something called tackgrip shears. He could almost run up a wall, if he put sufficient force into it, and the soles would not slide a centimeter. During a normal walk, the soles would seem no more than standard flexoprene. He didn't have the matador patch on his shoulder—he'd taught them but never gone through the graduation ceremony himself— and the spetsdods he'd worn virtually every minute for years now seemed strange on the backs of his hands. Still, he was obviously what he was, out of practice or not; he wore the clothes, he had the look. Probably he looked better than he felt.

  The security din built into Juete's door came to life as the pair approached. It scanned them, then queried vocally: