by Ларри Нивен
Ander seemed calm, almost sleepy, except that his breathing was a little ragged and there was sweat trickling down his neck. The cigar had been for my benefit, but he really hadn't noticed the kzinti. Mankind had claimed this world, hadn't we? Kzinti didn't belong here, did they?
He sought the thread of conversation. «You don't know where Feather Filip is, and you last saw the magical autodoc a year and a half ago.»
«Exactly. I don't know that Feather hasn't been watching for me to come back and get it. There were lamplighter islands in line of sight. She could be watching for me with a pair of mag specs.»
«Or she could be anywhere on Fafnir. But if I find her, she can take me to the island.»
I kept silent.
«I can reach some funds. Tell you what,» Ander said. «Take my entire expense credit. Five thousand and change. I'll have to live on credit till Sigmund can send me more.»
«No, no, Ander. I want a hundred thousand.»
«I'd have to beam Sigmund. I'd have to tell him what it is for. Where does that leave me?»
«Tell him I want two hundred thousand. Keep half yourself.»
«Beowulf, what you have to sell is a tool that's been left under seawater. The technology is in records left behind by Carlos Wu.»
«Did he leave records of his research? You don't know that. Encrypted? You don't know. I don't, either. Could the Fafnir government get the techniques by studying the autodoc itself? We don't know.»
Ander laughed at that. «What are you going to tell the Fafnir bureaucrats? You stand five ten, maybe, but you can produce records that show you seven feet tall? Records can be faked, Beowulf. I'm your only customer.»
This was fun. I had his attention, finally. «What if we take a stunted kzinti — there are a few — and skin him, and before he suffers too much trauma, we shove him in Carlos Wu's 'doc. Would it rebuild him into a passable human? A perfect spy?»
He guffawed. «That is really ridiculous.»
«Oh, maybe. But there are wealthy kzinti families on Fafnir.»
«They don't know how tall you used to be, either! Anyway, dealing with kzinti is crazy dangerous. Beowulf, I've got nearly six thousand, and you can have it all. Otherwise you'll have to wait while I tell Sigmund Ausfaller what you're selling, and Sigmund makes a counteroffer, and you settle, and he finally sends credit, all by hyperwave across ten light-years. And if I find Feather while you're waiting, you get nothing.»
«Good enough. Tell him two hundred thousand stars —»
«One.»
«One. Half in advance, half when you've got the 'doc. I'll be here at the Pequod until the money comes in.» I stood up. «It's midnight. Pay my consultant's fee at the hotel desk.» I walked out, thinking I'd timed that nicely.
I stopped at the desk to learn my room number. I told them there would be a payment entered against room charges.
My backpurse was hanging in the sleeping plates. I checked through it. Someone might have searched it … someone had. Sharrol, looking for what might identify me as a family man. She'd found and removed my two holos of her, one with Tanya and Louis but not Carlos, the other more recent, pregnant, with Jeena at her breast.
Twenty minutes between the plates would do me a world of good, I thought. Four hours would be even better.
No time.
I rode an elevator to the roof. There I paused, gazing idly up into the black oceanic night.
Sanity check: Was I being watched? In what fashion?
ARM cameras are little transparent disks you apply with a thumb to a flat surface. They don't cost that much and are impossible to spot. My room would be a good place to scatter a few. So would the lobby doors and the line of transfer booths behind me on the Pequod's roof. But Ander had had no chance to set them … had he?
I wished that I'd known Ander Smittarasheed better. I hadn't learned much today. He had the instincts of a cop; he'd treated me as a felon ready to escape. He remembered me fairly well. Strong as hell. What else?
He had come here for me, he'd said. More likely he'd come for us. For Carlos, the valuable one; Feather, the dangerous one; Beowulf Shaeffer, the talkative one who knows too much; Carlos's children, both United Nations citizens; Sharrol Janss … could lead him to the rest. But I could do that for him, too. He didn't need Sharrol.
Ander must have reached Fafnir by tracking a sighting of Carlos's ship. Where had he begun his investigations?
He'd started where he had landed, at the Shasht spaceports, of course. A party of six, three of us flat phobes, would not have come to a weird world like Fafnir to stay. He would search through the hotels and spaceports and hiding places on Shasht, try to learn if we'd left, before he faced eleven hours worth of jet lag in the islands.
If he'd gone to Outbound, he'd have found the Graynor family all registered for flight. Those names and a phone file would have brought him to Pacifica.
The public booths in Pacifica are lined along the dome, with a view up into the underwater jungle, for its impact on tourists incoming from Shasht. Ander Smittarasheed must have just arrived from Shasht when he saw me looking down at him.
I didn't like that. It would mean Ander had placed cameras at Outbound. They would have been waiting when Sharrol came in with Jeena. They'd be there now, for me.
But I couldn't be wrong about this: Ander had been shocked stupid at the sight of me. If he had found records for the Graynors, he'd have everything: our transplant types, allergies, eye color, height.
Ander would have given up then or persuaded himself that Beowulf Shaeffer had made himself shorter. But he hadn't known that. He hadn't.
No, he hadn't followed a paper trail. He had followed one of six fugitives, the one he knew, through a chain of logic. Beowulf Shaeffer, albino. Track him through the regular purchase of tannin secretion pills. No? Then he must be living like a vampire: working a night shift at Shasht or the Islands, at any business that caters to jet-lagged travelers. No? Then … under the sea? Losing hope … and there he is!
He'd run up a long flight of stairs to catch me. He certainly hadn't phoned anyone on the way. He hadn't let me out of his sight since. Congratulations, Ander! Beowulf Shaeffer has not escaped.
But Ander hadn't had a chance to call for backup.
The curve of glass above me supported kilotons of seawater and a life older than planet Earth. Luminescent angler fish and eels and elaborately shaped jellyfish writhed through the blackness. I sat on a bench and watched. Perhaps something was watching me.
Ander would search in vain for Feather Filip.
That wouldn't stop his search. Using instruments on a ship or satellite, he would pick out every darkened island. Dead lamplighter, no glow of house lights. Choose among those for just two live islands in line of sight; then deep radar for a hollow object more massive than sand offshore. Carlos Wu's 'doc.
In the lamplighter pit: the scorched remains of an antique lander. He'd search out human remains. He'd find bits of my bones and read their DNA. If he found traces of Feather's blood, it would only confirm my story.
If Ander was honest, he'd return the machine to Earth and the UN. If he changed his mind, so much the better. Give him something to hide, to sell.
Meanwhile, Beowulf Shaeffer waits patiently for word. Let him stew long enough, paying hotel rates when he clearly can't afford it, and he'll settle for much less than his hundred thousand. Monitor his phone; we wouldn't want him looking for a better offer from the Shashters, let alone the Patriarchy. At least we know he'll wait.
The thing is, Shaeffer knows too much. A man who has seen Julian Forward's miniature black hole and the tools he used to make it a weapon should not be running loose. (Feather Filip had told me that, but I believed it.) The money is trivial … well, trivial given that it will never be paid. But Shaeffer needs the money; he won't run away from that.
I watched the eternal show of Fafnir's sea life for a time in case I was being watched myself I fished my flat portable out — less advanced than Ander's, pu
rchased locally — and tapped at it idly. Addresses popped up, with transfer booth numbers. Some I filed, filling in a map.
People went in and out of the booths. Maybe one was an ARM planting cameras. Maybe not.
So I strolled into the near booth. Got to kill some time — right, Ander? — or the waiting will drive me nuts. My card in the slot. Look at the wall, watch the advertisements flow past (discreetly small, by city law), and presently tap out a number.
There were places a single might visit. They advertised on the walls of transfer booths. I'd never been in one — honest, Sharrol! But when the booth flicked me in, I didn't see anything surprising.
It was noisy and close. They were dressed to catch the eye, in those bodysuits with windows, men and women both. The dim light favored them, and holograms of real and fantasy worlds made a distracting magic. Eyes looked me over, judging, not liking what they saw.
On every world some singles nodes welcome the tourist trade; some don't.
How they knew me I can't guess, because Shashters are a varied lot. But I was not welcome here. One or two men were preparing to tell me so. I retrieved my Persial January Hebert card, stepped from the booth, and walked straight to the door faster than they could decide, and then out.
Any flatlander who followed me through might well be delayed.
I was hoping to see a restaurant or juice bar, but I didn't. Around the nearest corner, then, and here was a public booth. I didn't use the card. I used coins.
My ears felt the pressure drop. What I saw as I stepped from the booth was a patchy cityscape. These were the Disneys, a cluster of ten coral peaks linked to another dozen by slidebridges. It was still night. A shadow blocked a patch of stars: a wedge-shaped dirigible just departing from the Flying Island terminal.
You wouldn't find more than one dirigible company to an island. Why risk dirigibles floating into each other when any customer can take a booth to the next island over? There were four terminals in the Disneys, all on outlying islands.
From the Flying Island terminal I began walking.
Daylight would have fried me before I reached my target. But the night was a gorgeous display of stars, and the waves crashed down in spectral blue and yellow flashes of luminous algae. In this light an albino would look no weirder than anyone else.
* * *
If I had a trick worth trying, it was unpredictability. Ander might trace me as far as the singles node. What he would learn there might set him to searching hospitals for a battered P. J. Hebert. He couldn't follow coins, I thought, but if somehow he did, he'd find I had reached the Flying Island dirigible terminal, then –
Then? Somewhere else, with the same haste I'd shown up to now. Possibly I'd boarded a dirigible; more likely I was on Shasht via instantaneous booth.
But for most of an hour I rode slidebridges toward Beast Island.
On Aladdin Island I found a tourist section and a hairstyler with a wide range of settings. Nobody but a flatlander would want his hair colored. I turned it sandy and curly and short. I stopped again to buy fresh clothing and a bigger backpurse, again for a steam bath and massage and to ditch my old clothing. Ander could have left any number of cameras on my person. Well before dawn I walked into the Grail Hunt terminal, where I bought my dirigible ticket as Martin Wallace Graynor.
If Ander knew that name, he'd have Milcenta Graynor, too: Sharrol. But he didn't have Feather, and Feather was Adelaide Graynor. We weren't caught yet.
I boarded the Wyvern. I settled into a hammock chair and fell fast asleep.
GHOST: EIGHT
The Core. Ashes of supernovas: plasma thick and glowing among millions of neutron stars. Lighter stars still glowed, still retained their retinue of planets.
Automated spacecraft streamed out from a pentagon of blue and white worlds. Terraforming began on a vast scale. Would they all be farming worlds to feed one homeworld with a population approaching quintillions? The surface would be lost. A hollow world would form and swell to Jovian size.
Tens of thousands of years away. Would anyone remember the Pierson's puppeteers?
They would, yes. Information is too easy to record, too difficult to destroy. When the Core explosion glared in the night sky, anyone who cared would find the Fleet of Worlds in ancient United Nations records, and the record of their departure, and even Beowulf Shaeffer's opinion, as recorded by Ander Smittarasheed, as to where they'd gone. If our civilization survived, there would be records showing whether I was right.
The easy sway of Wyvern had awakened me. I knew before I opened my eyes: we were airborne.
I studied my watch. Four hours I'd slept. Not enough. Dawn must be a long way away, but I ought to do something about it.
The floor jittered under my feet as I made my groggy way to the dispenser wall.
The dispensers were coin-operated. I thanked my luck and bought tannin secretion pills for the first time in a year and a half. I downed four at the fountain, then made my way back to the hammock.
I watched black water and bright islands, their centers marked by white city glow or yellow lamplighter glow, with the electric blue flash of breakers to outline their rims. Presently one crept near. I watched while Wyvern descended to a mooring and a spiral stair came snaking up to us.
Passengers were boarding at Thelinda's Island; others were getting off. I got off.
My phone was listed under Graynor, not Hebert. I called Outbound Enterprises.
Ice Trireme would lift for Home in four days, more or less. Milcenta Graynor and a child were frozen solid and doing fine. I was expected; Milcenta had already signed me in. Was I aware that Milcenta was carrying a child? Special techniques had been required, and a surcharge had been added. It had been too long since I'd had my physical. I'd need another before I could board, and that, too, required a surcharge, which Milcenta had paid.
She'd done it! She'd retrieved Jeena; she'd reached the terminal and checked us all in and kept her cool until they cooled her down and had never made a mistake.
My turn now.
The real Martin Wallace Graynor had played the futures market. It had broken him. Feather had made him an offer, and I had become Mart Graynor.
I had taken up his habit. I bought options to buy (or sell) shares of cargoes on outgoing spacecraft, sold the option if the price went up (or down), sometimes exercised the option instead. I'd been doing that for over a year, ever since I had reasoned out how it worked. I was down a few thousand, but that wasn't the point. Mart Graynor held options on cargoes bound for Home.
Ice Trireme was carrying a fertilizer package: cattle dung seeded with minerals, earthworms, and small life-forms including unicellular rock eaters. The stuff would be treated like a concentrate, mixed into rock dust, and used as soil. Mart Graynor owned an option to buy at a set price.
I bought it all.
I would own it when it landed on Home, and there I would sell it. Money moving between stars might be noticed, but fertilizer packages were supposed to move.
Next: the apt in Pacifica, in Milcenta Graynor's name. Should I do something about that? But Sharrol had been so efficient. She might well have put it up for sale herself.
Or we could just let the lease lapse. I left it alone.
Twenty minutes gone. Plenty of time to cross the slidebridge to Baker Street Island, put coins in a booth, and be waiting on Landis Island when the dirigible Wyvern touched down.
Direct sunlight flamed on my cheeks, forehead, closed eyelids. I thrashed in terror and snapped awake. I'd taken the pills, hadn't I? Pat pockets, find the bottle. Seal broken. Good.
We had left most of the islands behind.
A balcony rimmed the gondola, screened with webbing to discourage fools and jumpers. Several passengers had taken their trays out there. I got my breakfast and went out in time to occupy an inflated chair. I took my shirt off. My blood was suffused with the antisunburn chemicals, and my skin darkened fast as the morning wore on.
We flew not far above the water.
Following the surfaces of enormous swells, Wyvern felt a long-period surge and drop. This was the deep ocean. Waves had room to grow out here. So did the sea beasts.
A voice from the control room directed our eyes to where a black shadow was forming in the dark water. It surfaced; water ran from it, a black island. Then a neck rose, and rose farther, dozens of yards into the air. A bar of a head with eyes wide-spaced for binocular vision studied the lights of the flying machine above it.
I felt the heady ecstasy of the discoverer and then a sudden savage guilt.
We would end on Home.
A flat phobe could live and raise her children there without forcing her body to admit that she had left Earth. In that respect it lacks interest, and that was why we chose it. I would be there, too, marooned beneath the stars … at the bottom of a hole, as the Belters say of planets.
I didn't even know if there were alien embassies on Home. «I'm out of the aliens business,» I'd said.
I'd been on Fafnir for a year and a half, and I'd spent it beneath the ocean. This was my last chance to see the world. My last spaceflight, in miniature.
It's misdirection, see, Sharrol? The crashlander's hand is more nimble than the eye of the ARM. But I'd known what I was doing all along.
Sanity check –
Ander wouldn't ignore the spaceports; Ander wouldn't forget the iceliners. I had to gamble that he had looked at Outbound Enterprises first, and thoroughly, before he had come to Pacifica. Sharrol and Jeena and I might get clear before Ander looked again.
Then the records would tell him that a family native to Fafnir had been frozen while, halfway around the planet, Ander was watching water war with Beowulf Shaeffer. He would have no reason at all to connect these Graynors with fleeing flatlanders.
I was not burning time at my family's cost. I was confusing my back trail. With luck and ingenuity we'd be clear of Ander Smittarasheed and would stay that way.
