“How long have you been there?” H asked.
“Long enough.”
H walked away, into the breaking Parisian dawn, carrying Pawny with him.
39
Most of the larger MiB stations around the world had a room tucked away that acted as a memorial for their fallen. The London office was no exception. The walls were black marble and, as you approached them, the code name of each fallen agent and their dates of service glowed to life. The names they had been born with were not present. The walls were covered with glowing names, and like any agency that valued secrecy, there was no mention of how these men and women had died, or where.
A row of square, marble pedestals lined the wall you faced as you entered the chamber. The pedestals were white and bore only the code name of the few agents who had been elevated to command of an MiB station. High T’s pedestal was the newest addition to the room.
Atop each pedestal was a transparent crystalline bust of the station chief. H shook his head and gave a dry chuckle when he examined High T’s bust. Even though it had been laser-cut using the 3-D holographic image from High T’s service record, H thought it didn’t look like the real High T. It reminded H a bit of the busts of Roman emperors that usually served vanity more than historical accuracy. H was pretty sure T himself would get a laugh out of it. Maybe he should ask him.
Embedded in the crystal of each bust was a monomolecular quantum AI storing a complete brainwave print from the deceased, made sometime prior to death. It was maintained and updated on a regular basis throughout the agent’s life. While it wasn’t immortality, and often wasn’t even accurate, touching the bust would let you “visit” with the dead through a telepathic interface. H didn’t think he was ready for that, not right now, so he just did it the old-fashioned way.
“Well, here we are, old man,” he said, his voice echoing in the empty vault. “I never thought you were serious about me taking your place.” He looked down at the marble floor. “That night we bumped into one another the first time, in Bridport? Well, it was pretty much just another night for me. Working a job to pay the bills, pub, a few too many, then either over to the Cod for a quick sober-up meal or just home to get up and do it again the next day.”
H paced in front of High T’s bust, feeling like he really was talking to his old friend. “That had been good enough for my mates, not a bad life, you understand. I just always wanted… more, felt there was more out there, just hiding a bit out of reach.”
H looked at the bust. “You believed in me, T, when I didn’t even believe in myself. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for seeing something in me, when no one else could. You were always like a father to me. I hope some part of you knew that.”
H took his flask out of his jacket and began to unscrew it. “Here’s to you.” He paused for a moment, considered the flask, and then tightened the cap and slipped it back into his jacket. “Maybe later,” he said. “Goodbye, T.” He turned from the bust and strode toward the doors. “I’ve got a train to catch.”
40
Em sat alone in the hyperloop depot on the lower level of the MiB London Station. She was waiting for the train that was going to take her home, back to New York. She had tried reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on her MiB-sanctioned tablet. She’d read it several times in her life. Her dad and mom had even read it to her when she was a kid and it always delighted her. H had told her that a lot of the book was more travelogue than fiction, and that had made her want to read it again with different eyes. But she couldn’t focus to read right now.
She glanced at her watch and then to the empty escalators. No one was coming to say goodbye. He wasn’t coming to say goodbye.
But when she looked away from the escalators, she found H sitting on the bench next to her. Pawny, in a new suit of black-and-white armor, reminiscent of an MiB uniform, was sitting on his shoulder.
“You were going to leave without saying a proper goodbye.” A half-smile was playing on H’s face.
“You were going to let me,” Em said, her eyes brightening.
“No… I just hate long goodbyes.”
“No kidding,” Pawny said, checking the watch on his gauntlet. “Her train leaves in, like, seventy-four seconds.” H picked up Pawny and stuffed him back in his jacket pocket, patting it gently.
“I’m sure we’ll bump into each other,” Em said. “Sometimes cases intersect, right?”
“Not often.” The disappointment was evident in his voice; he didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news. “Issues of jurisdiction and all that.” His face brightened a little. “Unless there’s a mole in New York.”
It coaxed a smile out of Em.
“You’re the boss now, aren’t you? You could always make something up.”
“Well, probationary boss,” H said. “Whatever that is. I mean, talk about an oxymoron, right? ‘High PH?’ Sounds like some kind of skin condition—”
“Is there something you wanted to say?” Em asked, cutting him off.
H was awkwardly silent for a moment. Then, “About what?”
“You did come all the way down here,” Em reminded him.
“It’s not so far.” H pointed up toward the main floor beyond the escalators. “I work just up there.”
Em sighed.
“Pawny?” Em said.
The little warrior popped up out of H’s pocket.
“Yes, my Lady?”
“Will you tell Agent H he’s almost out of time?”
Pawny looked up at H. “My Lady says, ‘Spit it out.’”
H was silent for a heartbeat, then he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his gaze on the floor.
“When High T was High T,” he told her, “he had this thing he’d say about how the universe has a way of leading you to where you’re supposed to be at the moment you’re supposed to be there.” He met Em’s eyes, stared deeply into them. “You came right when I needed you. And I just wanted to say—” he wrestled with so many things he wanted to say, but knew it was better if he didn’t “—thanks.”
There was a loud whoosh that echoed through the empty station. The train was suddenly there, the doors hissing open, the automated conductor announcing the stop and the next station.
Em leaned closer to H.
“I wanted this suit more than I ever wanted anything,” she began, knowing she only had seconds. “I always thought there was nothing I couldn’t happily walk away from.” She let the words hang in the air. She wrestled with so many things she wanted to say, but knew it was better if she didn’t. “Okay… I’m going to walk away now.” She held her gaze on H one more moment. “Take care of him, Pawny.”
“Is that an… order?” Pawny asked.
“That’s an order,” Em said, as she stood and walked to the train’s doors.
H stood, too. He took a step toward her, but only a step.
“Goodbye, Molly,” H said.
She turned back to him. “Goodbye, Har… Can I just call you H?”
H smiled and nodded.
“Goodbye, H,” she said.
Em entered the train and took a seat. She looked back at H, one last time through the window, and smiled. The doors closed and the train rocketed away, immediately out of sight. She was gone.
H and Pawny stood alone on the platform. The wake of the train faded and was gone. H began to walk toward the escalators.
“H,” Pawny sighed sadly, “I think this is the beginning of a really annoying friendship.”
OPEN ARMS
A SHORT STORY BY R.S. BELCHER
A vintage Jaguar glided toward the churning chaos of the crime scene that stretched the length of Elcot Avenue. Well, thought Agent H as he parked near the border of the blue-and-white police tape, 2012 is off to a brilliant start.
It was early March, and already MiB London Station had seen an alien attempt to assassinate the royal family, a “plague” of microscopic aliens called Millicrons joyriding around in the bloodstreams of unsuspectin
g humans, and now this—whatever this was.
H climbed out of the Jag and ducked under the police tape. He was tall, athletic, blonde, square-jawed, and clean-shaven. He wore the standard issue “uniform” of the Men in Black: a crisp black suit, white-collared shirt, and black tie. Being nondescript was part of MiB’s armor. The covert international agency oversaw extraterrestrial activity on Earth and secretly protected the planet and all its inhabitants from any threats that came from among the stars. And that meant protecting the inhabitants from that knowledge too.
There were MiB personnel everywhere. Teams of agents like H were busy using their neuralyzers—small, silver, pen-like devices—to erase and replace the memories of the bystanders and police who were swarming everywhere in the aftermath of what had happened. Other MiB support personnel were gathering forensic evidence, while at the same time destroying any traces that anything involving aliens had gone on here.
“Oi!” A burly constable came at H, all swagger and authority. “Get back on the other side of that line! This isn’t some tourist attraction; it’s a crime scene.”
“You could have fooled me, mate,” H said. “All you need is a few jugglers and someone selling roast chestnuts.” H gestured to a fellow agent who had just spotted the altercation between him and the policeman. The other MiB agent, wearing sunglasses even though it was night-time, stepped up and put the neuralyzer in the cop’s face as H looked away. The small wand gave off a flash of light, and the constable stood frozen and vacant-eyed.
“Evening, H,” the agent said with a smile. “Catch the match last night?”
“Not much of it.” H walked toward the heart of the scene. “Enough to know I lost a bet.”
At the center of activity was the man who had called him out here in the middle of the night—the recently appointed head of the MiB London Station, H’s boss and former partner, High T. High T was a tall, slender man, decades older than H, with close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He carried himself with an air of gravitas and a hint of menace lurking under all that civility.
“Peckham’s gentrified a bit since I was last here,” H said. The street was lined on either side with neat, terraced houses, expensive cars parked in front of them.
“It has. Still a little rough around the edges, though.” High T beckoned him to the side of the road, and H followed. “Unfortunately, a few gangs claim parts of the neighborhood as their territory. Two of them ran afoul of each other here this evening.”
The ground was dotted with bodies covered by white sheets, blood-soaked islands in a sea of concrete. High T knelt and drew back a sheet. “One gang had knives, crowbars, their fists.” Underneath the sheet was a puddle of goo with some clothes floating around in it. “The other group had Capellian De-Valenizers.” He covered the remains again. “It was a massacre.” High T’s voice grew cold, sharp, and angry. “They killed several bystanders, too, ripped them apart at the molecular level…”
“How did they get their hands on Capellian military hardware, T?”
“An excellent question,” High T said. “One which you are going to answer. I’ve seen reports from numerous MiB stations all over the world with the same problem: alien weaponry making it onto the streets. I want you to track it, H. I don’t just want the dealers, I want the source.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You want me with you on this one?” High T asked.
H shook his head. “You’re not getting away from that desk you chained yourself to that easily. I’ll work it alone. In fact, I have a good idea of where to start looking.”
* * *
The Boar and Crown was well past its glory days. Back in the 1960s, the pub had been popular with London’s most infamous gangsters. But it had faded alongside its customers. A few low-level mobsters, old men now, sat at the bar or played darts in the back, but times had changed enough that when H pushed into the pub, wearing scruffy jeans, a leather jacket, and a five o’clock shadow, they barely lifted their eyes.
He saw the man he wanted right away. “Whistler never takes his coat off,” his informant had said. “He’s always ready to run. Horrible acne, too. You’ll spot him a mile away.” And there he was—younger than the card-players, with dark hair and bad skin. He wore a wool coat and his eyes were glued to the Millwall match on the pub’s TV.
H blocked Whistler’s view. The arms dealer’s eyes flickered over him. “Unless you plan on being more entertaining than this game,” Whistler said coolly, “clear off.”
H opened his coat and dropped a heavy pistol with a scope on it onto the table with a loud thud. Several of the pub’s patrons looked up quickly and then got back to minding their own business. “Galadorian neural shredder,” H said. “Silent, no visible beam trace. A tri-optic bio-tracking scope. Guaranteed kill on most lifeforms, up to class three, from a thousand meters. Makes that Capellian army-surplus stuff you sold the Peckham crew look homemade.”
Whistler reached over and picked up the pistol.
“Okay, you got my attention, Mister…?”
“Hern. Just Hern. That’s just a sample. I heard you were the man to see about out-of-this-world weaponry.”
“Who told you that?” Whistler gestured for H to sit.
“People who want to do right by me.” H wasn’t about to give up his informant, an alien whose brother had died in a gang shooting not long ago.
“I’m guessing you’re not here to buy,” Whistler said, “so what you got for me?”
H slid a piece of paper across the table to Whistler. The gun-runner shook his head as he read it, a smile coming to his lips. “What’d you do? Rob an arsenal?”
“An MiB arsenal, to be specific.”
Whistler looked up from the list. “You… you ripped off MiB? Are you insane?”
“Came across a shipment of confiscated weapons en route to be destroyed,” H said simply. “Now they’re mine.”
“How—?”
“The whole shipment’s for sale. One deal, in and out. I want to be long gone before MiB comes calling.”
“So, what’s your price?” Whistler nodded at the list.
“Oh, no.” H chuckled. He reached across the table and picked up Whistler’s scotch. He took a sip from the glass and leaned back in his chair. “I spent the last two years setting up this score. There is no way I’m dealing with some middleman. There is enough death on that list to make you and me wealthy for the rest of our lives. All you have to do is get me in a room with your boss.”
“Okay, tough guy,” Whistler said. “You’re on. You got a passport? Only my boss doesn’t hang out in old boozers like this. Get yourself to Saint Tropez, three days’ time. We’ll find you. And you’d better be what you say you are, Mr. Hern, or my boss will eat you alive.”
“And who is that?” H asked. “So I can be appropriately fearful.”
“The Merchant,” Whistler said. “The Merchant of Death.”
* * *
“The Merchant of Death,” High T said. “We’ve been after him for a long time.” His new office was an oval, elevated above the constantly swarming main floor of MiB London Station. Both men stood at the glass wall, surveying the hive of activity below them.
“I’ll need a sample case with real, working weapons.” H was back in his suit, every inch the MiB agent. “The nastier, the more illegal and exotic, the better.”
“Done.”
“What do we know about the Merchant?” H asked.
“If there’s a conflict occurring anywhere from the Milky Way to Centaurus A, some of the Merchant of Death’s products are in use. He’s one of the largest arms dealers in the universe.”
“What’s he doing on Earth selling weapons to London street gangs?”
“Perhaps expanding his operation. He has a massive distribution network, and operatives like your friend Whistler across known space. No job too small.”
“Background?”
“He’s believed to be an alien that goes by the name of
Nirous Stavros,” High T said. “His home planet is not known, but the story is that he was a warlord there who ended up on the wrong side of a rebellion. He fled his world with his family and a freighter full of weapons. He’s wanted for illegal arms dealing in several galaxies.”
“Well, we can extradite him after I shut him down.”
“Let me back you up on this one,” High T said. “I can have a strike team ready to move at a moment’s notice. This is no ordinary criminal you’re dealing with, H.”
“Precisely. He’s the kind that will smell a strike team a parsec away. Thanks, T, but I’ll be all right.”
High T rubbed his well-trimmed beard as he gestured to H’s shadowy stubble. “You seem to be enjoying the undercover lifestyle.”
“It’s just for the job,” H said with a laugh. “I won’t make a habit of it.”
* * *
Nights in Saint Tropez were bright: lights, motion, and music. The wealthiest people on Earth, and from other planets, came to dance, gamble, and drink in the luxurious clubs and casinos of the Côte d’Azur.
Shortly after he’d checked in to the exclusive Byblos Hotel, a note arrived from reception: Tonight at ten, Les Caves du Roy—Whistler. He hadn’t noticed being tailed from the airport, which both impressed him and made him a little nervous.
Les Caves du Roy was the nightclub in the grounds of the hotel, and just as exclusive. He dressed in a suit that was more expensive than he liked to think about, wondering for a moment if Whistler would still be wearing his drab coat. He slipped on a shoulder holster with a sleek, deadly alien blaster in it and hit the club early.
Music thundered around H, and lights rained down on him as he made his way across the crowded dance floor toward the bar. A stripy-haired woman, dancing with several other beautiful people, shared a guarded smile with him, and then she was lost to the crowd and H was at the bar.
Whistler was nowhere to be seen. H ordered a drink and settled down to wait. Someone sat down beside him, and H glanced over to find it was the stripy-haired woman. “You play hard to get,” she said, sipping from a €20 bottle of water.
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