“My fence is going to ask me about the coloration,” Pritchett explained. “The darker it is, the harder it is to refine the chemical signature out.”
Pepper shrugged. “It’s behind that door,” she said, pointing with her thumb. “Boggs, let our new friend into the storeroom. If he tries anything, bop him on the head.”
“Sure thing, Pepper,” Boggs said. He walked to the storeroom and opened the door. Pritchett followed him.
Rex, Donny and I stayed at the bar. It wasn’t like Pritchett was going to be able to make off with the zontonium. Boggs could barely lift it.
Rex and I filled Pepper in on the details of our adventures while Pritchett inspected the zontonium. After a few minutes, he and Boggs exited the storeroom and Boggs locked the door behind them.
“It looks pretty pure,” Pritchett said, approaching the bar. “I think my fence will give us a good price for it.”
“How good?” Pepper asked.
“At least a billion credits.”
Rex let out a whistle.
Pepper turned to Rex. “What do you think?”
“I think we need to talk it over. In private.”
Pepper nodded. “Sasha and Rex, come with me. Boggs and Donny, stay here and watch Pritchett. Boggs, you know what to do if he tries anything.”
Boggs made a head-bopping gesture.
Pepper walked to her office at the back of the saloon. Rex and I followed, and she closed the door behind us.
“Do you trust this guy?” Pepper asked.
“Not at all,” Rex replied.
“Do you think he really knows a fence who would buy the zontonium?”
“Maybe. As pathetic as he seems, he apparently really is the Pulsating Pompadour. So at one point, he must have had some serious connections.”
“It could be a trap,” I said.
Pepper nodded. “He might be setting us up. He tips off the Malarchy, we get arrested, they confiscate the zontonium, and he gets a reward from Heinous Vlaak for being a helpful citizen. Even if they only give him half the market value, he makes more than the twenty-five percent he gets with us.”
“It sounds like we’re saying no,” I said.
Pepper shrugged. “We just have to be careful. I know a broker who can handle the sale and insulate us from any risk. He’ll take another ten percent, but it’s worth it. I can’t keep a billion credits’ worth of zontonium in my storeroom forever.”
“Hmmm,” Rex said, rubbing his chin.
“What is it, sir?” I asked.
“Something’s not right here. I know he’s a little rusty, but I just don’t see a legendary con man like the Pantomiming Peregrine offering us a straight deal like this.”
“Weren’t you listening, sir?” I said. “Pepper just explained that he’s probably going to try to screw us on the deal.”
“Sure, but he had to know we’re not stupid enough to fall for that.”
“Aren’t we?”
“Well, Pepper isn’t, anyway,” Rex said. “So he offered her a deal that took the three of us two minutes to see through. Why?”
The room was silent for several seconds. Then the answer hit us all at once.
Rex threw open the door and ran back into the bar. Pepper and I were close behind. Donny and Boggs were still in the bar, but Pritchett was nowhere to be seen. The door to the storeroom was open.
“Where’d Pritchett go?” Rex demanded.
“It’s okay,” Boggs said. “He said you guys were going to sell the zontonium, so I helped him load it into the ship.”
Rex ran to the door. We followed him outside to the landing pad and watched as Pritchett waved to us from the ramp. He went into the ship and the ramp folded up. The Flagrante Delicto’s thrusters fired, and it lifted into the sky.
“Sasha, the remote control!” Rex cried.
I nodded and extracted the remote from my storage compartment. Pressing the buttons had no effect. “Sir, it’s not working!”
“Give me that,” Rex snapped, and grabbed the device from my hand. He futilely mashed buttons as the Flagrante Delicto receded to a speck in the distance. “Why isn’t it working?”
“Donny removed the transceiver,” Donny said, holding up a baseball-sized component in his hand.
“What?” Rex shouted. “Why?”
“The Narrator man said it was too heavy,” Boggs said.
“Too heavy? Boggs, you just loaded a hundred kilos of zontonium into that ship!”
Boggs stared blankly at Rex, unable to make the connection. Finally he said, “It’s okay. He said he will be back in five minutes. He’s just getting fuel.”
“Fuel!” Rex exclaimed. “Boggs, you just loaded enough zontonium into that ship to send it across the galaxy three hundred times!”
Boggs stared for several seconds more. “Maybe ten minutes then,” he said at last.
“That bastard stole my zontonium!” Pepper cried.
“At least we still have the Shiva plans,” Rex said, holding up the memory crystal.
I took the crystal from him and inserted it into the reader in my chest. “Empty,” I said after a moment.
“What?” Rex gasped. “How?”
“He must have switched it. This isn’t the crystal I examined earlier.”
“So the Pandering Pablum got away with a fortune in zontonium and the Shiva plans?” Rex asked.
Pepper sighed. “I need a drink.”
Chapter Thirteen
We spent the next week at Pepper’s saloon. We had no ship, no money, and no place to go. The Platinum Pigeon had really done a number on us. And we, fooled by his bumbling doofus act, had let him.
Pepper, of course, was furious—with Rex for telling Pritchett about the zontonium, and with herself for falling for Pritchett’s ploy. She rarely left her office for the next week, and Rex spend most of it drunk. The saloon was almost always empty except for the five of us; the Malarchian crackdown on piracy had really cut into Pepper’s business. Only occasionally would a stray freebooter or privateer stumble into the place. Boggs, Donny and I played a lot of holochess.
At last, Pepper emerged from her office with a triumphant look on her face. “Got him,” she said.
“Whoozzat?” Rex asked, looking up from his martini. I left the game of Ravenous Ringworms I was playing with Boggs and Donny and approached the bar.
“Pritchett,” Pepper said. “At least I assume it’s him. Somebody is selling a planet.” She was holding a sheet of paper.
“How does one sell a planet?” I asked.
“Generally, one doesn’t,” Pepper said, setting the paper down on the bar in front of me and Rex. “The Malarchy has a standing claim to any new APPLEs that are discovered. But there are back-channel networks where you can post announcements about black market planet auctions. Billionaires and criminal organizations show up to bid on planets that the Malarchy doesn’t officially know about. It’s how I came into possession of Sargasso Seven.”
I examined the paper. The top half was dominated by a picture of a nondescript sphere, which I assumed was the planet in question. The bottom half contained detailed stats on the planet. It looked like a pretty standard-issue Alien Planet Perplexlingly Like Earth.
“Where is it?” Rex asked.
“Ragulian Sector,” Pepper said.
“No way,” Rex said, shaking his head. “That sector’s been thoroughly explored. You’re telling me they missed a habitable planet until a few days ago?”
“No,” Pepper said, impatient with Rex’s denseness. “I’m telling you that this planet wasn’t habitable until a few days ago.”
A light went on in Rex’s head. “Ohhhhh.”
“Project Shiva,” I said.
Pepper nodded. “Project Shiva. That cheeky bastard got the device built and used it already. A little rusty, my ass. He must have had everything ready to go and waiting for him.”
“Are we sure it’s him?” I asked.
“Pretty sure. Look at the name of the planet.”
; I scanned the document until I found the relevant line. It read:
Provisional Identification: Oz
“Not exactly subtle, is he?” I said.
“Probably didn’t think it would occur to us to check for new auctions yet,” Pepper said. “Fortunately, I’m smarter than he is. All we have to do is go to Oz and nab Pritchett.”
“Are we sure he’ll be there?” Rex asked.
“Oh, he’ll be there,” Pepper said. “The auction is in three hours.”
*****
Rex, Pepper and I boarded Pepper’s little ship, Bad Little Kitty, and I plotted a hypergeometric course to the Ragulian Sector. Boggs and Donny, whose feelings about spaceships hadn’t been assuaged by recent events, stayed behind. We had barely enough time to get to Oz before the auction started. Already, several other ships—mostly small luxury cruisers probably belonging to mobsters or quasi-legitimate business tycoons—had landed at the makeshift spaceport near the large tent that had been erected for the auction.
The planet itself was nothing special—just a cold, muddy ball with a deep blue sky and near-Earth gravity—but even this was a vast improvement over its previous state. Before Pritchett had used the Shiva device on it, it had been an airless hunk of rock. Oz was never going to be a tourist destination, but now that it could support life, it could also support all sorts of other activities, both legitimate and illegitimate.
As the three of us made our way toward the Flagrante Delicto, parked amid several newer, sleeker ships, blades of grass began to sprout from the ground all around us, slowly turning the plain brown surface to a dark green. This was to be expected: after transforming the planet’s surface and giving it a breathable atmosphere, the Shiva device enveloped the planet’s crust in a biogenic field that would vastly accelerate the growth and evolution of plant and animal life. In a week, if everything proceeded as the Shiva documentation indicated it would, the planet’s surface would support a complex ecosystem of jungles, forests, plains and a multitude of animal species. If Pritchett had waited a few days to put the planet up for sale, he’d be in a better bargaining position, as Oz would be much more photogenic, but he’d evidently been in a hurry.
I entered the access code on the outside of the Flagrante Delicto, and the hatch slid open. The Platinum Pigeon hadn’t even bothered to change the code. As Rex led the way toward the cockpit, Pritchett, wearing a tuxedo, emerged from Rex’s cabin. His eyes went wide with shock.
“Put your hands up!” Rex growled, pointing his lazegun at Pritchett.
Pritchett backed away with his hands in the air. “Whoa,” he said. “I’m sure we can settle this like adults. There’s no call for violence.”
“You stole my ship,” Rex said.
“And my zontonium,” Pepper said.
“And the Shiva plans,” I added.
“By my math, that adds up to a call for violence,” Rex said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Okay, look,” Pritchett said. “It’s not what you think. I mean, I guess it is. But here’s the thing. I haven’t pulled a real con in three years. I just wanted to see if I could get away with it.”
“You didn’t,” Pepper said.
“Exactly my point. How can you be mad at someone who is so clearly out of his element?”
“The inept doofus act is getting old,” Pepper said. “Hand over our stuff. We’ll even let you keep this planet if you give us Shiva and the zontonium.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Pritchett said.
“Listen to me, you sniveling weasel,” Pepper started, taking a step toward Pritchett.
“No, wait!” Pritchett cried. “I’ll cooperate. I will. But I don’t have the plans or the zontonium on me. Too risky to keep everything in one place. But I can take you to them.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
“Sure, sure,” Pritchett said. “But we have more pressing concerns right now.”
“Like what?” Rex asked.
“Like, there are a hundred very rich and powerful people who are planning to start bidding on a black market planet in…” Pritchett checked his watch. “…two minutes.”
“Not our problem,” Rex said.
“It’s going to be if we try to leave here without auctioning off the planet. These people don’t like having their time wasted.”
“Ugh,” Rex said. “All right. Auction the planet, then we get our stuff. And we get the money from the auction.”
“What?” Pritchett cried. “Do you realize how much it cost me to have a Shiva device built in a week? I’m in hock for a hundred million credits!”
“Let him have the planet,” Pepper said. “We just need the zontonium and the plans.”
“No way,” Rex said, shaking his head. “I’m not giving this jerk a penny.”
“Sir,” I said. “Maybe it’s better if we let Pritchett keep the money. I’m not sure it’s wise for us to get mixed up in the black market planet trade on top of everything else. We’ll have the plans and the device, not to mention a fortune in zontonium.”
Rex and Pritchett eyed each other warily. It was clear that neither of them were happy with the deal, but it might be the best either of them would get.
“Fine,” Rex said at last.
Pritchett nodded. “All right. Let’s get this over with then.” He put his hands down and began walking to the door.
“No funny business,” Rex said.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Pritchett replied with a smile, and exited the ship.
*****
Pritchett mounted a small stage at one end of the tent. An audience of nearly a hundred well-dressed people sat on rows of folding chairs, murmuring to each other. I use the word “people” in the broadest possible sense: about half were human, but at least six other species were represented. There were Sneeves, Norks, Barashavians, Niknuks and a couple of races I didn’t recognize. Rex and I made our way to the back. Pepper was waiting at the Flagrante Delicto, in case Pritchett tried to make a run for it. As we stood waiting for the auction to start, I noticed that the grass had grown considerably thicker and taller. The blades licked playfully at my ankles.
Pritchett walked up to a podium and spoke into a microphone. “Greetings!” he said. “My name is Charlemagne Woo. You may know me as the CEO of such companies as Woo’s Interstellar Uranium Emporium and Woo Doggies, the number one robotic pet manufacturer in six sectors.”
I’d heard of Charlemagne Woo. He was an entrepreneur who had made a name for himself selling goods of questionable quality by buying airtime on unused subspace communication frequencies. Whether Pritchett was just pretending to be Woo or whether the persona of Woo was a fiction Pritchett had created I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember ever seeing Woo himself; he always hired curvaceous spokesmodels to hawk his products.
Pritchett continued, “Today I’m excited to announce an entirely new endeavor. Ladies, gentlemen and other-beings, I welcome you to the very first, invitation-only event held by my recently formed company, Woo’s Overlooked Worlds. WOW! for short.”
Unimpressed murmurs arose from the crowd.
Undaunted, Pritchett went on, “It’s a commonly repeated myth that the known galaxy has been thoroughly scoured for habitable planets. I’m here to tell you that this myth simply isn’t true. There are, in fact, dozens of habitable planets that for various reasons have been overlooked by the Malarchy and the various exploratory corporations. The engineers at WOW! have developed a secret algorithm that locates such planets—planets like this one, which you’ll be bidding for shortly. In order to keep overhead low, we also utilize a proprietary process for minimizing bureaucratic complications, which allows us to sell directly to enterprising businessbeings such as yourselves.”
I wondered if anyone in the tent bought Pritchett’s spiel. The part about discovering overlooked planets was obviously pure fiction, and the stuff about “minimizing bureaucratic complications” was just a nice way of saying that this was an illegal, black market o
peration. But there were no raised eyebrows, knowing glances or undulating tentacles in the crowd. Everybody seemed committed to maintaining the pretense that this was a legitimate auction.
Pritchett continued: “All right, let’s start the bidding. Up for auction today is the delightful sphere on which we’re standing. Clocking in at eighty-four million metric tons, Oz is composed mostly of iron, aluminum and silicon, and has a thoroughly breathable atmosphere of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and various trace gases. Although not officially certified by the Malarchian Registry of Planets, it meets all the standards of a Class Seven APPLE—an Alien Planet Perplexingly Like Earth. With a little TLC, Oz could truly be a planet to write home about. Whether you’re looking for a place to build a top-secret mega-weapon away from the eyes of meddling regulatory agencies, construct a free-range hunting ground for genetically enhanced superbeasts, or you simply need a few billion hectares to get away from it all, Oz is the planet for you. Boasting an easy-on-the-joints gravitational pull of point eight three gees, an axial tilt of eighteen degrees and an atmosphere that lets through just enough cosmic radiation to keep things interesting, a planet like Oz would go for well over ten billion credits on the open market. Bidding starts at a mere hundred million!”
Nods and murmurs went up from the crowd. After a moment, a Barashavian raised one of its tentacles. Pritchett smiled, unable to completely hide his relief. “We have one hundred million,” he said. “Can I get two?”
A young woman near the front, who wore jewelry marking her as a member of the Anvarvikk royal family, raised a hand. Pritchett nodded to her. “Bidding is at two hundred million. Do I hear three?”
An elderly gentleman a few rows in front of us raised his hand. This went on for a while, the bids rapidly escalating until it stalled at nine hundred million.
“We have nine hundred million,” Pritchett said. “That’s less than a billion credits for an entire planet with a breathable atmosphere and a complex and rapidly growing ecosystem. Look at that! The grass is growing before your very eyes!”
The Wrath of Cons Page 8