The Sagittarius Whorl: Book Three of the Rampart Worlds Trilogy

by Julian May

  “Let me level with you: I can’t afford this steep a bribe, even if I wasn’t scared stiff of Mahtani.”

  Stanislawski laughed. “I can afford it. And I’m not afraid. Plug your card into the phone.”

  I complied. The instrument’s data strip indicated a transfer of funds, triple the amount I’d requested.

  “A contribution to the war chest,” said the Macrodur chairman. “If Tregarth comes through, you’d better bring him back to Earth for safekeeping. Tell him I’ll personally make it worth his while.”

  “Will do. Thanks for the vote of confidence, sir.”

  He nodded and broke off.

  “So that’s how the simple folk do business,” Jake marveled.

  “You ought to know,” I said, very quietly.

  He sat still, his fork poised halfway to his mouth. The faintest trace of guilt shadowed his eyes. Then he calmly resumed eating.

  Gotcha, Jake. How else would Adam Stanislawski have known about the Barky Hunt?

  I picked up the phone again, engaging maximum encryption, a voice disguiser, and a masked code of my own to accommodate the server-link to Mahtani.

  A robot voice said, Code entered. Please hold.

  I put the phone down and we ate and drank in silence for a few minutes. Jake didn’t meet my gaze. The Bordeaux was splendid and my chunk of pampered Japanese cattle flesh so tender that it surrendered to the knife with hardly any pressure. I only managed to gobble a few subtly flavored quivering slices before my phone, sitting on the table beside the asparagus, began to blink.

  I picked up and said, “Yes.”

  “Do you accept my terms?” a disguised voice inquired. The view screen remained blank.

  “I have the EFT card ready.”

  “Transmit the agreed-upon honorarium.”

  I sent the mordida winging through the ether. Words popped up instantly on my instrument’s readout strip.

  BARNEY CORNWALL—PHLEGETHON, ZONE 3

  “It has been my pleasure to assist you,” said Mahtani, or whomever. “The information is accurate, as of today. Good evening.”

  And he was gone.

  I showed the phone to Jake. “Where is this place? I’ve never heard of it.”

  He munched a ’shroom redolent of shallots, wine, and exotic crustacea before answering.

  “It’s a hollow asteroid in a Sheltok Sagittarian system. One of the way stations for Shel UH carriers traveling from assorted R-class hellmouths in Zone 1 to the Orion Arm. Over the years, it attracted small-time human operators who traded with the local Joru and Y’tata worlds. The place expanded internally—sort of like an old tree getting hollowed out by more and more termite galleries. Now Phlegethon is a entrepôt for all kinds of fences and sleazy little trading outfits. Some are even legitimate.”

  “Sounds like a perfect place for Barky.”

  “Let’s see if his Barney Cornwall alias computes,” Jake said.

  He pulled out his own personal communicator, a police jobbie with more bells and whistles than mine, unfolded it, and summoned information from the CCID database. There was no trace of Barky Tregarth’s revised moniker in any official listing.

  “Can you get direct access to the Phlegethon resident census through Sheltok?” I asked.

  “Officially, no. Unofficially …”He entered a confidentiality override code, but gave a muttered curse of disappointment. “No one using the Cornwall or Tregarth names is on the asteroid’s roster. Mahtani could have jerked us around, but I don’t think so. He has a certain reputation to maintain. I think old Barky is lying low. You’ll just have to go to Phlegethon and start digging.” He grinned at me. “I’d lay odds that he’ll know somebody’s looking for him, too.”

  “It figures,” I said. “What else can you tell me about that part of the galaxy? How about checking the ZP crime stats for Zone 3?”

  He did so. “Hmm … There’s been a severe outbreak of piracy in those parts during the last couple of years. Twenty-one Sheltok megacarriers vanished without a trace, and others had close calls. I can get details from Zone Patrol.”

  “I’d be obliged.”

  His search indicated that the energy-ship attacks had been laid at the doorstep of Y’tata freebooters, denounced—but of course!—as outlaws by the righteous Y Federation. Jake popped me a data-dime with full particulars and I filed it for later study.

  “There could have been other hijackings that Sheltok didn’t report to ZP,” Jake said. There was something elusive in his tone that I didn’t pick up on immediately. “Just rumors.”

  I nodded. Sheltok might have good reasons of their own not to publicize the attacks, especially if they’d been skimping on fleet security. It was unusual for Y’tata crooks to be hijacking transactinides so aggressively. They were an ancient race of nearly humanoid albinos, with about a thousand planetary colonies on both sides of Red Gap. But their population was nearly stable, and they seemed content to piddle along with their relatively low-tech interstellar civilization, only occasionally resorting to piracy. Since they owned long-established ultraheavy element sources of their own in the Whorl, their marauders usually targeted freighters with more generalized cargoes …

  For a while we ate in silence. I finished my main course and began on the salad. The nittany ears were crisp and tart, just the way I like them.

  After a time Jake said casually, “You planning to head for the Sag?”

  “In a few days, maybe. If Barky’s inside that Sagittarian rock, I’ll find him and wring him dry. Whether he has any useful information for me is another matter.”

  “He might run,” Jake said. “Mahtani is sure to warn him that someone’s very anxious to meet him.”

  “I’m betting he’ll stay put, take precautions, and see what the deal is. I would, if I was in his position.”

  “Whole lotta money to pay, long way to go, on an off chance.”

  I gave him a cynical look. “Adam Stanislawski already knows why I’m interested in Barky Tregarth. No need to pump me, Jake.”

  He grinned sheepishly. “What can I say?”

  Not much, I thought.

  “You’re wondering what my price was,” Jake went on. “The answer is: zero, zilch, zippo. You know I owe the Big M even more than I owe you. For my posting home. The agreement was, if I ever came across anything that might affect Macrodur significantly, I was to pass it along. Your peculiarly urgent need to interview Tregarth, a guy who once engaged in illicit trade with the Haluk, tripped the alarm.”

  “You’re a smart cop, Chief Superintendent.”

  “And you’re a crazy hotdogger. When you get on somebody’s case, meshugeneh things happen. I remember Helly’s Comet. I remember Cravat and Dagasatt. So you won’t tell me what you want with Barky. But I happen to know that the guy’s only claim to fame is a drunken boast that he once went to the Haluk Cluster and got back to tell the tale.”

  “Bull’s-eye.” I refilled his empty wineglass.

  He eyed me with what might have been real concern. “You’re not planning to go after Tregarth alone, are you? It wouldn’t be wise. The old kocker didn’t pick a dump like Phlegethon as a retirement haven. He’s still on the job.”

  There were people I might have asked to join me on the Barky Hunt: a smart young bodybuilder and an ex-ZP officer who’d started as hired hands and later became my friends; a small group of retired Rampart security agents recruited by Karl Nazarian to assist my semilegal campaign against Galapharma; even several private investigators I’d worked with during my Reversionist period. But Ivor Jenkins was far away in the Perseus Spur, operating his own gym on Seriphos, and Ildiko Szabo had taken over the wholesale flower business of her aging parents in Hungary. I’d lost touch with Karl’s Over-the-Hill Gang during the long trial, and the PI’s were experienced in ferreting out capital chicanery, not crewing deep-space rumbles.

  Going after Barky Tregarth alone seemed a perfectly feasible option. Phlegethon would certainly cater to Joru traders as well as Y’tata, s
ince both races lived in that sector of the galaxy. This fact had suggested to me a way I might visit the place under cover. I had no intention of telling Jake Silver about my scheme, however.

  “Thanks for the warning, Chief Super. Actually, I’m planning to muster my usual task force of space dreadnaughts and a brigade of commandos for the Barky bust. You can’t afford to take chances with senile gunrunners.”

  “Not Tregarth, you putz. His friends. I’m serious.”

  “Y’tata pirates? Or are you talking about Carnelian’s thugs? Or Sheltok’s?”

  “All of the above—and maybe a wild card as well.” He paused for an uncomfortable beat. “There might be funny business going on out there involving the Haluk.”

  My jaw sagged. “Why didn’t you say so before?” I demanded, none too politely. “You know you can set your own price.”

  Jake winced. “I suppose I deserve that … But what I know, you can have for free. God knows it’s little enough. A single report, about eighteen months ago, kept ex-database by special order of Xenoaffairs to avoid distressing our new blue trading partners. A patrol cruiser responded to an emergency call—the attempted hijack of a Sheltok trans-ack carrier in the Zone 3 section of Red Gap. The patrol captain claimed that they scanned four bandits during the attack. Three were typical Y’tata pirates. The fourth ship was a hell of a lot faster, with a slightly different fuel signature. It hung back during the firefight, then broke off and ran with the others. ZP’s conformation scan of number four was futzed by weaponry EMI during the encounter, but the bandit wasn’t human. Or Joru or Kalleyni, either. The fuel signature might have been Haluk.”

  “In the Sagittarius Whorl? That’s crazy! Too far from their Spur colonies, way beyond their lines of supply.”

  Jake sawed away at the remains of the T-bone. “I heard about it from a half-drunk ZP Assistant Deputy Commissioner at a fuckin’ cocktail party. We were discussing the Haluk expansion in the Perseus Spur. Their starships are all over Zone 23 now, scoping out potential colonies, trading with the Rampart worlds. Blueberry scouts have even been seen in the outer Orion Arm—and there was this one anomalous spotting in the Sag, which might or might not have been Haluk.”

  “It makes no sense. Why would they go there? And why throw in with Y’tata trans-ack nabbers? The Haluk don’t need to steal ultraheavy elements. They sell them, for chrissake. The notion’s ridiculous on the face of it.”

  “Right. Whole lotta ridiculous shit going down these days. I’m glad I’m just a simple desk cop who doesn’t have to worry about such things.”

  The waiter materialized. “Can I interest you gentlemen in our dessert menu?”

  “What d’you think, Jake?” I inquired. “This might be our last meal together for quite a spell.”

  “Coffee and cognac,” the Chief Super said. “I don’t suppose you have any Ferrand Réserve Ancestrale?”

  “Of course. An excellent choice.”

  “Two,” I said.

  The waiter nodded and went away.

  “Figuring to get in one last lick before riding into the sunset?” I asked Jake sadly. The cognac was one of Earth’s finest, and the price was cosmological.

  “I guess that’s up to you, Helly. Serve me right if you shit-canned our friendship.”

  “Problem with that, I haven’t got very many. Friends, that is.” And he hadn’t really done me any harm by telling Macrodur about the Barky Hunt. Maybe just the opposite.

  “How about I pay for the Ferrand?” he suggested. “Peace offering.”

  “Peace is good,” I said.

  When the waiter returned with the cognac and coffee, we drank to it.

  I saw Jake off on the Yonge Street subway, which would whisk him to his home in German Mills in about fifteen minutes, then started down the Path to the Winter Garden Theater, a twenty-minute walk south of Carman’s restaurant.

  The commuter rush had slackened a little now that the day-shift workers from the towers had left and those on the evening watch were settled in, but there were still throngs of pedestrians heading for downtown attractions: shopping, nightlife, amusement, fine dining, and most especially the innumerable watering holes where congenial companionship of one sex or another awaited trolling lonelies.

  I got onto a very crowded moving walkway. Many of its riders were striding along to enhance their groundspeed, but I stood still at the far right side, since I was in no particular hurry. I was jostled often and hard by impatient passers, but thought nothing of it until a particularly sharp jab insulted my left hip and made me grunt with pain. The guy who did it sped past without an apology. He was small and slightly built, wearing a bomber jacket and carrying a bulky portfolio of the type favored by commercial artists.

  I stepped off the conveyor at a Jolie Jacqueline lingerie shop, cursing mildly. My assailant had left the moving walkway ahead of me and was skipping nimbly across the mainstream of pedestrian traffic on the opposite side of the concourse. He disappeared into a corridor leading to the Bodascon Tower escalators.

  There was a small hole in the side of my anorak that looked almost like a stab from an icepick. The armored lining was visible and the edges of the hole seemed wet. What the hell had Bomber Jacket hit me with—a large pen or some other sharp artist’s implement? Mellow with expensive alcohol and the heavy dinner, it never occurred to me that the poke hadn’t been accidental. My survival instincts, which had been on red alert during the perils of the late Galapharma takeover, were rusty after nearly three years of disuse.

  I looked up at the opulent window display of silk and lace in Jolie Jacqueline. A thought came to me, a way to repay Jake’s favor while simultaneously playing a mild practical joke to point up his treachery. I stepped into the shop.

  “May I be of assistance, m’sieu?” A saleswoman of a certain age, wearing a little black dress, approached me with an encouraging smile. Her name badge said ANNETTE. She did a very creditable French accent.

  I flicked off my intimidating privacy visor in a gesture of civility. “Would you please show me your very nicest nightgown and peignoir set? I’m not sure of the size, but I think I can eyeball it.”

  “Of course. Let me bring you several choices.”

  I followed Annette to a counter. The items she showed me were very pricey indeed. I selected an ensemble in cherry-red silk chiffon with lots of lace inserts, gave her my corporate EFT card, and consulted my phone dex for the home address of Chief Superintendent Jake Silver and his wife of twenty-eight years.

  “I’d like the package gift-wrapped and sent to Marie Warrener, 163 Linden Crescent, German Mills, Markham.”

  “Certainly, m’sieu. Will there be an enclosure?”

  I took one of the tiny cards she offered and wrote, From your adoring Snuggle-Puppy, Jake.

  While Annette wrapped Marie’s present, I wandered idly around the small shop, indulging a fantasy or two. There were no other customers in Jolie Jacqueline. The place had a boudoir decor with soft lights, gauzy hangings, discreetly semitransparent holograms of lovely ladies modeling sexy underthings, and a lot of gold-framed mirrors. In one of the angled ones I caught a close-up glimpse of my own back.

  Right at rump level, the Anonyme’s outer fabric had been perforated twice more. Around each small hole was a dampish corona.

  I felt my throat tighten. Those earlier jostlings on the walkway had been less vigorous attempts to stab me. The wet spots suggested that Bomber Jacket had tried to inject me with an unknown substance, probably poison.

  Damn! Think, Helly, think. Get your sozzled brain back in gear.

  A random attack by a psycho? It had been known to happen, even in beautiful cosmopolitan Toronto.

  Had Ram Mahtani traced me after all and taken out a contract on my life now that he had his money? Impossible. The time frame was too tight and the motive wasn’t there.

  Had Jake Silver sold out my ass to somebody other than Stanislawski? No way. It made sense that Jake would nark on me to Macrodur in a manner that did me n
o particular harm. That he’d be an accessory to my murder was inconceivable.

  Think, Helly, think.

  Bomber Jacket could have trailed me from the moment I left Rampart Tower. If he was a real pro, he could have ID’ed me easily through a body language analysis, in spite of the concealing Anonyme. Everybody has a distinctive walk, individual arm and head mannerisms. During my brief political fling the media had made countless holovids of me. My motion signature would be easily obtainable.

  So who genuinely wanted me dead?

  The minor villains in Galapharma had been neutralized long ago. If Gala’s ex-CEO, Alistair Drummond, was still alive, he was certainly crazy enough to come after me out of revenge. But Bomber Jacket himself wasn’t Drummond. My old nemesis was a tall Scotsman with a princely bearing, not a skittering runt. And why would Drummond have waited so long?

  The only others who had any motive for killing me shouldn’t have known yet that I was an immediate threat to their galactopolitical ambitions. But maybe the Haluk had other reasons for wanting me out of the picture. The article in the Journal would have reminded them that I was now at leisure and once again in a position to cause them serious trouble in the Commonwealth Assembly.

  And if there were still Haluk demiclone agents in Galapharma’s woodwork, they might have learned about Lorne Buchanan’s transfer of incriminating data from the Concern’s computer to that of Efrem Sontag.

  I let out an involuntary snarl of disgust. My night at the theater was a scrub. I’d have to get back to the safety of Rampart Tower as quickly as possible, then lie low until I could take off for the Sagittarius Whorl—

  “Is there another way I can be of assistance, m’sieu?”

  Annette had snuck up on me. “No thanks. I was just checking a rip in my jacket.”

  I turned my visor back on and drifted to the door. Blank-faced, I carefully studied the crowd outside. There was no sign of Bomber Jacket. I exited the shop and walked a few meters away to put a solid wall at my back, then took out my phone and called Rampart Internal Security.

  “InSec. Duty Officer Callahan.”