by Joe Ollinger
Sure enough, the Commerce Board auditor stands there in the hallway, next to the heavy on guard. He’s changed clothes since I last saw him, now dressed in trim slacks with a horizontal pleat and a cling-fasten shirt that makes him look like a traveler from one of the inner worlds.
“Kearns. What are you doing here?”
“Brady’s fine,” he says, smirking. “I pulled some strings.”
“Strings?”
He holds out an open hand, offering me a familiar object. My badge. “I need your help, Taryn.”
“Agent Dare is fine. What do you want help with?”
“I need your resources,” he says, “and your skills. Hell, I need someone to tell me where to start.”
“Maybe you’re not as dumb as you look, Kearns. You came to the right place.”
The Chartered Finance and Credit Company of the Shipping Consortium for Aerospace and Planetary Exploration—the SCAPE Bank, as people tend to call it—sits on the near side of the SCAPE complex adjacent to the spaceport, the entrance driveway open to Safelydown Boulevard. Covering nearly a square kilometer, the Central Branch is huge, a stone and aluminum monolith seemingly carved as a testament to the infallibility and power of the galaxy’s largest space travel company. It’s the only portion of SCAPE land open to the general public. As Kearns drives between the huge if not particularly tall industrial buildings, I feel hesitant. Over my uniform I’m wearing an unassuming civilian outfit of outdoor-casual khaki wind pants and a jacket, which makes me feel more vulnerable for some reason, even though I’ve still got the light ballistic protection of my gear underneath. To shield my face, I pull on a pair of blocky, mirrored sungoggles and a khaki storm cap, a useful and currently in-fashion hat with the brim angled down on the front and sides to keep sand and dust away from the eyes.
Kearns’s car pulls to a stop in the loop in front of the building, and I get out and walk to the front entrance, keeping my distance from the other customers coming and going. Passing through one set of auto-flip doors, I enter the grand, modern lobby—a vast, cool, open space. Load-bearing cylindrical pillars of smooth aluminum connect floors of polished hard gray stone and arched ceilings of carved stone with metal moldings. Finding a vacant automated teller among the bank of them along one of the walls, I order a withdrawal of a big chunk of my account. Doing it makes me nervous, but in the following days I may need to become a shadow, and that means turning off my phone and its debiting software and minimizing my paper trail. I may need a lot of hard money.
The machine dispenses the units with a mechanical hum and a series of metallic clicks, dropping the fat hundred-unit chips in the pan in three neat little interlocking stacks of ten. The “big tabs” have a nice look to them, thicker than other denominations, the hard, fluid-filled bubbles covering their entire surface area. As I gather them up and stuff them into a zippered pocket, I marvel at how half a year’s pay, half the calcium value of a grown human being, can feel so small. Dust and liquid inside some cheap plastic.
I walk across the lobby and exit through the auto-flip doors, feeling the bright, hot light of late afternoon for only a few seconds before I’m back in Kearns’s car.
“You good?” he asks.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He drives manually, pulling in behind some other cars exiting the lot. “So what’s our first step?”
“I need more info from Collections. Frank Soto flew for the company that makes the weevil eggs. He saw Marvin Chan once, not long before Chan hired Sales. Maybe those are coincidences, but I’m starting with him.”
Kearns nods, understanding. “So where to?”
“I need to see my Dispatcher.” I’ve got paperwork for her to turn in for me, and we set up a meeting at a place she would know without me having to identify it too explicitly. “She’s meeting me at The NewLanding.”
A pedestrians-only street in the middle of uptown, lined thick on both sides with shops and clubs and bars and restaurants stacked four or five or six high, all brightly lit in many colors, The NewLanding is the hip epicenter of nightlife on Brink, a playground for Oasis City’s wealthy and those who like to pretend they’re part of that group. At night it bustles with foot traffic, but it’s busy even now, an hour or so before the end of the workday, with idle rich doing midday shopping, getting their hair done, having happy hour drinks at the clubs. I’m sitting on one of the glass block benches surrounding the sand fountain at the north end, facing away from the red sun which hangs heavy above the skyline, bathing uptown in warm orange light cut with long, angular shadows.
I watch the sand cascade in the fountain, fine bright white powder pouring by the kiloliters over angled slabs of channeled gray stone cut in the rough, blocky shape of a hand reaching upward. It’s a tourist attraction, unique to Brink, built because it was cheaper to make a grand fountain that could flow sand through it than keep one filled with a liquid. It commemorates the spot of the New Landing itself, where a group of six ships arrived from Earth with badly needed supplies, saving the colony from extinction in its early days.
I feel vulnerable without my gun or phone, the latter of which I shut off and left in Kearns’s car, and I get the sense that I’m sticking out here. I don’t look like a tourist, and I don’t look rich enough to belong here otherwise. I like to look good, but I don’t wear civilian clothes often enough to spend much on them, and although the goggles and storm cap shield most of my face from plain view, the outdoor-casual outfit I’m wearing is lower-end and noticeably out of style. I remind myself that this is as safe a spot as any for a meeting. There are a lot people here, there can be no ingress or egress other than on foot, and security cameras cover nearly every millimeter of the area. Plenty of buildings would provide a clear sniper shot at me, but that would require knowing that I’m here and getting someone armed and into position before I move.
I’ve been waiting fifteen minutes or so when Myra approaches. She’s in sungoggles, too, and a similar storm cap. But her clothes are nicer, newer, and colored more brightly, in the pastel solids supposedly popular on Ryland as of a solar year ago.
I keep staring at the fountain, saying nothing until she sits down next to me. “Looking good, Myra.”
“Thanks. You’re never too fat for outdoors cazh.”
“Stop it.” Normally I wouldn’t let her fish for a compliment like that, but she’s going way out on a limb for me here, and I’m grateful. “You know you’re in great shape.”
“So how does this work,” she asks, her voice turning hushed, “do you just hand me the drive?”
“I don’t have a better plan.” I remove the little silver rectangle from my front pants pocket and slip it to her.
She holds it tight for a second, then pockets it. “It’s going to take forever for this to go through, you know. And Knowles isn’t going to like it.”
“I know.” The drive holds an application for a warrant compelling production of Frank Soto’s employment and financial records. I wanted to submit it physically, in case someone is tapping my network access, and I didn’t want to risk being seen by the wrong eyes at Dispatch. The paperwork is thin, to be honest, and there’s probably less than even odds it will be approved, but I had to make an effort. My distrust of the guy aside, Kearns did get me reinstated. “Just do what you can.”
“You’re really back on duty already?”
“Yeah.”
“How did that happen?” She sounds distrustful.
“The Commerce Board auditor supposedly pulled some strings.”
“That’s . . . really strange, Taryn.”
“I know, I know it looks suspicious. I’m being careful.”
“I’m worried about you.”
I’ve got no good response to that. I’m worried about me, too. “Thanks.” Trying to divert the conversation, I ask, “Any idea who Knowles has on the Marvin Chan case now?”
“No. He’s not going through any of the Agents I work with, I know that much.”
&n
bsp; “Hmm.” So Knowles wants to keep Myra away from it, too, assuming he’s even allowing an investigation to go forward. Does he suspect her? Or just me? Or does he have something to hide?
“I owe you Myra.” The shadow cast by one of the buildings west of us stretches to overtake us, dripping over our shoulders. An off-worlder mother and her child pose for a photo in front of the sand fountain as a group of businessmen in out-of-fashion suits pass by, arguing. “Come on, I want to buy you a drink.”
She smiles. “I was beginning to worry that this was a dry rendezvous.”
I get off the glass bench and lead the way past the fountain, giving passersby as much space as possible, wary of another attack. But we make it across the street and arrive unmolested at the huge spiral staircase down to The Old Moon, a well-known below-ground bar. We take the transparent glass steps down, and cool air rushes over us as we step through the frosted airlock-style doors at the bottom.
The place is mellow but airy, with a floor of plain beige stone, possibly carved from the original bedrock, worn smooth by decades of footsteps. The walls are punctuated with transparent cases, each of which is occupied by one or more alien animal or plant specimens. Myra and I sit down at a small booth with translucent glass bench seats in the corner, next to the case containing a Köderschwamm, a vicious sessile creature from Leereweldt, a world relatively near Earth, colonized early in the interstellar era by German speakers. About a meter tall and wide and blue-gray in color, the Köderschwamm burrows thick, rough roots into soil like a plant, but it is an animal, its bark actually a rubbery skin, its branches actually arms muscled with hydraulic, hemocyanin-filled arteries and veins, like a spider’s. At the end of one of those arms is a malleable flap of tissue with a wide variety of pigments and an intensely detailed camouflaging mechanism, which the Köderschwamm uses as bait.
This particular specimen has six arms and apparently learned at some point to shape its bait appendage into a long, flat rectangle with elaborate green and gray markings on it, like something manmade, printed. It flops against the glass as the tiny eyes at the fat center of its trunk watch us.
“What is that?” Myra asks.
“A Köderschwamm,” I answer, “it’s a—”
“I’ve heard of it. Some novelty animal-plant-thing from Leereweldt, right? But what’s the bait supposed to be?”
It moves slowly down the glass and away from us, and I get a slightly better view of it. There are letters and numbers, and an image of a human face inside an oval-shaped frame in the center. “It’s money.”
“Money? What kind of money is that?”
Myra leans closer, trying to see the opposite side. She puts a hand up to the case, and in less than the blink of an eye, the arms of the thing shoot out and slam with a thump into the glass, short but viciously sharp barbs protruding from their tips. Myra gasps and recoils. As she exhales, realizing that the glass has stopped the strike, the Köderschwamm writhes there for a second, then relaxes again.
I stifle a laugh. “You knew it would do that, right?”
“I guess I had some idea, but I didn’t think it would be so fast.” She blushes, embarrassed.
“Hello, ladies.” A smiling waitress stands at the side of our table. She’s young, slim, and short-haired, and her yellowish-tan skin is clear except for a couple of barely noticeable spots of concealer at her elbows—apparently on hard times, but working at a higher-end place like this may pull her out of it, if she’s careful with her money. “Can I get you a menu? Start you off with some drinks?”
I notice Myra checking her out but can’t gauge whether she finds the girl attractive or not. “Say,” I ask, “do you know what that’s supposed to be?” I point at the Köderschwamm’s bait appendage, which is again slithering up to the glass.
“That’s what they call paper currency,” the girl answers, “It’s used as money some places.”
“Right, but from where?”
“One of the big, old Earth governments,” she answers. “Story goes that one of the bartenders here sixty-some years ago trained it to do that as a trick to scare off-worlders. Supposedly it was good money at the time, a type that most people would recognize.”
“I fell for it,” Myra confesses jokingly.
“Oh no,” the waitress giggles. “Hope you weren’t too freaked.”
“I’m a big girl,” Myra flirts.
The waitress lets that slide. “Would you two like a few more minutes or maybe a drink menu?”
“I’ll just have an iced tea,” I answer. Myra begins to speak, but I cut her off before she gets a word out. “You’ve got good bartenders here, right?”
“The best,” the waitress answers without hesitation.
“Can they make an authentic martini? All Earth ingredients?”
“Yes, they can. The one I’d recommend we call the Eastender. It’s Beefeater gin with Rossi dry vermouth and a green olive grown in South America.”
I recognize Beefeater gin from somewhere. I think it’s like two or three hundred units a bottle, and the other stuff is probably equally pricey. Of course, almost all of that expense is attributable to the cost of shipping and customs, but sellers can charge that much because enough people are willing to pay for the luxury of Earth origin. It’s a purchase I’d never make, but I owe Myra big time, and odds are I’ll be dead or rich by the time my next paycheck comes anyway. “A glass for the lady.”
The waitress’s eyes brighten. “Very good, I’ll go ahead and start a tab for that order. I’ll just ping you . . . ”
Of course they don’t want someone ducking out without paying for a drink that pricey. The security cameras and ID sensors might put out a name after the fact, but that doesn’t guarantee payment, and anyway why go to the effort? “I don’t have my phone on me,” I answer. “Can I pay cash?”
That surprises her. “Of course. It’ll be eighty-eight point two units.”
“Taryn, you don’t have to,” Myra interjects. “That’s too much. It’s crazy.”
“I’ve got it, Myra.” I pull a thick hundred-unit chip from my pocket and hand it to the waitress.
She turns it in her hand, eyeing the hologram, then smiles. “Wonderful. I’ll be right back with those drinks and your change.”
She walks away, but the person that comes back a minute or so later is not her. Instead, it’s an elderly male bartender, face lined and weathered, head completely bald but for a few white wisps in the back, dressed in an old-style white button-down with a tucked red tie. He parks an elegant little cart tableside, on top of which are a number of bartending items, then places an iced tea in front of me along with my change, a handful of thinner chips which I pocket without counting. Myra and I watch as he places two little fifty milliliter bottles on the cart-top, the one with squared edges decorated with a fancily dressed old Earth soldier and labeled “Beefeater London Dry Gin,” the round, curvy one labeled “Rossi Extra Dry.” Motioning to the gin, he asks, “Would the lady be so kind as to open?”
Letting the customer break the cap seal is classy way of showing that the product is not counterfeit or watered-down. I nod to Myra. “Go ahead.”
She does, and the metal makes a barely audible cracking sound as the seal separates. The bartender takes the Beefeater back and pours it into a metal cylinder, then places the empty bottle in a waste bucket, smashes it with a ballpeen hammer, and tilts it forward to show us the broken remains, an act meant to demonstrate that the restaurant won’t sell the empties to black-market dealers to be filled with some lower-priced alcohol and resealed. The old man does not go to quite those lengths with the vermouth, which looks to have already been opened and partly emptied. He simply uncaps it, pours a small bit into a measuring spoon, and pours that into the metal cylinder with the gin. Using a metal scoop, he removes a few perfect cubes of crystal-clear ice from a bucket and drops those into the mixer as well. Holding a metal cap over the cylinder, he lifts it up beside his ear, angles it s
lightly, and shakes it seven times. He places a stemmed, triangular glass on the table in front of Myra, and with stiff, measured movements removes the cap from the mixing cylinder and pours its contents into the glass. He pokes a toothpick into a tin, skewering a single green olive stuffed with a bright red pimento, and places it into the cold, clear liquid in the glass. With the tiniest bow he walks away, pushing his cart in front of him, leaving Myra staring at the beverage like tourists sometimes stare at the sand fountain outside, as though it’s interesting and impressive and constructed with surprisingly tight precision, but not something you’d ever consider drinking.
“What are you waiting for?” I take a sip of my iced tea, my nose catching hints of the fresh, crisp, piney scent of the martini. “Now you can be one of those people who speak with authority on what a real one tastes like.”
She lifts it to her lips nervously and takes a tiny sip, holding the liquid on her tongue to savor for a second before she swallows it down.
“Well?”
“It is different than what I’m used to, though I can’t really say how.” She takes another sip, then slides the glass across the table. “Try it.”
Unable to resist my curiosity, I take a tiny little sip, just enough to taste it. It’s good. Bright, very herbal, not as sweet as I expected. I slide the glass back to her, wordless. In the case on the wall, the creature slides its false money slowly down the glass like some kind of lure. I lean a bit closer, trying to get a better look. Remarkably, the text on it is sharply defined enough that some of it is legible.
“One dollar,” I say out loud.
“Dollar?” Myra responds, “I’ve heard of that.” She breaks into song, “The sun will come out, tomorrow. You can bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun.”
I stifle a chuckle. “What is that?”
“A really old song. From some musical about a poor orphan.”
“Why would there be any doubt that the sun would come up?”
“I think that was the point?” she guesses.