“Okay,” Troblum said. “You’re right; I didn’t get it. Congratulations.”
“I know.” The Cat gave a fulsome pout. “Me and Stubsy here had a small wager going. I thought you’d realize by the time you reached the pool; Stubsy said it would be as soon as you arrived and saw him. We both lost. Your fault.”
“How did you find me?” Troblum said. He didn’t really have any tactical programs to run, no smart way to work out how to escape from an underground room with only one door and no communication. But then, he was pretty sure even the best tactical program would tell him he was going to die. His own knowledge unfortunately supplied him with a host of extremely unpleasant methods she was known to use to kill her enemies (and friends), and that was before he called up her file to check. If he could just keep her talking … He glanced at the door again.
“Oh, my!” The Cat’s delighted laughter rang across the chamber as she caught his unsubtle motion. “Troblum, darling, are you going to make a run for it? Tell you what, I’ll give you a five-minute head start. Do you think your fat legs can reach the bottom of the stairs by then? Will you need to sit down and take a breather?”
“Fuck you.”
“Troblum! How jolly rude!”
From anyone else it would have been ridiculous. From her, it frightened him even further.
“How did you find me?” he repeated.
The Cat batted her eyes. “It was so difficult. You’re such a master covert agent. Let me see, could it be all the illegal money your Accelerator friends pay into your External world bank accounts, which is rather easily traceable to Stubsy here? Or was it when you called ANA: Governance and told my dearest old chum Paula Myo to meet you here? Hmm, which was it now? My memory is not what it was.”
“Oh.” It wasn’t often Troblum felt foolish, but the way she said it made him realize what an idiot he’d been. He’d suspected that the unisphere might be compromised to a faction, yet he still hadn’t taken adequate precautions. And as for the money, well, any half-rate e-head could trace money.
“Where’s your ship?” the Cat said.
Troblum shook his head. “No.” The smartcore had some very specific instructions should his secure link be broken. A timer was counting down in his exovision. It was a small glimmer of hope, though he suspected the kind of ship the Accelerators had supplied her with would be able to burn Mellanie’s Redemption out of the sky with a single shot. More bad planning. That left just one chance.
“Troblum,” she said as if chiding a child. “I’d like to know where your ship is, and I want the command codes. And I believe that you of all people know you really shouldn’t annoy me.”
“I know. Why do you want the ship?”
“Oh, come on; you know that, darling. Marius might be slightly peeved you made him look like a complete dickhead in front of his masters, but that hardly motivates me, now, does it, Mr. Me Expert?”
“Paula. You want to use it to catch Paula.”
She clapped her hands delightedly. “She and I are going to be together for a very long time. I have plans, you see. Big plans for our shared future. And I need her intact. Which you’re going to help me achieve by convincing her that everything here is just hunky-dory.”
“There’s no point. Nobody has a future anymore. The galaxy is being eaten alive. We’re all going to die within a few years.”
A flicker of annoyance passed over the Cat’s face. She gave Troblum a long stare. “I want her to walk in here expecting to see you. Moderately unsuspecting, though she is a paranoid little bitch. So … Ship. Now.”
“No.”
“What do I do to people I don’t like?”
He shrugged, not wanting to think of the details he’d so laboriously extracted from various police reports over the decades.
“You will help me,” she said. “Don’t make me threaten you. I’m only being this patient because I know you don’t understand the consequences of your stupidity. So ask yourself this: How come Stubsy and his friends are being so cooperative?”
Troblum turned to the dealer. It wasn’t something he’d considered. Another mistake, he thought.
“Just help her,” Stubsy said brokenly.
“I cheated,” the Cat said, and rested a finger on her lips. “Bad lady that I am. I used a small insert.” She grinned at the companions, who glared back at her through clenched teeth. “And it was quite difficult to insert, wasn’t it, girls? You know, I actually had to hold them down to do it, there was so much girly squealing and wiggling. And look at them now, happy to do as they’re told.”
Troblum thought he might be sick. His biononics had to work hard at keeping his hormone glands suppressed. And finally he didn’t need any programs to interpret the expression both Simonie and Alcinda showed, their fear and loathing. A tear was squeezing out of Simonie’s right eye.
“The girls are going to hold you down now for me, Troblum,” the Cat said. “Even their silly little weapons enrichments can overcome your pitiful force field. Higher culture,” she said with a shake of her head. “Where do you people get off calling yourselves that? Talk about insecurities. And you think I’ve got psychological flaws.”
The two companions started to walk toward Troblum. He ordered the shields on all the cases to switch off, as well as his own integral force field. The Cat’s response was instantaneous. She vanished inside a silver glow, as though she’d been encased in moon-washed silk.
“Stop,” Troblum told the companions.
They hesitated, looking at the Cat’s glowing shape for instructions.
“Troblum?” The Cat’s smooth voice issued out of the protective aurora. “What are you doing? You haven’t got any defenses now.”
“Remember this?” he asked, and pointed at a gray ovoid on a table close to the door.
“No,” the Cat said. Her tone was one of dangerous boredom.
“It was on the Ables ND47 you rode through into Boongate,” Troblum explained, wishing he wasn’t trembling and sweating so much. “Somebody salvaged it and took it with them to their planet’s new world. I never found out why; maybe they thought it would give them some kind of edge over their fellow settlers. But the government confiscated it, and then it got lost in evidence archives for several hundred years. Then a museum found it and—”
“Troblum!” The Cat’s angry voice snapped across the chamber.
“Yes, sorry: It’s a zone killer dispenser,” Troblum said meekly. “And I was really lucky when I bought it. The museum had kept it in a stabilizer field, so it’s still functional and active. The thing’s about as antique as you can get, but in a confined space like this one I don’t count on anyone’s chances, not even in a force field like yours. What do you think?”
There was a short pause. “Are you trying to threaten me, darling?” the Cat asked.
“I’ve got it on a double activation switch,” Troblum said. “I can trigger it if I think you’re going to try to hurt me. Or if you’re too quick for me and I’m exterminated, that’ll trigger it as well.”
“Oh, fuck me backward with a power blade,” Stubsy wailed. His legs were giving way, sliding him onto the floor. “I can’t take any more.” His hands went over his head, and he started sobbing. “Just fucking do it, man. End this, for fuck’s sake. Kill us.”
“He won’t,” the Cat said. “He’s not the type. If you fire that thing, fat boy, we all die, not just me. If you do as I say and help me capture Paula, I might even overlook this little misdemeanor. Carry on, Alcinda,” she ordered.
Troblum sent an order into the dispenser’s small management array; its malmetal surface rippled, opening fifty small portals. “No.”
Alcinda had taken one step toward him. Now she stopped again.
“Do it,” the Cat said.
“They don’t understand,” Troblum said. “It’s not just the insert that helps you control them; they have hope. I don’t. I know how stupid that is. I know you. You’re probably one of the few people I actually do unde
rstand. That’s why I turned my force field off. So there’s no chance of me surviving the explosion. I know you’re going to kill me no matter what. And we both know that I’ll never get relifed even if the galaxy does survive. This is it for me, the end. Not just bodyloss but real death. So I might as well do the human race a favor and take you with me.”
“What about Stubsy and the girls?” the Cat asked.
“Do it, you fucking bastard!” Stubsy screamed.
“Yes,” Alcinda growled. “Take us—” Her body stiffened, her back arching convulsively. Her spine bent so far, Troblum thought it might snap. She clamped her hands to her head, elegant fingernails clawing long bloody streaks in her scalp as she tried to tear out the source of her agony. She screamed silently as her legs gave out.
“Let’s not confuse the issue with other people’s poor advice,” the Cat said lightly. “You still think you can get out of this≔ otherwise you would have fired the zone killer straightaway. What’s the deal?”
“I don’t know,” Troblum said. “I don’t have a tactical program. This doesn’t have a logical outcome. I’m just waiting for you to do something scary, then I fire it. We both die together.” He stared at Alcinda, who was writhing helplessly on the floor. Things like furry mushrooms were emerging from her eyes, mouth, and ears; then another one bloomed from her belly button. They began to spread wide, swelling.
The Cat laughed. “Oh, darling, you are delectable. I’m the only person you understand, and because of that you’re going to kill yourself. How about you walk out the door and rush into your starship while I wait here for Paula.”
Troblum couldn’t stop staring at Alcinda, who had begun to shake in a convulsive fit. Her head was now half-covered in the furry growths, with additional ones pushing out around the edges of her bikini bottoms. Tiny clear fluid drops glistened at the tip of each strand of fur. The shaking grew more violent. Troblum was seriously considering trying to kill her with a disrupter pulse if his biononics could put one together. “I’d never make it to the stairs,” he said, trying desperately to focus on what the Cat was saying. Alcinda’s death would be a mercy, and she’d definitely have a secure memory store and re-life insurance. “Stubsy’s other companions would make sure of that.”
The Cat made a small gesture with her hand. Alcinda stopped shuddering, her body collapsing limply to the rock floor. “See. If that’s all you’re worried about, the girls are easily disposed of.”
Troblum thought he was going to collapse himself. A stricken Simonie was gazing at Alcinda’s body. The gray fur continued to spread outward. He’d never seen anyone die before, certainly not in such a terrible fashion. “Don’t do that,” he gasped.
“Why? I thought you were going to kill us all, anyway.”
Troblum began to accept that he really was going to die. In a way it was kind of fitting that he would do it while eliminating one of the most horrifying human beings who’d ever existed.
The villa nodes abruptly came on, flashing a short encrypted message he couldn’t decode. He tried to use them to reconnect to his starship, but they wouldn’t acknowledge his u-shadow.
“She’s here,” the Cat snarled happily. “Was this why you were stalling, my dear? I thought she wasn’t due for another couple of hours.”
“Sorry,” Troblum said. He couldn’t help grinning.
“I won’t let her save you, darling.” The Cat brought an arm up, bulging through the aurora.
“You can go,” Troblum said quickly.
“What?”
“Go. Have your battle. If anyone can defeat you, it’ll be Paula. I’ll wait down here. Leave Simonie to guard me if you want. I can’t get a message out to warn Paula. If you win, I’ll fire the zone killer. If she wins, well, you don’t get to call the shots then, do you?”
“Clever boy,” the Cat said in an admiring tone. “I accept. Stubsy, get up. You’re going to have to be the bait now that Troblum isn’t playing.”
“No!” Stubsy howled. His body jerked madly, and he scrambled to his feet as if the floor had turned white hot. Troblum didn’t like to dwell on that idea.
“Do it, you almighty shit,” Stubsy cried at Troblum. “Kill us all. Kill her.”
“Tut, tut,” said the Cat. “Is that gratitude?”
Stubsy’s mouth slammed shut. A trickle of blood dribbled down from the corner of his lip.
“Simonie, you stay here,” the Cat instructed as she walked out of the chamber. Stubsy Florac hobbled after her, throwing one last desolate glance at Troblum. Simonie stood in the doorway as the malmetal contracted shut, framing her with a dark circle.
“I’m sorry,” Troblum told her. She didn’t say anything, though he could see her jaw muscles working silently.
The Cat must be remote-controlling her, he guessed, which didn’t leave him much time. Then he noticed the way her eyes kept switching from him to Alcinda’s body. The vile gray growth had covered her flesh completely; now it was starting to spread across the floor, sending out fronds that moved like a spilled liquid.
Troblum activated his integral force field again and hurried across the chamber until he came to the longest case in his collection. He was sure he heard some kind of bang from outside, maybe more than one, but the door was an effective seal, and he didn’t want to turn off his force field again. Paula must have arrived at the villa itself.
He had to use biononic reinforcement for his muscles so that he could lift the elongated cylinder out of its cradle mountings. The weapon was incredibly heavy, but the designers of the old Moscow-class warships hadn’t had to worry about mass. He just managed to lever it vertical, feeling like some pre-history knight hoisting a lance. The cylinder’s tip was barely a couple of centimeters from the cavern roof, wavering as he fought to keep it steady. There was no guarantee its ancient components would hold together if he switched it on, nor was he convinced his integral force field would withstand either a malfunction explosion or a successful discharge. But the Cat had eliminated certainty from his life; he was flying on logic and fatality now.
He looked directly at Simonie, whose right eyelid flickered. For the second time in a day Troblum didn’t need a program to interpret a human emotion. He nodded back and fired the ship-to-ship neutron laser.
For Paula it really hadn’t been difficult to discover Troblum’s ally on Sholapur. Troblum’s clandestine money transfers had been subject to forensic accounting by an office at the Commonwealth Senate Treasury (CST) ever since Justine had reported on his strangely empty hangar at Daroca spaceport. The treasury office had quickly determined that Stubsy Florac’s accounts had been the beneficiary of a great deal of money over the years, and ANA: Security had accumulated a large file on the dealer’s activities. An irritant rather than any kind of threat, Florac moved objects around the Commonwealth that he had no legal right to handle. The majority were basically harmless like Troblum’s war relics, though he did supply weapons to agitator groups. As far as ANA knew, he didn’t involve himself with any factions or their agents. Despite what he liked to imagine, Stubsy was very small-time in relation to the real political and economic subversives operating on the edges of Commonwealth society.
So she arrived in her ship the Alexis Denken a day before the agreed meeting, descended through the atmosphere in stealth mode at night, easily evading the sensor sweeps run by Ikeo’s defense system, and sank under the water twenty miles away from Florac’s villa. When she arrived just offshore, she was interested to find the wreckage of a high-performance glide boat resting on the sand closer to Florac’s charming white sand beach. An examination by sensorbots showed it had been cut apart by a disrupter pulse. Paula guessed that she wasn’t the only one who wanted to meet the elusive Troblum. It would be difficult for a faction to intercept calls to ANA: Governance security but hardly impossible. And Troblum had promised to divulge what he considered important activity concerning the Accelerators. Ilanthe inevitably would send a representative to intercept him, possibly even Marius himself
. Paula would enjoy arresting him, though he probably would self-destruct before he allowed any such humiliating indignity to prevail.
Five small passive sensor remotes slipped out of the sea to take up positions on various high points around the estate, and she settled down to wait. Her piano slid out of its padded storage alcove; it was three hundred years old, made out of fiwood that glimmered with a soft red-brown sheen in the cabin’s subdued lighting. The instrument had been handcrafted in a workshop on Lothian by a Higher artisan who’d taken a hundred fifty years to perfect his craft, exceeding even the quality of Earth’s legendary piano makers. Paula had commissioned it new, and the lush sound was well worth the ninety-year waiting list.
She sat at the velvet stool, pulled the sheet music out, and once again tried to play “Für Elise.” Her problem was lack of practice time. It would be all too easy to use a music program linked with a dexterity function. But Paula wanted to be able to play the piece properly. A piano as beautiful as this one deserved that level of respect and commitment. Fingers ruled by a program would be no better than simply playing a recording.
Curious native fish nosing around the unusual ovoid resting on the sandy seabed were subjected to the ancient melody repeated dozens of times, interrupted, and begun again with relentless determination.
A day later, when she was playing with a lot more confidence, Paula had to admit Troblum’s ship was extremely well shielded. She was caught off guard by the large figure in a shabby old toga suit riding a small scooter out of the forest on the far side of the Florac estate. None of her sensors had caught Mellanie’s Redemption coming down out of orbit. Her fingers hung motionless above keys of vat-grown ivory as she waited to see what would happen.
The scooter stopped just outside the estate’s boundary posts. It wobbled oddly as Troblum opened a link to Florac. Then the perimeter disarmed, and Troblum flew on unsteadily to the villa.
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