by M. G. Herron
“Seems to me,” Tanamir finally said. “That the Gatekeeper finally has some real competition.”
His low, soft voice caused gooseflesh to prickle up my arms to the elbows.
“Competition?” I asked.
“Surely you’ve heard about the sudden influx of Ora floating around the city. Selling that euphoric and rarified substance to offworlders is the Gatekeeper’s main source of revenue. He’s the only one with the connections to import it without drawing the attention of the Federation.”
My eyes widened as the realization fell into place. “Until now,” I breathed.
Tanamir nodded.
I thought she’d been following the conversation, but next to me, Anna slapped at my leg.
“Gunn, Gunn! Look!”
I lifted my head. A giant metallic green beetle flitted through the air on a beeline toward us. Anna held out her hands, and what looked like a glittering scarab beetle landed in her open palms. It sat there, sparkling, as those seated in the bleachers around us turned to look jealously on.
I returned the looks with what must have been a bemused and distracted expression. Had everyone known that the Gatekeeper sold Ora? As an outsider, no one had wanted to tell me, but to everyone else, it must have been obvious. Of course he wanted me to find whoever was selling Ora to humans! To eliminate the competition. Not because a moral imperative drove him to do the right thing, but because his revenue had taken a hit.
As the offworlders stared at us and my mind spun to catch up and realign the pieces of this mystery, the beetle in Anna’s hands spit out an invitation that read:
Anderson Gunn and Guest,
You’re invited!
Please join us for a private tour of Rashiki’s Jel’ka stables during the intermission.
The metallic green beetle hummed into the air, then turned and flew back to Rashiki, where it attached itself to the inner rim of his pod.
“Wonderful!” Tanamir said, reading the invitation in Anna’s hands and then beaming at us.
I smiled tightly at the Lodian gent, then looked down in the direction of Perekles. He stood, brushed himself off, and held his own beetle aloft, smug as ever, making sure that everyone seated near him saw it.
“The others?” I whispered to Anna.
“They’re moving,” she said.
Almost as one, intermission began and all the offworlders in the bleachers rose and began to file out to the boardwalk for the break.
“Good talking to you,” I said to Tanamir.
“Enjoy yourselves, you two.”
“Thanks!” Anna said, then bounced down the steps. I hurried to follow her, not wanting to let her out of my sight, or rather, not wanting her to get to the stables and be in the same room with the suspects without me.
Not wanting to take any risks that would put her in danger.
As we stepped past Tanamir, he nodded at me and I noticed a patch of rough skin near his shirt collar that was more wrinkled than the rest of him—a burn scar, as if a white-hot fire had twisted and melted his skin like candle wax.
The scar was almost covered by his shirt, but not quite. It was on his right side, so I didn’t have an angle to see it during our conversation, sitting side by side on the bleachers.
Tanamir continued to smile benignly at me. He didn’t react when I noticed the scar, and there was no time to ask him about it.
I turned and hurried after Anna, still reeling from what I’d learned. The Gatekeeper was an Ora dealer. The pit of my stomach seemed to fall into my feet. The cold logic of it was undeniable. If the competition was new, it would explain both his job offer to me, as well as the attack on his place.
The only thing left to do was find out how Vinny and the events of last night connected. Had I been looking in the wrong place this whole time? I had a sinking feeling I was about to find out.
Not for the first time, I missed having a pistol on my hip.
I was going to have to be very clever, and very careful, to get both Anna and myself out of this one alive.
19
I had been worried I’d stand out as the plant—as the suspicious insider—during the private tour, but with Anna there to act the part, I shouldn’t have been.
When we entered the stables, she gasped, threw both hands over her mouth, and rushed toward the nearest cage housing three brightly colored Jel’ka.
“They’re beautiful,” she crooned.
Perekles, standing nearby in his maroon robes, wrinkled his whiskered snout, staring condescendingly down at her theatrics. He’d sure gotten here fast. Could that mean he knew his way? Whoever had attacked Vinny had to have been intimately familiar with the layout of the racetrack and boardwalk above.
A Lodian couple I didn’t recognize whispered to each other about ten feet away from Perekles, and I knew they were talking about us—meaning me and Anna. Humans didn’t come to Rashiki’s often, and it probably seemed a scandal that the two of us had been invited to the private tour. The couple averted their eyes when I looked at them.
Perekles didn’t.
“We got a problem?” Not hard for me to put off the aggressive boyfriend vibe. I didn’t even have to pretend, at either my feelings for that gorgeous blonde or my animosity toward Perekles. I hadn’t liked him from the first glance.
“No,” Perekles said, turning away and studying some of the training equipment at the edge of the room. “Just minding my own business.”
I grunted.
One of the Jel’ka lumbered up to Anna on its powerful hind legs and let out a lovely, sonorous purr. It would have been adorable if it weren’t for the razor-like claws on the creature’s forelegs that clinked against the metal bars of the cage, and the wet gleam of its glistening teeth.
Anna turned to me. “Oh, honey, can we get one?”
“You can’t even keep your house plants alive, babe,” I said. “How you gonna take care of that thing?”
I won’t lie—a thrill shot through my body at the chance to call her ‘babe.’ One botched date and a failure of communication did nothing to diminish the level of physical attraction I felt for Anna.
“Me?” She shot me an icy glare. “You of all people know how much it hurts to leave a plant out in the cold.”
Ouch. I crossed my arms and frowned at her. Anna returned the look with an impish smile that dimpled her cheeks, and a tilt of her head that challenged me to respond.
I was saved when the rest of our suspects, and the other tourists who had been invited to distract from our purpose, trailed into the room.
There was Ezembaster, dark-furred, face like a thundercloud, leanly muscled and dangerous looking.
Then old Theo, leaning on his cane, but with none of the shuffling gait you usually saw in the elderly.
Next, to my surprise, a family of Torliks, each shorter than the one next to them, down to the smallest who was no larger than a ten-year-old human boy. The large eye in the head of each was peeled wide, staring around. Their irises were a beautiful shade of brown and orange, matching their smooth skin.
Last came Amarkis. He trailed in, distracted and itching at his neck. His whiskers twitched as his beady eyes darted around the stables, marking Rashiki’s pod by the faint hum it made a moment before the oversized Torlik rounded the doorway from the practice track and into the spacious room.
“Welcome one, welcome all,” Rashiki said as he floated toward us, finally coming to a stop.
Behind him, through the open doorway that led to the practice track, I could see Yarnow casting a scowl in our direction, obviously annoyed to have tourists in his stables. Judging by his body language, it seemed safe to assume he and Rashiki had just gotten into some kind of argument. His face was dour. He fingered the training whip coiled at his waist. Then he bent, slung a limp goat over his shoulder, and carried it toward the big rectangular grate in the far corner of the practice track.
“Be careful, dear,” Theo said to Anna in a kind, grandfatherly voice. The other two creatures now
crowded around the first Jel’ka she’d attracted. The raptors were separated from her only by a few pieces of thin metal. They really seemed to like her, and I couldn’t tell if they thought she was a friend or a snack.
“Their teeth are sharp,” Theo added, tossing one of his little bug-snacks through the bars of the cage. A raptor caught the bug in its jaws and swallowed it in one swift chomp. A slimy tongue darted out to lick its lips.
“He makes a good point,” I said as I slipped my arm around Anna’s waist and led her away from the cage. “How about we give them some room, huh?”
She smiled icily at me, then stepped gracefully out of my reach.
I spotted Hix leaning casually against the wall near the security office, watching everyone from a distance. His other security men had positioned themselves at the doorways in front and behind us, ready but appearing unthreatening. Even so, I noted the small high-tech gun at Hix’s waist. The other Torlik security guards wore small truncheons on their belts, but apparently Hix was the only one with a gun.
Like me, Ezembaster noted the exits as well as the security guards, like any good soldier would. Amarkis cast nervous glances at them as well. Neither Theo nor Perekles paid the guards any attention. Whether that was because they had nothing to fear, or just didn’t think they deserved any attention, I couldn’t tell.
After welcoming each person individually, Rashiki launched into an explanation of what we were here to see.
“This is where we keep the Jel’ka for training and during the races, but not where they sleep. They spend most of their days here with Yarnow, our Alpha-class trainer, a Torlik with over forty years of experience working closely with the galaxy’s most impressive competitors.”
One of the young Torlik boys asked a question about their food in a shrill voice.
“Their diet consists of mostly raw meat,” Rashiki said. “Although occasionally we feed them live snacks.” He winked playfully. “Now, if you’ll all follow me this way—watch your step—you can see…”
Rashiki led us on. The four Pangozil, the family of Torliks, and the Lodian couple ambled after him, each looking around with wide eyes. I realized that Rashiki bringing me down here yesterday really had been unusual. It gave me a new appreciation for how much exception Rashiki and Hix had given me—even apart from threatening to shoot me after they found the Ora in Slim’dar’s stomach. But who could blame them?
I watched each of the Pangozil on the tour for signs of abnormal behavior. It was difficult to tell if Amarkis’s twitching whiskers were nerves or not. And Ezembaster didn’t so much as smile during Rashiki’s tour, didn’t laugh at any of his jokes. What was he hiding?
Theo flirted with Anna, as innocent and charming as any doting grandfather. During the conversation, he dropped his half-full bag of bug snacks into a trashcan in the corner, about ten feet from a Jel’ka cage. One of the smaller Jel’ka scrabbled at the dirt floor and thrust his muzzle against the cage as a few of the bugs hopped out of the trashcan. The raptor scrabbled and scratched at the dirt as he tried to reach them. The sound of his snapping jaws sounded behind us.
Rashiki then led us through the doorway into the practice area and around the dirt track there, spinning another yarn about how wonderful and state-of-the-art his training facilities were.
“We even keep a live Fetraxian to toughen up their claws,” Rashiki once said, eyes gleaming.
This brought forth wowed murmurs from the small crowd of tourists. I recalled an earlier time when Rashiki had threatened to feed me to the Fetraxian, but I still didn’t know exactly what a Fetraxian was. Even the quiet Ezembaster gave Rashiki a small nod and said, “Impressive.”
I tried to make small talk with both Ezembaster and Amarkis. The former gave me laconic one word answers, while the latter merely stared at me and then edged away.
I didn’t ask any direct questions that would make either of them suspicious, just asked them about their favorite part of the race, their favorite bar on the boardwalk to grab a cold beer, and watched their reactions.
Ezembaster was guarded, hard to read. Amarkis had a nervous habit of running his hands along everything we passed. Just as he scratched at his own itchy skin, so too did he feel the need to touch and fondle every moveable—and unmovable—object.
My casual queries were designed only to give me a sense of them. From the plans we had laid out earlier this evening, I knew I’d only have two chances to see how they really reacted in the moment of surprise.
Two opportunities where they might give themselves away.
I braced myself as Rashiki led us onward, this time into the med unit. I stepped quickly past Anna and turned to get a good view of all four of them.
Amarkis let his twitchy fingers trail along the wall, so he was the first to notice the gray cloak hanging on a coat rack among the white uniforms of the medical staff. He may have been a nervous Pangozil, twitchier than normal—even for their species—but he was observant, and his fingers quickly found the cloaking device.
“What’s this for?” Amarkis asked with nothing but naiveté evident in his tone. “Is it fireproof? To protect the medics that have to run onto the track?”
I caught Anna’s eyes, then looked back at Hix, who was standing in the doorway. They both frowned, which showed that they were thinking the same thing I was—Amarkis was out. The guilty party would have stayed far away from the cloak, and certainly wouldn't ask questions.
My eyes moved across the crowd, noting the reactions of Theo, Ezembaster, and Perekles closely. Perekles rolled his eyes at Amarkis, obviously annoyed by the man’s inquiry, as he seemed to be annoyed by any question anyone asked. He stepped around the Torlik children as if they contained some kind of contagious sickness, and moved down the hallway leading to the Jel’ka’s rooms.
Ezembaster narrowed his eyes suspiciously. They darted from Amarkis, to Rashiki, to Hix in the doorway.
Was he being cautious, or was he the one we were looking for?
Theo just smiled dumbly and let out a soft burp. Was that an act?
“The cloak is not for training,” Rashiki responded smoothly to Amarkis’s question. “It’s a personal item that belongs to one of our doctors.”
This made Perekles frown at Rashiki. But I didn’t know what to make of that. His expression was always sour, so it wasn’t much of a change.
Rashiki waved us onward into the medical unit. As we rounded the corner to the left, Perekles, at the head of the group, stopped cold. He stared into an open door, from which the odor of death emanated.
The others noticed his stiff posture, and all glided reflexively toward the room to see what had caused such a reaction. The Lodian couple made sad noises when they saw the body of the prized Jel’ka lying on the table there. Hix had hidden the Ora crystals away, but the body remained, and it was beginning to stink. When the Torlik parents saw what was in the room, they worked together to pull their children away.
“That poor Jel’ka,” Theo said. “Did you ever find out what caused him to collapse so suddenly?”
Either Theo was an excellent actor, or he was as innocent as Amarkis. The older Pangozil frowned as he gazed at Slim’dar's sad, limp body. He was curious but, as far as I could see, displayed no outward manifestation of a guilty conscience.
Rashiki must have come to the same conclusion, for his gaze alternated between Perekles, who was staring quietly at Slim’dar as if trying to solve a puzzle, and Ezembaster, who had put his back to the hallway wall and was inching toward the elevator opposite the doorway where Hix stood.
A light above the elevator door went on. The door opened, revealing two more Torlik guards, each as burly and as tall as I was.
There was a moment of taut stillness.
A hesitation.
And then everyone moved at once.
The two guards, noting Ezembaster’s charged presence near them, drew their truncheons, which flickered with a jagged crackle of electricity. He reacted like some kind of secret agent, swee
ping out the legs of one and throat-punching the other so hard the Torlik pitched over backwards. This elicited cries from the Lodian couple and the Torlik family, who scrambled to get away from the sudden violence.
“Arrest those two!” Rashiki shouted.
Hix tackled Ezembaster as he was going for the elevator, sending them both down in a heap in the corner. Hix tried to reach back for his blaster, but Ezembaster caught Hix’s hand and wrestled him back. A band of Torlik guards ran into the room and sprinted around the bystanders to pile on top of the pair wrestling on the ground.
As for Perekles, Anna had beat me to him, wrapping her arms around his neck as Rashiki bumped into the arrogant snob with his floating chair.
Before I could run over to help them, the Torlik children began to scream shrilly. They froze me in my tracks as my blood went cold.
I heard a throaty purr, followed by a small, questioning sound that can only be described as a cross between a purr and a squawk.
Turning, I saw three Jel’ka—one gold, one viridian, and one crimson—stalk into the med unit, bobbing their heads like oversized, killer chickens. They sniffed at the air, seemed to catch the scent of poor, dead Slim’dar, and snapped their jaws hungrily.
One of the Torlik kids squirmed out of their mother’s grasp. She cried, “Reggy, no!” but the boy was already running toward the elevator, obviously frightened to find the Jel’ka free of their cages, and desperately trying to get away.
The gold Jel’ka reacted to the movement like the predator I had always known it was, and with three bounding leaps went after the boy. The other two hopped slowly after, gawping and blinking around the bright room curiously. Their claws scrabbled against the smooth tile floor when they moved, giving the father a chance to jump bravely in front of the Jel’ka and shield his frightened child.
With the two most likely suspects being wrestled to the floor by my comrades, I did the only thing that seemed right in the moment and jumped behind the Jel’ka, yanking the gray cloak off the coat rack and snapping it down like a matador’s cape.