Before long he heard the subdued murmur of casual chatter: three voices—those of the couple and that of the store owner. Then footsteps, splashing in the rain, growing louder instead of more distant. Reaching into his coat, his fingers closed around the grip of the tiny pistol.
Timing his appearance, he stepped right out in front of them, trying to make himself look larger than he was. The stunned expressions on their faces showed that his surprise was complete.
Quickly now, he told himself. Before they have time to think or time to react. He extended his other hand, palm upward.
“Wallet!” he snapped curtly. When the man, who was despite his age large and fit looking, hesitated, Cheelo barked as threateningly as he could, “Now—or I’ll skrag you and take it anyway!”
“Martin, give it to him!” the wife pleaded. “Everything’s insured.” Ah, traveler’s insurance, Cheelo mused. The casual thief’s best friend.
“Slowly—so I can see it as you bring it out.” He couched the warning in his most intimidating manner.
Glaring down at him, the well-dressed pedestrian removed a soft plastic pouch from beneath his coat and handed it over. Cheelo took possession gingerly, never taking his eyes off the man. Slipping the prize into his own inner shirt pocket, he turned his attention to the woman. Above and below them, the narrow street remained deserted. A couple of vehicles hummed past on the main avenue above, their occupants oblivious to the pitiful drama that was being played out beyond their windows.
“Purse,” he ordered her. “And jewelry.”
Trembling fingers passed over the handbag of woven metal, then reluctantly followed it with a ring and two bracelets. Nervously eying the front of the store from which they had recently emerged, he gestured imperatively at her left hand. “Come on, come on—the rest of it.”
The woman covered the remaining exposed ring with her other hand. Her expression and tone were imploring. “Please—it’s my wedding ring. I’ve given you everything else.” He knew the droplets that were starting to run down her cheeks were tears because her face was protected from the rain by the wide brim of her stylish water-repelling hat.
He hesitated. Enough time had been spent standing out in the street. He had wallet, purse, and jewelry. The woman’s anguish seemed genuine. He had seen enough of it faked by those attempting to protect expensive but impersonal possessions. Wearing the same expression he had presented when he had first stepped out of the alley, he started to turn away from them.
“Sure, why not? Look, I’m sorry about this, but I’ve got a big deal pending—the opportunity of a lifetime—and I just need a few more credits to…”
That was when the husband jumped him.
It was a stupid move, a foolish move, the kind propounded by middle-aged men who think a little regular exercise and a lifetime of watching action tridees equips them with the wherewithal to handle sinewy professionals. He was a lot bigger than Cheelo, which made him bold, and a lot stronger, which made him overconfident. In fact, he superceded Cheelo in every aspect of fighting ability except the most important one: desperation.
As the man’s large hand, fingers aligned in a karate chop, came down on Cheelo’s flinching arm, the impact caused his finger to contract on the trigger. The compact weapon spat a small, silent blue flash. Instantly, the delivered charge interrupted the flow of electrical impulses running through the millions of neurons in the man’s body. A shocked look on his face, he collapsed onto the sidewalk, falling over sideways so that his shoulders and then his head struck the pavement. The skull took a visible bounce. Hovering over him, pistol in hand, Cheelo was no less shocked than the woman, who immediately dropped to her asinine husband’s side. His eyes were wide open.
When it had gone off, the muzzle of the pistol had been aimed right at his chest. His heart had momentarily been paralyzed. That was not necessarily a lethal proposition—except that the man’s heart had not been an especially sound one to begin with. The problem was not that it had stopped; the problem was that it did not start beating again. Cheelo had seen death before, though it had not been propitiated by his own hands. He saw it now, in the gaping frozen face that was filling with rain where it lay upturned to the sky on the cobblestone sidewalk.
Heedless of her own circumstance, the woman began screaming. Cheelo raised the pistol, then lowered it. He had not meant to shoot the poor dumb grandstanding bastard. He had certainly not meant to kill him. He doubted the admission would carry sufficient weight with the authorities. Clutching the purse close to his chest beneath the raincoat, he turned and ran, shoving the weapon back into his pocket. Behind him, the woman’s screams were swallowed up by the gray torrent that fortuitously continued to spill from the clouds. He was more grateful than ever for the rain. For a little while at least, it would keep the shopkeeper from hearing her wails.
Breathing hard, he threw himself onto the first public transport that presented itself. Surrounded by preoccupied, indifferent ticos and ticas, he pulled the collar of his raincoat higher around his neck and head and strove to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. Now what the hell was he supposed to do? Self-defense made a bad defense for a known brigand. At the very least he would be sentenced to a selective mindwipe, the extent of which would depend on how tolerant a court he found himself in. The truth machine could possibly support his claim that he had not intended to kill, but his state of mind at the time might appear as a gray area on the device’s readout.
It didn’t matter. He had no intention of being incarcerated or of letting the authorities erase any part of him.
He did not go back to the cheap hotel room that was his address when he stayed in San José. Instead, he transferred to public transport traveling in the opposite direction. By the time he reached the airport the rain was diminishing, the sky becoming merely sentimental instead of sorrowful.
The nearest shuttleport where he could secure offworld transport was in Chiapas. Even if he could somehow make it that far without being picked up, he couldn’t be sure his efforts of the past month had accumulated enough credit to purchase passage. Not that it mattered. The first thing the local authorities would do would be to run a report on the incident, complete to a police molder’s rendering of the attacker based on the woman’s eyewitness account. As soon as he stepped off a down shuttle on, say, one of the Centaurus colonies, a grim-faced welcoming committee would be there to greet him. Besides, he had no intention of traveling offworld. Not when he had important business on this one.
What he needed was to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible, but not so far that he couldn’t get back to see Ehrenhardt before the deadline that had been set for payment. At least for the moment, returning to Golfito was out of the question. Ehrenhardt would not take kindly to a personal visit from a man wanted by authorities for murder. As a known antisoc, his home and businesses would be watched.
Paying with credit from his personal account, Cheelo locked himself in a shower room at the airport while he renegotiated the unfortunate husband’s credcard. In minutes, using the room’s public terminal, he had succeeded in draining the credit and switching it into his own account. Colorless and untraceable, it would provide him with a means of flight. He was grimly gratified to see that with the addition of the latest sum, even after the purchase of a ticket to somewhere else, enough remained for him to pay Ehrenhardt what was required. The transaction would simply have to be delayed for a while. There was no reason to panic. He had plenty of time.
The woman would remember what he had been wearing. With considerable reluctance, he discarded the raincoat, shoving the crumpled bundle of fabric into a disposal chute where, hopefully, it would be compacted and then incinerated. Underneath, he wore attire that was simple but clean and untattered. Adopting as best he could the air and attitude of a small businessman, he approached one of the automated ticket dispensers and logged in.
“Where is it you wish to go today, sir?” The device’s synthesized voice was brisk and
feminine. He tried not to be too obvious as he looked sideways, backward, down, anywhere but directly into the visual pickup. Frequently, he passed a hand over his face as if wiping rain from his eyes. He kept his voice at the lower limits of audibility as he shoved his illegally recharged credcard into the accept slot.
“As far as this will take me on the next flight out and still leave twenty thousand in the account. No, make that twenty-two thousand.” If his estimate was off he could always cancel the request and make a new one.
“Could you be a little more specific, sir? Random, spontaneous vacationing is a joyous adventure, but it would be helpful to me if you could at least pick a direction.”
“South,” he mumbled without thinking. His choices were simple. West or east would send him out over one of two oceans. North would find him very, very cold.
The dispenser hummed softly. Seconds later a small plastic strip emerged from a slot. Cheelo stood ready to bolt if the device’s internal alarms went off, but his credcard popped out normally alongside the ticket a moment later. Taking the strip, he placed it on his card, to which it promptly adhered.
“Thank you for your patronage, sir,” the dispenser told him. He turned to go, then halted and spoke without looking anywhere in the direction of the unit’s visual pickup.
“Where am I going?”
“Lima, sir. Via suborbital, gate twenty-two. Enjoy your flight.”
He did not offer thanks as he strode purposefully in the direction of the requisite concourse. A glance at a monitor showed that he would have to hurry if he was to make the departure. His expression set; he was inwardly pleased. The last thing he wanted to do was to have to linger in the vicinity of the airport.
No one challenged him as he approached the gate. The ticket processor did not eat his card, passing it through to him on the other side of the entryway. The man and woman seated next to him ignored him as they chattered inconsequentially.
Even so, he did not allow himself to react until the plane was in the air, gaining altitude to climb above the tropical weather while accelerating rapidly to supersonic speed. He had to try to relax. He had a couple of hours before the next crisis, when the time would come to disembark. It was futile to agonize. If the police traced him to the flight, they would be waiting for him when he stepped off the plane. There would be nowhere to run. He would be promptly put on a return flight and extradited back to San José.
As he leaned back in the seat he remembered the face of the lurching husband, the sharp pain of his big hand coming down on Cheelo’s arm. He did not even recall pulling the trigger. Then the man collapsing, his life imploding like a mud wall under assault from a rain forest downpour. His wife falling to her knees next to him, disbelief seizing control of her throat and vocal cords. He shuddered slightly. Though he had administered his share of beatings, he had never killed anyone before. He still felt the same. The pistol had done the killing, not him. The man had set if off himself, as a consequence of his own idiotic actions. Why couldn’t he have just stood there for another lousy couple of minutes? Why couldn’t he have played out his role of victim? A lot of good his insurance did him now.
Lima. Cheelo had never been to Lima, had in fact never been south of Balboa. Whenever he accumulated a little credit he usually went to Cancun or Kingston for a while, until he was broke again. He tried to recall what little he knew of planetary topography. Lima was near the Andes, but was it in them? He was dressed for the subtropical clime of San José, not high mountains.
Well, he would find out when they landed. Assuming the ticket dispenser had abided by his instructions and that his transfer of credit from the dead man’s account was not compromised, he would have the additional wherewithal beyond the franchise price to purchase clothes as well as food and shelter. And transport. He could not afford to linger long in Lima, or in any big city boasting competent police technology. He began to feel a little better about his randomly selected choice of destination. Mountains were a good place to hide. He knew nothing of the region, but he would learn quickly. As soon as he landed he would purchase a guidebook or two and have them transferred into his card where he could peruse the information at leisure.
Somehow, he would manage to lose himself. He had done it before, though not under the impetus of such urgency. A new identity, a new look, and he would be safe. He was thirty-five years old and for twenty of that had lived off his wits and illicit activities. He was not about to let himself in for even a partial mindwiping. Hell, no! Not when the answer to all his dreams lay virtually within his grasp.
Just let me get off the plane and out into the city, he thought tightly. Just that one moment of freedom and from then on I’ll be able to make my way in silence and safety.
He was shaking when the plane slowed to a stop at the disembarkation gate. When one of the flight attendants remarked on his evident distress he managed to reply in a calm and unaffected voice that he was just a little cold, and he even thanked her for her solicitude. Shuffling off the aircraft, he kept his gaze fixed resolutely straight ahead. As the passenger load thinned around him—businessmen striding toward connection gates or baggage pickup, families reunited joyfully—he kept walking without any real destination in mind. When he was halfway through the terminal and it was apparent that no officials were waiting to intercept and detain him, he lengthened his stride.
Public transport into the city was readily available in various familiar forms. Avoiding both the cheaper bulk carriers and the more expensive private vehicles with drivers, he chose an automatic. It answered his questions as readily as any human escort and without propounding inquiries of its own.
Once downtown he immediately felt better about his situation. New clothing, a meal, the purchase of a guidebook, and a dose of depilatory to remove his attractive but too distinctive beard improved his outlook considerably. All he had to do was to disappear for a while. It was much too soon after the incident to search out a surgery where he could have his appearance permanently altered. When the furor over the killing had been pushed off the front page of police screens he could return to Golfito and conclude the transaction with Ehrenhardt.
Lima was not in the Andes, he discovered, and at this time of year it was subject to heavy fog, a development that delighted him. The less visible he was at all times, the better. But, like any large metropolitan center, the city boasted an unobtrusive yet sophisticated police center and an appropriate number of active response sites. Enough stolen credit remained in his account to get him out of the city and away from public scanners without impacting on the twenty thousand he needed to keep for Ehrenhardt. The only question was where to go. It would have to be someplace where the police presence was slight to nonexistent, someplace where he could walk without having to worry about keeping his face turned away from pole-mounted scanners.
The guidebook suggested several possibilities. To the north lay a largely uninhabited region of rolling hills and flat plains. But the area was thick with important archeological sites that were periodically swarmed with tourists. That wouldn’t do. The mountains were a suitably forgotten fastness, except that the habitable valleys were full of neat vegetable farms and ranches that echoed to the hoofbeats of alpaca, llama, and cattle genetically engineered to thrive at altitude. The higher elevations were sufficiently inhospitable to discourage settlement. Similarly, the low temperatures and thin air were more than enough to discourage him.
More promising was the strip of southern coastal desert. Behind the beaches, with their resorts and desalinization plants, few people lived who did not work in one of the numerous mines gouged from the arid landscape. There was still room for a person to lose himself, but not enough room—not for the kind of near-total disappearance Cheelo had in mind.
That left the enormous Reserva Amazonia. The most biologically diverse stretch of rain forest wilderness left on the planet, it had seen its last indigenous inhabitants resettled elsewhere more than a hundred years earlier. Since then it had been aba
ndoned to its great profusion of plants and wildlife, save only for scheduled incursions by tourists and scientists. The dense canopy would hide him from prying overhead eyes, and the presence of so many other forms of life would mask his heat signature from patrolling remotes.
According to the information he read on his card, the most primitive and isolated part of the park lay at and encompassed the eastern foothills of the Andes. There, where cloud forest met lowland rain forest, there had never been a need to remove and resettle traditional inhabitants because there had never been any. The region was as inhospitable to man as it was lush, a place where some of the rarest creatures left in the wild roamed free. Yet even there, isolated tourist facilities could be found that catered to the most adventurous, to those seeking a true wilderness experience.
Having spent some time in the rain forest himself, plucking tourists instead of tropical fruit, he enjoyed a certain familiarity with such country. The miserable months he had spent drunk and diseased in Amistad came back to him in a rush. It wouldn’t be very comfortable—he would be hot and sweaty all the time, and there would be bugs—but the same conditions that would make it unpleasant for him would also discourage extended examination by officers of the law. If stopped and challenged, he could pass himself off as just another tourist. If anyone thought to probe further, he could vanish into the immense forest while they were running a background check on him.
He was unable to outfit himself to his satisfaction in Lima, but Cuzco boasted a number of shops where he was able to obtain his modest requirements. The lightweight, rip-proof pack he purchased filled rapidly with a good supply of basic emergency concentrates and vitamins, a permanent water filter and purifier, insect-proof bedroll and tent, fuel-cell cooker, and mapping ware for his card. The live clerk assured him that his new clothes would repel everything from army ants to a rainy season downpour.
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