by Pam Uphoff
Xaero stiffened. Vater pollen was a closely controlled pharmaceutical. Hideously hard to grow because of the carnivorous plant's need for warmth and high humidity. She scanned the foliage visible through the slit, but she hadn't a clue what vater looked like. It hadn't existed in the wild for millennia. The domestic variety was bred for potency. The unaltered pollen, breathed in even small quantities was soporific. Refined, it was the basis for all medical anesthesia and pain killers. And several different illegal drugs. Was that the main reason for this luxurious penthouse jungle? She was suddenly glad she hadn't finished getting the pane out of that greenhouse window.
What could the Supreme One's target be? L'azlod was said to be nearly a twin to the crown prince. Could this be a substitution plot? But Crown Prince Fensteri had no power. As the empress's first born, and being a fertile male, he was the presumed heir, but he had no governmental post now. His siblings were all over thirty and only one sister had also matured. She was his only rival and as a trufem, a weak one. The empress herself had been considered a puppet until she'd metamorphosed from trufem into elder wisdom and had all the would-be puppet masters forcibly retired a few splits after her coronation. Two of the princess's children were young enough that they might yet mature. As a rather late maturer, Xaero knew they wouldn't be disregarded until they were thirty, just as her own extended family wouldn't stop testing her for another year. But right now, the death of the empress would, without a doubt, put Fensteri on the throne.
Just how close in appearance was L'azlod to the prince? Surely it wasn't possible for him to be two convenient deaths from the throne.
The two lizards walked completely out of hearing range, and she jumped down and exited the lav. It sounded like she had three days to get a look at the prisoners in "the real dungeon".
***
By dinner time she still had no idea how to accomplish that.
She and Raelphe were seated as far from Traveler, the Supreme One, and the two new pseudofems as possible, which was far enough for privacy if they kept their voices low. She and Raelphe conversed little and listened hard. Xaero could tell by the way Raelphe eyed the next table over that he was wishing for a bit more proximity. Several uniformed guards had joined Very Large Lizard standing at parade rest out of the way but handy. Gold and Silver stayed on their side of the patio, trying to look equally professional, when they weren't looking resentfully at the competition tucking into dinner on either side of their mutual Boss.
Blozolli showed up halfway through the silent meal, gusting onto the patio with a huge toothy grin. "Hey, guess who I caught trying to crash the party."
Two more uniformed guards followed, each holding an arm of Detective Jodeni Fre G'sele.
Traveler rose and stepped forward, shifting in such a way that G'sele's view of the Supreme One was pretty well blocked. He crossed his arms in irritation and looked the detective up and down. "What is it?"
G'sele growled a bit at the insult from a pseudo. "I am Captain Jodeni Fre G'sele of the Department of Martian Security."
"Oh really, and why are you prowling around our facility? We are inspected quarterly, our guards are certified. If the authorities had a question about our business, the authorities should have called. As a secure site, we are always interested in cooperating with the authorities." Traveler cocked his head and studied the trumale. "I think there is sufficient doubt as to your bona fides to hold you until the local authorities can come fetch you. Impersonating a federal officer is a criminal offence."
G'sele sneered. "Good try REMie, but with Blozolli and," G'sele glanced at Xaero, "his lawyer here, your credibility is zero. You may claim to have no knowledge of their backgrounds, in which case I suggest you surrender before you get in any deeper."
Traveler laughed out loud at that. "Do you hear that, Miss L'svages? You have now become known as REM's lawyer. Tsk! Tsk! What a bad little pseudofem you are."
"Oh, very funny." Xaero switched her glare to the cop. "Since you proved yourself so incompetent at rescuing my nephew, I undertook to do so myself." She scowled. "Not that I seem to be doing a very good job of it, mind you." She huffed her spines and slumped on her stool.
"Please, Captain, do join us for dinner." Traveler waved him to the seat next to Xaero, and then sat down across from her. Xaero flicked a glance across the patio. The Supreme One had quietly disappeared, taking his pseudos with him. The silent waiter transferred Traveler's plate to their table and a moment later brought another for the stiff captain.
"So . . . Captain . . . how'd you find this place?" Xaero asked him.
"Once I realized you'd done a bunk, I followed you. Not terribly good at hiding your trail, are you?" He stopped sawing at his wurfle to watch her reaction.
"I made no effort to conceal it. I had no reason to. Although given the Dims either incredible incompetence in letting, I assume, this . . . gentlebeing," she nodded at Traveler, "escape, or your collusion in letting him go, perhaps I should have. I certainly was not willing to trust my nephew's life to you."
G'sele glared at her. "We had reports that Crown Prince Fensteri had slipped into town, so we handled the situation with kid gloves." He studied Traveler. "Impersonating a member of the royal family is a capital offense."
"This is what I look like. It is not an impersonation," Traveler informed him. "What other people assume on their own is none of my concern. Are you close to the prince? Could you ever mistake me for him?"
"No." G'sele didn't specify which question he was answering.
Raelphe had been silent, watching the accusations whipping across the table with open mouthed astonishment. Now he chimed in.
"Wait a split, you mean to say you think a L'svages would join a terrorist organization?" He waved his hands around, trying to collect his thoughts. "I mean, the hideout's just as warm and deep as it gets, but does it pay? Do you realize how much we charge for our services? L'svages don't do volunteer work."
"Tell me about it!" Blozolli growled. He brought up a stool and shoved it in between Xaero and G'sele. "Three hundred rocks a split, and you ought to hear what they consider a billable split. As best I could tell, they worship billable time."
"Our finance department is a bit single minded," Xaero agreed, "And the legal department always insists on full disclosure of what a client will be billed for before they ever see an actual practicing attorney."
"Yeah, I didn't think I was ever going to see an actual mouthpiece." Blozolli grinned and patted her back. "But you were worth the wait, babe."
Xaero glared and twitched away from him.
"Excuse me?" Traveler interrupted. "Do you mean to say your financial and legal department talked to Blozolli first about the money and then you met with him to discuss his case?"
"Right." Xaero told him. Then seeing the confounded expression on his face, added, "We are always upfront with our clients. They are buying our professional services and need to know exactly what those are and what we are going to charge for them."
"And thorough," Blozolli growled. "They sent this slow talking geezer who carefully enunciated every word and kept stopping to ask if I understood. It took splits. I had to sign and scale about a dozen things. I nearly died of old age in there."
"It's good business practice." Xaero gave the snickering Traveler a glare. "We are completely honest."
Captain G'sele choked on a mouthful of grilled wurfle. "Honest!" he croaked, then cleared his throat. "You represented one of the worst criminals I've ever heard of and twisted evidence and witnesses around to get him off." He glared in turn at Blozolli, hitching a bit further away, as if he might be contagious.
Xaero flicked her crest spines at him. "Do you wish to pick and chose who has a right to representation and who does not? Do you wish to deny anyone due process?" As he sputtered indignantly, she added, "Or do you just think the accused should only have incompetent lawyers?"
He growled, but didn't offer any specifics.
Xaero looked thoughtfully around the t
able. "I did a tiny bit of research on the goals of the Red Ever Mars, but nothing in depth." And billed Blozolli for it. "What, in general, do you hope to achieve? What's wrong with pumping up the atmosphere a bit?"
"A bit?" Traveler shrugged, flashing bronze black scales. What a pity he's a pseudo. Xaero kicked herself. She wasn't interested. Breathe two three four. "They need to at least double the pressure to make the atmosphere marginally breathable. If they can re-establish this mythological 'hydrologic cycle' the paleoscientists claim was active during prehistoric times, they say we'll be able to farm nearly the entire surface, expanding our food supply by four thousand percent."
The two uniformed guards, the VLL and Silver and Gold had closed in with the consolidation of their bosses and prisoners at a single table.
Silver had been nodding as Traveler talked and jumped in as he paused. "And then the population would grow enormously. If something happened on the surface there wouldn't be enough space underground, let alone food or water, for everyone. There'd be a horrible battle for resources and we could destroy ourselves."
"Or it could happen slowly," Gold took over. "With uncontrolled breeding, and no need for the civilized life underground, Martians would degenerate into stupid barbarians like the Dry Scales."
Raelphe shoved a hand full of claws into his mouth and bit down on them, making no sound at all.
Smart lizard.
"I thought breeding was pretty much uncontrolled now?" Xaero asked. "Kids are a time intensive, not to mention, expensive pain in the tail to raise. Lots of cheap food and space won't change that. The current problem is a lack of children, not an excess."
"The main scientific objection, Miss L'svages." Traveler ignored the pseudofems rather pointedly. "Is that our atmosphere is being constantly eroded by the solar wind. The scientists think that in earlier time periods, Mars had a molten iron core that produced a much stronger magnetic field than we have at present. That would have diverted the particles of the solar wind and preserved the atmosphere during early Mars history while life evolved."
She nodded understanding.
"Once the core cooled and solidified, the magnetic field dropped dramatically, allowing the solar wind to regularly strike the atmosphere, knocking it off atom by atom. That is still going on. If we melt a substantial part of the south polar ice and humidify the atmosphere the solar wind will gradually take it all. Mars cannot afford to just throw away a substantial percent of the water on the planet."
"I've heard that argument," Xaero commented, "Wasn't that partly behind the Space Program checking out the other planets and asteroids? The possibility of bringing water from off world sounded good to me." Breathe two three four, breathe two three four.
Enough! Nice body, shiny scales and he seems pretty smart. But he's both a bad guy and a pseudo. I shouldn't have to do mini meditations to avoid flashing her frills at him.
"The surface of Mars is covered with impact craters. Be careful what you wish for," he replied.
"I wouldn't think that would bother the REM." G'sele pushed away his mostly empty plate. "I thought you liked big explosions."
Blozolli just smirked, "You think the last one was big, just wait."
"Well, you've got a few obstacles to overcome, first." Traveler frowned and turned to Gold. "Find a place to lock him up."
Gold saluted with the wrong hand and marched off.
After a seductively sweet dessert, they were escorted back to their mossy meadow where yet another uniformed guard was just finishing abusing the door of a third room. The guard handed a key each to Blozolli and Gold, then departed. With Blozolli here any attempt to get the fems to let them stay up and chat was foiled. In fact, he was following her, looking awfully friendly. She nipped into her room and closed the door in his face, bracing herself against it. It was shoved lightly a couple of time, but Blozolli wasn't going to injure his dignity by having to force his way in, and she heard the hasp shoved in place and the padlock snapped.
She thought about moving some furniture to brace the door, but if he'd come unlock it when no one else was awake . . . maybe she should lead him on? Her spines rippled and flattened in revulsion. Well, maybe she could manage one smile. One. Period.
She dug down to the bottom of her briefcase, pulled out the stone headed club and set it within reach of the bed pit, covered with a scarf.
***
The next morning Xaero wondered if they were going to be let out at all. It was getting close to noon before Silver unlocked her door.
"I don't know what happened, but we were all super totally on guard all morning. Then finally Traveler let the cook go to the kitchen, told us all the alarm was over, and that brunch would be served soon."
"How odd." Xaero put sympathy in her voice. "What were you guarding?"
"The bosses quarters." Silver led her over to Raelphe's door and unlocked it.
Raelphe practically fell out. "Are you all right?"
Xaero opened her mouth to answer, then realized that all of his concern was for Silver, as well as Gold, who was approaching with G'sele in tow.
"So, you guys guarded the bosses all morning?" she prompted, hoping for more info.
Gold wrinkled her forehead. "It was very weird. Blozolli and those fems were the only people we saw, and the Supreme One ordered them to stay in their rooms. Blozolli was ticked because Traveler was allowed to go with the Supreme One."
"I think," Silver said, "That the Supreme One left. Traveler came back alone and then let us get back here to you guys."
Xaero didn't like the sound of that. She'd thought she had at least one more day.
Maybe if she found out where L'azlod, or the Supreme One if they weren't one and the same, had gone it would still be possible to stop him from doing whatever he was planning on doing with the vater pollen.
And she still hadn't a clue how to get to the dungeons.
The dining patio had been rearranged, with two tables pushed together and five chairs around it. Apparently they were now eating with the opposition.
Traveler looked . . . smug and excited, but he controlled himself and acted as cool as ever. But there was a happy gleam in his eye as he apologized for the late feed. The noon sun was shining down on him, making him nearly glow. Breathe two three four . . .
"There was a bit of a project we're involved with and you were much happier knowing nothing about it." A smile lurked on his lips. "Really."
Xaero pulled her eyes away from him with difficulty. Think! This was no time to have her hormones robbing her brain of blood to feed . . . other parts.
Her room looked out the back of the hotel building. She couldn't see anything that went on in front of the lobby or toward either the vehicle shed or the entrance where Traveler had parked when he brought her in. Would she be able to get out there and look more closely?
She tucked into the, as usual, very good devets and eggs, wondering what could have been so important that even the guards weren't allowed to see it. Speaking of which, she glanced around, the Very Large Lizard was missing today. That was a first. Traveler without his keeper. Or perhaps he'd switched to a pair he preferred. The whips and chains pair were guards rather than diners today, and definitely not hobnobbing with Silver and Gold.
"So, babe." It was Blozolli. Again. Practically drooling. Yeach, he could just keep his endorphin loaded, hallucinogenic and whatever saliva to himself. She wasn't playing that game. Or any other. Her eyes slid toward Traveler, before she got them under control. "Wanna come soak in a hot mineral spring with me?"
"No, thank you. I think I need to stretch my legs. Perhaps I'll take a walk outside." She kept munching, wishing she had a way to conceal her club in her clothes. It was beginning to look like she'd need it.
Traveler hadn't changed the contented look on his face when she mentioned outside, so apparently whatever he was up to, there wouldn't be anything to see in any of the outlying buildings. Drat. He looked like a herfit full of rockhopper, just lolling back waiting. The s
tirring of her spines was more fear than desire now. She had a hideous feeling it was getting close to too late to stop this 'Final Blow'.
And if she got out of this alive, maybe she'd hunt down a black market medic and get some hormone antagonists. It was getting much too difficult to control her reactions with just will power.
"Sure, babe, I like it in the jungle too!"
Well that killed her appetite.
At least with Blozolli in charge, she was spared the fashion prep of the day before. She stepped into the elevator first, pushing the button for the sixth floor. She swung politely out of everyone's way, in a way that placed her back to the panel and kept it out of everyone's view, and also placed her next to the doors.
Only Raelphe and the fems had accompanied them. G'sele had stayed, trying to grill Traveler, and last she'd noticed, amusing him.
When the door swished open she stepped quickly through as she turned, stopping as if in surprise as she scanned the level quickly. An empty and boring corridor, running both left and right. Lots of doors, cross corridors down a ways, both directions. Blozolli glanced past her, then took her arm and pulled her back in. "Wrong floor, unless you want to get it on with a whole bunch of guards," he said then, glancing at the elevator's indicator light, which was now indicating a desire to rise, reversed his course and escorted her back out of the elevator. "C'mon, the stairs are faster."
He led them left, to the first door, beside the elevator shaft. The stairs went up and down multiple floors without obvious security precautions, although she supposed there could be alarms on the doors. The guards at the reception desk glanced up alertly when they exited the stairs, but hadn't seemed to be expecting them. She hoped this meant there were no vid pickups in the stairwell. They dipped their muzzles to Blozolli as he led them across the lobby and out.
She took a deep allergen free breath, and figured even Blozolli's company was a small price for this halfway outdoor outing. Hmm, could the muscle bound slimeball have any relevant information?