by Steve Perry
“Sorry. I felt fully alive. Fully in the now of existence.”
Attila shrugged. “Dangerous sportsters report the same kind of rush. It’s all the human body’s internal drug system. I’m told that they have some nice rushes on the black market as well.”
“No, no, you just don’t understand.”
He nodded. “No. Perhaps I do. Perhaps, with all this proving of your mettle, your own honor and valor in this society of hypermacho creatures, you were able to somehow momentarily blot out the shame and guilt that rest so heavily upon your family’s name because of what your father did, and what that means in the culture that you cling so stubbornly to.”
“I hate it when you get like this.”
“Get like what?”
“What—did I buy a psych-bot for God’s sake? What kind of bullshit are you handing me?”
She got up, red-faced, and threw the half-eaten sandwich at him.
Attila flinched.
“Simply pointing out things we’ve already discussed.”
She was immediately sorry.
She realized the reason why they didn’t call these things robots anymore. Robots didn’t have feelings. Androids did. And though perhaps those feelings weren’t as screwy and cantankerous as human feelings tended to be, they deserved respect and consideration.
“I apologize, Attila.” She went over and picked up the sandwich, biting into it as though she were eating the words she’d previously spoken. “A delicate area.” She brushed some dirt and grass from the sandwich and took a large bite, masticating with emphasis. “Hmmmm. Lovely.”
Attila the Hun folded his arms. “Perhaps I refuse to be tricked in such an obvious way.”
“Oh. You won’t forgive me?”
“I was never upset. What’s to forgive?”
“Oh, now who’s dissembling?”
“I find our course of conversation extremely unproductive and will now resume my role as your trustworthy, faithful, and silent robot servant.”
“In other words, you’re going to sulk.”
“Precisely.”
“Well, before you do that, maybe I can have your input on what I’m presently looking at over there.”
She directed her finger skyward.
Attila swiveled his head, responding immediately to the seriousness of her tone.
The spaceport lay to the west of the makeshift town. They had driven immediately south. Coming down on incandescent impellers was a starship, flashing in its own exhaust and in the exultant sun at its zenith.
“A moment.”
There was a click and hum as Attila’s oculars focused on the object and made the appropriate telescopic adjustment Attila had shown her some of the mechanical aspects of his composition. All truly impressive. Hidden compartments. Perhaps even hidden weapons? He even claimed that portions of his body could operate independently of one another—by remote control. At his more exasperating moments, Machiko sometimes felt like testing this out with her sword.
“Well?”
“Impatience is not a virtue of a warrior.”
“My humanity is leaking. So… spill.”
“Your metaphors are mixed.”
“Come on.”
“It’s a most curious spaceship, Machiko Noguchi. Some kind of KX model.”
“KX models…” She whistled. “Those are exclusive yachts.”
“Indeed.”
“Why would anyone who owns a KX want to come to this godforsaken planet?” wondered Machiko Noguchi.
4
It didn’t take long for her to find out.
“Well,” said Livermore Evanston, hoisting his own glass of fine wine to his guest, “here’s to health, happiness, and a mutually beneficial business arrangement.”
Machiko looked at him suspiciously. She sniffed the brimming crystal glass of startling red he’d just poured. Superb. This, coupled with the foie gras, would just about make her gourmet quotient for the year. Nonetheless, she managed a noncommittal expression.
“I only know your name and that you zoom around in a big private starship. As for business arrangements, that remains to be seen.”
He smiled, his red cheeks glowing like cheery Christmas bulbs. His merry eyes were wide and open and seemingly wanted to hide absolutely no secrets.
“Oh, I think what I’ve got for you, my dear, will be of emphatic interest.”
She sipped the wine. Truth in advertising on this. It was the best burgundy that had ever crossed her lips, a glow of grapey warmth with a dry yet clever finish.
She took another sip, though, just for the alcoholic content.
“May I sit?”
“Certainly.”
He gestured to the streamlined though well-appointed seat before her. Everything on this ship was sleek and streamlined, but with touches of quality and class that could come only from wealth.
She sat, and the cushioned chair was very comfortable indeed, ergonomically accommodating her body.
“More wine?”
“Why not?”
She put her glass out and had it topped off.
“Excellent stuff, no?”
“I see nothing on this ship that’s not excellent.”
“I’m so happy you could take the time to come here and visit me.”
She shrugged. “I miss out on a frozen dinner, my vid, and my robot. You owe me a lot.”
“An attractive woman like you, not being wined and dined on the evening of a weekend. Somehow the very notion appalls me. I am happy that coincidence brought me here today.”
She took another sip and leaned over, all politeness wiped from her face now, replaced by a pure business expression.
“So. Let’s cut to the chase.”
“Gladly.” He sipped at his glass. “I have an offer for you, a business proposition, that I think you will find most interesting.”
She leaned back to listen.
When she and Attila had returned to her apartment, there was a message waiting on her communications module. It was a man’s voice, requesting her to return the call to a certain number.
She did not return the call.
She had a bath. Time was a luxury, and always after a strenuous workout she took the chance to have a languid bath, filled with scented oils and topped with delicious bubbles. She’d never taken time for them as a corporate ramrod in those frenetic pre-Ryushi days. Just quick showers. Her baths on Ryushi had been generally cold water. And with the Hunters… well, they seldom took baths, and so she’d just learned to live with her own true grit.
Now, though, her baths were opportunities to shut out the universe. Machiko-time she called it. She had all kinds of interesting gadgets in her bath.
Dried off and in her synthsilk robe, she’d been in a reverie that she liked to think of as meditation but was actually a regretful daydreaming that she’d started at this dead-end job here, when the phone had rung.
She ignored it.
Attila, however, had not. Attila had answered and then had insisted she take it This made her think seriously about selling Attila. However, she did take the portable phone and placed it to her half-listening ear.
That was the first time she had heard the name Livermore Evanston.
It was only after she’d rung off and discussed the phone call with Attila that she realized, with the android’s help, that the address she’d been invited to that evening was a docking bay at the spaceport. In all likelihood she would be heading that evening to the spaceyacht she and Attila had witnessed landing. Attila had been all atwitter about the possibilities, but Machiko remained stoic and suspicious.
There was too much to lose if any kind of hope crept into the mix.
“Let me put my cards on the table from the beginning,” said Livermore Evanston. “I know quite a bit more about what happened on Ryushi than most people. And I know more about you than the corporation does.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You want to spell out exactly what you mean by that?”
<
br /> He knew about the Hunters? That seemed unlikely. They kept a low profile, and their maneuvers through human as well as universal history had been veiled with secrecy. That, after all, had been part of their Game.
Her time with the yautja was officially “unaccounted for” in Company records; the Company didn’t know what had happened in the time she was missing, but they knew enough to bury her someplace safe. They’d thought they had done that when they left her on Ryushi after the colony was moved.
“I know about your experience with the alien arichnida.”
“The bugs, you mean.”
“Yes. They are, frankly, the reason I’m here.”
Something sparked in Machiko. She could not help but move forward. Doubtless, interest flamed in her eyes. It wasn’t a good poker face anymore. Fuck it. Bugs were Bad. Anything that had to do with squishing them was worth paying attention to, and every little bit of help she could extend to eradicating them from the galaxy she did not begrudge.
“I’m listening.”
“You seem to have a reaction to the creatures.”
“I do. They need to be destroyed.”
“So your dossier would indicate. And if your survival on Ryushi proves anything, you’re quite talented in that area. Although your settlement was all but wiped out, your experience, your skill, and your valor were noted—however, you disappeared for years…” He let the sentence hang, waiting for her to fill in the blanks.
She sipped her wine and left them empty.
“…and then suddenly you reemerged on that mining planet, in better shape than ever.”
“Yes. Gordian.”
“A planet with a bug problem.”
“Yes.”
“Along with some sort of other mysterious problem…”
Again she sipped wine. He did not probe.
She remembered how it had been on Gordian—another human colony world seeded with bugs by the Predators she hunted with. She had to make a decision there. She had to choose between the yautja she Hunted with for two years and tried so desperately to win honor from, or the colonists, creatures of the painful race that was her own, that had caused her and her family so much shame. Her sense of humanity had won out. She had thrown in her lot with the colonists and beside them had fought off the Hunters. The margin of victory had been slim.
Evanston had assumed a serious, closed aspect, sealed with a frown during these last sentences. Now, though, he smiled and assumed a jolly openness once more.
Livermore Evanston was a round and pudgy man, but there was no sign of a lack of strength, either physical or mental, in his face or body. He exuded a vitality of power and enthusiasm beneath his mask of indolence. He wore beautifully tailored and color-coordinated clothing in a business-suit ensemble that looked as comfortable as it was neat. Expensive, like everything else around here, no doubt. His hair was a lovely mass of artfully coiffed curls—dappled brown and gray—and he wore a tastefully cut goatee. He smelled of lemony sandalwood cologne and pipe tobacco. He was the epitome of the excesses and might of civilization, and Machiko Noguchi had to admit to herself that she was very, very intrigued.
“Ah. I’m getting ahead of myself. I am a creature of curiosity. I forgot my promise to you. I have the advantage here. I know far more about you than you know about me.”
He paused then and slipped his hand into his pocket as though he were digging around for a pipe. Then, as though deciding against it, he pulled his hand out again and reached for his glass of wine.
He did not drink it, just stared into its clear, deep red as he spoke.
“A little rectification, then, is called for.”
A scratch of the nose, as though an aid to considering the best phrasing.
“I have this planet, you see…”
That was a little too much for Machiko to take, right from the start. “Wait a minute. You’re clearly a wealthy man—but you’re telling me you own a world.”
“Hmm. Yes. A bit off the beaten track, but then so is this wonderful little place.”
“Never has sarcasm been so truly used. You mentioned before you’re not a member of the corporation.”
“No. I trade with the corporation. I got my start in the Rigel system, you see. A huge inheritance and I’ve been nothing but a pure entrepreneur since I can remember. All sorts of businesses and technologies and conglomerates. Much of what constitutes the modern starship engine was designed in my engineering think tanks.” He shook his hand expressively and dismissively. “Enough of that. I’m loaded, okay? So loaded that I personally sent out an expedition in an unsettled and unexplored region of the galaxy, personally colonized it, and set up an enterprise unlike anything in human history.” He took a deep breath and exhaled through a tentative, chagrined smile. “However, we’ve got a problem.”
“I suspected as much.”
“Yes. There’s been a sudden and unexpected bug infestation… and the hell of it is that we don’t know where they came from or how they got there.” He looked at her with an arched, bushy eyebrow. “A situation very similar to that on Gordian, right down to the mysterious and unexplained deaths. Also similar to Ryushi. It’s been said, you know, that planet is haunted.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that theory too.”
He tapped his fingers on the table, looking at her expectantly, as though she were going to solve his problem with a pronouncement of some sort.
She, however, said nothing, even though the interest still burned in her eyes, undisguised.
“I suppose you’d like to know what sort of planet it is I own.”
“Something that would make money, I presume.”
“Oh, yes. But it’s something that’s important to me as well.” Tap tap tap. “I have your dossier. I’m aware of your abilities with weapons, and your excellence in martial arts. However, your write-up is not complete. Have you ever hunted, Machiko Noguchi?”
She smiled. “Yes.”
“What?”
“Bugs.”
“That wasn’t sport, that was necessity.”
She let that go. He said it, she didn’t. The further away the subject stayed from the Predators, the better. She smelled possibilities here, and there was no reason to louse them up with a little jaunt into Alienland. Let that business be her little secret. It was bad enough, betraying her pack to save her humanity. She didn’t want to broadcast that little personal bit of mixed courage and shame.
She shrugged. “I went duck hunting once.”
“Then you know something of the thrill of the sport.”
She nodded.
That was the understatement of the year.
Hunting with her pack had come to make multiple orgasms feel mild and mundane.
“Good. I had that feeling about you.”
“Is this suspense thing to keep me interested? I mean, I came to your ship, didn’t I?”
“I’m sorry. A bit of sales technique. I’ve never quite gotten out of the habit.” He leaned back and rubbed his pudgy hands together gleefully. “You see, it’s a hunter’s planet, Machiko.”
“I kind of guessed.”
“Good. I suppose you’re aware of the restrictions that have been placed on blood sports on many worlds.”
“You have governments and they tend to make laws. You have corporations and they make laws too.”
Evanston nodded soberly. “Yes. And as civilization proceeds its dizzy climb up the ladder of Progress, the elevated few who think that they can legislate morality have lost track of some of the needs of humankind.”
“Like hunting.”
“Precisely. It’s in the fiber, the very marrow, of humanity. The hunt… Instincts die hard.” He winked at her and patted his chest “I know. They’re right in here.”
“Hmm. I’m catching the drift. You find and colonize your own world. You go and shoot its creatures without any threat of reprisal.”
“That’s not the whole story. I import creatures as well… fine, ferocious creatures. Worth
y of glory. I then sell tickets to people who can afford them.”
“Ship them out, let them chase beasties about.”
“Yes.”
“Sounds ideal.”
“That’s what I thought, Machiko. I didn’t bargain, though, on the arrival of the bugs.”
“A bit more than your hunters can deal with.”
A grave nod. “At the moment I’m pretending it was all planned. There have been deaths, but that just adds spice to the sporting. However, deaths are one thing… catastrophe’s another. I’d like to hire you to avert catastrophe.”
“One little problem, Mr. Evanston. As the song says, I owe my soul to the Company store.”
“Ah, yes, the beloved corporation. They didn’t know quite what to make of you when you came back, did they? They considered you a loose cannon, and so they put you out to Pasture World. Yes, yes, I’m well aware of the confines of your life, Machiko. However, I’m a man of means—and a man of contacts. If you’ll sign on to help deal with this alien manifestation on my planet—with the understanding, of course, that you’ll be well remunerated for your effort—I will not merely get you leave from this backwater nothing of a planet”—he smiled—“I’ll get your contract torn up.”
She blinked. “You can do that?”
Evanston nodded.
“Hmmm.” She stood up and paced.
It was too good to be true. There had to be a catch.
She looked the gift horse in the mouth.
“How do I know that I won’t be stepping from the frying pan into the fire?”
“Oh, it’s a fire, all right But you hate the frying pan, I know, and it’s my take on you, Machiko, that you love fires. Your element, so to speak.”
“I don’t know. You’re telling me the whole story here, right?”
“No. Of course there are details…”
“Details that would make me regret my decision to jump on your horse?”
Again the shrug. “You’ll have to wait and see. Look, I’ll tell you what. Come with me, and I’ll make you an advance. Work for a week or two. If things aren’t to your liking, the advance will be enough to start a new life somewhere.”
“You’d pay that much up front?”
“Indeed. And you won’t even have to spend any of it for ship fare. I’ll put you on one of my ships.”