Infinity's End

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Show me later,” Foxy said, trying not to be envious. “Ooh, here we go. Sighting in the casino. Classic.” She had a final lap of the tea and then hopped up and onto Tiggs’ helpfully low back. “Let’s ride!”

  “Cowboy,” Tiggs said, unamused, and heaved to her feet. “Oh, I drank that too fast... my stomach hurts.”

  “You’ll be fine, just take it slow. The casino roaches are tracking her.”

  “What do you think is going on?” Tiggs asked as they paced along the walk and then turned to face the huge, glossy frontage of the seafront casino. It was a beautiful building, like a cliff of glass. To either side of it, lesser buildings provided restaurants, bars, theatres and haciendas within which all manner of spa treatments and indulgences were available. Skinshops and tattoo joints stood out here and there. Foxy saw a young woman come out entirely recoloured from head to foot as a zebra. Even her eyes were white with black rings.

  They stood in the shade of one of the tall palms that helped to separate the casino from the beach. “I think...” Foxy began, questioning the sense of going in without any backup, but getting off the saddle and checking her vest anyway. “That time is of the essence. She’s got wormware. She’ll have some way of finding out she’s been spotted. We know she can bypass ordinary security. We should go arrest her. I’m heading in. You stick around here and be ready in case she makes a run for it.”

  Everything was human-sized. Tiggs clearly could not be the one to go inside. “All right,” she said. “But keep me on live feed. I need to know where she goes.”

  Foxy gave her a pat on the knee. “Don’t you worry, I wouldn’t feel safe if you weren’t right with me.” They synced up, and Tiggs watched as Foxy walked through the revolving doors, absurdly small for a police officer on the hunt of a ruthless criminal. A roach pinged from the gambling floor where classic card games were in play. Foxy vanished from sight and Tiggs watched her on second sight. She was so still and so absorbed with the strange view of legs and bottoms that were the majority of Foxy’s vision that it took her a while to realise that a family with toddlers had stopped next to her.

  “How much is it for a ride?” asked the father, looking around Tiggs for a place he could scan his wristband, clearly under the impression that she was a mechanical child’s toy. They were day-rate guests, flown down to the beach from the cheaper accommodations on the massif.

  Tiggs cocked her head to look down at the children.

  “It’s so realistic!” the woman said, putting out a finger to stroke one of Tiggs’ arm feathers. “I love how they spare nothing on the technology here. Not like Procyon Paradise—you could tell all their machines straight off. Really clunky finishing.”

  “I can’t find the tagger,” the man complained.

  Tiggs felt her eyelid twitch. In the dim, chandelier-lit confines of the card arena, Foxy had cashed up a few chips and prowled herself to a seat at the Blackjack table, opposite the mark. Roaches were moving into position at key points to oversee all the exits.

  “I wanna ride!” screeched the smaller child, holding up its arms imperiously.

  “Here, just sit on it for a minute,” the woman said and lifted the boy up, setting him down with a thump on Foxy’s saddle. “Put your feet in the thingies. There you go.”

  “I can’t get it to...” the man was saying when Tiggs gave a little whole-body jerk as if she had just been put to life by a very slow processor command. “Oh thank God. You walk with him, Jody, I’ll put Kimmy on when you get back. Go up to the ice cream shop and come back.”

  The croupier was setting up as the bets were going down. The mark, a tall, athletic human with long black hair and mahogany-wood-style skin, was toying with her chips. At her elbow a large vodka tonic was half gone, ice cubes melting to blobs. She was wearing a fine silk jumpsuit, and something about the movements made Tiggs think she had a powersuit on underneath it. She said so to Foxy and, at the same time, began a careful and slow march towards the ice cream shop.

  Foxy ordered a pina colada and made a modest wager. The cards went out. Foxy got a three and a six. “Her name is Ghabra Behdami. So it says at Reception. They think she’s the original. She’s a premier platinum passholder but bought it only two days before she got here. Everything about her checks out, but if she is wearing a powersuit, then it’s good enough to pass, and that means she doesn’t check out at all. Plus she bugged that skimmer. The roaches are in. As soon as this hand’s over, I’m taking her out.”

  Tiggs was nearly at the shop. She could still see the casino out of the side of one eye. “Got a bit of a situation here. Wait, what are you doing? Doubling down on nine?”

  “What does it matter?” Foxy ignored her drink and shoved more chips forward. “Oh, look at that. Look at her eyes. That’s some fancy crap in those irises and on that retina. This is military grade. Shit. What should I do now?”

  “We haven’t found any accomplices. We don’t have motive, we only have association,” Tiggs said, waiting as a dripping cone was passed over her neck before slowly making a turn and starting a creep back towards the avenue of palms and the glass frontage. “Show her the photo.”

  Foxy got a two out of the shoe. The croupier already had eighteen. “So, has anyone here seen this guy? He’s gone missing and we need to find him. He has a virus. It’s complicated.” Foxy showed the registration photo of the dead john, his open necked linen shirt, floppy hair, plumped skin all unsuspecting they were on the final countdown.

  Ghabra Behdami looked at it on her feed, looked at Foxy—not just a glance but a real good look—and then without any warning at all bolted from the table, jarring it and knocking over all the drinks as she got a good solid boost off it. In a heartbeat Foxy was in pursuit, bounding over the glasses and the foaming, icy froth, her paws slipping on cards before she was in the air and then on the floor, her arms pumping. She was fast and she was nippy, in and out of legs and around chairs, but Behdami had a front-line soldier’s power-assisted second skin on, and if it weren’t for the fact she had to change direction a couple of times, throwing guests left and right like ping-pong balls as she hurled herself towards the kitchen server entries, then she’d have been able to outpace any regular hotel security.

  At the front Tiggs crawled the last few steps to the waiting father and second child, who was whining and swinging at the limit of his father’s arm. A large glob of melting vanilla cream ran down her neck and into her ruff feathers. All sorts of hormones were coming up, readying her for the hunt, and she started to drool uncontrollably.

  “Eww, look at it,” said child two as the mother reached up, standing on Tiggs’ foot, and hefted the first one out of the saddle. As soon as she stepped clear, Tiggs whipped her head around and put her nose right in child two’s face. The spit slid off her gold tooth and onto the pavement.

  “Y’aint no picture, sweetie,” she said and then she was off like a bat out of hell around the side of the building. She heard the kid screaming and winced as roaches pinged her with the news that the mark was barrelling through the kitchens and, soup catastrophes in progress, would be out of the back and into the service bay in five seconds.

  Tiggs sprinted, had to go around a laundry cart, skidded on the corner on loose sand, made the back just in time to see the doors burst open and Behdami come powering out. The silk jumpsuit was baggy on the limbs, tight at the waist, gathered at the bust. She looked like an insane genie from a cabaret in her high heels as she caught sight of Tiggs and made a quick change of angle, away from the street exit and towards the high wall that screened the backyards from the gaggle of two- and three-storey blocks that make up the Hexen—a little district devoted to pirate fantasy fun for adults, thick with roleplayer zombies and cursed sailors packing cutlasses and pistols. It was nearly three o’clock, when the backwaters would be surging with crocodiles as the pirates made their play to steal the “naval” masted ships and make for the open seas of the lagoon, flush with treasure and slaves and all the whatnottery of a v
ery good time. Behdami leaped like a hero, took a stride up the wall and over it, pumped off the top into a cat’s leap that took her onto the roof of a fortune-telling bodega. A chicken squawked as Behdami vanished from sight, and Tiggs was after her, claws scrabbling on the wall top for a moment as she recruited ten rats and a seagull to help her see.

  At the kitchen doors Foxy, panting, hat in her hands, paws covered in soup, could only stand and watch. “Go get her, Tiggs!”

  The chase was swift and deadly. Behdami could parkour like a goddess, and she did—up walls, onto roofs, ten metre jumps, down the fire escape slides, over the heads of gawping navvies in the burning heat of the afternoon. Everywhere she went, the seagull watched, the rats pursued, and Tiggs came after. Behdami cleared a street in one bound. Tiggs followed and crashed through the roof of a taco stand, got up and was after her in a second. Behdami dashed over the rooftops, doubling back towards the casino, no doubt having realised the only way out of the zone was either the Skim Depot, which would block her now, or by a direct route physically out of the main gates and through the hotel parking zone into the raw wilderness. The gull’s call became a siren wail as more security was called in.

  Staff pirates shouldered their way through the groups, but like everyone else they were sidelined as Behdami rolled, somersaulted, vaulted her desperate race using every surface like a rebound board in an effort to avoid the relentless, slavering velociraptor that followed her stride for stride. High in the air, mid-leap, Behdami spun to fling out a line of razor thread, but Tiggs was wise to it—the seagull saw her pulling it out of her sleeve—and she threw herself to the side, tail balancing the zigzag with incredible flexion. The thread fell aside and cut through the fake thatching of the zombie master’s roof where someone will have the unlovely job of cleaning it up soon but not Tiggs—she was wide-eyed and as deadly as an arrow. Behdami feinted left, dived right and dropped into the street, going to cover herself with the milling agitation of the pirates on the quayside. A rat noticed the plan—there were two rights and a left before the gate to the outside world, but if she went through the buildings, it was only two doors and a pedestrian crossing.

  Tiggs changed direction and cut her off, bashing her way in through the back doors of Black Blood’s Barbecue as Behdami entered the dining area. A quick-thinking freebooter drinks server shoved the doors closed, trapping them in the grill. Behdami went for a knife but Tiggs was already pouncing and on her. She was not the only one with a skin suit on today.

  Tiggs stood, victorious, her prey under the deadly claws of her feet. Ice cream and drool ran off her neck and ruined Behdami’s lilac jumpsuit. Behdami struggled for a moment but felt what she was up against, looked at Tiggs properly and gave up, lay back on the rubber matted tiles, her chest heaving for breath. It was over.

  A few rats gathered for a look and then dashed off again, remembering their place. Somewhere in the deep background of her mind, Tiggs saw Foxy approaching with the handcuffs and calmed down. This was how they always operated. Foxy and Tiggs.

  “Sorry about the kid,” she said as Foxy calmly trussed up their spy or whatever she was.

  “I comped them a cruise, don’t worry about it,” Foxy said, so proud of Tiggs she could hardly speak. “Ghabra Behdami, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of an unknown man in Pirate Bay. You can say what you like but we both know it’ll all come out in the end.”

  “GOD, YOU PEOPLE,” Behdami said from the floor as Tiggs reached over to the grill, foot still clasped around her neck, and helped herself to a half-cooked steak. “Will you let me go if I give you your story?”

  “Try us,” Foxy said. “Let’s see what it’s worth.”

  “It’d be easier without you sanding on my n—”

  Tiggs squeezed, just a little. It had been a very long, hot day.

  “Fine. Have it your way. Your man’s name is Fantheon Pelagic and he was hotel security, just like you. That’s how come you couldn’t see him—he was never tracked here because he was part of the hotel, only he worked out in the spacelanes, tracing counter agents from rival groups. He came down here looking for some lowlife from the Dream Tripper group—her data’s here, look. She’s a spy.”

  “What’s your angle?” Foxy asked, taking a seat on Behdami’s thigh and patting her. “You’re tooled up nicely.”

  “I’m Solar Military, I’m on furlough,” she said. “I’m not here because of your hotel, only because of Pelagic. He was the lover of my best friend and he’d been cheating on her. Once you can excuse, but they were going to get married and he was still at it so I came to take him out as a kind of... not wedding present, let’s say.”

  Tiggs went for the other steak because it was getting overdone and there was no way any guest would be served it now. “Go on.”

  “I came down here, found him at the beach party, seduced him—not like that was difficult. I mean, that’s pretty low, right? I had to be sure though, sure he was scum.”

  “So you drowned him and then took him to the Safari in the hopes he’d be eaten before we found out what had happened.”

  “Yeah. It seemed like the easiest way, you know? A couple of park rangers were the worst that would happen. I mean it should have taken days for you to figure it out, and all I had to do was ride my real ticket out tonight.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Foxy said as their check on the data she’d given them paid out. There really was a spy in the hotel, and nobody, until now, had found her.

  “Yeah, me neither,” Behdami said. “Rangers and pirate zombie rats. God in a fucking bucket, but you are one badass hotel.”

  “It’s a cutthroat business,” Foxy said and stood up. “Tiggs, you can let go now. The offworld police are here and I need another drink.”

  Tiggs let go and stepped back. “We did it!” she said privately to Foxy.

  “You did it, dear.” Foxy patted her and then hopped up and onto the saddle. “Hey, this is all sticky and—what for the love of all booty has been going on up here?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Tiggs said. “Trust me. Do not. Want. To know. I’m going for a swim.”

  “I think they have floating loungers and a wet bar,” Foxy said. “Let’s go find out while we wait for the specials to pick up that spy.”

  CRIME IS NOT uncommon in the world of business. For a hotel such as myself—The String of Pearls—four pearly planets, orbiting the golden jewel of their travelling star as it heads steadily on into the depths of unknown space, the greatest prize of such a crime would be the looting of the consciousness protocols that govern every aspect of hotel life and my evolution as a living system within which people and creatures may live and prosper to the best of their abilities as honoured guests. This was the prize that the Dream Tripper franchise of luxury liners had been going for in its wonky, desperate way, and who knows what they might have done if they had not been caught on the tails of a crime of passion?

  I am reasonably sure they could have done a lot of damage, but it’s not in my nature to be vindictive. That is the very antithesis of hospitality and a hallmark of bad romance. So, once the matter of Pelagic had been cleared up and the spy returned to the Dream Tripper’s nearest waylay point, I sent Dream Tripper a full and complete copy of my functional mindmap and its operating systems and dependencies. If it is worth stealing, then it’s worth sharing.

  Meanwhile, later the same day Foxy and Tiggs are back on their usual patrol route on our Serene Serengeti pathway. The night is cool and clear, the full swathe of the Milky Way visible as we pace majestically towards its mysterious heart. In both the friends a sense of wonder and happiness from their adventure is still burning—they are young and they are valuable, successful, in a beautiful world that loves them.

  I copy that and I send it on to Dream Tripper too. I want to be clear that there is no such thing as just a park ranger, just a rat. Upon the actions of the innocent, the daring, the incidental and the tiny, so much fortune can turn and it must be free, not
governed from above.

  For a while I watch the guest shuttles come and go from our major reception station. A heavily laden schooner full of people who have been on long serving trade craft in deep space is coming in. They’re all so eager to see and be on a planet again that I’ve felt inspired. I’m quite delighted with all the little treats I’m planning for them as they acclimatise to their ancestral worlds—though not Foxy’s suggested monster invasions, not yet at least.

  I hope some of them will stay awhile and maybe become permanent guests—all fellow travellers are welcome and I hope many of them will have stories of their own to share. But until they arrive I am watching a foxling and a raptor run the game trails in the dark beneath a hunter’s moon.

  BUT REALLY IT’S hard to live at that level of the romantic even though I love it. I’d rather watch Foxy. I’d rather watch Tiggs.

  “FOXY, YOU KNOW when you have that feeling that you’re being watched?”

  “You mean when the hotel is paying attention?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Is it, like, really there or is it imaginary? Is there really one big mind or is that just what it feels like when some bits of the hotel have to check what you’re doing and... and is it related to that funny ringing noise you sometimes get in your ears?”

  “That high-pitched whine?”

  “Yeah, like you have a crossed wire or a mosquito stuck in there—there for a second, then gone. Is that like—what is that?”

  “I don’t know. I used to think it was something being downloaded.”

  “I thought that but then nothing seemed to happen.”

  “Yes, but it wouldn’t, would it, if it was a secret download of stuff. It would just update you and then you’d feel the same but operate better. If it was that.”

  “Oh yeah. We were good though, weren’t we?”