by Mike Resnick
“Wait!” said Pretorius.
She stuck her head back down. “What is it?”
“Stick this grate back in place,” he said. “No sense telling every soldier who walks down this corridor that we’ve got someone sneaking around up there.”
“Right,” she said, grabbing it from him and fitting it into place. “Okay, I’m outta here.”
And with that she vanished from their sight. They stood still for a moment, and then Apollo turned to Pretorius.
“I’m glad she told us where she’s going,” he said. “She’s as silent as . . . well . . . a snake.”
“I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but she’s also one hell of a contortionist,” said Pretorius.
“Makes you wonder why the hell she ever joined the military when she could make a handsome living as a thief.”
Pretorius chuckled. “She’s not military.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a matter of work for me or serve her full jail sentence.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Apollo with a laugh. He turned to Pandora. “You serving time here too?”
She shook her head. “No, but I’m not military either. I just have some talents for sale, and Nate and General Cooper decided to buy them.” She smiled. “Well, rent them, anyway.”
“Son of a bitch!” said Apollo, still grinning. “I’m on a team with fellow mercenaries.”
“Hey, Snake!” called Pretorius.
“Yeah?” came her voice from above, and perhaps forty feet distant.
“Keep tapping very lightly on the ceiling—well, our ceiling, your floor—every fifteen feet or so unless you’re over a room, and we’ll follow you. And if you hear any voices, any noise at all, just hold still until it passes.”
“Gotcha!” said Snake, tapping twice where she was and then continuing her progress while her four companions followed the tapping from below.
“Speaking of not knowing where we are,” said Proto, “I hope one of you can find your way back to the room Irish is in.”
“Not a problem,” replied Pandora, holding up her communicator. “We’ll just home in on her signal. All we need to remember is that she’s on the sixth level.”
They followed Snake’s tapping down the corridor until it came to a three-way branch, and she moved from the left side to the right.
“Why not the middle one?” mused Apollo. “It’ll get us to the center of things.”
Pretorius shrugged. “Could be a blockage. Could be some other reason.”
“You trust her?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” said Apollo, “that’s good enough for me.”
They followed the tapping down the new corridor for a few minutes, then stopped when it went silent.
“What’s going on?” whispered Pandora.
“Beats me,” said Apollo.
Pretorius walked down the corridor, looking up every time he came to a vent. Finally he came to a stop.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
“Yeah,” said Snake, loosening the screen over the vent. “Here, catch this.”
She dropped the screen into Pretorius’s hands, then lowered herself through the vent until she was hanging by her fingertips.
“I got you,” said Apollo, grabbing her legs.
“I didn’t need any help,” she said as he lowered her to the floor.
“You’re welcome,” he replied with a smile.
“What’s the problem?” asked Pretorius, then added, “Quietly.”
“Hard to breathe,” she said.
“Oh?”
She nodded. “Big room not too far up ahead,” she said softly. “Got a bunch more vents. I can see the light through them. The real Michkag and the clone Michkag are the only two Kaboris we’ve had much association with. They’re nonsmokers, but evidently a lot of these bastards smoke something that smells a lot worse and a lot stronger than pot or cigars, and there are some small fans right next to their overhead vents that suck the smoke up and then blow it down the way I was coming. Been making me sick for a few minutes.”
“Why the hell did you wait?” asked Apollo. “You should have bailed out of the vent the second you smelled it.”
She shrugged. “I thought the worst it could do was make me high,” she responded. “I never counted on getting weak or sick.”
“Put the screen back,” Pretorius whispered to Apollo, “while I figure out what we’re going to do about this roomful of smokers.”
Apollo reached up and adjusted the screen as best he could. When he was finished, they waited a few minutes until Snake said she was ready to proceed, and they began walking cautiously down the corridor.
“Shit!” muttered Snake after a couple of minutes. “There it is again!”
“But the meeting room or whatever it is is still seventy or eighty feet away,” said Apollo.
“Don’t take my word for it,” snapped Snake. “Take a deep breath.”
They all inhaled deeply.
“I don’t know what the hell it is,” said Apollo, “but it’s sure as hell not cigar smoke, not even from alien cigars. There’s too damned much of it; they should be setting off fire alarms by now.”
Pretorius had been frowning since the odor first hit them. Finally he turned to Snake. “You healthy enough to do a little work?” he asked.
“I suppose so,” she said unenthusiastically.
“You’re the best lock-pick on our team,” said Pretorius. “Open that room.” He indicated a door that was perhaps fifteen feet ahead of them, on the right wall.
She walked over, reached into a small pouch that hung down from her belt, pulled out a pair of odd-looking metal instruments, and twenty seconds later the door slid back.
“Everyone back up!” ordered Pretorius. “Apollo, take a deep breath, walk into the room, and see where the hell that smell is coming from. If anyone’s it in, kill them.”
Apollo took a breath, made a face when the same odor that was in the vents floated out of the room, quickly walked inside, took a quick look, then exited and, speaking in Kabori, ordered the door to close after him.
“Well?” said Pretorius as Apollo bent over and took three or four deep breaths of the stale but odorless air in the corridor.
“Couldn’t see much. Along with everything else, that air is foggy.” He finally straightened up and turned to Pretorius. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“Knew what?” demanded Snake.
“Let’s say I had a pretty strong suspicion,” answered Pretorius.
“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Snake.
“That’s not cigar smoke,” said Pretorius. “Nobody can stay in a room that ejects smoke and odors like that.”
“So what was it?” persisted Snake.
“I don’t know the race, but it’s what passes for their atmosphere,” answered Pretorius. “That’s why I had Apollo check out one of their sleeping rooms.”
“Got to figure they’re here for a peace conference, or as mercenaries,” said Pandora.
“Probably not mercenaries,” said Pretorius.
“Why one and not the other?” asked Pandora. “Hell, we don’t even know what race they are.”
“We’ll know their race the minute we get you to a computer,” said Pretorius.
“Fine, but you didn’t answer my question,” she replied. “Why allies or potential allies of the Kaboris rather than mercenaries?”
“Because of that shit they breathe,” answered Pretorius. “Sooner or later it’s going to get into every corner or every room of the damned castle. If they’re here for a peace conference, or even a trading deal, they’ll pull out in four or five days tops, the Kabori will fumigate the fourth level and anywhere else where the odor of their air lingers, and that’ll be that. Whereas if they’re mercenaries, they’re here permanently, and Michkag would be crazy not to build them their own quarters with a machine that generates their own air, somewhere other than within the castle. I know M
ichkag, and he’s a lot of things good and bad, but crazy isn’t one of them.”
“Okay,” said Snake. “So what do we do now?”
“Oh, I think maybe one of us,” began Pretorius, “maybe one who’s so small and so abusive they she’d never be missed, will see if there’s a way around whatever room they’re all meeting in without getting so sick or drunk that she can’t go on.”
“I don’t know anyone who fits that description,” said Snake.
“Well, truth to tell, neither do I,” said Pretorius. “So why don’t you go reconnoiter and see if there’s a way to get past their meeting room without getting sick or drunk or whatever.”
“And if there isn’t?” asked Pandora.
“Then we go back to where we started and try a different route, or we go down to the third level and hope our luck holds out.”
Snake left without another word, proceeded cautiously down the absolute center of the corridor as if that would stop her from encountering the alien air. She made it to the meeting room, then knelt in the fog and the shadows and pressed against the wall as a door slid open and two bark-skinned aliens, each larger than her but smaller than Pretorius, walked out into the corridor. Each had a pair of hand weapons tucked into holsters at belt level, and one of them had some strange mechanism, which may or may not have been a weapon, attached to his shoulder.
They spoke softly, laughed loudly and gratingly, and arm-in-arm turned left, away from where Snake was crouching, and proceeded down the corridor.
Snake stuck around for another couple of minutes, until three more aliens left, one alone and two in tandem. All proceeded in the same direction as the first one.
She quickly made her way back to Pretorius and told him what little she’d been able to see.
“No sense going that way,” he said when she had finished. “Sounds like they’ll be coming and going on no set schedule for hours. It’s not worth getting seen by them, and if enough of them are opening doors from time to time, we’re either going to get drunk or pass out breathing that shit.”
“So what’s our next step?” asked Apollo.
“Grab a room with air we can breathe, and work out the step after that one,” said Pretorius.
20
They tried two empty rooms, hated the residual fumes, and finally came to a room that had not been inhabited—at least recently—by the aliens.
“So what’s our next step?” asked Proto.
“The next step is to find out how the fumes affect you,” replied Pretorius. “We don’t have any special breathing gear with us, and I need to know if any of us can be in their company for any length of time.”
“I must confess that I found the odors mildly distasteful, but not to the extent that you four seem to have.”
“Well, that’s something, anyway,” said Pandora. “Now if only you could hold a weapon . . .”
“We don’t want to start our battle on the fourth level of a castle that’s almost as big as some megalopolis on old Earth,” answered Apollo.
Pretorius grimaced. “We may have to,” he said. “It’s going to be pretty hard to hide all five of us while we’re looking for an airlift or even a stairwell if one exists.”
“Perhaps not,” said Apollo.
“Oh?”
Apollo smiled. “Outside of Michkag, how many of these bastards have actually seen a human?”
“Back at the fortress in Orion, maybe a dozen,” said Pretorius. “In battle, who the hell knows?”
“And since none of us has ever heard of these foul-smelling aliens, maybe—just maybe—they’ve never seen a Man either.”
“You doing this because you like to talk?” asked Pretorius. “Or have you got some point?”
“What’s to stop us from walking straight to an airlift, taking it down to the second level, and marching right up to Michkag?” said Apollo. “If anyone questions us, we say we’re here to volunteer to fight for his side.”
Pretorius smiled and shook his head. “It’d make a great video adventure, but we’d all be dead or incarcerated before we got halfway to him.”
“Why?” asked Apollo.
“Because he is the most powerful tyrant in the goddamned galaxy,” answered Pretorius, “and that means he’s the best-protected. Remember, this castle can hold a million beings. Even if it’s half full, they’re still not going to let strangers from a race they’ve either never seen or else been to war with walk unhindered up to Michkag. If we wear our weapons, they’ll mow us down the second they see us. If we don’t, they may not shoot immediately, but we’ll sure as hell be incarcerated until someone cracks or Michkag himself gets a look at us. Don’t forget: he was in our company for a month while we flew to Orion and waited for the opportune time to make the switch.”
“What the hell,” said Apollo with a shrug. “It was an idea.”
“Oh, it’s time to do something,” agreed Pretorius. “I’d just prefer to live through whatever it is.”
“Sounds like every other colonel I ever knew,” replied Apollo with a chuckle.
“And the first thing we have to do is capture one of these foul-smelling aliens,” continued Pretorius.
“He’ll breathe on us and we’ll pass out,” said Pandora. “If just being near him doesn’t do the trick.”
Snake studied Pretorius’s face. “You know a way, don’t you?”
Pretorius nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
Snake smiled. “That’s why he’s the king and we’re all peasants.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” said Pretorius.
“Why the hell not?” demanded Snake.
“Because I’m modest to a fault,” he answered.
“Okay,” said Apollo. “What’s your foolproof plan for getting near one of them?”
“Any of you seen any garbage in the corridors?” asked Pretorius.
“No,” said Pandora, frowning. “Is garbage part of your plan?”
“Not exactly,” he replied. He walked over to the room’s sole window and looked out. “Nice view.”
“Okay, it’s a nice view,” said Apollo. “So what?”
“So it wouldn’t be a nice view if the window hadn’t been cleaned recently,” said Pretorius.
“I hope you’re not suggesting that we get some janitor to do our dirty work for us,” said Snake.
Pretorius chuckled. “You find one, I’ll ask him. But in the meantime . . .”
“In the meantime?” she said.
“It should be obvious,” said Pretorius. “The corridors are clean. Walls and ceilings are spotless. Windows have been washed.”
He waited for one of them to leap to what he thought was the obvious conclusion, and finally Apollo spoke up. “Oh, shit!” he bellowed. “Of course!”
“What do you know that I haven’t figured out yet?” demanded Snake.
“The odors are totally confined to the meeting rooms and the bedrooms,” said Apollo. “We know that. But we also know everything has been cleaned, and not by one of these foul-smelling aliens, or the corridors, the windows, everything, would smell like they do. So clearly some Kaboris are on this level’s maintenance staff. And since they breathe pretty much the same air as we do, and none of them are dead in the corridors or throwing up all over themselves in the rooms, it’s only reasonable to assume they’ve got some protective gear that lets them breathe pretty much the same air that we do.”
“Not identical,” added Pretorius. “We know that from Orion. But pretty close.”
“So the trick . . .” began Apollo.
“Is to find the protection the maintenance staff uses and adapt it to our own needs and structures,” concluded Pandora.
“That’s my job, I suppose,” said Snake.
“No,” answered Pretorius. “It’s Apollo’s.”
“Why the hell isn’t it me?” she demanded in hurt tones.
“This isn’t going to require any crawling or slithering in small spaces,” said Pretorius. “Apollo can pick any l
ock you can pick. And he’s got to be two and a half times your size.”
“So what?”
“So if he enters the wrong room or closet or corridor and the aliens have been there, the smell won’t knock him out as quickly as it will you.”
She thought about it for a moment, then nodded her head. “Okay,” she said. “It makes sense.”
“Okay,” said Apollo, “I might as well start now. Anyone from either race tries to stop me, they’re dead meat.”
He stepped out into the corridor, and the door slid shut behind him.
“And we’re deader,” commented Pretorius.
“Really?” asked Proto.
“They’re not going to find a thing of interest on him, including whatever phony ID he carries, so they’ll have to assume he’s not alone.”
“You’re always looking at the bleak side,” complained Snake.
“If you don’t anticipate it, you can’t react properly to it,” answered Pretorius.
Pandora walked over to a computer that sat on a small desk in a corner. “While we’re waiting, I can contact Irish, give her a progress report, and see how she’s doing.”
Pretorius shook his head. “I’ve got to think that if Michkag’s got spy devices anywhere, they’re in his headquarters. Besides, we haven’t made any progress to speak of. That doesn’t begin until we’re beyond all these foul-smelling bastards.”
“What race are they, I wonder?” asked Pandora.
“It lacks a certain dignity, but we might as well call them Stinkers until we know what they call themselves.” Snake chuckled. “On second thought, better not. Who knows what their translating devices will make of that?”
They sat silently on the mildly uncomfortable Kabori furniture for fifteen minutes, then ten more.
And then the door burst open and a grinning Apollo entered the door, a large sack slung over his shoulder.
“Don’t get too close to me for another couple of minutes,” were his words of greeting.
“You found some breathing mechanisms?” asked Pretorius.
Apollo nodded his shaggy head. “I found more than that—or, rather, it found me.”