by Janet Morris
He put the stunner carefully in its belly holster and paced the rich young criminal as the kid walked into the hall. If he broke for the elevator, Remson was going to shoot him.
"Yeah?" Cummings's head was high but his chin was quivering.
"This place is crawling—literally—with contraband. We're in a heap of trouble, Ricky boy. And if you want out of it, you're going to do exactly what I say."
"I don't do what anyone says. When my father hears about this unauthorized search and seizure—"
"Stuff it, before you threaten a Territorial officer and things get worse. You better not have touched that girl in—"
Cummings looked at his feet.
"You're telling me you did?"
"We're in love," said Cummings, his glance meeting Remson's like a slap across the cheek. "There's nothing wrong with that."
"Then you'll marry her?"
"I—have every intention of doing just that."
"Oh, good. I'm sure your father will be thrilled."
"I don't think you know my father."
"I think I've got a smuggler on my hands. You and your girlfriend have got to do exactly what we tell you, to the letter."
"You stupid cop. We can't go anywhere with you." Young Cummings had his father's icy stare. "If Dini's folks get hold of us, we're both dead meat. If you know what's good for you, you'll pretend you didn't find us. I'm a smuggler; you're right. I'm going to smuggle Dini out of here, where it's safe. . . ."
"There's no place safe enough for you two. Didn't you see all those people down there? All those official vehicles? Now, we're going down there. And I'll have somebody come up here and fumigate this place. Those Leetles aren't going to officially exist—"
"No! You can't do that! The Brows will die. I can't let you— "
Remson realized that Cummings was high as a kite on Leetle. But that didn't mean an interrogation was invalid.
And there was something here he'd missed. . . .
"Brows? What's a 'Brows'?"
The kid's mouth closed into a tight, thin line.
Then it cycled for Remson: "The raccoons, right? You're going to tell me all about the Brows, hotshot. Right now. The whole truth. Hold anything back, and I won't promise that I can get you out of whatever you've gotten yourself into. . . ."
Cummings spilled his guts. This kid had not only smuggled in a controlled life-form, deflowered a Medinan maiden, and subsequently provided illegal drugs to her, but now it developed that he'd smuggled in a life-form previously undiscovered, as well.
Smuggling wasn't a minor offense. Smuggling in an unknown life-form, something that seemed to have psychological effects on third parties, something that made mockets take their shape . . . These kids were in so much trouble that letting the Medinans execute them might have been the kindest alternative.
But Remson couldn't do that. The Alis' lives were at stake. And maybe Croft could argue that Medinan justice would have to wait until the Threshold legal system finished with these two kids.
Given the mess at hand, and the Cummings family's clout, that could take twenty or thirty years.
"Let's go, Cummings. Get your lady friend and be ready to smile for the cameras. And count your blessings it's us, not the Medinan secret service, that found you."
Remson escorted the boy back into the room, where Dini Forat was standing stiffly beside Ali-7, on whose shoulder rode the mocket, still in the raccoonlike form of a Brow.
Ali-7 said, "Remson, what now?"
"Now we make everything come out all right," Remson said casually, giving the terrified girl his best smile.
And Dini Forat said, straightening up, "The Brows can do that."
Young Cummings said, "Dini, shut up!"
Ali-7 went for the kid's throat in a blur Remson was nearly too slow to intercept.
While he grappled with the Ali, the mocket scrambled onto Remson's shoulder. In a sudden burst of enlightenment, Vince Remson understood about the Brows.
"Ali, come on. You know we can't do it this way." Vince Remson was holding Ali-7's wrists in his hands, and young Cummings was backing out of harm's way.
The Ali was as strong as Remson, and struggling to break free.
"Ali, I'm counting on you to take both of them to the Secretariat and stay with them—you've got to protect the two of them now. I can't be with them all the time."
"That's right," Dini Forat said. "This is my husband, my beloved, Ali-7. You must protect him as you protect me."
The Ali slumped in Remson's hold.
Remson let him go. "Good. Now, can we lock this place up and close ranks against what's waiting out there."
"I want to make a call. I have a right to make a call," said Rick Cummings, already at the vidphone.
"Why not? We've got all day." Remson didn't, but he couldn't risk a procedural error. "Just make sure you tell your lawyer that this is protective custody, no charges have been filed by my office yet, and that everybody's concern is to get you to the Secretariat without the Medinans getting hold of you."
He didn't bother to tell the kid that there already was a battery of his father's lawyers downstairs. Somebody would patch him through to the waiting attorneys and those attorneys might have more luck talking sense into the idiot son of NAMECorp than Remson'd had.
With the mocket back on Ali-7's shoulder, Remson shepherded everybody out and closed the door, slapping a Secretariat lock on it, once Cummings had put down the phone and segregated the Brows from the Leetles, locking the Brows in his bedroom, because otherwise, "they'll eat all the Leetles, get sick and die, and there goes your evidence. You wouldn't want that that, would you?"
Remson wasn't sure whether the kid was just stupid, or good and stupid. If he'd been Cummings, he'd have let the Brows eat the Leetles and die, solving at least half of the problem.
But he wasn't Cummings, thank heaven.
And he was in a hurry: he had Riva Lowe waiting for him, once he got these juvenile offenders settled where no harm could come to them.
CHAPTER 15
Once a Pilot
The port police and Reice's ConSec sharpshooters were all over the docking bay like mold on old cheese.
In the situation van, pulled up parallel to the Relic ship just beyond the metal safety wall, Riva Lowe rested her forehead on her hand in frustration, hunched over the display console.
The screen directly in front of her showed her an overhead, ambient-light view of the entire scene, with the shooters' call signs indicated in red by their positions.
The screen to her right gave her a schematic of the Relic ship, with heat-signature readouts indicating Joe South, his operational fusion power plant, life-support system, and the seven operational consoles within the ship.
The screen to her left was pulling in a concurrent view, mirrored from the Relic ship's inboard sensors: she could see what the ship's AI was seeing; she could read the emanations right off STARBIRD's screens, just the way Joe South did, even to the audio they were microwaving off the ship's windshields.
The last screen gave her combat readout, currently from Reice's helmet, where he was keeping track of his "boarding" force.
That one, she ignored. She'd determined that it would be useless. She had no intention of forcibly boarding the Relic ship, or allowing anyone to try using the sharpshooters, no matter how many times she'd been told that the rubber bullets and tranquilizer loads wouldn't hurt the Relic pilot.
If the Relic pilot got frightened enough, and started playing with that power plant or his jump-capability, he could hurt her. Perhaps he could destroy the entire ConSec docking area. According to one expert program and three human specialists, he could even do some structural damage to Threshold if he engaged his spongejump function.
If she knew how dangerous the situation was, South knew it. Captain Joseph South wasn't stupid. She'd just finished listening to Consolidated Space Command's Lydia Jones tell her all about Joe South.
They'd been trying to dig up a li
ving relative—or descendent—of the pilot, to tweak a hot spot in his psych profile. "No luck," Jones said from a tiny screen below and to the right of the schematic display.
"Well, does ConSpaceCom have any more bright ideas?"
"We'll get back to you," said the tiny woman's face.
"The hell you will." Riva Lowe was nearly out of time. She could tell by the way everybody was acting. "You people haven't exactly done your best on this thing. Why's that? Why the quick discharge and boot out the door?"
"Director Lowe, my orders where Relics are concerned are very specific. We can't have these people making sweeping claims as to what the service—a defunct service—owes them. Any of these two-bit pilots could decide that they own half of Threshold Bank's assets, if they compound their back pay for five hundred years. Plus there's their psych profile problems. Nobody's interested in these people. We have a surfeit of information from their native time frames; it was the Information Age, you'll remember. They're of no historical significance, their abilities are minimal, and their feelings of disenfranchisement lead to unpleasant interactions with modern society."
"So what are you saying?"
The miniature face blinked at her. "We have every right to tell you that this man is no longer our concern. We have discharged him in good order. His back pay is being figured. We don't owe him a lifetime of rehabilitation. ..."
"That's not the right answer," Riva Lowe said. "Call me back when'you can tell me what I want to hear. Within fifteen minutes, or I'm going so far over your head, you'll never see the light of day again." She reached out to break the connection.
"Wait, Director." Jones's little face was pinched and drawn. "Look here. You can offer South whatever you wish, under your own authority. Just don't expect us to put him on our active duty list, as he'll probably demand, or to pension him for the rest of his life with expensive rehabilitation. He's really not our problem. We've the legal structure to support that determination. And no terrorist act by a single Relic can be allowed to interfere with that, no matter how high up my command tree you choose to climb."
Riva Lowe grunted. "Okay. I hear you. But you hear me! I'm going to do something about this pilot, and you're not going to remonstrate, officially. You're not going to give me a negative fitness report. You're going to support my decision, as long as it doesn't put him in a ConSpaceCom ship. Agreed?"
"Ah . . . agreed."
"What's his back pay?"
"For twenty years, with inflation, converted into our currency, about a third of a K-note."
"Let's make it 5 K-notes."
"Phew. Just arbitrarily?"
"The guy's been out there testing government equipment— United States government equipment—for five hundred frigging years. Don't you people have any—"
"Not in his biological time, he hasn't. He's been out eighteen months. Okay, Director." The woman looked down, and Riva heard the nearly inaudible tap of keys. "We'll pension him off that gross. But that's the best I can do."
"Great. I'll take it. This is logged and dated. Thanks for the help, Jones."
So much for military assistance. But she'd done better for South than he'd have done on his own. He wouldn't starve, although he couldn't live in luxury for the rest of his life.
She hoped he gave a damn. Lowe stared at the little screen, then sat back and stared at the larger ones. Where was Remson? Her negotiating team had broken for lunch, waiting for the representative from the General Secretary's office. Lowe wasn't hungry.
She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes until they came back. If she was going to try anything decidedly nonstandard, this was the time to do it.
Just as she was punching orders into her keypad, Reice called in: "Come on, Riva, let's go in and get the bastard. What if he decides he's never going to talk to us, just blow us all to perdition?"
Reice's face blossomed where his team readouts were: he was looking into his own scanner so that she could see his face.
"Reice, when I want your advice, I'll ask for it." Now was her chance. "But I think I'm going to be able to get in there. And I need you to go along with my idea if I can. . . ."
"In there? You must be out of your—"
Lowe stabbed a button so that Reice could see her face, as well. "Did you hear me, Lieutenant?"
"Riva . . ." Reice's face worked. "If you'll take me in with you, I could live with it."
She might as well go in with a pulse rifle already blasting. "You can blow up the ship if I don't come out, Reice," she teased. "Think of it, all that nice flash and bang. . . ."
"Come on, this is serious."
"I've waited for the Secretary's negotiator as long as I can. We're scaring the life out of that Relic, holding him incommunicado like this. His ship's systems are picking up our invasive scans, you can bet."
"We're holding him incommunicado? If I didn't know better, I'd think you had a personal interest in this pilot. But since you don't take a personal interest in men—"
"Cut it, Reice. There're men, and then there's you."
Lord, this was all on the record. Why were they behaving like this? Why was she letting Reice get to her?
Still bristling, she continued, "Lieutenant, I'm putting you on notice that I may well enter the Relic ship within the next few minutes, and that I'll expect the required long-range support up to the ship's air lock, but that I'm going inside alone and I'm walking up to the ship alone."
She hadn't known that she'd decided to actually do that until the words came out of her mouth.
Reice knew that tone. "Director, it's your decision. ConSec can only disagree with your judgment, not your right to implement it. Reice out."
My, my, the lieutenant was testy.
But then, so was she.
Well, having declared herself on this probably suicidal course, she must proceed, or look like a total idiot.
Finishing the sequence that would allow her to hail STARBIRD on its standard com frequency, she felt as if someone else was in charge of her body.
If Remson showed up now, he'd probably give her a way to back down without looking quite so foolish.
Thinking of the possibility, she found herself hurrying, not dawdling.
She really did want to take care of this Relic situation, the way she'd promised Mickey Croft she would.
The screen cleared and she was looking at somebody who didn't have a soul in the world who cared about him. South was bleary-eyed and his face was puffy from sleep and bristly with beard. Depilatories weren't big in the early twenty-first century, she supposed.
"STARBIRD, this is Emergency Command. I'd like to come over there and talk to you, face-to-face. Just me. No large boarding party. Unarmed." She raised her hands to where he could see them, as if that would prove something. He was in his aft redundant control module. She could see that from her schematic. But she didn't expect to see a pillow behind his head. . . .
"Yo, Emergency Command. You mean your own self, lady?"
"I'm Director Lowe, the person in charge here." Hadn't she told him that? Hadn't they told him that? Hadn't anybody told him . . . but no, her orders had been specific. "I'm sorry I took so long, but I had to familiarize myself with the specifics of your case."
"Now I'm a 'case'?" The pilot's eyes narrowed. They seemed to be nearly all pupil.
"Now you are, since you've taken over that ship."
"My ship. I just want to take my ship and leave, lady. My mission's in interrupt. I need to return to my home base—the Earth's U.S. space station."
Had South lost what was left of his marbles? Was the stress too much? Was she too late?
"Your ship's safer here. Your mission's accomplished, Commander, as of your docking in this bay. You'd really better let me come talk to you in person. This is a very complicated mess you're in, and I want to help you get out of it."
"Yeah, I bet. Well, I want to continue to Earth, I told you. And I don't need a passenger. We're not set up for passengers. This is a testbed."
"If you know that, you ought to know to call me just plain old 'captain.' "
"Sorry. Captain." Riva Lowe's mouth was getting dry. Her eyeballs were beginning to tingle as they strained to read microdefinition from the pixels of her viewing screen, some hint of what was behind the pilot's facade. "May I have permission to come aboard your ship? I have some good news. I've made some progress on your behalf. I really want to sit down with you, face-to-face, and work things out."
"Come aboard my ship? Yeah, okay. If you put it like that. . ." He leaned sideways, out of her view. Then he was back. "Door's open, ma'am. Don't let the mess bother you. ..." And his screen blanked.
She blinked at the empty viewscreen. Just like that. Come aboard his ship . . .
The phrase gnawing at her, she prepared to do just that. Now that she was making progress, she had to follow up before Remson or someone else who could stop her appeared and spoiled everything.
She didn't understand why she felt so elated as she grabbed her briefcase, put it down—must go empty-handed—did the same with a handheld vidphone, and then ran out of the trailer, pinning a microtransceiver to her collar.
To hell with the video record. She spoke into the transceiver as she ran down the steps of the trailer and over to the kiosk: "Reice, he's letting me aboard. Don't do anything to get me killed, and I'll spot you a dinner."
Reice's voice came up from her blouse's collar. "On Spoke Nine, in Gravity Point Ten."
"Fine. We'll have spaghetti." What an infuriating man. But she knew it was Reice's way of apologizing, and saying he trusted her, after all.
The kiosk guards got out of her way when she said, "Get out of sight and put those rifles down."
Then she was all by herself, walking up the apron to the Relic ship in a wash of painfully bright floods.
The air lock below the red arrow on the black hull of STARBIRD wasn't open, she noticed as she got close. Had the pilot changed his mind?
Or was South going to do his worst, now that he had a human he could take with him if he blew the power plant?