The Wind After Time

by Chris Bunch

  Chapter Three

  I find,” Sector Marshal Jagua Achebe dictated, “after a complete survey of the evidence, that the deceased, Innokenty Khodyan, met his death while resisting being served with a correctly drawn warrant for… for… you put whatever the charges were in, David, before you final this document for my signature. I further attest that Innokenty Khodyan’s body was inspected by me, on this date, and I certify the corpus is in fact that of the charged being.”

  “I also certify the warrant hunter, one Joshua Wolfe, is well known to me as a reputable citizen who has previously served warrants, on a freelance basis, for the Federation and at no time has behaved in an unprofessional, careless, or bloodthirsty manner.”

  “This inquest is duly closed.” She released the microphone, and it disappeared into the ceiling. Achebe looked down once more, and Innokenty Khodyan’s frozen eyes stared back. She slammed the drawer shut.

  “That’s that. No known estate, no known next-of, nobody gives a rat’s ear, so we can crispy the critter after a decent spell. Maybe this afternoon, when we get back from lunch.” She went out of the morgue, and Joshua followed her down a long corridor.

  “Hell in a whorehouse, Joshua,” she said over her shoulder. “When you go and kill somebody, you don’t mess around. You could float a lifter through that hole in his chest.”

  They went into her office. It was big, intended to reflect the dignity of her position, and Achebe had taken advantage of every square inch. It looked like a crime lab had exploded.

  The walls were lined with 2D solidos. Achebe looked at one as if she’d never seen it before. There was a line of soldiers in dress uniforms, waiting to be awarded medals by some forgotten dignitary whose back was to the pickup. One soldier was a younger Achebe. Not far from her stood Joshua Wolfe, also at rigid attention. The scar that now etched the corner of his mouth wasn’t there.

  Achebe tapped the picture. “We were a lot prettier then. At least, I was.”

  Wolfe was looking at another picture. “That one’s new.”

  It showed Achebe wearing a shipsuit with the three stars of a Federation vice admiral on it. She was on the bridge of a ship, staring at the pickup in astonishment.

  “Somebody sent it to me about three months ago,” Achebe said. “Said she shot it when the word came over the com about the Al’ar. We were off Sauros then, waiting for the landing order.

  “She was one of my weapons officers and thought I might like to have the pic to remember the day. As if I’d forget it, sitting there, trying to handle the idea that maybe I wasn’t going to die in the next hour or so.”

  “Guess nobody’ll forget that day, now, will they?”

  “Guess not,” Joshua said, his voice flat.

  “Where were you when you heard?”

  “About a parsec and a half under you. Waiting to give the signal.”

  “You were with them when it happened? On the ground? You never told me that.”

  “I wasn’t with anybody,” Joshua said. “I was hiding in a spider hole, staring at my watch.”

  “So what do you figure happened to them?”

  Joshua stared at her, his face blank. After a time Achebe realized he wasn’t going to answer her. She slid behind her desk, grace denying bulk.

  “Too early for sauce?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “The sun’s up, isn’t it?” Joshua set a skull with a large hole in it on the floor, next to the archaic weapon that might have caused that hole, and eased into a cracked leather chair that didn’t match any of the others in the room.

  Achebe took two bulbs from a floor unit and handed one to Joshua. He pulled the tab off, waited until the bulb iced, then sipped. Outside, there was the dim hiss of antigrav traffic and every now and then a high, shaking whine as a ship lifted from the nearby field.

  “Just to remind you of something you seem to have let slip your mind,” Achebe said. “Warrant hunters don’t get but their expenses when they bring back the bounty in a meat chest. Even when an upstanding official’s willing to say said warrant hunter isn’t any more homicidal than anybody else in these parts.”

  Joshua did not bother answering.

  “You losing it, my friend?”

  “Looks like,” Joshua said ruefully. “I had him cold. I should’ve hit him with a hypo or a nerve block instead of giving him a chance to make a damned fool out of both of us. Maybe I better start looking for a nice quiet job building bombs or something.”

  He stared at Achebe as the grin slowly split her face. “All right. What are you holding back?” he asked.

  “When you pulled down on Khodyan,” the Sector Marshal said, “that put an equally large hole in that 50K Federation warrant you would’ve gotten, as I’ve pointed out. However…”

  She took a microfiche from the desk and flipped it to Joshua. “You need not bother asking for a viewer. Private enterprise triumphs. That’s an E-transfer for one hundred thousand credits to the being who terminates Innokenty Khodyan’s nefarious career. Merry Halloween or whatever holiday you Christians celebrate.”

  “Who posted it?”

  “One Judge Malcolm Penruddock of Mandodari III. Back in civilization. But not that far. It’s about—”

  “I’ve seen Mandodari on the charts,” Joshua said. “What’s his interest?”

  “According to the full complaint I used to issue the warrant, he’s one of the honest joes Khodyan hit when he was out ripping and tearing. He posted this bounty after you’d already grabbed the official alert and gone snuffling off.

  “I guess ‘Judge’ isn’t a courtesy title, because he had enough clout to com me instead of sending his message through channels. Interesting note, Joshua. I had to remind him the law isn’t a private assassination service for rich bastards, since he wanted to offer the reward on the condition Khodyan wasn’t to be taken alive. Judges do go and presume they’re the only dispensers of justice, don’t they?”

  “Has he been told yet?”

  “As soon as we got the com that you were inbound with a meat crate, I shot one straight off. He authorized immediate payment. So you aren’t as poor as you thought.”

  Joshua scratched his nose, thinking. “Innokenty Khodyan killed some people this time around. Was that what set this Penruddock off?”

  “Big negative there. According to his com, he lost a chunk of his gem collection to Khodyan, but there weren’t any bodies involved. He was very interested in anything that was recovered. I had him ship me his original theft report.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  “You think it’s a little strange somebody gets that antsy about a bunch of rocks, too, eh?”

  Joshua studied the printout she passed to him, matching it with his mental inventory of the two jewel cases that now sat in Achebe’s safe. Penruddock certainly was a man who knew what to buy. Some of the finest stones were on his list, along with their valuation. The two trays of star sapphires Wolfe had paid Ben Greet with weren’t there. But the five four-carat marquise-cut diamonds he’d given Lil were. And one other: small stone, of unknown composition, semipolished, egg-shaped, approximately three inches by two inches in diameter. SENTIMENTAL VALUE ONLY.

  The Lumina.

  Joshua handed the list back. “I don’t know if it’s that strange,” he said. “I knew a man who collected string. He shot himself after he lost it all in a fire.”

  Achebe studied him closely, then put the list away and took out two more bulbs. “That’s got to be it, Joshua. Just another nut case with money. Surely there’s nothing more to it.”

  Her voice dripped disbelief.

  Chapter Four

  The slender brown-skinned man blocked the saber slash with his own blade and cut quickly with the long straight dagger in his left hand. Blood lined the upper arm of his heavyset opponent, who stumbled back, mouth gaping in seeming astonishment and fear. Blood oozed from half a dozen other light cuts on the man’s bare torso.

  Joshua Wolfe grunted, stood, picked up
his cloak, and edged his way past the big man’s knees.

  “ ‘Samatter, friend? A little blood get to you?”

  “I get bored at boat races,” Joshua said.

  “You think it’s rigged? Somebody better check your pupils, bud. I got a dozen large ones saying Yamamoto’s just playing with him.”

  “Yeah,” Joshua said. “Yamamoto’s at six to five, Lopez eight to one, and who’s doing all the bleeding? Plus nobody’ll take a bet on anything beyond the sixth, at any odds. Tell me that’s not an invitation to dance.”

  “You just picked the wrong boy,” the big man said.

  “Maybe so,” Joshua said indifferently, and forced his way into the aisle. “I make a lot of mistakes like that.”

  The big man looked after him, worried.

  Joshua was at the coliseum’s exit when the roar began. Yamamoto’s saber and dagger clanged onto the mat, and his arms crossed overhead in surrender. The crowd didn’t sound as if it liked what had happened.

  Wolfe pulled on his cloak and went out. The streets were wet with the drizzle that had fallen all day. He walked down a block, checking his back now and then in shop windows. He was clean.

  He thought about walking back to the hotel but decided not to. He started to subvocalize, then caught himself. His ship was half-gutted in one of Carlton VI’s yards for a long-overdue refit and update, so there was no one to talk to. He took a com from his pocket, keyed a number, and spoke softly. Then he leaned against a building, waiting. There was a doorway nearby he could have sheltered in. But he liked the rain.

  After a while a red-painted lifter slid down the street and grounded next to him. Joshua clambered in beside the driver. “Sorry to take so long,” the driver said. “Everybody’s out and about tonight and scared spitless they might melt.”

  Joshua smiled and gave an address. The lifter went down the avenue, no sound in its cockpit but turbine hum and the occasional buzz as the demisters cleared the windows.

  The lifter stopped at the address Joshua had given. Joshua had coins ready and dropped them into the driver’s hand. He got out of the lifter and went across the sidewalk quickly, into the café’s brightness.

  The house musician had a metronome-bass going and was weaving a polyphonic line across it. His eyes were half-closed, as his fingers plucked notes from the squares holoed irregularly in the air in front of him. Joshua thought the piece might have started life as a medieval lieder.

  The musician said hello to Joshua as he went past.

  A red-faced man wearing a gold woman’s wig waved and shouted at Joshua to join them before they got too drunk to see. Joshua smiled, shook his head no, and went to the bar.

  He ordered Armagnac and ice water. He sipped, staring at the antique mirror behind the bar, not seeing it. He was thinking about a gray stone and a judge who’d tried to take out a murder contract for a hundred thousand credits. A woman wearing loose silk harem pants and a bare-midriff blouse slipped up beside him. “You don’t have to drink alone,” she said in a voice that sounded worn-out.

  Joshua nodded to the bartender, who busied himself at the mixpanel. “Jean-Claude’s out of town?”

  “Out of town or with somebody else,” the woman said as if it didn’t matter very much which. She took the tall glass from the bartender, made a slight toast in Joshua’s direction, and sniffed deeply at the gas as it rose from the mouth of the container.

  “Thanks for the offer, Elspeth,” Joshua said. “But I’m not fit company tonight.” The woman shrugged, patted his hand, and went away.

  Joshua finished the Armagnac. He dropped a coin on the bar and went back out into the rain.

  The streets were as deserted as the sidewalks. An occasional lifter hissed by, sending water swirling up as it passed. Joshua thought he could hear surf crash against the cliffs behind his hotel. A coryphodon honked wet unhappiness from the zoo half a mile away.

  The hotel’s huge lobby was deserted except for two desk clerks trying not to yawn in each other’s faces and a middle-aged man with a short haircut frowning his way through the headlines projected on a portable holoset. There weren’t any messages. Joshua considered a nightcap, but the taste in his mind was wrong.

  He went to one lift and touched the porepattern lock. The door opened, and he entered. As the door closed, Joshua turned and saw the man with the crew cut looking at him, then away.

  The lift had only one sensor. Joshua touched it, and the lift soared toward the hotel’s roof. When the door opened, he waited a moment before he went into the wood-paneled corridor. There was no welcoming committee. Staying close to the wall, he walked toward the door at the end. It opened as he reached it, and he went into his home.

  The penthouse had a huge multileveled living room, two bedrooms and freshers, a library, and a workout room. Glass doors showed the terrace garden that could serve, and had, as an emergency landing platform. In the master bedroom, hidden in a windowsill compartment, was a steel-wired ladder that could drop two floors to the balcony of a small room he’d leased through a cutout.

  Joshua checked the security board. The sensors showed one entry by someone using an approved key and giving the current code. Fires crackled in the living room and bedroom fireplaces. Loughran, the nightman, had followed his instructions.

  Joshua closed his eyes, then opened them, looking around as if seeing everything for the first time. It was very neat and looked as if it had been decorated by a man with a lot of money, time to make up his mind, and quiet tastes. It also appeared as if the occupant was a man who’d owned very little for a very long time and who had to keep that little in perfect condition. The penthouse appeared to be just as he had left it at dusk.

  Joshua frowned, corrected the slightly skewed hanging of one of the Hogarths, then crossed to a cabinet. He took a medium-aperture blaster and a fume mask out and went to a couch that faced the entrance. He put the mask on a table and sat down with the gun in his lap, thumb resting on the pistol’s safety, index finger touching the trigger guard.

  Some time passed. A smile touched Joshua’s lips, and he swept his hand through the air. His motion opened the penthouse door.

  A man stood there. A look of surprise ran across his face, then vanished. He walked into the suite, hands held up to either side, palms facing Joshua. Joshua gestured, and the door closed.

  “You’re still hard to sneak up on, Joshua.”

  “You’d better give your boy downstairs some peripheral vision training,” Joshua said dryly.

  “Hard to find a good op when peace breaks out all over. Harder to keep him in Intelligence after he’s trained. Can I sit down?”

  “Pour yourself a drink first. Third decanter from the left’s got your brand in it.” Joshua put the pistol on the table but left his hand draped over the couch’s arm.

  The man went to the sideboard, found a glass, and poured a small drink. He did not put ice in the glass. “You want something?”

  “I’ll get it myself. In a few minutes.”

  “Aren’t we being a little untrusting?” Still moving carefully, hands in view, the man sat across from Joshua. There was nothing special about him. One would never remember his face an hour after meeting him. He would fit seamlessly onto any street on any world and never be noticed. He wore casual clothes in quiet colors. The name he’d given Joshua fifteen years before was Cisco.

  “I’m a creature of habit,” Joshua said. “Every time you show up out here in the Outlaw Worlds, life’s got a tendency to get interesting.”

  Cisco painted on a brief smile, then took it away. “I’ve got something special.”

  Joshua made no response. Cisco tasted his drink. “I understand you blew a warrant recently. Or was that on purpose for some reason my leak didn’t know about?”

  “You heard right. I slipped. What do you have?”

  “I said this one was special, and I meant it,” Cisco said. “First I’ll give you the terms. Federation Intelligence guarantees all expenses, no questions asked. One h
undred K payment on top, even if you draw a blank. You make the recovery intact, we’ll pay one million credits. Delivered here on Carlton or anywhere else you want, in any shape you want. It’s an NQA—no questions asked.”

  “You did say special, didn’t you?”

  “I did. And you’re the only one being offered the contract.”

  “I’ve heard that before, believed you, gone out, and found every amateur headhunter and half of your operatives stumbling around playing grab-ass in a fog they made up themselves.”

  “You can’t blame me for something like that. You know you can’t always give an operative all the data before you put him in the field. You never did, when you were running someone.”

  “That was during the war.”

  “Maybe mine went on a little longer than yours.”

  “Maybe,” Joshua said, tired of the fencing. “Go ahead, Cisco. Let’s hear the proposition.”

  Cisco leaned forward. “There’s one Al’ar left alive. He’s somewhere in the Outlaw Worlds.

  “We want you to take him.”

  On the terrace outside rain splashed harder. Cisco’s eyes glittered.

  Chapter Five

  Wolfe forced control.

  “Hardly a new rumor, Cisco. Surprised that you’re spreading it.”

  “It’s not a rumor.”

  “Look,” Joshua said, trying to sound ostentatiously patient. “Since the war, since the Al’ar… disappeared, there’s been stories floating around that they’re still out there. Hiding behind a pink cloud or something, waiting to come back and wreak terrible revenge.”

  “I know the stories. This one’s different, which I’ll prove in a second. But let me ask a question,” the Federation agent said. “They had to go somewhere, right? We were pushing them hard, but it was still their choice, as far as anything I’ve heard. I’ve never believed that crap about mass suicide. Doors swing both ways.”