“How tall is she?” I said.
“Tiny,” Lobo said, “one point six meters. Either she grew up in an extremely poor family on a backward world, or for some reason she or her parents chose that she should be that short.”
“Surely people have questioned her about her height,” I said. “What has she said?”
“In all the cases I can find,” Lobo said, “she has either refused to answer or said, and I quote,” here his voice turned soft, slightly high, and feminine, in what I assumed was an accurate rendition of Passion’s, “‘unedited fidelity, like my music.’”
“Is she some kind of anti-tech crackpot?”
“Not as far as I can find, at least not in any area beyond her approach to tech in performances and, possibly, her body.”
“Play me her most popular songs,” I said. “Start with the most recent hit, and go backward chronologically. Put titles and lyrics on the wall past the foot of my cot.”
“I live to be your personal music player,” Lobo said.
I closed my eyes at first, wanting to focus on the music. I expected to need the lyrics, but I didn’t.
The first song was about sadness and loss, Passion pledging to follow a lost loved one into death.
The next was completely different in every way, a rant against injustice and a tale of lost opportunity, her voice periodically raging into what could easily have turned into a screeching scream but which she managed instead to deliver as a burst of soaring sonic power. Her words and the strength of her voice united the instruments into one protester as surely and as easily as a skilled speaker uniting an angry crowd.
Back we went to a love song, but this one about a parent for her child, a blend of love and terror at the tough times ahead for the child, the roughness of the world that we all inevitably face growing up.
“Turn off the lyrics,” I said.
They vanished, and I listened in the dark.
On even the most heavily orchestrated songs, her voice surfed on top of the instruments, never overwhelming them but always clear. It was a big voice, a huge voice, resonant with power and able to move flawlessly from very high notes to very low ones. It was the kind of voice I felt honored to hear, all the more so because, if Lobo was correct, it actually was her voice, something that came from that small body, and not a human/machine hybrid more computer than person.
Sometime past the fourth song, I don’t remember exactly when, I fell asleep.
I dreamed again of Omani, but exclusively the young woman I had loved. I felt her caress again, the shape of her body against mine, the warmth of shared breaths as we lay head to head in the darkness and whispered of nothing of consequence.
I dreamed, too, of Maggie, a woman I might have loved, maybe even had loved for short times, but who had to live apart from me. In the dream she kissed me once again as she was walking away, and I again watched until she disappeared in the crowds on the street.
The dreams carried pain, pain and loss and sadness, but it wasn’t the kind of pain that woke me. In each case, I had lost someone special and dear, but I had chosen that loss, made the best decision I could, and though those decisions hurt, I knew they were right.
The music brought the dreams, but it also brought more focus on and appreciation of the bright and warm memories of those precious moments I had enjoyed with each of them. My mind accepted the dreams, and when they passed, I fell into a deeper sleep than I had enjoyed in many months.
I awoke when Lobo said, “Time to move, Jon. I think I’ve found our opportunity.”
CHAPTER 28
Jon Moore
I showered, surprised at how rested I felt. Though calling herself “Passion” was a gimmick I disliked on principle, I had to admit that it captured the unifying thread that ran through all the songs I’d heard.
When I was dressed, I grabbed some water and a few protein bars from our larder and headed up front.
“What did you find?” I said.
“Passion and her crew are in York right now,” Lobo said. “They’re gearing up for a three-month tour of shows on Haven, one of which will be the charity special in twenty days at Schmidt’s. They will move out tomorrow afternoon for the first show the following night.”
“So what’s our opportunity? How do I get onto Passion’s crew?”
“You don’t, at least not per se. Passion appears to travel with her own entourage and security staff, all of whom have been with her for a long time. They use a vehicle she owns that they customized for her. Everyone else, though, travels in locally hired transportation; when they change planets, they change transports. Her manager, Zoe Wang, rides alone with a lot of research material in a vehicle smaller than I am on the outside but less heavily armored and so not significantly smaller on the inside. From the data I can gather—and I am now into their private databases—the vehicle is her workspace on the shows, a sort of command central for the team. It and its driver are local and have not been with them for long.”
“What else does the driver do? Piloting the ship can’t really require much of his attention.”
“Of course not. He appears basically to do whatever Wang wants; the job description in the contract is vague.”
“So how do we replace him and the vehicle?”
“They hired him through an agency. I’ve been able to insert us into their database with a backstory that should hold. I’ve also made sure no other local talent in the agency’s database will be suitable. We just need the driver to prove to be unavailable.”
“So we bribe him or take him out in some nonpermanent way,” I said.
“Bribery is too risky and likely to fail,” Lobo said. “Everything I can learn about him suggests he is a good person. Further, the contract he signed with Passion’s team pays a small reward for identifying newstainment types who offer to buy information; they’ve used this approach to smear more than a few would-be dirt-diggers. And, he’s a fan of Passion’s, someone who contacted her multiple times about getting the job.”
I shook my head. “Taking him out is the only option, but I hate it. I’ll have to hurt him in some way, and he’ll lose money as well by not working.”
“We can fix the money problem,” Lobo said. “I can spoof the identify of any of a number of groups, including insurance companies, and offer him a payment from a policy the agency got for him. You supply the money, I intercept and manage his communications, and as long as he doesn’t talk to them in person, we can fix that end of it.”
“Good,” I said. “I have no desire to hurt or involve any more innocent people.”
“Taking him out, though, has to incapacitate him, and it has to happen very quickly.”
“I don’t want to break something if I can avoid it,” I said, “or to cause any permanent damage. Ideally, he’d get sick in some way that would last three weeks and leave him unable to do his job.”
“I can generate a serum with a blend of neurotoxins and slow-decay support molecules. It’ll knock him completely out for two or three days, and then he’ll have vertigo and stay sick for at least weeks.”
“Won’t the medtechs spot it and deliver the antidote immediately?”
“Please,” Lobo said. “Do you think I can’t outwit some hospital’s computers, at least for a while? I’ll go biological, separate the compounds and mask each, then build in some countermeasures and some spurious DNA. In my medtech stores, I have samples of every major biological weapon under consideration or in active use at the time of my deployment, as well as their antidotes. Most of them are now old, but most of them were also never used in conflict and were the private property of the Frontier Coalition. No one in this part of space should have any experience with them. I can—”
I interrupted him. “Okay. How quickly can you get this to me, and how can we find him?”
“For the compound,” Lobo said, “four hours, maybe a little faster. It’ll take that long for me to run a counter-surveillance route and land us back in York. He lives in Y
ork, so right now, because he’s local help, he’s sleeping at his apartment. You’ll have to get it into his body, which means catching him while he’s out or breaking into his apartment.”
I disliked what I was about to do to this man, but I saw no other option. If Jennie might even possibly be at Schmidt’s, or if I could save Omani’s life with whatever was there, I was willing to make him sick and put him out of work for a few weeks. I’d pay him a great deal for his trouble, which would never give him back the time but would at least get him more money than the tour would have paid. I knew it was wrong to rank Jennie or Omani over him, but as much as I hated it, I couldn’t think of another way I could get onto Schmidt’s estate.
“Can you think of any other solution,” I said, “either to joining Passion’s road crew or to infiltrating Schmidt’s estate?”
“None that aren’t far riskier and far more destructive than this one,” Lobo said.
“Neither can I,” I said. “Make the serum, and take us to York.”
CHAPTER 29
Jon Moore
His name was Ramon Lee, and from what Lobo told me as he flew me to the public landing area nearest the man’s apartment, he was just another guy trying to make a living and follow some dreams. He’d inherited the ship when his father had moved on to a different line of work, so he’d drifted into providing transportation for anyone who would hire him. He worked mostly through the one agency, though as best Lobo could tell from maintenance records he found, the man also moonlighted a bit.
Music was his passion. He played multiple instruments, all of them old and non-electronic. He wrote songs. He submitted long, passionate commentaries to multiple feeds, and he’d developed a small but loyal following for those pieces. He adored Passion and her music. When he’d heard she’d be touring on Haven, he’d offered his transportation services both through the agency and directly.
I learned all this and more out of guilt. I knew that’s what I was doing, but I couldn’t stop myself. I’ve provided safe courier services for packages and people at high prices and asked fewer questions, but I couldn’t get over the sense that I was doing the wrong thing here. I suppose part of me hoped that I’d find something that would make me feel better about what I was going to do, some bit of darkness in the man, something to justify the punishment I was about to mete out to him, but I didn’t.
I’d caused a lot of trouble for the caterer I’d set up on Studio, but I could barely remember his name. I wondered why this time was so very different. Maybe the sheer amount of time I’d be incapacitating Ramon Lee was what made this so hard, but that didn’t feel right either.
I’ve always questioned myself about my choices, turned them over and over in my mind, because I think that’s proper and fitting. Acting on instinct alone is more efficient, and I certainly do that in situations that demand it, but a big part of our humanity comes from our willingness to examine our actions. I didn’t want to lose that. When you don’t age and you can’t tell anyone anything important about yourself, when you can’t even conceive of a permanent relationship with another human, you start to question your own humanity. I needed to hold onto mine tightly.
“Touching down in two minutes,” Lobo said. “I’m coming in this time as a medical supply ship and you as a medtech, so keep that in mind in case someone talks to you. If this works out, we’re going to end up spending almost three weeks on a planet where two of the most powerful families in all the worlds are looking for you, so I don’t want to linger long enough on this run for anyone to notice me.”
I grabbed the serum, the comm, and a wallet set to another identity Lobo had built. This one wouldn’t last until the end of the day under close scrutiny, but all I needed from it was some money. “Ready.”
“Will you stay on comm this time,” Lobo said, “or do you and Ramon have some secrets I shouldn’t share?”
I chuckled. “You’re safe on that front,” I said. “I’ll be on the comm. Track me, and tell me where to go when I say I’m done.”
Lobo opened a hatch in his side.
I stepped out onto the permacrete. A group of four men and three women were walking together about twenty meters to my left, maybe heading to an early lunch. I angled to my right, away from them and toward the nearest exit in that direction. I wore another costume, a pair of gray work pants, a black shirt, and work boots I’d scuffed as I dressed. I couldn’t afford to be memorable, and I was heading into a working class area.
Ramon Lee lived four kilometers away. A taxi would get me there quicker, but if for any reason the police decided to investigate his illness, they’d check all transportation records for people in the neighborhood. It was risky enough that I had to get close to him; leaving a trail was out of the question. So I walked as quickly as I thought I could without attracting attention, a near running pace when I found myself alone on a block, and a quick walk the rest of the time.
When I was half a kilometer away, Lobo said over the comm, “He’s left his apartment.”
Crap. I couldn’t afford the time to chase him all over town. “Where should I head?”
“Slow down,” Lobo said. “He’s coming your way.”
Excellent. I slowed to a leisurely walk and looked around, a man with no cares in the world.
From what I saw when I looked closely, that might be the wrong attitude for this neighborhood.
The buildings were short and dirty, permacrete structures sunken into themselves like very old men after a long day of physical work. Warehouses stood side-by-side with residences. The first floors of a few buildings were bars; they all advertised food specials with signs that hadn’t changed in so long you could barely read them.
“Look up,” Lobo said. “He’s on the opposite side of the street from you.”
I recognized him from the few images Lobo had been able to find of him. With short, curly black hair, olive skin, and a wide, flat face, he wasn’t handsome, but his large, quick eyes made him memorable. I doubted the top of his head would reach my chin, but his shoulders were broader than mine.
About ten meters before we would have drawn parallel to one another, he turned into a bar, Hobbers, and vanished from view. I stopped for a second to consult my comm, as if something important that I had to read had just arrived. Two couples turned the corner nearest to Hobbers and followed Lee inside it. That was good. The more popular it was, the less likely it was that anyone would notice me.
“He must be going to eat,” I said. “I’m going in.”
“It’s less risky to wait,” Lobo said.
“Unless he stays a long time. We need him out of commission as soon as possible, so you can make sure his agency hears about it immediately, tells Passion’s crew, and they start searching for a replacement.”
“True,” Lobo said. “Once you’re inside, if you find that you six are the only people in the place—there’s too much heat radiating out of it for me to get a clear thermal image—get out and wait. Otherwise, it’s worth a shot. Remember, though, that once you administer it to him, you have only five minutes before he starts developing symptoms and feeling sick. I couldn’t delay the concoction any further.”
“Will do.”
I crossed the street, stepped through the open doorway, and walked inside Hobbers. The inside was a great deal dimmer and a little bit cooler than outside. Tables lined the right wall, with a small wall at the end of them creating a service space behind them. A bar ran the full length of the left wall. A huge aquarium ran the length of the wall behind the bar. It started at the height of the bar and extended upward a meter and a half. Smaller aquariums were built into the opposite wall as well, each starting at the same vertical position as the one behind the bar and also its height, but each of them was only a meter wide. The tables were positioned so each one was between a pair of the aquariums. A great many different creatures swam in the tanks. Most were fish of many different shapes and colors, some large and plain, others smaller and very brightly colored. Modified animal
s—cats and dogs with gills, eels with legs, and several varieties of rodents with both fins and feet—also occupied areas in the tanks.
I didn’t see Lee or any of the people who had entered after him.
Two men were working the bar, but both stood at the far end talking with a tall, thin, pale woman with brown hair that hung straight down her back almost to her knees. She was pointing at the tank. In front of her, a modified basset hound pulled itself up the tank’s glass by a set of long, fur-covered tentacles. Its long ears floated beside its head. Its large, brown eyes stared sorrowfully at her as it licked the glass.
“The octobasset is not for sale,” the farther bartender said.
“Nonsense,” the woman said. “Everything is for sale. It’s so beautifully...” she paused, “tentacular. I simply must have it.”
The nearer bartender noticed me and moved up the bar until he was standing opposite me. “First time?” he said.
I forced a smile and nodded.
“Do you want a drink, are you looking for the restaurant, or maybe,” he tilted his head toward the woman across from him, “are you also here to try to buy something from one of our tanks?”
“Restaurant,” I said.
He tilted his head toward the wall at the end of the bar. “Take a right after the little wall, go through the metal door you’ll see on your left, and you’ll be there.” He stared at me for a moment. “What brought you here?”
I’d noticed one of the never-changed special signs out front, but I’d stupidly forgotten to read it. “The special.”
It was his turn to nod. “Thought so. Word spreads. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but if you want my opinion, go for the meat and beans. You never know what the meat will be, but it’s tasty every time, and the meal will stay with you all day.”
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