The Inspector reappeared from the back room, handed me another report, this time a real one. “Looks good,” he said. “No sign of rats. Keep it clean and you shouldn't have problems."
"Thank you, Inspector,” I said, and watched him climb back over the counter and move on to Birnie. I set the report down and looked at the unwrapped pigbrick. If they'd tampered with the whole stash I'd be out of business, lose my stand and my freedom too. This was war: I don't let anybody mess with me, and I sure don't let them kill my customers.
I picked up the stand's comm and put a call in to security with a request for Garrit to come by. Then I went and got the next pigbrick out of the freezer. I unwrapped it and stared at the peel for ten minutes before I was sure it was okay.
* * * *
"Are you frotting insane?” Garrit exploded. “You can't just accuse the Turog Ambassador of attempted murder on account of a few stupid little holes! Anything could have made those!"
"Then what about this?” I slammed the fake inspector report down on the counter in front of him.
"What about it? Someone played a joke on you, that's all!"
"I called you,” I said through gritted teeth, “because you seemed like you might actually be almost intelligent."
"Well, you're wrong!” he shouted back.
"No fegging kidding!"
We glared at each other for a few moments, then Garrit let out a long breath. “Do you have any other ‘evidence’ to support this wild theory of yours?"
"No."
"Then what exactly do you expect me to do?"
I hefted the pigbrick, now mostly thawed and getting squishy. “Can you have this tested? Just to check? For me?” I smiled sweetly at him.
He made a face. “I don't care how cute you are, I'm not touching that thing. Is that really what your hot dogs are made of?"
"Yes, genius. What'd you think they were made of, starlight and flowers? I'll put it in a bag for you."
"I don't know how long it would take. A couple of days, probably."
"That's fine,” I said. I pulled a take-away bag from under the counter, dropped the pigbrick in with a heavy squelch, and handed it across to Garrit.
He took it reluctantly. “You owe me one,” he said.
"Sure!” I answered brightly. “If you find out it's not poisoned, I'll make you a whole batch of dogs from it."
He turned a little pale and turned away, and I watched him go. I had to admit, for a completely useless and stupid jerk he did have a nice ass.
* * * *
"Psssst."
I looked up from the day's numbers, halfway through the ordering screen, to the dimly lit concourse that was now closed. A pair of anxious, filth-ringed eyes peered at me from just beyond the half-closed gate. “Loo?"
"I shooted some rats with my gun,” she said.
I stifled a yawn, glanced back down at my figures. “Yeh, how many?"
"Three. Then I chased another up the pipes to station top. Blammed it close, but it keeped running and got away."
That explained the noises I'd heard in the night. “I still don't think it's a good idea for you to use that gun. What if someone heard?"
"Did,” she said, her glance darting away from mine. “Came out in a special bassader stall chasin’ it, and a scary alien was there. One big bug eye."
"The Turog.” Why wasn't I surprised? Come to think of it, hadn't Loo found the gun in a quad stall? What if the Turog had hid it there for later?
"It chased me,” Loo said. “Said I was vermin, should be me all shot up, not the rats. I runned back into the pipes."
"Loo, the Turog are dangerous."
"Got away."
"But what if you hadn't?"
She rolled up one sleeve. An angry red mark crossed the skin. “Grabbed me, but I kicked its eye and it let go. Said it would find me, can't hide. I'm all sorts of scared, Verah. Someone been in my space today."
"Someone was in the utility tunnels?"
"Went through my stuff when I was down in the below pipes. Big mess,” she said.
I wondered what sort of stuff she had, and thought I was better not knowing. “It might be whoever lost that gun, trying to find it,” I said.
"Took my stuff!” she said. “Going to come back and kill me in my sleep. Made messes out of the quad stall where I finded the gun, lookin’ for it too. I didn't mean to see it. Didn't mean to!"
"Didn't mean to see what? The gun? The Turog?"
"The ticky box in the bassader room,” Loo said. “I was only looking for my stuff that got stole."
"Ticky box?"
"The ticky box. It counts numbers till they go away. Someone hided it inside a fancybox. Verah, it's going to come kill me for finding it."
Ticky box that counts numbers? That didn't sound good. “Loo,” I said. “Do you mean it was a bomb?"
She nodded miserably. “What do I do?"
"I'll call Garrit,” I said. I picked up the comm, then looked at her sternly. “You stay quiet, zero?"
"Zero,” Loo said, so I dialed the security node.
"It's late,” Garrit growled at me when he finally answered. “What do you want?"
"Loo told me she saw a bomb up in the conference room where the ambassadors have been having their talks,” I said. “You need to go check it out."
"'Loo said'? The toilet-cleaning kid is suddenly a bomb expert?"
"She described it to me,” I said. “It sounded just like a bomb, it really did."
"Where is she?” he asked.
"I don't know."
"I've got to warn you, one of the Ambassadors heard weaponsfire in the pipes and saw Loo with a gun."
"Maybe she was up there shooting rats,” I said.
Garrit frowned. “Don't make jokes. This is serious, Verah. If you know where she is...?"
"More serious than the Turog trying to blow up the Gnetsians and your stupid talks? We need to stop it!"
"Stop it? What do you know about anything? You're just a concession girl! Security isn't exactly your area of expertise. If you even can be said to have one at all!"
"Yeh, and what great skills do you have? Just because someone gave you a gun and a badge doesn't mean you're not an idiot! I'm telling you there's a bomb on the station! Don't you care about that?"
"No, because there's no bomb. It's just another lie by some silly, over-imaginative, trouble-making girls who are obviously desperate for my attention,” he said. “As flattered as I—"
"Desperate for your attention?” I started to yell. “You bloated, arrogant human gas-bladder of a—"
"Fine!” Garrit yelled back. “Stop pestering me or I'll have you arrested for wasting my time! Goodbye!"
The comm disconnected.
Loo and I stared at each other for a while. “Mighta not called him a gas-bladder,” she said quietly.
"Shut up,” I said and slammed down the comm. “The station could blow up and we could all die, and what does he do? Nothing! Mr Useless Tighty-Pants Security Guy! Nothing!"
"Die anyway,” Loo said sadly. “Going to get me sleeping."
Around us, the concourse was quiet. Birnie and Hom had already closed up for the night, liking to do their own numbers in the morning. It was just me and Loo.
"Climb over,” I said, before I could think better of it. “And don't touch anything you don't have to."
Loo just stared at me.
"It's up to you,” I said. “You want to go back to the pipes or hide here with me?"
She hopped over the counter without another word. I directed her into the back room and straight into the shower. “Don't worry about using a few extra water rations,” I called in. “I can cover the fines. Just get as clean as you can, Loo."
She stuck her head out. “Sofi,” she said. “My name's Sofi."
I hadn't known that. “Okay, Sofi,” I said. I handed her the tube of industrial soap and she handed out her clothes, which, trying not to breathe, I stuffed one piece at a time into the flash-recycler and tu
rned to instant ash.
"I'm going to be up front,” I shouted into the bathroom, and heard only a happy gurgling in response. I grabbed the whole box of sanizers and some air spray and went out to clean the counter where she'd climbed over it, and her dirty footprints on the floor leading right to me.
Loo—Sofi—hadn't even gotten out of the shower before all traces of her passage into my stand had been wiped away.
* * * *
I didn't sleep very well, kept thinking about that bomb and that maybe it'd go off at night by accident instead of the next day when the Gnetsians were back in the room. By morning, though, I'd gotten past the idea of finding Garrit and beating him in the head with his own fists until he came to his senses and listened to me. I had a plan—a real one.
I put a batch of synthetic potatoes into the hotcooker and unwrapped a fresh pigbrick while Sofi sat on the floor against the counter, out of sight. I'd found an old uniform of mine, and she looked an awful lot like me from when I was a kid except for not having any hair to speak of and only being like four feet tall. Whatever; she didn't look like Loo the toilet scrubber slave girl at all anymore, and that was the point.
"So what are we going to do?” she asked, her voice low.
"I think we're going to go get the bomb ourselves,” I said.
"How?"
I told her my plan. I'm not sure she liked it, but she didn't have one better so oh well. I made her walk around until she got used to the boots and then I picked up the food I'd prepared—twelve hot dogs, twelve fries—and stacked it neatly into a hot bag. Then we climbed over the counter, I pulled down the gate, and we headed for the lifts.
"Verah!” Birnie yelled. “Where you going? Who's your new helper? Some girl too ugly to make it as a whore?"
"My cousin, visiting me,” I said. “And none of the rest of it is your business, Fat-headed Birnie!"
He made a suggestive gesture at me as we walked past. “Hear you're losing business,” he said. “When you go under I'm going to buy you to be my wife, and then I'm gonna fix that smart mouth of yours. Make you my own whore. Already got the request in to the station, just waiting..."
I ignored him, but I was bristling inside. Cudder.
"I hate him,” Sofi whispered to me after we were past. “And his chicken-sticks are gummy an’ cold in the middle anyways. Figure he is too, nasty gummy man.” She made a big show of shivering in revulsion.
I smiled. Yeh, we were going to get along fine. As long as we didn't get ourselves blown up, anyway. I steered Sofi towards the elevator I'd taken when I'd gone up for that phoney apology from the Turog, nervous we'd get caught or stopped somehow, but nobody paid us any attention. I pressed the button for the Ambassador level and up we went.
When the lift stopped and the doors opened, Garrit was standing there in front of us. Behind him, the Turog was sitting on its own folded-up legs, its back to us, as across the table the Gnetsians were just pulling out their chairs. “What are you doing here?” he hissed.
"I brought lunch for the Ambassador,” I said, loud enough for my voice to carry, and I saw the Gnetsian Ambassador look up and twitch his nose side to side and smile. I opened the hot bag and showed Garrit the stacks of food. “Special free delivery, since they bought six dozen dogs this week. Plus I'm training my new helper,” I said. Sofi smiled anxiously at Garrit and he scowled back at her, no recognition in his eyes.
I reached into the hot bag and handed Sofi the fries, then walked around the table to the Gnetsians and began laying out the dogs in front of them, four apiece. The Turog started to rise, making a warning clacking sound with its teeth, and Garrit started forward from the door.
"Uh-oh!” Sofi called out. “I dropped a fries!” A single plastic tray of fries lay upside down on the expensive carpeting, little golden sticks scattered across a wide area.
"I'm sorry!” I said. “I'll clean it up right away! I'm so sorry! She's new!” I got down on my hands and knees and started picking up the fries. Everyone's eyes were on me. Sofi backed away from the scene, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her pick up a small decorative box from the side table and slip it into the hot bag that lay open on the conference table.
"I can send my cousin up with more fries,” I said.
The Gnetsian Ambassador shook his head. “Is right so already,” he said. “Not needing. Thanking you for the pig dogs and fries also."
I think that meant we were off the hook. “Thank you very much,” I said, and I bowed to the Ambassador before I grabbed Sofi's arm and started pulling her gently towards the door.
The Turog Ambassador had stood and got between us and the lift door. “Vermins,” it hissed. It reached out a claw and poked me hard in the chest. “Is why here, truth? Trickinesses?"
"Truth?” I said, and put my hands on my hips and gave him my best angry stare. “I like the Gnetsians and I wanted to show them that I appreciate them as customers. Unlike you, you big ugly bug-made-out-of-sticks!"
Garrit lunged for the Turog before it could attack me, and Sofi and I dodged around them into the lift. Behind us, I thought I heard a chuckling sound from the Gnetsians.
The lift doors closed, and I had to resist the urge to sit down on the floor of the elevator, I was so relieved to be out of there. “You got it?” I asked.
"Yeh.” Sofi peeked into the bag. “Numbers small now."
"Great,” I muttered. What was I doing? Garrit was right—I was just a concession girl. What did I know about bombs?
The lift reached the concourse. It was busy, nearly the height of lunch, and there was a line at both Birnie's and Hom's. I tried not to think about the business I'd lost as I took the bag back from Sofi and walked, as calmly as I could, over to the emergency station. I lifted the box out very carefully and cycled it into the disposal. A few moments later it was shot out into space.
"Is that it?” Sofi asked as we walked back to my stand.
"I hope so,” I said. I smiled, feeling almost giddy all of a sudden, and threw up my gate and hopped over the counter. “You hungry? I can make us some—"
Outside the windows on the far side of the station there was a soundless flash. “Oh, feg,” I said, and I sat down fast on the floor as my legs gave out under me. “It really was a bomb."
"Said so,” Sofi said. “Ticky box."
* * * *
* * * *
Sofi was snoring quietly on Pa's old bunk as I lay staring at the ceiling, thinking about guns and bombs and the Turog and Garrit and listening to all the faint sounds of the station at night. What would the Turog try next? Would Garrit believe me the next time? What if he didn't? What was I going to do with Sofi? Technically, I'd stolen her—she was station property, no matter that she was just a kid. Eventually they'd find her.
There was a faint click at my back door, and I was wide awake. I listened, not daring to breathe. A few minutes later the sound came again, as if someone was messing with the outside lock plate.
I swung down off my bunk, landing lightly on the floor in my bare feet, and shook Sofi. When she opened her eyes, I motioned for her to be silent. Grabbing her gun off the desk, I pushed Sofi out of the back room into the front of the stand, where she crouched down, wide-eyed, in the far corner. Then I flattened myself against the wall to the side of the door, gun in hand, thinking that if I noticed how frightened I was I was going to shake so badly I couldn't shoot the air.
There was a faint zap, something shorting out, and the sound of the back door opening.
Time passed as slow as pain, waiting, listening to faint footsteps, a low rustle as if a blanket had been pulled off a bunk. Then the door to the back room started to open, slowly, silently. A gun appeared and a hand with it. Not a Turog hand, but a human hand. Frot it, I didn't think I could shoot a human!
Sofi stared at me, her eyes bright white in the darkness.
Making a face, I pointed the gun at the hand and squeezed the trigger. There was a bright flash and zap and a smell like burning pigmeat, and a scream of
pain and frustration as the attacker dropped his gun and lunged forward through the door towards me. I grabbed the giant pink ceramic pig off the counter beside me and smashed it down on the attacker's head with all the strength I had. The intruder crumpled, falling to the floor, and I hit him twice more to be sure as Sofi scrambled forward and grabbed his fallen gun.
As soon as the culprit was down, I hit my alarm, then stood there shaking as Sofi held the gun at him. She was probably a better shot than me anyhow, what with all her practice shooting at rats, so I knelt down and turned the man over.
Fat-headed Birnie. Well. I wouldn't have guessed that.
Still didn't like the Turog though.
* * * *
"Birnie confessed it all,” Garrit told me later. “He's part of a faction of alien-haters who call themselves ‘Humans First', and he was planning on killing both the Turog and the Gnetsians. The gun was in the quad stall so he could jump the Turog when it came in to do its, ah, business. And yeh, the pigmeat was poisoned, just as you thought. With the Gnetsians coming here every day, it seemed like a good way to get them and let you take the blame. He had plans to bail you out, and then...” Garrit winced. “Well, then he'd own you, of course. He had no way of knowing the real inspector would be coming the next day. The bomb was a desperate last try, and would have taken out both ambassadors if you hadn't stuffed it out the disposal. The station's confiscated his chicken-stick store and all his assets, and he'll be going to prison for a long time—a Basellan prison, I might add, not an Alliance once."
"Good,” I said. I was trying to find a way to put the pig back on the counter where the big old chip out of one side didn't show. Birnie had a hard head, I guess.
Garrit stared at his knuckles for a moment, then watched me adjust the pig again. “There's more,” he said. “Both the Turog and the Gnetsians are very appreciative of your efforts."
"Well, if the Turog wants to say thanks, this time I'd rather it does it without making me stand around for an hour."
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #217 Page 10