by Ian Whates
Me? Nothing. I did exactly what you told me to do. I waited to see if he appeared and, when he did, made sure he didn’t get away, delaying him until you arrived.
Drake kept a firm lid on his thoughts as he went across and collected the small bundle of fur, scooping him up. He was conscious of the warmth of that compact body in the palm of his hand as the creature hopped off and then into the special pocket that all Drake’s clothes now sported, just behind the left shoulder. Sure you did. So why is he so terrified?
Beats me. Guess you must have had him rattled. You can be pretty formidable in the right mood, you know, certainly a lot more terrifying than a puffed-up little tat of fur like me.
Drake knew there was no point in pursuing this right now so he didn’t, content with filing the incident away for further reference. Some day he’d get an explanation for this and all the other little anomalies that seemed to occur around Mudball. Not today though; he would bide his time.
One thing he was increasingly certain of: there was a great deal more to his diminutive companion than met even his eye.
TWO
Buildings cut the skyline like a fistful of razors. Even the clouds scudding above the metropolis held a rosy pink glow – as if some artist had added the hint of colour as embellishment, a suggestion of blood summoned forth by steel, glass, and concrete edges where the buildings scraped the heavens. It was one of two things Pelquin loved most about New Sparta, that skyline; the other being the inordinate amount of wealth sloshing around the place.
New Sparta was the banking capital of human space. In Pelquin’s experience, bankers usually demanded blood before they would even consider parting with a fraction of the wealth they shepherded, so the sky’s ruddy hue struck him as wholly appropriate.
He’d even seen an Xter here once; the very first of that strangely unsettling alien race he’d ever set eyes upon. To date, Xters were the only other intelligent species mankind had encountered, but the two races rarely mingled, warily eying each other across the mutually agreed boundaries that arbitrarily defined their respective ‘space’ in an uneasy peace founded on tolerance rather than welcome. Pelquin had gained no more than a fleeting glimpse, straining to see over the heads of a crowd as security ushered the gangly figure through a hastily cleared lobby. But it was a moment he would never forget. The Xter looked insectlike, abhorrent both in form and in its darting, stuttering motion, but fascinating at the same time; alien in every sense.
Doubtless the Xter had come to New Sparta for the same reason everyone else did: money.
Pelquin continued to head for the river, as he had been for much of the morning, though circumspectly due to the nagging sense that he was being watched. Part of him almost wished he’d been pounced on by now – shaken down by pseudo-muggers, found to have nothing of interest on him and left to get on with things. No such luck, just the incessant prickling at the back of his neck, the conviction that someone was following him. If they’d tagged him with a bug, he couldn’t find it. If they were using a revolving tail there must have been a lot of them and they had to be very good. The only time he thought he might have spotted someone – a woman, middle-aged and nondescript – she’d slipped away in apparent innocence seconds before his suspicions could crystallise into certainty and well before he could discount his own paranoia as culprit.
Of course, under the circumstances, paranoia was to be expected, welcomed even as a goad to caution. After all, when someone bigger and tougher than you and with a far longer reach openly declares their intent to thwart your ambitions and pummel you, it pays to be careful.
For all his determination to remain vigilant, Pelquin’s musings were almost his undoing. A streak of pink fur and fast-moving legs suddenly shot across his path, low to the ground, almost tripping him up.
“Binky!” a woman shrieked as Pelquin’s footfalls stuttered and he was forced to swerve and skip on one foot to avoid colliding with the creature or stepping on it. A genpet, genetically engineered to its owner’s dictates. The wretched things were all the rage on New Sparta at present. Pelquin hated them. He wasn’t religious in the slightest; he had no qualms about mankind’s tinkering with the genes of domestic animals on that score. He knew full well it was something that had been going on since the dark ages, long before the advent of spaceflight, but genpets struck him as a step too far. They were an affectation of the rich and foolish, a pointless abomination to titillate jaded palates and blatant testament to the fact that some folk had more money than taste. This one, with its narrow muzzle, flopped-over ears and long sausage-like body, had clearly been developed from canine stock, despite the pink fur and its three pairs of legs – front, middle and rear. Probably a bit of snake in there as well to judge by the sinuous way it moved.
The creature’s owner, a slender, leggy woman in pencil skirt whose platinum hair was tied back to display a wrinkle-free face flush with the tell-tale glow of a recent rejuve, tapped frantically at her wrist perminal, reeling in the invisible leash that was supposed to keep her pet in thrall.
Pelquin had been momentarily distracted by the incident. He nearly missed the flash of steel as the kid in scruffy blue top came towards him, hood up, head down; and if he’d reacted a fraction slower the blade would have found its mark and lodged somewhere in his belly. As it was, he came to his senses in the nick of time and was able to sway and jump, allowing the steel splinter to thrust forward and slice through the air where he’d been standing a split second before. He didn’t think, just reacted, grabbing hold of the assailant’s arm with both hands. He dug his thumb into the wrist tendons so that the kid had no choice but to drop the knife. Movement in the corner of his eye warned him that the attacker wasn’t alone. Still holding the arm, he swivelled, yanking the inept knifeman across and driving the kid’s torso into the advancing form of a thicker-set youth dressed in grey, hood again pulled up as token gesture to anonymity.
Somebody screamed – a woman – more a yelp of surprise than of fear. Something else barked excitedly – quite possibly the same genpet that had distracted him. The sounds reminded Pelquin that there were others here, that he’d been walking down a crowded thoroughfare when the attack came. He stepped back, dropping into a fighter’s crouch as the kids untangled themselves. A small knot of onlookers had stopped to watch. The attention evidently unnerved the two would-be muggers. The pair exchanged quick glances, as if seeking reassurance which neither was in a position to provide, before they turned and fled, the smaller one barrelling into an elderly man in a brown jacket who was too slow to react, nearly knocking him off his feet.
The cluster of people began to dissolve at once, clearly preferring not to get involved. All except for one man who stepped forward as if to help. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Pelquin replied. He trusted this man about as much as he did the two muggers.
“If you hang around for a minute, security should be here and you can report those two hoodlums.”
Of course they would. This was New Sparta, where cameras lurked at every vantage point and petty criminals could never be allowed to prosper. It was only the fat-cat corporate ones who had a right to do that. Bankers, for instance. The very sort he was eventually due to meet that day.
“No need,” Pelquin assured the stranger. “I’m late for an appointment, and there’s no harm done.” He was already moving away.
Perhaps the two kids had simply been opportunists who somehow sensed he was new here, but perhaps not. Likewise the Good Samaritan with his sincere expression and neighbourly concern.
Pelquin walked swiftly for the next half hour, every nerve on edge, every sense straining to catch something out of place. He would stop suddenly to look in a shop window here, staring at whatever was displayed without seeing while checking reflections, cross the road for no real reason there, and retrace his steps at random intervals. He didn’t glance upward much, didn’t want to present his face any more than necessary to cameras that might be taking an int
erest in him after the fracas, but he did look around, surreptitiously checking for the two kids, the concerned man, for anyone who might be following him.
Eventually, despite the likelihood that the attack had been staged and the lingering concern that those tailing him might simply be better at this than he was, he arrived at the river. It was either that or miss the first rendezvous entirely, which wasn’t an option.
Beneath the embankment a narrow track ran right along the river’s edge, submerged during Spring tides but usable otherwise: the subbankment, which perhaps had been a towpath in the past – Pelquin couldn’t have cared less about its origins.
He resisted the temptation to glance around again as he took the grey stone steps that descended beside The Crescent Bridge, fully aware that looking furtive was the best way to attract the sort of attention he was anxious to avoid. Instead he simply walked up to them and trotted down, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. The wall of the embankment hurried past until he stood on the narrow path below, which was all but forgotten by everyone except the tramps and the bargemen and the whores in search of a quiet place to take their johns, and the occasional hormone-laden teenagers looking for a quick shag somewhere their parents wouldn’t find them.
It seemed cooler down here, as if the water sucked the heat from the air. Pelquin failed to supress a shiver that travelled up his spine. Smelt colder too; the river bringing with it a hint of the uplands that had birthed it. A buzzing insect landed on the back of his left hand. He squashed it with a deft slap of the right before the thing could bite, and then brushed away the small corpse, leaving a black smear.
Under the bridge itself, pushed up against the mouldering brickwork, a pile of rags and cardboard had been heaped in apparently haphazard fashion. Only as he walked towards it could Pelquin make out the shape of a man sitting in the middle of the small mound, head bowed, tatters and off-cuts of packaging material and clothing gathered around him like a flowing cape fashioned out of refuse.
He frowned, torn between conflicting urges to say something and to walk on. This didn’t look anything like the person he was expecting to meet here. Then the figure glanced up and the eyes gave him away.
“Nate?” He barely recognised his recently returned second in command, the man who was the closest thing to a friend he’d known in a decade or more. Nate Almont looked filthy, his hair unkempt and his customary stubble sprouting towards ragged tufts of bristly beard – ginger peppered with grey.
“Shh…” the figure urged, staring down again. He was fiddling with something cradled on his lap, pressing keys with deft assurance. A console of some kind, Pelquin realised – an oversized perminal. Seconds later the man sat up straight, to stare past the new arrival, towards the river. Pelquin followed his gaze but couldn’t see anything.
This parody of the man he knew grunted and said, “That’s better.” Only then did his attention return to Pelquin. “Spyflies,” he explained. “Two of them. I hijacked their command frequency and ditched them in the river.”
“Thanks.” Spyflies? No wonder he hadn’t spotted them, but since when had Jossyren grown so sophisticated?
“I thought you were going to be careful!” Almont snapped.
“I was… Or at least I thought I had been.”
Pelquin let the other’s tone go, this time. After all, the man had been living rough for the past few days, blending in, losing himself among the dregs of New Sparta’s homeless, doing all he could to remain beneath the authorities’ notice and enduring who knew what indignities for their mutual cause. Nate had jumped ship the moment they docked, smuggled off within the small cargo they’d delivered here. An endeavour whose success had taken a lot of planning, considerable discomfort on Nate’s part, a pinch or two of good luck, and a well-placed bribe. However, all that would have been worthwhile if in the process they’d succeeded in getting one particular item off the ship unnoticed.
“You’ve got the gonk?”
“Of course I have. You don’t really think I’d be sitting here dressed like this if I didn’t, do you?”
“Don’t push it, Nate,” Pelquin advised.
Almont rummaged around among the rags that swaddled him and produced what looked to be a fist-sized ball of screwed-up greasy paper. He thrust the unsavoury object towards Pelquin, who took it gingerly. The weight immediately told him that there was something a lot more solid than mere paper at the ball’s centre. He carefully pulled the bundle apart, to reveal a dull matt-grey object. Half an ovoid, like an egg sliced in two lengthways, the ‘gonk’, as Bren had christened the thing for no good reason anyone could think of, looked unremarkable in the extreme. Then again, the first indicator of so many fake artefacts was their artfully bizarre appearance. The genuine ones were often like this: mundane on the surface. It was only once you saw what they could do or tried to analyse what they were made of that their truly alien nature revealed itself.
Pelquin grinned and pulled the papers across to cover the thing once more before stuffing it into a pocket. “Good job,” he said. “You’d better get back to the Comet.”
“No kidding. Don’t worry, I’ll be out of here as soon as you’re on your way. Don’t look for me for the next couple of days, though. I’ll be too busy soaking in a hot bath and catching up on some snooze time.”
Pelquin grunted, pulled his collar up against the chill emanating from the river, and continued along the subbankment footpath. He emerged on the far side of the bridge and hurried up another flight of stone steps, taking them two at a time, to emerge once more in the sunlit world of the quadrant’s financial capital.
He didn’t dawdle, having left the rendezvous with Almont until the last possible minute. In fact, he’d have to hurry to avoid being late, which suited him just fine. Pelquin knew he wouldn’t relax until the alien thing had served its purpose and, hopefully, left his possession. This was largely because of Jossyren. If, as seemed likely, the faceless corporates really did have men out in the streets, they’d presumably be making a beeline for this area now that the spyflies were down.
Ever conscious of the gonk’s solid presence at his hip, he stepped out into the stream of people. Transport modules shot down the avenue at high speed, unerringly controlled by the network’s AIs, while dampener fields protected pedestrians from both the wind and noise of their passage. Carefully choreographed light displays played along the sides of the endless stream of fast moving vehicles, gauged to match the ‘average’ walking pace of a person on foot in either direction so that the portrayed adverts could run their course. The one currently haunting Pelquin’s every footstep featured a series of glossy images of mankind’s noble endeavours, all fronted by women with faces as perfect as their physiques and men with biceps as broad as their foreheads. It was an ad for First Solar Bank, which struck him as ironic, given that this was precisely where he was going.
Moments later he stepped into the plush lobby of the imposing black-glass building that served as First Solar’s head office and strode up to the reception desk. Human receptionists, two of them; as ostentatious a declaration of wealth as any investor could wish for.
“Name’s Pelquin,” he said to the pretty young thing whose smile might as well have been tattooed in place. “I’ve an appointment to see Terry Reese.”
Pelquin wasn’t remotely nervous. He’d dealt with bankers before – perhaps not with this particular one, but all such were interchangeable in his experience and he knew exactly what to expect. Reese was a capitalist by definition, and a successful one to have risen to his current position. He would be slightly corpulent, marginally the wrong side of middle age, his hair bearing an artful touch of grey – just enough to look distinguished in his own eyes – and his features would be a little waxy from rejuve treatments. He’d be dressed in an expensively tailored suit, with or without a waistcoat, and ensconced behind a completely redundant desk, there merely to impress upon those few privileged enough to be ushered into his august presence that this
was his domain and they were there only at his tolerance. The man’s worldview would be narrow but his mind razor-sharp in one particular area: finance. Pelquin knew how to play such men and had his strategy all worked out. He’d tantalise Reese, using greed to draw the banker in, holding back his trump card until precisely the right moment, revealing it only once he could see the currency signs dance in the whites of the man’s eyes.
The pesky alien artefact that Bren had so quaintly christened a gonk had turned out to be more trouble than Pelquin had counted on. He couldn’t wait to offload it, even if he was about to do so only in order to secure the funds to go and find a whole shipful more of the blasted things.
The final door slid open, admitting Pelquin into exactly the sort of office he’d envisaged. The huge desk might be absent but the room was plush yet modern, efficient and sparsely furnished, with a few understated personal touches – 3D image cube with a sequentially changing series of family photos, and a pot plant whose small verdant leaves spilled out to tumble down the pot and dangle over the shelf supporting it like an eruption of green yeast. It was enough to suggest that the interviewer might be human after all, to lightly smooth the edges of what could otherwise have come across as a wholly unsympathetic environment. Enough, perhaps, to throw the unwary off-balance, to tempt them to relax just a fraction; but Pelquin wasn’t about to fall for that. The room’s only occupant, however, was a different matter. At least he’d been spot on regarding the age. As for everything else…
“Captain Pelquin, I presume,” said the tall, rod-slender woman who stepped forward to clasp his hand in a vice-like handshake. The eyes that assessed him from behind the perfunctory smile were as keen and bright as a console alarm. “I’m Terry Reese, Senior Loan Assessor for First Solar Bank. Do take a seat.”
THREE
Prior to Pelquin’s arrival, Terry Reese had taken the trouble to skim through the file containing all the information First Solar had on the man, which proved to be a surprising amount. She gazed with jaundiced eye at the fields of text that scrolled across the air before her, while reflecting on a thoroughly unproductive morning. This was to be her third and final appointment of the day. The previous two had been a waste of time and she didn’t suppose number three was going to prove much better.