by David Drake
“My name’s Larrinaga,” he said. He was younger than he looked; thirty years standard at the most. “And I’m nothing, that’s who I am.”
“Pedro’s had a difficult time this past year,” Georg said; half-confiding, half in an attempt to forestall the wrath of the little stranger who made him very uncomfortable to watch. “His wife died. She was an artist in psychic ambiances, a very fine one, known all across the galaxy.”
“Really?” said Niko Daun. “I’ve worked in PAs myself. Who was she? The wife.”
His tone wasn’t precisely dismissive, but there was a challenge in it. Daun didn’t regard himself as a top PA artist, but he didn’t expect to find a better one on this wretched planet.
Hathaway drew drinks. Larrinaga looked up and said, “My wife was Suzette. That was her working name. She was a saint. And there’ll never be an artist like her. Never in all time!”
“Suzette was from here?” Daun blurted. “Blood and martyrs!”
Margulies raised an eyebrow in the direction of the sensor tech.
Daun turned his palms up. “She’s—” he said. “Well there’s taste.
But the best PA artist in the galaxy, yeah, you can make a case for it. I’m amazed…. Well, I didn’t think she’d have come from a place so …”
He looked at Larrinaga, who was staring morosely into his beer mug. “Suzette’s work is so tranquil, you see,” Daun said. “It’s not what I’d expect coming from Cantilucca. From Potosi, anyhow.”
Georg handed out beverages in rough-glazed ceramic mugs of local manufacture. The beer, for all his praises of it, had an oily undertaste that Moden found unpleasant. He’d drunk worse in the field, wine that had rotted rather than fermenting properly …and there were worse things in life than bad booze.
Daun sipped his mug of frothy, bitter, cacao drink with approval. His lips pursed as he considered Larrinaga and the situation. A Tech 4’s pay didn’t run to art the like of Suzette’s, but there was always the chance …
“I wonder,” he said, “if there’s any of your wife’s work still on Cantilucca? Some minor pieces, perhaps, that—”
The local man clutched his empty mug with both hands. He began to cry. He made a convulsive gesture that would have swept the mug against the wall to shatter.
Vierziger, who was standing arm’s length away and didn’t seem to be watching, caught the mug in the air. He set it on the serving counter.
Larrinaga lurched up from his seat. “I’m going to go piss,” he said. He angrily wiped his eyes with his forearm. “That’s fair, isn’t it? I’ve pissed my life away!”
“Pedro?” Hathaway said. “Can I show them the draft? It’s not the same, but they’ll get the idea.”
“Do what you please,” Larrinaga called as he left the alcove.
“He leaves it here,” the innkeeper explained as he opened a cabinet beneath the serving counter. “He doesn’t have a place of his own anymore.”
Margulies returned to the saloon alcove. She’d taken a beer to Barbour at his console. “Trouble with the gangs?” she guessed aloud. “They robbed him?”
“Well, not quite that,” Georg said. “You see, when Suzette died, Pedro sold his house to the factor of Trans-Star Trading on Cantilucca. His name’s Suterbilt.”
“Suterbilt is a criminal,” Evie said from the lobby. She sat in an upholstered chair, knitting as her eyes stared into time. “He’s no better than the thugs he bankrolls.”
“Now, Evie, you know we shouldn’t say things like that,” Georg said. “But Suterbilt has, well, a financial stake in L’Escorial. That’s personal, not TST.”
The innkeeper was setting up a table-model hologram projector. Niko moved to help him. The unit had a lot of flash and glitter, but it looked clumsy compared to the trim projectors in use on Nieuw Friesland.
“So a shotgun sale?” Margulies pressed. The story would probably come out, from Mistress Hathaway if not from her husband, but Margulies didn’t want to wait.
“Not that either,” Georg said. He obviously felt uncomfortable speaking about the gunmen and their masters, though the chance to gossip with these folk had attraction as well.
“Not really, at least,” he continued. “Pedro had been taking a lot of gage, mostly gage, because he’d loved Suzette so much. He wouldn’t have sold at all if he hadn’t been, well, if he’d been in better condition. Because Suzette’s greatest masterpiece is a part of the home where they’d lived, you see.”
“And then he lost the money,” Evie added harshly. “He was drugged silly, and he gambled, and he lost every peso of the price.”
“The price had been a good one, though,” her husband said quickly. “Master Suterbilt didn’t cheat him, not really, since the art can’t be moved and its value’s only what it’s worth on Cantilucca.”
“Suterbilt didn’t cheat him in the notary’s office, you mean,” Evie said. “He left that job for his friends at the roulette table.”
Her fingers clicked the needles with mechanical precision. Moden thought of the old women watching the guillotine; and realized for the first time how much, and how rightly, they had hated the aristocrats being beheaded.
“Why can’t the PA be moved?” Daun asked in surprise.
“What?” said Georg. “Because it’s built into the fabric of the room, sir. You’d destroy the whole thing to try to move it.”
The technician frowned. He didn’t argue, but it was obvious that he couldn’t understand the problem.
“There,” said Hathaway. “Watch this. It’s the holographic draft Suzette did before she created the ambiance itself.”
He dimmed the alcove lights. The policemen were watching from their table. Larrinaga reappeared from the rest room. He stood in the archway instead of reentering the saloon.
A psychic ambiance was just that, a recorded vision—a waking dream—capable of being transferred to recipients in the focal area. It couldn’t be copied, because it depended on inputs too subtle to survive the duplication process. Though the PA was immaterial, the artist normally started with a visual or auditory sketch, just as medieval fresco artists drew cartoons on the wall before applying a coat of fresh plaster on which to fix the paint.
Suzette worked visually. The holographic sketch was of a verdant paradise, a mythic place in which fountains played and the geologic features seemed themselves alive though immobile.
No animals could be glimpsed, though the movement of plants hinted their presence. Above all, the shifting holographic image was suffused by light and a warmth for which the objects described could not themselves account.
The sketch began to repeat itself. The second time through, individual facets merged into a whole greater and quite different from its parts.
Daun frowned. He could almost grasp the unity to which the intersections of light beams were building in this holographic shorthand.
“It’s her, you know,” Larrinaga said abruptly. “It’s Suzette. She did a self-portrait, she built it into our house so that I’d never have had to be without her. And I threw it away!”
He began to weep openly. Georg Hathaway shut off the chip projector; Margulies brought the lights back up. Though Hathaway House was a fortress, the bright internal illumination prevented the weight of the protective walls from crushing the souls of those within it.
“There, there, Pedro,” Georg said awkwardly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. I know it bothers you.”
“Everything bothers him,” Evie said, knitting with tiny clicks unaffected by her words. “It’s Pedro’s life now, being bothered.”
“It’s still possible to see the PA, isn’t it?” Niko asked, looking from Georg to Larrinaga and quickly away again.
Hathaway pursed his lips. He started to say something, then glanced toward the archway.
“Can I have another beer, Georg?” Larrinaga asked. “It’ll have to be on credit, of course.”
“Why of course, Pedro,” Hathaway said enthusiastically. “You’re not a patro
n here, you’re our friend.”
He gestured Larrinaga toward the serving counter instead of drawing the mug himself. A transaction had taken place, and everyone within earshot knew it.
As Larrinaga stepped past him, head bowed, Hathaway said, “The ambiance can only be viewed with Master Suterbilt’s permission, and that’s hard to come by. He’s aware of its value, you see. He keeps—well, there are six L’Escorial, ah, security personnel in the house at all times. Suterbilt doesn’t live there, but he visits frequently.”
“The last time I went there and asked to see Suzette,” Larrinaga said with his back to the others in the saloon, “they beat me unconscious and left me in the street.”
He drank in order to create a pause for effect. “I think,” he resumed, “I’ll go back there tonight.”
“Yes, I suspect you will do that,” Johann Vierziger said in a voice like the purr of a well-fed leopard. He set down the mug of cacao from which he’d been sipping with evident approval. “It’s the sort of thing a worthless bastard would do, after all.”
The little man’s enunciation was so precise that it was a moment before the words themselves registered on the others. Daun stifled a snort of laughter. Margulies raised an eyebrow; Sten Moden pointedly failed to react.
“Sure I am,” Larrinaga said loudly. “You bet, that’s just what I am.”
“Oh, you mustn’t say that, sir!” Georg Hathaway blurted. “Pedro isn’t that at all. You don’t know what he’s like inside!”
“Nor do you, Master Hathaway,” Vierziger said with sneering intonation. “All we know is the side he shows the world. That side is a sniveling, self-pitying bastard.”
The words wouldn’t have cut as deep if there’d been emotion behind them instead of cold disdain. Larrinaga winced as though he’d been stroked with a barbed whip. The mug trembled. He set it down and walked to the outer door.
Barbour looked at the local man, calculating the door’s opening against the movements of figures in his holographic display. There was no need to keep the armored door closed; but there might have been, and Barbour would have said so if there were.
The door closed behind Larrinaga. “Oh, I wish you hadn’t said that, good sir,” Hathaway murmured miserably, though he didn’t look directly at Vierziger as he spoke.
“Why, Georg?” Evie Hathaway demanded. “Does the truth bother you so much? Has saying, ‘Oh, Pedro just needs a little time to get straightened out,’ made things better? For anybody?”
“Well, he blames himself for having sold the house,” Georg said. “And it was Pedro’s fault, I know, partying with Master Suterbilt who’d been trying for years to buy the ambiance and Suzette wouldn’t hear of selling to him. But it’s a shame that one mistake should ruin his life.”
“The major’s coming back,” Barbour called from the foyer. He looked toward the policemen and grinned. It was the first smile any of his teammates had seen on his face. “He’s returning your shock baton, gentlemen.”
“One mistake can ruin more than a man’s life, Master Hathaway,” Vierziger said to the innkeeper. “It can ruin all eternity.”
He smiled tightly, terribly. “Of course, I’ve made many more mistakes than one.”
Coke entered the lobby. He closed the door behind him, then rested his back against the cool metal surface.
“Any excitement, sir?” Margulies asked.
“Matthew, please, Mary,” Coke said with his eyes closed. “And no, nothing to speak of. The usual run of port-city foolishness, nothing serious.”
“What’s the next order of business, Matthew?” Moden asked. “We continue to wait?”
“I could use one of those beers,” Coke said, snapping alert again. He strode into the saloon alcove. From there he continued, “Yeah, we wait. I figure it’ll be days before either side makes an approach. Two gangs may make this a tough place, but it sure isn’t an organized one.”
“Is organized better, Master Soldier?” Evie Hathaway demanded from her chair.
“Evie, please,” said Georg.
“Yes, ma’am,” Coke said, taking the mug the innkeeper had drawn him. “It is. Highly developed parasites see to it that the host body stays healthy. Less developed ones, roundworms and the like, are often fatal. Cantilucca has a bad case of roundworms, I’m afraid.”
“And your prescription?” the woman said. She’d stopped knitting so that she could turn to look directly at the Frisian leader.
Coke drank, then shrugged. “Arsenic or the equivalent, Mistress Hathaway,” he said. “The trick is to titrate the dose, of course, so that you only get the worms.”
“In the short term, Matthew,” Mary Margulies said, “would you have any objection to me doing a little sight-seeing in the countryside? Tomorrow, maybe?”
Coke shook his head “No, we need to learn as much about the place as we can,” he said. “Potosi may be the head of the planet, but it’s not the whole place. Ah—I’d rather you didn’t go any distance alone.”
“I’ll go along, sir,” Robert Barbour said. “That is, if you’ll permit me. I’ll have the AI in this console dialed in to take care of ordinary business in an hour or two, now that you’re back.”
“No, that’s fine,” Coke said “Just remember, we’re in a fluid situation. Things might happen pretty fast. And I’m Matthew.”
“My old driver came back here when he got out of service,” Margulies explained. “He came from a place called Silva Blanca. It’s supposed to be fifteen klicks away.”
“Good,” said Coke. He handed his mug to Hathaway for a refill. “It’ll be good to get a professional’s viewpoint about the situation here.”
“I’m not sure there’s enough arsenic, Master Soldier,” Evie Hathaway said. She had resumed knitting. “Certainly there can’t be too much.”
Cantilucca: Day Two
The messenger at the door of Hathaway House flashed his gray cloak open toward the viewslit, displaying a blue uniform jacket with chromed buttons and frogs. By trying to look simultaneously self-important and inconspicuous, the man gave the impression of a rat tricked out in pheasant plumage.
“A lady wants to see Major Coke!” he hissed meaningfully, casting a wary glance over his shoulder toward L’Escorial headquarters.
Coke nodded toward Mistress Hathaway at the door. He was shrugging into his body armor. The location of Hathaway House wasn’t ideally neutral, but the team hadn’t been sent to Cantilucca to be fair. Just to strike a deal, and that seemed to be a practical proposition.
“A bit earlier than I’d figured,” Coke said to his three fellows. “Niko, you’re ready on your end?”
The sensor tech grinned brightly. He patted a magazine pouch on the right side of his waist belt, opposite the holster clipped for cross-draw.
“The bugs’re here,” he said, “not in my case.” He waggled the attaché case in his left hand.
“Sten, you’re comfortable with the hardware?” Coke went on, shifting his attention to the man who would remain behind in the hotel lobby.
“Quite comfortable,” the logistics officer said. His arm swept across the terminal, changing the display from streetscape to a close-up of the Astra messenger’s face, then back. “This isn’t my specialty, but I’ve probably spent as much time at consoles as you or Bob have.”
“Come on,” the messenger whined. “Do you think I like standing out here?”
“Do you think we care?” Niko Daun snapped. The suddenness with which the young technician’s smile broke and reformed indicated that he was jumpy, reasonably enough.
Johann Vierziger grinned at Coke. Neither man bothered to speak the obvious truths.
Coke settled a gray cape over his armor, his attaché case, and a slung sub-machine gun. “All right,” he said. “Then let’s do it.”
The messenger scampered ahead. He was probably afraid to be seen with the trio of Frisians. It was late morning and the sun was hot. L’Escorials had removed the wrack of bodies from against their wall, but t
he stench of rotting blood was fierce even against the reek of garbage and human excrement.
The gates to the L’Escorial courtyard, vertical steel bars in a wall-height framework, were closed. Half a dozen gunmen sat beneath an awning inside, playing cards. The concrete around the titular guards was littered with gage injectors and empty bottles. None of the men paid any attention to traffic from Hathaway House.
The messenger was ten strides ahead of the Frisians. He turned around and waggled his hands toward them in a pulling motion. “Come on, come along,” he urged.
“We’ll get there, little man,” Johann Vierziger said calmly. “And the more surely if we watch what we’re about, not so?”
Though the messenger wasn’t a prepossessing physical specimen, he was bigger than Vierziger. Nobody hearing the comment smiled at it, however.
A combat vehicle converted from a bulldozer was now parked in the entrance to the courtyard in front of Astra headquarters. Metal plates were welded to a framework around the bulldozer’s sides.
The add-on armor didn’t look to Coke as if it’d stop much. The earthmoving blade which protected the front would originally have been tempered soft so that it wouldn’t shatter if it hit a rock. The alloy steel could have been surface hardened during the conversion process, but he doubted that it had been.
The vehicle mounted a twelve-tube launcher for hypervelocity rockets. These could be extremely effective weapons, capable of penetrating more than a meter of ferroconcrete; but the mounting was fixed in azimuth, so that aiming a salvo required the vehicle itself be turned toward the target.
The messenger led the Frisians past the ’dozer’s worn tracks. Astras on the vehicle and around it had their guns out. None of them spoke to the Frisians, but Coke heard several deliberately loud sneers about the pansies come to call. At least the blue-clad guards seemed to be more alert than their rivals down the street.
“The Widow’s waiting for you, gentlemen,” the messenger called, several strides ahead again. “Do come along.”
Niko Daun stumbled twice while easing past the converted bulldozer. The first time he slapped his hand against the armor covering the commander’s station on the right side of the vehicle; the next time he caught himself on the gatepost. He’d touched his belt pouch before either slip, but there was nothing noteworthy in that.