“I have trouble believing she was going to kill Gredler,” I said. “She didn’t even want to go meet him. I met her friends here at a local church—she doesn’t seem like a sleeper assassin. Something is weird about all this.”
Now Morrigan reacted to me, giving me a look that presumably meant “Shut up!” I hoped that would prompt her to explain things to me soon.
Verg bobbed his head. Maybe that was the equivalent of a nod for his species. “It is a little odd, but the evidence is indisputable. Anyway, I am just very sorry you got caught up in all of this. But Gredler still wants to meet with you tomorrow morning.”
“And that’s not going to be awkward when the woman I’ve been working with is apparently his intended assassin?” Honest question. I’m still not very good at reading social situations.
“Word has already spread about the heroes who stopped the terrorists,” Morrigan said. “The police department is planning to remove references to Thompson and focus on you as the officer from another planet working with the local police force.”
“I’m getting uncomfortable with being used as some sort of political pawn.”
Morrigan gave me another look. “Then I should remind you that you’ve broken numerous weapons laws on this planet, and they’d just like you to perform this gesture as thanks for their forgiveness on that.”
“If you really don’t want to be a part of this anymore, we can pass word on to Gredler, though,” Verg said. “I know this has to have been quite a strange visit to this planet for you.”
Morrigan stared at me intensely as I pretended to mull things over for a moment. “No, I guess I’ll go along for the sake of cooperation.”
“Good. Again, we apologize for all this,” Verg said. “It’s a shame someone like Fincher could hide in plain sight like this for so long. I need to meet with Gredler’s people now.”
“I’ll see Rico out,” Morrigan said. When Verg left the room, she sat down next to me with a huge smile. “Come on. You have to admit this is hilarious.”
“Just tell me what’s happening here,” I said in a very measured but forceful tone. “I do not like surprises like this.”
Morrigan rolled her eyes. “You’re such a baby. Anyway, what happened was that I decided to do some actual investigative work. I know—what a novelty. I noticed something was a little fishy about Thompson’s background. So, on a lark, I ran her information against the much better organized databases Nystrom has. And guess what popped up?”
We sat there staring silently at one another for a few seconds until I realized she actually wanted me to guess. “You found out that her real name was Melanie Fincher and that she had been an assassin for the syndicate.”
“Exactly. She was part of a squad on her last hit with Nystrom, and the entire unit disappeared—though there was evidence that something violent had happened. We weren’t really sure if she was alive or dead…until now, that is. My best guess is that she went berserk, killed the other Nystrom assassins, and went into hiding. When I found her real background, it was too perfect not to use, so I carefully placed some data around to make sure Verg would find this. Now all the focus will be on her, leaving you free and clear of suspicion.” Morrigan’s smile faded. “But you know, people like her are the reason female assassins like me and the women I train don’t get the respect we deserve. She just perpetuated the myth that we can’t be trusted because our girl hormones will make us go crazy and start killing everyone.”
I probably would have been annoyed by Morrigan’s badinage again if I weren’t more preoccupied with going over my memories of Diane to see how I’d missed the signs that she was a syndicate assassin. That was a big failure on my part.
“Anyway, I guess Fincher was here trying to turn her life around or some nonsense like that. But hiding out on the police force—she has some brass ones. I almost admire her. But my orders are to find her and kill her and be real mean about it when I do. You don’t turn on us and not expect to eventually regret it as the worst mistake of your entire life, so we’re going to have a field day with her. And you’ll be free to join in if you want. Out of curiosity, ever rape someone before?”
She was trying to get a reaction out of me. I wasn’t going to play her game. “No, have you?”
She laughed. “See, there’s that quick wit of yours. You can be fun to work with if you try.”
I stood up. “No more surprises like this.”
She smirked. “Calm down. Everything is under control. I swear you’re the girliest person I’ve ever worked with.”
I turned and quietly left the room. For a moment I thought about the pain and misery Morrigan would inflict on Diane when she caught her. What an odd, irrelevant thing to think about. I had my job to focus on.
CHAPTER 26
It was almost refreshing to talk to a politician—that meant I wasn’t the only one in the room pretending not to be a sociopath.
The short talk I had with Senator Gredler was rather pointless tripe, but the trip itself was actually a bit illuminating. I was flown out of Nar Valdum City to a pristine forest area with nearly no developments in sight. Gredler’s very private villa was in a cleared meadow in the middle of the forest.
He had obviously taken the threat of assassination to heart, and the place was swarming with security. They looked like official government-assigned security, but then I caught a glimpse of the handle of one of their firearms. By the distinctive markings I could tell it was an FR-76 Blaster, a pretty nice gun made on the Randatti-owned Sindel 7—and you would pretty much never see the gun in the hands of anyone other than a Randatti thug (or someone who had killed one). So basically Gredler’s home was filled with Randatti killers who were just barely incognito—that’s how important the situation was to them. All the big powers were taking a lot of risks here to ensure their places in the new power structure—which meant things hung precariously close to an open war between the syndicates.
But that wasn’t all I noticed. When I went into Gredler’s office to meet him (which was an extremely perfunctory bit of his thanking me and my acting modest—I wasn’t paying much attention, but I could probably recite everything said nearly verbatim), he was at his computer, and I saw enough of the screen to note that he was looking at the conference hall’s security plans. He was apparently worried enough about the assassination threat to take matters into his own hands. But it was all for nothing, because I noticed something about his Corridian female aide. I caught her eye for a brief moment, and she was ever-so-slightly taken aback. She knew exactly who I was and what I was capable of. But since she stayed put and tried to behave normally, I knew she was one of Morrigan’s people. Despite all the precautions Randatti was taking, Nystrom had someone on Gredler who could kill him at any time. It made me feel a bit pointless, since I was only here to add a big flourish to his already certain death. Seeing the number of people Randatti had here (and I could only assume the other syndicates had significant presences, too), it made the aftermath of the assassination look like it would be the much more interesting part, but so far there was no word on my role in that.
I still had three days before I’d be killing Gredler as he was announced president of the new Alliance. Usually at this point in a job, I’d be thoroughly planning out my strategy, but with Morrigan controlling all the details, there wasn’t much need to do that. She’d already confirmed exactly where I’d be sitting and had mapped out my path out of the auditorium to safety.
There wasn’t really anything for me to do but wait, which was probably why my thoughts kept drifting back to Diane. Maybe it was just curiosity—or maybe with the new information I was even more infatuated with her—but I kept wondering what her next move would be at this point. From what I knew about her, I couldn’t imagine she was just in hiding, but I saw little hope for her no matter what she did. The police were after her, the exits from the city were heavily secured and monitored, and on top of everything, all the other syndicates probably believed the story a
bout her being a Nystrom assassin and were hunting her too. I expected Dip to inform me of her demise at any moment. In a way, I wished Morrigan would get to her first, as she probably wasn’t going to kill her immediately, which could give me one last chance to see Diane and satiate my curiosity. Of course, they’d be torturing her, and she’d then know I was the real killer assigned to take out Gredler, which would make that last meeting…I’m not sure of the best word here, so let’s just go with “awkward.”
After the meeting with Gredler, I was taken back to the police station. I noticed Officer Meela, who I thought was friends with Diane, and she conspicuously avoided eye contact with me. Wasn’t sure what that meant—it was probably the shame of having been fraternizing with a known killer for so long. Usually, I’m happy when people avoid talking to me, as it saves me the effort of avoiding them, but now I was curious to talk to people who knew (or thought they knew) Diane. I didn’t see Chief Rudle around either, though, so I left the police station to go back to my hotel so I could try to figure out my next move.
“Rico!”
I turned to see that Hana had once again found me. For once, she wasn’t smiling. In fact, she was on the verge of tears.
“I don’t know what in the world is going on,” she said, closing the distance between us. “Diane has disappeared and they’re telling me she’s an assassin planning to kill Senator Gredler! What are they talking about?”
I’ve been in a few situations where desperate people unwittingly came to me for help. I’ve found the quickest way to deal with that is to shove the person out of the way and walk by without saying a word. Apparently very few people can just disregard someone who’s in complete desperation. Thus when I callously shove them, they just stare at me blankly, because they don’t have a preprocessed reaction for it.
Since Diane was my only link to this woman, I had nothing to gain from continuing to be nice to her. Still, I didn’t just shove her out of the way. I have something against breaking character before a job is done, plus she seemed more tolerable now that she wasn’t so annoyingly happy.
“I don’t understand it, but they apparently are sure about her—plus she ran when the police came for her, which makes her seem guilty.”
“This is crazy! I’ve known her for over a decade—she’s a kind, loving person. I know she’s killed in the line of duty—and she struggled with that—but she is in no way a murderer. She would never work for criminals—she hates injustice.”
Hana was boring me. I could have explained to her the hard evidence that Diane was an assassin and seen how she dealt with finding out the truth about her close friend—which would have been mildly interesting from a sociological perspective—but I wasn’t feeling particularly scholarly. I was more interested in whether she unwittingly knew something useful about Diane. “Well, what do you know about her past?”
“She had a hard life. She was orphaned at an early age and had a lot of problems, but she turned her life around and became a police officer back on Andalu. When she transferred here…” Hana was silent for a moment. “Well, I remember that very well. She contacted our church to make sure she had a place to worship here. She was coming alone and didn’t know anyone on the planet, so we at the church decided to meet her at the landing station and make her feel really welcome. But then while we were waiting for her transport to arrive, we got word that the ship she was on had a jump malfunction and was completely destroyed. Everyone on board was presumed dead. It may seem silly, but I was devastated.”
For the record, yes, having an extreme emotional response to the demise of someone you don’t even know is quite asinine. I just nodded at the sentiment, though.
“It almost shook my faith a little,” Hana continued. She smiled; I really preferred her not happy. “And then a miracle happened. We got word that Diane had changed transports at the last minute and wasn’t a part of the accident. She came in the next day, and when she saw how overjoyed we were, she cried and embraced us like we were family. We thought we lost her before we ever even knew her, and I’m so glad we didn’t.”
A few pieces fell into place. “That’s quite a story.”
“You yourself have seen what a hero she is. I’ve never met a more selfless person. These charges against her don’t make any sense.”
“It is pretty hard to believe.” But life surprises you.
“Please, if you find out anything, let me know. All her friends are so worried about her.”
“I certainly will.”
She then made a move on me, and I very nearly snapped her neck before I realized she was hugging me. I just stood there and took it, and it was soon over.
“Thank you so much for everything, Rico.” She gave me one last smile—as if taunting me after getting away with the hug—before walking off, leaving me alone to figure out what in the world I was going to do with myself now.
“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
What profit has a man from all his labor
In which he toils under the sun?”
“What are you doing now?” Dip asked.
“I’m reading in the Bible about the pointlessness of life.”
“Do you find that to be comforting?”
“I find it to be true, and the truth usually isn’t comforting.”
I was too on edge to just relax in my hotel room, so I headed out to no particular destination and ended up at the park I had visited with Diane two days earlier. Diane had caused me quite a bit of uncertainty, and I’d thought that would have ended now that she was out of the picture. But no such luck. Now I was constantly thinking of how worthless this job was becoming to me. I was preparing for a big hit—which was usually the highlight of my life—but that could barely even keep my attention now. And if my job no longer interested me, then exactly what was I living for?
And the revelation about Diane—it had affected me somehow. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it wasn’t something I could shake off as one of life’s odd little surprises. As I sat in the park, I looked at all the sentients walking by. Each had his own life story—his own hopes and dreams—and I cared about all of that equally little. But now there was one person in the universe I did seem to care about for some odd reason, and that was slowly making me realize everything had changed now. Much of what I’d thought about myself was no longer true. And what did that mean for me?
And I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is grasping for the wind.
For in much wisdom is much grief,
And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
That was a truth I’d already grasped and was the crux of my problem. People could only live in the illusion of happy lives because they never bothered to really think things out. I’d never had that luxury—I’ve always had to analyze everything in order to survive. And when you analyze life enough, you can’t help but conclude that it’s all pointless. You live, have your struggles, and then die and become nothing. Far enough into the future, the whole universe dies as well, and then there will be no evidence that any of us ever existed. I had come to terms with this, though. I’d found something I liked to do and focused on that. You have to focus on the now, because if you think too far into the future you realize it’s all for naught. But my work was beginning to lack appeal. There was little excitement left in the game, and now, for some reason, it seemed as empty as everything else. So what now?
I assumed if I kept reading the passage, it would conclude that things weren’t pointless if you were nice to people or something like that, but I didn’t really care to hear that now. I just wanted to find another distraction—something to entertain me and just let my brain shut down for a little while.
The sun was setting, and in the distance I could see some lights just beyond the park. The carnival Diane had mentioned to me before. Well, I had no other ideas.
“Where are you going now?” Dip asked.
“Does it matter? Don’t you
have other things to do besides keep tabs on me?”
“Well, since you were speaking of the pointlessness of life, my further attempts to come up with an extraction plan from the city have been rather unfruitful. Either you need to get me the clearance codes for the city, or I’ll have to plan to rendezvous with you after Morrigan gets you off planet.”
“I’ll bring up the clearance codes with Morrigan next time I see her, then.” I wasn’t hopeful she’d give them to me, though. She obviously liked to keep tight control over things. I looked around, wondering if she still had people following me. I hoped the carnival would be crowded, since that would make it easy to get lost in there.
It was filled with families of various species, all checking out the rides and booths about wonders from other worlds and food from exotic places. There were also soft pretzels, which I liked. I never have a problem with crowds of people in a situation like this, because they leave you alone. In fact, it makes it easy to disappear among them. To really not stand out—to not be noticed—you need to be surrounded by lots of people. Just another face in the crowd.
I could see a number of rides, including the iconic Ferris wheel made popular by human amusement parks (though many other species had similar rides). Rides held no interest for me, though; I found it hard to get my adrenaline to misfire because of faked danger. And if all I wanted was a rush from chemicals in my brain, I could just take narcotics.
I had a sudden awful thought that there might be clowns at the carnival. I shook the notion from my head as I had more serious things to worry about—though none so creepy.
There were a number of attractions set up to show off the cultures of different planets. I never found cultures that interesting (especially modern cultures), so I continued walking by all the booths until I came to a new section with games of skill. That was more promising. I figured I could find some small challenge that would distract me a little—though I really didn’t want to get stuck toting around one of those large stuffed animals.
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