by Mike Resnick
"I bribed a nice young major."
"That figures," he said with a tinge of bitterness. "You always knew how to get what you wanted."
"I still do," she said, staring directly at him.
He met her gaze for a moment, then looked away uncomfortably. "Did you ever marry that fellow you used to live with?"
"I've lived with a number of people," she replied. "I never married any of them."
"Pity." He pulled out a handsome cigarette case and offered one to her.
"No, thanks."
"They're very good," he said, removing one and lighting it up. "Imported from the Kakkab Kastu system."
"I prefer my own," she said, withdrawing a distinctive box.
"Don't you find those kind of harsh?" he asked.
"I've been smoking them since I've been on the Frontier," replied Virtue. "They grow on you after a while."
"You've been on the Frontier?"
"For almost a year."
"What were you doing out there?"
"The same thing I'm doing on Pegasus: following up a story." She paused. "I've also picked up a pretty interesting partner."
"I thought you always worked alone," said Smythe.
"This time I needed help."
"Is it anyone I know?"
"Probably not," Virtue replied. "Ever hear of the Songbird?"
He shook his head. "Is that her byline?"
"It's a him."
"I've never seen any of his features."
"That's not surprising. He's a bounty hunter."
"What the hell kind of story are you working on?"
"If I tell you, we're all through exchanging pleasantries and we start talking business."
He shifted his weight uneasily but nodded in agreement. "We're going to do it sooner or later. I suppose we ought to get it over with." He paused. "Salvatore Acosta was a small-time smuggler who died broke. He wasn't worth much more than a five-second obituary. So who are you really after?"
"Santiago."
He laughed. "You and ten thousand other journalists."
"I'm different," said Virtue seriously. "I'm going to get him."
"I wish you luck."
"I don't need luck," she replied. "I need information."
"You probably know more about Acosta than I do."
"Forget Acosta," said Virtue. "He's a dead end. I need something else."
"Such as?"
"Someone who can tell me where Santiago is."
Smythe laughed again. "Why don't you ask for a million credits while you're at it? One's as likely as the other."
"This person doesn't have to know Santiago's headquarters. He just has to point me in the right direction."
"What the hell makes you think anyone on Pegasus has any dealings with Santiago?"
"Because, with all due respect for your beautiful city, it's not exactly a vacation spa. Acosta was here to deliver some goods or some money, or else to pick something up. He probably didn't deal directly with the person I want—but that doesn't mean you can't help me find that person."
"Are you telling me Acosta worked for Santiago?" asked Smythe.
"Indirectly. I doubt that they ever met. Acosta was just a conduit for stolen goods, or perhaps money. What I need from you is the name of the biggest operator in Hektor."
"Harrison Brett," replied Smythe without hesitation.
"Does he have a criminal record?"
"Yes."
"Tell me about it."
"He's got thirty arrests."
"Any convictions?"
Smythe looked uncomfortable. "Two."
"Suspended sentences?"
He nodded.
"Who's he paying off?" she asked quickly.
Smythe shrugged. "Everybody."
She smiled. "Come on, Leander—this is Virtue you're talking to, not some slob in your newsroom. You know what I want."
"Why not just put the pressure on Brett?" he asked in a tone of voice that implied he knew the answer as well as she did.
"How do you pressure a man who knows he can't go to jail?" she replied. "The name, please."
"I don't know any other name," he said.
"Not smart, Leander," she said ominously. "Not smart at all."
"It's the truth," he replied defensively.
"I know another name, though," she said. "The name I know is Leander Smythe. I even know some facts to go with the name. Want to hear them?"
"No," he said, puffing rapidly on his cigarette.
"They're interesting facts," she continued. "They're all about how he falsified evidence on his first big story and helped send an innocent man to jail for eight years."
"You covered for me, for Christ's sake!" he hissed. "If you knew he was innocent, why didn't you block the story when you had the chance?"
"Oh, he deserved to go to jail," she said pleasantly. "He was a bastard from the word go, and the police had been trying to nail him for years." She stared seriously at him. "But the fact remains that he was innocent of the charges that were brought against him based on your information."
"Then you should have said something at the time."
"I did," she replied, finishing her drink. "I told you that you owed me a favor in exchange for my silence, and that someday I'd be by to collect it."
"You know," he said unhappily, "I never did like you much. You were always too ambitious, always scheming and plotting."
"Why should I deny it?" she said calmly. "I'll only add that it's people like you who made it easy."
"What'll you do when you finally get to the top, and there are no more bodies to climb over?"
"Mostly, I'll enjoy it," she replied. "And I'll protect myself a hell of a lot better than the rest of you ever did."
"How many other favors have you stockpiled over the years?" he asked bitterly.
"A few."
"And how many other people have you blackmailed with them?"
"I'm not blackmailing you, Leander," replied Virtue. "I have other leads. If you don't want to do me a favor, you don't have to. Just forget I asked."
"You mean it?"
"Absolutely." She paused. "Of course, I'll have to pay a visit to your superiors. After all, I'm a journalist—and what you did qualifies as news, even after all these years." She smiled. "Don't worry; you won't go to jail for it—but you'd better find a new profession."
"Have you ever done anything, even once, with no thought of a return?" he asked.
"Yes."
"How old were you? Six?"
"Younger. And I immediately decided that there was no percentage in it."
"Who did your bounty hunter have to kill for you before you teamed up with him?"
"Actually, he had to postpone killing someone," said Virtue. "But we're straying from the subject. I need a name."
He nervously lit another cigarette before his first had gone out. "You must understand: I can't be connected with it."
"You won't be," she assured him, leaning forward intently. "The name."
"This is it?" he said. "You'll never bring up that damned story again?"
"I promise."
He sighed. "Dimitri Sokol."
"How big is he?"
"Very. He's a multimillionaire, he's a director of half a dozen corporations, he's held a couple of political offices, and word is that he's about to buy himself an ambassadorship to Lodin Eleven."
"Better and better," she said with a predatory grin. "What have you got on him?"
"Officially, nothing."
"Come on, Leander. Just blurt it all out and then forget you told me. Women?"
Smythe shook his head. "Not a chance."
"Men? Little boys? Drugs?"
"Just money. He bankrolled a smuggling operation out in the Binder system, though I think it would take you a couple of lifetimes to pierce through his corporate veil. I've got a feeling that he was peripherally involved in a couple of murders six years ago—very peripherally—and I know he's given and taken bribes. Anyway, somew
here along the way he decided that he wanted to be respectable, and he's been cleaning up his image for the past three years."
"And now he wants an ambassadorship?"
"So I'm told."
"Okay, Leander—start giving me names and dates, and then I think we can go our separate ways."
"I don't know any names and dates for sure. It's all gossip and conjecture."
"I know. Now let's have them."
"Damn! I wish I could give you a suicide pill or something, just in case this doesn't work."
"I wouldn't take it."
"I know," he muttered.
Their lunch arrived, and while they ate—she enthusiastically, he totally without interest—Smythe laid out such details of Sokol's dealings as he had been able to piece together. Virtue took no notes, but he knew that she'd be able to recite the list verbatim a month later.
"I'll try to set up an appointment with Sokol for tomorrow afternoon," Virtue announced when they were finished with dessert and sipping their after-dinner drinks.
"What makes you think he'll see you?" asked Smythe.
"Turn down an interview with a journalist from Deluros with an ambassadorship in the offing?" she replied with a chuckle. "Not a chance."
"Since when are you from Deluros?"
"Since tomorrow morning."
"He'll check you out before he sees you."
"I know," said Virtue. "That's why you're going to program my new credentials into your network's computer. It's the first place he'll look if he has any doubts about me."
"The hell I will!" he exploded, then lowered his voice when he realized he was attracting the attention of the other diners. "That's above and beyond our agreement," he said, lowering his voice.
"True. I won't threaten you with your ... ah, journalistic indiscretion again. I gave you my word, and I intend to keep it."
"Then that's settled," he said firmly. "I'm not loading false credentials in the computer."
"The choice is entirely yours," she said. "I suppose I'll just have to tell Sokol to verify my position with you personally." She shrugged. "There's always the chance that he won't put two and two together and figure out who gave me the stuff I'm going to use on him."
"You'd do it, wouldn't you?" he said furiously. "You'd really do it!"
"Nobody's going to stop me from finding Santiago—not you, not anyone. I've staked my career on it."
"Then why don't you find another career? Go raise a family or something, instead of blackmailing your old friends. Jesus, but I feel sorry for your partner!"
"He's pretty good at taking care of himself. I think your sympathy would be better spent on a sweet, innocent girl like me."
"Innocent of what?" he said disgustedly.
"You will remember to change my credentials, won't you?" she said sweetly, pushing back her chair and standing up.
"Yes," he muttered. "I'll change them."
"And one more thing, Leander."
"What other little favor can I do for you?" he asked. "Pluck out my eyeballs so you can play marbles with them?"
"Some other time, perhaps." Suddenly she was serious. "I'm sure everything will go smoothly—but just in case I don't come back, or get word to you that I'm all right, I want you to contact Sebastian Cain."
"Who the hell is that?" he demanded.
"The Songbird." She gave him the registration number of Cain's ship. "He should be in the Altair system in the next day or two."
"What message do you want me to give him?"
"I should think that would be obvious," she replied. "I may die unmourned, but I sure as hell don't plan to die unavenged."
7.
Since Black Orpheus never returned to the populated worlds of the Democracy, and Dimitri Sokol never left them, it's only natural that he gave Sokol neither a verse nor a nickname. They never met, never crossed paths, never even knew the other existed—which was probably just as well: Black Orpheus wouldn't have liked him much. Orpheus loved the uninhibited, colorful men and women of the Frontier; Sokol was calm, calculating, and self-controlled. Black Orpheus painted his word pictures in primaries; Dimitri Sokol was a pastel.
Sokol was a civilized man, and as such he indulged in the crimes of civilization. If a man had to be killed, his hand may have held the checkbook, but it never touched the weapon. If there was smuggling or black marketeering to be done, he put so many holding companies and middlemen between himself and his hirelings that he might as well have been on Deluros VIII itself. He craved respectability, which Black Orpheus disdained; and he disdained notoriety, which Black Orpheus dedicated his career to perpetuating.
Orpheus would have considered him a hypocrite, which is certainly one interpretation; but the truth of the matter was that Sokol managed to walk a very fine line between his deeds and his expectations with a skill that even the Bard of the Inner Frontier would have admired.
He had vacation homes on Seabright and Pollux IV, and a suite of offices—which he hadn't visited in years—on Canphor VII. He made large donations to charity each year and had recently paid for an addition to a hospital in Pallas Athena, the oldest of Pegasus' seven enclosed cities. He was a patron of the arts and could always be counted upon to support the local symphony orchestra and ballet with handsome contributions; he no longer donated to the opera, but it was common knowledge that he disapproved of his daughter's liaison with one of the lead tenors, and nobody thought any the less of him for it.
He had spent most of his working hours during the past two years in his penthouse atop one of Hektor's more desirable residential buildings. There were twelve rooms in all; nine served as the family's residence—a son and two daughters still lived with him—and the other three rooms, with their own private entrance, had been converted into an office suite.
It was just after noon when Virtue Mackenzie presented herself in the building's lobby, waited while a security woman announced her arrival, and then took an elevator directly to Sokol's office suite. Upon emerging, she found herself in a small reception foyer, where a secretary told her that she was expected and ushered her into an opulently furnished study.
"He'll join you in just a moment," said the secretary, returning to his post by the elevator.
Virtue took that moment to examine her surroundings. Two of the walls were covered with artwork from all over the Democracy, most of it expensive, some of it good, none of it showing any consistency of taste. A third wall, composed of floor-to-ceiling windows, afforded a dramatic view of a blue river and a deep ravine just beyond the dome. The carpet was plush, made of some wiry alien fabric which seemed to shrink from the touch of her foot, then instantly moved back and pressed against it once she had set it down. There was a large holographic videoscreen, the controls of which were built into the arm of a leather couch. There were four matching chairs, two of them almost pristine, the other two showing some signs of wear. An alien musical instrument, bulky as a piano but of a type she had never seen before, was carefully angled into a corner. Atop it were six small cubes, each containing a hologram of a member of the Sokol family. She picked up one containing the representation of a lovely young woman and examined it.
"My youngest daughter," said a firm, friendly voice, and she turned to find that Sokol had entered the room.
He was a tall man, burly without being overweight, with a well-groomed shock of steel-gray hair and a dapper mustache. His eyes were a deep blue, his nose absolutely straight, his chin square without being prominent. He wore an elegantly embroidered suit of a style that had recently been popular on Deluros VIII.
"She's very pretty," replied Virtue, setting the cube back down.
"Thank you," said Sokol. "I'll tell her you said so." He touched a concealed control behind a picture, and instantly a section of the carpet disappeared and a small but well-stocked bar rose from the floor. "Can I fix you a drink?"
"Why not?" she replied.
"What will you have?"
"What do you recommend?"
; He reached for a strangely shaped bottle. "Cygnian cognac. A gift from a friend who recently returned from Altair."
"I thought you said it was Cygnian," remarked Virtue, filing the reference to Altair away for future reference.
"I did. But Cygnian cognac is in demand all across the galaxy." He paused, then smiled. "If you'd ever tasted the stuff they brew on Altair, you'd know why he brought me this instead."
He poured two glasses and handed one to her.
"Very good," she replied, taking a sip.
"Won't you have a seat?" he said, escorting her to a chair, then sitting down across from her. He pulled out a large cigar. "Do you mind if I smoke?"
"Not at all."
"It's from old Earth itself," he said proudly, lighting up. "They're very hard to come by these days."
"I can imagine."
"Still," he said, exhaling a streak of smoke, "they're worth the effort." He paused. "By the way, where's your camera crew?"
"I don't have one," she replied, opening her well-worn satchel and pulling out a small, metallic, many windowed device, which she placed on a table between them. "This has a pair of wide-angle three-dimensional lenses that can follow you anywhere in the room, and there's a built-in speaker that will pick up everything you say." She pressed a small activator button. "It's not studio quality, but one doesn't always know what conditions will be like in the field, and it's a pretty handy little gadget."
"Amazing!" he said, staring at it in fascination. "It covers a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree area without moving?"
She nodded. "That's right—which means I'll be in all the pictures, too. When I get it to the lab, they'll edit it to follow a standard question-and-answer format, cutting to each of us as we speak. No one except you and me and the lab technicians will know that there wasn't an entire crew on hand."
"And this will be aired on Deluros Eight?" he asked, his expression mirroring his interest.
"As well as half a dozen other systems."
"Can I get a copy of the final cut for myself?"
"I don't see why not," said Virtue. "Of course, you'll need professional equipment to play it back."
"I own some, and have access to still more."
"Fine. Shall we begin?"