That concept so repelled Stake that for a moment he was at a loss for words. Margaret Valsalva broke in just then to announce, “Everyone, we’ll be heading back to the embassy shortly.”
“It was nice to meet you, Mr. Stake.” Argos shook his hand with a crushing grip, then the businessman turned to shake hands with Ami. “My dear. A pleasure, as always.” Finally, he smiled down at Brian and pinched his plump cheek. “You are the adorable one, aren’t you?”
Seeing Argos pinch Brian’s cheek made Stake’s flush of fever intensify. A wave of nausea rolled over in his gut.
Argos linked Penelope Godfrey’s arm flirtatiously, speaking close to her ear, as the party began to drift off down the hall, chattering amongst itself. The robot bodyguards turned their candy green heads in unison to look back at Stake with dead silvery eyes.
As soon as Argos had moved away from Stake and Ami, Colonel Gale swept in on them like an eagle, and hissed to the science chief, “What were you thinking parading the kid in front of the investors like that? They’re spooked enough by what’s going on without meeting this eerie little fucker.” Ami started to speak up, but Gale cut her off with, “We’ll discuss this more, later.” He then turned to Stake, took his arm none too gently, and pulled him a few steps aside. “And you. Where do you get off acting so superior to these people, smart mouth?”
“What do you mean? I’m the epitome of courtesy.”
Gale spoke through his teeth. Stake found himself woozily watching his strip of goatee as he said, “I heard about your incident with the bender and your Ha Jiin traitor. Is the poison getting to you? Or maybe it’s her. She must be one incredible fuck, to mess up your mind like this after all these years. Maybe I should have a go at her myself sometime, huh?”
Stake’s mind, and eyes, sharpened. “I wouldn’t try that if I were you.”
“Oh, and is that a threat?”
“Sound advice. I don’t think your chances of surviving an encounter with that person would be too good.”
“I see. But you’ve survived her, huh? I guess it must be that charming personality of yours.”
Stake wanted to say that Ami Pattaya seemed to find him charming enough, but he held his tongue.
“Coming, colonel?” Henderson asked from a bit down the hall.
Gale glared at Stake for a final beat before clomping off to join the others. Stake shifted his eyes to Argos, and called, “It was nice to meet you, Dink.”
Richard Argos stopped in his tracks, his back broad, bald head glowing in the overhead lights. He turned to face Stake slowly, smiling oddly. Then he walked back in Stake’s direction. Over his shoulder he asked, “Can I catch up with you others in five minutes?”
“Take your time, Mr. Argos,” Valsalva said. The others were still chatting. “We’ll wait.”
As Argos approached, Stake said to Ami, “Why don’t you take Brian back to the lab? Sorry about Gale.”
“So am I,” she said. “Very sorry about Gale.” She steered Brian off down the hall in the opposite direction.
Argos stepped close to Stake, still wearing the strange smile. “Excuse me, detective, what did you call me?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to speak with such familiarity.”
“And how did you come to be familiar with that nickname?”
“As we were talking, I remembered that you won the BBB competition, oh, about eighteen years ago. I’ve always enjoyed following that on VT.”
“You have quite the memory. So from that you recognized me? Personally, I think I look a lot different than I did back in college.”
“You surely do, but come on...you’re the gas magnate Richard Argos! I’ve seen a lot of articles about you over the past seventeen years or so. I know you used to call yourself Dink Argosax. But you’ve sort of reinvented yourself since those days, haven’t you?”
“We’re always evolving, Mr. Stake, aren’t we? Who wants to stand in one place and stagnate? You have to know when to adapt to new opportunities. For instance, if David Bright had any kind of vision he’d be turning this disaster to his advantage. Look at that kid. Bright’s stumbled on a new technique of cloning human cells, and all he’s doing is lamenting about his stupid little construction outfit.”
“You’ve adapted pretty nicely, though – from a young researcher for Wonky Science, to the owner of the most important supplier of sinon gas in the colonies.”
Argos cocked his head a little, showing that funny smile again. “And where did you get that name?”
“From one of the articles I read. I can’t remember where, exactly.” Stake kept glancing down the hall at the others, and he knew he must appear suspiciously fidgety and evasive, but he was doing his best not to lock onto Argos’s face. He had, however, stolen some shots of it with his wrist comp, while lifting his arm to rub at his lips.
“Really? I can’t remember reading about Wonky Science in any particular article about me, either.”
“Well, there was that mishap at Wonky Science, I remember. Researchers killed. Others injured. Were you hurt, yourself?”
“I’m afraid I can absolutely not discuss that subject at all, Mr. Stake. Honestly. If you know anything about that, then you know we were government contractors. I have to maintain an oath of silence.”
“Sorry to hear that. It’s an interesting topic.”
“And you’re an interesting man. Captain Henderson must feel you’re one important private dick, in fact, to have introduced all of us to you like that.”
“Rick understands me. He could tell I’d want to know who everybody was.”
“Know us for what? I thought you were here to look into dead people.”
“Well, what I’ve been finding is people who’ve been reborn as new people.”
“Hm.”
Glancing again at the others engaged in conversation, Stake noted how Abbot Hoo and the two robots faced toward Argos and himself. Though their postures were erect, the robots looked ready to bolt to their master’s defense at the slightest provocation. Stake nodded toward them as he asked Argos, “The other investors don’t have personal bodyguards?”
“They’re not in the same position I am. As cooperative as most of the Jin Haa have been, there are still those who resent my company, especially in the current climate. Death threats are common.”
“David Bright has his own bodyguard, too, for the same reason. I understand your bodyguards and his even had a bit of a run-in with each other, during dinner.”
“Do you know Bright? Seen him lately? The man has absolutely lost it.”
“He’s absolutely lost his shirt. He’s under tremendous stress.”
“That’s big business for ya; if you’re gonna cry, then don’t play with the big boys.”
“Is Hoo something of a bodyguard to you, too, being the buffer between your operation and the Jin Haa?”
Argos looked down the hall at the holy man. “He’s a controversial figure, so much so that there are even other Jin Haa clerics who would like to see him dead for working with us. But they’re living in the dark ages, like all the Ha Jiin clerics. You have to adapt to the times.”
“Sort of like how the land is adapting to the times.”
“Hey, I’m as upset about Bluetown as anybody; don’t lump me together with that ass Bright just because I’m on Sinan to make a living. His out of control monstrosity threatens to cut me off at the knees! Anyway, yeah, my friend Hoo is trying to calm the rest of his kind – mediate not only between us and the clerics, but us and the common people. He’s appealing to the other powerful abbots to remain level-headed through all this.”
“It’s funny, though, that a man of his position would still align himself with an Earther, seeing how this Earth Colonies project has run so amuck. I mean, what do he and his followers get from essentially selling their ancestors’ souls, as they think of sinon gas, to outsiders as product? Do they see a cut of the money?”
“Well, the clerics and the politicians are in a close relatio
nship. A man with no face might not have a lot of desire for money, but a politician with two faces does.” Argos smiled at his own cleverness. “And face or no face, every man likes power, Mr. Stake. That’s what attracts these mystical types to the order. Tapping into that celestial power.”
“Still seems like a big sell-out for someone who’s devoted enough to let his face rot away.”
“I don’t pretend to know everything that goes on in Hoo’s head. Let’s face it – pardon the pun – they’re aliens.”
“Well, I can understand why some of his own kind would be upset enough to want to see him come to harm. Do your robots look after him, too?”
“It’s not like me and Hoo are roommates, Mr. Stake – ours is a platonic relationship. No, the robots are wholly mine. These monks have their own bag of tricks to protect themselves. They can make sounds that’ll have your brain oozing out of your ears, and a lot of them have developed PSI powers through sheer force of will. You see his pet, there?”
Both men looked. As if it understood their words, the worm sloth lifted its head again and ran its tongue over one of its huge eyes. Stake had the unsettling sense that, telepathically linked with the creature as the cleric was, he could to some extent see through those eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “They can get into the minds of animals. Some say, even people.”
Argos kept his voice low. “Right. They’re scary buggers, and I wouldn’t want to tangle with one of them. Especially one of Hoo’s rank.”
“Richard,” called Ambassador Valsalva, “I’m sorry, but we’re about ready to leave now.”
Argos shook Stake’s hand again, his grip even more punishing than before. “It was nice chit-chatting with you, Mr. Stake. Glad you enjoyed watching me win the Better Booby-trap competition all those years ago.”
“Like I say, that’s always been fun to follow. Did you know that as deep penetration operatives, Captain Henderson and I were trained to rig actual booby-traps in the jungle?”
“Well, then – maybe we’ll just have to test our skills against each other sometime.” Argos gave Stake a mock military salute, and then strode powerfully off down the hallway to rejoin the others.
“We already are,” Stake mumbled.
NINETEEN: CAMOUFLAGE
In his room within the Colonial Forces base, Jeremy Stake again examined the handgun that Thi Gonh had stuffed into his trouser pocket while he’d been unconscious, and the two clips of solid projectiles and green plasma rounds respectively. He paced the room while getting a feel for the pistol, pointing it here and there.
The handgun’s entire surface was an odd, pale glossy gray, and he recognized the type of weapon this was. Like the device that Colonel Gale had shown Henderson – supposedly recovered with the three Bluetown clones – that could render a soldier invisible by rerouting light rays, the gun’s composition used metamaterials to screen itself from weapons scanners such as those at the Colonial Forces base. It was an illegal weapon, and expensive, and Stake figured Thi must have acquired it from a serious black market dealer. From having followed news stories and articles about Sinan over the years, he was aware there was a powerful Ha Jiin crime lord called Don Tengu, and he supposed Tengu’s people might be able to supply such a sophisticated weapon to a simple Ha Jiin farm owner. But why would she even need one with this quality? Maybe this was one of the weapons she had acquired before coming to Punktown to aid Stake last year when she’d learned that his life was at risk from dangerous enemies. He’d always figured she’d bought the sniper rifle she had used at that time from a Punktown weapons dealer. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Thoughts of the invisibility cloak returned Stake to the subject of the equipment and uniform fragments Gale claimed had been recovered, compared with what Captain Yengun had seen. So Stake put away his new handgun, and turned his attention to two other instruments instead. One was his wrist comp, brimming with files. The other was Rick Henderson’s own hand phone, which he had let Stake borrow within the past half hour.
The captain had offered to try Persia Barbour himself this time. Stake had said no – there was someone else he wanted her to meet.
***
Persia Barbour did not pick up her call, but since he was using Henderson’s phone he was not blocked and found he could leave a message, so he started.
“Mrs. Barbour, my name is Jeremy Stake. We spoke before – sort of. As I was trying to tell you, I’m a private investigator hired by Captain Rick Henderson of the Colonel Forces to look into a very strange matter on the planet Sinan, where the remains of three –”
Persia Barbour came on, cutting him off as she snapped, “Who are you? You’re not the same man who called me before.”
“I’m a mutant, Mrs. Barbour. I suffer a condition known as Caro turbida. It means ‘confused flesh.’ I can take on the appearance of other people. I had originally planned to show you a photograph of a little boy when I called you next, or even try to have the boy himself beside me. But then I thought it would be better if I adopted this boy’s appearance myself. Since he’s a child of about five-years-old in development, I can’t match his proportions exactly. What you’re seeing is the best I can do. But I figured, maybe the combination of his face and my face would give a kind of representation of what this child would look like as an adult.”
“Oh my God,” the woman choked, putting the fingertips of both hands to her lips.
“So you tell me, Mrs. Barbour – who am I? Who am I to you? Because I know I look like one of the three people who died in that teleporter accident at Wonky Science, and there’s a one-in-three chance that right now I look like your late husband Lewton Barbour.”
She looked away and gasped a sob. But she didn’t disconnect.
“So it is. It is him.”
“I saw it on VT,” she got out shakily. “I saw the clone. I’ve seen pictures of my husband as a child, but I didn’t recognize him at first. But then I thought, Sinan...”
“We’ll get to the Sinan part. So you already knew the clone was of your husband, but you didn’t come forward to identify him?”
Persia turned her eyes back to the screen gingerly, as if afraid what she’d see there were her husband’s remains as they had appeared when they’d been rotting under the Ha Jiin soil, before the living pseudopod of Bluetown had slithered along. “How can you do this to me?” she managed.
“How can you let this situation remain unresolved?”
“Do you really want me to cut you off, Mr. Stake?”
“You can’t do that. Now I know the identity of one of the clones found in Bluetown. It’s your responsibility to tell me the names of the other two so we can put this matter to rest – and decide what the best future for this child could be.”
“I won’t talk about it anymore.”
“Look, Mrs. Barbour...”
“I won’t talk on the phone! If you want to discuss it, all right, but not like this! You’re on Sinan? Well you’ll have to come to Punktown.”
“I believe this is a safe channel.”
“Dung. There’s no such thing. Come to see me in Punktown; it’s the only way.”
Christ, Stake thought, Mrs. Henderson was going to wonder what her husband was doing with all their money on Sinan. “All right...all right. Where and when?”
“I have your number. I’ll call you again in two days. Will you be here by then?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Then get moving. Two days.”
She was gone. Only when her image blinked out did Stake realize a headache had crept up from behind to tackle him. His hand went to his forehead involuntarily. Maybe, without knowing it, his touch compressed a certain single nerve just enough, a button under his skin, because that was when the movie began playing behind his eyes.
He was on hands and knees, crawling behind another man through tall blue grass, rubbery blades with knife edges, wet with condensation. He was able to see in the dark through his special goggles, his helmet camouflaged like the uniform
of the man ahead of him. The man stopped, held up a hand, and Stake halted with his hands inches from the other man’s boots. This soldier got to his feet but kept low as he ducked behind a thick black tree trunk caught in a web of blue lianas. One liana hanging down from the tree’s branches swept across Stake’s face when he peeked up over the top of the grass. For a moment, he swept his hand at it frantically, for some reason thinking it was the stinging tentacle of a hovering jellyfish.
He saw the other soldier at the tree, leaning around its wrinkled flank slowly to see what lay on the other side.
A whoosh, like a bird of prey swooping down through the air, an owl that had been patiently waiting to launch its attack, ready to seize with sharp talons. Stake never saw what made the whooshing sound, but he did see that his companion still squatted at the base of the tree. If he hadn’t been looking through his goggles, he might not have noticed that the man no longer had a head. The body gently tumbled backwards, dropped out of sight into the grass as if submerging into blue water.
A thump as something dropped into the grass closer to Stake, and it rolled until it came to a stop just in front of him. He parted the tall blades with his hands, and looked down at a severed head. Its helmet had been knocked away when the booby-trap was sprung, helping Stake to identify the features. The face was unnatural in a way that was hard to put a finger on, as though this were the head of a very realistic mannequin.
It was the disembodied head of Timothy Leung. But without being hooked up to its life support, the eyes did not follow him, the lips did not move. Well, only for a second or two did the eyes turn up toward him. Only for a second did the lips part to speak, before they went still and the unuttered words were gone like a wisp of black smoke.
***
“Ami,” Stake said into his wrist comp, “care to grab some dinner, off the base for a breath of fresh air? Away from your boyfriend’s loving gaze?”
Blue War: A Punktown Novel Page 23