by Scott Rhine
****
Next, Max went to the trading post in town. Other stores had specialty items at a higher price, but locals shopped at the post for quality, inexpensive gear.
Bortral complained about another shopping stop. “We already bought everything we will need on the trip.”
“Well I’m the expert, and I need more. The hunt is won or lost in the preparation.”
“When will you start tracking?”
“I already have.” Max had decent binoculars, canteen, and a trenching shovel in his military kit. “Since you put on your disguise, people have been talking to me. The target is north of Lake Kalanga, probably in the wilderness, under the protection of a local terror group known as the Mbutu.” To cover for the bold lie, Max debated whether he could spend another fifty credits on a pair of metal shears for his first-aid kit. Combined with the vibro gloves, they would be a formidable weapon.
Surprised, Bortral said, “I must call the captain.”
Max raised a hand. “I have a contact who’ll give me more detailed information and confirm this lead. He’ll send a messenger when the packet is ready. Patience.”
His biggest purchase ended up being two sets of homespun clothing to help him fit in with the locals. None of them had nanoweave. He changed into the everyday outfit immediately, saving the “Sunday” outfit for later.
He spent all but twenty of his credits at the store, bargaining over the ration prices. The clerk at the trading post shared rumors about the Mbutu expanding into illegal drug shipments.
“Narcotics?” asked Max.
“That and extra shipments of pharmaceuticals for companies who don’t have contracts with the government.” Limited flow kept prices and quality high while minimizing environmental impact.
“What do they get in return? Extra tech? Untraceable credits?”
The clerk shrugged nervously. “I have a family now. I don’t know anything about the drug scene myself.”
He traded the remainder of his credit stick for small coins that would be usable in the outback.
When Max stepped outside, a woman waved to him from the veranda of the restaurant next door. Helena Claremont was dressed in an archaic plantation costume.
On his way to greet her, her guard stopped him for a frisking. Max left his medical bag and purchases with Bortral. The guard called Gunther leaned over to whisper, “One of these days you’re not going to have a woman or a lizard around to protect you.” The Neanderthal still hadn’t forgiven Max for taking him down at the Jotunheim Station food court.
Max ignored the unibrow’s threat. “Helena, why aren’t you at your estate?”
She rolled her eyes. “The mansion has water damage in the ceiling. Dreadful. My bedroom looks like a white cave. We’re staying here until the roof has been patched.”
At her gesture, he pulled up the nearest wicker chair to her patio table. “Excellent choice. Their stuffed grape leaves remind me of my mother’s, and the cherry tea is divine.”
“Then I’ll order some for you, and you can let me taste a spoonful.”
At the word “spoon,” Gunther glowered in Max’s direction.
Helena placed a hand on his arm. “We’ve arranged your ceremony for eight days from now.”
“You don’t need to—”
“Nonsense. Be sure to dress for the occasion, though. After the presentation, we’re having a party with a beach luau theme since you distinguished yourself in New Hawaii. We’re printing the invitations tomorrow.”
Trying to sound casual, he asked, “Could I bring my assistant and our dates?”
“There won’t be room on the grandstand, but they’re welcome at the party as long as they’re respectable and pass Turtle security screening. You have no idea how hard it is to clear workers who don’t have birth certificates.”
“I’m sure the embassy will approve. I’m considering the chief engineer from the station and her roommate who works at the spaceport.”
Helena took notes, satisfied that neither name was Troutwine.
****
Max chatted with the first lady until twilight brought out the mosquitoes. She retreated at the first sign of insect activity. None of them bothered Max. As the sun went down, a ragamuffin approached him.
Max tipped the boy his remaining rolls and jam, and meandered to the police department. Bortral veered off, afraid of attention from law enforcement.
Smug, Max strode into the police offices. Before he could duck into the bathroom, he ran into the sheriff, who had the same name as the Indian station manager. “Can I help you, sir?”
“Just a courtesy visit,” Max invented on the spot, speaking clearly enough for eavesdroppers. “I know I have a bounty hunter’s license, but I wanted to let you know that I’m leading an expedition to capture a known criminal near Lake Kalanga.”
“Are you suicidal? I wouldn’t go there.” The sheriff glanced at his deputy and corrected his claim. “I mean, I’d love to bring those murderers to justice, but that’s outside my jurisdiction. You’d have to talk to the rangers about them.” Park rangers policed anything outside of the tech zone.
“I’m !Kung. We track anywhere,” Max bragged. To keep the sheriff occupied, he added, “Although it would help if you could let me download the latest satellite survey map of the route. Station master Ramakrishna should approve it.”
Max stepped into the bathroom for the real meeting—only to face the muzzle of a blaster. He raised his hands. “Mr. V. Pleased to meet you.”
“Bounty hunter?” asked Vrilkesh, who, other than his taste in hand-tailored Human suits, was a dead ringer for the captain.
“Not by choice. Look, with your help, I think we can find an equitable solution to this mess.”
“You mean, other than pulling this trigger?” asked the Saurian.
“Kill me, and you kill the Goat and Magi hostages your brother is holding on the ship, not to mention pissing off the natives, Turtles, Yellow Slash, Blue Claw, and governor’s mistress.”
Vrilkesh flipped the gun’s safety on. “What did you have in mind?”
“Faking your death and pirating your brother’s ship.”
The Saurian embezzler laughed through the whole plan, except the part when they wired money back to Parro Sageworthy’s accounts. “I performed a public service bankrupting those criminals.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know how to hide. The money is nothing. I bet a guy with your brains has made a lot of interest on that money since the crash.”
“I doubled it.”
Max paused. “Wow. So you can give back the original funds, take a finder’s fee as your brother, and we’ll fly you anywhere in known space you want to go on a posh Magi courier.”
“There’s nothing you can say to make me fork over half my earnings.”
“You’ll have your brother’s flush bank accounts and a share of the profits from any non-lethal cargo you like.”
“What happens to Zrulkesh?”
“He gets marooned on Eden as you … after I interrogate him.”
Vrilkesh grinned. “It’s a deal if I get to watch.”
“I’m trusting you with something more than my life.”
“Fear not. Krannek would skin me alive if I betrayed you,” the Saurian said.
Max held out his hand. “Prove it. Swear a clutch oath.”
“You don’t know the magnitude of what you ask.”
“When Beloved Sanderjee presents my medal, you can stand behind me as my second.”
The criminal looked down at Max’s hand for a long moment before he shook on the deal. “If it weren’t for your reputation and Krannek’s praise, I wouldn’t believe you. I swear to aid you until the charges of kidnapping and slavery are expunged from my clan’s name. I will stand by you until you are honored for your service to all sentients.”
Max contacted Echo and Reuben on his secure earbud. “Guys, if you have any hope of freedom, it’ll be through Vrilkesh. Even if I don’t make it, he can close th
e deal. I’m giving him my secure comm so he can coordinate with both of you.”
Max traded the earbud for a few of the fugitive criminal’s personal items. These Max stuffed into a plastic garbage bag to preserve their scent. The expensive wallet was even engraved. He borrowed the cash from inside. “Put something else with your smell on it into the lost-and-found bin at McCool Travel.”
“That fool? Why?”
“I’ve been leaving breadcrumbs for your brother that McCool is the Mbutu’s courier.”
“Sometimes he is.”
“Even better. Wait here for a moment,” Max said.
Chapter 22 – Can’t Go Home Again
The sheriff provided Max with a low-resolution satellite map over fifty years old. “The land hasn’t changed much, but we have to keep a lid on the hi-res maps because mining companies are always sniffing around.”
“Because they can’t take the same aerial photos on their way down from the station,” Max replied sarcastically.
“My hands are tied.”
“I understand.” Max pulled the original warrant paperwork from Vegas out of his pocket. “Since I need Zrulkesh to identify his brother and I owe him a percentage of my fee for his services, I thought I might apply for a bounty hunter’s license for him as well. You can check his credentials with the space station, and the seal from Vegas law enforcement. The governor’s clerk wasn’t sure if she could issue papers for a Saurian, but I thought we could pay a small fee here and make everything official. The last thing I want to do is step on any toes.”
“Certainly,” the sheriff said warmly. For a hundred credits in hydrogen coins, the sheriff photocopied and signed all relevant documents. With an extra fifty credits, he even threw in a laminated badge, complete with a passport photo of the captain from the space station logs.
Max couldn’t resist one more nail in the coffin. “Oh, could you add something to the criminal Vrilkesh’s file that I found out though my investigation?”
“On our planetary net. Updates sent elsewhere can take months.”
“He uses Blue Claw bodyguards, so be careful.”
“The dumb oxen. Good to know. Thanks,” said the sheriff, scribbling a note.
On his way out, Max stopped at the bathroom again. He handed all the paperwork, plus the change, to Vrilkesh. “Remember to dress the part.”
The embezzler couldn’t stop snickering.
****
Bortral fell in behind Max the moment he left the police station. “Now do we call the boss?”
Max held up a hand. “Patience. Knowing when and how to strike are just as important as where.” He showed Bortral the outdated map. “These cops have been bought off. Something is happening in that area the officials don’t want us to see.”
Unhappy with the sheriff’s evasions, Max walked the two kilometers to Eastgate, the nearest crossing point into the preserve. There were no cattle allowed on Eden because the conservationists feared deforestation by the owners who cleared grazing land. Limited llama licenses were available, but everyone could own pigs, which turned garbage into fertilizer. Furthermore, pigs tended to be resistant to every poison the planet threw at them. Max petted a few piglets in a roadside pen, heedless of the smell.
Darkness had fallen by the time he arrived at the gatehouse. Connected to solar fabric on the roof, a single glow panel lit the front of the building. He knocked on the door of the glorified shed, and an old woman in a green poncho slid open the window beside the per-person price listings. “No crossings at night. Too dangerous.” He recognized her as an ancient Australian aborigine. The tribal council often arranged for those who couldn’t work the land anymore to get softer jobs like this.
“Grandmother of the land, I greet you,” Max said in English. “I come seeking wisdom.”
Wary, she asked, “And what would you trade for my years of learning, child of the bush?”
In Banker, Max told his Saurian shadow, “Give her your dagger, hilt first.” When he objected, Max lied, “I’m out of bribe money, and all I have are scissors.”
Grumbling, Bortral slapped his dagger on the counter. The weapon disappeared into the folds of her poncho. Her smile was missing a number of teeth. “How can I help?”
“Tell me about the twenty people that the Mbutu massacred and why the councils did nothing to avenge them,” Max asked in English.
The grandmotherly smile vanished. “It’s complicated. The people killed were all specialists brought in to manage extinct and borderline animal species as part of Sanderjee’s giving program. The specialists increased populations across the board.”
“Rangers?”
“No. They weren’t qualified, but they were all card-carrying Conservationists. The surge in animal populations caused a problem. The elephants were overrunning their designated habitat.”
“If they find a new migration path, the elephants could either trample Human land or risk being wiped out by the next tsunami.” Max rubbed the back of his neck. On Eden, natural selection wasn’t always the best choice. “Did they transport part of the herd to another location?”
“Too much impact, the study said. Experts said we needed a predator.”
Max cursed in three languages. “Tell me they didn’t.”
The grandmother sighed. “Three years ago, the governor authorized limited hunting, in conjunction with the tourism industry, to limit the herds. The Mbutu Cartel purchased a license and an exemption for ten guns. The specialists interfering in the hunt were ruled in violation of the law. The killers were recorded as exiles in the spaceport’s master database so they can never leave this planet, but that was the sum total of their punishment.”
A nature preserve turned out to be the one place in the galaxy where someone could pay to kill a protected animal. The Mbutu were killers with the law on their side, like pirates with a letter of marque from the crown. Something was still missing. “I bet they export the ivory, too. That’s not in the spirit of the charter.”
She nodded. “The Conservationists argue that any necessary cull should be done by natives with native weapons. Maybe the new governor will listen.”
“Or the elephants will learn to fly and find a new home.”
The ranger passed over a photo of a Saurian posing by a bleeding elephant on its side. Bortral glimpsed the scene and remarked, “A glorious hunt.”
“If he had to use his own claws and teeth, maybe that might be fair,” the old woman replied.
Indeed. Max handed back the photo. “Why did someone tell me that the people killed were !Kung?”
The old woman licked her lips. “They were children and grandchildren of a certain Conservationist and never accepted into the tribe. They had skin like yours but were all raised in Conception Bay.”
Matters crystallized for Max. The tribes only protected their own. Since the Conservationists hadn’t been tourists, the rangers couldn’t avenge their deaths either. At a gray area in the law and facing big money, these victims had no one. “Why couldn’t they have been deputized as rangers?”
“To succeed so well at their jobs, the animal managers were Dolittles.” They had a special kind of deep Collective Unconscious talent that enabled them to bond to other mammals. As CU positives, they couldn’t be citizens of Eden.
“Wait, did the Mbutu kill these people because they were positives?” Max asked. Many of the purists who had settled Eden hated mind-sighted Humans with a passion and dubbed them traitors. If I’d married Lisa, would our children have been fair game, too?
The old woman slid the window shut and turned off the porch light.
Population increases and the influx of money had caused changes in his childhood landscapes. Lions weren’t the worst thing he would need to watch out for on this hunt. Max told the Saurian, “About the time Vrilkesh arrived, the Mbutu Cartel had a surge in revenue and broke into several shady businesses. The hairdresser at the airport said she saw a Saurian being flown around by McCool Travel, the cartel’s primary smug
gler.”
Bortral nodded. “So your tip was good?”
“Yes,” Max lied with confidence. “The fact that the police don’t want us to know what’s in the lake area means that’s definitely where he’s hiding.”
He led Bortral back to town. Instead of staying at the hotels, he talked to the Goat running the stables. In exchange for an hour of Mnamnabo stories and helping to muck out the stables, the owner let them sleep in the hayloft for free. When Bortral complained, Max told him, “We’re about to travel into the bush. The natives will be able to smell a city dweller at ten paces. Your boss hired me to find Vrilkesh, and I will. I can’t guarantee the rest of you will survive unless you listen to my advice.”
He bedded down in the same clothes he had worked in. His last thought before he drifted off was that Lisa was probably in the hotel … alone. She would take him back without questions, and he wouldn’t need to continue this mission. All it would cost him was his self-respect and conscience.
No. He had to set his friends free.
Chapter 23 – Protect your own Asset
An hour before dawn, Max woke at a phantom noise. More than likely, the wind had spooked one of the horses. Adrenaline prodded him to action, so he went for a run down to the beach. He continued along a rocky peninsula until he reached the two-story desalination towers. The shapes reminded him of rook chess pieces. He climbed one to watch the town and think, just as he had over sixty years ago.
Max accessed what little information he could off the slow and sparse public net. Apart from the massacre, all visitor deaths on Eden seemed to be from animals or natural disasters. People engaging in safaris or water sports routinely signed waivers to prevent the preserve from being sued. So-called acts of God weren’t investigated by rangers. A dozen locals and one tourist had died this way over the last two years, more than the previous ten years combined. What disturbed him most was how many worked for the spaceport or the government.
As he perched above the path at sunrise, a woman ran past in a jogging outfit and earphones. Her hair and nails were perfectly groomed, the way women from the big houses had been in his youth. Her dark hair had red undertones that accented the sunrise as well as her outfit. She certainly made the tourist track suit look better than the Saurian had. She used the spiral stairs around the towers to stretch and give her butt that extra workout. As interesting as the view was, he felt like a voyeur. He announced himself with, “Do you really think a young woman such as yourself should exercise alone?”