“Alan wrote me, a year or so ago. Said you were doing extra duty with the NIO. I figure you must be on NIO business, and most of the time these days, isn’t it usually about the Movement?”
“He probably shouldn’t have told you that.”
“I will expose you both for the spies you are.”
I laughed, relaxed a little.
“Plenko has a number of aliases,” she said, “and I’m betting you’ve got him cornered somewhere. Alan’s on his trail.”
I said nothing.
“Where?”
I just shook my head.
“Right,” she said. “Can’t tell me. But you’ve found out something. You’re on the run.”
I looked at her. Smiled apologetically.
“Right, can’t say,” she said, smiling right back. “Alan know you’re here?”
“I think so. Sent him a message before leaving. I’m waiting to hear from him before I decide what to do.”
“You can stay with me.”
I’d counted on it. “Thanks, but you don’t have to. I can grab a room—”
“No, it’s fine, although I’ve moved since you were here last. A bigger place.”
Moved on. Making more money, doing well for herself. I wondered what else had changed in her life.
“That’s great,” I said. “I’m sorry about not writing.”
She shrugged. “You’re an interworld agent,” she said. “Why would you have time for me?”
“I have no excuse. I’m a borrowed hound, after all.”
“I really didn’t expect to see you again. Honestly. I really didn’t.”
“Actually,” I said, “I’ve not stopped thinking about you.”
“Really?” she said, her voice quiet. “Did you come back for me, or did the job bring you here?”
“Both.”
“Lucky for you,” she said, reaching up and kissing me lightly on the cheek, “that I’m still here. Although during the past few months I’ve not been sleeping well.”
“Thinking about me.”
She made a dismissive sound. “Right. No, just some insomnia, at times, and then all of a sudden, I had this huge sleeping marathon, where I just could not wake up.”
She put her arm around my waist and we started walking again. My feet crunched through the snow. “But you’re feeling okay now?”
“Sure.”
“So what’s the big attraction at the Sea these days? Besides the obvious.”
“Nothing the tavern’s promoting,” she said. “People want to be close to the world capital. There are rumors going around about Aryell breaking its ties with the Union of Worlds.”
“Hearing the same kind of things on Temonus.”
“Yes. But the rumors are true. Aryellian leaders have already started the process.”
We kept walking. Cara knew a lot more about the Movement’s involvement here than I did, because before leaving Earth, I’d heard nothing about Aryell moving forward with secession, even through the DataNet.
So how did Cara know?
Eight
Brindos awoke the next morning in his hotel room bed, feeling the relief one feels when awoken from a bad dream. In the nightmare he was on his back in a dark filthy alley, a blood-thirsty Helk leaning over him. He remembered thinking the Helk was going to tear him apart, then eat him. It wouldn’t have been the first time, although nowadays they didn’t generally consume other intelligent races, except as an act of war or terrorism. It was a fine point of etiquette with them. But as he tried to sit up, physical pain caused memories of the alley to surface.
It had been real.
Brindos propped himself against the headboard and soon realized it was not morning, but evening. How did he end up back in the hotel?
He reached for his code card on the nightstand, but it wasn’t there. Oh shit. Without his code card—
He wouldn’t get his message from Dave on Aryell. Couldn’t contact him from his end. Not without compromising his whereabouts, unless he could get away with a lasergram. He wouldn’t be able to encode it.
In a panic, he clambered out of bed and found his coat on a chair. No code card.
No blaster.
He checked his fingers. The capacitors, each with enough charge to knock a Helk cold, had been emptied. He wouldn’t be able to recharge them until he could find a portable charger.
The room clock confirmed that it had indeed been eighteen hours since he’d gone out into the alley behind the Restaurant.
What the hell?
He attempted to piece together the previous evening: walking with Joseph through the old quarter, or what was left of it, he had said. A dead sector, but beneath the surface, a strange heart with a peculiar beat. And then they found the Restaurant. A sense of luxury laced with carnival atmosphere. The food remarkable, and their waiter, a Hulk Jekyll and Hyde. Brindos had received friendly service, then the Helk had almost killed him. He could remember nothing beyond that.
The hotel room looked like his hotel room. Clothes scattered on the floor. These were not the same clothes he had worn to the Restaurant. They were his clothes, but he hadn’t worn them yet.They were thrown there as he would have thrown them. Shoes under the table, but they were his smart shoes, not the loafers he had worn. Too bad. The smart shoes could’ve told him where they’d been if he’d been wearing them. As it was, the shoes had never left softmode, and the flash membrane under the shoe’s insole reported no usage since he’d last worn them, two weeks earlier for a fund-raiser event at the NIO building. Over a chair next to the clothes was a towel. He could tell it was damp, as though he had used it to dry off after a shower.
Brindos staggered over to the dresser mirror, spotting the loafers near the bathroom door. He examined his face; there were no marks. He felt for tender spots, but other than a little back pain from slamming against the brick wall, and a bruised throat from where the Helk had grabbed him, he seemed okay. The Helk could have taken his face off. Brindos was glad the Helk had been Second Clan instead of First. He felt a little dizzy, but that could have been a result of the Helk food.
If Brindos had indeed run into Knox last night, Crowell’s alias hypothesis was off the mark. Knox, alias Koch, in no way resembled Plenko. Knox, as big as he was, was a good eight inches shorter than Plenko.
The newspaper roll on the table blinked red, announcing the latest update of the Midwest City Tribune, but he ignored it and looked things over once more: the clothes on the chair (the clothes he’d worn last night had seemingly vanished), the towel, his shoes, and the rumpled bed, which he couldn’t remember crawling into.
He sat on a corner of the bed. Upon awakening he had considered the dilemma objectively, just a puzzle to be solved, but now reality caught up with him, and he felt a tug of fear. It wouldn’t be wise to return to the Restaurant. He could obtain a better picture of what happened from Joseph, who must have whisked him back here. Risk and danger were not supposed to be a major part of his job now, and he didn’t go looking for them. He’d been in military and government work for years before doing investigative work because the benefits were solid, and he had a little money tucked away for an early retirement. He never tried to think of it beyond those terms, but at the moment, he was having difficulty.
Brindos thought of the alley in the back of the Restaurant. This Helk will kill me, he remembered thinking, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him. He felt his body ramming against the wall, over and over. He’d been afraid for his life, but he was more terrified of oblivion, of not knowing.
Now eighteen hours of his life were missing.
He went to find Joseph.
The concierge hadn’t come on duty yet, so Brindos stepped out of the hotel, thinking he might find a street vendor selling bagels or pastries. It was evening, but his body asked for breakfast. The early evening weather was cool. Overcast skies threatened rain. He carried a black umbrella he’d purchased at the Tour Depot on his first day here. They could put a man on a ship t
o the stars but they still couldn’t make an umbrella that would last. Already, two of the thin metal ribs had ripped free of the nylon, poking out like cat whiskers.
He walked a half block and came upon a street vendor on the edge of a small park. After buying a bagel and coffee, he sat in the nearby park to eat it. Before long, he looked up and found Joseph standing over him, looking old and inconsequential in his neat gray street clothes.
“Joseph, I—”
“Quiet now,” he said. “You need to talk, and so do I, but this isn’t the place.”
Joseph led the way to a bar a few blocks from the hotel on Eagle Street, called the Blue Rocket. They ordered at the bar and took their glasses of Temonus whiskey to a booth at the rear. The light fixture above them was busted. Brindos could barely make Joseph out across the table from him.
Joe brought out a microfilament, which heated up almost immediately. He lit a candle that had nearly dripped its last drop, most of its wax stuck in a congealed pool on the tabletop.
He picked up his glass. The blue liquid moved through his parted lips like a frozen gas.
“Joe,” Brindos found himself whispering, “what happened last night?”
He just shook his head and said, “I was hoping you could explain it to me.”
Brindos just stared at him.
“You can’t?” Joe’s puzzled look of concern bore down on him.
“I woke up in bed not long ago,” Brindos said. “But I have no idea how I got there.”
The startled look on Joseph’s face was genuine. He began to laugh, and Brindos chimed in with his own nervous hack. But this did not go on long.
“Look, Mr. Roberts,” Joseph said with a smile that said he thought Brindos was the biggest screwup he had ever known, “I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, but this isn’t funny, not funny at all. Do you think I’ve gotten as old as I am by being an idiot? Maybe you think you’re some big hotshot who can get away with murder, is that it? You best watch your back.”
“Murder?” Brindos said, a little panicked. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Joseph, this is me you’re talking to—”
Joseph edged out of the booth and stood up, clearly upset. “And who are you? Dexter. What do I know about you? I can’t talk to you about this if you refuse to cooperate. I must go.”
As he moved away, Brindos’s drinking hand rocketed from his glass, hooking his coat. Joseph shot an angry glance, and Brindos chose his words quickly.
“Joe, I don’t remember what happened last night. I must have blacked out. Something terrible happened, I can sense that, but I’m in the dark and you’re the only one who can help me.” He relaxed his grip, letting his coat fall free. “Please. Stay.”
Joseph paused. “You blacked out?”
“Eighteen hours. Please,” he repeated. “I don’t blame you now for being angry at me, but the plain truth is I need your help.”
Joseph reached into one of the deep pockets inside his overcoat. His hand came out with a flashroll of the Tribune that he thrust onto the table. Brindos cleared space and unrolled it. The same roll he had in his hotel room, which he had not taken the time to look at before leaving to find Joseph. His eyes went straight to the headline: “Waiter Slain Outside Old Town Restaurant.”
Nine
Cara lived in a two-story duplex at the end of a winding street, the pavement following the contours of a tiny hill bordering Kimson’s residential park. The road ended at a series of narrow and steep steps that climbed to an upper hallway outside her building. She’d moved there, she said, about two months after Alan and I had left. Or, I should say, two months after I left; Alan had taken transport back to Earth a week earlier on assignment.
The new apartment lurked like a secret lover; I didn’t know this place, didn’t know the Cara who lived here. In the dim porch light, Cara fumbled with her keys, taking a few moments to insert the right one and unlock the door. No sensor.
We slipped inside the door, and without a word she turned and pulled me to her. Our lips met and I tasted lipstick as her mouth opened. Her rapid breaths warmed the back of my throat. My brain clung to the memory of our past together as she unbuttoned her blouse, then I reached behind her and unclasped her bra. As it fell to the floor, I spun us around and pushed her against the wall. Her breasts were small and pale, aueroles brown and nipples erect, and as I kissed them she unbuttoned my shirt and fumbled with my belt, sending shivers along my stomach. When I touched her she moaned so eagerly that it brought back the chills of our earlier times together. In an instant I was against the wall and she straddled me and rocked back and forth.
She pressed her face against my shoulder. She said my name in quiet, terse whispers, her shudders vibrating against my skin. I was still inside her as I lifted her and carried her to bed.
In the morning, sunlight streamed in through a crack in the window curtains, the passive heat bringing me out of contented sleep. Cara rested quietly beside me. I eased out of bed and padded across the path of sunlight on the hardwood floor. I peeked out through the curtain at the city center, and beyond the morning mist, Kimson’s clock tower emerged behind the winding street that had brought me here. I hadn’t realized we’d climbed so high. I threw back the curtains, and the sunlight invaded the bedroom. Cara stirred, and I returned to the bed and kissed her forehead.
She smiled with her eyes closed.
I snuggled next to her and we again became tangled with each other.
After a while, Cara spoke. “You didn’t tell me what you thought.”
“Fantastic,” I said.
She laughed. “Not that.”
“The new place is nice.”
She slugged me in the shoulder. “I mean, about Aryell.”
“Ah,” I said. She stared at me, suddenly serious. I said, “Rumors about secession. We didn’t talk about it last night for some strange reason.”
She rubbed the shoulder she had punched. “Bad boy. But you’ve heard the same rumors about Temonus.”
“Sure,” I said. “And last night you said the rumors about Aryell were true.”
“They are. Didn’t you read the paper?”
“I just got here.”
“You must be getting updates from the NIO if nothing else.”
“Not really. And when have I had time to look? I came straight to the Flaming Sea to find you.” I couldn’t tell her about being on the run from the NIO. At least not yet. Not until I knew more about what she’d been up to.
“An article in yesterday’s paper said the Union of Worlds is nearing a crisis point,” she said. “You know what happened to Ribon. You probably heard about Temonus and the sabotage of their weather device too. The Movement, again, and Aryell is running scared. It’s coming to a vote in a few days.”
“Secession seem likely?”
“Very. President Nguyen’s administration is faltering, he’s losing control of the Union Senates, and we can thank Terl Plenko for that.”
And maybe Tim James. Maybe President Nguyen himself. Thanks for nothing. “I’ve heard whispers of the same thing happening on Barnard’s World.”
“Barnard’s too?”
“Plenko’s got a hell of a reach, and he’s not on Earth anymore. To tell the truth, I don’t have a clue what’s going on.” So far, a true statement. I kissed her, featherlike. “I should get down to the Union Express office and see if I’ve got any new messages from Alan.”
“Why Union Express? Can’t you just use your code card to reach Alan?”
“It’s damaged,” I answered, which wasn’t exactly a lie, since Gray had zapped the close-ops transmitter. It wasn’t exactly the truth either. The code card was exactly what I’d use. I’d check it later for Brindos’s message.
I just needed an excuse to get out of there, get my luggage from the Flaming Sea, poke around some more. What Cara had told me rang true, but I’d have to buy a newspaper roll and double-check her story. I pushed the sheets away and moved
my feet to the floor. Something bumped in the apartment below.
“Your neighbors?” I asked. “Downstairs?”
Cara’s eyes widened. “That apartment’s been vacant for five months.”
“Are you certain?”
“I should know. I’m the resident manager here.”
I froze, listening for more sounds from below.
“David?”
I motioned toward her closet. “Get dressed.” I shot her a quick look, urging her to move quickly.
The clothes I’d worn the day before lay in a pile where I’d left them, sweet and musty with the smell of smoke. I propped myself against the wall and pulled on my pants and socks. Cara came out dressed in only a sweatshirt, and tiptoed across the floor. I squinted as I put on my shirt and listened by the door. I touched the doorknob.
The doorknob and the surrounding metal glowed red in an instant. My coat with my blaster hung on a hook next to the door. I looked back at Cara and pointed her back toward the closet, and as she moved, I reached for my weapon. The door burst open and slammed into me just as I put my hands around the gun butt. I’d pulled the blaster halfway out of the coat pocket, but the impact of the door knocked it from my hand and sent it skittering across the floor.
I stumbled back and fell. A Helk crashed through the doorway, saw me sprawled on the ground, and took that opportunity to perform a swan dive right on top of me. The air rushed from my lungs.
Oh, he was a big one. First Clan. The Helk smiled down at me and let me have it, throwing a punch that felt like a cement block smashing into the side of my face, even though I turned my head enough to cause a glancing blow. I heard and felt my jaw pop, the pain traveling from cheekbone to neck. He had my arms pinned beneath his massive legs, and I couldn’t move. He hit me again.
“Give it to me or I’ll hurt you,” the Helk said.
A thought raced through my mind in a flash: No shit. For the first time, I managed to take a good look at him, even though my vision zoomed in and out of focus. It wasn’t the Helk who’d followed me the night before. At that moment, I wished it had been. Last night’s Helk had been Second Clan. This one was nearly twice the size in most aspects, the most noticeable being his goddamn fists. A sheen of sweat covered the dark skin of his head, and his white, razor-sharp teeth gleamed when he grinned at me.
The Ultra Thin Man Page 9