The Ultra Thin Man

by Patrick Swenson

  I stepped toward the fireplace so I could get a look at the folks lounging on the furniture, but none of them turned out to be Cara. There was one guy sitting there with a cast on his leg. Probably not fake.

  I continued on to the restaurant, which had no host. A sign said SEAT YOURSELF, so I walked in, taking the long way around, checking the tables and booths. No Cara.

  I passed somebody intently checking out the menu, and I was just about ready to leave and start checking guest room floors, when the voice from behind me said, “About time you figured things out and got here, Dave.”

  I recognized the voice and stopped midstep. I could hardly believe it. I turned and saw he had put down the menu and twisted his legs out from under the booth.

  “Alan?” I said, my voice weak. I put a hand on the back of the booth to steady myself.

  Alan Brindos stood and smiled. “Shall we find Cara and get the hell off this backwater planet?”

  Twenty-six

  Joseph the concierge—the real man, Brindos hoped—did have a last name: Sando. He drove the tiny black car through the streets of Midwest City in no apparent pattern, with no apparent destination in mind. Probably he was making sure they weren’t being followed, while giving them all a little time to sort things out.

  Dorie put another square of RuBy on Brindos’s tongue, then explained that she had found Joseph at the hotel right at his concierge stand, giving him Brindos’s alias, Dexter Roberts, urging him to help. He had done so readily, she said, because of all that had happened between them. Luckily, it was slow at the hotel, and the second concierge had come in early, so Joesph checked out.

  When Joseph finally pulled the car over to the curb, it was in a residential neighborhood so devoid of traffic and pedestrians that Brindos thought they had entered the area from the Conduit disaster, everyone evacuated. But that was East City. Joseph ran his hands over the console in front of him, the car coughed a few times, then fell silent.

  Now he was able to fully turn around and face us. His eyes narrowed and the wrinkles in his face deepened as he studied Brindos. “So they got to you,” he said. “These aliens Dorie told me about. The real threat. Unbelievable.”

  Brindos looked up at Joseph, still terribly uncomfortable in the cramped quarters of the car. “They got to you,” Brindos said.

  “Apparently.”

  “You going to tell me what happened with all that? The Restaurant, the night at the hotel? The minor details like the goddamn reason why you didn’t tell me about being copied?”

  “Calm down, Mr. Roberts—” He shook his head. “I mean, Mr. Brindos.”

  “You see the shit I’m in. Don’t tell me to calm down.”

  “How do I know you are who you say you are?”

  “Come on, Joe, why would we be in this predicament right now? Dorie coming to get you? Didn’t I just mention The Restaurant? The night at the hotel? How about the Blue Rocket, when you told me everything you saw in that alley.”

  He shrugged. “Things the copy could know.”

  “You told me you were the reason I didn’t get hauled into jail by the Midwest City Authority. I killed a man, and you witnessed it.”

  “Then there you were, sitting out cold in the alley next to the body.”

  “Yes.”

  “Or a copy of you.”

  “Jesus, Joe!”

  Joseph turned away from them. Dorie continued to put a comforting hand on the top of Brindos’s head, but Brindos knew she was looking at him differently, not having heard about this. He was surprised she wasn’t in pain from most of his weight pressing down on her.

  “Joe,” Brindos said. He didn’t need to argue with him, he needed answers. “We talked baseball. When Cecil wouldn’t help me get to the disaster site.”

  Joseph didn’t move, just gripped the wheel of the car. “What team?”

  “Tigers. Detroit Tigers. We complained about the open space laws shutting down the game.”

  Joseph visibly relaxed, loosening his grip on the wheel. “Look, I don’t know anything about what happened.”

  “Nothing about what happened to you? To me?”

  “I only know that one evening several weeks ago, I missed an entire shift at work.”

  “You lost time.”

  “Fifteen hours. I just thought it was some sort of exhaustion that put me out for so long. I’d been working long hours. Only … something didn’t seem quite right about it all. There was all the craziness around the Conduit disaster, but I somehow managed to put it out of my mind.”

  “But why you? Why copy a hotel concierge? And a copy that an alien is using?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but probably because they could watch you through me. How would you know if it was me or a copy talking to you or doing concierge duties in your presence?”

  “It was obviously you who talked baseball to me and got me the cab to the airport.”

  “Yes. But there could have been other times the copy of me was there, when I was off shift.”

  “True.” He remembered wondering—even asking—if Joe ever slept. He seemed to always be at the Orion.

  “And it was you who took me to The Restaurant?”

  Joseph nodded. “What I saw there I truly did see. It happened the way I told it to you at the Blue Rocket. Hearing you talk about your perceptions of what happened, about waking up with all those hours missing? Well, I didn’t want to believe it might be connected to what happened to me. Then you walked out of the Blue Rocket, and that was the last I saw of you.” He turned fully back to them again. His discomfort gone now. “But I didn’t know about”—he pointed at Brindos, his eyes looking him over, up and down—“your change. I didn’t know about … what Dorie said … about another me.”

  Brindos stared away out the window, at the prefab houses across the way taking shape in the morning light. He raised his arms and looked at his furry hands, the size of them still unbelievable. “I wasn’t even Alan Brindos for a long while,” he whispered. “I’m not me at all on the outside. But Dorie saved me on the inside.”

  Dorie’s other arm, the one not cradling and stroking his head, tightened around his torso a little. He understood her need to help him. To be close. He was her husband. Had been. If the situation had been different, would he have even taken notice of someone like Dorie?

  Dorie saved him.

  But it wasn’t enough, he knew. She saved him from being Plenko, but she wouldn’t be able to save him from the aftereffects of the change. Already, the last RuBy he’d taken had begun to wear off, the ache inside starting to build again.

  “What happened?” Joseph asked.

  Brindos told him about walking out of the Blue Rocket, the Helks grabbing him, taking him out to meet Plenko.

  To meet his One.

  Joseph closed his eyes when Brindos told him about what the Joseph copy had done to Brindos.

  “I don’t have much time,” Brindos said. “According to Plenko, the process that turned me into this is not without complications. I have a day or two at best.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t be. None of it is your fault. As you said, you were helping me out.”

  “If I hadn’t, you’d have been saved this agony.”

  “A death sentence for murder, you said. End result the same.”

  “But you’ve found out a lot,” Dorie said. “You’ve helped me too.”

  True. There was a sense of urgency now. Whatever was happening could take over the Union as quickly as any cataclysmic event. Brindos’s severely shortened life span should only keep him more focused and determined. He tensed as pain rippled up both arms, both legs.

  “Then help me understand, Dorie,” Brindos said. “Plenko said you were alive now only because of something about a key. Something you said you could help him find.”

  Dorie grimaced, then looked away, obviously nervous about something.

  “What is it?” Brindos said.

  She pursed her lips, her e
yes darting back and forth. Not looking at Brindos directly. She shook her head, as if deciding she couldn’t come up with a reason to tell him.

  “Tell me, Dorie.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  Joseph piped up now. He’d been listening intently. “You don’t trust me. It’s only logical. Maybe you don’t even trust Mr. Brindos, here.”

  Dorie shook her head. “No, it’s not that. I just don’t know. Plenko seemed to think I should know. But maybe my copy knew. Before she killed herself.”

  Joseph frowned. “You’re copied too?”

  She nodded. “While I’ve been on Temonus, Plenko has kept asking for the key. He didn’t even know what it was.”

  “He kept you alive,” Brindos said, “based on what you knew, which was nothing?”

  She nodded. “But he thought I might understand at some point.”

  “So you honestly don’t know what it is or what happened to it?” Brindos asked.

  Dorie shook her head, and she drooped her shoulders, her eyes downcast. “But I told them something without thinking about it. They set off on a little diversion, and it did buy me some time, but I got a couple of people killed because of it.”

  “Where?”

  “On Aryell.”

  Brindos raised an eyebrow. “My partner ended up there. It wasn’t him—”

  “No, no. One was a woman. Katerina Parker. She was a friend of mine. Well, then she became a friend of my copy.”

  “Katerina.”

  “She went by Kristen. She replaced a girl at the Flaming Sea Tavern named Lexianna. Lexy for short.”

  Brindos’s pulse pounded in his throat.

  Sexy Lexy.

  Cara Landry had worked for her. If what Dorie said was true, Cara might have worked for this Katerina Parker. Katerina Parker who was now dead.

  Crowell could be right in the middle of it.

  If Dorie wanted to talk about trust, then turnabout was fair play. Brindos said nothing about Cara. He shook off a strident buzzing that echoed in his head, then endured a gut twist. For the love of Union, the pain never went away now, only added sharp barbs in spite, each one of them getting harder to bear. He looked at Joseph, who just stared at Dorie.

  “Who was the other person killed?” Brindos asked Dorie.

  “Some Helk of Plenko’s,” she said. “That’s what Plenko said. Could have been anyone. One of the Chinknos, a Knox, or Koch.”

  Brindos sighed and tensed the muscles in his arm against the jangling of his nerves and the snaps of pain that ran from his fingers to his shoulder.

  “I’ve got nowhere else to go,” he said. “I’m the most wanted Helk, Terl Plenko. I’ve got to get off Temonus and find my partner Dave.”

  Joseph leaned back as far as he could between the seats. “But if it’s all happening here—”

  “The Conduit’s down,” Dorie said.

  “I was copied after that happened,” Brindos said, “so it must still be working in at least some limited capacity.”

  “All the more reason to stay here and fight this thing,” Joseph said.

  “They’re gunning for me,” Brindos said. “The Union government is looking for Plenko. Me. If I can get off planet, find Dave, find out the bigger picture? I don’t know. So much has already happened, and I feel like I’m no closer to the truth of it all. Maybe Dave knows more.”

  A new twinge of pain ran through him then, and he grunted. Joe said, “You need help.”

  “Joe, you were the only person I thought might be able to help.”

  “If I turned out to be who you hoped I would be, that is.”

  “Yeah.”

  Joseph turned completely around to the front again and restarted the car. “Then we best get moving.”

  “Moving?” Brindos said. “Where to?”

  “I’m the goddamn concierge for the Orion Hotel,” he said back to us, pulling onto the street. “I’ve got connections.”

  Dorie switched to the front as Joseph drove them to the Orion. He entered the hotel a few minutes to make some calls to some of those connections only a concierge seemed to be able to make. When he climbed back into the car, Brindos saw he had also grabbed a hotel comm-phone so they could make some calls on the way. It looked like a simple block of black plastic, almost antique. He assured them the phone was not trackable.

  “I’ll have proper clearance,” Joe said as they drove to the airport. “The lockouts have no effect on my car, and I can bypass any travel routine the suits try and program into the grid.”

  “Who did you call?” Brindos asked, fondly remembering this Joseph as the friendly, knowledgeable man who helped him during his first days in Midwest City.

  “A gal I know who works for the Authority, and an old friend at the M.W.C. Airport who can get my car past the security checkpoints going in, since nonessential traffic is still limited.”

  “Then what?” The view between the front seats revealed the wet streets flashing by a little too quickly for his comfort. Brindos gripped Joseph’s headrest.

  “I’m working on it,” he said, waving the comm-phone in his free hand.

  Twenty minutes after that, they reached the entrance to the huge facility, Joseph’s car passing the initial automated checkpoints without incident. Dorie kissed Brindos’s forehead and gave him some more RuBy as they arrived in the public parking area skirting the TWT terminal and the dozen or so launch circles. During the drive from hotel to airport, Joseph stayed on his phone, making half a dozen different calls. The names he used had no significance to Brindos, but each call ended the same, with Joseph hanging up, shaking his head and cursing a little bit.

  Temonus’s spaceport bustled with activity, with drop shuttles landing on the launch circles, and shuttles taking off from other circles, bound for Solan Station in orbit or to West City. Once in a while, the occasional press shuttle cleared for East City headed off to cover the Conduit disaster, or the attack on the Helk district. According to Joseph, the scene at the Conduit still had everyone over there scrambling.

  They sat in the airport parking lot, gazing out at the arriving and departing flights. Joseph and Dorie sat in the front seats of the black car, and Brindos remained low in the back, spread out the best he could, enduring his escalating pain.

  Now, sitting in the parking area, they all came to the same conclusion. They hadn’t a chance in Helkunntanas of getting on a drop shuttle.

  “I’m sorry,” Joseph said. “I thought I could get us on one of those rides out of here.”

  Dorie looked back at Brindos. “You feeling okay?”

  At the moment, because of the RuBy, he wasn’t feeling much pain. He nodded. “But it wears off faster now.”

  “I know.” She searched his eyes, and it was as if she were trying to gauge how much time he had left. “This is getting awfully difficult. I’m about out of the RuBy I had with me, and I don’t know how we’re going to get any other treatment to you.”

  Brindos shook his head. “I can last awhile longer.”

  “That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know how much longer you have.”

  His gut churned, and he closed his eyes. Not much longer. Not much. Soon he would be dead, if what Plenko and Dorie said were true.

  “Then we have to figure something out, and fast,” Brindos said. He shook his head and stared at the nearest shuttle, which happened to be loading up members of the press.

  An idea started to take shape.

  “Joe, those press shuttles. Can they make the trip to Solan Station?”

  Joseph shifted in his seat, looking out at the same shuttle. “Sure.”

  Brindos felt the first bit of hope run through him, the first in a long time. Dorie still scanned his face, her eyes narrowed slightly.

  “What for?” she said.

  “Joe,” Brindos said, ignoring her, “you know anyone at Cal Gaz?

  “Cal who?”

  “It’s a
Helk newspaper.”

  “Oh, you mean The Monitor.”

  “Yes, that’s the translation. The English version.”

  “They’re all Helks there, but yeah, I know one. Reporter. But you’re not going to get him anywhere close to this airport.”

  “I met a Cal Gaz reporter at the airport in East City named Melok.”

  “Melok.” He pondered a moment before shaking his head. “No, I don’t know him.”

  “He’s human. The only one working there.”

  Joseph lifted his eyebrows. “Human? Unusual. I still don’t know him.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Whoever you know over there, see if you can get him to get Melok to contact us.”

  “Why would he help?”

  “Don’t know if he will. But he was sympathetic to the idea that the Conduit had been sabotaged. He was quite interested in it. He gave me his card, but I kind of blew him off.”

  “You have his card?” He offered his phone. “Why don’t you call—”

  “I don’t have it anymore. It was in my pants pocket, but of course that disappeared along with my clothes when I was altered.”

  Joseph pulled back the phone.

  “Alan,” Dorie said, “just because he seemed sympathetic—”

  “He’s a go-getter,” Brindos said. “I think I can entice him by promising the story of a lifetime.”

  “An awful big risk,” Joseph said.

  “You don’t know; he might be one of them,” Dorie said.

  “He wasn’t.”

  “He could be now,” Dorie said. “You changed since meeting him. Same could’ve happened to him.”

  Joseph nodded. “Like I said, an awful risk.”

  Brindos said, “What other choice do I have?”

  Not long ago he’d thought about risk and its implications. Brindos, a little wheel hidden somewhere on a big machine that kept plodding along no matter what direction he tried to turn. All he had was his little map and a general direction.

  “I may not get out of this alive,” Brindos said, the seeping pain reminding him of just that, “but I can do some real damage before all is said and done. More than that, I owe it to my partner. Make the call, Joe.”