Deserter

by Mike Shepherd

  After a quick shower, Kris found a suit laid out for her. Conservatively cut in a dark blue, it was the kind of day wear Mother dismissed as “fine for a woman who knows how to count beans but knows nothing really important.” To date, Mother had yet to define what was really important. “This bulletproof?” Kris asked, dressing herself.

  “The slip is,” Abby answered, entering the room with a light blue beret in hand. “So is this,” she said, twirling the head cover to Kris. “It also has a nice antenna for Nelly.”

  “You are full of surprises,” Kris said, pulling on the skirt.

  “So is the world. The trick is to have one more surprise in your pocket than the world has up its sleeve.”

  “Or in your travel trunks.”

  “Or wherever.”

  Penny appeared at the door. “For an empty day, you’re up early and not dressing to lounge around. What’s up?”

  “A visit to Nuu Pharmaceuticals to start with. I want Mr. Winford to say to my face that he didn’t steal the vaccine.”

  “Should I order a cab? Kartum could probably use the fare.”

  Kris nodded, then shook her head. “People who get too close to me get killed. Have Klaggath order me a car, not too flashy. Cop for a driver and plenty of armor.”

  “Doing it.”

  The ride down the beanstalk was uneventful. Kris exited the terminal to find a late-model car waiting, green and about as nondescript as they came. Only the hum of the motor and the heavy way it sat its shocks gave away how special it was. Penny held the door open, but Kris paused before settling in.

  Across the parking lot, workingmen were going and coming from a second, newer terminal. On one side, large trucks were backing up to a vast loading dock. “What’s that?”

  “That,” Penny said, “is the ground terminal serving the space dock. It loads its own cars, both workers and material. Totally separate security system. Best in fifty planets.”

  Kris glanced back at the terminal she’d just left. “No interchange?”

  “Not so much as a breath of air.”

  “Seems like overkill,” Kris said, then remembered the tiny mobile bugs that Nelly was having to work so hard to keep out of her room. “Then again, maybe he knows what he’s keeping out,” she said and settled into her seat.

  Tom shared the backseat with her and Penny. Jack was in front with the driver. “Minimum detail?” Tom asked as they pulled away from the curb.

  A moment later they were joined by a car ahead and another behind. “Full detail,” Jack said. “So, Princess, where to?”

  “Nuu Pharmaceuticals,” Kris said.

  The driver repeated the address, probably for the cars around them, then punched in the address, but kept his own hands on the wheel. “You’ll also need to drop by the embassy, ma’am.”

  “I don’t mind going, but why?”

  “Klaggath said you might want to get your passport stamped, or maybe a passport issued and stamped if you don’t have one.”

  “A passport?”

  “Yes, ma’am. They’re becoming the thing for foreigners on Turantic. Used to be it was only the Earth types or their seven stooges we demanded them from, but the last couple of weeks it seems anyone without legal papers is subject to deportation.”

  “I got here two days ago and no one asked me for any papers,” Kris said slowly.

  “I suspect you got the royal treatment, ma’am. Inspector suggests that you might not want to keep counting on that.”

  “I agree,” Jack said. “Just now they can’t deport anyone. You could end up cooling your heels in a jail cell.”

  Time was Kris would have considered a couple of days in jail as a relaxing vacation from her social duties. Now that she was using social as warfare by other means, it might be a good idea to cover all her bases. “We’ll do the embassy right after this. I want to be there when Winford opens the door.”

  Nuu Pharm was a low warehouse in an industrial park just this side of the bluff from Katyville. That was enough to make for an entirely different milieu. The concrete walls were newly painted tan. The barbed-wire-topped fence around the warehouse yard was in good repair, new patches gleaming against the older wire. There was a small patch of grass in front of the office entrance. The Nuu flag waved lazily in the light breeze that carried only a small whiff of river and pollution. Five men and women in work clothes and a woman in office dress waited at the door.

  “Nelly, what time does this place open?”

  “Twelve minutes ago.”

  “Let’s go see why it’s still locked up.” Kris and her team piled out of the car. A dozen others, obviously cops despite their civilian clothes, were also spreading over the parking lot to the alarm of the working folks at the door.

  “We didn’t do nothing.” “We don’t know nothing,” came from the workers, along with a “What do you want?” from the better-dressed woman as she came down the sidewalk toward the police. “We filled out all your reports yesterday.”

  Kris walked to cut her off from the officers. “I know you did, ma’am. I just wanted to talk to Mr. Winford.” The woman eyed Kris for a moment without recognition. “I’m Kris Longknife, a Nuu Enterprises stockholder.”

  “Right, I saw you this morning. Newsies said someone shot at you last night.”

  “They missed.”

  “And you want to know what happened to our vaccine supply?”

  “Yes, Ms. . . .”

  “Mrs. Zacharias.”

  “Mrs. Zacharias, why is everyone waiting outside?”

  “Mr. Winford is very particular about security, Miss Longknife. Or do you want me to call you Princess or something?”

  “Kris will be fine. So you won’t open the office?”

  “No, ma’am. Mr. Winford uses an old-fashioned key lock that can’t be jiggered or hacked. He figures that’s the best way to handle things nowadays.”

  “Where is Mr. Winford?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. He’s never late.” There were assents and nods from the workmen to support that point.

  Kris turned around in exasperation at this check to her schedule, only to find her driver approaching, a reader in hand. “Ms. Longknife, you’re waiting for a Mr. Winford?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid you may have a long wait ahead of you.” He offered her the reader. It showed the face of a man she recognized from last night. Mr. Winford looked slightly better rested, but very dead.

  “What happened?”

  “His body was found near a wooded jogging path this morning. It appears he had been dead less than an hour.”

  “Cause of death?” Jack asked.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”

  Officious people could be a real pain sometimes. “Is it being handled as natural causes?” Kris asked.

  The driver glanced at another agent coming up beside him, whom Kris suspected was the head of this detail. “No, ma’am, we are not treating it as natural causes,” the new man said. “I’m Inspector Marta, and we are handling it as a homicide.”

  Jack turned to Kris. “Please, get back in the car.”

  “Jack, I came to see what happened here. I’m not leaving before I’m finished.

  “Fine, but humor me and sit in the car until I’m sure this area is safe.”

  So Kris humored Jack. She tried not to fume in the car while Jack and the cops covered the grounds like a nest of very disturbed bees. Her focus of attention changed when Penny brought a tearful Mrs. Zacharias to join her in the car. There were tissues in the seat back; Kris offered the woman the box.

  “Thank you,” she said, blowing her nose. “I don’t know what you think of Mr. Winford, but he was a good man to work for. An honest man, and there aren’t a lot of them left in business.”

  Kris agreed. The woman made use of a few more tissues, then opened her purse and began rummaging in it. “He told me to use it if there was ever an emergency. I don’t imagine there can be much more of an emergency than th
is.” Kris agreed further, wondering how much longer before Jack declared the place safe.

  Mrs. Zacharias pulled a key from her purse. “You think your police will mind if I let the crew in so they can get to work? I don’t imagine Nuu Enterprises wants us to take the day off.”

  “That’s the office key!”

  “Of course. If Mr. Winford came down sick or something, you don’t expect he’d leave the company in the lurch, do you?”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Kris said, opening the door and waving the key at Jack. Five minutes later, the crew were at work, and Kris was sitting next to Mrs. Zacharias as she checked for messages, released orders, and got the day’s work started. “Sales have been falling the last few years,” Kris said as she watched Mrs. Zacharias’s old-fashioned screen.

  “Competition is tough. ‘Cutthroat,’ Mr. Winford called it. And it being company policy not to pay bribes or anything that smelled of it, it was hard enough for him to keep his old customers. Impossible to get new ones.”

  “Bribes?” Kris echoed.

  “Well, not exactly,” the woman said, still going through her orders. “More like consulting fees. Or quality testing. One company insisted we send ten percent of our order off to some lab to ‘destructive’ test it. It wasn’t for testing. It was a kickback right off the top. Mr. Winford checked with corporate, and they told him no way.” The woman shook her head, resting her eyes out the window. “That’s not the way it was when I started work. Turantic was as square as you could ask. But the last five years have been bad, and getting worse.”

  Mrs. Zacharias turned to look at Kris. “You know, Mr. Winford told me to move my retirement account off Turantic five years ago. Said things were going to get crazy. I didn’t believe him. Glad it only took me two years to realize he was right. All of us,” she waved a hand to include the entire shop, “moved our accounts to Wardhaven. We’re in better shape than lots. Better shape than your cops. Ask them what happened to the Fire and Protective Services Retirement System.”

  “I will,” Kris said. Klaggath had dodged her general question about Turantic last night. Maybe tonight she’d have a more specific question. Done at her computer, Mrs. Zacharias took Kris to see where the vaccine should have been.

  “Aisle eight, row A, about as far back and out of the way as you can get and still be cool,” she told Kris. The space was out of the way, cool, dark . . . and empty.

  Kris stepped across the “crime scene” tape to stand in the vacant spot. Slowly turning, she looked for anything yesterday’s investigation might have missed.

  Inspector Marta came up as Kris was finishing empty-handed. “Report says there was nothing unusual yesterday,” he said.

  “And there’s nothing today. Any fingerprints?”

  “Cardboard boxes don’t take prints.”

  “Any hole in security?”

  “Three weeks ago there was a major failure in the security system. Our inspection thinks there was a hole dug under the back fence. Doesn’t explain how the door was opened, though. Or why no one noticed the missing boxes. Strange.”

  “And now you don’t have Mr. Winford to question further.”

  “Nope,” Marta agreed.

  Kris turned to Mrs. Zacharias. “When I was on Olympia, we got all kinds of flu, new one every month. Doc would cook up a new vaccine in about a week from feedstock. Do we have the feedstock to bake up a vaccine for the anaerobic Ebola?”

  “Mr. Winford had me look into that yesterday,” his assistant said. “I called our best three pharmaceutical labs. There is a vaccine, but it’s even more expensive than the ready-made. That’s why we store the stuff. And no, we don’t have the feedstock for it on planet. No one does.” The woman shrugged. “We had that problem covered. No profit in covering it twice.”

  “At least the plague isn’t spreading,” Marta said in a half prayer.

  “But until we can innoculate people, they can’t go off planet.” Kris headed back to her car. She hadn’t had the social encounter she’d wanted with Grampa’s local rep. Still, she’d learned more about this planet that held her like a fly in amber. Her talk with Mrs. Zacharias had been very informative. Very.

  The embassy was nowhere near as interesting. Kris waited over an hour while she and her party were fingerprinted, retina-scanned, and validated that they were indeed who they said they were. Neither Kris’s ID card nor Jack’s credentials could save her from that hassle. Once approved, passports were quickly generated, Kris’s in a regal bright red and Jack’s and Tom’s in an official blue. “Now, who does a Navy Lieutenant check in with to see that she’s in no more hot water than she has to be?”

  That got Kris ushered deep into the gray-walled rat maze of cubbyholes that seemed to be where the real work happened. An overweight man in a Major’s uniform was finishing a bagel as Penny led Kris in. “Princess,” the man said, trying to stand, brush crumbs from his coat, and button it all at the same time. Kris let him fuss over her as she settled into his one visitor’s chair, then explained her problem of taking one week’s leave for what was proving to be a much longer stay on Turantic.

  “You know we are out of communications?” he said. Kris avowed she was aware of that condition. He assured her he would document her reporting and forward a letter to her commanding officer as soon as communications reopened. “It should be any hour now. The Ambassador assured us at the staff meeting this morning that the Minister of Communications promised they are on the verge of solving the problem.” Kris nodded, thanked him for his fine work, and left. Penny was waiting for her just outside the cubicle.

  “The car, please, if you can find your way out of here.”

  “On our way,” Penny assured her.

  “That isn’t your real boss,” Kris said as soon as they were well down the hall.

  “It says so on my orders.” Penny didn’t even try to suppress a grin.

  “All the gods in heaven and space can’t help Wardhaven now.”

  “Strange, I felt the same way when I first met him. But he gets along with the business types that provide our supplies and material. And he knows contracting like the back of his tongue.”

  “I’m glad he found his place. Maybe someday I’ll find mine.”

  “May we all live that long.”

  Kris almost made it to the car, but the Ambassador caught her in the foyer. “I heard you were in the embassy,” he said. “Sorry I wasn’t here when you came in. A breakfast with some local businessmen and then our morning staff meeting. I understand you will make it to the regatta. I know a dozen party boats that will be dying to have you join them.”

  Penny flinched at his choice of words, but maybe he hadn’t heard about the late-night live-fire exercise at the ball. He had already left for the fund-raiser elsewhere. Kris kept a smile on her face and agreed that maybe the Ambassador would accept the best-placed offers for her and arrange for a boat to move her about the party fleet as the races went on. The Ambassador was in awe of such a brilliant idea, one that Father would have considered so routine as not to need mentioning.

  Kris escaped to the car and was back to the beanstalk before noon. “Done a lot sooner than I expected,” Kris said, resting her eyes on the busy station across the parking lot from the regular port. A massive truck was backing up to the loading docks. “What would that be?” Kris asked Penny.

  Penny took a long look, then reached in her purse and removed a pair of binoculars. “Truck is from Tong and Tong Transport,” she said slowly. “We use them for the largest and most unwieldy stuff: reactors, generators, the massive capacitors a new battleship needs.”

  “That big enough for a reactor?”

  “I handled the set we ordered for the Wilson and Geronamo, ” Penny said. “I think they came in about that size.”

  “With all shipping closed down, that can’t be going up to the yard for transshipment, but I thought you said Turantic wasn’t building warships.”

  “The last intelligence report said it wasn’t. Mayb
e that report needs an update.”

  “Any major liners under construction?” Kris asked. Penny shook her head.

  “No ships are under construction,” Nelly supplied. “I just ran the check. The yard is full, with overhauls and safety improvements recently ordered by the Turantic government.”

  “Did any of those safety upgrades need major jumps in power?” Kris asked. Again, Penny shook her head.

  “No,” Nelly said.

  “Nelly, can you access the view on Penny’s binoculars?”

  “Yes, I’ve acquired it and done a comparison against all shipments of naval stores from Turantic to Wardhaven in the last five years. That matches the shipping container of one of the electrical generators for a President-class battleship. It can produce one hundred gigawatts of electricity.”

  Penny whistled. “Not many ships need power like that.”

  “Not any that aren’t a battleship,” Kris agreed. “Nelly, Penny, Tom, I’ve just decided how to spend our free afternoon. It’s time we had a study day. What makes this planet tick? Who’s paying for what and how? What’s showing at the movies, and what’s getting attention? It’s time I know what I’m dealing with, since it looks like I’m going to be here for a while.”

  “If we all can stay alive that long,” Tommy added.

  They rode the ferry lost in their own thoughts.

  11

  Next morning, Abby laid out baggy white shorts for Kris as well as a royal blue sweatshirt with a prominent seal and crown.

  “Full armored body stocking?” Kris asked.

  “Not today,” Abby answered, pulling out a pair of nude panty hose instead. “The sweatshirt and these are spun silk.”

  Kris dressed quickly, then added a holster for her automatic in the small of her back.

  Abby shook her head. “Jack will not be pleased. You are the primary. You should be concentrating on not getting hit.”

  Kris considered several answers, then settled for Harvey’s best comeback. “You tend to your knitting. I’ll tend to mine.”