The New Space Opera 2

by Gardner Dozois

  “He’s got taggies,” said someone from behind him. “Felt ’em in his clothes.” A hard hand grabbed his shoulder, dug in painfully.

  Karl tried to twist away but the man in front of him, with no warning at all, kicked him hard in the shin. The pain made his eyes water. Reflexively, he swung out with Bryce’s case, knowing better, but unable to stop himself. The man grabbed his arm and squeezed; Karl felt his hand loosening on the handle, a yank on the case, and then it was gone.

  “Security most like…trying to play thief…we don’t like your kind down here,” the man said, pushing his face into Karl’s. His breath stank. Karl tried not to flinch, tried to summon the anger and strength that had saved him before. He could break that hold; all he had to do was—he moved, twisted, evaded a second grab, but then they were all over him, more than two, more than three, and his punches and kicks were too weak, too slow. He went down, with someone on his back clubbing at his head, and trying to remember which of the invisible studs on the camouflage suit would stiffen it against blows…but he couldn’t. Pain burst from various parts of his body until awareness faded and he lay waiting for the end, unable to resist.

  “Stop that!” A woman’s voice, angry. The blows stopped. “Who’ve you got there?”

  “Security snip or some up-dock boz too stupid to know he gotta work with a fence. Had a bunch of stolen stuff in his clothes.”

  “Let me see.”

  He felt more cool air around him; they must have moved back a little. A hand touched his hair, moved his head.

  “I need to talk to him. Turn him over.”

  Hands pulled, tugged, until he lay on his back. Light pierced one eye…so he wasn’t blind after all. He felt like giggling; it hurt to breathe that deep. Something stung his nose.

  “Wake up, you.”

  He tried to open that one eye more, blinked, and saw a slightly blurry version of a face he’d seen before. Where? His brow wrinkled—that hurt—but it helped memory. In a store. In a store recently. Today? Yesterday? It had been when Bryce was there…the woman in the work coverall, the woman who’d looked at Bryce and Bryce had looked at her.

  “You…store?” It came out in a gasping croak.

  “You stupid young fool,” the woman said. “Why are you here?”

  “Here?” He had no idea what she meant.

  She made a sound like a cat spitting. Then, close to his ear, her warm breath tickling, she said, “Be very quiet. Do not talk, do not move.” He heard her moving away a little; he wanted her to stay. The others would come back, would hurt him more—but she was talking to them now, a rapid slangy mix he couldn’t quite follow.

  “S’mine, my claim. Not what you think, not snip or boz, ’e’s not.”

  “You know him? You…own him?”

  “Long haul, s’mine.”

  “How long?” That was the reedy tenor.

  “Years. In Delmar’s chain.”

  “Corded?”

  “ ’Course it’s ’corded. Doubt me?”

  “No.” A grudging, resentful no, but a no. If only, Karl thought, he knew what it meant. No to what?

  “Take him, then.”

  “And his taggies,” the woman’s voice said. Implacable, no argument possible. Karl blinked again and again, and his left eye came unstuck finally. With both eyes open, he could see that she was plain, worn, someone he’d expect to be housekeeping or in the kitchen back home. Here, she wore the same grubby work coverall he’d seen her in before, the same toolkit slung over her shoulder, a carrysack in her hand.

  “You don’t know how much it’s worth—”

  “I know what it’s worth if every one of them isn’t in a carrysack in my hand right quick,” she said. And one by one, the men came forward, dropping their contributions into her sack.

  “This here key isn’t his…” one of them said. She merely looked at him and he shrugged and dropped it in.

  Then she looked down at Karl. “You’re breathing better,” she said. “Can you get up on your own?”

  Karl tried, but pain he’d never imagined seized muscles and wouldn’t let him move. She sighed. “Lift him carefully,” she said. The big red-faced man bent down and slid one vast hand under Karl’s shoulders…all things considered, they lifted him gently to his feet, but his vision blurred with the pain anyway. He stood, more or less upright.

  “The way you look, Security’d stop you the moment they saw you,” she said. “Plant, I’m going skew. Cover, then meet me in two. Binto, peel the cams. Rest—you never saw him. Just a scuffle, a loopy fell down, hear?”

  A mutter of agreement.

  “Now, you: ’f you’re standing, you can walk. Stay with me.”

  Karl found that he could walk, in a shambling, uneven sort of way. Every breath hurt, every part of his body hurt, but he put one foot after the other as she led him away from the open space into a narrow passage, turning one way and then another, past rows of narrow doors almost touching. Finally she stopped; he swayed and the man behind them held his shoulders, keeping him from bumping into the wall. She opened one of the narrow doors. The space inside was tiny: the ceiling no taller than the door, a single bunk along one side, a narrow space beside it, a small sink and toilet at the far end.

  “Sleephole,” she said. “Likely you’ve never seen a place like it. Safe place to clean you up and stash you until I figure out the best thing to do.”

  She went in, set the carrysack and her toolkit on the far end of the bunk. Karl followed, at a slight push from the man behind him. The man crowded in as well, and he and the woman helped Karl onto the bench-bed. She wet a towel in the sink while the man started to unfasten Karl’s shirt, but then jerked his hand back.

  “He’s got somethin’ on, Glia.”

  “Clothes,” Glia said, without turning around.

  “Somethin’ else…can’t see it, can feel it.”

  She came over and touched him. “You are stupider than I thought,” she said. “Suit could’ve saved you a lot of this—and you, didn’t any of you notice it when you were hitting him?”

  “Too busy,” the man said, flushing. “What is it?”

  “Camouflage suit. It’s set to be invisible. Controls should be somewhere…” Her hands felt around his wrists, up his arms; the suit reappeared over his clothes, its supple pale gray marked only by smudges from the dirty floor he’d fallen to. “This makes things easier—”

  “It does?”

  “We can use it—carry him to Meeting, where it’s bigger and the others can come. Won’t show on scan-vids. I think he needs more care than we can give him here.” She laid the wet towel on his face, then hissed again. “Boy, this wasn’t your first fight of the day. Who got after you with a stinger?”

  “Stinger! We didn’t have no stinger!” the man protested.

  “I know you didn’t. But this is a stinger mark—look at it—”

  “ ’Tis, right enough. No wonder he fought so puny.”

  Karl wanted to protest, but he had no strength for anything but sitting there, letting them talk over his head.

  He passed out in the big man’s arms, pain and exhaustion rising like a black tide. When he came to again, he was flat on his back and mostly naked, with the woman—Glia, he remembered—and two men bending over him. The pain in his head was gone; his vision was clear enough to see one of the men, the tallest, spit a wad of turquoise goo into one hand—one three-fingered hand—mash it up, and then reach out and wipe it down Karl’s left arm. He was so startled that he didn’t flinch and the pain he’d barely had time to feel in that arm faded away.

  “Your ID says you’re Karl Terrine,” the woman said. “Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Karl said.

  “I saw you yesterday in Triolet’s with my old friend Boris,” she said. “You and that younger boy. And now, while my friend here treats your wounds, I want to know what Boris is doing back here, and who you are to him and why, in all the seven pits of hell, you came strolling into Day Market loaded with
expensive tech.”

  Karl started at what he considered the beginning. “Some men grabbed Bryce—”

  “That’s the name he’s using now?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s his name…you said he had another name? So it’s not his name?”

  “It is now,” she said. “Go on.”

  “They said they were bounty hunters. They said there was a warrant on him. And he said the code phrase, the one that meant run.”

  “So you ran…but there were two of you, in that store.”

  “My brother. Evan. I was farther away…and I moved when Bryce said, but Evan, he froze for a moment, and…and they got him, too.”

  “How old is Evan? I’d have guessed maybe twelve.”

  “He’s only ten. We have to get him out—”

  “Your brother or…or Bryce.”

  “Both of them! Those men, I don’t know what they’ll do…”

  She kept asking questions; Karl kept answering—it was the only hope he could see.

  Bryce closed his eyes against the glare of the lights. His stomach cramped, hinting at the hours since he’d eaten, but that was the least of his troubles. If he could just rest for a moment…he could feel the effects of the drug leaving his system, and maybe this time he’d have a chance…one of them yanked his hair, then banged his head into the unyielding wall.

  “Wake up! You want us to hurt the kid again?”

  He opened his eyes. Evan, still in the bodywrap, was staring at him, eyes wide. They’d used the stinger on both of them, though on Evan, so far, only through the bodywrap and his clothes, to prevent leaving marks. It still hurt, as he knew from experience. Cosgrove, who’d been Cossie years back, tapped the stinger against his other palm; Merrick leaned against the wall paring his nails with a knife. Pretending to, at least.

  It had to have been Glia. No one else should have made him, not with his new appearance, his new identity. If he’d spoken to her, would she have done it? Was it new anger, or old resentment, or something else?

  “We have your papers,” Merrick said. “You know that—so why not just tell us. Who is the boy? Not your nephew, that’s for sure. And not your toy, unless your tastes have changed since you left here. You’re taking him—them—somewhere for somebody, that’s clear enough. Merchandise? Or it is a family?”

  Evan’s safety depended on his silence. Bryce stared at Merrick, trying to project befuddlement, but knowing it would not work for more than a few seconds. Merrick and Cosgrove knew him—knew Boris—far too well.

  “Another little touch?” Cosgrove said, glancing at Merrick, then at Evan. “The boy?”

  “Not at the moment,” Merrick said. “Maybe he needs a little time to think. Not much time—” He pushed himself away from the wall, flipping the knife and then closing it and tucking it in his pocket—“but a little. Maybe he can explain to the boy, or the boy can explain to him, what the real situation is, while we eat.”

  Cosgrove shrugged, put the stinger in a back pocket, and the two of them left, closing the door behind them.

  “Bryce?” Evan’s voice was trembling.

  “Yes,” Bryce said. “I’m all right.”

  “You…you yelled.”

  “Well,” Bryce said, trying for a calm tone. “It hurt. People do yell when something hurts.”

  “But you’re a grown-up!”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t make much difference.”

  “Where’s—where’s Karl?”

  A good question. He’d seen Karl back away, just as he’d been told…but had the boy remembered what to do? If he’d raised an alarm at a security kiosk, he’d have expected some response by now. His captors were acting as if nothing had happened. And if Karl hadn’t done that, what would he have done? “I don’t know,” Bryce said. He closed his eyes again. “I hope he’s getting help for us.”

  “But it’s been hours. Maybe days. And nobody’s come, and I’m really hungry and it still hurts where they hit me. Somebody will come, won’t they, Bryce?”

  “I certainly hope so,” Bryce said. He tested the bonds that held him. Some play, though probably not enough. The cell must have surveillance; Merrick hadn’t ever been careless about that sort of thing. If only he’d had his kit with him…if only he hadn’t been captured in the first place. Merrick probably had the kit now. He had their IDs, their room keys, their tickets—he might even have their luggage, if he’d managed to get into the Altissima luggage bin.

  “I’m scared, Bryce.”

  “I don’t wonder.” Bryce looked around the small, bare room. It could be anywhere on the station; it could even be one of the smaller hotel rooms, if they’d been able to penetrate Blue Zone.

  “Could you…could we get out?”

  “I doubt it,” Bryce said. “Not without help.”

  “Are you really a criminal?”

  “No.” Bryce shook his head automatically, and winced. “I was—” A scared little boy, like Evan. Would it help Evan to know that? Would anything help? “I was at one time,” he said. “Before I escaped here. It’s in my dossier. Your—” He shouldn’t say “father.” They wanted to know who Evan really was, what Bryce’s role really was. “When I was hired for this job,” he said instead, “I told them all about it.”

  “You told my—” At Bryce’s gesture, Evan stopped. Tears glittered in his eyes, spilled over and ran down his cheeks. “I wet myself,” he whispered.

  “It’s all right,” Bryce said. “You couldn’t help it. Nobody can.”

  “So,” Glia said. “There’s two maybe-dead men back in your hotel…you normally go armed lethal?”

  “I didn’t,” Karl said, then stopped, breath hissing past his teeth as Glia’s friend spread something pungent and orange on his side. It burned like fire, then subsided. “I didn’t have any weapons. So I got a sprayer of stuff out of the cleaning closet. In case there were people like those who snatched Bryce and Evan hiding in our room.”

  “And?”

  “They had our luggage; they were packing everything away…they didn’t expect me.”

  “And you beat them unconscious with your bare hands, did you?” Her brows went up; she sounded as disbelieving as she looked.

  “Sort of,” Karl said. “They shot drug darts at me. When I’d knocked them out, I stuck darts in them. But I got beat up some.” He winced as Glia’s friend wiped a wet rag across his face.

  Glia grunted. “You got beat up a lot, altogether. How’d you knock down two adults?”

  “I’ve had a lot of martial arts,” Karl said. “But mostly I was lucky.” He felt better; the pain in his side was gone completely now, and fading wherever Glia’s friend put turquoise or orange goo. “I could sit up now,” he said.

  Glia grinned. “You could, could you? I think you better lie there and let the knit work. You don’t want it knitting crooked.”

  Glia’s friend grinned too, his thick, purplish tongue with the little white sucker-like nubs extended. It still looked scary, but Karl was becoming used to the face that had been hidden behind the mask, the flat nose, the slit-irised yellow eyes. The—Glia’s friend gulped again and spat another glob of orange goo onto his three-fingered hand—the complete weirdness and alienness.

  “Are you…?”

  “Human?” The voice was human enough, the words accented the same as Glia’s. “Some don’t think so. My line was terminated.”

  “You were designed?” Why would anyone design something this…this ugly?

  “For work on the fourth planet, yes, during terraforming. This is—” he held up his hand, covered with the goo, “—modification of human saliva into a healing paste. So we would not need any medical supplies. Ocular mod for the ambient light and weather conditions.”

  “But—why’d they terminate your—your line? That stuff’s valuable—”

  “Project completed,” he said. “Project completed, no need for freaks and mutants…but some of us, still in the bottles and not yet chipped, were saved. By her—” he nodded
to Glia, “—and others like her. To her, we’re human.” He had spread the orange goo down Karl’s leg. Now he looked directly at Karl. “To you—maybe not.”

  Karl evaded that. “Are there others?”

  “Like me?”

  “Like you, or different—I’m just curious.”

  “You’re just young,” Glia’s friend said, sighing. “Next thing, you’ll be asking if I have a tail, or if I’m part reptile. So no, I don’t have a tail, and it was amphibian genes, not reptile, responsible for my colored spit.”

  “They’re called human-modified, or humods,” Glia said. “Mostly designed for scutwork in places unmod humans can’t work without a lot of extra support. But we call ourselves chameleons.”

  Karl looked at her, and saw nothing different there. “You’re not—”

  “Oh, I am,” Glia said. “But I can pass. My modifications don’t show unless I choose.” She sat back in her chair and right there in front of him her skin changed color and texture, a dizzying array of such changes—plain colors, patterns of stripes and spots, and geometric patterns, all moving across her face, her arms, her hands. Then it went back to looking like ordinary human skin, the face and hands he was already used to. Another change, and it was a child’s face—the skin smooth, unmarked, soft-looking—and it aged as he watched, half-horrified and half-fascinated.

  “How do you do that?”

  “Practice,” Glia said. “And both cephalopod and reptile genes. There are other mods that don’t show on the surface—I’m able to function at temperatures that are fatal to most.” She had reverted to her usual look. “I’ve foxed the medical scans for years. That way I can help the others.” She waved at the others in the room.

  Karl really looked this time. In the corner, a stack of masks and five-fingered gloves, plus two complete arms, fully clothed in gray shirtsleeves. On the moving forms, hands with too few fingers, or tentacles, faces with features that would always be conspicuous. “How many?”

  “Forty-three at the moment. Free, that is. The station uses some for special work whole-gene humans can’t do, but they’ll never pass. They’re on file.” She smiled, but it was a sad smile. “Now here’s the thing, Karl. I know your identity is legal only. You’re someone else. I want to know who you really are.”