“This is two hundred and twelve years old, Teg.”
“Yeah, I got about ten cases of the stuff left over from the West-Corp run. Go ahead, have some.”
Cole paused, then poured some into a shot glass. He sipped. Exquisite. Farging Teg.
He sipped again, trying to formulate his request. The massagebot ignored Cole, its four hands working away silently. Cole couldn’t help staring at Teg—the tan, the perfect body, the prototypical jaw. Literally—it was patented. It was one of the most popular implants for men, and surprisingly for women, too. Farging Teg.
“Spotted you in the bar,” said Teg.
“You did?”
“Hard not to. You were singing.”
“I was?”
“Yep. What’s that song? ‘You tore my heart a new one’?”
“Teg—”
“You’re not coming along, Cole. I don’t need that kind of heat.”
“Teg, please, I’m in trouble something awful. Please. Please please please please please. Don’t make me beg.”
“You are begging.”
“Then don’t make me cry!”
“You are crying.”
“It’s the smoke!”
Cole tossed back the rest of the drink, went to refill the shot glass, then took a hit directly from the bottle instead.
“Sorry, Cole. I can’t help you. But go ahead—you can keep the bottle.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
Cole recorked the whiskey and turned to leave.
“See you, Teg.”
“Good luck, Cole.” Teg still had his eyes closed. “A little to the left, by the shoulder blade,” said Teg.
“Yes sir,” said the massagebot.
“Perrrfect.”
Cole swung the bottle in a short, tight arc, aiming for the vulnerable spot directly behind Teg’s left ear.
Thud.
The bottle rebounded harmlessly off the massage table, Teg jerking his head away just in time. He was instantly on his feet.
Cole stepped back, guiltily clutching the bottle.
Teg shook his head, his expression one of sorrowful incomprehension.
“Cole …”
“I’m sorry,” said Cole. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Teg chuckled. “Sheesh, Cole, you’re really—”
Cole swung at him again.
Teg ducked, the bottle whistling over his head.
The two faced each other.
“Oops?” said Cole hopefully.
Teg rocketed straight at Cole.
“Teg! Wait! I’m sor—!”
Teg slugged him. It was not a particularly new experience for Cole to be on the receiving end of a punch. He had to admit that Teg knew what he was doing.
Teg was coming at him again. “Teg, you’re naked!” said Cole. Teg punched him a second time, Cole hearing it more than feeling it. He staggered back into the embrace of the massagebot, which began to vigorously realign his muscles.
“Ow! Ow!” protested Cole.
“You seem very tense, sir,” said the massagebot.
“Teg, you got this thing set too high—” Teg hit him a third time, in the stomach.
“Oof,” oofed Cole. He wanted to double over in pain, but couldn’t extricate himself from the robot’s grip.
“Teg … I’m sorry,” he managed.
“Me too, Cole. Me, too.”
He grabbed Cole in some sort of complicated hold, preparing to dislocate his everything.
There was a horrible cracking, popping noise. Cole closed his eye, waiting for the pain to come.
It didn’t. He opened his eye. Teg was standing in front of him, his face frozen in a mask of surprise and agony.
“Arrggh!” said Teg. “My back!”
Then Teg toppled over like a statue.
Cole drove as quickly as he dared, staying precisely at the speed limit as he roared down the streets of the Bourse on Teg’s motorcycle. It had a standard Fezner drive, completely clean and silent, but Teg had it outfitted with a device that pumped out noxious, choking fumes, as well as a noise generator to simulate the sound of an ancient internal combustion engine.
He checked his, or rather Teg’s, watch. Kenneth would start looking for him in less than twenty minutes.
Pedestrians waved and shouted mistaken greetings to him, recognizing the bike with its distinctive sponsorship decals. Cole was wearing Teg’s roomy jacket, also plastered with ad patches, his face hidden by the mirrored visor of Teg’s helmet. He waved back a few times.
Cole spotted Teg’s sleek spaceship immediately. If anything, it had even more sponsorship decals than the motorcycle, the actual surface of the gigantic Benedict 80 almost entirely obscured.
The Earnest Man and the Hard Woman from the bar were waiting underneath the craft, standing next to several large shipping crates. Cole hurtled up to them and leaped off the still-moving motorcycle.
“Teg?” said the woman.
Cole ignored her and the minor explosion caused when the motorcycle slammed into a nearby safety barrier. He jabbed a button on a remote—bleep!—and the passenger ramp instantly descended from the ship to the ground.
He raced up the ramp, still wearing the helmet, the man and the woman right behind him.
“Hey!” said the woman. “Teg! Hey! Wait!” “I told you!” Cole heard Earnest Man say.
Kenneth was quite pleased with his suite at the S’Port Hotel: the saline levels and PH balance of the water were perfect; the coral was live, not simulated. He was completely submerged, finishing up his fourth Savlu clam, crunching effortlessly through the twelve-inch, rock-hard shell, when the indicator light on the tiny tracking device lit up. The device was beeping.
“Oh, goody,” said Kenneth. “He’s running!”
Cole was already firing up the engines when Hard Woman and Earnest Man caught up to him in the cockpit.
“Teg. Teg! What’s going on? What about the cargo?” she said as Cole fast-forwarded through the preflight checklist.
“Forget the cargo,” said Cole, his voice muffled by the helmet. “We’re leaving.”
“See?” said Earnest Man, “I told you we couldn’t trust him!”
Cole was mentally renaming him Whiny Man when he heard a distinctive clickclack.
He turned. Hard Woman was targeting him with a Hard Expression. She was also targeting him with a Firestick 9 (“Small Holes—But Deep Holes”).
“Argh!” said Cole.
She kept the gun trained on him as he and Whiny Man loaded the crates onto the lowered cargo platform.
“We really don’t have time for this,” he said to her. She ignored him.
“We really don’t have time for this,” he repeated. “We really—“
“If you say that again, I will really shoot you.”
“—don’t have time for this,” Cole finished under his breath after he turned his back.
Whiny Man seemed determined to justify Cole’s internal nickname for him, struggling with his end of the crates and complaining about splinters and why didn’t they have a bot to help them. Cole looked at his watch again. His time was up. Kenneth was no doubt looking for him right now.
They shoved the last crate on the cargo platform. Cole cinched the straps to hold it in place, then jabbed the button to raise the platform into the belly of the Benedict.
“All right, let’s go!” he said, sprinting past the Hard Woman back up the ramp.
Cole hopped into the seat in the cockpit, hit the button to reseal the air locks, and fired up the engines.
“Oh yeah,” he breathed, feeling the comforting hum as they came on line. “You better strap in,” he said to the other two, who had followed him back into the cockpit. It was a handsome room—smooth, curvilinear walls with a nice white finish, blond wood highlights, recessed illumination. Cole wasn’t a huge fan of carpeting in cockpits, but the muted neutral tones did subtly play off the lighting and the small framed lithographs, creating a sense of quiet luxury,
just like the profile in SpaceCruiser Monthly said.
The Benedict 80 control panel was appropriately tasteful. It was also more complicated than he’d expected. Where was the RQ compensator? There? He twisted a knob. An alarm bell sounded somewhere. No.
“He was going to leave the cargo! I told you!” said Whiny Man.
“He’s not Teg,” said Hard Woman. “You’re not Teg. Take off your helmet.”
“I’m a bit preoccupied right now.”
The lights and dials swam before him. He shook his head, trying to clear it, then realized that Teg’s ship had an ergonomics autosensor and was trying to calibrate his morphology and movements and adjust the control positions accordingly.
“Stop moving around!” he said. The controls froze in a random position.
Another button. Nothing.
“Who are you?!” said Whiny Man.
“I’m busy, that’s who I am!”
“Take off your helmet!” said Hard Woman.
There was the RQ compensator. He flicked the switch. There was a distant whooshing noise.
“Septic tank evacuation complete,” said the computer. That wasn’t the RQ compensator.
“Take off your—”
“All right!”
Cole pulled at the helmet, nearly taking his head off with it before he determined that the chin strap was still fastened. When he removed the helmet both the man and the woman staggered back a step in shock.
“You’re not Teg!” said Whiny Man. “Are you?”
Cole caught a glance of himself in the reflective visor of the helmet. Seeing the condition of his face, he understood Whiny Man’s confusion. He tossed the helmet to him.
“Teg hurt his back. I’m his second in command,” said Cole. What did this switch do?
“RQ compensator engaged.”
Yes.
The Benedict 80 started to rise unsteadily off the tarmac.
“We’re not going anywhere with you, pal,” said Hard Woman.
“Look, can you fly this thing?”
She glared back at him. He turned to Whiny Man. “How about you?”
Whiny Man dropped his gaze. “I didn’t think so,” said Cole. “Well, as you can see, I can.”
There was a crashing, screeching noise as they scraped along the side of another parked spacecraft. The other two stumbled, nearly falling. Cole hurriedly readjusted the controls, and they started to rise above the S’Port and the city.
Hardy and Whiny dragged themselves to the unoccupied seats and strapped in. Hard Woman was still pointing the gun at Cole.
“You’re going to land this thing.”
“Uh-huh. You’re going to shoot me and make us crash?”
“Five,” she said.
“Oh, stop it.”
“Four,” she said.
“I’m telling you, save your breath. You can’t bluff—”
“Three.”
“You’re not going to shoot me.”
She placed her other hand on the gun to steady her aim.
“Two.”
“Hold on now, hold on, let’s talk about this—”
Bam! The explosion shook the ship, the concussion stunning them, the noise setting Cole’s ears ringing. Red lights flashed. Alarms whooped. Whiny Man said, “Eeeeee!”
“What the hell was that?” asked Hard Woman.
Cole looked at a blip on the display and swore.
“That,” he said, “is Kenneth.”
“Yrnameer is less a location than an idea,” said Stirling, to general nodding and noises that signaled concurrence. Stirling was pleased. He wasn’t quite sure that he believed his own statement, or even understood it, but it was the first time he’d dared to make a contribution to the Moonday evening discussion, and it was nice to have it both acknowledged and taken seriously.
“Yes, but I’d like to offer a refinement,” said Orwa. Stirling grimaced, or at least would have, if he were in his old body. Hard to grimace now in his new form.
“Yrnameer,” continued Orwa, “is both locality and idea, in fact idea qua locality, a place-conception whose very ontology has been realized and made manifest precisely through the act of conceptualization,” added Orwa, “as if by the process of protoideation it has occasioned its own essentialism.”
More nodding and noises from the ten other participants. Stirling resisted rolling his eyes. That was one thing that he could still do in his new body, but with lidless eyes the size of billiard balls it was hard to do so with any degree of subtlety.
“While I agree to a certain extent, I have to take issue with your post-Apsian analysis.” This was Reff, who had considerably more cognitive capacity than one might expect from what appeared to be a thick purple shag rug.
“Cluck,” said the chicken.
Stirling wasn’t sure about the chicken, who attended each session and never contributed anything beyond that simple vocalization. But no one else ever commented on it, so he wasn’t going to start.
Stirling rose to his several feet and leaned in to take the bowl off the table. “I’m gonna get some more chips,” he said. “Anyone need anything? Orwa? You want a beer, Souff? Mayor? Beer?”
“I’ll take another beer,” said Mayor Kimber, a rumpled, genial type with gray hair and a furrowed brow.
“You got it.”
Stirling trundled into the kitchen area carrying the chip bowl and a few empties. He’d been hosting the salon for about six weeks now, and generally enjoyed it—it was certainly different from anything he’d ever done before—but man, could those guys talk. Especially Orwa, who could be a real bag of hot wind, and Stirling wasn’t just thinking of Orwa’s appearance, what with all the translucent gas bladders and everything. Not that Stirling would make fun of how anyone looked—he was looking pretty weird himself these days. But it was worth it.
He dumped some more chips into the bowl, and grabbed a few fresh beers from the fridge. One thing was for sure—four arms were better than two when you were hosting. He could have gotten one of the servicebots to help him out, but the folks in Yrnameer could get a little preachy about relying too much on technology. Not that anyone complained about gathering in his climate-controlled living room and drinking his cold beer.
Again, he didn’t mind. He liked them all, even Orwa. It made sense for him to host the gathering: his house, set back on a cul-de-sac, was easily the largest in the community. When Stirling had shown up he had a team of constructionbots that built his home in just over a day. There’d been some frowns and muttering, but folks mostly welcomed him. He brought along a vast surplus of supplies—tools, building materials, protozoac solar panels—and he shared everything freely. No one asked him any uncomfortable questions, not even when he burned his spaceship.
He reached back over his shoulder and pried open a beer on his carapace. There was another advantage of being a sembluk instead of a human. When you thought about it, it was strange: you had, on the one hand, your standard human being. On the other hand, you had a sembluk, with a body like a four-legged, four-armed slug, three big eyes, and a shell on its back; and yet if you looked at the DNA, the two species were nearly indistinguishable. Closer even then humans and chimps, or sembluks and gembluks. Alter a few select locations on the human genome, and you got a massive and dramatic transformation. And how many other extensive mods could you do without ending up like all those poor slobs on Qualtek 3, turn yourself into a cannibal? None, that’s how many.
If you wanted to get away from it all, and you weren’t particularly bothered by the idea of becoming a gastropod, it was ideal.
He thought about going to the back room to check on his treasure. The tiny object was his only link to his past life, before he’d thrown it all away, gotten rid of all of his riches. Before he’d decided to live a simpler, more spiritual life—inquisitive instead of acquisitive, as he liked to think of it. Out of the spotlight, anonymous.
“Geldar!” It was a voice from the other room, probably Mayor Kimber. Geldar was h
ow they knew him here. “Where’s the chips?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he shouted back. Forget it. He’d check on his treasure later. In a few hours everyone would be content, sated from a feast of inquiry into the nature of Truth and Happiness and Beauty. His guests would head home, their minds already forming their arguments for next week’s gathering, and Stirling would go spend some quality time with the diamond.
The Bad Men were almost across the plains.
They weren’t coming for the diamond. They didn’t know about it. What they did know is that the people of Yrnameer had food.
They knew it because the villagers had given it to the bandits two years ago, when the bandits’ stolen spaceship crashed and burned a few short kilometers from the community. The village virtually emptied as the citizens rushed to help, rescuing those caught in the wreckage and treating the many injured. They took them in and fed them. They helped them bury their dead. They didn’t know whom they were helping or where they were from. They didn’t ask. That wasn’t their way.
Runk, still injured and stupefied from the crash and fearing pursuit, ordered his men to move on after a few short days. The people of Yrnameer sent them on their way with a generous helping of their own harvest, enough to last for months. And after a while they forgot about Runk and his bandits.
Runk and his bandits didn’t forget about them.
A hard, lean year of living off the land passed, and another was looming. Runk decided there was an easier way to fill their bellies.
He knew it was likely that, if asked, the people of Yrnameer would willingly share what they had. But what’s the point of being bad if you’re not being bad?
So the Bad Men were moving grimly toward Yrnameer with their message. They were traveling faster then they had expected, mostly due to the fact that there were only nine of them left. The most recent casualty had been a terrible rider who had slowed them down.
It had happened the previous evening when they stopped to make camp. They had been lucky enough to find a small grove of Oni trees, whose bright red fruit was packed with nutrients. The fruit was best cooked, but lacking the means to ignite the temperamental Krager stove, they ate them raw. That was fine: the fruit could be enjoyed either way—unless you were Taknean. If you were Taknean, you had to cook the Oni fruit thoroughly to destroy a certain rare protein, or you were essentially eating a deliciously sweet, fist-size suicide pill.
The Sheriff of Yrnameer Page 4