Empire & Ecolitan

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Sure. But the Empire’s not at war. So the crew just forgets she’s there. Just like the Fuardian and the Halstani flag lines forget about our ops, unless there’s trouble.”

  “Makes sense, I guess. But why’s she here?”

  “Not here, White. Haversol. Haversol’s a happy hunting ground for everyone—us, them, the outies, even see some of the Ursans once in a while. Good reason to be careful there.”

  “Why are you headed there?”

  “Not headed there. Headed to Accord. Understand they might be able to fix my eyes. Good biologies there.”

  “Like the genetic wars under the Directorate?”

  Arto shook his head. “No. Not quite the same, the way I understand it. The Directorate tried to create superkillers. Accord works with what already exists.”

  “Not what I heard.” The younger man shrugged, and let his eyes check the still-closed lock port. “But I guess you hear what they want you to hear.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” snorted Arto. “Never changes.”

  In the lull in the conversation that followed, both men looked around the waiting area.

  “Attention, please. Your attention, please. In just a few standard minutes, we will be embarking full status passengers on the J. P. Morgan through lock port three. Those passengers with gold status should be prepared to embark. Those passengers with gold status should be prepared to embark.”

  Arto glanced from the far seats back at the man beside him. “Wouldn’t mind that kind of status.”

  “No. Beats the stand-up closet I got.”

  “Bet you spend most of your time in the common lounges.”

  “No bet.”

  “Be careful, White. You look just enough like an Imperial agent to get in trouble, and you haven’t got any metal plates in you. Every two-bit operator, like that sister, or like the fellow over on the end with the heavy boots—bet he’s a Fuard with the steel tubes built into his forearms—will be angling to find you out. Doesn’t matter that you’re what you say you are. Because only an Impie agent could have cover that good.”

  “Hades! That why everyone keeps looking at me? Thought it might be my good looks.”

  “Just a guess, friend.” The scanner glasses, their mirrored surface impenetrable, looked away from the spacer and toward the lock.

  “So who do you work for? Knowing all the agents and what makes them tick?”

  “Me? I work for me, no one else. Couldn’t afford it otherwise. One stun beam my way and I’m blind. Direct hit and I’m out for a week, with a headache for a month afterward.”

  The spacer nodded, ignoring the evasion. “So what should I do? Act my normal dumb self? Hope someone doesn’t decide I’m am Impie agent? Pretend I am? Pray?”

  “Prayer won’t help. Neither will playing the agent unless you can carry it off. Acting innocent might, particularly if you are. At least until you land on Haversol. Then all bets are off.”

  “Wonderful.” The brown-haired man shook his head, lifted both shoulders as if trying to relax them.

  “And that shielded personal kit in your bag would make anyone suspicious, at least anyone with a scanner.”

  The other shook his head again. “That why I’ve opened the damned thing every time I’ve turned around?”

  “Your attention, please,” interrupted the message system. “Your attention, please. Republic Interstellar is now embarking gold status passengers on the J. P. Morgan. Gold status passengers only. Through lock port three. Would those passengers with silver status please prepare to embark? Passengers with silver status prepare to embark.”

  Arto reached down and pulled a single kit back toward his feet. “Time for us to separate, White.”

  “Have a good trip. Good luck with the eyes.”

  “Hope to, and thank you.” The older man stood, then leaned toward the younger spacer. “Someone’s out for you, but it won’t be me. Good luck.”

  With that, Arto was up and in the waiting line of passengers, his bag in one hand.

  The man called White did not shake his head, but studied the remaining passengers waiting to board the Morgan.

  So someone was already looking for him? That was scarcely the most auspicious beginning he could have hoped for. Not at all.

  He shrugged and brushed back his hair with his left hand, not that his hair was long enough or messed enough to require attention.

  “Standard amenities passengers, please stand by for boarding. Standard amenities passengers, please stand by for boarding on the Morgan. Destination Haversol.”

  The level of deference in the carefully controlled voice announcing the passenger boarding schedule was definitely declining.

  The apparent Halstani Intelligence Operative glanced in his direction before standing. Her eyes passed over him, but he had no doubt that the woman already knew who he was. Her look was confirmation, not search.

  He would have liked to sigh, but that wouldn’t have been in character.

  His supposedly uneventful trip to Haversol was looking less and less uneventful.

  VIII

  JIMJOY STRETCHED AS he studied the small room.

  One double bed, scratched plastic drawers built into the wall next to a narrow closet with dual doors—bent—which looked as if they squeaked every time they were opened. A lopsided and cracked plastic table squatted in front of two armchairs that would have been out of style three centuries earlier in most of the Empire. The drapes, spread, upholstery, and floor padding were all either brown or orange or both, and the two colors, faded as they were, clashed.

  The Imperiale was anything but imperial, though in character for the itinerant pilot/electrical worker outlined in Jimjoy’s cover papers.

  He shook his head. Hale Vale White—whoever had saddled him with such an absurd cover name should be on the mission, rather than the overtired and overworked Major who was.

  Lifting the single hanging bag from the floor, he opened the closet doors.

  Skkreeett.

  Wincing, he hung up the bag, but did not close the door. Instead, he glanced over at the other bag, squat and lumpy. With a sigh, he dragged it over and used his right foot to give it a final shove inside the shallow closet, where it barely fit.

  Then he sat on the edge of the bed, which sank alarmingly under his weight, and pulled off his dusty boots, letting them clump to the floor.

  He half turned, half eased himself back into the central valley in the bed, the depression created by his own weight. Even sleeping one night at the Imperiale was likely to give him a backache, and there was no guarantee that he would escape with a single night. But he wasn’t up to trying the floor, or to fighting with what might appear on it once the lights were out.

  With the first Accord ship not available for two days, and with supposedly few credits, the poor pilot named White could be expected to catch a few hours’ sleep, especially in the warm midday of Haversol. Besides, if Arto were right, the longer he stayed around Haversol, the more he would have to be on his guard. The sleep he got now might be his best.

  At least the Imperiale had climate control, reflected Jimjoy as he adjusted the pillow under his head. He hoped that no one would bother him, not yet. The last thing he needed was his combat reflexes jolting him into full awareness because some cheap hotel’s valet wasn’t certain who belonged where.

  In a more affluent system, he wouldn’t have had to even leave the orbit station, but Haversol had no quarters in orbit, except for the extraordinarily wealthy, which raised the costs of travel beyond Haversol considerably. And the Empire certainly wouldn’t help Haversol out, not to improve transit toward the Arm. Neither was it in Haversol’s interest.

  Jimjoy shook his head and let the economics lapse.

  The dim light of late afternoon angling into his eyes woke him from the latest in a series of nightmares.

  He recalled only the last, in which he had commandeered a slow freighter and was being chased toward some system jump point by a full Imperial floti
lla, all because he had failed to give Commander Hersnik the proper salute.

  “Must be a moral in that,” he muttered as he struggled up into a sitting position to wipe his dripping forehead with the back of his sleeve. He eased his feet over the side of the bed, his back to the narrow single window, cradling his aching head in his hands.

  Finally, he stood and made his way into the antique bathroom, where he began to splash the lukewarm water that was ostensibly cold over his face. Slowly, he wiped his face dry.

  Then, taking a deep breath, he stepped back into the empty floor space next to the bed and began the muscular relaxation exercises designed to relieve tight muscles and the symptoms of tension.

  The sagging bed had left his back stiff, but not actually sore—not yet.

  The exercises relieved that stiffness, as well as the remnants of the nightmare-induced headache.

  Once he had completed the exercise pattern, he returned to the bathroom and cleaned up. Then he extracted a clean, but slightly faded, tunic from the hanging bag, leaving the squeak-prone closet door still open. He pulled on the tunic.

  He bent down and touched the squat kit bag, as if to adjust the clasp, and then straightened, stepping away from the shallow closet again and toward the door that represented the single exit from the room. With a glance around the not-quite-shabbiness, he touched his hand to the door, then listened before actually opening it.

  No one seemed to be outside in the hallway.

  Feeling more rested and slightly more relaxed than when he had entered the dingy room hours earlier, Jimjoy started down the empty hallway toward the center stairs, avoiding the ancient elevator.

  Four flights down and he stood in the dusty lobby, inhabited by one bored clerk hunched behind a faded plastone-facaded counter, and a white-haired man who stared at the main doors.

  Jimjoy touched his chin, wondering whether to try the equally aged saloon or to chance finding something nearby which might be even more dismal and expensive.

  The Special Operative walked over to the open portals, the first actual portals he had seen so far on Haversol, and peered in. Despite the early hour, nearly half the tables were taken, and the majority of the patrons were actually eating.

  He shrugged. The posted prices were reasonable, and he was no more likely to find trouble in his hotel than outside it.

  Scarcely inside the portal, he found a tough-faced woman in a gray tunic before him.

  “Dinner or drinks? Or both?”

  “Dinner…maybe drinks later.”

  “Unhh-hunnnn,” mumbled the hostess as she turned.

  Jimjoy shrugged again and followed her, letting himself amble along in the style of his current persona. The walk was that of an outwardly careless man who had actually never let down his guard. For all that the style reflected Jimjoy’s current feelings, the motion was more obvious than he would have normally used. But he had the strong feeling that he was being tracked closely.

  “Here,” grunted the green-haired tough who had led the way. The small table was in a corner, jammed under a planter from which a tattered nightfern spilled over the sides and brushed Jimjoy’s shoulder as he ducked under it in moving behind the smeared and nonreflecting black table.

  The would-be out-of-luck spacer eased himself into the straight-backed wooden chair on the back side, glancing at the two dark-bearded and burly men and their companion at the nearest table. The first looked up from his mug of ale. The second continued to stare at the tabletop. Their companion, a younger male with collar-length blond hair, was clean-shaven and held a heavy wineglass.

  The four tables on the other side, to his right, each designed for four, were filled, and all were lined up with minimal space between the tables and the rear wall.

  Even as he positioned himself in the battered chair to survey the saloon, he could feel the chair back grate against the already scraped and dented paneling behind him. Although the planter stand projected nearly half a meter from the wall, he still had a good view of the threesome to his left. He edged the chair farther away from the planter to give himself a bit more room, hoping he wouldn’t need it.

  Another woman, tired-looking, wiry, with white-streaked black hair, dropped a bill slate on the adjoining table and turned, in two swift jerks, to face him.

  “Eats? Or drinks?”

  “Eats. What do you have?”

  “Here.” She slapped a cube on the table, which projected the menu right into the air before Jimjoy. “Be back in a minute.”

  She jerked back toward the three men who hunched around the table to Jimjoy’s left. The younger man was still drinking from the wineglass, but the two bearded men had drained their heavy and transparent mugs.

  Jimjoy glanced at the blond man and decided that he was a she…despite the masculine appearance and garb.

  Jimjoy frowned as he watched the hard-looking blond woman proffer a handful of credit discs to the waitress before standing with a sudden movement.

  “Let’s go…” The low and gravelly voice grated on Jimjoy’s nerves, and he wished the woman and her two bearded friends would depart quickly. He also hoped that the adjoining table would remain empty, but with the saloon filling up so early in the evening, he doubted that.

  “Come on,” said the blond woman. Standing, she was taller than Jimjoy.

  One man, the one closest to the Special Operative, rose quickly. The other did not.

  Jimjoy’s mouth opened. He closed it quickly.

  “Now!” snapped the blond, as her right hand reached down and lifted the man who had remained seated from his chair and onto his feet.

  The waitress scuttled backward, nearly upsetting Jimjoy’s small table, at the sight of the tall woman yanking a nearly hundred-kilo man from his chair as if he had been a disobedient infant.

  “We’re going…” said the tall woman, quietly this time.

  The laggard male did not look at her, but nodded…after mumbling “Sorry” under his breath.

  The waitress slid sideways past Jimjoy’s table in an effort to avoid the argument and brushed into the shoulder of another woman, violet-haired and hard-eyed, who immediately looked up with a glare. The violet-haired woman’s look softened as she realized it was the waitress, even as both watched the blond woman escorting her male friends toward the doorway.

  “…used to be a Hand of the Mother…” That whispered scrap of information came drifting down from the line of tables to his right.

  The woman was not massively built. Solid, but certainly not heavy, and if that episode had been the casual effort of a retired or resigned Hand, Jimjoy would just as soon avoid one on any terms, but especially on professional terms.

  Quite suddenly, Commander Hersnik’s concerns about the Matriarchal takeover of Halston seemed much more believable.

  “You decided?” asked the waitress. Her tired voice sounded as though nothing in the world had happened minutes before, even though the Halstani trio were not quite out of the saloon.

  “Samburg steak, whatever else goes with it.”

  “Salad or local veggies.”

  “What do you recommend?”

  “Local veggies.”

  “I’ll take them.”

  “Drink?”

  “El Parma, with dinner.”

  He hoped the local beer was palatable, but the out-of-luck pilot of his cover would not have wasted credits on anything more elaborate. Hale Vale White indeed.

  He snorted.

  By now almost all the tables were taken. As he watched, the green-haired hostess escorted two couples to the table next to him, barely before the glasses had been removed and the table surface further smeared by the quick hand of a scarred youth wearing a faded brown singlesuit.

  As the four sat down and were quickly abandoned by the hostess once she had gestured at the table, Jimjoy glanced from one face to the next. He wrinkled his nose, afraid he might sneeze, so heavy was the scent of rose perfume emanating from the false blonde. She and the spurious redhead were
obvious joygirls bent on separating the younger men from their paychecks and whatever else could be separated.

  Jimjoy sighed at the lustful innocence in the face of both men, wondering how long before they lost more than innocence, wondering if lust was ever innocent for all its singlemindedness.

  Rather than dwell further on the neighboring set of mismatched couples whose companionships were doubtless financially based, he began to study people at other tables.

  Across the nonreflecting tabletop toward his right and past the three closer tables was a corner table, pulled out fractionally. At it sat three people: a silver-haired woman, apparently in her late twenties or early thirties, as measured in standard Terran years; a dark-haired and slender man whose age seemed indeterminate in the dim light; and another woman, clearly older and heavier. Although he could not have said why, Jimjoy felt that the younger woman’s silver hair color was natural. He knew of no world where such color was widespread, but it looked natural—and not the natural color that came with age or premature aging.

  The woman looked in his direction momentarily, although he could not tell whether she had actually looked at him.

  Jimjoy dismissed the urge to smile and continued to survey the room. The table closest to him on his right held four men, all bearded, silently chewing on their main course, occasionally swallowing gulps of beer. One, his red beard shot with silver, thumped his heavy mug on the table, empty, wiped his mouth and beard with the back of his faded gray sleeve, and waved wildly toward the tired-looking waitress.

  She looked at the bearded man, who held up the empty mug. With a nod toward the bar, she accepted his order.

  For all the diversity in the saloon, Jimjoy became aware of one thing. The two couples next to him did not fit. Nowhere else could he see such an obviously commercial relationship.

  Slowly he edged his chair back until it rested firmly against the wall behind him. Then he quietly shifted his weight until his legs were coiled under him.

  “What you doing, bud?” demanded the nearest of the young men.

  Jimjoy recognized the accent and coldly looked at him, bringing his hands up under the edge of the table.