The Albino Knife

by Steve Perry

  Here, the patrons and workers he employed knew him under a pseudonym. It had been five years since anybody had called him by his true name, and none of the locals knew who he had been before. He was a man who had gone to ground, hiding who and what he had been.

  The outer door slid open and then closed, the hard plastic squeaking a little as it moved along its track.

  Have to get that fixed, Khadaji thought.

  He turned to adjust the nozzle on the liquor dispenser as the inner door opened, so that he caught only a peripheral flash as the single customer entered the pub. He noticed nothing unusual about the figure from his quick glimpse. He—she?—wore a heavy, gloved and hooded parka over thermoskins and extrusion boots. The whine of the snow-shoes as they retracted over the second dump grate just inside the door was a sound he heard frequently. There was nothing to set the customer apart from any other, and yet—

  Khadaji turned and looked at the woman. He was sure it was a woman, and something about her movement as she reached up to untab her parka and face shield seemed familiar, even though he felt certain he had never seen her before. What would bring a stranger here? The last person he hadn't known personally who'd come to the Red Sister had been a miner from Delton City, and he'd stopped in only because his flitter had broken down on the way home.

  When the woman removed the parka, Khadaji thought his heart was going to stop.

  Juete!

  It couldn't be, and yet, there she was.

  Khadaji stared, unable to get his mind working. It had been more than twenty years since he had seen her, and she looked exactly the same. There was the white skin, the white hair, the pink eyes—she wasn't wearing colored droptacs—and the beauty that hit you like a fist to the solar plexus, stealing your breath and your soul at the same time.

  Even as he saw her, he knew it could not be. Juete had never told him how old she was, but surely twenty years had to show somehow? If anything, she looked younger than she had when he'd seen her last.

  She walked toward the bar. Every customer in the place stopped and turned to watch, caught by the genetic magic that was the Albino Exotic's birthright. Those closest to her would have felt the call most, for her ancestors' pheromones had been tailored to attract virtually any man or woman of human or human mue stock.

  As she drew closer, Khadaji saw that he had been mistaken. This was not Juete. There were small differences in her face, the shape of her nose, her lips, her jaw. She was close, very close, but not Juete.

  A relative.

  The woman reached the bar and looked at Khadaji with a gaze that seemed to penetrate to his essence.

  "Hello, Emile," she finally said. Her voice was honey on denscris, smooth and clear. "My name is Veate."

  That she used his name, one he hadn't heard directed at him for five years, was not lost on him. And in that instant, he knew who she was.

  "You're Juete's daughter," he said, his voice full of wonder and a certain kind of joy. Juete had a daughter.Amazing.

  She gave him a brief nod. "And yours," she said.

  Veate had played this scene a hundred times in the theater of her mind and in none of those rehearsals had he reacted quite the way it turned out now, finally, on opening night. She was watching carefully, very carefully when she announced her news, and save for a slight tightening around the eyes, he had shown no reaction. He hadn't suspected, she was pretty sure of that; it was a true surprise, but he'd handled it well, better than she'd expected. She wasn't sure exactlywhat she thought he might do: he could have denied it, maybe; or maybe his mouth might have gaped in shock; yes, and maybe he could have fallen down and frothed at the nose, too. But she could see that he didn't doubt it for a second, that he knew the truth when he heard it.

  There was a way in which she hated him, but she was also curious. One did not meet one's father every day, and she had been nervous about it, frightened in some nonspecific way. Not every young woman was the daughter of a certified hero, a man who'd taken his lever and found a place to stand and then moved the whole damned galaxy.

  Not that he looked it. He was ordinary enough, handsome in a rough way, but nobody she'd cross the street to view better. She had seen the holoprojic representations her mother had, some of them full size, and even so, she'd expected him to be taller, to be larger than life,to be arrogant.

  He turned to a young man stacking bottles near the opposite end of the bar. "Shel, watch things here for me, would you?" Then he turned back toward her. "I have an office in the back; we can talk there."

  Damn. He sounded so fucking calm! She'd wanted to rattle him, offbalance him, at least a little, and he was taking this in stride as if she'd offered him nothing more than the weather.

  He grinned, and Veate tried to read it. Was he laughing at her? Could he somehow tell she'd wanted to rock him? Or was he smirking for some other reason?

  Maybe he's glad to see you, hey?

  No. Discount that. She didn't want him to be glad to see her. She didn't want him to have any redeeming virtues, save his much-vaunted abilities with guns and intrigue. She needed his help; that was the only reason she'd come to him.The only reason.

  Yeah, said her little inner voice,right .

  The small room Khadaji used for an office was not much. It had enough space for a desk and a couple of chairs, with an old couch against one wall that sometimes served as a bed for customers too stoned or drunk to try to make it home. Over the couch there was a painting of a figure wrapped in dark robes against a background of a starry night. The figure was of one of the Siblings of the Shroud and it was the only reminder of his past life that Khadaji kept in his office. Except for the pair of loaded spetsdods locked in the center drawer of the desk.

  Khadaji stood next to the desk, looking at the young woman who claimed to be his daughter. To say it had come as a shock was a massive understatement. He had a daughter, by Juete? She had never even hinted at it. She must have been pregnant before he had left her on the Darkworld, and for some reason, had decided to keep the child.

  That she was Juete's child he did not doubt; he could see her mother shining through her face. But that she was also his offspring still vibrated through him like a sudden thunderstorm. He had a child. It was not something he had ever seriously considered. His path had been in a different direction from home or family, and while he had sometimes wondered at that which he had turned away from, he had never regretted his choice.

  He believed her when she'd said it. He was not naive, but the truth had rung for him like a crystal bell in a quiet mountain zendo. He looked for some sign of himself in her features, but could not see it.

  The truth did not preclude the questions that arose in him, the thousand things he wanted to know all of an instant.

  "Your mother never told me," he said.

  "I know."

  It was said coolly, matter-of-factly, and it brought up in him another raft of emotion bouncing in the rapids of his amazement. "Do you know why?"

  "You left and went to save the galaxy. You were busy."

  Again, the comment was spoken evenly, without apparent anger or censure.

  "Even so, I loved her."

  "She has always spoken well of you," Veate said. "That I am alive indicates something."

  Khadaji nodded. Juete couldn't have known that he would become rich a few years after they parted and that he would arrange for her to be supported by part of his wealth for the rest of her life. Bringing another Exotic into the universe was risky, especially during the days of the Confederation.

  "And I've read all about you," she said. "The Man Who Never Missed, the father of the revolution that cleared away galactic injustice, the living legend who vanished after he had done his job. Some people think you're right up there with Chang or Buddha or Christo."

  There was the barest hint of sarcasm in her voice this time. He did not know her, had not known that she even existed before a few moments ago, and certainly he did not need to justify his actions to a stranger
, albeit that this stranger was like no other to him. But it bothered him that she seemed to dislike him somehow.

  "But you don't approve," he said.

  "It's not my place to say."

  He let it pass. "How did you find me?" He already knew, but he wanted to hear how she would play it.

  "Pen told me."

  He nodded again. Pen was the only person who knew where Emile Khadaji had gone. And he would never send on anybody who didn't have good reason to see Khadaji. Surely this was as good a reason as he was likely to come across.Must have surprised the old man.Or, given Pen's integratic philosophy, maybe not.

  "Why now?"

  A fugue player would find worlds to think about in those two words, but it was not his intent to play fugue with his daughter. The simple answer to the basic question would do for a start.

  "I need your help." The cool reserve in her voice was still there, but for a moment, he saw the girl underneath the composure. Albinos had to learn early how to deal with a galaxy that wanted them, wanted to own them, wanted something from them even if it had to take it by force. Exotics had to develop walls to protect themselves, hard shells to absorb the blows, and he could not imagine Juete failing to teach her child—their child—what she must know to survive. But for an instant, the walls cleared and her fear and vulnerability were there for him to see.

  "Someone has kidnapped my mother," she said. "Will you help me find her?"

  He had left it all behind when he'd come to retire on Muto Kato. The killing he had done while a soldier, the manipulations after that, the war against the Confed. Oh, he would sometimes take the spetsdods out on a free day to plink at old drink containers, trying to keep skills that had once been razor-edged from rusting completely. He had put it all behind him, the danger and intrigue, and he had never regretted it.

  He'd done a lifetime's work in a decade and a half, and walked away without a backward look. He had done what he had been driven to do by a mystical battlefield revelation that he could not ignore, but he was long past that. It seemed sometimes when he thought about it as if it had all happened to another man, in another life, one he knew only slightly, if at all.

  All these thoughts ran through his head in a jumble, and it was only a few seconds before they were done. This was a test; the gods were not done with him yet.Comfortable in your little pub, Khadaji?

  Really? Here. Chew on this.

  "Yes, of course," he said. "I'll do whatever I can."

  Veate smiled at him, the relief bright behind her expression, and he mirrored her smile with one of his own.

  "Thank you," she said.

  He stared, entranced by her. He had a daughter.

  But the joy was mitigated by what she had said. The woman he had loved above all others, the mother of his child, had been kidnapped. He hoped he wasn't too late to do something about it.

  Veate slept in the spare room of his cube. Khadaji sat at the keyboard of his computer and called up his communications program.

  "Online," it said.

  He gave the computer the com number of the Siblings of the Shroud's main compound on Earth. It was billions of klicks from here but White Radio had a hundred-LY armspan, if you could afford it. And at this distance, the time lag would be almostnil . Odd, that, since the farther away one got using White Radio, the less lag there was.

  "Linked," the computer said.

  The face that peered from the holoproj over Khadaji's computer was completely covered save for the eyes. The hood was part of the shroud all members of the order wore. Khadaji kept his own visual transmission blank.

  "Yes?"A woman's voice.

  "I would like to speak to Pen."

  "He is unavailable at the moment."

  "It's important."

  "This makes him no more available." There was an edge to the woman's voice, something Khadaji could not quite identify.Anger? Worry?

  "I see. I would like to leave a message, then. Tell him to call Emile when he can—"

  "Emile? Will you give me visual?"

  Khadaji hesitated. The Siblings were as trustworthy as they came, but the habits of the last few years were hard to break. What the hell, he thought. I'm leaving here anyway. Maybe I won't ever come back.

  He said, "Transmit visual."

  The computer obeyed.

  "It is you," the woman said. "This is Moon."

  Moon.Pen's mate.Khadaji had met her before he'd left for his new life. He should have recognized her voice.

  "Ah, Moon."

  "Pen is having a cut on his shoulder bonded," she said. "I'll put you through."

  "Nothing serious, I hope?"

  "We had an explosion. He was hit by a shard of denscris."

  "An explosion?"

  "An attack, of sorts."

  Something torpid stirred in Khadaji's mind. Juete kidnapped and Pen injured? It was possible that it was coincidence, of course, but his reptile brain knew otherwise. It sent a cold tendril to chill his scrotum, another to tighten his belly.

  The reptile knew that something was very wrong here and that he should stay the hell out of it.

  Chapter Two

  KHADAJI HADN'T BEEN offworld in five years, and when he booked passage for himself and Veate, he was mildly surprised. The old Confed-run system had been inefficient on its best days, with no apparent logical reason for various transit times. The Bender-driven ships often seemed to go out of their way to drag things along slowly, and when he'd come to Muto Kato from Earth, it had taken the better part of three weeks, with side jaunts to systems that made no sense whatsoever. Now, the trip to Earth could be done directly, with an elapsed time of just under four days. The deregulation of the star lanes and openingthem to private companies had apparently done wonders for the industry.

  Other things had changed, too. Where once there had been Confederation troopers and military flight controllers, they had been replaced by ship company employees and civilians. Bribes were not necessary, and any galactic citizen with a basic ID cube could travel virtually anywhere he or she wished, with few restrictions save those of common sense.And enough stads, of course. Access to classified military areas was forbidden, as was spacing to a planet where some new disease might be loose. Local restrictions had to be dealt with, naturally, now that the planets could set their own rules, but by and large, few worlds tried to keep strangers from visiting.

  The ship, the Pride of Bocca , was an old deep spacer that had been extensively refurbished. The vessel was the size of a small ocean liner, and could carry five hundred passengers in comfort, with choices ranging from basic accommodations to luxury in the extreme. Years past, when he had waged war upon the Confed, Khadaji had put virtually all of his own money into that battle, keeping out only enough to buy the pub—and a certain reserve, just in case of emergency. The stash was of precious gems and rare metals, easy to convert to stads, and it was upon this fund that he drew to buy passage to Earth. If anything, thefreebizRepublic prices were cheaper than the old government-run ships had been.Very interesting.

  Veate spoke little as they took the boxcar into orbit and rendezvous with thePride . She seemed lost in her own thoughts and Khadaji respected her privacy. Probably worried about her mother, he thought.

  For himself, Khadaji had yet to get over the shock of the young woman's sudden appearance in his life.

  As they left the gravity well of Muto Kato, he turned the new sensation of being a father around in his mind and looked at it from various angles. He would have thought that at his age and after all his experiences, he would not have been rattled by anything. But he was wrong, for this was one hell of a surprise.

  The deep space ship was shaped more or less like a brick, with odd protrusions jutting out along the sides here and there. He watched the holoproj unit built into the back of the seat in front of him as they approached. It would be a few minutes before the boxcar docked. Khadaji turned to Veate.

  "Tell it to me again," he said. "I might have missed something the first time
."

  The young woman came back from her long stare. "I was skiing onMountRama ," she said. "I was with four friends and we were in the lodge. I called Juete's cube and got the recorder. I asked that she be paged—she was considering coming out to join us—and the page went unanswered. It worried me."

  "Any particular reason?"

  "Only that my mother was a careful woman. When she wasn't in the casino, she usually was in her cube.

  If she went outside the safety of those places, she always did so with an armed casino guard."

  He nodded. "Go on."

  "I had the cubecomp page security. They didn't know where she was. I got nervous, and I had the cube's recorder give me a recent playback."

  "You had the override code?"

  "Yes. And you heard the recording."

  Khadaji leaned back in the form-chair and sighed. Juete had been abducted from her electronically secured cube on Vishnu by two men. They had vocal and visual records of the kidnapping, and he had seen the holoproj three times. Neither of the kidnapperswere familiar to him, but that in itself meant nothing. The men had managed to rascal their way in, but had made no attempt to stop the room's recorder from working, and they had known that somebody would collect the voices and images sooner or later. They could have been skinmasked and wearing voice distorters, of course, but even so, a computeraug could do wonders with somatic patterns and speech cadence based on the recordings.

  They had not seemed particularly worried. It was as if they wanted people to know what had happened.

  Why had they taken her?

  Khadaji stared, as if he could see across time and space to the event. If he knew the "why," he might be able to figure out the "who," and the "where."

  He had certain resources upon which he could draw. He had never traded on his status as the man who focused the revolution that toppled the Confed. It had been five years, but there were those who owed him, and others who might not reject a call for help. He would go to see Pen first and then he would call in his favors. The mother of his child—he had a daughter!—was in danger, and he would do whatever it took to try to save her.