The Albino Knife

by Steve Perry

It amused Wall to use the tactics of his former enemy. He wondered if perhaps Khadaji himself wouldn't find it amusing as well. Of course, humor depended on one's relative position to the effect, but still, even Khadaji would have to see some irony in Wall's moves, had he but known who was responsible. Alas, he would not know, not until it was too late to really appreciate it.Much too late.

  There were others to be called.

  "Nobody sees Maro," the man said to Dirisha.

  They were in a small pub called the Pregnant Pelican, on a back street near the water in the bad part of Dogtown, and that was saying something. The man across from her had insisted on meeting her alone, but Dirisha knew he had accomplices scattered through the meager crowd in the dim room. Dirisha herself had triggered her dentcom the second she'd entered the place, and her friends could hear the conversation easily from their hidden positions outside the pub.

  The man across from her called himself Dub, and he was an oily-looking little character with stainless and platinum teeth plates carved into needle patterns. Depilated, he wore hair and eyebrow tattoos in a formal style popular on Vul maybe ten years past.

  "Nobody sees Maro, huh?He invisible?"

  "If he wants, yeah.And besides, he ain't even onplanet. He's got a lot on his mind, he don't come here often."

  Dirisha had picked out two of the little man's muscleboys in the crowd. They might be hard, but they weren't very good, and too obvious to anybody with half her training. She figured Dub was good for at least one other to watch his back and she wanted to spot him before she made her point. So far, the third man had been more careful than the others, and she hadn't seen him.

  "Then how do I get to him?"

  "Through me."

  "I worry that something might get lost in translation.Nothing personal."

  Dub flashed his custom teeth, looking sharklike for his effort. "I'm like a recorder, fem. It gets passed exactly like it gets said."

  Dirisha shook her head. Black Sun—they would rather be called "The Organization"—had been around for a long time. The name might have changed, but the criminal underground was the same. There had always been something like it and Dirisha figured there always would be.

  She finally spotted the third watcher.The bartender. A good move, that, since he would be expected to keep his gaze roving over his customers.

  Were there any more? She didn't think so. There was a quick way to find out.And if she were wrong?

  Well, life was risky, wasn't it?

  "Look, Dub, supposing I impress him somehow. Think that'll get me in for a face-to-face?"

  The little man shrugged. "I doubt it. Maro, he don't impress real easy."

  Dirisha smiled. "Well, suppose we try?"

  She shot the first two while she was still seated, thewhump !of the spetsdods loud in the enclosed space.

  Dub's eyes widened and his mouth gaped as Dirisha had to stand to get a clear shot at the tender, who'd moved to the end of the bar to serve another patron. She'd made it look as easy as she could, offhand; she hadn't even looked away from Dub for the first two, using her peripheral vision to find them.

  As soon as the first shots went off, people started dropping to the floor, hunting for cover. A handful of weapons came out, but nobody still awake need worry about Dirisha and apparently nobody wanted to risk pointing a gun in her direction.

  She settled back into the chair and waved one hand lazily at Dub. "Think that'll do it?"

  "Y-you're crazy!" He kept his hands on the table, fingers spread wide.A wise move.

  "Probably.But I've got some serious business to discuss and I don't want to filter it through a ferret like you. I expect Maro can find me."

  "You are in deep shit, fem!"

  "Not from you, friend.And I figure Maro is too smart to flatten me without knowing who I am and what I want."

  Dirisha stood and walked away. She allowed herself toswagger a little as she did. What the hell.

  Maro was pushing sixty, a lot of natural gray in his black hair, but he had a lean, hard look. He wore a plain silk jumpsuit, dark blue, and his hands were laced together on the otherwise empty desk as Dirisha walked into the office. He sat straight in the chair. His face was neutral, no anger or fear in it; he was simply watching her.

  They were on the second floor of a business building, running to bland earth-toned carpet and walls, the kind of place that could have been the headquarters of almost any kind of operation. Dull, quiet, safe—if you bought the picture.

  The guards had scanned and hand-searchedher carefully, though they'd apparently missed the dentcom; her spetsdods were gone, and she hadn't tried to smuggle any obvious weapons into the meeting. She was not, however, unarmed.

  Maro leaned back in his chair and waved at the seat facing his desk. One desk, two chairs; those were the room's only furnishings. There were no tapes, no paintings on the wall, nothing else.

  Dirisha sat. She also leaned back and propped her left ankle on her right knee, her hands resting on her shin and boot.

  "Why shouldn't I have you killed?" he said. His voice was calm, full of power, confident. "If I let somebody thump my people, it's bad for business."

  "Nobody got hurt," she said. "And I don't think you want a war."

  He smiled. "You think I'm afraid of your three friends listening in on your dentcom?"

  Dirisha smiled. He'd prepared for this meeting with at least a little investigation. Good.

  "No, I don't think you would be, though it would be a mistake to discount them."

  "I can field an army against your three matadors," he said.

  "We had a guy take on an army once; he did okay. And how many matadors do you think there are?

  You might be good enough to beat them all, though I doubt it, but a war would surely be bad for business."

  "Point taken.What is it you want?"

  "There's somebody giving us a hard time. We want to know if he's connected to your organization. If he is, we want to know why he's on us. If not, we'd like to ask you to help us find him."

  "Let's assume for a minute that I don't know who planted the bombs at the Dogtown warehouse," he said.

  Dirisha scored another point in Maro's favor.

  "Why should I help you find him?"

  "He's going to be bad for your business as well as ours. A lot of people are looking for this guy. A lot of rocks are going to be turned over. Some of your operations are under some of those rocks. No offense meant."

  "No offense taken. And if I help you find this person, the heat gets turned down."

  "No lower than it was before, but yeah."

  He raised one hand and touched his chin lightly.

  "I do biz," he said, "and what you have said makes sense. And I like your nerve. My people will be in touch."

  Dirisha nodded. "Nice talking to you."

  "You took a big risk coming here," he said.

  "Not really."

  "The room is wired for zap," he said."Every part of it, including where I sit. The field is variable, state-of-the-art—it can be set to tickle me while at the same time it will fry whoever is across the desk.

  All I have to do is say the word. You're unarmed. No matter how fast you are, you'd never be able to get to me before you died."

  Dirisha pulled at her boot heel, peeling from it a thin sheet of material that matched the color of the spun dotic. She raised it slowly so Maro could see it.

  He blinked and sucked in a short, sharp breath. He didn't know what it was exactly but she could see that he knew what it was in general.

  "Sonderstat," she said, laying the dark square onto the desk. "You can pound it, burn it, or eat it and it won't do anything other than flatten, smoke or give you indigestion. But if you run an electric charge through it or put it into a working zap field it will go boom. Even a hand wand might set it off. Piece that size would take out this room, rooms on both sides and maybe the one above and below it."

  "Nice," he said. "My guards will be sorry they missed it.
"

  "What you get when you hire second best."

  "We'll be in touch," he said.

  Dirisha stood. She was almost at the door when he said, "What about the other boot heel?More explosive?"

  "Inactive biocell battery," she said."Doesn't show on a scanner. Good for one shot of juice if you rap it twice."

  "Of course.A pleasure to meet you, Fem Zuri.You ever need a job, look me up."

  "Thanks."

  Since Massey had beenSoldatutmarkt , one of the elite troops run by the Confed, Khadaji thought that was a good place to start. The infamous spy-soldier group had been disbanded, those who weren't killed during the revolution, but some of the leaders survived. Khadaji had the names, and several of the highest-ranking survivors still lived on Earth. Perhaps he should pay them a visit.

  This was more, than just a kidnapping and attempted killings on the matadors, he felt. And whatever was going on was a lot more complex than first he'd imagined.

  Best hefind out what. Soon.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "SO WHAT DO we do now?" Sleel said. "Sit and wait?"

  He and Geneva and Dirisha were sitting or standing near the mirrored wall of the gym, watching Bork do squats. The big man was naked, save for a sweatband, groin strap and half-fingered lifting gloves; the flexsteel bar across his shoulders was loaded with plates. Dirisha figured the weight must be about three hundred and fifty kilos, counting the bar. There was a rack behind him so that if he leaned back it would catch the bar, but that was the only safety.

  Bork squatted, and muscles bulged and veins stood out all over him as he went down. He came up fast enough so that the flexsteel bar bent, and the weights bobbed up and down on the ends when he stopped at the top.

  Geneva said, "You could use him to teach anatomy. He looks as if he's carved out of something; no fat at all."

  "I could probably manage that much weight," Sleel said.

  Dirisha and Geneva smiled briefly at each other.

  Bork did another rep, his fifth.

  "To answer your question, no, we don't wait," Dirisha said. "Maro and Black Sun may or may not be able to find out anything. While they are looking, we keep our own motors running."

  "To where?"Sleel said.

  "Earth."

  Both Sleel and Geneva turned from watching Bork complete his seventh squat to stare at Dirisha. Sleel said, "Earth? But you said that's where Emile was going."

  "He can't cover the whole planet by himself," Dirisha said. "He's running down oldSoldatutmarkt leaders.

  We have another reason to go there."

  "Yeah?What?"

  "We need to see a man about a computer."

  "What are you talking about?" Geneva said.

  "Ever hear of Jersey Reason?"

  Geneva and Sleel both looked blank. Bork arrived at that moment, wiping the sweat from his face with a towel. "Jersey Reason the thief?" he said.

  "Ex-thief," Dirisha said. "He's retired these days. But he kind of keeps a hand in.An electronic hand."

  "Whatare you talking about?" Geneva said again.

  Dirisha smiled.

  Many of the upranks of theSoldatutmarkt had been imprisoned after the Republic took power, and rightfully so. Some managed to disappear, to take new identities and new faces, and those who chose quiet and unassuming lives mostly got away with it. While theSoldatutmarkt had been full of cruel men and women, it had never become quite the arm of slaughter as had some of the more infamous elite armies of history. Some of the troops had been no more than good soldiers doing what they thought was their duty. Some of these men and women were known, though the Republic had not chosen to unmask and punish them. The Republic had its reasons for so doing.

  As the boxcar dropped from orbit toward its destination at the Western Canadian station, Khadaji mentally reviewed the information he had been given about one of these ex-soldiers. He needed somebody who would not only be willing to talk, but also somebody who had been ranked high enough to have something worth saying.

  Khadaji's quarry lived in a small bubbletown built about sixty years ago. About fifty klicks south ofLiverpoolBay in what had once been theNorthwest Territories , New Anderson lay twenty kilometers west of the Anderson River, just out of the eastern edge of theEskimoLakes . The main industry in the town was tempdiff power conversion. Back before the powersats took over supplying most of Earth's electrical needs, it had been deemed a good idea to try alternative methods of generation. Tempdiff technology had progressed to the point where it could produce enough juice to warrant the building of several Arctic stations. Deepdrills tapped into the Earth's natural body heat many kilometers below the surface, and that warmth and the cold air outside the town were artfully and precisely mixed to make power.

  The technology was outmoded now, but New Anderson continued to pump its small sparks into the NoHemi Grid. One never knew but that a microwave sat could go down and even a few gigavolts might come in handy.

  NewAnderson was far from anyone likely to accidentally happen across and recognize a former Soldatutmarkt Section Chief, an officer equivalent to a Sub-Befalhavare in regular military rank.

  "Looks cold out there," Veate said, snapping off her seat's holoproj.

  Khadaji pulled his thoughts back into the boxcar.

  "It is. Even the summers aren't real warm and it is winter now. Probably they have more snow on the ground than I did at the Red Sister."

  Veate said, "I wondered at the name. How did the place come by it?"

  Khadaji leaned back in his seat. "During the fighting at the end when the Confed was falling, I lost two of my people. Lyle Gatridge—everybody called him 'Red'—and Mayli Wu, sometimes known as 'Sister Clamp.' " Hestill felt a twinge of pain when he thought about it. He hadn't seen them die, but he'd set them on the path; it had been his fault, at least partially.

  "Red was one of my first teachers, the man who showed me how to use this." He waved his left hand and the spetsdod on the back of it. "Mayli was many things, and the most centered of all the matadoras.

  She taught us about love."

  Veate did not speak, and Khadaji allowed his memories to flow again, recalling his friends. Red had also been Geneva's father, and Mayli had been Bork's lover. The death of the Confederation dinosaur had not been bought cheaply, even if it had cost nothing but those two. It had cost more. A lot of people had died and though not directly by his hand, they were piled high on Khadaji's karma.

  He shook the morbid thoughts. The dead were dead. He had the living—Juete still among them, he hoped—to attend to, and that had to be more important. You could not bring back the past but you could still save the future.

  Maybe.

  Khadaji and Veate rented a flitter at the WC station, bought heatmesh and spare batteries for it, as well as hats and gloves, and took off for New Anderson. Between the WC station just outside Greater Vancouver and their destination were a dozen bubbletown settlements. Such places utilized Ben Lu generators, the cheaper version of the Ben Wah devices used on airless worlds to form a hardball force sphere around itself. A Ben Lu would shield against most precipitation and extremes of heat or cold, but did not greatly affect light or other electromagnetics. Khadaji was no physicist, but he understood that a Ben Lu effect was more like a wall of thickened air than anything else.

  Two thousand meters below, the ground was covered with snow. As they flew over the first of the bubbletowns, they could see the perfect circle standing bare against the whiteness. The town within was visible through a dome only slightly fogged in a few spots. Veate said, "Why doesn't the snow stick to the bubbles'? Are they heated?"

  "As I understand it, the field vibrates in such a way that snow andrain are repelled, something like personal weather shields."

  "Ah."

  Two hours later they came within range of New Anderson. Khadaji allowed the town's traffic-control comp to lock them into a landing mode. Most of the power complex was apparently underground, although there were several large building
s that had a heavy industrial look to them visible up top.

  According to the infonet feed into the flitter's comp, New Anderson sported a permanent population of around two thousand, more than half of whom worked running the tempdiff plant, despite the dins and automatics. He guessed that merchants, children and assorted service people made up the rest of the town. There'd be pubs, stores, maybe gambling and prostitutes, as well as medical and dental facilities.

  The only way Khadaji could tell they'd crossed the Ben Lu barrier was that theflitter's outside temp sensor showed an instant rise.

  The flitter made a series of inward spirals and put down on a plastcrete landing lot, then taxied to an assigned parking slot near a small building. The com came to life.

  "How long you gonna need the slot?"

  Khadaji saw the attendant in the small building wave at him. "Just the day," he said.

  "Gimme your credit number."

  That done, Khadaji and Veate alighted from the flitter.

  "Not cold at all," Veate said.

  "The mesh and hats and gloves were in case the flitter had problems on the way," her father said.

  Most of the buildings were standard everwear plastic, still dark green, almost in mint condition. Here and there some of the structures had been painted, to change their appearance. The builders had been generous in the sizes allotted to housing and recreation. The streets were straight and wide. Those running east and west were numbered, while those going north and south were lettered. It would be difficult to get lost, and the entire town was only three klicks by three at its longest. Someone who lived in the northwest corner would be found near the intersection of Avenue A and1st Street ; a shop in the southeastern corner would be near Avenue J and10th Street .Simple.

  The address her father had was between 3rd and 4th on Avenue E. It would not be a long walk from where the flitter was parked. There were few people and fewer vehicles evident, and those people who were about stared at Veate when she passed close enough for them to see her clearly. She was used to that. Albinos grew up with constant stares.

  As they walked, Veate said, "So, are you going to tell me anything about this ex-soldier or not?"