The Albino Knife

by Steve Perry

  Khadaji said, "I'd rather get your reaction without a bias, if that's all right."

  Veate shrugged. It irritated her, but she said, "Fine." Whatever game he was playing here, she wasn't going to let him think he was getting the best of it with her.

  The address was of a small shop, and what it apparently sold was hand-knitted garments. There were shawls, caps, and mufflers artfully hung in a display behind the plastic window. The door slid open as they approached it.

  Seated in a wooden rocking chair in front of a display case inside was a woman wearing a green wool caftan. She was perhaps eighty-five, white-haired and wrinkled, and was busy with her needles, knitting a sweater. She looked up at Khadaji and Veate and smiled, showing a fan of deep lines at the corners of her eyes. Veate found herself returning the older woman's smile.

  "Good day," she said. "You're new, aren't you?"

  "Yes, fem," Khadaji replied.

  "Come looking for a nice gift, perhaps?"

  "Come looking for Sub-Chief Heresh Vasquez of theSoldatutmarkt ."

  The woman's smile froze,then faltered. She sighed and put her needles down, nodding as if to herself.

  "Ah. I wondered if you'd ever get around to me."

  Veate blinked, but held her face as calm as she could. This kindly-looking granny was one of the fearsomeSoldatutmarkt ? Come on.

  "We aren't here to disturb your life, Fem Vasquez. We only want to ask you some questions. That done, we'll leave."

  "Do I know you? You look familiar."

  "I don't think we've ever met. My name is Khadaji. This is my daughter, Veate."

  Recognition lit the woman's face. "Ah. I knew I'd seen you. You'rethat Khadaji, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm honored. What is it you want from me?"

  Something in the woman's attitude bothered Veate, though she couldn't quite figure out what. She seemed less disturbed maybe than she should. In her place, a war criminal, Veate thought she'd be a little more nervous about being discovered.Especially by somebody like her father. "I need to know everything you know about a man named Massey.And about Marcus Jefferson Wall."

  "Why? They both died during the revolution."

  "So they did. I still need the information."

  Vasquez stood. "Would you like some tea? There are chairs in the kitchen. We can talk there."

  "That would be fine," Khadaji said. They followed Vasquez into the kitchen.

  On the ship bound for Earth from Fox, Dirisha, Geneva, Sleel and Bork sat in the pub talking. There were only a few other patronsthere, and they mostly seemed intent on some sporting event being presented on the far wall's holoproj.

  Sleel said, "So how is this sticky-fingered character supposed to help usfind whoever is out to get us?"

  "He is a wizard with any kind of complex electronics. He's improved or invented half a dozen major devices in use throughout the galaxy, including the best lock suppressor made. No patent on that one.He can backwalk computer input better than anybody, so it's said."

  "And you figure he'll help us try to find out who is doing all this biz by computer?" Geneva said.

  "Yes."

  "How come?"Sleel asked. "Guy like this is probably pretty well off; he wouldn't have to do us any favors."

  "He had a son who got into some trouble once. I happened to be in the right place to help him out of it."

  "Oh, good," Geneva said."A new story. You constantly amaze me at all you've done."

  "That's us old folks, brat. Full of history."

  Sleel said, "Yeah, but you're still missing one of the wonders of your life, Dirisha." He grinned and waggled his eyebrows.

  She shook her head. "Never give up, do you, Sleel?"

  "Just trying to help your sexual education," he said. "We came close once, remember?"

  "You were in a Healy with an arm blown off; you don't think that would have put a crimp in your style?"

  "Nan, it'd have just given us more room in the medicator. We'd have needed it."

  Bork and Geneva laughed, and Dirisha shook her head again. The man had a one-track mind, sure enough.

  Vasquez talked for more than an hour, responding to Khadaji's questions. He had a recorder going; she answered candidly as far as he could tell and he had no reason to believe she was lying. Even so, nothing immediately useful leaped out at him. He had known Massey when the spy had been his student, and later when the Confed had arrested him. He and Wall had met only once, but nothing Vasquez said added much to his research on the Factor before that. Wall had been fond of little girls in one way, and apparently of animals in another—less perverted—way. Khadaji had known about the former, not about the latter, but it did little to illuminate the relationship between the Factor and his Soldatutmarkt lap dog.

  Whoever it was who had used the image of Massey on the holoproj, it wasn't Wall, anyhow.

  Well. There were other people in hiding who might offer more.

  "Thank you for your time and trouble," Khadaji said. "We won't bother you any longer. And you won't be getting any visits from the Republic."

  "Thank you," Vasquez said.

  As they walked back toward their flitter, Khadaji said, "What did you think of Vasquez?"

  "She seemed nice enough, though I wouldn't have pictured her as a soldier."

  "Everybody gets older.Anything else?"

  "Well, it's just a feeling, but it seemed as if maybe she was hiding something."

  "Any ideas as to what?"

  "I didn't think she was lying about her answers. But she didn't really seem all that surprised to see us."

  "I thought so, too."

  "Does it mean anything?"

  "Probably not," he said. "But you can never tell."

  Deep in another of his fantasies, Wall received a com that demanded a portion of his attention sufficent to terminate the carefully crafted dream. He stored the scenario intact so that he could resume it later, and conjured the appropriate face to receive his caller. The old woman's image sparkled to life.

  "Reverend Father?"

  "I am here, daughter," said the kindly-looking fat man.

  "Someone has come to speak with me as you predicted."

  "Of course.The Lord of All does not lie."

  "You didn't say it would be Emile Khadaji himself." Wall was only faintly surprised but of course he did not allow it to show. "You did not need to know."

  "I told him everything he asked for, as you ordered."

  "Good. You have done well, Vasquez. God will smile upon you for it."

  "Thank you, Reverend. Bless you for your intervention."

  "It is only my duty, daughter."

  Mirth played itself upon Wall's biomolecular electronic pathways. Things were going along nicely.Very nicely indeed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ELBU RA JAMBI stood in front of the com unit, speaking to one of Wall's holoproj constructs. It was not necessary, since Wall had eyes and ears all over the compound and knew more about what was going on there than did anyone actually on-site; still, the fiction must be maintained, at least for a while longer.

  Behind the man was the clean room of an advanced bioelectronics lab, built to Jambi's specifications, furnished with all that he had requested to fill it. The air glowed with purity, courtesy of pulselamps that kept the interior perfectly sterile. Jambi and his assistants wore noshed osmotic suits equipped with coolers so that their indigenous microscopic flora and fauna did not escape into the environment.

  Advanced nanogen computers worked silently creating tiny machines, a billion of which combined would not weigh as much as a gram; biogen units burbled quietly, rearing their colonies of tailored viruses and bacteria; and other computers mated the pieces into something quite unlike any natural life that had ever existed. The lab was a marvel all by itself. What it did was a miracle.

  "You have results to report?" Wall's image said.

  Jambi, a pale-skinned man with kinky hair and blue eyes, looked petulant behind his clear facemask.
"I have made the initial infection and it is functioning properly," he said. "But I must protest once again the choice of subject. The test-beast is old and infirm; a younger animal would be much better."

  The construct said, "Your objection is noted, doctor."

  Noted and disregarded. The hybrid electrovirus and its host bacteria and nanomachineries now circulated within the body of Hizta. True, the mastodon was somewhat past his prime, but Wall had a fondness for the old beast,who had been used extensively in breeding experiments with young females for a number of years. During his peak, Hizta had possessed an astounding virility and a matching eagerness to copulate with anything that would hold still long enough to allow him to penetrate it. Elephants, mastodons, curlnoses, Hizta was not particular once stimulated.

  "How long before the circuitry is complete?"

  Jambi looked at his chronograph."With the new enzymes and cell linkers, another two days."

  "Call me as soon as the tests show he's ready."

  "Of course.But I wish you would reconsider the subject. It would be easy to infect a better specimen and it would only delay the project a week at most."

  "Hizta will do."

  Wall broke the connection by dissolving his ersatz image. Two days! In two days, he would have at his command an organic brain rewired to be much like the viral matrix of the computer that he had become.

  In two more days, he could wear the flesh once again, albeit that flesh would be an animal's.

  No matter. He would be able tofeel again, to touch and taste and smell. Two days.

  He did not allow himself to dwell on the possibility that the experiment might fail.

  Jersey Reason lived on an island in thePuget Sound , between Old Canada and what had once been the States United.

  DeCampIsland was twenty-five klicks west of the Bellingham Metroplex, and was a tiny, squarish-shaped chunk of land barely large enough to show even on local maps. Due to the neighboring military installation in the plex, the airspace over the island was restricted. Due to a freakish combination of atmospheric and magnetic factors,DeCampIsland was in a dead zone, impenetrable by all but the most tightly focused of radio beams. The place could be reached by private watercraft, but there were no scheduled ferries coming and going. DeCampIsland was a small and insignificant spot in a cold, gray salt waterway, and a place one had to make an effort to find and reach.

  Dirisha explained this to the others as they headed toward the island in a pearly mist kicked up by the fans of the ten-passenger hovercraft they had rented inBellingham . Bork piloted the vehicle, which must surely qualify as an antique even here. The day was gray, and though the temperature was mild, the air felt chilly.

  "Man likes his privacy, hey?" Sleel said.

  Dirisha said, "So it would seem."

  Ahead, the island loomed, and from the look of it, it was hardly impressive. Barely large enough to support the structures Dirisha could see through the thin fog. There was a large house, flanked by a smaller building that could be some kind of vehicle housing or workshop. The house was old, a three-story-high box with plastic textured-sheet siding and a blue tile roof, built in a vaguely pre-space Spanish style, complete with tall, arched windows. The garage or workshop was in the same mold. A third structure, a squat plastcrete oval,rose only a couple of meters from the ground at its tallest. There was something of a yard around the buildings, with grass and low, trimmed bushes. There were no signs of a boat or any other vehicle.

  "Doesn't look like he gets out much," Geneva offered.

  "You think he knows we're coming?" Bork asked.

  "I expect so," Dirisha said.

  "I don't see how," Sleel said. "We didn't call; you pointed out that the place is shit for radio orvis reception. He got a crystal ball?"

  "Well, he could just look out the window," Geneva said. "He could see anything for ten klicks and if he's got any kind of optics, he'd notice something this big to the horizon, you think?"

  "I'd love to have this place in a defense scenario," Bork said.

  Sleel chewed on that."Yeah, maybe so. If you can't come at the place by air without a couple of military hoppers bracketing you, that narrows it down.Got to move over the water or under it. And you'd have to come up when you got to the island. You could line the perimeter with proxy-mines or a trip-track gun and make things hot for unwanted company."

  "Unless the company was official," Geneva said. "Then air would be okay."

  "Still see it coming a long way off, though," Bork said. "Couple of missiles on the roof…"

  Dirisha grinned. It was good to see her friends thinking tactically again. They'd all been away from it a long time.

  "Yeah, that's all well and good," Sleel said, "but you got no place to run if the heat comes down. Same rules apply to you. You can see them, they can see you. You try to take off, you're just as visible."

  "Maybe he's only worried about unofficial visitors," Dirisha said.

  "Yeah?How good was this old geep?"

  Dirisha chuckled at Sleel. "He was the best thief in the galaxy at one time. In the biz for forty-some odd years and never did a day of lock-time. The Confed never could pin anything on him and he mostly retired by the time the Republic came online."

  Sleel nodded. "That's not bad."

  Geneva laughed. "Damn, Sleel, that's almost a compliment. Better watch yourself."

  "Yeah, well, if we can justcome tooling up to this guy this easy, he's maybe not so sharp anymore. We could just as easily be out to splash him as not; how's he to know?"

  That was a good question.

  Veate had to admit that Khadaji had so far been operating at a level a lot higher than she had expected.

  Or had wanted to expect. As they left the frozen area around the bubble-town, she considered her thoughts about her father. True, they had not found Juete. Still, Khadaji's confidence did not seem dimmed. If he had any doubts, they were not apparent. And while their progress did not seem to have brought them any closer to her mother, Veate felt in a way she could not put into words that they were getting closer somehow. It was an eerie sensation, but no stranger than sitting next to a man she had grown up hating and finding that despite that, she was beginning tolike being around him.

  No. She was not ready to give that particular anger up yet. It was a wound that she did not want to heal.

  Still, Khadaji did not behave as she had pictured him behaving. There was none of the megalomania she had expected, no arrogance. He admitted to being afraid, he confessed that he felt doubts, he easily spoke of luck being a major factor in his triumph. No, he didn't pretend to a false modesty, he said he was good—but he never hinted at being great.

  As the flitter zipped through the frigid air, Veate stole a quick glance at Khadaji. Despite all her years of anger, there had always been a tiny piece of her that took a certain pride in what he had done. She never voiced it to anyone, but hewas her father and hehad changed the galaxy in which people lived.And for the better, too. Maybe he had done it for more than just his own ego. He hadn't hesitated before agreeing to help her find her mother. Maybe he still did feel something for Juete as he had said.

  Maybe he wasn't all bad.

  In that moment, Veate realized she was going to have to work at it if she wanted to maintain her anger. It was a major thought. It made herwant to shut her eyes and pretend that it hadn't come to her. Damn!

  Why couldn't he be as bad as she had wanted him to be?

  "Where are we going?" she said.

  "To the Bellingham Metroplex.To meet some old friends."

  Wall maintained a calmness he certainly did not feel when he spoke to his hired medic. "The computer checks are all successful?"

  "Of course.I did not expect it otherwise."

  He was an arrogant bastard, but if he pulled this off, he had earned the right, Wall thought.

  "Give me the relay codes."

  "You are ready to begin the transfer?"

  "Immediately."

  "Very well.My monit
ors are in place," Jambi said. "There's an automatic abort and retrieve set at—"

  "No," Wall said. "Don't pull the program unless you get a direct request from me."

  "Unwise. The transfer is risky. The computer you intend to use is fragile in many ways. It could overload the organic brain. Such damage could rebound."

  "The risk is minimal."

  "Still, it is there. Another specimen can be infected and brought to term in ten days, should anything happen to the mastodon, but the rebound might damage your computer's circuits. Certainly it would scramble the program somewhat."

  "Then I trust that you will make certain that there will be no problems."

  "I can't guarantee that—"

  "I thought you were supposed to be the best there is at this?"

  "I am! But even the best cannot lay claim to omnipotence!"

  I think perhaps you might be wrong, Wall thought. But he did not communicate this to the doctor.

  "We will take the risk. Stand by for the transfer. I will upload my program into the comcircuit."

  "It's your computer."

  You don't know how right you are, Wall thought.

  A hidden sensor must have seen Dirisha and Sleel as they approached the front entrance to Jersey Reason's house. While Bork and Geneva had also left the vehicle, they had separated and stayed well away from the others.

  "Do I know you?"came a voice from the entrance. The voice was gruff, fairly deep, and age-roughened.

  Dirisha recognized it from her last meeting with Reason, even though that had been ten years earlier.

  "Dirisha Zuri. We did some personal biz once."

  "Ah.Dirisha. Hold on a second, I'll open the door."

  "This is my friend, Sleel. And I've got a couple other people with me."

  The door swung open on noiseless hinges, operated by remote control, since no one was there. "Sure.

  Bring 'em in."

  Dirisha didn't need to relay that, since her dentcom was running. Bork and Geneva drifted into view.

  "Down the hall and first door on the left," Reason's voice directed."The library."

  Nice place, Dirisha thought. Thick carpets made to look like some animal pelt, a dark, rich blue-black.