Pariah

by W. Michael Gear

All in all, it had been a good day. He and Wirth had come to an agreement. There would be no trouble, as Tam had predicted. Wirth was a known quantity. A true psychopath, as his emotional control indicated, along with his careful surrender. The guy really believed, down deep, that he was going to come out ahead in the end. Psychopaths had that trait hardwired into their personalities.

  Tam could work with that. No reason Wirth shouldn’t emerge with his empire untouched. Unthreatened in the end, he’d be a perfect lieutenant when it came to maintaining control of Port Authority.

  Shig Mosadek and Yvette Dushane, on the other hand, would be harder nuts to crack. Political ideologues always were. Any kind of true believer, especially the ones with an emotional investment, were always trouble. No sense of compromise. He’d probably have to eliminate them. That was going to be touchy on two fronts. First, people genuinely liked Shig. Even Wirth, who didn’t really like anyone except himself. Second, Yvette was the savvy operations officer. She understood the files, the management, oversaw the way that Port Authority actually worked.

  Wonder if I could find some lever, a flaw in her personality?

  Just off the cuff, that didn’t seem likely. What the hell could she have to hide? In libertarian Port Authority, no one seemed to give much of a damn about licentious behavior. She was single, so there was no lover to compromise a marriage. All the records were wide open to anyone’s inspection, and money was cash, kept in people’s homes or on their persons. Worse, everyone knew everyone else, so graft and corruption, abuse of office, were like an open book. There were no rations to cheat on or skim. No special access to buy. When it came to exploiting good old corruption in the name of political manipulation, Port Authority sucked toilet water.

  So, if Dushane couldn’t be compromised by means of flaws in her character, it would have to be through intimidation. Threat of pain or death.

  He eased his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, the room dim in the nightlight’s glow.

  Allison lay on her back, head pillowed on a slender white arm, her hair in a white-blond tangle on the pillow. The woman’s rounded left breast with its pink nipple lay exposed where the sheet was wadded.

  To his surprise, she hadn’t immediately turned down his advance, but had looked to Wirth, who’d given her a slight nod. Still, Tam would remember that smoky look of irritation in the man’s eyes. Not jealousy so much as surrendering, without due compensation, what he thought was his. That he’d acquiesced at all was a mark in Wirth’s favor. The man fundamentally understood when his best interests were at stake.

  As had Allison Chomko. He had read the tension in her. The woman had no illusions about the role she now found herself in, a pawn between him and Wirth. Better yet, she’d proved herself to be a player. Not like sex with Shayne—given her implants and trained body—and certainly not like the professional courtesans who served the moneyed and powerful that gravitated around the Board. Instead, the fact that Allison had honestly committed herself to good and fulfilling sex rather than a professional performance served to make it a most memorable night.

  He stood, stretched, and cocked his head to listen. At the door, he unlocked it, let it swing silently open, and waited. The Jewel was quiet in the few hours between closing and when Shin Wong would show up to begin cleaning prior to opening.

  Barefoot, Tam made his way down to the staff toilet, let himself in, and emptied his bladder.

  For a moment, he stood, listening.

  There, the faintest rasping of clothing. He could almost sense the person’s breath, a soft inhaling, then a careful exhalation.

  If there was any surprise, it was that it had come so quickly. As in all high-stakes games, making a point early and unambiguously generally paid dividends in the end.

  Tam flushed, letting the sound of the water cover his movement as he opened the door. His augmented night vision gave him a good identification of his attacker. Let him easily duck the blow that would have crushed his skull. Instead the club cracked loudly into the door jamb.

  “Sorry, Art. Missed.”

  Again the man swung. Tam bent to one side. The long club crashed into the opposite wall.

  Tam ducked and bobbed, backing away.

  “You sucking snot!” Maniken bellowed. “Whack me in the head? I’ll show you.”

  Art Maniken charged forward. Tam sidestepped, tripped him, and watched Maniken hit the floor. The big man seemed to be all elbows and knees as he scrambled to get up.

  The hall lights went on, the effect blinding. From long training, Tam slitted his eyes. He skipped back as Maniken made another wild swing with his club.

  “Dan send you?” Tam asked pleasantly.

  “I’m here ’cause nobody does what you did. Wanna bet Dan gives me a bonus when he comes in tomorrow and finds your dead body?”

  “Dead men don’t collect bonuses.”

  Tam kept track when each of the doors opened. Angelina’s, Dalia’s, and of course Allison’s as she peered out with wide blue eyes, a sheet pulled loosely over her shoulders.

  “You’re dead, snot bucket!” Maniken sorted himself out. Got his feet under him.

  He was rising when Tam skipped, lashed out with his right foot, and snap-kicked Maniken in the Adam’s apple. The blow was devastating enough that it whipped the man’s head back and forth.

  Tam landed lightly on his left foot, recovered his balance, and watched Art Maniken sink to the duraplast floor. The big man’s eyes were bugged, his tongue out, lungs heaving against the crushed trachea. Hands to his throat, Maniken collapsed onto his back.

  Tam kicked the club out of the way, stepped over, and dropped the point of his right knee on Maniken’s crushed throat.

  Game to the end, Maniken grasped futilely at Tam’s dangling genitals, but the weakening and flailing hands were easy to bat away. As Maniken’s heart and pulsing lungs faded, Tam looked up at the wide-eyed audience, including a miner who’d bought Angelina for the night. “Said he’d kill me. You all heard. Went after me with a club. Seems to me, as I understand it, this falls under what’s called fair fight.”

  “Yeah,” the miner said as he hitched up his underwear. “We all heard.”

  Maniken’s hands fell away, the arms thumping limply on the duraplast. Tam gave him just a little longer, then reached down and touched an eyeball, got no response. Only then did he rise.

  “So, what’s protocol?” Tam smacked his hands together as if to clap any dust away.

  “Call the wagon in the morning,” Angelina said as she ran fingers through her long hair. She wore a robe belted at the waist. “Boss is gonna be in a piss and fit when he finds out. He put a lot of store in Art.”

  “Always thought he was a mean fucker,” Dalia said sullenly as she pulled her own robe tighter. “Won’t miss him crawling drunk into my bed anytime soon.”

  “Wrap him in a sheet and put him out back,” Allison said. “No sense in advertising.”

  “You all do what you want.” The miner turned back into Angelina’s room. “I’m outta here. Don’t want Dan thinking I got anything to do with this.”

  Once they had Maniken wrapped up, Tam helped the women drag his corpse to the back door and out into the alley.

  “Fart-sucking hell,” Allison whispered as she closed the door behind her. “This will put Dan into a bitch of a mood.”

  Tam took her hand, aware of the women watching as he led her back to her room. “That’s for tomorrow.”

  “Good, ’cause I’m sure not sleeping for the rest of the night.”

  Tam chuckled, slapping her on the ass as he trolled her through the door. “Suits me. Sleep’s about the last thing on my mind.”

  “You want to fuck?” she asked, shutting the door. “With Art’s body still warm?”

  He peeled the sheet away from her body and toppled her back onto the bed with a playful shove. She fixed on his
erection, slowly shaking her head in disbelief.

  “Amazing how fast a man can get a hard-on after a good fight, isn’t it?”

  “You’re a maniac,” she whispered as he lowered himself between her smooth white thighs.

  42

  This was insane. Dortmund stepped from the dormitory and into the early morning. His gaze traveled out past the Corporate Mine fence. He could hear the chime, wondered at the rich harmonics as the invertebrates greeted the morning.

  Invertebrates. Different from the Earthly concept, he had learned, but like so many things in a new environment, humans needed to call them something. Problem was, no one had taken the time as yet to study them in depth.

  That, he’d discovered, was the trouble with so much of Donovan. Chairman Radcek, in his greed and arrogance, had placed the study of Donovanian life way down the list when it came to priorities.

  Radcek. The guilty party totally unmasked. Driven by hubris and ambition, the Chairman had considered Donovan to be his legacy. A planet of incredible wealth that he had ordered his minions to refer to as Radcek’s Planet, it was to have solidified his reputation in the history books. Proved him to be a sort of Augustus Caesar, the first true autocrat and Corporate emperor.

  Dortmund leaned up against the fence and locked his fingers in the wire as he stared out at the dawn that was now bathing the tops of trees. Huge, alien-looking forest giants, the likes of which he could never have imagined. He sucked the perfumed air into his lungs.

  Alas, poor Radcek. The first hint of justice came from the knowledge that no one even remembered that Capella III had once borne the man’s name. The second, and larger, blow was that Capella III had turned into a disaster. A colony on the verge of failure, doomed by the unexpected revelation that symmetry inversion as a means of interstellar travel was turning out to be fraught with dangers and difficulties.

  “So here is the wealth,” he announced to the chime-filled morning. “And no way to get it back to Solar System.”

  Fact was, he needed to get out there. To see for himself. Here, at Corporate Mine, he was locked away at the Supervisor’s will and pleasure. Heartless Corporate spider that she was, she was going to assign him to some menial data compilation, or perhaps an equally silly graduate-level research project down at her farm. Which, fascinating as that might have been, was still a hideous waste of his potential.

  The woman was impossible. He should have been outlining an overall study of human impact on the planet, tasking Jones and Sax with survey strategies and developing methodology. Yes, it was a disaster, but also the biggest living laboratory ever when it came to proving conservationist values.

  He sighed, rubbed his eyes, and shook his head. The last thing he wanted to do was draw the Supervisor’s ire, but the bunk he’d been assigned to in the dormitory was an unmitigated affront. Like he was a common laborer. A menial to be given a bunk three up from the floor in a room filled with men. As a full professor he merited no less than private quarters, even if they did turn out to be Spartan. One expected at least a little privation in the field.

  But to be treated as a sort of employee? Worse, Aguila was going to assign him a project? Some bit of make work? After his illustrious career?

  This is untenable.

  He turned as the first of the miners began trickling out of the large central dome. The worker bees had finished their breakfast and now spread out across the compound, some heading for equipment, others for the headstock and mine.

  Dortmund looked back through the chain-link.

  “I will not be Kalico Aguila’s slave.” No, he had to get back to Vixen. There, at least, he would be free to write up his notes, have access to the ship’s AI and computers. He’d be tied into the net again instead of this insidious silence in his head.

  “Another ship will come.” He closed his eyes, imagining that day. He’d just have to wait it out up in orbit, but then he’d planned on four years in Vixen just in transit out and back to the Solar System. The time would be well spent as he wrote his blistering polemic that would damn Radcek, Aguila, and the rest of the looters who’d condemned Capella III to an ecological nightmare.

  But how are you going to get away? Aguila has you locked up like a common prisoner.

  Which is when he noticed the aircar. That woman and the little girl. They’d arrived yesterday. He’d heard the woman was a security officer in Port Authority. They’d be leaving this morning.

  A thought wedged itself in his head. No. Impossible. He was a full professor, not a silly youth. And what would they say if his professional colleagues ever heard?

  “Dortmund, what you are considering is totally beneath your dignity.”

  Then he looked back at the tall fence, the dome, and the dormitory. This was indeed prison. And he was desperate.

  43

  “You’ve got your radio,” Kalico said as she led the way across the baked clay of the landing field to Talina’s aircar. “I haven’t a clue about where Rork Springs is, but as long as you can transmit, we can follow the signal to you.”

  Talina, a sack of supplies over her shoulder, glanced sidelong at Kalico. Beside her, Kylee strode along in her yellow overalls, her hair in a single braid down the back. The girl might have been cataloging targets for later destruction given the wolfish look in her eyes.

  “I’d think you were really worried, but that would lead me to embrace notions too unsettling even for me.” Talina gave the woman a wry smile, her memory having dredged up the time she’d contemplated shooting Aguila in the head. Shig had talked her out of it.

  Kalico grinned back, the scars on her face not diminishing the warmth expressed. “It’s all selfishness on my part. I really want you back in Port Authority by the next time I’m up there. I need someone to drink with at Inga’s. If I have to endure another night of Shig and his damn philosophy, I’ll slit my wrists.”

  “Why do you think I ran for the bush? It was that or give up drinking.”

  As they reached the aircar, Talina glanced around and took final stock. Corporate Mine was humming to work; the chime rolling in from the surrounding forest contrasted with the sound of machines. Overhead thin strands of high cirrus made patterns on the morning sky.

  “Thanks for taking care of us. The food was a special treat. Not to mention two whole cups of coffee. I won’t forget it.”

  “Neither will I. I’ve had Ituri list it as a charge on your account. I just hope it isn’t a bad debt.”

  Kylee said, “We ready to go?” as she climbed over the side and into the aircar. A large crate had been laid in. Must have been in addition to the other supplies Kalico had given them.

  Kalico crossed her arms, studied the kid. “You sure you don’t want to wait for your mother? She’ll be here in another couple of hours.”

  Kylee shook her head with a ten-year-old’s virulence. Behind her stricken eyes lay a deep-seated terror, and she appeared on the verge of tears. A desperate panic was building inside the kid. To make her point, Kylee clicked herself into the safety restraints, and stared fixedly forward through the windshield.

  “Trust me on this,” Tal told Kalico.

  “You’ve never struck me as the motherly type,” Kalico told Talina. “You sure you know what you’re doing, flying out into the bush like this? And taking Dya’s daughter with you?”

  “She’s my quetzal guide. I’ve got to get through this. Figure out what’s going on in my head. As for Kylee, she’s got her own demons to slay. Hell, maybe we can save each other.”

  Talina tossed her war bag onto the back seat and climbed in.

  “You be careful out there.” Kalico was watching her through concerned eyes.

  “Me? You’re the one with a mine, a farm, and an unstable reactor. All I have to worry about is quetzals, skewers, bems, and the occasional flock of mobbers.”

  Talina checked the charge, delighted t
hat it read ninety-six percent. Old as the battery was, it was a miracle it still took ninety.

  “Tell Dya that Kylee and I are making our way through a rough patch. Sort of propping each other up.”

  “Done.” Kalico’s gaze narrowed. “What if you have an episode? Get carried away by your hallucinations while you’re flying?”

  Talina jabbed a thumb at the kid. “Kylee’s got the drill down. I start to whiz out, she jabs me in the ribs. But I think I’m beginning to get a handle on the flashbacks and visions. Comes from my Maya heritage. My people are used to being possessed by spirits.”

  “Fly safely.”

  “And thanks for the supplies. With what’s in the garden out at Rork, it’ll keep us fed for a time. By then maybe we’ll have whipped our demons.”

  “Yeah, if you don’t end up as quetzal shit,” Kalico called back as Talina stepped to the wheel and throttled up the fans.

  She gave a final wave and dialed in the lift, turning the car toward the northwest as they rose.

  Damn. What the hell had Kalico given them? The crate took up half the deck. And with the dried vegetables and packet of coffee the Supervisor had had the kitchen provision her with, it was like a bonanza.

  “So, kid, you survived a night at Corporate Mine. Didn’t even have to kill anyone.”

  Kylee had placed herself next to Talina, peering through the windshield as they rose over the high peaks that were now known as the Corporate Range. Part of the uplift from the ancient impact crater, exposed rock strata gleamed where Capella’s light reflected from threads of gold, silver, copper, and platinum.

  Then they were across the divide, the sloping ground dropping away into an endless forest. It lay like some rumpled, mounded, and irregular carpet of greens, turquoise, teal, and blue. A trackless expanse of mundo, chabacho, stonewood, broadvine, and giant aquajade. There were other species, too. Whole varieties of trees that no one had cataloged, still unnamed and unseen by human eyes. Sometimes the vastness of Donovan left her feeling humbled and awed.