by J. S. Morin
It was so easy. A pop-top and one smooth motion of the hand and beer would pour into her. It would take the edge off the worries that the Cannabinol in her drug regimen couldn’t. Brute force. If tailored psychiatric drugs weren’t getting the job done with precision strikes, she could bomb her troubles from orbit.
She tossed the can back. “Sorry. Gotta keep it together. If Carl gets back here, Squall or no Squall, we’re off this rock.”
“What about Mriy?”
“I’m hoping that datapad caddy from Phabian spooks her into heading back here before then,” Tanny said. “If not… maybe we make a stop along the way. We’ve taken bigger detours during getaways.”
Tanny found a grapefruit-flavored EnerJuice in the fridge—undoubtedly Esper’s doing—and joined Roddy on the couch. She didn’t make him restart the holo, but she let herself slip into the bland, waking comatose of mindless entertainment. The laaku warlord in the holo-field was cutting a swath through blaster-toting Zheen soldiers with his bare hands. The choreography was top-notch. Aside from being preternaturally strong and fast, Combat Lord Jhunzin was making sound tactical decisions, prioritizing targets, and making proper use of cover and environmental factors. He wasn’t flipping around like the monks in Four Fists, Zero Fear, or counting on his enemies having lousy aim the way Kickmaster Thulau seemed to. Jhunzin was a DNA-upgraded laaku veteran of a dozen wars, sleeping in the cryostasis chamber in between so he was always ready when Phabian needed a hero.
The holo echoed true for Tanny. There was a lot of marine in Jhunzin. He was science-modified, had given up home and family to defend his way of life, and no one seemed to appreciate the gravity of his sacrifice. Tanny might have been a notch off her peak since her days in the service, but it wasn’t a big notch. She’d had top-notch training in hand-to-hand combat, endured physical alterations at the hands of ARGO’s bio-improvement division, and became dependent on a regimen of expensive chemicals that altered not just her physiology, but her brain chemistry.
The holovid froze. “Hey, Countess,” Roddy called out as Esper shuffled past in slippers and pajamas. “Where you headed?” Roddy’s smirk and glance at the overnight bag that Esper clutched to her chest said he already had his answer, but wanted to hear her say it.
“Off to my next lesson,” Esper replied, turning her head to stifle a yawn against her arm. She resumed her sleepy trek in the direction of Mort’s quarters. There was brief eye contact between her and Tanny. In that one look, Tanny knew that Esper was leaving it to her to tell Roddy whatever she liked.
The door to Mort’s quarters opened, then shut.
“So that’s the story they’re going with?” Roddy asked. “Weak.”
There was a sensitive soul somewhere inside that laaku mechanic. Tanny had heard him play guitar—songs that he’d written—and make himself cry. There was some quantity of alcohol necessary to bring that out in him. It wasn’t zero, and it didn’t sound like it was the amount in him currently.
“Carl owes me fifty terras, you know,” Roddy said, leaning close. “He bet me Mort wasn’t sleeping with her. Looks like he was wrong about her, huh?” Roddy elbowed Tanny conspiratorially. “You want a sure bet, long term? Every time you got the chance to bet whether two humans are going at it, bet yes. You’ll take it on the chin once in a while, but keep making that bet and it’ll pay you back with interest. You freaks breed like roaches.”
Tanny waggled her can of EnerJuice to see how much was left. After tilting it back and sucking the last drops from the bottom, she sighed and took one of Roddy’s beers. “I guess technically you’re right. But it’s not what you think. Hell, I think we’ve been wrong about both of them.”
# # #
There were times when Carl wished that he had a nice, normal job. He could have run a bar and spent the day trading gossip and shooting pool. If he’d gone into comedy like his father, he could still travel, and scrape by as he saw the seedy backstage scene from one end of the galaxy to the other. Hell, he could even have decided to run a legitimate cargo service—he already had a ship for it. None of those careers would have resulted so frequently in being arrested, detained, and generally on the blaster-point end of the law enforcement system.
Waking up strapped to his hospital bed had given Carl time to ponder those alternate career options. Right about then he was considering whether he’d even get a chance to decide between prison mess hall and laundry detail. Prisons weren’t renowned for their congenial employment programs.
The room was dim, with the overhead lights off and just a halo of light peeking around the curtains. If the facility was as modern as the doctor had boasted it was under the surface, they must have been monitoring his vitals. They must have realized he was awake and aware. A few experimental tugs told Carl that he was going nowhere. The cuffs on his wrists and ankles were thickly-padded leather, just loose enough to allow for circulation and tight enough that he could barely flex his fingers or wiggle his toes.
“Water,” he croaked to no one in particular. He wasn’t thirsty, per se, but he played it up for sympathy in case anyone was watching over him. There was an IV tube in his arm. Since he’d woken up, it was probably straight saline, no sedatives. Other tubes had made sure he didn’t soil himself while comatose.
A minute or so later, the door opened and the lights flicked on. Carl blinked at the sudden brightness. A young nurse stepped in with a datapad in hand, its wood trim trying but failing to make it resemble an old-fashioned clipboard. “Good morning, Mr. Doe,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“Thirsty,” Carl replied. “And a little claustrophobic. Think you could let me up?” He smiled his best inoffensive smile at the nurse. She could have been a doctor in disguise, like Dr. Singh. But she looked legitimately young and not cosmo young like Esper; probably too young to have finished medical school, burnt out on civilized life, and moved out to the retroverse already.
“I’ll get you some water,” the nurse replied. “But I’m afraid I can’t release those restraints, Mr. Doe. Dr. Singh’s orders.”
“Why do you keep calling me Mr. Doe?” Carl asked. Had he been mislabeled? Was some poor bastard being arrested as Carl Ramsey in another room? It might be worth playing along if this Doe guy wasn’t scheduled for a vasectomy or a sex change, or anything else unpleasant.
“Would you prefer John?” she asked. “I try not to get too familiar with patients. It’s not very Americana, you know?”
Carl let his head slump back against the pillow. John Doe. Of course. Dr. Singh didn’t have a name to admit him under, not one she was willing to place on file anyway. When in doubt, she went the cliché road and labeled him a John Doe. He wondered if the nurse even knew the lingo, or if she thought that was really his name. She was probably interning here as if it were low-development sentient world in need of interplanetary aid. A social-conscience do-gooder with no sense of the vibe of the colony.
“John’s fine,” he said.
She brought him water, and a while later a breakfast of oatmeal topped with cinnamon. It didn’t seem all that nutritious for hospital food, but she denied it when he accused her of serving him reconstituted laaku fare. Those machines of theirs could turn just about anything organic into raw nutrients, then put it back together looking and tasting like almost anything else. It was bad enough thinking about some small percentage of it was laaku remains, recycled “for the good of the people,” but the bulk of it was insectile in origin.
It was hours later before anyone else arrived. In the meantime, Carl was subject to the humiliations of the bedpan and continued intrusion of a catheter. Not to mention that there was still an IV dripping into his arm that may or may not have been entirely saline. But eventually Dr. Singh arrived. With her was a plainclothes police officer. Carl knew even before the cop ID’ed himself. He’d seen enough period flatvids to know the cheap suit-and-tie combo, not to mention the slight bulge of a holster by the guy’s armpit.
The door closed behind them. “Mr. Ramsey, this is
Detective Sullivan from the Anaheim PD,” Dr. Singh said.
Carl closed his eyes. “So, you’re working for them.”
“Mr. Ramsey,” Detective Sullivan said. He had the voice of a twenty-year smoker. “We’ve been looking into this story of yours. I was hoping you might be able to… clear a few things up. Things I’m not clear on.”
“Not a lot to be clear on here,” Carl said. “I’m here. Some clone of me is dead. What? You think I killed him?”
“I think you know more than you’re letting on,” Detective Sullivan said. “For starters, what are you doing here on Peractorum in the first place?”
“I spent some time here as a kid,” Carl said. He didn’t even need to think up a lie for that one. “Figured it was a low-key locale to let the shit-storm blow over. I got a sister around here I haven’t seen in a while. Figured I’d say hi to her before I moved along, but you fine folks snagged me before I even made a phone call.”
Phone call… Carl was starting to form the rudimentary core of a plan.
“And it’s a coincidence that your ship, the Mobius, is on-world not two-hundred miles from here?” Detective Sullivan asked.
Carl perked up. No reason for them to know it wasn’t news to him. “The Mobius is here? Great! Just let me get some clothes on, and I’ll get out of your hair.” He shook one restrained hand to draw attention to his continued confinement.
“Not so fast,” Detective Sullivan said. “There’s still plenty here that doesn’t add up.”
Carl looked past Detective Sullivan to Dr. Singh. “Did you get the low-down on the Phabian investigation? That should clear me.”
Dr. Singh pursed her lips. “I couldn’t get past the front door making comms to my friends there. But what I was able to find out is that it’s Harmony Bay who’s running interference.”
“There you go!” Carl said. “Just like I said. That proves I’m telling you the truth.” Vehement denial and proclamations of innocence worked sometimes, but they were better on soft hearts like Dr. Singh. Detective Sullivan was hard-boiled and fresh from a pulp novel; he’d be ornery just because it’s in the job description. Still, one ally might be all he needed in the end. Even that nurse might have been enough. And thank God for Harmony Bay being their usual, dickish bully selves about the whole thing. They couldn’t help themselves getting involved. It was like a despotic corporate reflex, like swatting at mosquitoes.
“That proves you knew one player in this,” Detective Sullivan said. He leaned close, looming over Carl. Mriy would have bitten him at this range. Tanny would have head-butted him and broken his nose. Carl had to just push his head back deeper into the pillows as Detective Sullivan edged closer. “But I’ll make you a deal. A chance to prove you’re telling me the truth.”
“Oh?” Carl asked. He tried to sound worried. But if he couldn’t beat a twentieth-century polygraph test, he had no business in this line of work.
“Detective Sullivan is a wizard,” Dr. Singh said.
“So the, ‘I can look into your head and see you thinking’ thing,” Carl replied. “Neat trick, but isn’t that way illegal? I have rights.”
“Rights?” Detective Sullivan asked, standing upright and giving Carl room to breathe. “Sure you got rights. I can march you down to the precinct in handcuffs, throw you in a cell, and get you indicted for vehicular theft. Then I can make a few comms, and Phabian Investigative Service is probably going to pull rank on me and demand we extradite you. And me, being a small-town cop who isn’t paid to deal with that sort of shit-storm, I say ‘sure,’ and they pick you up. Then you can deal with them instead of me.”
“Fine,” Carl said. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Smart, kid,” Detective Sullivan said. “Real smart. Now just breathe deep and relax, and look into my eyes.”
Mort had hammered it into Carl’s head from a young age: never look a wizard in the eyes. It was good, general purpose advice, like looking both ways before crossing the street or making sure your blaster was charged before a fight. But shit happens, rules are made to be broken, and Carl didn’t think Detective Sullivan was wizard enough to fry an egg.
Carl felt the intrusion as Detective Sullivan’s eyes met his own. He told himself that he’d escaped from a ship called the Bradbury, owned by Harmony Bay. There was a lab there, with tanks and vats and bubbling liquids pumped through clear hoses. Men and women in monochrome jumpsuits monitored equipment, their faces obscured by sterile masks. In his imagination, Carl slipped around behind the tanks, staying out of sight. Bare feet slapped quietly against the cold floor. In one of the tanks, just millimeters away through the glass wall, a human form floated, suspended in green fluid.
The puppet show in Carl’s head continued. He ran through corridors without knowing where he was going. A scientist came by, and Carl hid around a corner, ambushed him, and took his uniform. Using a stolen keycard, he gained access to a cargo bay and hid himself inside a container designated for delivery. He hastily added a quick bartered trip aboard a smuggler’s ship, a stowaway passage on another, and a cheap flight to Peractorum to catch Detective Sullivan up to where things stood now.
All this while, as Carl convinced himself that this all really happened, he ushered the actual memories from that time period into a broom closet and told them to shut up for a little while. With facts out of the way, Carl felt a lot more heroic and paranoid about his harrowing escape.
Detective Sullivan broke the contact with a gasp and stumbled back a step from Carl.
“What’d you find out?” Dr. Singh asked.
Detective Sullivan stood there, shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t know what this all means. But this guy’s telling the truth about Harmony Bay being out to get him.”
“So, I’m free to go?” Carl asked.
Detective Sullivan’s confidence returned with a smirk. “And what about that theft charge? Maybe you think I was gonna let you off on account of a hard-luck story?”
“At least let me get dressed before you take my mug shot,” Carl said. This time period had so many holes in its legal system, you could strain pasta with it. The theft rap was a loser in court, and it would never get that far. Any first-year law student could get him off. Fortunately for Carl, he had a boyfriend-in-law who fit that bill. “And I get one phone call, don’t I?”
# # #
Roddy was cleaning up in the cargo bay when Mriy returned. Most of the star-drive was reassembled in roughly the configuration he’d found it, and the few leftover components he would store in a locker until he decided where to weld, bolt, or jam them into the mechanism. It was all for show anyway, much the way he suspected Mriy’s uniform was.
“What’s with the getup?” Roddy asked by way of greeting. “There a prison detail I didn’t know about? I thought it was black and white stripes around this place.” Mriy wore an all-orange costume that fit loose around the body, but was tied close against her lower legs and belted in black cloth. He knew exactly what it was from having watched humanity’s take on martial arts holos, but he couldn’t resist the jab.
“I was imprisoned briefly for devouring a know-it-all mechanic,” Mriy replied with a toothy snarl. “Or was that just a vision of the future I had during meditation? Time will reveal,” she added with a shrug.
Roddy wiped his hands on a rag and followed her up to the common room. “How was Kung-Fu Land? You beat up anyone interesting?”
“Master Lao was a more able combatant than Tanny,” Mriy replied. “I was not allowed to spar with the other pupils. He said I lacked control, so he paired me with himself.”
Roddy detoured to the fridge as Mriy opened the door to her quarters to throw her duffel inside. “’Lacked control’ being a euphemism for an azrin getting pissed off and clawing some poor shit’s throat out when she starts losing?”
“Possibly,” Mriy admitted with a grin. “But that bare-headed little man was impossible to strike, and he had knuckles like steel.”
“They’re all wiz
ards, you know,” Roddy said. “According to Mort, all that chi doesn’t move on its own.”
“Mort thinks that breathing is magic,” Mriy replied. She fished a beer of her own from the fridge and claimed a swath of couch.
“That’s true,” Mort said as the door to his quarters opened. “You might want to summon the girls on the talk-box,” he mentioned to Roddy.
With a shrug, Roddy activated the comm panel for ship-wide broadcast. “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here. Well, all but Carl.” He hopped onto one of the kitchen chairs and tipped it back onto two legs. Balancing it in place was a simple reflex—he didn’t need to lean it against the wall or put his feet up on the table the way Carl did.
Moments later, Esper emerged from her quarters and Tanny joined them from the cockpit. “Welcome back,” Tanny said when she saw Mriy. “Have fun punching little bald guys?”
Mriy flattened her ears back. “They were worthy warriors. Don’t make light of them.”
“Warriors use guns these days,” Tanny said. “Hand-to-hand is a backup option. Those guys are sportsmen, not fighters.”
“Try one of them yourself,” Mriy countered. “See how you fare.”
“Naw,” Roddy said. “She got her ribs busted by Esper yesterday. I don’t think she’s up to snuff for kung-fu masters.”
“How’d you know about that?” Tanny demanded.
Roddy hated being on the business end of her temper. He raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, I just—”
“Did you tell him?” Tanny snapped at Esper.
Esper retreated a step and shook her head.
“He records all the girl-fights in the cargo bay,” Mort said. “Him and Carl. Despicable, the both of them.”
Roddy’s eyes went wide. “You watch them, too!” It was one thing sneaking a holo feed when it was all fun and entertainment. It was another dumping a confession at the foot of the angriest woman on board.
“You what?”
Mriy’s purr-like snickering broke the tension. “Carl still seeks pleasure in your form.”