“Mommy,” Mia said. We had the girls in the cab with us, crouching in the footwell, rather than make them ride in the back.
“Mommy what, Mia? She is. They’re blatantly pushing the marine animals, Mike,” Irene said, turning her tired face to me. “Do they think it’ll be good for tourism or something?”
“The kids’ll make their own choices,” I said. “Kids always do.” I hardly considered the words as they exited my mouth. I was thinking about Christy Day’s hazel-flecked eyes.
27
Tired out, Lucy went to sleep on my lap in the truck. The moment her eyes closed, I got out my phone and checked for updates again.
Kaspar Silverback was still hospitalized. Turned out I had shot him in the chest, and the bullet had fragmented, perforating his lungs. Serve the bears right for loading their car guns with soft points. It was a salutary reminder that every time you load a gun, it may be used on you. Silverback was at Dr. Zeb’s, the Shifter hospital in Smith’s End.
Canuck was telling everyone he knew that I was a rabid dog and Dolph was another one. Unspeakable threats of retribution were multiplying. I flagged them, without much hope. If death threats were enough to get your data cut off, the internet would be a much quieter place, and did I really want Canuck and his cronies banned, anyway? This way at least I knew what they were thinking.
I wasn’t sure if they were actually planning anything. Yet.
Buzz Parsec himself had yet to chime in.
What did that mean? It wasn’t his style to lie low when slighted, directly or indirectly.
As we drove back towards the city, I called Dolph. He was out at the range, test-firing his new Koiler. He expected trouble. Irene listened to the conversation, although her eyes were closed. She interjected the odd comment about what reckless idiots we were.
Yes, Irene. Thanks for that.
“I went back to Bonsucesso Tower this morning for my bike,” Dolph mentioned eventually.
I tensed. “Did you go upstairs?”
“Yes, but—”
“I was going to go!”
“I know,” Dolph said. “Guess I saved you a trip.” He explained that no one had been there.
Or if they were, they were hiding.
The foyer of Mujin Inc had been closed away behind heavy steel double doors. Dolph had rung the buzzer, but no one came.
“Guess they don’t want any more walk-ins,” he said.
I gazed down at my innocently sleeping daughter. So Sophia was gone, again. All I’d ever have was that one inconclusive conversation to help me make sense of what she had done to us.
It was probably just as well Dolph had gone without me. I might have done something stupid. Then again, sounded like it had been too late, anyway.
“Figure they closed up shop as soon as they got their taxis back from the police yesterday,” I said heavily.
“Yeah,” Dolph said. “We made it a little too hot for them.”
“Congratulations,” Irene said. “Now that just leaves Parsec.”
Martin had joined the call. He was out at the spaceport, going over the ship’s wiring and fixing damage from the HERF attack. “My opinion?” he said. “Make like a horse’s dick and hit the road.”
“So tasteful, Marty,” Irene said. “My children are listening.”
Actually, they were all asleep.
“Sorry,” Martin said. “Why do you put up with us?”
I was sniggering. I also wondered the same thing sometimes. But I didn’t want to give Irene ideas. “Because we’re the best Shifter crew in space,” I said.
“Look at the competition,” Irene said dryly.
We talked it over and decided Martin was right. If we were off-planet, there was a good chance that the Parsec situation would blow over. “But we can’t fly without an admin,” Irene said.
“Robbie’s coming along,” I said. “But we definitely can’t fly without a cargo.”
After I dropped Irene and the kids off, I headed out to the office. Speaking of cargo, I needed to put in a few hours of v-mailing and bidding.
I brushed my fingers self-consciously across my Machina .22 as I crossed the dingy lobby of our office building.
It was still only 4:45 in the afternoon, but there was no one around. There’s never anyone around down here. I know people work in the other offices in our building, but for all you usually see of them, they might as well be bots plugged into their desks. When I had picked up a coffee at the hole in the wall across the street, there had been no one in there. The whole Harborside district is 99% automated—the factories, the trucks, the trains … it’s a vision of what a world run by AI might be like. Noisy, clattering, thumping, bustling, dirty. Empty.
I rode up in the dank elevator and walked down the empty, echoing hall to my office. A big red and yellow sign on the door said Uni-Ex Shipping. I stood in front of the door, juggling my take-out coffee and my phone in my left hand, while my right hand hovered near the Machina .22.
The door sprang open in my face.
I sidestepped. The Machina leapt into my hand.
I almost shot Mary.
“Oh, hey,” I said, whipping the gun behind my back. “Didn’t think you’d still be here.”
If she had seen the gun, she said nothing about it. She was a shrewd lady. She knew what our industry was like, and the kind of competition we had to handle. “I was just about to lock up,” she said. “Do you want me to stay a while longer?”
I gestured with the hand that didn’t have the gun in it. “No, no, you go on. I’m just going to take care of a few things.”
Mary clicked her tongue, took the coffee that I was about to spill, and steered back into the office. “I’ve got a few more things to take care of, myself. I was going to wait for tomorrow to get your input, but I’ll stay and keep you company.”
I didn’t try again to talk her out of it. The way I’d just freaked myself out, I was not displeased to have company for a while.
Mary worked in the outer office while I made phone calls. When I got off the phone, she came in and showed me some enquiries from regular customers: Help the Hungry, Catholic Outreach, Humans In Need. I looked over the details of their cargoes with a feeling of melancholy. I told Lucy I was in the aid business. The truthfulness of that claim hinged on these type of cargoes. If only they paid better. “We’ll take this one,” I said.
“Medical and food aid for Belalcazar.” Mary made a note. Her eyes twinkled. “That’s a Farmworld. Are you getting gun-shy in your old age, Mike?”
“Naw,” I said. “But we’ll be breaking in the new admin officer. Don’t want to throw him in at the deep end.”
“He’s a Shifter, isn’t he? I’m sure he can handle it.” Chuckling, she returned to her desk.
The aid supplies for Belalcazar would take up only half of the St. Clare’s capacity, so I’d need some small-lot shipments to make the run pay. I topped up my cold coffee with bourbon from the bottle in my desk drawer, and opened up my auctions platform.
One of the primary ways indie freighters fill the hold is through the auction system. Anyone with a package to ship can put their cargo up for auction on GoFast or one of the littler platforms. We all bid for it. Lowest bid wins. That’s the gist of it, but in practice the auction game also involves a lot of flirtation, selling the customer on the safety and reliability of your service, and hopefully turning them into a repeat customer. I was pretty good at this aspect of the business—no false modesty. But today, I was more than usually aware that one of the other anonymous bidders in each auction was probably Parsec, and I caught myself bidding too low in a self-destructive effort to spite the image of him hunched over his own computer, in his home on Cape Agreste, or his blinged-out downtown office. I was also aware that this online battle was beside the point. Nothing would ever be settled this way, with twenty klicks of fiberoptic cable between us. I had been kidding myself for too long that it would. My sales expertise and my reputation for honesty were no substitute f
or claws and teeth.
I pushed back from the computer and ran my hands through my hair. I glanced out the window but couldn’t see anything because the lowering sun struck straight into my eyes.
The buzzer rang. Mary answered it. A few seconds later I heard her rise to let someone in. It was rare for us to get walk-in business, but it did happen.
I drank some coffee-flavored bourbon, still thinking about Parsec.
The door of my office was closed, muffling the voices in the outer office, but then I heard Mary say, in the voice she used for getting rid of people, “No, I’m sorry, we cannot help you. I can only suggest you try Clusterwide or Human Spacelines, sir.”
Intrigued, I rose and opened my door. “Is there something I can help with?” I said pleasantly.
The words died on my lips as the customer standing in front of Mary’s desk turned to face me.
My initial instinct was to throw this stinking homeless dude out of my office.
Desperate hope brightened his eyes.
I knew him … and then I knew him. It was Rafael Ijiuto, wholesaler. Last seen on Gvm Uye Sachttra.
28
“Thank God,” Rafael Ijiuto said, limping up to me. I must have looked blank, for he prompted me, “Gvm Uye Sachttra?” He rolled the alien planet’s name off like a native. “It’s Mike, right? Rafe.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t recognize him. I was shocked by his appearance.
If I didn’t have a good memory for faces, and if that flat-nosed, beige-skinned mug of his weren’t so memorable, I might not have recognized him. He looked as if he’d been sleeping rough for a week. His white shirt was no longer white, but the reddish hue of PdL dirt, disfigured by rips and stiff dark splotches that looked like blood. The knees of his suit trousers were ragged, the hems frayed. He limped, because one of his pricey dress boots was missing. That foot was bare and filthy, and I noted dots of blood on our office carpet.
Ever noticed that when a person looks like crap, they always look worse if they started out in a nice business suit?
Ijiuto smelled as bad as he looked, filling the office with the old-timey unwashed funk that had made me think homeless.
He went to shake hands with me, first transferring his grip on his trousers to his left hand. His belt had gone AWOL. He was literally holding his trousers up with one hand.
I let his profferred handshake hang in mid-air, not because I was deliberately being rude, but because I was so astounded by the state of the man.
He withdrew his hand—which was, indeed, filthy—saying with a self-aware grimace, “I know, I need to get friendly with a shower. I was going to ask your receptionist to recommend a hotel after we’re through here.”
“Mike, is this a friend of yours?” Mary had a wet wipe in her hand, crumpling and twisting it. If she had been a less polite woman, she would’ve been holding it to her nose to mask the smell.
I started to say, “No,” and then changed tack, because one of my rules is never to be rude to customers. Whatever else Rafael Ijiuto was, he was or had been a customer. And curiously, his wretched appearance disposed me to give him the benefit of the doubt. “He’s a customer. I wasn’t expecting to see you here on Ponce de Leon, Rafe,” I said with a smile. I was itching to ask him how he got into that state.
“Right? It’s funny how you can meet someone in one place, and then run into them again on the other side of the Cluster. Well, Gvm Uye Sachttra ain’t quite the other side of the Cluster, but you know what I mean. Anyway, I’m glad I caught you. I’m hoping to do business with you again.”
“Looking to move another cargo?” I said. I still suspected this man of killing Kimmie. I wasn’t going to let him go until I got the truth out of him.
“Ha, ha,” Ijiuto said. “Nope. I was hoping to get a ride off-world, but Mary—” he had got her name off the nameplate on her desk— “says you don’t take passengers?” He raised his eyebrows with a conspiratorial smile, as if expecting me to reveal that Mary had just been putting him off on account of how he looked. Even his eyebrows were dirty.
“Nope, afraid you misunderstood,” I said. “We’re not a passenger ship. Freight only.” Now I knew why Mary had tried to send him to Clusterwide or Spacelines. “You’d be better off with one of the commercial lines.”
Ijiuto’s face fell. He looked so wretched I felt sorry for him.
The silence stretched.
Reluctantly, I said, “Where were you hoping to get to?”
“Montemayor,” he said. “Or Valdivia.”
I frowned. No one wants to go to Montemayor or Valdivia. Montemayor is a Heartworld. Valdivia is a Farmworld, almost suburban in its relation to Ponce de Leon and its determined boringness. The only thing they have in common is they’re both planets.
“I had a ride,” Ijiuto said. “I was supposed to be going to Valdivia on the Tezozocat Ham. But those goddamn Eks.” He punched one fist into his other palm, and abruptly launched into a tirade against the Ekschelatans. His voice shook. He was nearly crying with rage. “I hate those blue bastards. I went all the way over there, and I didn’t even go in, because look at me, right? I asked the security guy to call up. This six-armed blue fucker comes down and pretends he never met me. Bullshit. We’re standing in the café area, people are staring. I’m not the one making a scene. He’s yelling. He says he never met me before—basically, he pisses on my shoes and tells me it’s raining. And then he gets security to throw me out. They threw me out on the fucking street!” His eyes widened at the horror and indignity of it.
I uh-huh’ed. If there’s one thing that unites humanity, it is dislike of the Eks. Properly known as Ekschelatans, they are the other big power in the Cluster. They don’t do planetary colonization like we do. They’ll live anywhere. What they do do is banking. They have a lock on the interstellar financial network, and not only that. Laws, regulations, contracts, treaties—anything to do with money, they’re all over it, eking out profits where a human’s compassion or sense of fairness would get in the way. They are ruthless.
So it was no surprise to me, when I teased out the facts from Rafael Ijiuto’s incoherent tirade, that his Ek buddy had refused to give him passage on the Tezozocat Ham—I looked it up; it was a biggish Ek cruiser operated by a data infrastructure company, scheduled to depart for Valdivia in two days’ time—regardless of what may have been promised, or what Ijiuto thought had been promised. I have to deal with Eks myself sometimes, and you absolutely cannot let them get away with vagueness. That’s a license for them to twist your words later into a form benefiting themselves. Get it in writing, with their seal and two witnesses, or it’s just hot air.
So the only surprising thing was that Ijiuto had even thought of trying to get onto that ship.
Because he had no money.
“None?” I said.
“What you see is what you get,” he joked weakly. He stretched out his left arm. Beneath the patina of grubbiness, his credit dot was black. He then made a pantomime of turning out his pockets. The insides of the pockets were startlingly clean, in contrast to the rest of his clothes, and empty.
I kept my face blank. Having been turned down by the Eks, he’d then come to me … because he thought I would give him a free ride, out of the goodness of my heart? I couldn’t decide whether to be flattered or insulted. “You’re not going to get off Ponce de Leon for nothing,” I said.
“I’m expecting a bank transfer in a week,” he said, without energy, as if he didn’t expect me to believe him. “I’ll have plenty of money when that comes through. I told the bastard Eks that, but no. Cash up front or nothing. Stinking blue jerkwads.”
“That’s too bad,” Mary said. She had stopped wringing that wet wipe in her hands, and was now watching Ijiuto with motherly compassion. At any minute she would offer him the use of our restroom.
I folded my arms. Something stank, all right, but it wasn’t just Ijiuto. It was his story. Oh, I believed he was telling the truth about getting the brush-off from th
e Eks. That outraged tirade had had the ring of sincerity. But that left a whole lot of unanswered questions.
“I’m sorry I have to ask,” I said. “But how the heck did you end up here with no money?” And only one shoe, and your clothes in tatters, and your belt missing.
Ijiuto swayed, and caught himself on Mary’s desk. “I walked,” he said.
“Huh?” Yet I immediately sensed that this was the truth. He looked like that because he had walked … how far?
“It’s a miracle I’m even alive,” he said. He pointed at me with a weak smile. “I’d rather have you as a friend than an enemy.”
Then he collapsed on my office floor.
*
I called Dolph, squatting beside Ijiuto. I had persuaded Mary to go home. I didn’t want her getting mixed up in whatever kind of mess this turned out to be. I held my gun in one hand and my phone in the other, angled so that Dolph could see Ijiuto’s unconscious face.
“He was on that Traveller ship,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that’s what he was saying. It crashed in the Tunjle … but he must’ve bailed out. Anyway, he survived. He made it out of the jungle somehow. Then he walked to Mag-Ingat. He walked, Dolph. What’s that, six hundred klicks from where it came down? Seven?”
“More like eight,” Dolph crackled. He was on his bike. He had hit the road the minute I told him that Rafael Ijiuto was lying unconscious on the floor of our office. “Maybe he hitchhiked some of the way.”
“Maybe, but I would guess he hasn’t eaten in days. He has no money. He made it here on sheer willpower.” I placed two fingers on Ijiuto’s limp wrist. His pulse was rapid. “He’s dehydrated, might be in shock. Definitely heatstroke.”
“He’s lucky to be alive,” Dolph said, which was the same thing Ijiuto himself had said. “Did he say why he was flying with the Travellers?”
“Nope. He didn’t even say outright that he was. That’s just my guess. Then he passed out.”
Lethal Cargo Page 16