Lethal Cargo

by Felix R. Savage

“OK,” Irene said. “That’s your plan. How’s that working out for you?” Rex rubbed against her legs, wordlessly telling her to cool it. She let out an exasperated, cat-like hiss. “Here, just drink the goddamn tea, Mike.”

  I drank it, to placate her.

  I don’t know what she put in it.

  I vaguely remember stumbling downstairs, holding onto Rex’s mane.

  I woke up in my own bed, thick-headed. The heat, and the angle of the sun striking down between the buildings outside, told me it was nearly noon.

  Panic gripped me. Hours had passed, and Lucy was still missing.

  39

  Irene came into the room. “Sorry about that,” she said. “You needed to get some sleep.”

  I swung my feet hurriedly to the floor. Pain spiked through my head, but I’ve had worse hangovers. Like it or not, she was right. I felt stronger, more in control of my thoughts. The panic swirled around in my head like a vortex, but now I was able to keep it under the surface.

  I had gone to sleep fully dressed—lions aren’t good with zips. I stripped off my sweat-damp, smelly clothes. Irene gazed critically at me. I knew she wasn’t interested in my nudity. She was counting my injuries. I glimpsed myself in the mirror inside the door of the closet as I grabbed a fresh t-shirt and work pants. I looked like hell. Bruises mottled my ribs and flanks, and teeth marks dotted my neck, courtesy of Parsec’s bears. Shifting back had “reset” the overall impact to my system to some extent, which is why I was on my feet at all, but it wasn’t a cure. The goose egg on my forehead looked like a bulging third eye. My hair partially covered it in lank, dirt-brown clumps.

  “Dolph’s down on the Strip,” Irene said. “He facial-matched the two guys who were with Cecilia. They’re bears, natch.”

  “Figures.”

  “Him and Robbie have gone to look for them.”

  I turned. “Robbie? They’ll chew him up and spit him out.”

  “I don’t think he’s that dumb.”

  “He’s plenty dumb.”

  “He realizes that he fucked up. They set a trap for him and he walked right into it. He’s desperate to make it right, Mike. Let him do what he can to help.”

  I gestured impatiently and walked into the hall with Irene behind me. A shockwave of pain hit me at the sight of the open door of Lucy’s bedroom, with her not in there. The faint sound of the holovision came from the living-room. For an irrational instant I believed I would find her sitting on the sofa, watching Gemworld Families. I put my head around the door.

  Rafael Ijiuto sat on the sofa, watching some stupid comedy channel. He looked pale and worn, but his eyes were open and he was very much conscious.

  I had completely forgotten his existence. He now seemed like a person from another planet—well, he was—and as irrelevant as an alien to my woes.

  “Hey,” he said, catching sight of me.

  “You OK?” I said.

  “Getting there,” he said. He gestured at the drawn curtains. “I have a new respect for the lethality of stars.” When he moved his hand, the IV line still plugged into his arm caught on the end of the sofa. Nanny B bustled forward, quacking at him not to pull it out. She adjusted the fan that was blowing on him, and took his temperature with the same infrared thermometer she used for Lucy. Ijiuto endured her ministrations with an abashed grin. “She’s been taking care of me,” he said.

  I felt a sudden wave of loathing for the tubby little bot. She was only doing her job. But it felt like she had swiftly and unfeelingly replaced Lucy with someone else to care for, as if she didn’t actually give a damn about Lucy—and of course, in actual fact, she didn’t. She was a machine that obeyed its programming. She had no emotions. She did her job. That was all.

  “I swear,” I said to Irene, lowering my voice—as if Nanny B had feelings to be hurt! The instinct to humanize them is so strong. “When I get Lu back, this bot is taking a one-way ride to the scrapheap. I’m through with letting a machine look after my little girl.”

  “You can give her to us, then,” Irene said. “I took Kit to my mom’s this morning, but I can’t leave him with her for long.”

  “Where’s Rex?”

  “Out,” she said, flicking a glance at Ijiuto—wherever Rex was, she didn’t want Ijiuto to hear about it.

  “Ms. Seagrave told me what happened to your daughter,” Ijiuto said to me. “Man, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “You saved my life. If there’s anything I can do …”

  “Maybe there is. How’d you get to Ponce de Leon?”

  “On a ship,” he said, smiling like he was making a joke: ha, ha, duh.

  “Was it, or was it not, the Traveller ship that crashed in the Tunjle last week?” I waited a beat. “As you say, I saved your life.” Actually, Martin and Dr. Zeb had, but he didn’t know that. “You owe me the truth.”

  Ijiuto brightened. “That’s how I see it, too. I believe in straight dealing. Trusting people who were not being honest with me, people who don’t even know their own best interests, people that, being frank here, have the attention span of an insect and the self-control of a puppy with diarrhea …” It was weirdly fascinating to see him working himself up into one of his tirades, and then remembering himself, and dialing it back. “Anyway, that’s how I got into this mess.”

  “Are we talking about the Travellers?” Irene said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ijiuto said. He looked up at me. “Are you sure your ship isn’t for hire?”

  I suddenly got the impression that he was not just talking about hiring me to take him from A to B. I might have realized it when he showed up at my office—all that bullshit about Montemayor and Valdivia ... But penniless men do not hire contractors.

  “No,” I said.

  “I can pay,” Ijiuto said, with fading hopes. I glanced pointedly at the credit dot on his arm. It was still black. “Well, maybe not in cash. But I can pay in kind. You won’t be disappointed.” He looked up at me with dark, steady eyes, and I got a sudden sense of his intelligence as an ageless and malevolent thing, independent of the body that housed it, watching, judging, and assessing me and Irene for our aptness to its needs. Whatever was inside of Rafael Ijiuto, it didn’t match his slightly odd, but innocuous, exterior.

  I was right about that, of course. Oh, I’m not saying he wasn’t human. The opposite, in fact. He was all too human. Humanity at its darkly magnificent worst. In him lived the same insatiable life force that had made the leap into space and ploughed relentlessly across the stars to the M4 Cluster, leaving behind a tidal swathe of detritus, mistakes, dead ends, and extinctions. Rafe Ijiuto was old school. I would come to understand him better as I came to understand us better, but right there, that moment in my living-room, I thought I knew all about humanity already. So my only conscious reaction was, Huh. Watch out for this guy.

  Not so far wrong, actually.

  “Let me be clear,” I said. “My ship is not for hire. And I don’t take payment in kind, anyway. Is that how you were paying the Travellers?”

  It was only an inspired guess. I knew that the Travellers did work for hire sometimes. As d’Alencon had reminded us, they had started out as mercenaries. They still took security-type jobs when it did not conflict with their nutty ideology.

  Ijiuto shivered. His hands lay upturned on his lap like a dead bird’s claws. Nanny B butted in, reminded him that he was mildly hypoglycaemic as a result of his heatstroke, and gave him a cup of the sweet klimfruit juice I had in the fridge for Lucy. The sight enraged me. At the same time, I realized how thirsty I was. “Damn,” Ijiuto said, wiping his lips. “I haven’t been sick since forever. I forgot how much it sucks.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It sucks. Why did you hire the Travellers, and what for?”

  Sitting there on my sofa, he tried to bargain. “If I tell you everything, will you take me to Montemayor?”

  “Or Valdivia?” I said cynically.

  “Or anywhere.”

  I pointed
in the direction of the front door. “If you don’t tell me everything, you can get the hell out of my house.”

  “Can I take the bot?” he said. “Just kidding.” He sighed and slumped back, resting his head on the back of the sofa. “I’m not really a wholesaler. I’m a prince.” He eyed us anxiously.

  Irene snickered. Even I smiled.

  “It’s true,” he said gloomily. “Believe it or not.”

  “Oh, I believe it,” I said. “I’ve met princes before. Princesses, too. Kings, queens, empresses, grand dukes. Anyone with enough money to pay for the DNA analysis can trace their lineage back to Charlemagne or Alexander the Great. Heck, I’m probably descended from a coupla kings somewhere along the way.”

  “Well, I am,” Ijiuto said. “I’m the heir to the throne of New Gessyria.” We shook our heads, not familiar with it. “In the Darkworlds.”

  “Oh, I think I know where he’s talking about,” Irene said. “Those old colonies outside of the Cluster.”

  “Oh, those worlds,” I said. “In the Earthwards Up sector, near San Damiano.” Outside the Cluster, eighty light years is close.

  “I heard the Darkworlds are total dumps,” Irene said, eyes glinting.

  “That’s right,” Ijiuto said phlegmatically. “Anyway, my lineage goes back hundreds of years.”

  “There must be a lot of you by now,” I said.

  “There are,” Ijiuto said. “That’s the problem.”

  “So you hired a bunch of Travellers …”

  “Just to get around,” Ijiuto said. “I heard they have good ships. Well, they do, but no one ever told me they’re completely, utterly nuts.”

  “What rock have you been living under?” I scoffed.

  “It’s like travelling with a bunch of over-caffeinated octopuses.” Ijiuto did have a turn of phrase. “When they’re not stoned, they’re drunk. When they’re not drunk, they’re training with swords and axes. In freefall. And they never stop yakking at you about personal autonomy and freedom of action and all the rest of that bullshit. Well, I guess you’d know.” He slid an almost shy glance at me. “Your ex travelled with them for a while?”

  My voice turned soft and cold. “Right. You know Zane Cole.”

  “I wish to fuck I’d never met him.” A note of angry petulance returned to Ijiuto’s voice. “I remember when the name of Uni-Ex Shipping first came up, Cole reacted oddly. He was way too interested in the details—of the freaking shipping company. I should’ve suspected something. But I didn’t. After all, they’re working for me. So there we are, I’m about to take delivery of my stuff. Everything’s going smoothly. Then he ruins everything by taking a pop at you! At least he had the decency to miss.”

  “It’s almost as if you think we’re stupid or something,” Irene said. Ijiuto looked up at her warily. “Those shots were not fired from the Travellers’ ship.”

  “I never said they were,” Ijiuto protested. “Cole snuck over to your pad. I saw him in the thickets. That’s why I bailed.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “He wouldn’t have had time to get over there.” Or … would he? After all, Dolph and I had. And the kids had slowed us down. If Zane was a strong swimmer, he could have taken the short-cut across the channel and beat us there … But no. I’d bitten his hand off. He wasn’t skulking around shooting people after that.

  Then a nasty thought occurred to me. Had that really been Zane’s hand? I hadn’t seen his face, after all. There could have been more than one Traveller with blond arm hair sporting a knock-off Urush fortunometer. It seemed unlikely, but it was possible.

  “Never mind that. I got another question for you, Rafe. Why’d you follow us back here?”

  “I wanted my stuff,” he said.

  “Right. Your stuff.” I moved closer to the sofa. I stood over him, so close that my knees brushed his legs. I waited until fear flashed in his eyes. “Why don’t you tell me about that stuff, Rafe? What was in those crates?”

  “Toy fairies.”

  “And?”

  “That’s all. Just toy fairies.”

  “Which you bought from a supplier called, what was it again …”

  “I don’t even remember. They gave me a good price.”

  “Mujin Inc. That was it. Know anything about them?”

  “No, man. Sorry.”

  “You’re not making much sense here, Rafe. You chased me all the way back to Ponce de Leon, for a few toy fairies?”

  “Nine thousand of them,” Ijiuto said, jerking further away from me, “minus the one you ruined. And if you think that’s nothing, I guess you don’t know what it’s like in the Darkworlds. We’re not rich. It’s not like here. You’ve got your flying cars and your sky-high malls and your five thousand varieties of lettuce. All we’ve got is our pride. I have a hundred and eight cousins waiting for me to bring home enough credit to stop the EkBank from pulling out of our system.” The one hundred and eight cousins were a complete fiction, as I learned later, but it rang true at the time, given my preconceptions. “And now I’m stuck here, staring down the barrel of bankruptcy, all thanks to you! I think you at least owe me a refund.”

  I threw up my hands. “Get in line.” I turned on my heel and went into the kitchen. Ijiuto’s voice followed me, pleading with me to help him recover his stuff. I figured he was telling the truth about being broke, anyway. Like I said, there are hundreds of so-called royal families in the Cluster and outside of it, and none of them have enough paper to wipe their asses with.

  I filled a glass with water from the sink and drank it down.

  Most likely, Ijiuto planned to come into money once he sold the stash of contraband in his crates, I speculated.

  My abortive plan to ransom Lucy regained a weak spark of life. Maybe I could steal the crates from Mujiin Inc and offer Parsec their contents in exchange for her. Or threaten to turn them over to the police …

  In the living-room, Irene was getting the hair-raising details of how Ijiuto had survived the crash of the Traveller ship. I leaned against the sink, sipping water, interested despite myself. He said that the Fleet Marines had started the fires onboard the Traveller ship when they boarded, shooting wildly into the electrics. I didn’t doubt it. The Marines had then withdrawn, mission accomplished. With its flight controls gone, the Traveller ship had started to plunge into the atmosphere. It had been disintegrating and spinning around: every captain’s worst nightmare. Mine, for sure. Chaos reigned on board. Smoke fouled the air. The Travellers have a tradition of going down with their ships, more often honored in the breach. The captain had been shooting his people to keep them away from the airlocks, screaming that their names would live forever. Ijiuto knew that jumping out of the airlock would be a death sentence, anyway. He fought his way to the life support deck. He already had his suit on. He wrenched open the cleaning hatch of the sewage tank—and climbed in, knowing that the liquid suspension represented his best hope of surviving re-entry.

  Shock after shock assaulted the tank, tossing him around. All he could see by his helmet light was the spinning walls. He knew the ship was breaking up around him, and prayed the tank would hold.

  It did. As the wreck entered the atmosphere, he drifted in the liquid sewage, cocooned against the re-entry gees. An increasing whine, and a steady vibration, told him the tank had settled into a hypersonic dive. He waited, waited, waited until his nerves were fraying, until the whining gave way to an eerie silence. Then he threw open the hatch and fell out, amidst a rain of sewage, into Mach 2 winds, 11 kilometers above the jungle.

  His suit had a built-in parachute. Wet from the sewage, the chute functioned even better, wafting him gently to earth.

  “It was a good suit,” he said regretfully. “I had to cut myself out of it when I landed in the trees.”

  I shook my head in grudging admiration. The young man had first-rate survival instincts, even if his royal status was neither here nor there.

  Oh, OK, he was now admitting he’d hitchhiked part of the way to Mag-Ingat, lik
e Dolph had suspected.

  I went back into the living-room. “What kind of truck was it?”

  “Huh?” Ijiuto said.

  “You got a ride on a truck. What kind of a truck was it? What did the driver look like?”

  “Oh,” Ijiuto said. “It was self-driving.”

  Irene said, “Can’t have been. Self-driving trucks don’t pick up hitchhikers.”

  “This one did,” Ijiuto said. “The funny thing was, it was going the other way, but when I said I needed to get to Mag-Ingat, it turned around and went back that way, even though it was empty.”

  “Were there any identifying details?”

  “Oh, yeah. Right on the side, it said Trident Overland.”

  40

  Irene and I retreated to the kitchen. She leaned against my refrigerator, whose stick-on screen showed a collage of Lucy’s pictures and flyers from school. I paced around the kitchen table. Ijiuto was still watching that dumb comedy channel in the other room, without making a sound.

  I had told Nanny B to ensure he didn’t leave the apartment. Not that he was going anywhere in the midst of recovering from heatstroke and septicemia, with no shoes and no money, anyway.

  “Two possibilities,” Irene said. “Either Parsec ordered his truck to pick up that—” she dropped her voice— “con-man in there, or he didn’t.”

  “Don’t try and tell me he doesn’t know what his own trucks are doing,” I said. Then I shook my head. “This isn’t helping us find Lucy.”

  “True.” Irene pushed her shoulders off the fridge. The stick-on screen came loose and fluttered to the floor. Irene picked it up with an expression of pain. “Oh God, the Founding Day Festival.”

  Founding Day, July 33rd according to the terrestrial calendar our forebears force-fitted to Ponce de Leon’s 452-day year, was a public holiday. Kids got the day off school, except they really didn’t because the schools participated in the big parade which wound through the city and finished up on the Mag-Ingat Skymall.

  “The girls were looking forward to it so much,” Irene said, her forehead creased with sadness.