“Swell. With Rick we got three. No, wait. We got to leave him here to take care of Maria.”
“I’m coming with you.” Her head held high, Maria strides across the garden. “I can lead you straight to Nunks. Without me, you no can find him cept by blind luck.”
“You sure you want to come? It’s dangerous work, girl.”
“You and Nunks took me in, you got me a doctor, you fed me. Damn right I’m coming along.”
Since she can see that Sam is lusting to drive the Bentley, Lacey tosses him the keys and takes the front passenger seat while Maria and Rick slide into the back with looks approaching awe. As grimly attentive as if he were piloting a shuttle into orbit, Sam starts up the skimmer and lifts off, rising smoothly as they spiral above the streets. Lacey leans back in her seat and wonders what could possibly be wrong with her: she feels sick to her stomach, and her breathing is coming a little too fast. Then she realizes that she’s frightened, not for herself, but for Mulligan, worried literally sick as Sam’s words sink in: Nunks is frantic, thinking Mulligan’s hurt or something. Ohmigawd, don’t tell me I really am in love with the little bastard! The idea is preposterous, but she has to admit that she isn’t breaking into a cold sweat from worrying about Nunks.
oOo
When Mulligan wakes up, the first thing he’s aware of is the blinding, biting pain in his head. The second is the smell in the air, a miasma of unwashed human, unwashed lizzie, grease, steam, indeterminate food, and a both sweet and acrid overtone that, thanks to his having had two younger brothers, he finally identifies as dirty diapers. When he tries to move, he realizes that his hands and feet are tied. At that point it occurs to him to open his eyes. He discovers that he’s lying on a pile of filthy blankets with his face to a gray plastocrete wall. Judging from the dancing shadows thrown onto it, a fire of some sort is burning behind him. For a long time he lies still and tries to remember how he got to wherever this is, but the blow on the head has left him utterly confused. Although he remembers the three Ratters threatening Nunks and the way he led them off, after he rounded the white tower his memories end. He can assume, of course, that they caught up with him.
Alternately moaning and swearing he manages to roll over onto his other side. When his head stops swimming he can see that he’s in a round room, about eighteen meters across, piled and heaped with crumbling boxes and mysterious bundles wrapped in rags. Directly across from him is a sliding door in the gray plastocrete wall; about ninety degrees from that, what seems to be the mouth of a tunnel. A small fire of thorn wood burns nearby, the smoke swirling down the tunnel so smoothly that Mulligan assumes it opens somewhere outside. Sitting near the fire and nursing a baby is a young black woman dressed in a pair of dirty brown shorts and two ragged blouses, layered together to cover up the holes. When she looks his way, her eyes seemed to be focused on some other world. It occurs to Mulligan that he knows who she must be.
“You’re Del, and that baby’s J.J.”
“How you know, white boy?” She sounds both angry and frightened.
“I know lots of things.”
She considers him for a moment, her liquid-dark eyes flicking over him; then just as suddenly she loses interest and looks away. At her breast the baby, who seems about six months old, squirms and fusses; she changes him to the other side and pats his back almost reflexively while she goes on staring at the wall. Every now and then her eyes move as if she’s following some kind of action; occasionally she smiles or frowns at whatever it is she’s seeing. Mulligan decides against asking her about it. Yet when he tries to wriggle his hands free of the rope tying them together, she turns her head to glare at him.
“Dunt you try nothing, white boy. Old John’ll be back any minute now. If he finds you trying to escape, he’ll be mad. The others wanted to kill you. He dint, but if he’s mad, he’ll maybe change his mind.”
“Okay. I’ll be good as gold.” He lies still again, and he has to admit that his head feels much better when he isn’t moving. “Why dint John let’em kill me?”
“He’s going to try and sell you.”
“Sell me? To who?”
“God.”
Although Mulligan would like to think that he’s hallucinating, he knows that indeed, she did say ‘god.’ By then the baby’s fallen asleep; very tenderly, smiling all the while, she lays him down in a cradle improvised out of a plastofoam carton and covers him up with some clean rags. Stretching, yawning a little, she goes over to a barrel standing among the other rubble and scoops out water in a cup with a broken handle.
“Say, Del, can I have some water?”
“Dunt see why not.”
She brings him the cup and holds it while he gulps the water down, but she stays at arm's length, as if she suspects him of plotting violence.
“Thanks. Uh, say, like, why would God want to buy me?”
“I no savvy. John no told me that. All he said, and he told Wild Man and Blue-Beak, too, that God maybe pay us with whiskey, like he did the last time.”
“Last time?” Mulligan decides to play a hunch. “Like when they killed the Devil, you mean.”
“Yeah. Say, white boy, you sure do know lots of stuff.”
“You bet. Want to know something yourself? I’m a friend of Doctor Carol’s.”
“Oh.” Her lips part in honest distress. “That’s too bad. That’s sure too bad! Doctor Carol’s been real good to me and my baby.”
“Yeah. Say, I dunt suppose you could, like, let me go? Just as a favor to Doctor Carol, like?”
She considers for a long moment, digging at the floor with the toes of one bare foot.
“No,” she says at last. “Rather have Doctor Carol mad at me than God.”
“Oh.” Privately Mulligan considers it a choice he wouldn’t make so lightly. “But hey, man, you sure this is God who wants to buy me?”
“John says so. John hears him, talking like in his head. Got to be God, if he can talk to you in your head.”
“Yeah, guess so.”
She smiles, nodding to herself in agreement, and wanders back to the water barrel while Mulligan chews over this interesting news. It seems fairly clear to him that John is one of those unrecognized psychics that Nunks spoke of and that the assassin is putting thoughts in his mind. To someone who understands nothing about psionics, a voice that suddenly appeared in his head could no doubt pass for God. That means, of course, that Lacey’s guess about psionic assassins is correct, a thought that turns him sick to his stomach with fear.
Thanks to the water, his headache has subsided enough for him to try to contact Nunks. He takes a deep breath to steady himself, then sends his mind ranging out—only to run hard into some sort of barrier with a pain that’s the mental equivalent of being barefoot and kicking a piece of furniture in the dark right on the big toe. His already aching head swims so badly that he nearly faints. When he moans aloud, Del turns and regards him with calm eyes.
“More water?”
“Yeah. Like, thanks.”
While she is giving him his third cup, the sliding door hisses open, and his captors come stomping in, bringing with them a gust of old sweat and lizzie secretions. John Hancock, the Blanco, is the tallest, a bear of a man with filthy bright red hair, but at about one point eight meters the Wild Man runs him a close second, and Blue-Beak isn’t far behind. Mulligan decides against using force.
“He awake?” John says to Del.
“Yeah. I gave him some water. Is that okay?”
“Yeah. Got to keep him going till we take him to God.”
“God wants to buy him, then?”
“No savvy yet, woman! No talked to him. Got to go to the holy temple. I’ll go tonight, round sunset, so we better feed him, too.”
“Okay. Looks like you scored.”
“Yeah. Traded the Warden the last bottle of booze. Sure hope God gives us more.”
Mulligan notices then that the Wild Man and Blue-Beak are carrying a sort of hamper between them, a big plastof
elt carton with clear plastic strap handles. Stamped all over it are the mysterious letters, NASA. All at once he realizes that just as rumor and hearsay have always said, the original colony headquarters do still exist under the Rat Yard and that he must be in part of them. Some of the Ratters must have stumbled upon a cache of old space rations, freeze-dried, irradiated, and vacuum-packed to last for a practical eternity, to supplement the small game and the gardens that Carol spoke of. John strolls over, towers above Mulligan, and gives him a random but not particularly hard kick.
“You be good, white boy, or God going to blast your liver right out of your guts.”
“Yessir, like, whatever you say.”
With a satisfied nod John wanders away again and kneels down to help Blue-Beak knife open the hamper. As he watches the others crowd round, Mulligan realizes that he’s seen them before, in the dream he had yesterday of being killed. Apparently he’d picked up the traces of Mr. Bug’s murder the way he would have those of an ordinary police case. He shudders reflexively and hopes that he isn’t making a mistake by trying to tamper with John Hancock. Mulligan summons what little energy he has left and carefully, slowly, reaches out to the Ratter’s mind. Nothing. Not a trace of any psychic openness, not even to feelings, much less to words. Mulligan feels his stomach wrench as he considers the two alternatives: either God did speak to John Hancock, or this assassin actually has the power to contact non-psionic minds. Although he’s putting his money on the latter, he has to admit that perhaps it’s even more frightening than the former choice. If the Alliance ever develops such an awesome power to its full extent, they will have their enemies and rivals wanting nothing more than to desert to their side—and thinking that they came up with the idea on their own. He makes a solemn if despairing vow that he’s going to stay alive long enough to get this news to Nunks, no matter what it costs him.
oOo
Although the beings of Nunks’ species don’t cry, they do have a way of moaning under their breath while they repeatedly clench and unclench their hands that provides the same emotional release for them that shedding water from the eyes does for us. Once he reaches the skimmer, Nunks sits in the dirt and does just that for a long time. No matter how far he sends his mind or how sharply he focuses it, he cannot find Mulligan. As well as grief he feels guilt, that he’s the one who dragged Mulligan out here, that he didn’t insist on Sam Bailey accompanying them, that he wouldn’t let Mulligan bring a weapon. Although he considers trying to get help from the rehydro workers, he is utterly helpless without a mouth-speaking psychic along to translate, and besides, Mulligan had the skimmer keys in his pocket when he ran.
Then it occurs to him that he never felt Mulligan’s death. They are emotionally close enough, he’s certain, that he would have felt a mind-tearing wrench when Mulligan’s consciousness ceased to exist. He gets up, listening carefully, letting his mind range, but nothing is moving in the chaparral, not even an animal, and he can sense no psionic mind nearby. Above, the northern lights are fading as the sky turns a dirty pinkish gray with the first touch of dawn. Nunks walks back into the shelter of the trees and sits down again. He is planning on mentally working over every square centimeter of the Rat Yard until he finds some trace of Mulligan. By narrowing his focus to a few square meters at a time, he can pick up signal too faint to receive in a broad scan. Yet no matter how he concentrates, he can pick up nothing except a lack of something: there is no trace at all of the psionic disturbance that accompanies a violent death.
oOo
Although there are plenty of sentients in the Outworld Bazaar who would be glad to do its unofficial mayor a favor for free, the chance at a reward inspires the entire community. The news spreads fast that Richie’s offering cash on a sliding scale from ten bucks for an old sighting of this Outworlder to ten thousand for the dude himself alive or seven thousand five hundred for his corpse. Since ten bucks will buy you a meal in Polar City’s finest restaurant, the rewards strike everyone as sufficiently generous to make them start combing their memories. The Bizarros realize that Richie is really serious when the further news spreads that his bodyguards are forbidden to demand baksheesh from anyone coming with information.
At the same time as Sam is piloting the Bentley across the Polar City limits and heading for the rehydration crater, an elderly lizzie who runs a drugstore on the edge of the Bazaar proper comes to Richie with the first solid news. The guards show him straight to the office without shaking him down, and Richie does his best to put him at ease, offering him a low hassock of the sort lizzies prefer and a silver plate of chocolate-covered sandworms. Richie is often aware, with a certain self-mockery, that he’s spent so much of his life exerting himself to please clients that even now, when he could have anyone who annoyed him murdered in cold blood, he has a fetish about making those around him comfortable.
“It was just tonight, sir, round bout sunset, cause I was just opening up, when this male Blanco came to the door. Got to come in right now, he goes, and why, I go, I’ll be open in ten minutes. Have a heart, man, he goes, I’m late already for an appointment, and I’ll make it worth your while. So I let him in, and sir, he bought all kind of stuff, sprays, creams, dabs, wipes—everything I got, just so long as it was for skin problems. Jock itch, eczema, infections, scale creep—you name it, sir, this guy buys something for it. Hooboy, I go, you better get yourself to Doctor Carol if you’re that bad off. Oh no, he goes, and he laughed, no for me, this stuff. I work for the news, we’re doing a special on over-the-counter medicines. And he showed me this ID, saying he was a staff member on the holo. Well hell, sir, made me kind of scared, wondering if they’re going to say I’m selling bad stuff, so I remembered this dude. And then just now, my boy came in and told me who you’re looking for, and it jogged my mind, sir. This dude, I no can figure it out then, but something about the way he smelled, it made me think of slice’n’fry.”
“Vinegar, right?” Richie favors him with a lazy grin.
“You got it, sir. Vinegar it was.”
“Hal, bring that comp link over and set it to record, will you? My friend, you’ve been real helpful, I mean, super real helpful, okay? Now, you just tell me everything you can remember about this dude, and we’ll file it in comp.”
The druggist pops in another worm, shuts his eyes to help his concentration, and begins reeling off details. When he leaves, two hundred bucks go with him.
oOo
“I got the skimmer on the sensors,” Sam says abruptly. “Maria, what are you pickin up?”
“Nunks is real close now. In them trees, maybe.”
In a smooth trajectory Sam heads the Bentley down. When she leans forward to look out Lacey can see her old blue car among the thorn trees. By then it’s full sunrise, the pink sky brightening to a dangerous orange, and she’s so tired that her eyes ache and every thought seems to take forever to complete. She finds herself wishing for some of Bates’ purple hypers. When Sam lands on the rammed earth embankment that marks the end of the road, her entire body protests the very thought of moving. Even so, she’s the first one out of the car, running toward the blue skimmer while the rest are still unstrapping themselves from their safety harnesses.
“Nunks! It’s us! You’re safe now!”
“Lacey, damn you!” Sam’s voice floats after her. “Be careful!”
This sensible advice makes her stop and draw her laser. Squinting against the light she circles cautiously around the skimmer, which is empty. His own gun in hand, Sam comes up beside her.
“For all we know, man, these crazies are out in force.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Sorry. I’m just so damn tired.”
“When we get back to the warehouse, you’re getting some sleep, Mulligan or no Mulligan.”
Although she’d like to tell him to shut up, she quite simply doesn’t have the energy. Then, out in the chaparral, they hear someone moving, crashing and grunting their way through the tangled mass of plant life.
“It’s Nunks!??
? Maria calls out. “Dunt shoot!”
Waving his enormous hands in distress, Nunks comes staggering out of the underbrush, his fur plucked bald in places, his coveralls torn in a couple more. When Maria runs to him, he throws an arm around her shoulders and squeezes her so hard that she grunts for breath.
“Nunks,” Lacey snaps. “Is Mulligan dead?"
He spreads his hands palm upward to indicate that he doesn’t know and tosses his head in a frustrated kind of grief.
“All I’m pickin up is despair, like, and he’s real grateful to Mulligan,” Maria says. “Oh wait, Nunks—Mulligan saved your life? Is that what you mean?”
Nunks nods a yes and sinks to the ground while his hands clench and relax over and over again. Even without psychic talent Lacey can feel the grief pouring from him. For a moment her mind desperately denies everything: Mulligan has to be all right, they can’t really be standing here on the edge of the Rat Yard, she’s simply so tired that she’s misunderstood the entire situation. Then she feels an icicle of rage, stabbing somewhere near the heart. She’s aware of Sam watching her in obvious concern.
“If someone’s killed Mulligan, they’re going to pay,” she says. “It’s going to be a real expensive mistake on their part, man. Okay now. Rick, you take the blue skimmer, drive Nunks and Maria home. When you get there, call the cops. Don’t call’em from the skimmer—too easy for someone to cut into the line. And you tell Buddy to get you Chief Bates and no one else, hear?”
“I hear you, sir.”
“Good. Sam, come with me. We’re going to cruise the Yard and see what we can see till the federales catch up with us.”
When Maria helps Nunks up, he grabs Lacey’s arm with one hand and points to first himself, then the Bentley with the other.
“You want to come with us? Yeah, sure. Come to think of it, you’d better, man. I don’t know how we’re going to find him.” Lacey rubs her eyes hard; they seem to be burning—exhaustion, she assumes. “Rick, you no let anyone near Maria.”