I suspected that any effort made by those folks in Handy's employ and our opposition would similarly be dressed up and softened to make it more palatable to the citizenry. In essence, we would be two groups of nibblers fighting for territory, with each side trying to take on the role of Nifty and painting the other side as his evil cousin, Naughty.
Regardless, nibblers we would be, and hiding our nature would be difficult. In fact, Niemeyer's comments to me suggested he knew a lot about us. I had to assume nothing much had happened yet, but that talent had been gathering rather noticeably and no one had taken the good Colonel up on his offer to send us home.
I waited for a half hour after Niemeyer left before I headed out again. I spent the time clipping tags and labels from my clothes, then dressed in things that would sink me into anonymity in the crowds. I walked out of the hotel and watched for any tails, but saw nothing. I flagged down a hovercab, or tried to. The first two were driven by Dracs and refused to pick me up. Finally a Capellan who was adventurous or just really hungry stopped. I climbed in, then asked the driver to take me to a place where the liquor wouldn't kill me, but some of the patrons might. He started to laugh, then caught my look in the rearview and just started driving.
He took me north along the east side of the river. Manville had grown up around the downtown. The river became navigable to the north of the city, so the docks, warehouses and industrial sectors had sprung up there. To the south, where the three rivers allowed for a lot more in the way of waterfront property, the suburbs had grown. The hilltops became the Olympian domains of the rich like Emblyn. The Germayne palace covered a hill to the southeast and shone like a fairy-tale castle when the clouds broke and a lance of sunshine pierced it.
The driver began talking cautiously as he drove into a commercial area in the industrial district.
It seemed pretty clear to me that thirty years ago some regentrification had been tried here, with factories being converted into lofts and other things to attract the rich, but they had wandered elsewhere, letting the area begin to slide back down into decay.
I had him drop me a block south of a place called the Cracked Egg. We drove past it once and then circled the block. He picked up speed as we went by it, which I took as good omen. The fact that the place's sign showed an ovoidUnion -class DropShip that had been ripped open by savage fire told me this was the sort of dive I was seeking.
He grumbled about the lack of a tip, but I snarled at him. His comment in Chinese pertained to my ancestry and doesn't bear repeating here. He sped off angrily and I gestured eloquently and obscenely in his direction.
He turned the corner and I turned my attention to the bar. I watched the Egg for a little while and didn't see too much traffic going in or out. I did notice some activity at a fourth-floor window in the building across the street and down one. I figured it was Niemeyer's Public Safety Department hard at work. My wandering into the Egg so quickly after he spoke to me would likely engender a return visit to my room, so I'd have to be careful.
I walked down the block and into the tavern. The door opened into a small corridor made of corrugated steel that forced you to turn left, walk three paces, then turn right again. I was fairly certain that on that short walk before the second turn I got scanned for weapons. I didn't see anyone in position to stop me if I did have them. My eyes had not yet adjusted enough to the darkness for me to glance up and see if there were walls that would slip down and trap someone coming in with heavy gear, but that wouldn't have surprised me.
The Egg looked as if it had once been a department store as it was deeper than it was wide and a lot taller than it needed to be. Thick pillars held the ceiling up. It had four bars, the largest being along the first quarter of the left wall. In the right corner, halfway down the right wall, and then a bit further down on the left were the others. That last one serviced the tables where folks were playing cards. Back in the far right corner a Tri-Vid projection system had been set up and was playing old music Tri-Vids. The one they had on showed little Becky Shaw gyrating. Apparently they didn't know she'd gone and grown up and had been repackaged as Rebecca! when her career was relaunched.
I stood in the opening and felt more thoroughly scanned by eyes than I'd been when dropping into a hot zone. There were probably a hundred people in the Egg, excluding staff, and easily half had a feral sense to them. They were sizing me up as trouble, as a possible ally, and most certainly as a potential kill.
I let them have a good look, then walked to the bar. A bartender came over to me and glanced a question. I pointed to a neon sign. "That sign true? I'll have one."
The heavyset guy wearing a sleeveless shirt to my left hunched his shoulders and chuckled into his beer. "The only way there'd be Timbiqui Dark in the place is if you drink it someplace else and pee it out here."
I looked at him. "Do you realize you have more hair on your shoulders than you do on your head?" He had so much beer in him, or so little sense, that it took him a moment to realize I'd meant that as an insult. As he began to get up I found it easy to imagine him being Boris' little, dumber brother-an assessment I did mean as an insult. His left hand tightened on the barrel of his mug. He intended to splash the beer in my face, crash the glass against my forehead, then pound glass splinters into my skull with his fists.
Everyone does need a hobby and, from a glance at his scarred knuckles, I gathered he rather enjoyed his.
A hand landed on his right shoulder. "At ease, Sergeant."
He moved up for another second, then turned to look at the speaker with confusion knotting his brow. "Did you hear what he said?" "He asked for a beer." The dark-haired woman moved to slide between me and Boris Junior, but she had to wait for me to take my right foot off the back leg of his bar stool to do so. When I did, she bellied up to the bar and rapped her knuckles on it. "Tina, two bottles of Diamond Negro."
I looked up and saw no sign for it. "Never heard of it."
"Basalt brand, not quite up to Timbiqui, but good. They brew it up in Contressa, where Broad River meets the ocean. I have it brought in."
I reached into my pocket for money, but my benefactor shook her head. "My treat."
"I owe you for saving my life." The man behind her snorted as he parsed the sentence.
"If lives being saved is the criterion, Mustang should be buying for both of us, for along time."
Her brown eyes glittered with red-and-yellow highlights from the sign. "You'd have tipped his stool back, then what, stomped on his groin and his throat?" "One or the other. I'm new here and don't know him that well."
"If you did, it would have been both. Repeatedly." The beers arrived and she slid one to me.
We raised them and clinked them together. "I'm Alba Dolehide."
"Sam Donelly." I drank and the beer was good,very good, but I found myself distracted by the tattoo on her right forearm. It was the Lament insignia.
She lowered her bottle and smiled. "So, what is a MechWarrior like you doing in a scrapyard like this?" "Could be a long story. Do you want to sit?" "Sure." She started off through the crowd and I found myself distracted again, but not just by her body. She moved so well, so supple and lithe was she, that parts of me were inclined to aching. Her long black hair had been loosely knotted with a red bandana and swayed back and forth from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. She wore her sleeveless gray shirt snug where it should have been snug, and that applied to her cargo pants as well.
What distracted me more than her walk was the way the others looked at her. Whereas I'd been regarded with cold hostility when I came in, my being in her company offered me a dispensation.
Some folks even gave me a nod, about as close to a welcome as I'd get before I'd bled alongside them, and maybe not even then.
Alba reached a table that, while she was still incoming, had been fully populated. By the time I got to it, an ashtray leaking smoke and several condensation rings were the only evidence that anyone had been there. She drew a chair back against a wall an
d I came around to her left. My back remained a bit open, but if anyone in here wanted me dead, they weren't going to worry about angling to shoot me in the back.
She sipped her beer. "You were going to tell me why you're here."
"Same reason as you are, I suspect. Victories are bought with blood or gold. Our blood, their gold."
Alba nodded easily, both in agreement with what I'd said, and acknowledging that she'd heard that sort of reasoning before. "Gold is to be had here, but I thought this was going to be a private little affair. Someone else sent for you because I know I didn't, which means you're not on my team. As the saying goes, you're either with us or against us."
"There's another saying: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend." ' She regarded me carefully with sloe eyes. "You have enemies?" "A guy named Baxter Hsu. There was some trouble on Acamar and he set me up to take a fall for him. I was told he was heading here, to Basalt, so I came after him."
She shook her head. "Name's not coming up in my directory, Sam. He's not one of mine."
I glanced around the room. "I notice no Dracs or Caps. Personal preference or . . . ?" "My employers' preference." She shrugged. "Pity, since they are good fighters, but the crew here will do fine."
"They look hard enough." I scanned the room again. "You're right. He's not here, at least, nothere ."
"Describe him."
"Average everything, black hair, brown, almond eyes, yellow skin. A bit more cunning than I expected, but I think someone was pulling his strings."
"Could be one of millions here." She regarded me quizzically. "You gonna climb those strings and go after the puppeteer?" I drank, savoring the heavy taste of the hops. "Not unless he knots those strings on me. Now, if Bax isn't one of yours, who would he be working for?" "Someone else. Take your pick." Alba shrugged her shoulders. "Warriors are being collected here like coins."
"Who's got the biggest collection?" She smiled. "You follow the analogy. Good. Most of the folks here think analogies are why you sneeze during pollen season."
"Flattery. I like it." I gave her a nod. "And a nice deflection of my question."
"If you're as smart as I think you are, you can answer the question all by yourself."
I thought for a moment. "Emblyn, of course, can afford as much muscle as he wants. But the biggest collection isn't always the best."
Alba smiled in spite of herself. "Wise words. The best collection here might not be paid quite as much as the largest, but there will be a lot of slugs and plugged coins that won't ever spend their gold."
"Just leak their blood."
"Exactly."
"What does the best pay?"
She shook her head. "You're still an unknown quantity, Donelly. I will take some time to check you out. You'll be talking to others, I'm sure, so you'll know the going rates and see what you can negotiate. I'd expect nothing less."
"And I'd do nothing less." I finished my beer and set the bottle down. "Thank you. I'm staying at the Grand Germayne. If they don't have this in the bar, I'll ask them to order it. I'll buy when we speak again."
"I hope we can reach agreement." She nodded as I rose. "I'd rather it be your gold than your blood."
22
If you listen to what people say,
you will fish rabbits in the ocean and hunt fish in the forest.
- Bulgarian saying
Manville, Capital District
Basalt
Prefecture IV, Republic of the Sphere
29 January 3133
My previous comments about the tradecraft of leaving threads in doors and the like, and the futility of doing that because the others in the craft know to look for such things, came around full circle as I returned to my room in the Grand Germayne. When I'd left my room, instead of trapping a thread between door and jamb, I just left one on the floor close to where it might have fallen were the door opened. The careful sneak subsequently entering my room would notice it and would likely believe that housekeeping or someone else had opened the door, knocking the thread loose. They then had to decide if they would leave it there-which they would if they wanted to get in and get out, since I would blame housekeeping for the intrusion-or replace it.
The thread had been trapped just below knee height, which is the recommended area, since no one ever looks there. The only reason for putting the thread back was because they wanted me to think things were normal in my room. They wanted to surprise me and, while I was getting used to the idea that I might as well not even have a door on my room, surprises I could do without.
Being unarmed at the moment, the dodge of pretending to be room service, or a valet, really wasn't going to work. Instead of opening the door, I backtracked to the lifts and used the house comlink to call my room. I let it ring four times and got no answer. I called again, waited for four rings, and hung up. I did that three more times and finally got an answer.
It was a female voice that sounded vaguely familiar. "Hello?" "It's me, Sam. You'll be a long time waiting for me to join you."
My comment met with momentary silence, then she growled. "Gypsy sent me to fetch you."
"Gypsy?" "You know him. He's quite handy."
I nodded and her voice clicked into place. I'd not recognized it because she was speaking without her jaw wired shut. "Ms. Elle, so glad you escaped Aunt Helen."
"We shouldn't talk over this line."
"Fine, meet me in the lobby and we'll go for a walk." I hung up the phone, punched the button for a lift to head down, then opted for the stairs. I descended quickly and reached the lobby, but didn't find her there. This I took as a good sign, as it meant she'd not rushed out to try to find me, which would have been stupid. She'd taken her time, looked around, made sure I wasn't going to ambush her, then headed out.
She was easy to recognize with that shock of red hair. It had been cut shorter, darkened a bit and styled nicely. Her clothes, unlike mine, were not dated and she wore them very well. Heads turned, and as she found me and smiled, men young and old glared pure hatred at me. They all wanted me dead so they could console her at my loss.
"Shall we talk of old times, my dear . . . ?" "Elle will do fine. Gypsy was surprised to learn you arrived early." She steered me out a side entrance of the hotel, and we started walking south through a district that was full of galleries, antique stores, smart little bistros and the ubiquitous Javapulse Generators. "We got your message and were preparing for you to arrive next week."
"I know. That's what I wanted you to think."
She nodded. "Gypsy figured that out. He assumed you were still wary about the way things ended with dear Aunt Helen."
I patted her hand. "And did he think it was okay for you to let me know you've got someone working spaceport security who reported my arrival?" A little jolt ran through her, but she covered her reaction with a dazzling smile. She leaned in and whispered in my ear. "We'll keep that between us, shall we, Sam?" I couldn't see her expression as she whispered, of course, but the look on the face of a couple walking toward us suggested they would have been grossly surprised by the benign nature of her murmur.
I faced her, our lips centimeters apart-close enough that I could feel her breath on them. "Your secret is safe with me."
We stayed that way for a second or two longer than we probably should have, then she turned away and guided me toward a JPG shop. We ordered and then took our drinks to a small table on the sidewalk. Both of us turned our chairs so our backs were to the building, giving us a full view of the street.
I noticed nothing of merit, but I kept watching as I spoke. "How did you leave it with Aunt Helen?" "Things were very tricky. I was thinking I might never get out of there. You know how she is. I fantasized about shaving my head and disguising myself as a Buddhist Monk, but saffron robes are so not my color. Still I would have done anything to escape and finally I did."
Glancing over, I measured her hair with my eye. It was a couple of months' growth, so it seemed conceivable that she might have made it out that way
. "And Gypsy?" "I think he wanted to tell you himself. It's a surprise."
"He's like that, isn't he?" I sipped my coffee-flavored chocolate beverage. "He's not worried that I would be holding a grudge, is he? He paid me what is due me. I do understand how the business can run."
Elle rested a hand on my arm and gave it a little squeeze. "Ah, but you're a professional, and so many others are not. Gypsy believed this and that is why he sent for you. He liked your arriving early.
He said it showed you had even more intelligence than he'd given you credit for."
"Good." I smiled and groaned inwardly. The last thing you want someone who is into conspiracies and making odd things happen thinking about you is that you're smart. That makes him think you're a player and a plotter. The problem was that there was no way to reverse that assessment.
The damage had been done and there was really only one way to repair it. Because Gypsy now would believe I was someone he couldn't trust, I had to make myself into someone he found itvital to trust.
We chatted about my escape and what I'd been doing as we finished our drinks, and then she hailed a hovercab. We got in and from the first it was apparent to me that the driver was in Gypsy's employ. Elle gave no directions and I was fairly certain she didn't know where we were going herself.
This meant someone had been watching the JPG and, after we arrived, had brought the hovercab in on standby, with Gypsy telling the driver where we were supposed to go.
We headed north, but on the west side of the river this time, and to a small office complex with about half the units rented. Suite 301 still looked vacant. The name of the previous firm-a travel agency by the looks of the leftover graphic-had been scraped from the glass, and paper had been taped up over the windows. A sign read, "Coming soon, Basalt Astrology: By us, for where we are now."