Crashlander

GHOST: SEVEN

«So there you have it,» I told Ander. «Carlos is dead. I saw Feather shoot him before she shot me. Sharrol and the children must have gotten away. Feather stayed to put me in the 'doc, then used the other boat.

«She left me marooned on a desert island. I think she'd already given up on catching Sharrol. Otherwise, why would she need me for a hostage? I can't guess where they all are now, but if Feather was holding Sharrol, I think I'd know it.»

«How?»

«By now she must know I'm gone. She could advertise on the personals net. There hasn't been anything like that.»

Ander held his peace. No point in his telling the poor crashlander that his story leaks like a NASA spacecraft. From the way I'd told it, Ander could only guess that Feather had covered her back trail. Sharrol and the children must be as dead as Carlos, and Beowulf Shaeffer didn't have the courage to face it.

If he bought it, Ander would be hunting Feather, not Carlos.

«And I live in Pacifica because anywhere else I'd need pills to protect me from sunlight. Feather might trace that. Ander, can you do something about Feather? I keep expecting her to pop up behind my ear.»

«I'll see what I can do. She's ARM responsibility. Could she be dead?»

«For all I know. Carlos cut her. I don't know how bad, but I saw blood.»

«Carlos … yeah. Sigmund isn't going to like that. What do I give him for proof?»

«You might find traces of him on the island, but I doubt it, Ander. I think Feather dumped him in the hopper for biomass. The closest you'll get to any remains of Carlos Wu is right here.» He didn't understand. I stretched my arms, flexing my still not quite familiar body. «Not the fish, Ander. Me.»

«Stet. Which island?»

«On another matter,» I said. «Carlos Wu's experimental autodoc is a very valuable item. I propose to sell it to you.»

Ander studied me, mildly amused. His hands wandered into pockets and came out with a silver match and a box of fat green cigars. He said, «Your bargaining position isn't that terrific.»

Was he really going to fire up that thing? Tobacco, it had to be tobacco.

I tore my eyes off his hands. «Cheap,» I assured him. «I can't touch it myself, after all, and you can't afford to lose it. Look at me! That thing rebuilt me from a severed head!»

«Buying up your trash is not exactly in my job description.»

«I'll sell you the location. You collect it and do with it as you will. One hundred thousand stars.»

Ander smiled at the number, conveying that it was too high even to be funny. He said, «They wouldn't let me smoke on the ship. Want one?»

«No,» I said, watching all my problems solve themselves. Well, half my problems. I could run clear off the planet while Ander worked at getting himself out of a cell. But he'd chosen the wrong restaurant, and I didn't believe it, anyway. He'd delayed too long; his body language was wrong.

I said, «Wait up. Don't light that.»

He sat there with the cigar poking out of the center of his grin. «I thought you'd let me do it.»

I said, «I toyed with the notion. If it was just a matter of you going to jail, Ritz, that might improve my leverage. I could make you an offer you couldn't walk away from.»

«You used to have the tobacco habit yourself.»

«But I gave it up to make Sharrol happy, and tanj if my sense of taste didn't come back. Ander, put those things away. Pacifica is a big spaceship.»

«Make you nervous?»

«Ander, don't tease the kzinti.»

The breath caught in his throat. The match and cigar disappeared with minimal motions of his hands. Then his head turned casually.

They looked at him, three big males with glossy orange coats and carefully closed mouths. Looked away again. They weren't doing anything threatening. Maybe they hadn't even noticed. Riiight. Kzinti living in Pacifica might never have smelled tobacco, but any who had would not forget.

Ander seemed calm, almost sleepy, except that his breathing was a little ragged and there was sweat trickling down his neck. The cigar had been for my benefit, but he really hadn't noticed the kzinti. Mankind had claimed this world, hadn't we? Kzinti didn't belong here, did they?

He sought the thread of conversation. «You don't know where Feather Filip is, and you last saw the magical autodoc a year and a half ago.»

«Exactly. I don't know that Feather hasn't been watching for me to come back and get it. There were lamplighter islands in line of sight. She could be watching for me with a pair of mag specs.»

«Or she could be anywhere on Fafnir. But if I find her, she can take me to the island.»

I kept silent.

«I can reach some funds. Tell you what,» Ander said. «Take my entire expense credit. Five thousand and change. I'll have to live on credit till Sigmund can send me more.»

«No, no, Ander. I want a hundred thousand.»

«I'd have to beam Sigmund. I'd have to tell him what it is for. Where does that leave me?»

«Tell him I want two hundred thousand. Keep half yourself.»

«Beowulf, what you have to sell is a tool that's been left under seawater. The technology is in records left behind by Carlos Wu.»

«Did he leave records of his research? You don't know that. Encrypted? You don't know. I don't, either. Could the Fafnir government get the techniques by studying the autodoc itself? We don't know.»

Ander laughed at that. «What are you going to tell the Fafnir bureaucrats? You stand five ten, maybe, but you can produce records that show you seven feet tall? Records can be faked, Beowulf. I'm your only customer.»

This was fun. I had his attention, finally. «What if we take a stunted kzinti — there are a few — and skin him, and before he suffers too much trauma, we shove him in Carlos Wu's 'doc. Would it rebuild him into a passable human? A perfect spy?»

He guffawed. «That is really ridiculous.»

«Oh, maybe. But there are wealthy kzinti families on Fafnir.»

«They don't know how tall you used to be, either! Anyway, dealing with kzinti is crazy dangerous. Beowulf, I've got nearly six thousand, and you can have it all. Otherwise you'll have to wait while I tell Sigmund Ausfaller what you're selling, and Sigmund makes a counteroffer, and you settle, and he finally sends credit, all by hyperwave across ten light-years. And if I find Feather while you're waiting, you get nothing.»

«Good enough. Tell him two hundred thousand stars —»

«One.»

«One. Half in advance, half when you've got the 'doc. I'll be here at the Pequod until the money comes in.» I stood up. «It's midnight. Pay my consultant's fee at the hotel desk.» I walked out, thinking I'd timed that nicely.

I stopped at the desk to learn my room number. I told them there would be a payment entered against room charges.

My backpurse was hanging in the sleeping plates. I checked through it. Someone might have searched it … someone had. Sharrol, looking for what might identify me as a family man. She'd found and removed my two holos of her, one with Tanya and Louis but not Carlos, the other more recent, pregnant, with Jeena at her breast.

Twenty minutes between the plates would do me a world of good, I thought. Four hours would be even better.

No time.

I rode an elevator to the roof. There I paused, gazing idly up into the black oceanic night.

Sanity check: Was I being watched? In what fashion?

ARM cameras are little transparent disks you apply with a thumb to a flat surface. They don't cost that much and are impossible to spot. My room would be a good place to scatter a few. So would the lobby doors and the line of transfer booths behind me on the Pequod's roof. But Ander had had no chance to set them … had he?

I wished that I'd known Ander Smittarasheed better. I hadn't learned much today. He had the instincts of a cop; he'd treated me as a felon ready to escape. He remembered me fairly well. Strong as hell. What else?

He had come here for me, he'd said. More likely he'd come for us. For Carlos, the valuable one; Feather, the dangerous one; Beowulf Shaeffer, the talkative one who knows too much; Carlos's children, both United Nations citizens; Sharrol Janss … could lead him to the rest. But I could do that for him, too. He didn't need Sharrol.

Ander must have reached Fafnir by tracking a sighting of Carlos's ship. Where had he begun his investigations?

He'd started where he had landed, at the Shasht spaceports, of course. A party of six, three of us flat phobes, would not have come to a weird world like Fafnir to stay. He would search through the hotels and spaceports and hiding places on Shasht, try to learn if we'd left, before he faced eleven hours worth of jet lag in the islands.

If he'd gone to Outbound, he'd have found the Graynor family all registered for flight. Those names and a phone file would have brought him to Pacifica.

The public booths in Pacifica are lined along the dome, with a view up into the underwater jungle, for its impact on tourists incoming from Shasht. Ander Smittarasheed must have just arrived from Shasht when he saw me looking down at him.

I didn't like that. It would mean Ander had placed cameras at Outbound. They would have been waiting when Sharrol came in with Jeena. They'd be there now, for me.

But I couldn't be wrong about this: Ander had been shocked stupid at the sight of me. If he had found records for the Graynors, he'd have everything: our transplant types, allergies, eye color, height.

Ander would have given up then or persuaded himself that Beowulf Shaeffer had made himself shorter. But he hadn't known that. He hadn't.

No, he hadn't followed a paper trail. He had followed one of six fugitives, the one he knew, through a chain of logic. Beowulf Shaeffer, albino. Track him through the regular purchase of tannin secretion pills. No? Then he must be living like a vampire: working a night shift at Shasht or the Islands, at any business that caters to jet-lagged travelers. No? Then … under the sea? Losing hope … and there he is!

He'd run up a long flight of stairs to catch me. He certainly hadn't phoned anyone on the way. He hadn't let me out of his sight since. Congratulations, Ander! Beowulf Shaeffer has not escaped.

But Ander hadn't had a chance to call for backup.

The curve of glass above me supported kilotons of seawater and a life older than planet Earth. Luminescent angler fish and eels and elaborately shaped jellyfish writhed through the blackness. I sat on a bench and watched. Perhaps something was watching me.

Ander would search in vain for Feather Filip.

That wouldn't stop his search. Using instruments on a ship or satellite, he would pick out every darkened island. Dead lamplighter, no glow of house lights. Choose among those for just two live islands in line of sight; then deep radar for a hollow object more massive than sand offshore. Carlos Wu's 'doc.

In the lamplighter pit: the scorched remains of an antique lander. He'd search out human remains. He'd find bits of my bones and read their DNA. If he found traces of Feather's blood, it would only confirm my story.

If Ander was honest, he'd return the machine to Earth and the UN. If he changed his mind, so much the better. Give him something to hide, to sell.

Meanwhile, Beowulf Shaeffer waits patiently for word. Let him stew long enough, paying hotel rates when he clearly can't afford it, and he'll settle for much less than his hundred thousand. Monitor his phone; we wouldn't want him looking for a better offer from the Shashters, let alone the Patriarchy. At least we know he'll wait.

The thing is, Shaeffer knows too much. A man who has seen Julian Forward's miniature black hole and the tools he used to make it a weapon should not be running loose. (Feather Filip had told me that, but I believed it.) The money is trivial … well, trivial given that it will never be paid. But Shaeffer needs the money; he won't run away from that.

I watched the eternal show of Fafnir's sea life for a time in case I was being watched myself I fished my flat portable out — less advanced than Ander's, purchased locally — and tapped at it idly. Addresses popped up, with transfer booth numbers. Some I filed, filling in a map.

People went in and out of the booths. Maybe one was an ARM planting cameras. Maybe not.

So I strolled into the near booth. Got to kill some time — right, Ander? — or the waiting will drive me nuts. My card in the slot. Look at the wall, watch the advertisements flow past (discreetly small, by city law), and presently tap out a number.

There were places a single might visit. They advertised on the walls of transfer booths. I'd never been in one — honest, Sharrol! But when the booth flicked me in, I didn't see anything surprising.

It was noisy and close. They were dressed to catch the eye, in those bodysuits with windows, men and women both. The dim light favored them, and holograms of real and fantasy worlds made a distracting magic. Eyes looked me over, judging, not liking what they saw.

On every world some singles nodes welcome the tourist trade; some don't.

How they knew me I can't guess, because Shashters are a varied lot. But I was not welcome here. One or two men were preparing to tell me so. I retrieved my Persial January Hebert card, stepped from the booth, and walked straight to the door faster than they could decide, and then out.

Any flatlander who followed me through might well be delayed.

I was hoping to see a restaurant or juice bar, but I didn't. Around the nearest corner, then, and here was a public booth. I didn't use the card. I used coins.

My ears felt the pressure drop. What I saw as I stepped from the booth was a patchy cityscape. These were the Disneys, a cluster of ten coral peaks linked to another dozen by slidebridges. It was still night. A shadow blocked a patch of stars: a wedge-shaped dirigible just departing from the Flying Island terminal.

You wouldn't find more than one dirigible company to an island. Why risk dirigibles floating into each other when any customer can take a booth to the next island over? There were four terminals in the Disneys, all on outlying islands.

From the Flying Island terminal I began walking.

Daylight would have fried me before I reached my target. But the night was a gorgeous display of stars, and the waves crashed down in spectral blue and yellow flashes of luminous algae. In this light an albino would look no weirder than anyone else.

If I had a trick worth trying, it was unpredictability. Ander might trace me as far as the singles node. What he would learn there might set him to searching hospitals for a battered P. J. Hebert. He couldn't follow coins, I thought, but if somehow he did, he'd find I had reached the Flying Island dirigible terminal, then –

Then? Somewhere else, with the same haste I'd shown up to now. Possibly I'd boarded a dirigible; more likely I was on Shasht via instantaneous booth.

But for most of an hour I rode slidebridges toward Beast Island.

On Aladdin Island I found a tourist section and a hairstyler with a wide range of settings. Nobody but a flatlander would want his hair colored. I turned it sandy and curly and short. I stopped again to buy fresh clothing and a bigger backpurse, again for a steam bath and massage and to ditch my old clothing. Ander could have left any number of cameras on my person. Well before dawn I walked into the Grail Hunt terminal, where I bought my dirigible ticket as Martin Wallace Graynor.

If Ander knew that name, he'd have Milcenta Graynor, too: Sharrol. But he didn't have Feather, and Feather was Adelaide Graynor. We weren't caught yet.

I boarded the Wyvern. I settled into a hammock chair and fell fast asleep.