Suicide, Inc

CHAPTER 16

Jack Saint frowned and his broad green nose wrinkled. He rose from his seat in the nearly empty shuttle ship, extracted his orange display handkerchief from his pocket and dusted the cracked plaz cushion he’d been sitting upon. He squinted down at it disapprovingly, then dusted it once again.

“You can’t get rid of the snull,” said a middle-aged catwoman two seats behind him.

“Beg pardon?”

“Oh, my.” She raised up a paw, gave herself a nudge in the temple. “The smell, I meant to say. You probably haven’t guessed it yet, but I happen to be a still.”

“A what, Madam?”

“Darn, did it again.” Another fist to her head. “Shill. See, I’m not actually a catwoman. I’m a cleverly contrived simulacrum. I’m an andy.”

“I’d already suspected that,” Saint informed her. “Principally from the smell of burning wiring you give off, but also from the small pool of machine oil that’s leaked out of your left foot since our shuttle lifted off from Zegundo some minutes ago.”

“Yes, it’s embarrassing at times to be less than perfect.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“All of us aboard, except for yourself, are androids and robots.”

“Why is that, dear lady?” Saint, very gingerly, lowered his buttocks back down on the seat.

“Oh, it’s rather shameful in a way. We’re here to foot…um…I mean, fool the poor gullible public,” she answered, brushing at a thin swirl of bluish smoke that was commencing to spiral out of one furry ear. “Fact of the matter is, I wonder why you’re making this journey to our satellite.”

“Ah, it’s because I’m a dyed-in-the-neowool robot buff.” Saint smiled over his shoulder at her. “I long ago made a pledge to myself that some fine day I’d hop on a shuttle to visit the Museum of Robotics History that orbits this fair planet.”

“I hope you won’t think me disloyal if I mention that you’re wasting your dough, sir.”

“How so, my dear?”

“The place is quite rundown,” she confided. “Mostly, though I hesitate mentioning it, mostly because of Professor Bunny’s peccadillos.”

“That would be Professor Montague R. Bunny, the esteemed electronics historian?”

“He’s not all that esteemed anymore,” she said. “And don’t you feel, by the way, that it’s a little late, when a man is pushing sixty-six, to go through midlife crisis?”

“We none of us know when our final moment will come.” Saint elevated his backside, giving the seat another swipe with his handkerchief. “If, for instance, Professor Bunny lives to be one hundred and thirty-two, then-”

“He won’t make it to sixty-seven if he continues to pursue nubile maidens with the zeal and brio he’s been exhibiting the past few years.”

“Perhaps it’s difficult for you, being a mechanism,” observed Saint, “to comprehend how deuced distracting the urges of the flesh can be.”

“Having oil leaking out of your darn foot is no bed of meeches either. If the professor wasn’t so neglectful I could hold up my head and-”

Karump! Whamp! Kabump!

The shuttle had docked, none too smoothly, in the landing bay of the orbiting museum.

Saint left his seat, then bent gracefully to fetch his sewdohyde attaché case from beneath it. The case had acquired an unsightly gob of gum on its underside. “Aren’t you disembarking?” he inquired of the imitation catwoman while disdainfully plucking the wad of greenish stuff off the case with a plyochief.

“Oh, no, I just ride this thing back and forth all the live-long day. That’s what a shull…shill does, you know.”

“One’s heart goes out to you.” Bowing politely, Saint went striding along the corridor and out of the shuttle.

There was only what appeared to be a slim blonde young woman on the vast welcoming platform. Head tilted a bit forward, eyes slightly narrowed, she was watching his approach. “I’m sorry, but would you be Mr. Saint?”

He considered the question as he scrutinized her.

“Why do you ask, my child?”

The blonde blushed, looking down at herself. “Am I unzipped, unseamed, unbuttoned or something? You’re staring at my body as though-”

“I was marveling at your believability,” he explained. “Yes, you’re a much better work than those rather forlorn androids aboard the-”

“Oh, hey, heck. I’m not a robot or an andy. I’m Jazz Miller and Mr. Smith sent me down to fetch you and escort you up to him, Mr. Saint,” Jazz said, smiling. “Actually, he would’ve come himself, but I felt that since I’m tagging along on this venture, for reasons of my own that we can go into later if you’re at all interested, I ought to earn my keep.”

Reaching out and catching hold of the young woman’s hand, Saint bowed and kissed it. “It’s a distinct pleasure, my dear, to meet you.”

Blushing again, Jazz slowly withdrew her hand from his. “Mr. Smith mentioned you’d be like this. Courtly and polite.”

“He described me to you, eh?”

“Yes,” she replied, nodding. “If you’ll come along now I’ll take you to where everybody’s waiting.”

“How exactly did he describe my appearance? Did he use such words as dapper, winning, attractive-”

“He just said you were green,” said Jazz.

Smith was pacing the cleared area at the center of the storeroom. “Those assholes,” he said, the pilfered pages Saint had brought fluttering in his hand.

“Be more specific,” requested Cruz, who was sitting in a lamé slingchair with his booted feet up on a neowood packing crate labeled Tapdancing Androids/ One Pair.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Smith said. “Triplan first off. They made up a false damn list for-”

“Not logical, old man,” Saint pointed out. “They’d have to give the Whistler Agency the true list. Otherwise, don’t you know, they wouldn’t be certain of getting hold of you.”

“They could’ve told the Whistler folks to hire me, insisted on it,” said Smith. “Once I brought in the missing alums, they’d pump what I know out of my head and-”

“My feeling would be our bosses know considerably more than they’ve thus far confided,” commented Cruz. “They went to a hell of a lot of effort to recruit you. Granted you’re a splendid operative, but they probably could’ve found a good one right here on Zegundo.”

“Yep, I think the agency knew, too.”

Saint stood up to dust the seat of his slingchair a second time. “One feels deuced awkward asking this, old fellow,” he said. “Yet one feels one must. Why aren’t you considering Jennifer Westerland Arloff’s part in all this?”

“I am.” Halting, Smith sat on a crate. “She lied to me when we had our stroll along the ocean. And she gave me a fake list, too.”

“Look on the bright side,” suggested Cruz.

Smith slapped the handful of papers. “What bright side would that be?”

“She was concerned enough to tell you something of the real purpose of our treasure hunt,” Cruz said. “Further, she warned you it could well be a lot rougher than you’d been led to believe up to that point.”

“You’re too sentimental when it comes to women.” Cruz shook his head. “What I’ve learned in a colorful and fun-filled life, old chum, is most people do the best they can with what they’ve got,” he said. “Jennifer can’t…and I’ve no idea why…do more than she did. Therefore you have to accept what-”

“It’s a little hard to accept her not telling me that I’m carrying part of a secret worth…hell, billions of trubux…around in my skull.”

“She’s married to Arloff and his goals aren’t yours.”

Standing, Smith held the papers out toward Cruz. “Westerland came up with a cheap transmutation process,” he said. “A simple way to turn base metals into valuable metals for a cost of just about nothing. Whoever ends up with the whole secret…Triplan, Syndek or the Trinidad government…they’ll be able, if they go carefully, to become as rich as they want. Because this is something that can be utilized and exploited in different ways all over the universe.”

Saint asked, “What exactly is our position at the moment? Are we still working for the Whistler blokes?”

“What I’m trying to figure out, and that’s why I’ve got Ruiz stashed here, is what comes next,” answered Smith.

“I’d be interested in hearing about that, too, Smitty.” The Whistler terminal had materialized a few feet to his left.