Suicide, Inc

CHAPTER 1

Smith was recruited first.

That was in an alley.

The alley was narrow and quirky, thick with misty shadows and rich with foul smells. It angled along behind a nameless saloon and dead-ended against a mildew-streaked brix wall. This particular alley was in Deadzone 22 in the capital city of the largest territory on the planet Barnum, but Jared Smith had encountered similar problems in other alleys all across the Barnum System and elsewhere during the past twelve or thirteen months.

The specific problem in the Deadzone 22 alley consisted of a large broadshouldered catman, an even huskier lizardman and a crackbeaked scarlet birdman, who was both smaller and nastier than his companions. All three had taken exception to Smith while inside the murky saloon, and had suggested stepping out here to settle their differences.

Smith had been drinking mulled skullpop, a powerful mix of alcohol, euphorium and propolis. A long lanky man of thirty-one, he’d found he was incapable of ignoring challenges much beyond the third drink. Even challenges from huge hulking louts near twice his present lean weight.

“Making snide remarks about the blasted zither player, were you?” grunted the catman, who was a muddy brindle color, as he commenced knocking Smith against the slimy brix of the alley wall. “This’ll teach you to keep your gob shut.”

“Merely mentioned,” explained Smith, bouncing back and getting in two quick jabs to the catman’s furry midsection, “that the fellow was a mite heavy-clawed.”

“He’s the best damn lobsterman zither player in this corner of the universe, mate.” The lizardman joined in the fracas, accompanying his comment with a smart kick to Smith’s ribs.

Losing his balance, Smith fell to one knee in the sticky purplish muck that paved the twisting alley.

Before he could rise again the bouncy birdman got a claw around his neck. “Let’s scruff him.”

“Not yet,” growled the catman. “I wants to batter the bastard around some more first.”

“Aw, a bloody waste of time.” The birdman produced a wicked sawtooth gutting knife with the claw that wasn’t throttling Smith. “I’m going to slice his gullet right…crikey!”

A flurry of scarlet feathers came exploding down on Smith.

The birdman was no longer clutching him. Instead he was crumpled up way down at the dark end of the alley, eyes shut, beak quivering.

“Where do you get off stunning our pal?” The cat-man was snarling at the compact computer terminal that had appeared all at once a few feet away.

It was floating in the thick, sour air about four feet above the ground.

Smith had the impression that a thin yellow beam of light had come shooting from the newly arrived gadget, hit the birdman and flipped him aside. “That’s an interesting trick,” he muttered while struggling to rise out of the muck.

“I’ll teach you!” The lizardman snatched a lazgun from beneath his tunic, and swung the barrel toward the floating terminal.

“Twerp,” remarked the gadget’s voxbox.

The beam this time was an intense throbbing green. It took the charging lout in the chest, lifted him clear off the ground, then tossed him atop his fallen comrade.

Smith was standing again, but swaying, watching all this through narrowed bloodshot eyes. He blinked, rubbed at his stubbled chin and took a couple of breaths through his open mouth.

“We was merely having a little musical discussion,” the catman informed the formidable terminal. “No need, chum, for you to come materializing out of bloody nowhere to bap my mates. Fact is, I bet our insurance attorney can sue you for-”

“Scram,” suggested the terminal, its screen turning an ominous black.

“Okay, okay, so much for free speech in this swill hole.” Hunching his wide shoulders, the catman went stomping toward the mouth of the alley. He scowled back at Smith. “Might just be, pal, that we’ll continue our conversation sometime when your blooming buddy ain’t around.” Growling, he walked off.

“He’s no friend of…” Smith paused, realizing that he was feeling pretty dizzy.

“Jared Smith, isn’t it?” The terminal came floating closer to him, bouncing on the twilight air.

“Sure, that’s who…I am.” He swallowed a few times. “These damn workouts…take a lot out of…” He dropped, once again, to his knees.

The terminal sighed. “I wonder, Smith, if you’re even worth trying to salvage.”

“Salvage?” He toppled over, landing face first in the muck.

It was raining where he awakened.

A thin, quiet rain drifting straight down out of the night sky. The rain hit, softly, on the plaz dome roof of the room Smith found himself in.

He sat, carefully, up on the oval airbed.

Interestingly enough, the dimlit room did not go spinning around. Smith had been waking up like that a lot lately. This time was different. And his head, now that he thought about it, didn’t ache either. Didn’t throb, didn’t give him the unpleasant impression that his brain was expanding and contracting inside his skull.

Bringing his hand up to scratch his chin, Smith discovered he no longer had his week-old collection of stubble decorating his weatherbeaten, slightly battered face. He noticed, too, that his left arm ached at a spot midway between shoulder and elbow.

“Bastards gave me some kind of shot.” He swung off the bed, planting his bare feet on the thick thermorug.

What bastards exactly? Frowning, Smith made his way across the shadowy circular room and slumped down into a spunglaz slingchair. He concentrated on remembering.

“Fracas in the alley…catman…birdman…who the hell was the third one?…Robot, wasn’t it?…Right, he fouled me with a tin fist in the crotch and…nope, wait…That robot was someplace else…last month out on-”

“Tarragon.”

“Yep, right. The planet was Tarragon. He was a big, clunky…hey!” Smith stood, spinning to face the small computer terminal.

It was floating at chest level a few feet away from him. “In your most recent senseless brawl, Smitty, your third opponent was a lizardman.”

“How do you know?”

“Wasn’t I there?”

Smith took a step toward it. “Sure, I remember. You saved me the trouble of decking that trio of halfwits.”

“And saved them the fun of stomping you into the muck.”

“Like hell. I was winning on points when you came barging in to-”

“Sit down.”

“Another thing.” He pointed down at his bare feet. “Did you swipe my boots?”

“They went down the dispozhole while you snoozed,” replied the terminal’s voxbox. “Being judged too foul to salvage.”

“C’mon, I paid nearly five hundred trubux for those out on Tarragon only a few-”

“Groutcrap. You swiped them off a drunken snergherder in a flophouse on the planet Esmeralda six months ago,” the floating terminal informed him. “To the abundance of snergdroppings already encrusting the footwear you’ve since added-”

“Okay, but what about the shot in the arm?”

“That was intended to sober you up. Which it appears nearly to have done. Sit down. You can call me Whistler.”

Smith, reluctantly, sat again in the slingchair. “Why exactly have you…whoa now!” He popped to his feet, pointing an accusing finger at the gadget. “That’s Whistler as in Whistler Interplanetary Investigation Agency, isn’t it?”

“Very perceptive, Smitty.”

“I don’t want to have a damn thing to do with you guys,” Smith told Whistler. “Thanks for lending me a hand in that frumus, and, if you can hustle me up some new boots, I’ll bid you fond farewell and go on about my-”

“Afraid to work for us?”

Smith shook his head. “Listen, my foolhardy days are a long time over.” He glanced around for a way out. “I’ve done some risky jobs, but I’m not dim or desperate enough yet to go to work for the Whistler Agency. You must know the nickname your outfit has all across the-”

“Suicide, Inc.,” replied the floating terminal. “Nice zing to it, but it’s an exaggeration. We aren’t foolhardy either, far from it, and we’ve never undertaken any job that promised to be completely-”

“Suicide, Inc. Sure, you heartless sons of bitches send operatives and investigators out to the worst pestholes in the Barnum System,” Smith accused. “And even to the planets in the Heliquad and-”

“The Trinidad System, too.”

Smith sat. “Anyway, I don’t intend to take a job with you guys,” he said. “If that’s what the kidnapping was all about.”

The night rain hit gently on the roof. A soft wind rattled unseen tree branches and foliage out in the surrounding dark.

“You were born on the planet Zegundo in the Trinidads,” said Whistler.

“Far as I know.” He shifted in the chair. “I’d just as well not talk about that.”

“You grew up in the Selva Territory, at a place called Horizon House,” continued the terminal. “That was a shelter for displaced children who-”

“Who is the real Whistler anyway? You guys call yourself the Whistler Agency, yet nobody seems to know for certain if Whistler’s a person, an android or just a computer who-”

“Not important,” cut in the Whistler terminal. “Has nothing at all to do with the problem we want you to-”

“What I want to do is exit.” He rose, slowly, to his feet. “You going to let me?”

“Not just yet, no.”

“I won’t,” he reiterated, “work for Suicide, Inc.”

“You served two years with the Interplan Law Service, then three with the Political Espionage Office,” said Whistler. “That was after coming here from the Trinidad System, where you’d worked in the Territorial Police in Selva.”

“And even earlier I used to play with toy rockets and skycars,” said Smith. “But I’ve grown older since, it happens to most everybody, and given up a lot of youthful crap.”

“You were an exceptional lawman and investigator,” said the terminal, “until about two years ago.”

“I keep getting older. I just matured to the point where I no longer saw any sense to any of it.”

“Was it because of that incident out on Peregrine or was it because of the marriage of-”

“Wasn’t any one thing.” He took some steps in the direction of the door he’d spotted.

“Do you really enjoy your present life?”

Smith laughed. “You are versatile,” he observed, grinning. “You can teleport yourself into alleys, cold-cock rowdies and deliver sermons. Terrific.”

“We happen to have, Smith, an assignment you’re suited for.”

“Nope, no. You don’t.”

“But in order to handle it, and boss the crew we’re putting together, you have to be sober,” the terminal told him. “And you have to be willing to go back to Zegundo.”

Smith watched Whistler for several silent seconds. “Tell me,” he requested finally, “some more about the job.”