Suicide, Inc

CHAPTER 5

“So tell me what…oops!” Whistler’s screen turned all at once an intense crimson.

“You okay?”

“Hush.” The terminal swooped down near the floor.

From its underside came a thin line of green light. The pulsating beam cut a small oval swatch out of the thermocarpet.

A tiny flat spybug had been nesting under the rug. Whistler sucked it up into its interior.

Smith said, “Who the hell planted-”

“Silence.” The terminal floated up to the sewdometal ceiling.

From within one of the three floating light balls Whistler extracted a second bugging device, this one larger.

“Now?” asked Smith, settling back into his chair.

“That’s the lot.” Whistler drifted down to a spot some four feet above the floor. “All those months of booze must’ve addled your wits, Smitty. You should’ve spotted these eavesdropping gadgets.”

“My fault, sure,” admitted Smith. “Thing is, you guys assured me this assignment was simple and routine. That lulled me into-”

“Being lulled is one thing, being jackass stupid is another.”

“Speaking of stupidity, how come you guys didn’t mention that the Trinidad Law Bureau was interested in this case? If you did know and forgot to tell me, that was stupid, too.”

“What makes you think TLB’s involved?”

Smith grinned. “I just bumped into Deac Constiner up in the saloon.”

“Constiner? He’s just about their best man. Are you certain he-”

“He didn’t give me a signed deposition, no,” said Smith. “He claims he’s just going back home after attending a law conference on Barnum.”

“That might be true.”

“Might, but I think he got wind of us somehow and got himself down to Barnum so he could catch the SS Pearl of the Universe and keep an eye on me.”

Whistler produced a faint buzzing sound. “Your hunch may just be right Smitty,” it said. “The under-the-rug snooping device tests out as standard Trinidad Law Bureau equipment.”

“Then they are interested in me,” Smith said. “That’s odd, if all that’s involved is a class reunion.”

“Isn’t it, though?” Whistler commenced humming again. “Tell you something else of interest, chum. The second spy gadget my keen senses detected is of maverick design.”

“Not TLB?”

“Nothing they’ve ever utilized before. I can’t even ID it right off,” replied the floating terminal. “It ain’t of Trinidad or Barnum System manufacture.”

Smith held out his hand, palm up. “Let me see.”

“Listen, inside me is equipment clever enough to identify, eventually, just about any-”

“A look.”

“Okay.” The bug dropped from beneath the terminal, went drifting over to Smith. “But if my highly-”

“Earth.” Smith tossed the little device up and caught it after examining it.

“The planet Earth in the Earth System?”

“That Earth, yep.”

“Heck of a ways from here. I can’t see why Earth agents’d be at all interested in-”

“The equipment comes from Earth,” said Smith. “But I’ve seen people out here use stuff like this.”

“This seems to indicate there’s more than one agent interested in you.”

“It does.” Smith eyed the terminal. “Have you guys told me everything?”

“So help me, cross my heart.”

“I’ll have to nose around the liner more than I-”

“Don’t go getting bumped off like…um…”

Smith stood. “Bumped off like who?”

“Oh, that was just a figure of-”

“Who got killed on this case already, Whistler?”

The screen blushed pink for an instant. “Well, it wasn’t one of our operatives,” it said in a subdued tone. “An agent working in our client’s Security Division died under suspicious circumstances while trying to find some of the missing Horizon Kids. That’s one reason why Triplan decided to come to us and not-”

“Suspicious how?”

“Oh, his skycar exploded. Scattered him all over a stretch of Zegundo woodlands. They never found enough pieces of the man or his skycar to be absolutely sure if it was an accident or a rubout.”

“Simple case, no danger.” Smith sat, slouched. “This ties in with the attempt on Constiner, too, probably.”

“I’m not aware of any-”

“Just happened.” Smith pointed a thumb at the ceiling. “Up in the saloon. Someone tampered with the servobot so that it introduced a fairly obscure but deadly herbal poison into Constiner’s drink. The stuff has a very faint scent and I noticed it.”

“What did you do?”

“Knocked the damn glass out of his hand before he drank it.”

“Was that wise?”

“I didn’t know it was Constiner until after I acted,” said Smith. “Bastard wasn’t all that grateful, claiming he’d spotted the stuff, too, but was going to pretend to kick off. Then see who came nosing around his mortal remains.”

“That’s not a bad plan, much better than your-”

“I’m a shade rusty, I admit. Don’t worry, I won’t keep making mistakes.”

“Any notion who rigged the ’bot?”

“I managed to watch while Constiner dismantled the robot back in the pantry. Not a trace of who did the fiddling.”

“Most likely the same agent who decorated your quarters with this unorthodox snooping device.”

“Possibly.”

“Stands to reason, Smitty, because-”

“You guys don’t know everything yet,” Smith pointed out. “It could be there are a dozen different agents, each one with a different boss, interested in this mess. And every one of them may have orders to do me in next.”

“Why not try to thrive on the challenge. The added danger should buoy you up, make-”

“I don’t especially want to die,” explained Smith.

“You won’t,” Whistler assured him. “Your record shows you have an almost supernatural knack for survival.”

“Up to now.”

“This negative attitude is what led you to end up in the gutter, Smitty,” said the terminal. “You have to look on the bright-”

“Let’s move on to the subject of my crew,” he suggested. “You were supposed to drop in here to tell me who you’ve hired.”

“If you hadn’t sidetracked me with all this Gloomy Gus chitchat I’d have long since-”

“Fill me in.”

Whistler floated back a few feet farther away from him. “Before I fill you in on the excellent team we’ve put together,” he said, “I want you to make a little vow.”

“Vow?”

“That you won’t swear and yell and berate me in case…I merely say in case you notice…in case they don’t meet with your complete approval.”

“What sort of dimwitted louts have you saddled me-”

“Hear me out with a minimum of complaining and cursing, please. This is, after all, something of a rush situation and-”

“Okay, okay,” said Smith. “I won’t bitch and moan. It’s a promise. Go on.”

He was very nearly able to keep his promise.