Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2013 (6 page)

Through pin cams on their clothing I observed the thetics in the other buildings moving from room to room and killing anyone who resisted, just so long as they weren't Straben. It was brutal, but then Straben's organization was brutal, and anyone working for it had to know they were culpable in mass murder. Those on the roof were now in too and working their way down—just as efficient and methodical as those working up from below—but also just as indifferent to personal survival. I reckoned on walking away from here with maybe just twenty or so surviving thetics. The rest would crawl off and die completely to become food for the honey fungus, or else turn into something nasty in the drains.

Directing my course by pin-cam feeds, I climbed the stairs since the building's drop-shafts were keyed to staff ID tags and wouldn't work for anyone else. Most of the action was now taking place on the third floor. At the second floor, some man in businesswear carrying a heavy flack gun charged down, skidded to a stop on a landing, and took aim. I raised my other gun just as a flack round exploded against the wall behind me and peppered me with shrapnel, then changed my mind, and raised my QC laser, a short while afterward stepping over the burning corpse.

By the time I reached the third floor it was all over. The main data room looked like an abattoir and over in one corner Harriet was tearing chunks off of some rather corpulent individual and gobbling them down. Many of the consoles were smashed and smoking, holo-displays flickering through the air like panicked specters, and flimsy screens seemed to burn with internal blue fires. Over to one side a chainglass window overlooked all this, plush office space inside, and there, working a console in frenetic panic, sat Gad Straben. I ran over to the door—armored of course—kicked it hard, then swore as my other boot went straight down through the floor and the door remained in place.

"Get me a charge!" I shouted, heaving my leg back out of the hole.

There were only two surviving thetics in the room, and they were guarding two women and a man who lay face down with their hands behind their heads.

"You three," I said, brushing debris from my trousers as I walked over. When they looked up I continued, "Get up and go," and stabbed a finger toward the door. They slowly stood up, eyeing me as I replaced my weapons in their holes in my legs and closed them up, then took off just as fast as they could. They were probably only temporary employees of Straben since they hadn't resisted, so whether they lived or died was a matter of indifference to me. I turned to the two thetics.

"I want an explosive charge to get through that door," I said concisely, since neither of them had understood me the first time.

One of them went over to one of its fellows, who was quietly deliquescing in a corner, pulled some sticky bombs from his belt and returned with them. I stared at the bombs for a moment then went over to the dead thetic myself and checked the belt. There—just what I needed. I detached a circular object like a coaster and took it over to the office window, slapped it against the chainglass and hit the pressure button at its center. With a whumph the chainglass turned to white powder and collapsed to the floor. I stepped over the ledge and into the office, seeing Straben simply stand and hold out empty hands.

"You move quickly," he said.

Straben was a slightly fat man with a bald rounded head. He was clad in businesswear and looked like some Polity executive styling his appearance on some antediluvian fashion. I ignored him for a moment, carefully studying my surroundings.

A glass-fronted case along one wall contained a variety of ghoulish antiques: a spider thrall and a full-core thrall, a couple of slave collars and an old automatic pistol. These were all the kind of objects you could obtain from dealers out of Spatterjay. I watched a nano-paint picture transit to its next image—a painting of a hooder coming down on some man in ECS uniform. Then I strolled over to the desk, round it, and stood facing Straben.

"I move quickly?" I inquired mildly.

"You arrived in the Graveyard only a few days ago," said Straben, then with a shrug. "I didn't expect you to act so quickly."

I looked at the desk, noting a flimsy screen up out of the surface, and the holographic virtual control Straben had been using a moment ago. The screen was blank. I tried my hand in the control but it wouldn't respond to me.

"It's genetically coded to me," he said.

"I could always cut off your hand," I suggested.

"That won't work either," said Straben, for the very first time showing some sign of anxiety.

I gazed at him for a second, then waved him out into the main office space. He nodded congenially and walked over to where the window had been and stepped through.

"Questions now?" he asked.

"Yes, questions," I replied.

Straben halted and turned toward me, tilted his head irritatingly like Harriet, and waited.

"So," I said, "was it your intention to try and seize the
Coin Collector?"

Straben gazed at me in apparent puzzlement. "Certainly not. It was my intention to sell you some valuable artifacts I have obtained." He turned slowly to survey the wreckage around him. "But it seems I was mistakenly under the impression that you were a reasonable man I could do business with."

I fought down another surge of irritation. We couldn't stay here much longer. John
Hobbs might have decided to look the other way, but he wouldn't do so for much longer. There would be reports going in of an incident here and he would have to respond.

"From Penny Royal's planetoid?" I suggested.

"Yes," said Straben. "I have them in a secure location and, despite this unfortunate mess," Straben gestured about himself, "I am still prepared to do business."

"So which of your vessels salvaged them?" I asked.

"The
Cadiz
—it got there before Hobbs or any of the other vultures." Straben smiled as if in pleasant recollection. He was certainly a cool customer and was now growing more confident."The objects concerned seem to be part of something larger and certainly contain U-space tech, though precisely what they are for is a puzzle."

The objects sounded precisely like what the Client was seeking, which was beyond suspicious. It was also the case that before coming down here I'd thoroughly checked the relevant details Tank had taken from the
Layden's
data store. Straben was lying, though to what degree and precisely what his aims were was unclear.

"Wrong answer," I said. "The
Cadiz
was in the prador Kingdom at the time."

Straben hid his shock well, but it was evident. "Do you honestly think I keep
precise
records of my ship itineraries?"

"Possibly not." I shrugged. "But apparently you shut down your salvage operation decades ago." I paused contemplatively for a moment. "In fact, as I understand it, John Hobbs would be the best to ask about artifacts from the planetoid since it seems his salvagers were the only ones that went there before everything of value was obliterated by some sort of chain reaction, and the artifacts he did obtain were routed directly to the Polity."

"So John Hobbs might tell you," said Straben, obviously thinking quickly now. "He was trying to nail down the market—make it exclusive."

He paused, searching for further excuses and lies, so I quickly interjected, "Perhaps you could tell me about the warehouse you've been renovating—the one located on an asteroid in this system." He definitely couldn't hide his shock now. "Perhaps you might like to tell me why you felt the need to kit out the place with so much armament along with a hardfield caging system?"

"How can you—"

"You set the bait and that's the trap," I said.

Now he was lost for words. I gave him a little while, but he lost the struggle as Harriet moved up to stand beside him, leaned her head down and gave him a long sniff.

"No more lies," I said, turning to Harriet. "Usual method: if he lies again I give you the nod and you bite off his right hand."

Harriet danced from foot to foot, champed her jaws, then as usual licked round her mouth with her long red tongue.

"Now," I continued, "what exactly is all this about?"

Straben just stood staring at Harriet for a long while. He shrugged, then sighed.

"It's about the reward," he said.

"What reward?"

"I will need guarantees," the man replied.

"You can guarantee that if you don't answer my questions Harriet will first eat your hands. If that doesn't work she'll start on you from the feet up."

"You are rather brutal and uncivilized in your dealings," Straben observed primly.

That was it; that was the limit. A man who cored and thralled human beings to sell to the prador was calling
me
uncivilized? I reached down to my thigh, opened the patch in my trousers, then mentally unlocked the hatch in my leg there. I took out the
other
gun and weighed it in my hand. Harriet, noting this, look a pace back. It didn't look like much—just a heavy chromed revolver.

"Your last chance," I said mildly.

Straben could obviously see I was feeling a bit testy. He quickly said, "A fortune in any form required, a Polity amnesty for all crimes,
and
a free fifty year pass into the Kingdom ratified by the King himself."

Puzzling. The Polity never gave amnesties to the likes of Straben, and that the Kingdom and the Polity had agreed on some joint reward seemed just as unlikely.

"There's some heavyweight action behind it," Straben continued, now taking a step back and resting his weight against one of the desks. "I couldn't believe it at first, but it really checks out." He gestured vaguely upward. "Polity agents out there and direct confirmation from one of the watch station AIs. The King's Guard are involved, too. I don't know what you are mixed up in but both the prador and the Polity desperately want to get hold of you."

"It is feasible that such rewards might be offered to negate some very serious threat."

It took me a moment to realize that Harriet had spoken. I eyed her carefully. Once we were back aboard the
Coin Collector
I felt we needed to have a long talk, and I needed to scan what was going on inside that reptilian skull of hers. However, I knew precisely what she was implying.

"I need to talk to the Client," I said.

"Yes, I think you do," Harriet agreed. "Shall we finish up here?" She tilted her head slightly, directing her gaze toward the gun I held.

There was nothing more to be learned from Straben. I returned my attention to the man and fired once, the kick jerking the barrel up and the shot going into his stomach and flinging him back across the desk. Despite that, the impact of the bullet had been toned down for the human form, since this gun had been designed to punch bullets through a prador's natural armor.

The man lay gasping, then abruptly jerked, stretched out flat and went into convulsions. Black threads spread across his skin and his flesh began to swell. He emitted a gargling scream then slumped into stillness just as brown sprouts broke out of his skin like spear points, then began to inflate at their tips. These swellings, each rapidly growing to the size of a tennis ball, turned a darker brown and acquired widely scattered black scales.

"Fascinating," said Harriet. "So it doesn't take control of the host—just kills quickly?"

"It's weaponized," I replied. "There's no advantage in keeping the host alive since it's spread by sporulation—and at a point of growth the host cannot survive."

Harriet glanced round at me. "But sporulation has been retarded, I presume?"

"It has—I don't want to kill off the whole colony here."

She nodded thoughtfully, then asked, "I am right in assuming that this is based on
ophiocordyceps unilateralis
or as it is known on Earth, the 'zombie ant fungus'?"

"It is," I said, slightly stunned by her sharpness.

"And that is just one of your bullets?"

"Yes."

"Fascinating," she repeated.

This sharp new Harriet would be, I thought, fascinated to know that this particular weaponized parasitic fungus would also be an effective way to kill another creature, a multiply renewing one. But that wasn't something I wanted to think about too much, especially with another
conversation
due with the Client....

Upon returning to the
Coin Collector
I delayed and delayed, but the Client was not to be denied—always testing its connections to my mind, always
pushing.

Time.

The stabbing sensation in my head told me I had delayed too long. I closed my eyes and began numbing all the nerve connections to my artificial body, highlighting the
other intrusive connections in my skull. The link between me and the thing sitting in the tank, which in turn connected to the ship's U-space communicator, opened up. And all at once I returned to hell.

Rage and suspicion came first, with that forever present undercurrent of loss. I stretched a hundred feet tall; a conjoined chain of insect forms reaching toward the roof of the deep volcanic chamber, a boiling wind blowing across the nearby lake of lava raising the temperature just enough. Hive creature and hive, perpetually dying and giving birth, immortal, the Client clung now to ersatz trunk of a giant tree being fashioned of silica crystals by one of its exo-forms—a thing like a giant horseshoe crab suspended from the roof by a long jointed tail. It read me, and peeled its upper section from the tree in its fear, emitting a pheromone fog, distributing it with the beating of glassy wings. Exo-forms down below like manta rays on spider legs, hoovering up and crunching down old fallen husks from past renewals, bleated and bumped against each other in bewilderment.

Synaesthetic interpreters finally cut in as I contained a scream in my skull, and turned complex organic chemicals to something I could truly understand. Then came a pause, with a scene replaying in my mind: my killing of Gad Straben. I felt an avidity, then came words.

"It is time for you to come to me," the Client told me, a whole avalanche of meaning falling in behind the words. "The danger is too great."