Down to Earth (51 page)

But then the black male named Frederick spoke in one of the local languages, and everybody else relaxed. “I greet you,” he called to Gorppet from the table he shared with the female with gaudy yellow hair. His accent was different from hers and Auerbach’s, more musical. “Come—have something to drink and we shall talk.”

“Good enough,” Gorppet said. The chair in which he sat was made for Tosevite posteriors, but he had survived such seats before and knew he could again. “I do not want that nasty brown stuff you two are drinking there—the alcohol straight from the fruit tastes better to me.”

“Wine!” Penny Summers called to the Big Ugly who served drinks, and Gorppet sipped from the glass with something not too far removed from enjoyment.

Rance Auerbach had some of the vile brownish liquor the Big Uglies seemed to enjoy so much. After he’d finished it and waved to the Tosevite behind the bar for a refill, he said, “Now. Down to business.”

“Down to business,” Gorppet answered. “You have ginger. I want it. If you can get it for me, I will pay you what it is worth and make it back by selling what I do not keep to taste for myself.”

As much ginger as I could ever want,
he thought. He wasn’t sure there was that much ginger on all of Tosev 3, but he intended to find out. The reward he’d got for capturing Khomeini had included a credit transfer as well as a promotion. What was money for, if not for spending?

“It is not quite so simple,” Frederick said. “We have to be certain you are not a decoy for the Race.”

“In theory, I understand this,” Gorppet said, making the affirmative gesture. “In practice, it is absurd. I want the ginger for myself and my comrades and friends. If I were a decoy, the males handling me would take the herb. They would get it all, and leave me with nothing. I want more than nothing.”

“So you say,” Penny remarked. “We have to be sure we can believe you. The Race does not like Tosevites who sell ginger.”

“It does not like males of the Race, or females, either, who buy it,” Gorppet pointed out. “We all run risks here.”

Rance Auerbach spoke up in a local language. Gorppet understood not a word he was saying. He returned to the language of the Race: “I told them I think you are worth trusting—and I thought they were addled when this scheme began to take shape.”

“I thank you,” Gorppet said. “I also do not believe you are tools of the Race, aiming to entrap me.”

“I should hope not!” exclaimed the female with the yellow hair. “The Race has entrapped us before, but we would never entrap anyone for the Race.”

Gorppet wondered if she was protesting too much. What would his superiors do to him if they found out he’d spent his reward to buy ginger? Nothing pleasant—he was sure of that. But how could they do anything worse than demoting him to simple infantrymale and sending him back to Baghdad for the rest of his days? As far as he was concerned, they couldn’t. And, but for a minor difference in rank, how was that different from what he would have been doing had he not recognized the fanatic called Khomeini? Simple—it wasn’t. And so . . .

Gamble,
he thought.
Why not? If you lose, you only go back to what you were before—the Race does not have so many trained infantrymales that it can afford to imprison one for a crime that has nothing to do with combat effectiveness. And if the gamble pays off it will make what your superiors paid you look like nothing but the money you would use to buy a narration to make the time pass by.

He’d never really thought about being rich before. What infantrymale did? None that had any sense—except the few sharp fellows who’d got into the ginger trade early on. But if the chance for riches came his way, was he fool enough not to turn his eye turrets toward it?

“If we do this,” he said slowly, “how do you want to be paid? I have heard it is difficult for Tosevites to use our credit, though I know there are ways around this.”

“Oh, yes, there are ways,” the dark-skinned male called Frederick said. The other two Big Uglies made the head motion that was their equivalent of the affirmative hand gesture. Frederick went on, “But we do not want your credits. We want gold.”

He spoke the word with as much reverence as Khomeini gave to his imaginary Big Ugly beyond the sky. And, by the way Rance Auerbach and Penny Summers said, “Truth,” in a sort of crooning whine, they were as reverent as the other Tosevite.

Gorppet understood that. The Tosevite economy was far less computerized than that of the Race. Money wasn’t just an abstract concept here; it was often a real thing, traded at a standard rate of value for other real things. And gold was the principal medium of exchange here.

“I think that can be done,” Gorppet said.

“I know a male Tosevite who will take your credit and give you gold for it,” Frederick said.

“Not so fast,” Gorppet told him. “First, let us settle on a price in credit. Then let us settle on a rate of exchange between credit and gold. And then let me make my own quiet inquiries and see if I can find a dealer with a better rate than your friend.”

“This is not a good way to do business,” Frederick protested. “It shows no trust.”

“There is no trust.” Gorppet stressed that with an emphatic cough. “There is only business. Business that deals in lots of ginger and money is dangerous to begin with, in the middle and at the end. Anyone who thinks different came from his eggshell addled.”

Frederick started to say something more—probably another protest. But Rance Auerbach spoke first: “This is also truth. If we get through this dealing without trying to kill one another, we shall be ahead of the game.” He swung his head toward Frederick. In his rasping, ruined voice, he went on, “This is what we all have to think:
my share of what we get here is enough.
Do you understand what I am telling you? You could try for all. Penny and I could try for all. Gorppet here could try for all. Someone might win. But, more likely, everyone would lose.”

“I understand,” Frederick said in that musical accent of his. “Have I been anything but a proper partner?”

“Not yet,” Auerbach answered.

“No, not yet.” Gorppet made the affirmative gesture to show he agreed with Auerbach. “But betrayal was not in your interest before. Now . . . I hope it still is not. It had better not be.”

Rance Auerbach didn’t like the pistol he was carrying. After the heavy solidity of an Army .45, this cheap little .38 revolver felt like a toy. But it was what he’d been able to get his hands on, and it was a damn sight better than nothing. He nodded to Penny. “Ready, sweetheart?”

“You bet,” she said, and pulled her own .38 out of her purse to show she understood what he meant. Inside their apartment—the apartment that, with luck, they’d never see again after tonight—she said no more. They’d never been able to prove the Lizards listened to them, but they didn’t want to take any chances, either.

“Let’s see what happens, then.” Auerbach stubbed out a cigarette and immediately lit another one. His mouth would have been dry even without the harsh smoke. He felt like a man going into combat. And this might be three-sided combat—he and Penny had one interest, Gorppet another, and Frederick yet another.

His eyes slid over to Penny. It might even turn into four-sided combat, if she decided to double-cross him. Would she? He didn’t think so, but the idea that she might wouldn’t leave his mind. She’d had her eye on the main chance for a long time now. If she decided she wanted all the loot . . .

She might be planning to double-cross him with Frederick, too. Rance didn’t really think she was, but he didn’t ignore the possibility, either. His Army days had taught him to evaluate all the contingencies.

Out they went. Rance fought his way down the stairs. Once he got outside, the very chirps of the insects reminded him he was a long way from home. If this went through, he’d still be a long way from home, but he’d be someplace he wanted to be, not where the Lizards dumped him.

If it didn’t go through . . . “Shoot first, babe,” he told Penny. “Don’t wait. If you think you might be in trouble, chances are you’re already there.”

“I gotcha,” she said, sounding as if she’d come out of a gangster movie. She’d been through these deals before, he knew, and every one of them outside the law. But this one was further outside than most—and she didn’t have any hired muscle along except for him. He snorted and fought back a cough. Hired muscle that could hardly walk without a cane. If it came to rough stuff, the home team was in trouble.

They walked through the narrow, winding streets of District Six. This late at night, Rance worried less about being a white man in a largely black part of town. Hanover Street and a few of the other main drags were well lit. Away from them, though, it was too dark and gloomy for anybody to tell whether he and Penny were white, black, or green.

Music that sounded like U.S. jazz with something different, something African, mixed in blared out of a little hole-in-the-wall club. A black woman leaning against the wall stepped out and spoke to Rance in her own language. He didn’t understand a word of it. Then the woman noticed he already had a companion. She said something else. He didn’t understand that, either, but it sounded scornful. He and Penny kept walking. The woman went back and leaned against the wall again, waiting for someone else to come along.

A couple of blocks later, screams floated down from an upper floor of a rickety block of flats. Auerbach tried to make a joke of it: “Somebody teaching his wife to behave.”

“You try teaching me like that, big boy, and you’ll eat your dinner through a straw for the next year, on account of I’ll break your jaw,” Penny said, and she didn’t sound as if she were joking at all.

After about half an hour, they came to the little park where gold and ginger would change hands. Everything seemed quiet and peaceful. Rance trusted neither peace nor quiet. “Stay well back of me,” he said. “If anything goes wrong and we get separated, we try and meet on the docks, okay?”

“I know what we’re supposed to do,” Penny told him. “You hold up your end, I’ll hold up mine, and we hope everybody else holds up his.”

“Yeah, we hope,” Rance said bleakly. He glanced at his glowing watch dial. Five to one. They were early.

A hiss came out of the darkness, followed by more hisses that were words in the language of the Race: “I greet you, Rance Auerbach.”

“Gorppet?” Rance stood very still. He knew the Lizards had gadgets that let them see in the dark. Human soldiers—maybe human cops, too—also had them these days. But he didn’t, and somehow hadn’t expected the male to be using one. It felt like cheating.

“Who else would know your name?” the Lizard asked, to which he had no good answer. Gorppet went on, “I have the payment ready. Now we await the Tosevites with the herb.”

“They will be here,” Auerbach said. “The deal cannot go on without all of us.” That wasn’t strictly true, which worried him. The deal couldn’t have got started without Penny and him, but they weren’t essential any more. If the others wanted to take them out . . . He didn’t worry too much about Gorppet; Lizards generally played straight. But he didn’t trust Frederick any farther than he could throw him.

“I greet you, my friends.” Frederick, in Rance’s opinion, spoke the Lizards’ language with a funny accent. “I have some of what we need. You, brave male, you have the rest of what we need. Let us now make the exchange.”

He didn’t say a word about Rance and Penny having anything they needed. That bothered Auerbach. Set gold in the scales against gratitude, and figuring out which one weighed more wasn’t tough.

Now Penny walked past Auerbach. Gold didn’t take up much room, but it was heavy. With a bad shoulder and a bad leg, he couldn’t carry so much. If she got their share of the loot and ran off . . . What could he do about it? Not much. He didn’t like that, either. Penny ate, drank, and breathed trouble. She might try to run off, as much for the hell of it as anything else.

“I have males covering me,” Gorppet warned, so Rance wasn’t the only imperfectly trusting soul here.

“I have males covering me,” Frederick said, as if he took the idea altogether for granted.

“And I have males covering me,” Penny said. Auerbach looked around to see if he’d grown a twin—or, even better, quintuplets. No such luck, though. He knew that too damn well.

“The exchange,” Gorppet said. Rance peered through the darkness. He could hardly see a thing.

“Now,” Frederick said, and the gloating triumph in his voice made Rance realize he was going to try to hijack all the gold. Rance filled his ruined lungs to shout a warning—

And another shout came from the edge of the park, a shout in an African language. A shot followed it, and then another, and then a stuttering roar of gunfire. Screams rang out, not just from human throats but from those of the Race. “Surrender!” a Lizard called, his voice amplified. “You cannot escape!”

By then, Rance was already on the ground, rolling toward cover. Old reflexes took over, modified only by the need to hang on to his cane. Bullets snarled not far enough above his head. “Who says we cannot escape?” Frederick shouted. “We shall smash you!” He shouted again. Rifles barked. Submachine guns chattered. He had to have brought a young army with him. By the volume of fire his men were laying down, he had the Lizards outnumbered and very nearly outgunned.

He wouldn’t have brought so many if he hadn’t intended to cut Rance and Penny out of the deal, to say nothing of punching their tickets for good. And he’d probably intended to rub out Gorppet and whatever pals the Lizard had along, too. Having that patrol come into the park just when it did looked to have been good luck for everybody but the black man, and Auerbach wasted no pity on him.

What they had now was a nasty three-cornered gunfight, with Rance in the middle of it. He shouted Penny’s name, but his best shout wasn’t very loud, and noise filled the air. She didn’t hear him—or if she did, if she shouted back, he couldn’t hear her.

He crawled toward her, or toward where he thought she was. Muzzle flashes sparked here and there, putting him in mind of giant, malignant lightning bugs—or of the fight in Colorado where he’d got himself ruined. He’d never thought he would wind up in anything like that again. He wished to Jesus he hadn’t.