F Paul Wilson - LaNague 02 (2 page)

           
“AH, HOW
I’D LOVE to wring that man’s neck!” Old Pete said to the air.

           
He lay
stretched out on the sand listening to the recording as Ragna’s G2 primary beat
down on him from a distance of approximately 156 million kilometers. He was
eighty-one years old but neither looked nor felt it. His legs were scrawny,
true – “chicken legs,” he called them – and the skin was loose at his neck and
wrinkled around his eyes, with the frontal areas of his scalp sporting nowhere
near the amount of hair they had of old; but when he walked he moved briskly
and lightly with swinging arms and a straight spine.

           
He loved
the sun. Loved to sit in it, bake in it, broil in it. His graying hair had been
bleached white by that sun and his skin was a tough, dark brown that
accentuated the brown of his eyes. Minute collections of pale, flaky skin
dotted his extended forehead. Actinic keratosis, a doctor had told him… or
something like that. From too much sun, especially through Ragna’s relatively
thin ozone layer. Can lead to skin cancer, the doctor had said. Be smart. Use
this lotion. It’ll dissolve the keratoses. And start using this sunscreen
lotion daily. Either that or stay in the shade.

           
Old Pete
did neither. If the keratotic areas took a malignant turn, well, they had a
lotion for that, too. Until then he’d enjoy his sun to the fullest.

           
And it was
his sun. At least the part of it that shone down upon this particular island.
The Kel sea stretched away in all directions to an unbroken horizon where it
merged with the lighter blue of the sky. The island, an oblong patch of sand
and rock about a kilometer long and half that distance across, supported a
single house, some scattered scruffy trees, and little else. But it belonged to
Peter Paxton and to him alone. He had purchased it shortly after leaving IBA
and rarely left it. A luxury flitter was moored on the roof of the house for
those occasions when he did.

           
So he lay
supine on the beach, seeing red as the sun transilluminated his eyelids, and
listened to a recording of other men’s voices. His right hand held a printed
transcript but he preferred to hear the original. The nuances of inflection and
tone not reproducible on paper were as important to him as the content of the
words themselves.

           
Nor did he
need the transcript to tell him who was speaking at any particular moment. He’d
never met the men on the recording but was as familiar with their voices as he
was with his own. Old Pete had been keeping tabs on the Restructurist hierarchy
at sporadic intervals for a number of years now, but his surveillance had
increased in intensity with the news not too long ago that something special and
oh-so-secret was afoot in the inner circle. He was determined to find out what
it was.

           
As the
recording came to a close, he sat up with a grunt.

           
“Poor Doyl
Catera – almost got himself in trouble there for a moment. His sense of ethics
made a serious attempt to break through to the surface. Almost made it, too.
Then deBloise brought up elections and the threat of being replaced in the
Assembly – the things that really matter to a politico – and ethics went
plunging into the pit again. Ah, well,” he sighed. “To be expected, I suppose.”

           
The visitor
to the island sat impassively on the other side of the player. Old Pete looked
at him.

           
“What do
you make of all this, Andy?” he asked.

           
Andrew
Tella shrugged. He was short, dark, and still carried himself in a manner that
hinted at his former years of rigid training in the Federation Defense Force.
He didn’t want to express an opinion. He was an operative. His job was to
gather information and he did his job well. His client, Old Pete, had just
mentioned ethics and Tella did not like to discuss ethics. Not that the subject
itself made him uncomfortable, it was just that his code of ethics was somewhat
different from most other people’s. He had no compunction about prying into
matters others wanted to keep secret. Events occurred, facts existed. They
belonged to those who could discover them and ferret them out. That was the
part that kept him in this business: the process of discovery.

           
And even
that became a humdrum affair at times… finding out what a client’s wife or
business associates or competitors were planning or doing.

           
Then
someone like this Peter Paxton came along and it was a whole new game. A man
with no political connections who wanted to know the secret goings on of some
of the biggest names in Federation politics. Here was a challenge, and a
profitable one to boot.

           
Receiving
no reply, Old Pete went on. “You did a good job. Actually got a recording
device into their security conference room. How’d you manage that?”

           
“It wasn’t
all that difficult,” Tella replied with a self-satisfied grin. “They have all
these elaborate security precautions – the distorter grid, the guard, that
trite transparent furniture. But they don’t scan the people coming into the
room. I simply planted a recorder in the heel of Catera’s left shoe the night
before the meeting and retrieved it two days later. You just heard the
results.”

           
Old Pete
laughed and looked toward the horizon. “I’d give anything to stick this under
deBloise’s nose and play it for him. But unfortunately that’s out of the
question. I’ve got to let them go blithely on their way thinking it’s all still
a big secret.” He paused. “You know, that’s the second time we’ve heard them
mention Dil. I think it’s about time you took a little trip to that planet to
see if you can find out what’s so important to them there.”

           
“That might
not be the most practical approach,” Tella replied. “I could waste a lot of
time on Dil before I learned a thing. The Federation Office of Patents and
Copyrights would be a better starting point. We are, after all, looking for
what was called a ‘technological innovation,’ and only a raving madman would
fail to register something like that before marketing it. And I happen to have
a few contacts in that office.”

           
“I suppose
that’s true,” Pete agreed with a nod. “Tell me: you ever do any industrial
espionage?”

           
Tella
hesitated, then: “A few times, when I was starting out. That’s where I got my
contacts at the Office of P&C. Never was very good at it, though.”

           
Old Pete
raised an eyebrow at this and Tella caught it.

           
“I don’t
consider myself a thief,” he said defensively. “I dig up information that other
people would rather keep hidden but I do not steal the products of another
man’s mind. That’s why I joined up with Larry. He feels the same way.”

           
Old Pete
lifted his hands an amused look on his face. “Did I question your ethics?”

           
“Your
expression did.”

           
“You’re too
touchy. I knew all about you and Larry Easly before I hired you. Research, you
know. I was looking for undercover operatives who took their work and their
reputations seriously and you two fit the bill. Now get to Fed Central or Dil
or wherever you feel you’ve got to go and find out what you can about this
device deBloise and his rats are meddling with.”

           
Somewhat
mollified, Andy nodded and reached over to the player set between them. He held
a small box over the top of the set, pressed a button, and a tiny silvery
sphere popped out to be magnetically scooped into the box, which then closed
with a snap. He rose to his feet.

           
“You’ve got
resources, Mr. Paxton,” he said, letting his eyes roam over the house and
island, “but you’re going to need more than you’ve got if you figure on putting
a kink or two into their plans.”

           
“What makes
you think I want to interfere at all? How do you know this isn’t all just idle
curiosity to fill an aging man’s final hours?”

           
Tella
grinned. “Who’re you trying to con? You mentioned research before. That’s my
field. You think I’d snoop around Fed Central for you before checking out who
you are, where you’ve been, and how you got there? In your whole life, as far
as I can tell, you’ve never done a single thing without an ultimate purpose in
mind. And this isn’t just politics for you – you’ve got a personal stake here,
but that’s your business. I’m merely warning you: You’re dealing with some
pretty powerful characters here. You’re going to need help, Mr. Paxton.”

           
Old Pete
resumed his supine position on the sand and closed his eyes.

           
“I’m well
aware of that. But for the time being, let’s see if we can find out exactly
what they’re up to.” Without opening his eyes, he waved a hand in Tella’s
direction. “Get in touch when you have something.”

           
The
receding sound of Tella’s footsteps vibrated through the hot sand to the back
of Old Pete’s skull as he lay there and considered his options. Things were
beginning to come to a head. He would have to start setting the stage for a
countermove now or risk being caught off guard when the time for action
arrived.

           
And that
meant he would have to go back to IBA.

           
A flood of
memories swirled around him. Interstellar Business Advisors… he and Joe Finch
had founded the company on a shoestring more than half a century before.
Fifty-four years ago to be exact. Hard to believe that much time had passed.
Then again, when he considered all they had accomplished in that period, it
seemed a wonder they’d had enough time at all.

           
IT BEGAN
BACK ON EARTH when a very young Peter Paxton received word from Joseph Finch,
editor and publisher of Finch House Books, that his manuscript on the theory
and practice of business on an interstellar scale had been accepted. Mr. Finch
wanted to meet with him personally.

           
The meeting
still remained fine-etched in his mind: Joe Finch slouching behind his
cluttered desk, fixing him now and again with those penetrating eyes, and
telling him how his book was going to revolutionize interstellar trade. And
imagine! Written by a man who had never even weekended on the moon!

           
They spent
the afternoon in the office. Joe Finch’s range of interests and knowledge was
impressive. He was an omnivore with an insatiable appetite for information. He
spoke at length on the fine points of the latest attempts to mine the neutron
stars, then switched to an impromptu dissertation on the reasons for the most recent
additions to Earth’s list of extinct flora and fauna. He gave a technical
explanation of his own experimental techniques in holographic photography and
then expounded on his perdurably unorthodox view of Earth’s current fiscal and
political situation. And through it all ran an invisible thread of logic that
somehow strung everything into a cohesive whole.

           
They talked
for hours in the office and then went to Finch’s house, where he lived alone
except for his giant pet antbear. The rest of the night was spent in the living
room, talking and drinking Joe’s horde of natural scotch whiskey until they
both passed out in their chairs.

           
Never in
his life among the teeming homogenized masses of Earth had Pete met such a
forceful personality. That night was the beginning of a close friendship. So
close that when Joe fled Earth after incurring the wrath of the planet’s chief
administrator, Peter went with him. The antbear came along, too.

           
They ran to
Ragna, rented an office and, rather than publish Pete’s book, decided to put it
into practice. Obtaining a business loan on Ragna was no easy matter in those
days, but they swung it and announced the opening of Interstellar Business
Advisors – a big name on a little door.

           
Soon they
began advising. A few small-time independent traders with timorous plans for
growth or consolidation were the first clients. Pete plugged the type of
product, the demographics, the population projections, political vagaries, et
cetera, of the sectors in question into his theoretical programs and ran them
through a computer. The results were then run through Joe Finch, who processed
them with his indefinable combination of intuition and marketing experience,
and a strategy was formed.

           
Success was
slow in coming. The efficacy of an IBA program was never immediately apparent.
The final proof was, as ever, in the marketplace, and that took time. But Joe
and Pete chose their clients carefully, weeding out the fantasists and
quick-credit artists from the serious entrepreneurs. After six or seven standard
years, word got around the trade lanes that those two fellows in that little
office on Ragna really knew what they were doing.

           
The fitful
trickle of inquiries soon swelled to a steady stream and IBA began renting more
space and hiring ancillary personnel. Each of the partners had found himself a
mate by then. Joe became the father of Joseph Finch, Jr., and life was good.