MECH EBOOK (2 page)

“Most importantly, it doesn’t show up in his face.”

Steinbach said nothing.

“Will you be able to guide him?”

He hesitated a moment before answering. “He doesn’t appear to be a weak man. However, enough money...”

“Blur dust and amp-rods speak louder,” purred the lady of New Manchuria. “You will persuade him somehow.” She watched with a knowing smirk as Droad breezed through security, then paused at the door for his giant to catch up a bit before going outside.

“Should I, ah—alert Governor Zimmerman that his replacement has arrived?”

“I’ll do it myself. I’ll enjoy the worm’s terror.”

“The presence of the bodyguard shows that he isn’t completely ignorant of the situation here,” said Steinbach. He broke off at Mai Lee’s gasp of surprise and followed her gaze back to the security screens.

When the new Governor and his bodyguard left the spaceport, more giants made their appearance. They waltzed through security and waded through the throng near the luggage claim section. Each of them wore a black jacket with silver trim and carried long cases like those used by rayball players. Mai Lee judged that they were all close to, or over, eight feet in height. They touched the delivery cubicles and grabbed up huge packs as they were dispensed.

“One, two, three, four, five... He’s not kidding,” muttered Steinbach.

“Count silently,” hissed Mai Lee. “Pay the Captain half the agreed amount, since he withheld half of the information.”

“He will not be pleased,” Steinbach
pointed out.

“He is either double-dealing us or incompetent. I have no time for him in either case.”

“Of course.”

Mai Lee noted one of the other passengers had touched a giant on the sleeve. She pressed the audio focus button immediately, and the computer-controlled parabolic microphones homed in and picked up the man’s words.

“Go Rangers!” the passenger said, and laughed.

The Giant stared at him for a moment, frowning in suspicion, then gave a wintry smile.

“Obviously, the man thinks he’s one of the new rayball players,” said Steinbach, chuckling. “They’re often giants. I doubt that they intended such a reaction.”

Mai Lee ignored him. She squinted a bit, examining the giants closely.

“They are wearing black and silver, the Rangers’ colors. Could they be players?” asked Steinbach.

“Of course not,” snapped Mai Lee. “If you looked carefully, you can see that their cases aren’t quite long enough to hold rayball sticks. Besides which, there are only flares for catch-baskets at one end, not at both ends. Viewed objectively, they looked suspiciously like weapons cases.”

Then the giant that she had focused in on turned an eye to the optical probe. His eyes challenged hers. Staring into the giant’s somber face Mai Lee blinked and for a split second felt a quaver of... not fear exactly, but what did the fool Germans call it?
Angst
. This emotion was followed immediately by rage.

“Damned Captain! Pay him nothing!” she screeched.

“He probably sold them as much information as we got out of him,” said Steinbach. “More perhaps, since it would be easier to get, I wouldn’t be surprised if the new governor was carrying a load of files in that bag of his on both of us.”

“Cease your prattle!” Mai Lee was becoming increasingly agitated.

Steinbach glowered and pursed his lips. “I take it you want me to do something about this rather large team of problems.”

“Ignore them for now. Kill the new Governor. Give him just enough time to let his guard drop a bit, but not enough for his flashy little escort to get organized.”

“Direct,” said Steinbach with an amused nod. “Quite a tall order milady. Might take a good deal of credit.”

“Do it.”

With a cordial nod, but not the bow that she demanded from her staff, the General turned on his heel and left.

She snapped off six months worth of nail-growth from her fingertip as she jabbed the cut-off button. The scene of the spaceport faded. She walked to the north side of the room, where a wall of one-way glass looked out over the city and into the forest of red hork trees beyond. The fruit on the tallest of the giant trees glittered in the sunlight.

She thoughtfully tapped her chin with the remaining inch of her broken nail, then called the Governor.

* * *

Governor Rodney Zimmerman was sitting naked in his bath, sipping from a glass of green hork-fruit wine when Mai Lee’s call came through. He was quite irritated. It was time for his afternoon sex, which he liked to have while relaxing in his ten-thousand gallon tub, to be followed immediately by his afternoon nap. To his mind, there was no room in this scheme for a rude call from the dried up old prune that had helped appoint him. Accordingly, he let the phone chime six times, flashing Mai Lee’s ID and stern image on the screen each time, lest he forget who it was that was calling, before he gulped his wine and opened the connection.

“Working hard as usual I see, Governor,” she said, making no attempt at pleasantries. She stared rudely at his exposed fatty pink abdomen and stick-figure arms.

“I’m on vacation,” he said stiffly.

“Naturally,” she purred, a dangerous sound.

“Of course, it’s always nice to hear from you, Empress,” he smiled, using the title he knew she liked best. There hadn’t been an official Emperor or Empress of New Manchuria since the earliest years of the colony, but Mai Lee had the proper blood and the power to fit the title.

“I’ve got some unpleasant news for you,” she said, pausing to ponder her broken nail. Governor Zimmerman knew she was playing with him, but couldn’t help responding with a groan. He so hated bad news. Bad news usually meant work at the capital, or worse, a field trip away from his beautiful villa on the rim of the famous Stardrop Cliffs to some squalid corner of Garm.

“Do you recall how you got your post, Governor?”

“Why... why, of course,” stammered Zimmerman, spilling a dollop of his green wine into his steaming bathwater. He had refilled his glass, having sensed he might need bolstering. “I was appointed by the Planetary Senate.”

“After the unfortunate demise of the duly commissioned Governor Riedman sent out from Neu Schweitz by the Cluster Nexus.”

“Yes, the shuttle accident over the Desolation, a black day for the colony,” said Zimmerman, really beginning to hate Mai Lee all over again. She had swung her clan’s votes in his favor unanimously, which when added to the block from the Zimmerman’s made him a shoo-in for the appointment. She all-too-often made a point of recalling this to his attention.

“Yes. I recall your presence at the funeral. You can fake tears like a holo-actor.”

“Could you get to the point, Mai Lee?” he asked with uncharacteristic bluntness. Her prodding was beginning to get under his skin, which was pruning up badly in the churning waters. His paygirl stepped out onto the terrace wearing a terrycloth skirt and slippers. He waved her back into the house. She left with her lower-lip protruding in an exaggerated pout.

Mai Lee appeared to be enjoying herself. “Ah, how strange are these coincidences of fate that change the faces of power.”

Feeling the first pang of real worry, Zimmerman leaned toward the phone, pressing his flabby side against the cool lip of his tub. “What’s happened?”

Mai Lee’s eyes ceased wandering and focused back on his face, her black-eyed gaze hardening. “The new Governor has just arrived on the
Gladius
. He will be claiming your title shortly, I suggest you prepare a reception for him.”

“What!” cried the Governor, horror-struck. He sunk back into the warm waters, eyes bulging like a heart-attack victim. “But it’s only been eight years! How could this happen? What will I do?”

“It was bound to, sooner or later. The Cluster people aren’t total idiots, you know,” said Mai Lee with an off-handed gesture.

“What are we going to do?”

“I’ll do what I can, and you do what you can. That means get your heavily-invested crowd of uncles and aunts to back you and slow down any kind of action in the Senate, in case he announces before we can move.”

“But what will you do?”

Here Mai Lee grinned and showed all her ancient teeth—unnaturally preserved enamel that should have rotted out of her head one hundred and eighty years ago. Somehow that grin shined through all the make-up and the operations, showing her true, fantastic age. She leered at him, a skeleton clothed in flesh that hung on her bones like limp putty. “I’ll do what I do best. I’ll kill him.”

After the connection cut off, Zimmerman was left to stew in his warm gurgling bath. He swam to the far side of his bath and looked out over the edge of the Stardrop Cliffs. Fluffy clouds scudded along far below him, brushing up against the great rock walls. Ten thousand feet down, air-swimmers wheeled over an endless stretch of white sand and black rocks. The sea pounded against the cliffs with huge waves churned up by the powerful gravity of Gopus overhead. It was a scene unchanged for millennia.

But it would change for Hans Zimmerman. If this new usurper were allowed to take his place, he would no longer be allowed to enjoy his villa, nor the jungle house, nor his saber-reed plantation on Gopus. He wouldn’t be able to afford them without the tens of thousands of credits in graft he received weekly for his lax police services and general rubber-stamping of the Senate’s every bill. Roasted air-swimmers and even green hork-leaf wine, his favorite, would be things of the past.

With a knot of cold fear in his belly that he had not known for almost a decade, Hans Zimmerman gulped down the last of his wine and swam back to his phone. He began tapping wet fingers on his contacts-list like a man possessed.

Two

It was midnight in the depths of the Equatorial Desolation. Garth huddled close to a tiny campfire that sputtered and popped, greedily eating the sparse fuel of spiny weeds he fed it. The weeds were all that grew on the sifting red sands.

An unknown figure approached along the highway. As he drew near, Garth recognized that the man was a fellow skald.

“Your rider is the great Fryx?” asked the man coming into the firelight.

“Yes,” said Garth. “Come and sit with me.”

Zeke, a small skald with large ears and long fingers, sat beside him. “You are indeed blessed to carry one so exalted as Fryx.”

Garth smiled slightly, trying to quell his pride. He added another twig to the campfire and in so doing moved slightly so that the scarred, red, horizontal stain that slashed across his face was more visible in the firelight. “The dictates tell us that it’s not proper for a skald to feel prideful.”

“Ah! I see now the mark of a great rider. The way it encompasses your eyes with livid red is truly striking,” Zeke said, beaming. He leaned forward so that he could better examine the red stain in the flickering light of the campfire. “Only the oldest and the largest of the riders leave such a blaze of glory upon mounting their skalds. Now I understand why my rider has driven me to find you. Surely, I have much to learn from the skald who bears Fryx.”

“It was more good fortune than anything else that brought Fryx to me,” said Garth, trying to sound humble.

“But tell me, communication must be easier for you than I, how does it go with Fryx?”

“True telepathy with one’s rider always takes time. Today I started playing at sunset, and still I continue to play and listen, hours later in the depths of night.”

Zeke nodded. “It goes much the same with my rider. Tell me, brother Garth, why did you come out here to this forgotten corner of the planet?”

“I seek what all skalds seek: truth through communion with my rider. I have wandered over much of this planetary system.”

“You are young yet.”

“Yes, I’m still serving my pilgrimage. I’ve visited many of the works of man and nature, and recently entered the Desolation seeking solitude. The Desolation at night allows the closest intimacy and communication with one’s rider.”

“I beg your forgiveness for disturbing you,” said Zeke seriously.

Garth waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.

“So you follow the great crossing highway northward, and I follow it southward. I came here for no reason of pilgrimage, however. My rider drove me here with the express purpose of finding you and Fryx.”

Garth stared into his fire for a moment, watching the tiny yellow tongues of light. He produced his skire. “Perhaps it’s time we let our riders have free rein with us.”

Zeke nodded and solemnly produced his skire as well. Together, they began to play.

Soon Garth was in complete harmony with his rider. His fingers danced over the reed instrument with fluttering bird-like motions. He heard only the warbling music and felt only the cold night air. The desert climate gave his skire an excellent clarity of tone. Each thin note seemed to last for an eternity.

After a time there came a welcome scratching in his brain, indicating that Fryx was active and willing to commune. Garth opened his eyes long enough to glance over at Zeke. The man played his skire fervently; his fingers danced madly over the tiny holes and his cheeks puffed out. Sweat bathed them both despite the cool night breezes.