The Credulity Nexus (14 page)

Veb blinked
and said nothing.

The lieutenant
was a big man, not in the way Rik was, or Veb himself, but he
filled up a room, and made everything in that room all about him.
Veb was hugely grateful that it was Lieutenant Lincoln Eugene
Burleigh who had answered his alarm. Anybody with less presence and
authority, and Veb might have had to blow Turgu's head off. And
then they'd have been collecting up Veb's bits and pieces in
buckets and looking for his brain box under the bar.

“
Thank you, Lieutenant,” he
said.

“
All in a day's work.” He bellowed an order
to his squad and they left the bar at the double. He turned to Veb,
drawing the upload closer with a gesture. “You know, this is the
Wild West, Mr. Rea. Heinlein's just a dusty little frontier town
when you get down to it, full of desperadoes and mean, gun-totin'
outlaws. My job as Sheriff is to keep the lid on things here until
everything settles down, and civilised folk move in and make the
place respectable. Do you see what I'm saying?”

Veb tried not
to let his confusion show. “Er, yes, Sheriff. I mean
Lieutenant.”

Burleigh
nodded to himself. “You'd better keep your finger near that button,
you hear? I've a feeling your friends will be calling again, real
soon.”

Veb forced a
smile and considered the possibility that there wasn't a sane
person in the whole city. Satisfied that he'd made his point, the
lieutenant followed his soldiers out the door.

The warble of
the bar phone made Veb jump, despite all his emotional dampening.
He glanced towards it, and would have let the message service take
the call if not for the name on the display: Maria Dunlop. Rik's
ex-wife.

“
I need to talk to–” she said, stopping
mid-sentence as she realised what she was talking to. “I need to
talk to Rik, please.”

She was
pretty. Striking, in a blonde, English public school way. Ethereal.
She had nothing of the earthy glamour of the Drew sisters. Not
exactly a woman; more of a girl in an adult’s body. But Veb could
see how a guy like Rik would think she was the be-all and
end-all.

That was one
of the benefits of being an eighty-year-old in an android body. A
beautiful woman turns up, and you see straight past the surface
features that would once have had your hormones fizzing in your
brain. You get to see the person behind the mask – with eyes that
have seen a lot.

“
I'm sorry, but Rik isn't around. You could
maybe try again in a few days.”

There was a
brief time lag, just enough to let you know you were taking across
four hundred thousand kilometres. “A few days? No, no. I have to
get in touch with him right now. It's an emergency.”

“
What can I tell you? He's away on a
business trip. I don't know when he'll be back.”

“
Someone must know!” She was starting to
sound a bit shrill. Whatever her problem was, Veb guessed it was
pretty serious. “What about his wives? They must know.” She
actually looked embarrassed just saying it, and Veb realised she
would never have asked to speak to Rik's wives in a million years
if it she wasn't desperate. There was still feeling there, then.
Lots of it.

“
Rik's wives are...” He couldn't say it.
“Look, when Rik turns up, I'll get him to call you, OK? It's the
best I can do.”

“
He's definitely coming back
then?”

“
Well, yeah.” What else would he do? This
was where he lived.

“
Tell him I'm coming.”

“
What?”

“
To the Moon. Tell him I'll be there as
soon as I can make it. I'll call again as soon as I
can.”

She looked as
if the decision was as much of a surprise to her as it was to him.
Yet he could see some relief in her face too, as if she hadn't
known quite what to do, but now at least she had some sort of
activity to focus on.

“
You will tell him, won't you?”

“
Sure. I mean yes, yes, of
course.”

“
Tell him it's Maria, OK?”

“
Yes. I'm Veb.”

“
What?”

“
That's my name, Veb. I'm a friend of
Rik's.”

She looked at
him for a moment, perhaps trying to take it in that her ex-husband
had uploads for friends. Then she gave a quick little nod. “Thank
you,” she said, and cut the call.

Veb found himself staring at a service
provider advert and stabbed the hang-up button.
Where the hell are you,
Rik?
he asked the empty
bar.

Rik felt sick.
He seemed to be underwater, his body surging with the ebb and flow
of powerful tides. Panicking, he tried not to breathe, forced his
eyes to open, struggled to move his arms and legs. But opening his
eyes didn't help. Bright walls surged and whirled all around him,
making no sense, making his nausea worse than before.

He remembered
the upload, Rivers, grabbing his gun. Forgetting the water, he
called out, “Fariba!” But he didn't hear his own voice, just a
distant, incoherent moan.

He realised he
was on his back and tried to sit up, but he couldn't move. Tidal
forces moved him. Bright walls shifted across his vision. He could
hold his breath no longer and gulped in a lungful of air. His
relief at not drowning started him laughing.

“
He's coming round,” someone said. He tried
to move his head, to see who it was, and sent the lights smearing
across his vision.

“
He's secure,” said another voice. “Let's
just get him on board and I'll give him another shot.”

“
Is that safe? He's already had more
than–”

“
What do you care? Just keep
moving.”

Zero-G! That's
why Rik felt so strange. He was strapped to a gurney and two men
were moving him along a short corridor. And he was in space. He
remembered the scramjet standing on the tarmac at LAX. Had they
taken him up in that? If so, they must have docked with another
ship in orbit. They were transferring him.

He began
struggling as best he could, but the straps were tight and his body
was weak. And Fariba... What had they done with Fariba? He tried to
call out again, but his tongue was fat in his mouth and his voice
was a low groan.

They stopped
moving and a door shut behind them, metal on metal. His ears popped
as the pressure changed. Airlock. The pressure was never quite the
same on two different ships. It always took a moment to change from
one to the other. He stopped struggling. Whatever ship they were
taking him to, they were already inside it. If only his head would
clear.

-oOo-

“
That's it. He'll be awake in a
moment.”

Rik saw a
woman in a jumpsuit step away from him and lower an infuser. His
head ached, and he felt like he weighed a ton.

“
Fariba,” he croaked and this time his
voice seemed to work.

“
He must really like this Fariba bitch,” a
man said. “It's all he ever says.”

Rik tried to
raise his head to look at him, but his skull was too heavy. Hot
pain shot across his eyes, making him squeeze them shut.

“
OK, can we take him now?” It was a
different man's voice.

“
Give him a minute,” the woman said.
“Unless you feel like carrying him.”

The man
laughed. “Not that big bastard. Not with the G we're pulling. He
can damn well walk.”

“
Where am I?” Rik managed to
say.

“
You're aboard a space cruiser named
The Phenomenon of
Man
,” the woman told
him. “I'm afraid you've been unconscious for quite a while, so it
may take some time to get your strength back.” She stepped into his
line of sight again. She was young and serious, and her jumpsuit
had a medic's patch above her left breast.

“
How long?” he croaked.

The medic
fetched him a bottle of water that he could suck at through a
plastic pipe. The water was wonderfully cool in his throat.

“
The woman who was with me. Is she all
right?” With every passing second, his head felt a little less
fuzzy. The pain, however, would not go away.

The medic
looked to one side, and a man answered him. “There wasn't no woman
with you, you dumb, drugged-up fuck.”

Rik pulled his head up to look at the
speaker, and this time he managed to get a look at the guy before
his head fell back. An ugly, grizzled man with a shaven head, a
kicked-in face and flat, lustreless eyes that said 'hired muscle'
as plainly as if they'd flashed it up in neon. He too was wearing a
jumpsuit, but the only patch on it was the ship's logo with the
words ‘
The
Phenomenon of Man’
around the outside.

So Freymann
wasn’t with him. Rik didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
Maybe she was of no interest to whoever had snatched him.

He hoped
so.

“
What about the upload?”

The muscle
sneered. “Yeah? Which one? We got more zombies on this ship than in
my great-granddad's book collection.” He thought he was a great
wit, and laughed at his own stupid joke.

“
A delightful young lady. Looks like she's
been dipped in oil.” Just talking was exhausting Rik.

“
Oh, that one.” Rik could tell from the
change in tone that the muscle and Rivers weren't close. “She's
around. Hey, is he ready yet?”

“
Help yourself,” said the medic.

The two men
unstrapped Rik and dragged him to his feet. The gravity in the ship
was crushing, and he couldn't stand without help – which his
captors gave with much cursing and complaining. They led him out of
the medical ward and along narrow corridors to a room with toilet
facilities.

“
Clean yourself up,” the muscle told him.
“You stink like old fish.”

Showering was
hell. Just standing up was hard enough, and doing it under stinging
hot water while trying to move his arms was more than he could
take. After a while, he let himself slump to the bottom of the
stall, and sat there letting the water scour his body.

The only
clothing in sight when he got out was one of the ship jumpsuits.
The fact that it fit him perfectly implied the ship was equipped
with a clothes printer, and that it had unobtrusively scanned him
at some point. Not that he cared. His head hurt so much he just
wanted to curl up on the floor. Clothed or naked; it was all the
same to him.

The muscle
turned up and led him back into the corridor, then back to the
medical ward. He asked the medic for an aspirin, and she gave him a
shot. Within seconds the pain started to ebb.

“
What the hell was that?” he asked, rubbing
his temples.

“
The pain? Nothing to do with me. Maybe you
had a bad reaction to the sedative?”

“
What about my cogplus? I've been getting
headaches ever since I had it fitted.”

“
You want me to take a look?” She stepped
towards him, but the muscle grabbed her arm and pulled her
away.

“
What do you think you're doing?” He fixed
Rik with a glare. “Get on that couch. This ain't your private
hospital. Docking manoeuvres start in two minutes.”

The medic
shrugged and left the room. Rik sat where he was told, and the
muscle strapped him in again.

“
Who are we docking with?” he
asked.

“
You'll see.”

“
I didn't know the Chicago Mob had space
facilities.”

The muscle
made himself comfortable on another acceleration couch. “I think
your brain's still fucked. Why don't you shut your face?”

The sickening
feel of his stomach floating up into his chest told Rik the fierce
deceleration was over. During the next fifteen minutes, long
periods of free fall were interspersed with short, powerful
accelerations that pushed him in unpredictable directions. When a
longer push from the floor below ended in a solid thump that echoed
throughout the ship, he breathed a long sigh of relief. They were
docked, and feeling a steady one-third G force through the
floor.

“
A space station,” Rik said. Most of them
aimed for about one-third G. It was what most spacers considered
comfortable.

“
Give the man a coconut,” the muscle
grumbled.

“
A rock and roller, right?” All the latest
stations were of this type now, tethered to an asteroid on a long
lead, and rotating around their common centre of gravity. Dragging
big rocks in from the asteroid belt, to use for stations in Earth
orbit, had become one of Cordell's fastest growing business
sectors. Maybe
The Phenomenon of Man
had lifted them from low Earth orbit to one of the
geosynchronous stations at thirty-six thousand kilometres. That was
a long haul, but it would only have taken a few hours. Rik felt
that much more time had passed than that.

With his
headache receding and the crippling two-G deceleration now over,
his brain was slowly rebooting itself. It occurred to him that he
could call Freymann and check up on her. If he could have slapped
his forehead, he would have done. What kind of idiot wouldn't have
thought of using the phone? But when he tried, his cogplus gave him
the 'no signal' message. In frustration, he turned to the
muscle.

“
Why am I here?” he demanded. “What the
hell do you think you're doing, kidnapping me like
this?”