Three Card Monte (The Martian Alliance) (4 page)

As usual, Roy’s landing was perfect. The discussion with Bullfrog wasn’t customary, however.

“I want to stay on the ship,” Bullfrog said for the third time.

“Monte will expect to see you,” Roy replied. “It’s going to raise more questions for him if you don’t show than if you do.”

“I’ll monitor as well,” Ciarissa said.

“If you can,” Bullfrog countered. “Just because it’s a new casino on a world that doesn’t normally require Espens to identify, that doesn’t mean Monte won’t have installed the usual tele-surveillance.”

Shocking absolutely no one, casinos and similar weren’t excited to have beings with telepathic and telekinetic powers hanging around. Espens were required to wear complicated head and body gear whenever they left their ships on Roulette and before going into casinos on other planets with gaming establishments, and on some planets without gaming but with a high privacy factor.

Tele-inhibitors had never been required on Polliworld. The Underground wasn’t concerned about Espen powers, for whatever reason. However, Bullfrog’s point was well made, because Polliworld had also never had a casino before.

Ciarissa closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “I sense no problems, at least within the spaceport. I’ll be able to test when we’re closer to our destination.”

I checked Doven’s reaction. Feathers weren’t ruffled, but I could tell he knew I was watching him, so that didn’t mean anything.

“We need to have someone guarding the ship,” Bullfrog said, trying a new tactic. “And in this case, I’m the best option.”

“Monte will ask questions you don’t want us to answer if you’re not with us,” Roy said patiently.

“Yeah? Well I’ll bet he asks some questions we don’t want to answer if I
am
along. Starting with ‘do you know my friends here?’ and ending with ‘so you’ve been lying to me all this time?’ I think our best course is me staying on the
Stingray
.”

“We have her locked down. I’m the captain, and you’re coming along. This is a social call. We’re not doing a job—we’re visiting a friend.”

“Job or not, this is a bad idea, Roy.” Bullfrog shook his head, but he stopped arguing. And on that cheerful note, we locked down the
Stingray
and headed for the Spillway.

Polliworld’s Tourism Bureau, which was unofficially run by the Underground, had two distinct branches: Scientific and Respite. For first-timers it was easier to get through the Spillway, which was their version of customs, if you were coming through via the Respite side.

However, we’d been here often enough that the
Stingray’s
crew and mission were reasonably well-known, and scientific missions were rarely searched because their equipment tended to be fragile and expensive to replace. On Polliworld, whoever broke it bought it, and that rule extended to Polliworld Underground employees. As Bullfrog liked to say, Polliworld Underground was firm but fair.

We arrived to a short line and were up at the head of it in no time. “Business on Polliworld?” the Polliwog working our line asked.

“Crew of the science vessel
Stingray
,” Roy said. “Here to continue our research on the habits and lifecycles of leeches.”

Ironically, this really was our mission. We’d created it in honor of Monte, but without his knowledge, of course.

“Where’s your equipment?” the clerk asked.

“On our ship,” Roy replied. “We want to determine where we’ll be studying before we haul it all out.”

“And we want to see your new gaming establishment,” Ciarissa added with a beaming smile.

The Polliwog nodded. “Good. We’re very proud of it.”

“We heard about it from six solar systems away,” Dr. Wufren said. “Made us get ready in a hurry.”

The Polliwog smiled. “Length of stay?”

“Unsure,” Roy said. “Let’s request the maximum, if we may, just to be on the safe side.”

“One Polliworld month,” our clerk said as he stamped nine bright green leaflets and handed them to Roy. They really were leaves, from one of the sturdier and abundant trees that grew on Polliworld like weeds. Polliwogs preferred to use natural products whenever possible.

Roy handed us each one. They were stamped for a month’s stay with full access. I wondered if Ciarissa had helped the Polliwog to be amenable or if we’d just caught him on a good day. Normally we had to work a little harder to get this kind of all access pass.

Once you’d landed at a spaceport and made it past the Spillway, Polliworld was fairly lax about everything else. The Underground tended to protect itself, and therefore its planet, quite well. The positive of being thought of as scientists here was easy and reasonably unhindered access. The negative was that all our weapons were still on the
Stingray
. It was an unpleasant but necessary tradeoff.

We left the Spillway area, unmolested and basically ignored. It was a nice feeling; experience said this level of casual disinterest wouldn’t last.

“Ready to get to work?” Roy asked me.

“Sure. Let’s head off to study the habits of Monte the Leech and to determine if his lifecycle is in danger.”

Monte had taken up residence in Amphibia, the capitol city of Polliworld. The Amphibia Space Center was huge and had anything and everything you could want: a museum, a theme park, the Swampland Zoo, restaurants, gift shops, and more. Anything made on or about Polliworld—including Polliskins and various transportation methods—were for sale or rent. Some visitors to Polliworld never left the Space Center and still felt they’d really seen the planet.

Enclosed buildings were fly-, humidity-, and fetid-odors-free. I could see the wisdom in never leaving the Space Center.

I was somewhat surprised Monte’s establishment wasn’t attached to the Space Center. I had no clue whether this was a sound idea or not, or if the casino was elsewhere because the Underground wanted Monte elsewhere. Either way, I planned to find out.

“Can you tell if it’s safe?” Roy asked Ciarissa.

“Especially for you and Dr. Wufren,” Doven added.

“Not yet. We’re too far away.” Ciarissa could read minds from space if necessary, but spotting electronic and mechanical surveillance and related equipment required closer proximity. Dr. Wufren was telekinetic, not telepathic, so he normally needed Ciarissa to know what items might need to be moved, shut down, tampered with, or broken—and when.

“We’ll go along and if we have to take public transportation to return to the safety of the Space Center, we will,” Dr. Wufren said. “Don’t worry, my boys, we can take care of ourselves.”

“The Underground taking care of all of us is what worries me,” Bullfrog muttered under his breath. If Roy heard him, he ignored Bullfrog’s fretting.

We rented a planet flyer and headed for The Polliwog Palace. Monte was all about keeping the theme if the original had worked out well.

Amphibia, like the other Polliworld cities, was on dry ground. But the swamp-and-flies motif was in full force anyway, making visibility sketchy. All this caused a first-time visitor to assume that Polliworld ground transportation went slowly and carefully and was well-controlled at all times.

Which is why so many first-time visitors ended up in the hospital.

Polliwogs made good pilots in space, and even in the air, but they were awful flyers on the ground for whatever reason. Maybe it was because the more flies they could smash onto their windshields meant the bigger, better meal later, but “chaotic” was the kindest description I could ever come up with for how they flew.

“They all drive like little old ladies with a death wish,” Willy said as Roy dodged the first, but certainly not the last, near crash. “It’s like they can’t see and have the accelerator pressed down to the floorboards.”

He was right and I was glad Roy was driving—even Doven would have had difficulty avoiding the planet flyers going every which way at reckless speeds with no obvious directional goals in mind.

“You say that every time,” Kyle mentioned through clenched teeth.

“It’s true every time,” Willy replied with a hiss as a flyer missed us by a hair’s breadth. “This place is like running a gauntlet—bad all the way through with death likely waiting for you at the end.”

“Cut the chatter,” Bullfrog said. “Roy needs to concentrate.”

This was true and we all shut up, other than group and individual gasps of fear as we ran the traffic gauntlet and prayed to our personal gods for safe passage.

Proving again that he was the best at any kind of piloting, Roy got us to the Polliworld Palace unscathed. He went to self-parking, and no one argued. The walk was longer, but you didn’t have to wait for someone to bring your flyer around if a fast retreat was necessary. Fast retreat was frequently necessary for us.

“What do you get here?” Roy asked Ciarissa.

She closed her eyes and tilted her head back again. “Nothing. There is no telepathic surveillance or telekinetic inhibition I can detect.”

“That’s odd,” Willy said.

“Scary,” Bullfrog suggested.

“Good for us,” Dr. Wufren offered.

“I’m with the doctor,” Roy said. “Let’s go. But everyone be ready for anything.”

“You know,” Kyle said. “Business as usual.”

The downside of using general parking was that it wasn’t enclosed. Thankfully, we had our Polliskins. However, we were either going to have to keep them on inside or leave them at the spacesuit check, which was never a good plan for us.

Bullfrog’s unease convinced Roy to have us keep our Polliskins on. However, as we entered the antechamber that connected self-parking with the casino’s lobby and took a look around, everyone who had a ’Skin was checking it.

Bullfrog was looking elsewhere. “Is there really no tele-surveillance of any kind around?” he asked in a low voice.

“I sense none,” Ciarissa reassured him.

“Nor I,” Dr. Wufren said. “Nothing seems to be inhibiting me in any way.”

Roy looked at Ciarissa. She nodded. “
We will do as the others
,” she said in our heads.

We waited for a contingent of Polliwogs with bad attitudes to descend on us, but nothing happened.

We heaved a collective sigh and struggled out of the ’Skins. Dr. Wufren used his powers to help Doven and Tresia out of their ’Skins. No one took any kind of interest in us.

“Don’t get cocky,” Bullfrog warned. “Just because you can’t spot it and no one’s come to slap you two into tele-restraints doesn’t mean they’re not monitoring.”

“Bullfrog’s right,” Roy said. “Only use your talents for what’s necessary for the job, not for anything else.”

Dr. Wufren sighed. “You do like to remove all the fun out of life sometimes, my boy.” He grinned as Roy and Bullfrog glared at him. “Not to worry. We’ll be the souls of discretion.”

The Polliwogs working in coat check were younger females. Kyle and Bullfrog checked our suits in—Kyle flirted, Bullfrog blew his cheeks out, the females giggled and promised to keep our gear very safe. Two of them passed their cards to Bullfrog. One passed hers to Kyle. “I like off-worlders,” she said, loud enough for the rest of us to hear.

Kyle grinned, Bullfrog looked pleased with himself, and Roy blushed. Roy’s extremely old-fashioned reactions toward the variety of come-ons he, and to an extent Kyle, always got was always endearing.

“Nice to see your charm is still working,” I said to Bullfrog as we walked along the enclosed corridor.

“I’m the best there is at cheek puffing.”

“That’s what it says on the bathroom stalls,” Willy said.

I managed to refrain from comment, or laughter, but only because I’d known Bullfrog a long time. Every species had their own special mating rituals.

The reminder that I no longer had the option to practice the rituals specific to my species slithered up from the part of my mind where I’d shoved those regrets. I had Roy, and really, I didn’t need someone who could shape shift to make me happy. Even if I met another shifter—an unlikely possibility since the Diamante Purge—I’d want him to shift into a copy of Roy anyway.