"Just be careful what questions you let Karl ask you during probing. Remember that I'm dead. To Ef Sontag and to everyone else except you and Karl."
"Surely we'll have to tell Mom and Pop—"
"Fuck Simon! Don't you dare tell him anything about me or Lee's deposition or Dagasatt! That goes for every other member of the Rampart Board of Directors as well. For their own safety, if for no other reason."
"Asa, Mom has got to know. She's slipping away and she refuses to let the doctors do anything. If she believed you'd been murdered, it would finish her."
"All right. Tell Katje right now. But for God's sake impress on her how vital it is to keep the information secret. Remember that someone in the family is hand in glove with Al-istair Drummond and Galapharma."
"We don't really know that for certain."
"Do you want to chance it?"
She let her intent gaze fall. "No. It fits too well. All right. I promise to beware of the unknown ratfink in the Frost bosom."
"I'm serious about the safety considerations, too. I think you should make a firm recommendation that the entire Board of Directors remain on Earth under heavy security. Until I nail Schneider or ... we all fall down in six weeks' time. Get the family members to stay at the ranch if you can. And when I say family, I don't include Cousin Zed. He'll explode into solar orbit when you tell Simon that you want the CEO job. Even if Zed isn't the Gala mole, he might try to dry-gulch you out of sheer pique."
"I'll deal with Zed. Coping with Pop might be more of a problem. He'll demand to know why I've changed my mind and want to lead Rampart now that you're dead and things look blacker than they ever have."
"You can tell Simon this much in strict confidence: say that Matt Gregoire has a new and important lead on Ollie Schneider and his fugitive associates. Following through will require the expenditure of thirty million dollars—"
"Yikes!"
"—deliverable to Matt Gregoire immediately. The money has to come from Simon's private accounts, not from Rampart."
"Pop will try to pump Matt, you know."
"Good luck to him. Just tell him to send a blind EFT draft to her home in Vetivarum within six hours. I can't carry out the Dagasatt mission without the cojonudo dinero."
"You'll get it. Do you need anything else?"
"Two matters have to be taken care of. Neither will help Rampart, but they may be useful additions to the circumstantial evidence proving a Haluk threat."
"Just tell me."
"First, the matter of the Haluk cadaver with the human DNA that went to Tokyo for study. Get it away from the university researchers and hide it. Xenoaffairs received a transcript of the analytical data from Professor Shibuya, but it's been classified Cosmic Secret, and SXA might deny its existence. Get another copy from Shibuya and tell her to watch her back. You'd better pray that Drummond's spooks haven't gotten to Japan first."
"Oh, my... Yes, all right. What's the second thing?"
"More body-snatching. You'll have to find someone dependable to dig up Fake Emily and secure the remains. And this time let us pray that her loving brother didn't have her cremated before interment in the family plot in Swaledale, North Yorkshire."
Eve was frowning. "You mean—"
"Emily Blake Konigsberg's doppelganger, the Haluk demi-clone duplicate of her that was accidentally killed in a star-ship accident before it could wreak unspecified mischief. No one knew the corpse wasn't human when it was released to her brother."
"Yes, I recall you telling me about that. I'd completely forgotten ... or perhaps 1 put it out of my mind because of the appalling implications. But we never knew for certain where the Haluk clone was heading, or what it intended to do."
"Fake Emily and its mission aren't what really concerns me, Evie. I'm worried that there might be other Haluk disguised as humans—and I'd like Ef Sontag to worry about them, too. That bastard Elgar planned to duplicate you and me as part of the plot to take over Rampart. But if we can believe what Real Emily told us, none of the Galapharma agents knew that the Haluk were already copying humans as part of some secret scheme of their own."
"Sontag will have to be told about that even if we don't find the demicloned body. I'll see to it. Do you have the brother's name?"
"Hubert Blake Konigsberg. He's a chemistry prof at some university in Leeds. Emily studied there before going out to Stanford in California and becoming a big wheel in xenobiology."
"I'll do a data scan on her burial myself. If the body exists, perhaps your forensic friend Beatrice Mangan can advise us on how to have the DNA analyzed."
"Excellent idea. Those findings should also go to Sontag." I tried to think if I'd forgotten anything. If I had, I was past remembering now. "I guess that's about all, sis."
She grimaced at me in a comical fashion, pushing her human hair away from her face with a grotesque alien hand. "All? Oh, Asa!"
"Hey." I managed to smile back at her. "Up, up, and away, kiddo. Blue Supergal and cashiered Supercop, fighting to save the day."
"There's that," she said in a low voice, the humor suddenly faded away. "But there's Rampart, too. For me, at any rate. I know you don't really care about the Starcorp. But the thought of losing it to a madman like Alistair Drummond—"
"Evie," I broke in gently. "Leave Drummond to me."
She seemed to freeze. Then she whispered, "Can I really do that, Asa? When you finish on Dagasatt—"
"If the mission succeeds, you won't have to worry about me tossing Ollie Schneider onto your doorstep while I go back to my old beach-bum lifestyle. I've had enough of Drummond's games. He needs burying. Like a rabid skunk. I'm ready to take on the job."
"Thank you," she said quietly. "Please be careful."
"Can't do that. But maybe I'll finally get lucky." I touched her image on the screen. "Gotta sleep now. Goodbye, sis."
She nodded and the com unit went to standby.
I slumped inertly in the office chair, staring at the remains of my supper, wincing in embarrassment as my fatigue-drugged brain replayed the John Wayne stand-up-sheriff speech I'd just delivered. Had I really said that?
Yep, I had.
A wonder Eve hadn't laughed in my face.
I'd worry about it tomorrow. Like one of the living dead, I shuffled into the back room of Mart's office, stepped out of the floppy sneakers and dropped onto the sofa bed, not even bothering to open it.
A rabid skunk... a steak bone .. . dredged up from childhood memories of vacations at the Sky Ranch. ..
It's a late spring evening in the high desert country of the Sierra Ancha. Getting kinda chilly. Stars galore, the faint noise of a creek in the canyon below, faraway howl of a coyote. There's Simon, tall as a ponderosa pine in his jeans and pearl-snap shirt and shearling jacket and old Tony Lama boots and curly-brim Stetson. There's me, no more than seven years old but dressed about the same, helping Pop clean up the supper dishes before we bed down for the night.
He'll sleep on the ground beside the dying campfire, long gun at his side, like a real cowboy. I'm stuck with a tiny screened pup tent and strict orders from my Mom: "Never mind if your father wants to risk a blacktail rattler snuggling inside his bedroll! You sleep in that tent, Asa. Do you hear me? And be sure to keep the screen zipped."
I toss our steak bones and leftover beans and apple cores into the ashes at the edge of the fire, zap the last plate clean in the laser stove, and pack the cook kit away. After a while Pop and I go off together with a lantern to check on his black stallion, Bandido, and my paint pony, Charlie, picketed a couple dozen meters away among some paloverdes smothered with blossoms.
The mounts are fine. Simon and I stand side by side, peeing against the broken trunk of a huge dead saguaro cactus looming skeletal in the starlight. Then we go back to the campfire. Flickering orange flames illuminate my little tent, which stands on the opposite side of the fire with its mesh curtains neatly tied open.
"Pop! Look!" I freeze in horror.
Something's inside the te
nt, sitting on my sleeping bag and gnawing one of the bones I'd failed to dispose of properly: an animal smaller than a house cat, dark fur strongly blotched and marbled with white. It sees the encroaching humans and does something so bizarre as to be nearly unbelievable.
Leaps into a perfect handstand, body in the air, jittering and bouncing and waving its plumy tail.
"Little spotted skunk," Simon murmurs.
I'd seen them road-squished, but never alive. The critter is in a frenzy, dropping onto all fours for a moment and then standing up on its hands again. It repeats the goofy maneuver over and over as I watch, thunderstruck. Then it hisses, picks up the bone and resumes chewing.
"Damn fool kid," says Simon. "Told you to burn up the leftovers."
"How can we chase it out of there?" I whisper in dismay. "It'll spray stink on my sleeping bag—maybe on the saddles and all the rest of our stuff!"
"Don't move, boy. Stay right where you are. I'll be right back."
He retreats, taking the lantern, and returns a minute later with one of the dry saguaro ribs, over a meter long. Cautiously, he pushes one end of the cactus stick into the fire. He grabs his rifle. When the stick blazes up, he takes it in his other hand and moves slowly toward the tent with the burning brand held ahead of him.
The flames come nearer and nearer to the little skunk. It sits petrified for a moment, just inside the tent door, then drops the bone and skitters away into the dark desert night.
"Oh, wow!" I groan. "That was close."
"Most animals are afraid of fire." Simon makes certain that the skunk is gone. "It was acting a mite peculiar. Had me worried."
"The handstands?"
"Nope. That's the usual way they warn you off. The nervous twitching and the way it hissed is what bothered me. Sometimes a skunk will have rabies. They catch it when they're bit by an infected bat. These little spotted guys are normally bold as brass, kinda cute, but a rabid one will come runnin' right at you. Crazy fearless, scared of nothing. You better be ready to shoot if that happens, and never mind about gettin' stink on you. That's the least of your worries! You got to shoot a rabid skunk dead and bury it without touching it. Got that, boy?"
I say, "Yes, Pop."
"Okay. Go to sleep now." He unstraps his bedroll.
I kick the stupid steak bone out of my violated shelter and into the center of the campfire. Then I zip the mesh curtains shut and lie on my sleeping bag fully clothed, my hunting knife clenched in my fist, listening fearfully for the scratching of tiny sharp claws against the outer fabric.
Eventually, my eyes close.
"Helly?" Rapping, rapping. "Helly?"
No sooner had I managed to fall asleep than a horrible noise woke me up. I cursed and rolled off the sofa and crashed onto the carpeted floor. Ooh, that hurt. More rapping. I struggled to my feet and remembered where I was. Limping to the door, I opened it. Matt stood there holding a large stack of packages. The big office window behind her still showed the luminous dark gray of snowfall in the nightbound city.
"It's oh-six-hundred," she said. "Here are some fresh clothes. If you'd like to pull yourself together, I'll order breakfast for us out here and give you a status report on Operation Q."
"Thanks. Be with you in a sec."
I retired to the impressive executive John, showered, and got rid of my beard. The wounds were much improved, and most of the bruises had responded to treatment and were fading to a sickly greenish-purple hue. I ate a few analgesic tablets, combed my hair with a towel, and put on the black mock turtleneck, lightweight khaki pants, matching short jacket, and the sturdy desert boots Matt had provided. The outfit would serve very well for the hot, arid climate of Dagasatt.
... But how had she known?
I slouched into her office, scowling. "I suppose Mimo spilled the beans about the mission destination."
"No. It was Eve. When she sent me the funding for your expedition, she told me everything but the planet's name, which was easy enough to deduce."
Someone had rolled in a small table, complete with white linen, elegant place settings of silver flatware, and china with the Rampart Starcorp logo. Nothing but the best for top management. Matt sat there eating a chilled orange-grapefruit cup. I plopped into a waiting chair and poured myself some coffee.
"Dammit, I wanted this mission totally deniable."
"Did you seriously think I'd be able to organize the logistics and personnel while you kept me completely in the dark?"
"I was going to take care of things myself. When my brain was back up to speed." I broke open an oat-walnut muffin and slathered it with rozkoz confiture. "Didn't you order any eggs? Sausage? Ham?"
"Eat your fruit. It's good for you."
She had always tried to reform my breakfast menu, which tended toward chuckwagon cholesterol. And now that small bit of domesticity was over, too. I felt a sudden awful pang of loss and regret.
"I really missed you back on K-L, Matt."
Her smile was ambiguous. "Separated five whole days. Or is it six?"
"That's not the point."
"The point, Helly, is that it was great fun—but just one of those things. You were a marvelous complication in my life. Really marvelous. But a complication all the same. Your quitting Rampart was just a—a final denouement to a decision I'd already made months earlier."
"To leave me." The muffin tasted like sawdust and the mellow sweetness of the rozkoz had turned cloying. "But we were good together, Matt. Those three weeks we had on the island, recuperating from Cravat. You told me then that you loved the place."
"Eyebrow Cay was wonderful. But not forever. 1 know what I want to do with my life. You still haven't figured that out."
"I'm back with Rampart, if that's what you mean." I tried to keep my tone free of sarcasm.
"Not permanently."
"For as long as it takes. And I intend to give it my best shot."
"And then you'll go back to the islands again and vegetate."
"I didn't sign on to the Starcorp for life, the way you Small Stakeholders do. What will you do if Galapharma wins? Stay on in your great new Vice President job under Alistair Drum-mond's regime?"
She flushed at the unfair jab but refused to lose her temper. "Galapharma is not going to win."
"Why don't you come right out and say it, Matt? Even if you do abandon the sinking ship, you still wouldn't want to live with me."
"That kind of a decision would require love on both our parts. And what we had together wasn't love at all. We both knew it, Helly. It was plain from the beginning. You always held back, never made me feel that you really wanted to know me. Or let me know you. Eve says—" She broke off, biting her lip.
"Go ahead. Tell me what my busybody sister says about my sex life!"
"This is all beside the point. Let's forget it." She activated a slate and handed it to me. "Here's the roster of volunteers. I was only able to recruit three people who fit your requirements. All of them are highly qualified."
Only three? ... But I didn't want to think about that. "Tell me what Eve said about me!"
Matt ignored the question again. "Two of the recruits, Ildiko Szabo and Zorik O'Toole, took early retirement from Zone Patrol SWAT units. They're in their middle forties. Joe Betancourt is thirty-two, a former ExSec cruiser pilot with extensive combat experience. He left Rampart because of a personal conflict with a coworker, but that shouldn't affect his ability to work with you. He's been working as a shuttle pilot. None of these three have dependents, and they understand the risks involved. All of them have had experience with the Qastt. Mimo felt you needed at least one additional person, so he drafted Ivor Jenkins, who was very eager to work with you again. God only knows why."
"Matt! Tell me what my sister said."
She wouldn't meet my eyes. "Eve is my closest friend, Helly. We worked together for nearly ten years on Tyrins. I love her. And she loves you so very much. She and I had every right to—"
"To talk about us?"
"Why not?"
she exclaimed hotly. "You've never been exactly forthcoming about your past, have you?"
"I thought you'd researched all my felonious little secrets pretty thoroughly."
She shook her head. "That's not the part of your life we spoke about."
"Then what, for chrissake?"
"Eve believes you're still in love with your former wife, Joanna."
"Jesus!"
Matt plowed ahead. "She said that you were the one who insisted on a divorce after your conviction and disenfran-chisement, while Joanna had tried unsuccessfully to change your mind, and even wanted to accompany you on your self-imposed exile."
"Eve had no right—"
"She also said that you used to wear two wedding rings on a platinum neck chain."
The furious words died in my throat. Kofi Rutherford had rescued the rings from the marauding sea toad's guts. I'd left them in Mimo's safe on Eyebrow Cay when I came back to work at Rampart Central, when it seemed that Matt and I...
I stared at the table. "I'm not in love with Joanna. And she certainly doesn't love me."
"Whatever you say." Mart's dark eyes were blazing with some emotion I couldn't fathom. She rose to her feet abruptly, rattling the coffee cups.
"Career histories and psychoprofiles of Szabo, O'Toole, and Betancourt are in the slate. I've also primed it with all the data we have on the planet Dagasatt—which isn't much. Mimo has the money your father forwarded. You'll need a local contact to arrange details of the Qastt release at the Justice Center on Nogawa-Krupp, but Mimo says he knows somebody. I'll call the operations manager at the Nogawan starport myself and have the impounded pirate ship cleaned up and fueled."
"Matt, can't we—"
She was standing beside me. "Your crew is waiting for you at Starbase. Good luck, Helly. And goodbye." She bent down, took my head in both hands, tilted it up and kissed me long and hard. "Now get out of my office. The day's just beginning and I've got work to do."
Chapter 6
The bad ship Chispa Dos, sporting a new name and newly registered to a citizen with known connections to the underworld, made the long journey to the Rampart world of Nogawa-Krupp in a phenomenal twenty-two hours, barely enough time for me to work out a revised plan of attack, based upon my pared-down personnel roster, and brief the team.