Both men had come to the rescue when my previous home had been gobbled by a giant sea toad, six months earlier. Mimo had shot the monster dead and Kofi helped search its stinking guts for salvageable household items . .. among other things. Not much of my stuff had escaped the brute's invincible digestive juices. But with help from Mimo and Kofi and other good buddies on Eyebrow, I'd ended up with a new little house even better than the old one. It still wasn't quite finished.
There are about four hundred Out Islands strung in a loose archipelago a couple of thousand kilometers west of the Big Beach, Kedge-Lockaby's single continent. Manukura, our planetary capital, boasts a tiny starport, the best hotels, a clutch of boutiques and craftshops, the independent casino that supports K-L's schools, and the rest of what passes for Kedgeree civilization. Most permanent residents live on the BB, and most Perseus Spur tourists go no farther abroad in search of recreation. The islands are much more primitive, more gorgeous, and utterly lawless. This has advantages and disadvantages, as I had already discovered and was shortly to reaffirm.
But first, breakfast!
I rolled up my jeans and splashed around the shallows, grabbed a dozen yolkworms before they could burrow out of reach, and stuffed them in my bag. They're repulsive-looking greenish squirmers about twenty centimeters long with a fringe of tiny paddles along each body segment. The edible part is a yellow sperm sac the size of a small plum, which cooks up better than the yolk of a fresh-laid chicken egg.
I cleaned the catch and tossed the leftovers to an eager flock of elvis-birds that glided down out of the mint palms, humming melodiously. Slogging back to the kitchen, I thought about how to spend the rest of the day before the storm hit.
I could paint window frames. (Yuck.) I could design a spiffier brochure to entice more sport divers from Big Beach hotels. (Double yuck.) I could start another vegetable garden, since the last one had been totaled by corrosive slobber from the shack-eating toad. (Exponential yuck, and besides, the impending storm would mess up the new plantings.) There were other chores, too, but the prospect had absolutely no appeal.
Ah, to hell with doing anything useful. I'd spent the last three days unpacking the stuff I'd brought back from Seriphos, evicting the vermin who'd snuck into the house during my long absence, and testing some new diving gear. Why shouldn't I goof off now and visit the Glory Hole? It's my second favorite place in all the galaxy, numero uno being the Sky Ranch in Arizona, where I was born.
(But I hadn't been there for thirteen years. Not since I had announced, fresh out of law school, that I was joining the Corporate Fraud Department of the Interstellar Commerce Secretariat rather than coming into Rampart Starcorp, as my father had expected.. .)
I whipped up the scramble and served it on soda biscuits, garnished with locally smoked faux lox. Then I called Kofi Rutherford to ask if he'd be my dive buddy. He wasn't answering his phone, but I figured maybe I could catch him over at the marina. I began to pack a lunch for two, and while I was building sandwiches the phone in my pocket buzzed again.
"Helly, it's Mimo," said a suave, familiar voice. "You have a subspace call. From Earth. Your sister, Eve."
"I'm on my way," I said, hitting the End pad and loping out the kitchen door. My phone was a cheap model without video, much less a patch option, so there was no way I could have the call transferred.
The only private SS com on our little freesoil planet was just where you'd expect it to be—in the home of Guillermo Javier Bermudez Obregon, semiretired Smuggler King of the Perseus Spur and my closest friend on K-L. He's beyond middle-aged, extravagantly generous, and inclined to keep mum about his past and present affairs. For reasons that are not quite clear to me, I have told him far too much about my own sorry history.
I trotted along the path through the palms in my bare feet, dodging scissor-shells, sandtacks, and the sharp-pointed fallen fronds of the exotic trees, certain that Eve was about to deliver the melancholy news that Rampart's Board of Directors had approved the shotgun marriage of my family's Starcorp and Galapharma AC.
I'd figured it would happen. The expectation had been one of my main reasons for opting out.
Mimo was waiting for me behind his screen door, a tall and skinny figure dressed in a fawn pashmina dressing gown, beat-up huarache sandals, and nothing much else. His habitually uncombed gray hair was even more frowsy than usual, and his lean, deeply furrowed face wore a look of grave concern.
He said only, "This way," and led me down a hallway decorated with primitive santo paintings, Maria Martinez pottery, and illuminated wallboxes holding ancient Aztec figurines.
The room that served as his study and command center was finished in cream-colored adobe and had a beamed ceiling. The floor was patterned red Mexican tile, softened with striped throw rugs. A fireplace, ready for the impending rainy season, held split fingertree logs resting on heavy andirons. Cushioned wicker chairs and a sofa stood before it. Above the plank mantelpiece with its twin wrought-iron candlesticks hung the portrait of a dark-haired woman dressed in the fashion of thirty years ago—my friend's late wife. A huge Mexican desk of elaborately carved oak stood before a window that overlooked the sea. Along the left-hand wall were two antique bibliotecas crammed with data-dime files, reader-slates, e-books, and conventional volumes. Between them, gleaming in modern ceramalloy incongruity, hulked a tall gun cabinet that I knew held an awesome collection of photon beamers and other portable arms. The communications equipment occupied an alcove of its own, framed by exotic plants growing in black Oaxaca alias.
The old smuggler gestured for me to sit down at the transceiver console. "When you're finished, I'll give you coffee." He left the room.
I touched the Open pad, then went through the rigamarole of iris-ID verification and establishment of a Phase XII encrypt filter. When that was complete, my big sister's awful face appeared on the monitor screen and she spoke to me across the fourteen thousand light-years separating the Perseus Spur from Earth.
"Asa, the Galapharma merger bid was turned down again by the Rampart board. Thanks to Mom."
"Katje voted with Simon?" I was thunderstruck. "But I thought she'd switched over to the other side!"
"So did all the rest of us, going into the meeting. But somehow, Pop talked her out of it. Cousin Zed, Leo Dunne, and Gianni Rivello were livid. Even Dan and Beth were shocked to the socks." Eve was smiling, and it broke my heart to see her semimorphed features, partially human and part Haluk as a result of the interrupted demiclone genetic engineering procedure instigated by her kidnappers.
"The bad news is," she continued, "there'll be another vote taken in six weeks, immediately after ICS rules on Rampart's status upgrade. If we don't make the jump and gain Concern immunity, I'm afraid we're wiped."
"So Simon refused to retire?"
"On the contrary. He agreed to step down if the board elected what he called a suitable successor—one whom the ICS would have confidence in. The consensus was that neither Zed nor Dan really fit the bill. The only viable candidate left was moi."
"Yes!" I enthused. "I knew it! Congratulations, Evie—"
"Not so fast, little brother. I turned Simon down. Conditionally."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"I don't dare travel to Rampart Central on Seriphos, where an effective CEO rightfully belongs. I'd be a sitting duck for the media or even Galapharma hired guns. But I can't run the Starcorp from Earth, either, hiding out at the Sky Ranch. It would be an administrative nightmare, given the horrendous problems we're facing. I told the board that I would accept the CEO job under one condition: that they elect you Chief Operations Officer, immediately under me."
"What!"
"Zed could retain the presidency—nominally—but he'd no longer be in a position to give orders and screw things up. On purpose or otherwise. I'd remain on Earth and call the shots very broadly. You'd be on Seriphos or wherever else you were needed, doing what had to be done any way you saw fit. Between the two of us, we can pull the show
back on the road and impress the pants off ICS. What do you say, kid?"
I couldn't say anything. I only sat there, open-mouthed, in a state of total disbelief.
Four days ago at Rampart Central on the planet Seriphos, when I still held the ad hoc title of Vice President for Special Projects foisted on me by my father, I'd taken part in a three-way conference call with Simon and Eve, who were back on Earth. We wrangled about what I perceived as the Haluk threat.
I had just learned that my Cravat deposition to SXA had been shitcanned. Mimo's statement and that of our young associate, Ivor Jenkins, had also been disallowed on the same legal technicality. I demanded that Eve show her Halukoid self immediately to Assembly Delegate Efrem Sontag, an old university friend of mine who was now Chairman of the Xeno-affairs Oversight Committee. Eve's mutation, together with a formal complaint that the Haluk had been stealing the genen viral vector PD32:C2 from Rampart and conducting a secret demiclone project on Cravat, would provide valid grounds for suspicion that the aliens were up to dirty work, possibly aided and abetted by Galapharma. My pal Sontag could be counted on to light a fire under the feet of the secretariat, forcing it to launch a full-scale investigation into dubious Haluk activities in the Perseus Spur.
But Simon had his own reasons for refusing to file a complaint about the vector theft and the Cravat shenanigans immediately, and for pressuring Eve to remain in hiding until after the status upgrade decision. He explained everything to me in words of one syllable, and also stoutly maintained that he could stave off the Gala acquisition bid at the upcoming general board meeting.
I told my father that his reasoning sucked. And if the takeover did go through, Galapharma would be in a position to conceal the vector theft evidence and fatally weaken Eve's deposition against the Haluk.
Our conference deteriorated into a shouting match. I berated Simon for putting the welfare of the family Starcorp ahead of a possible alien threat to the human hegemony in the Spur worlds—and maybe in the Orion Arm itself.
Simon told me I didn't understand the Big Picture.
I told him what he could do with said picture.
Eve tried to soothe the pair of us.
I lashed out at her for compromising her principles.
Finally, I tendered my resignation as VP Special Projects, announced that my tiny department was herewith dissolved, and wished my father, my sister, and Rampart Starcorp the best of left-handed luck.
Simon called me a traitor to the family honor, a sorry-ass bent cop, a born loser, and a cowardly coyote. Then he cut out of the conference. Eve remained calm and said she'd call later to let me know how the board meeting went.
After announcing my bail-out to Matt and to Karl Na-zarian, my associate and nominated successor in Special Projects, I left Seriphos with my tail between my legs. Home again on my little tropical island, I tried to expunge from my mind the improbable events of the past six months that had torn me out of my beachcomber's paradise and plopped me back into the turbulent mainstream of the Commonwealth of Human Worlds.
The mental delete job hadn't been going too well.
And now my sister had come up with this. ..
"Evie, you're stark staring loco. I can't run Rampart."
"Of course you can, with competent support. Once upon a time, you were an excellent bureaucrat, Divisional Chief Inspector Asahel Frost."
"Oh, sure. And how would the ICS Upgrade Committee react to my appointment?"
She laughed. "The Board of Directors asked me the same question. Dan and Cousin Zed figured ICS would go seriously apeshit, and so my proposal was tabled. But not formally rejected! I didn't force a vote because I wanted to ask you whether you'd accept. In my opinion, ICS will react to your COO appointment in the same way that they did when Simon made you VP Special Projects: they'll judge your performance by results and not quibble about your shady reputation. You did a hell of a job on Cravat, Asa. And there are still people at Commerce who don't believe you were guilty of malfeasance and all the rest of it. You aren't without friends in high places."
"Horse apples."
The half-alien face was almost impossible to read. She spoke very softly. "You don't have to give me a decision immediately. Think about what I've said. The moment that Rampart makes Concern, I'll institute a civil action against Galapharma. Jump on 'em with rowel-spur boots. Throw the Cravat affair in their teeth. Expose that damned Gala hit man, Elgar/McGrath. Implicate him in my kidnapping and demi-cloning and the attempts to murder you. Let the media know how Gala has tried to undermine and devalue Rampart to force the merger. And their secret dealings with the Haluk aren't merely violations of interstellar commerce. They're treason, Asa! We'll crush those bastards. You and I!"
"Evie ... we don't have enough evidence for any sort of case against Galapharma. Not without Ollie Schneider as a star material witness."
"Then find him, goddammit!"
"I've tried," I said wretchedly. "Karl and Matt and I combed the Spur from one end to the other, using all of Rampart's security resources and whatever help we could pry out of Zone Patrol. Schneider and his passel of Gala infiltrators have vanished without a trace. They must have escaped to the Orion Arm. And we haven't a prayer of tracking them there, among so many human worlds."
"Find other evidence, then. Play the Qastt angle. Put the screws on those Squeak pirates we've still got locked up on Nogawa-Krupp. They were dealing directly with the Haluk. Maybe some of them had contact with Bronson Elgar or other Galapharma covert agents."
"I never thought of that. It's a long shot, but I can put Karl Nazarian on it—"
"I want you on it!" Oh, God. Tears were running down her blue alien cheeks.
"But Evie—"
"Please work with me, Asa. Simon can call an extraordinary session of the board and ram both our appointments through. All the directors will remain on Earth for another week."
"I don't see how—"
"Will you at least think about what I've said? Give me your decision tomorrow. Whatever it is, I'll accept it."
I hesitated, then said, "All right, Evie. Tomorrow."
"Love you, Asa. Goodbye." My older sister's mutated face winked out and I shut down the subspace communicator.
Why the hell didn't I have the guts to say no to her, once and for all?
Because I'm a cowardly coyote, that's why.
I left the study and went to find Mimo. He was sitting at his dining room table, a polished wooden slab supported on wrought-iron legs, reading the morning news on a jumbo magslate. He had put his clothes on and now wore pressed slacks and a madras plaid sport shirt. His hair was still flyaway frizz.
"Sit down, Helly. Let me pour you some coffee. It's real Colombian Narino. One of my colleagues just brought in a new shipment."
I accepted a big stoneware cupful and drank the embargoed elixir in silence for several minutes. Mimo read his slate without further comment.
Finally, 1 said, "Rampart's still alive. A six-week reprieve, courtesy of my mother."
"Good. I hope she's well."
I didn't respond to that. As of four days ago, Katje was very far from being well. Simon had slipped in that sad piece of intelligence during our acrimonious confab. My parents had been divorced for twenty-three years, but they were still coolly friendly. Katje had always voted her corporate quarterstake as Simon advised her to, until Eve's kidnapping and the threats against my life and those of my older brother Dan and younger sister Bethany had terrified her and nearly convinced her to capitulate to the Galapharma takeover bid.
I said, "Eve was offered the Rampart Chief Executive post. She said she'd accept only if I became her ops officer."
"Caracoles! And what did you say?"
"That I'd let her know tomorrow. But I'll have to turn her down. The situation is hopeless. She seems to think that Rampart still has a shot at making Concern status. I don't. There's no way she and I could ever turn the Starcorp around inside of six weeks, corral a heap of fresh venture credit for expansi
on, and prove that Galapharma had used criminal pressure tactics in the takeover bid. Rampart's a goner. If only we'd tracked down that fucking turncoat Ollie Schneider..."
"Ah." Mimo looked thoughtful, even sly. Perhaps I should have suspected something, but I was immersed in my own frustration—to say nothing of my guilt.
"I've had a bellyful of Rampart, Meem. What I really have to do is figure out a way to force the Commonwealth to take the Haluk threat seriously. At the moment, I haven't a clue. So I'm going scuba diving, and fuck the fate of the galaxy."
My friend nodded tolerantly. "Can 1 prevail upon you to bring back some nice fish for dinner? Perhaps a few flapjaw demons. I'll grill them and make my special sweet pepper salsa if you'd care to join me."
"Happy to. We can watch the storm roll in."
"The colleague who smuggled the coffee also provided me with a case of 'twenty-nine Woodward Canyon Reserve Chardonnay from Washington State that I'd like your opinion of. It received the highest rating in The Wine Advocate"
"Sounds excellent."
As I was leaving, Mimo said, "Oh—one last thing. There's a remote chance that another guest might join us for dinner."
Something in his tone made me leery. "This person wouldn't be female, by any chance?" I wouldn't put it past the romantic old fart to try to fix me up with a new sweetie—or even lure Matt Gregoire to K-L in hopes of reconciling us.
"He's a business acquaintance of mine who is flying in from Callipygia. Masculine ... most of the time." He shrugged.
"No problema then. Catch you later."
I went back to my place, put on my OK Corral sweatshirt and a pair of Teva sandals, and grabbed the sack of sandwiches. Then I got my personal dive gear off the porch, loaded it on my new antigrav tote, and headed down our island's single marl road to the marina. On the way I stopped in at Billy Mulholland's Mercantile and augmented the sack of lunch with two liters of rozkoz-gold milk, a six-pack of Pepsi-Cola chillinders, and a couple of bananas. Then I gave him a grocery list I'd prepared, and said I'd pick up the food around sundown.