"Yeah .. . Jesus, it's bad, Helly."
"Right. I'm too wrecked myself to carry you into the house, but in a minute I'll be able to drag you underneath it, out of the weather. First I have to do a quickie splint on the leg. Here, cover up with my jacket. Keep the rain off you at least."
"Too. .. damn nice."
His voice was barely audible now and his eyes had glazed. He was probably going into shock. God knew what was busted inside him besides the ribs. Maybe his spleen or his liver. Could be internal bleeding.
Working as quickly as I could, I immobilized his leg between two slats and wrapped the result with duct tape. More of the sticky silver stuff secured his wounded arm to his chest, slingwise. I ignored the broken pinky finger. That was the least of his problems.
After hauling him to the driest spot beneath his shack, I limped up the stairs and collected bedding, a plastic tarp, and a big lantern. When I returned with the stuff, his skin had turned the color of clay. I cut off his wet clothing as best I could and swathed him with the blankets. His eyes opened.
"Helly."
"Don't talk. I'm going to my place and—"
"The guy... name he used was Lee. Garth Wing Lee. Oriental, one-seventy-five centimeters, stringy build, maybe martial artist, long black hair in a tail, ultra clearcut threads. Staying .. . Alhambra Lagoon, Bungalow 40. But he was leaving K-L. Maybe already . . . gone."
After pulling the blankets closer around his head, I arranged the tarp in a kind of tent, tucked under him, to keep wind-blown rain and spindrift at bay. "Thanks, pal. I'll check it out."
"Gone," he repeated. Then he was still.
It didn't register. But of course I was in pretty shitty shape myself by then. I finished fumbling with the tarp and said, "Hang in there. Be right back."
His mouth hung slack. The eyes in the gray face were wide open, their pupils dilated to onyx circles. I felt for a pulse in his neck but found nothing.
Should I have tried CPR? No use, given the circumstances.
And besides, I wasn't that much of a Boy Scout.
Chapter 4
Back at my place, I called the Alhambra Lagoon Hotel on the Big Beach. Citizen Garth Wing Lee had indeed checked out, not quite an hour earlier. By now he was either at the starport or hightailing it into the void. It was futile for me to think of going after him, given my state of physical decrepitude. Only one person could help me now.
Jake Silver is the Superintendent of Kedge-Lockaby's small Public Safety Force. Prior to my temporary rehabilitation, he was the only one on K-L who knew the true identity of the hapless beach bum called Helmut Icicle. On several occasions he prevailed upon me to share my special expertise in corporate-style criminality. We had become warily chummy. Cranky, ponderous, and on the wrong side of fifty, he is much too tough and intelligent to be running a twenty-ofricer dog and pony show on an insignificant planet in the back of beyond. I figured that somewhere, sometime, he had made some important enemies.
Just like me.
"It's Helly Frost over on Eyebrow Cay," I said, as he picked up my call. The poor guy is on duty ten hours a day. "Do me a swift and enormous favor. This is no joke! See if one Garth Wing Lee has departed Manukura Starport, and if so, via what." I rapped out the physical description. "If the guy is still landside, have your special weapons team take him down with a stun. He's extremely dangerous and he might try to self-destruct."
"Mother-o'-pearl!" Jake drawled. "You're not home a week yet, and already you're throwing your weight around. May I remind you that you're Thrown Away and no longer a facecard Rampart exec to whom I must bow and tug my graying forelock?"
"Jake, there's no time for bullshit. Lee could be another Bronson Elgar. One of my friends is dead because of him and I had the crap beat out of me. You gotta pull this fucker in."
" 'Gotta' is not a word I want to hear from you, Hell-Butt."
The Throwaway population of the Out Islands lives and dies beyond the jurisdiction of Commonwealth Public Safety authorities. Undertaking a hazardous collar on behalf of Rampart Starcorp is not a top priority of the freesoil constabulary, either.
"Do it, Jake, for chrissake!"
After a long pause he said, "I'll get back to you," and cut off.
I carried the phone into the bathroom so I could take another hot shower, pop more painkiller, and treat the latest damage to my long-suffering carcass. The right eye was reddish black and almost swollen shut. I pricked the contused flesh with bruise-diffuse and tied coldpacks over the shiner and the lump on my occiput by knotting a blue bandanna around my head, making me look like a cartoon Captain Kidd. The split lip needed AB and a strip of Novepiderm. So did the reopened wounds and my lacerated knuckles. My scarlet ears benefited from anti-inflammatory salve.
While I struggled into a fresh set of loose-fitting sweats, I debated whether to collapse on the bed and pass out immediately or get a glass of milk and some snickerdoodle cookies first to raise my cellar-dwelling blood sugar and calm my queasy stomach. I hadn't eaten since breakfast but I had no appetite. Being on the receiving end of mayhem'll do that to you.
The phone buzzed before I sorted out a decision.
"Jake?" I inquired.
But it was Mimo Bermudez. His dinner invitation had slipped my mind completely. I apologized. "It turned out to be a dismal day on the water, hombre. Sorry, but I wasn't able to bring back any flapjaws for you to cook."
"There's plenty of other food I can prepare for us. You must come over, Helly. The business associate I told you about this morning is here and very anxious to meet you."
"I'm really whacked and not very hungry. Much as I'd like to chat with your colleague—"
"He has vital information for you. If you're too tired to eat, then so be it. But you must hear what this man has to say. We'll come to your house."
"No!" I interposed hastily. "Give me a few minutes and I'll be right over." I severed the connection, moaning. I felt like I had one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel. There were gory clothes all over the place and the floor was bloody, too. No way was I going to explain to Mimo what had happened to Kofi and me. Not in front of some stranger.
Plodding back into the bathroom, I treated myself to a stimulant. I still felt terminal. The rainsuit was a mess so I put on an old yellow slicker and sneakers without laces and shambled out into the storm. When I knocked on Mimo's door, he opened immediately.
"Come in! Let me take your coat and get you a drink—" He surveyed my visible dings. "Madre de dios, what have you done to yourself?"
"It's a long story and I'd really rather not go into it just now. A neat shot of Jack would be great."
I followed him into his study. Blazing logs crackling in the hearth were the only source of light. Sprawled on the sofa in front of the fire was the guest, an enormously fat man with dead white skin. Either he was unaware that gross obesity can be treated by metabolic tweaking, or else he was one of those weirdos who take perverse satisfaction in cultivating corpulence.
Given the rest of his appearance, it had to be Option B.
His hair, which was teased into an intricate beehive, his eyebrows, and his bushy beard were an improbable buttercup color. He wore a tentlike garment that resembled a crazy quilt stitched together from countless scraps of expensive fabric: velvets, satins, brocades, lace, leathers, even bits of tapestry, trapunto work, and see-through tulle embroidered in gold and silver. Black leather cuffs bulging with little closed cases were clasped about his pudgy wrists. The nails of his oddly slender fingers were filed to sharp points and painted black, and he wore a multitude of jeweled rings. The feet of the grotesque apparition, absurdly small and dainty, were shod in Aladdin boots with turned-up tips. An ornate chain around his neck bore a tiny gold-plated Davis DM-22 derringer pistol as a pendant.
Mimo said, "Helly, may I present my former business associate, Captain Zygmunt Cybulka. Ziggy, this is Asahel Frost."
The seated personage made no attempt to shake hands. He smirked at
me, showing discolored pointy fangs, and raised one of my friend's crystal tumblers, half full of amber liquid, in a mocking salutation.
"I'm glad you could join us after all. I did come to see you at considerable inconvenience." He chuckled throatily, a sound like pebbles pouring onto a bass drum. "But Mimo assures me that I will be generously reimbursed."
What the hell?
Mimo held up a bottle of bourbon. "I'm afraid I have no Jack Daniel's. Ziggy was kind enough to bring me a gift of Maker's Mark Limited Edition from his latest import shipment."
"I'll manage to gag it down," I said. It was probably the best American whiskey in the known universe.
He poured me a snort of the magnificent booze and I lowered myself into one of the cushioned wicker chairs and sipped. It warmed my gullet all the way down, pooled ig-neously in my empty stomach and seeped into my veins, bringing blessed ease. Rain pelted the snuggery's windows and the surf sounded like rhythmic cannon fire.
"You look somewhat the worse for wear, Citizen Frost," remarked Captain Zygmunt Cybulka.
"I'm just fine. Small accident on my boat. You may as well call me Helly. I'm not a citizen any longer."
Cybulka expelled another rattling laugh. "A temporary setback, I'm sure, my dear Helly. I can't believe that your illustrious family would allow you to remain disenfranchised for long."
I was not in the mood to trade small talk with creepy low-lives. My pal Mimo was an honorable sort of outlaw, but cop's instinct told me that this "associate" of his was crooked enough to have to screw on his socks. "Do you have something to tell me, Captain Cybulka? I'm tired and I want to go to bed."
"Call me Ziggy. I have interesting information for you, but I do not intend to vouchsafe it gratis."
Mimo said to him quietly, "The two million is yours if the tip pans out. You know I'm good for it."
What?
The eyes under their shaggy yellow brows were small and reptilian. They darted back and forth between me and Mimo. Then Cybulka seemed to come to a decision and nodded. "In the course of my business travels throughout the Spur, 1 happened to see a parked starship designated RES-1349—"
"The ExSec cutter Schneider stole!" I croaked. "Where?"
The fat man went on as though I hadn't interrupted. "An acquaintance of mine said that the vessel had been there for a long time. Its dockage fees were paid up to date, however. I was told that five individuals had been escorted from the ship and off the port premises by a highly placed local official. My confidant had no way of knowing what became of the cutter crew after that. They may still be on the planet or they may not be. I departed at once and headed here at top speed, notifying Mimo of my intent to claim his reward."
I jumped to my feet, pain and fatigue forgotten. "My God—it must be Schneider! But how could our sweep have missed a ship parked in plain sight?"
Zygmunt Cybulka's face bore a self-satisfied simper. "Easily. You looked in all the right places, ignoring the wrong ones."
I stared at Mimo, who shrugged and said, "While Rampart and Zone Patrol mounted their search, I spread the word amongst... los bajosfondos de la sociedad, requesting that they keep their eyes open. I took the liberty of offering a generous gratuity."
"So where is the cutter?" I plopped down again.
"On a Qastt planet!" Cybulka quivered in seismic glee.
"Surely you jest." This was crazy. The fugitives might conceivably have gone to a Haluk world with the connivance of Galapharma, but hardly one belonging to the Lilliputian brigands.
"I saw the vessel with my own eyes." The fat man's voice was suddenly level and as cold as ice.
According to the terms of CHW Statute 44, human star-ships were forbidden to approach even the outermost perimeters of Qastt or Haluk solar systems without permission from the aliens. Which was never granted—except to shady operators such as the plethoric captain.
"From time to time I undertake commercial transactions with the Squeakers," he continued. "Dreadfully devious and high-strung little sods, but they do have an insatiable appetite for certain recreational narcotics. I condescend to supply their needs when it suits my schedule. Imagine my surprise when I visited—hem!—a world of theirs and saw the missing Rampart External Security ship."
"Which Qastt world?" I asked.
An intriguing idea lurked coyly at the threshold of my mind. There were numbers of Qastt planets in the vicinity of Cravat, source of the coveted genen vector PD32:C2, but the nearest Haluk colony was nearly seven hundred light-years distant. What if the Haluk had set up a genetic engineering facility on a Qastt world for the sake of convenience? We already knew that they had other operations besides the very specialized one on Cravat. Knowing what I did about their grand demorphing scheme, I figured there might be excellent political reasons for them to site the facilities outside their own colonies.
And Ollie Schneider and his lads might be usefully employed there, until the heat was off.
"Which Qastt world?" I repeated.
"Two million," the drug-runner crooned, "was the posted reward."
"Rampart Starcorp will give you half the amount immediately," I said, gritting my teeth. "You'll get the balance when we confirm the presence of the stolen cutter on the Squeak planet. I'll call Rampart Central on Mimo's SS com right now and arrange for the transfer of funds. Just give me your account code."
"Make it a blind draft," Ziggy said crisply. He opened one of the small compartments on his left cuff and handed me an EFT card. "And I want all of it now."
Mimo broke in. "Helly, I was the one who offered the reward—"
I rounded on him. "Rampart will pay. If this overfed scag-peddler really has the goods."
Cybulka chortled. "Oh, I do. Two million immediately, or I take my business elsewhere. I'm sure there will be other interested bidders."
I surged to my feet and grabbed a fistful of patchwork caftan. "Don't you play games with—"
He tapped one of my arms casually with his right leather cuff. A few thousand volts sparked from a concealed laser electrode into my frayed nervous system. I flew backward and crashed to the floor on my hypersensitive contused ass.
"Three million," said Ziggy, tossing off the contents of the crystal tumbler.
I disparaged his sexuality and that of his mother in hackneyed terms.
He cocked his head roguishly. "Do I hear four?"
Mimo helped me into a chair and murmured, "Let me take care of this. He means what he says."
I hissed, "Dammit, Meem, why the hell didn't you tell me what you were doing?"
"The odds were very long and I couldn't risk Matt Gre-goire or Karl Nazarian interfering." He eyed Cybulka. "Or putting pressure on my more skittish underworld contacts."
"Fuckin 'A," averred the fat man. He poured more whiskey from the bottle that sat on the low table before the fire and smiled at me benignly. "I forgive your impulsive behavior, Helly. It's plain that you've had a bad day. The information is yours for three million: two as a down payment, and the balance upon verification."
I asked Mimo, "How can we be sure this joker isn't just shining us on? And that he won't pull a double cross?"
"Ziggy would not dream of lying to me." Mimo Bermudez regarded his former colleague as though he were something he had just scraped from his sandal. "Nor would he entertain any thought of warning the Qastt of our interest, or speak of this delicate affair to anyone else."
"No, indeed." Cybulka's voice had lost its archness. "I'm too fond of living."
There was a silence. Not for the first time, I wondered about my courtly friend, Guillermo Javier Bermudez Obre-gon, semiretired Smuggler King of the Perseus Spur.
I said, "Okay, Ziggy. I apologize sincerely for doubting you and for the roughhouse. You get all the money up front tonight. Now which Qastt planet did you see the Rampart ship on?"
"Dagasatt, about one hundred ninety lights from Nogawa-Krupp."
Yes—and only thirty or so from Cravat!
Cybulka went on. "The cutte
r is docked at an auxiliary starport near a city called Taqtaq, on the edge of a conspicuous landform called the Great Bitumen Desert. But don't ask me to take you there! That's not part of our bargain. As I said, my boy, I'm fond of living."
"What kind of world is Dagasatt?" I asked.
"Ugly, but clean. No inoculations required. Imagine a desert, scads of sand, but with plenty of water available beneath the surface. No resources we could possibly be interested in. It's a very old Qastt colony, but a planet that only xenos could love."
He burbled on about the uncongeniality of the wee aliens, but I wasn't listening. An idea had burst into my mind like a supernova. Maybe it was impossible for Rampart Security or Zone Patrol ships to land on a Qastt planet, but I had a notion how the trick might be managed.
"Mimo, can I use your SS to call Eve right now? She can authorize Cybulka's payment draft by spinning some yarn to Simon. It may take a few hours—"
"Let me suggest a simpler solution. I'll advance the amount to Ziggy now, and you can have Rampart reimburse me at your convenience."
"A splendid idea, Mimo!" The fat man levitated out of his chair as though he were inflated with helium or wore an anti-grav jockstrap. He presented the EFT card to my friend with a flourish. "I intend no offense, but the inclement weather of Kedge-Lockaby is really not to my taste, and I have urgent business back on dear old Callipygia. So if you don't mind—"
The phone in my pocket buzzed and I started like a goosed moose. "Excuse me. I was expecting an important call."
I lumbered out of the room, tapped the Open pad, and whispered, "Yes."
"Your chum Garth Wing Lee had a very impressive private cruiser waiting at the starport," Jake Silver said. "A Bodascon Y700 prototype. Groundcrew never saw one like it before. It must be even faster than the souped-up crate your Mexican bootlegger pal flies."
"Shit. Well, thanks anyway for—"
"The cruiser was still at the fueling bay when my team arrived. They found Citizen Lee in the general astrogation office, calling the cashier impolite names because her card reader was malfunctioning and she was having difficulty completing a manual transaction of the fuel sale."