"That's a good point," the admiral said, subsiding. "But it still doesn't help us get off the planet."
"The laundry's gone," Mullins said. "There's a butcher shop and Aunt Meda's in addition. You know any others, Charlie?"
"Aunt Sadie's?" Gonzalvez said. "There's a flower shop on Holeckova, but this is the first I've heard of Aunt Meda's."
"Aunt Meda's House of Pain," Mullins replied. "It's a whorehouse with a sadomasochistic workout center called 'The House of Pain' as cover. And I know two safehouses. But if much of the network has been burned, who knows if any of them are clear?"
"How come you get the topless dancers and Aunt Meda's and I always get the flower shops and laundries?" Charles asked.
"God loves me and He hates you," Mullins replied. He jerked his head toward the admiral. "We need to get him out so we need to make contact. There's also Tommy Two-Time, but if I've got my druthers I won't bother with a double agent."
"You go," Gonzalvez said. "The Admiral and I will stay here and play gin rummy or something."
"I'll need a contact term for the flower shop," Mullins said. "Just my luck it'll be 'I need some pansies for the prom.' "
"Flowers or friends, Johnny?"
CHAPTER 4
SOMETIMES YOU GET THE BEAR
John walked past The House of Pain on the far side of the street, his head down, feet moving in the approved prole shuffle.
Aunt Meda's had been the last contact on his list and it was open. Contact, however, was problematic. The gym was on a generally unfrequented side street but today, for some unknown reason, there were several people wandering around.
In this corner, wearing an old shabby overcoat and fingerless gloves, nursing a bottle of cheap red wine, was a common street person. Such could be found in the more out-of-the way areas of Prague City but Aunt Meda's was on the better side of the tracks and street people should have been swept up by security. Ergo, it probably wasn't a street person at all.
Coming in the opposite direction from John was another prole. This one was a female and fairly good-looking. In fact, too good-looking. She didn't have the sallow skin from low-quality food that proles generally sported and her prole walk wasn't quite right. There was just a bit too much of the bounce to it.
Ergo, not a prole. Maybe a hooker or dancer dressing up as a prole, but unlikely.
Confirmation that the prole wasn't came when the woman, probably a StateSec officer, brushed against him and subjected him to a fairly professional patting down.
He apparently passed since she continued on her way but as he turned the corner to head back to the safehouse his heart sank; there was a group of local police waiting around the corner, their air car grounded on the sidewalk.
"You!" One of the patrolmen, faceless in heavy body armor and helmet, waved him over as two more took up positions on either side.
"Name," the officer said. It wasn't a question, it was a demand.
"Gunther Orafson," Mullins replied in badly accented French. He proffered his ID tag then spread his legs, placed his right hand behind his head and held the left out, palm up; it was a position that proles learned early.
The officer put the tag in a slot, then waved the pad in front of Mullins' face and over his outstretched hand.
What the system thought it was doing was reading personal information of one Gunther Orafson, assistant boom operator at the Krupp Metal Works factory. It took a retina scan, surveyed fourteen points on his fingers and palm, compared his facial infrared topography to its database and took a DNA scan, all in under two seconds.
What it was actually looking at was some very advanced Manticoran technology.
Gunther Orafson had been stopped years before by someone very like John Mullins, except at the time the Mullins counterpart had been dressed like a local police officer.
Using a device that looked identical to the one this officer was using, he had taken all of Gunther Orafson's vital statistics and put them into a database. One checkpoint, fifteen minutes on a busy day, could garner dozens of identities, and the CIT teams had access to all of them.
Now the results of all that labor bore fruit. The police officer's pad looked at Mullins' eyes, and adjustable implants reflected an excellent facsimile of Gunther Orafson's retinas. The pad scanned his face and a thin membrane reflected Gunther Orafson's IR patterns.
The rest was the same. DNA patterns on fingerprint gloves and even a pheromone emitter for the more advanced detectors, everything screamed "Gunther Orafson."
Except his face. And the Peep system was so "advanced" they didn't even bother with a picture on the ID tag.
All of it was dissected and spit back to central headquarters. There it was compared with Gunther Orafson's data and accepted or denied.
The system apparently liked what it saw because it quickly clucked green and spit out the tag.
"What are you doing here?" the officer asked.
It was an abnormal question so Mullins let a bit more nervousness enter his voice. "I live in the seventeenth block of Kurferdam Street. I went to the market on Gellon because I had heard they had meat. But they were out. I am returning to my flat."
"I know where you live you idiot," the officer said, handing the tag back. "Get home. There will be a curfew tonight."
"Yes, Sir," Mullins said with a duck of his head. He continued on his way immediately; despite the fact the cop-thug had probably come from a prole background, proles didn't talk to cops and vice versa.
It had seemed like a routine stop but given the proximity to Meda's it was unlikely. A pity, really. For all her personal . . . quirks, Meda had been a lady.
And, worst of all, it only left Tommy Two-Time; every other contact had been taken down by StateSec.
* * *
"Hiya, Tommy," Mullins said, trying not to breathe as he walked in the door. Among the many reasons not to deal with Tommy Two-Time, the regular fecal smell from his overloaded bathroom had to be high on the list. It had to be the worst smelling "herb" shop in the universe.
Thomas Totim was an herbalist. Often that was a high profile profession; in a society where "universal medical care" meant waiting four hours for a drunken doctor to look at your skull fracture, herbalists and midwives were the most medicine that many proles saw in their lives.
The shelves were sparsely populated with a variety of inexpensive herbal remedies while along the left wall a locked case held "harder" or more valuable materials. The far wall was lined with refrigerators, cases and aquariums; many of the odder materials available to the modern herbal doctor had to be used "fresh" from any of thousands of species alien to humanity's home planet.
But Tommy wasn't that kind of an herbalist. He had all the herbs, and he could do a pretty good herbalist patter. But people came to Tommy when they needed something harder than St. John's Wort; the shelves were covered in dust and most of the aquariums were filled with the dying remnants of their original populations.
"Oh, shit," Tommy said looking out the door. "I can't believe you just walked into my shop."
"Long time," Mullins replied fingering a dangling root that was covered in mold. It might be the way it was supposed to be, but with Tommy it was more likely to just be neglect. "What are you scamming this week? Spank? Rock?"
Under the early Legislaturalists many common soft drugs had been legalized. The technical reason was to reduce the rationale for street crime but the unspoken rallying cry was "A drugged prole is a happy prole." There was even a Basic Living Stipend entry for "pharmaceutical drug use."
However, even the Legislaturalists, and later the People's Government, weren't stupid enough to legalize Spank, which turned a male into a tunnel-borer rapist then drove him insane after about five uses, or Rock which turned a person so inward that addicts commonly drifted off and never came back. There were others that inquisitive researchers had developed over the millennia, and Tommy could get them all.
"What, you join StateSec, 'Johnny'?" the drug dealer asked. "I
don't think so. You and your buddy are the hottest thing on the planet."
"That what you're hearing, Tommy?" Mullins replied, looking around at the dust-covered sundries on the shelves and tapping on the glass of an aquarium. It was the only one that wasn't filled with gunk. Instead, five Gilgamesh River Devils looked back at him. Each of the semi-sentient, highly-carnivorous "fish"—actually a dual-breathing amphibian—followed his hand with all six eyes, clearly hoping he would get close enough to remove a nibble with their three centimeter teeth.
The river devils were piscine shaped, with sucker tipped "arms" in place of pectoral fins that they used for locomotion in their terrestrial mode. They were all flashing through a dozen colors as chromatospores changed the hue of their skin through all the colors of the rainbow. Some scientists theorized that the color changes were a primitive form of communication. Having seen a group of river devils first distract and then surround a cow on a Gilgamesh riverbank, Johnny was pretty sure the scientists were right. Except for the "primitive" part. "Who's looking for me?"
"You, your buddy and some admiral. And everybody," the dealer continued nervously. He had the shoulder-length hair that was practically the badge of the professional herbalist but the circular bald patch on the top ruined the look. Now he rubbed the top of his head nervously and looked out the door again. "I do mean everybody. StateSec has flipped; the admiral's got some of their codes and secret information. And the Manties are pissed; their whole network in Prague City is just gone and according to them you did it."
"Oh?" Mullins said carelessly. The news was like a punch to the gut, but he wasn't going to let Two-Time know it. "Where'd you hear that?" He noticed the river devils were spreading out with one raising a surreptitious suction cup towards the top of the tank and decided it was time to back up.
"There was a snatch team in town to pull the admiral. Some of them got caught but the rest left word that you guys were out of sanction. I guess you'd better head for Silesia and get a job beating up old ladies for quarters."
"Maybe," Mullins said. "But right now the question is getting off-planet. I need some papers."
"Like I'm going to help you with that," the dealer said with an honest laugh, a needler suddenly appearing in his hand. "You're worth a lot but the admiral is worth more. Where is he?"
"Tommy, you're going to get busy with me?" Mullins said with honest surprise.
"You got swept coming in the door," Two-Time replied. "No body armor, no weapons. So you can either answer the question or I can fill you full of needles and then call StateSec. Or just forget you were ever here after I feed you to the devils; they handle terrestrial proteins just fine and they even digest the bones."
"Tommy, after all the years we've been friends," Mullins replied, shaking his head. "For it to end like this."
"I was never your friend," the dealer said. "The admiral. One . . ."
Mullins shook his head and twisted sideways, grabbing the drug dealer by the hair as the needle-gun fired.
Most of the needles missed entirely, common even at short range when an untrained firer jerks the trigger, but a few hit him in the abdominal region. And slid off his T-shirt.
Mullins wasn't wearing anything that showed up as body armor to Peep scanners; despite the officially egalitarian stance of the People's Republic, armor was permitted only to police and senior members of the government; some pigs were more equal than others.
But that didn't mean he went out naked as a bird either; his T-shirt was made of a high-tech high-density microfiber material, uncommon outside of Manticore and a few Sollie systems, that absorbed much of the blow from the light-weight needles and stubbornly resisted penetration.
The effect was like a punch to the stomach but John Mullins had been hit in the gut plenty of times and shrugged this blow off as well.
Tommy Two-Time was not so lucky.
Ignoring the needles, Mullins slammed the drug-dealer's throat into the hard wood top of the counter, cracking the counter and filling Tommy's throat with blood. Then, to make absolutely sure he wouldn't be telling any tales, the Manty agent twisted Tommy's head around until he was looking back down his spine.
"I've been wanting to do that since the first time I saw you sell a kid Rock," Mullins commented quietly, stepping around the counter and shoving the body out of the way. The late drug dealer had voided himself on exit from this mortal plane, but it was unnoticeable over the stench from the toilet.
Mullins picked up the needler and hammered the lock off of the small lockbox under the counter. All it contained were a few unmarked vials and some change in the form of small sheets of silver and gold. Since the standard monetary form in the People's Republic was a highly traceable electronic transaction related to the identity chip, the metal currency was standard on the black market. However, since virtually everyone used the black market for even everyday purchases, probably the only person who didn't use the sheets was Cordelia Ransom.
It still couldn't be his main stash, or his main cash, so Mullins did some hunting. Finally he found both the drug and money cache under a panel behind the noisome toilet. From the looks of things Tommy hadn't caught up with his supplier recently; there was more than enough cash to sustain them for months. Or get them off-planet if they could find a trustworthy forger.
The toilet, once unplugged, served to deal with the drugs, and the sheets of metal were easy enough to secrete around his body. As long as he didn't get stopped on the way back, everything should be fine. And if he did get stopped, the local cops would just assume he was a money mule and confiscate the cash.
Which would be unfortunate since they were apparently going to need the funds.
He started to leave and stopped, looking at the body stuffed under the counter. After a moment he smiled.
A few minutes later he left the store after having wiped all the surfaces he touched. On his way out he turned the sign to "closed" and locked the door.
CHAPTER FIVE
SOMETIMES YOU BARE THE GETS
"I'd say something light and quippy," Charles said. "But the only thing that comes to mind is: 'Crap.' "
"Congratulations, Admiral," Mullins said. "You just changed from an annoyance to a life-preserver."
"Yes, if you get back with me, all, or most at least, will be forgiven," the admiral said. "That, however, is a large 'if.' "
"I'm out of contacts," Gonzalvez said. "And I don't have a prober system with me, so I can't try to play with the local police system and fake us up materials from that." He blew through his lips and shook his head. "I'm stumped, Johnny me lad." He hung his head and whistled through his teeth. "Bloody hellfire."
"I've got one contact," Mullins replied grudgingly.
"Oh, my," Charles chuckled, looking up. "You're serious?"
Mullins stepped out of the shadows and nodded. "Hello, Rachel."
The dancer was dressed in prole clothing, a heavy gray cotton jacket and similar slacks against the early spring night air. The style on Haven leaned more towards flashy clothing and bright, tawdry make-up, but on the "occupied worlds" there was no BLS for the commoners, it was a day-in-day-out struggle for survival under the unbending yoke of the Ministry of Industry and only the cheapest materials were made available for the "unassimilated" populations. However, like the police agent near Aunt Meda's, there was no mistaking her for a common prole.
She tilted her head to the side and sighed. "I guess StateSec officers don't have to worry about curfew?"
"Something like that," he said. "Can I come in?"
She paused and looked at him for a long time then nodded. "Okay."
The fourth-floor flat was surprisingly neat and clean, for all it was small. It was mostly one room with a fold-up bed, a couch, a small table, tridee and tiny kitchen. There was a small bathroom to the side with a shower just visible. There appeared to be no heat and the room was like an icebox.
"Nice," he said. "But not as nice as Nouveau Paris."
"It's a dump," Rachel re
plied, taking off her coat and pulling down the makings of tea. "What can I do for you as if I don't know?"
"It's . . . not what you think," Mullins said, sitting at the small table. "There are some things you don't know about me."
"Well, you're wearing prole clothing, so apparently one of them is that you're an undercover agent." She put a pot in the warmer and set it on heat.
"Not for StateSec," he said carefully. "I'm a Mantie."
"Sure you are," she said with a chuckle. "And I'm Cordelia Ransom. Pull the other one, it's got bells on."
"I'm serious, Rachel. That's why I wanted to get you out of Peep space. I couldn't be with you here; I'm from the Alliance."
She turned around and looked at him soberly. "You're serious."
"As a heart attack. And I'm in trouble."
"And you brought it to me," she said angrily. "You're a God-damned Manty spy and you've brought your troubles to me?"
"Yes, I did," he replied. "You're the only person I can trust anymore, Rachel. If you want to turn me in, fine. I just ask for a few minute's head start. But I need your help. Please."
"Oh, man," she said, shaking her head. "Why me? That question was rhetorical, buddy." She took the pot of tea out of the heater and poured two cups. "Honey, right?"
"You remembered." He smiled, wrapping his hands around the mug for warmth.
"I have a very good memory," she snapped as she sat down. "I can remember things like that for over four hundred men."
"Oh."
"This is not going to be cheap," she continued. "You had better have money."
"I do, and some materials that might help." He paused for a moment and then shrugged. "But we've got a couple of other problems. We also have a citizen to get out, a defector."
"This general that everyone is so up in arms about?" she asked, taking a sip of her tea.
"Admiral. Yes."