The Vastalimi Gambit (20 page)

Something about this whole line of inquiry felt wrong to her. It was perfectly reasonable to look for connections to people who had the expertise and equipment to generate the fake pestilence. And her less-formal questions might get responses that
Sena
absolutely would not get. Still, it didn’t feel as if she was on the quarry’s trail.

She said so to Wink.

“So, what do you want to do?”

“We can try one or two more and see if anything comes up.”

“Okay. Next on the list is one
Jares
masc, ostensibly an artist, who arranges assassinations through
prigovor
, at least according to the rumor net.”

“Let us go and speak with him,” she said.

“Going to call your sister?”

“Why would I? We have nothing new to report.”

He shrugged.

“I am
Droc
masc,” the Vastalimi said.

Of the humans, Jo was likely the only one who could see a family resemblance among the three siblings. It was in the carriage, the facial features, maybe even the voices. It was plain to see with Droc and Leeth standing side by side, and had Kay been here, she would have fit right in. Of course, Jo had spent a lot of time with Kay.

Droc looked at Em, who rattled off something in their language. Jo had but a few words of that, and hadn’t lit a translator, but it was apparent there was some kind of formality involved in the greeting. Interesting, since Kay had never been big on ceremonial greetings, considering them a waste of time.

“Leeth tells us that you have found a cause for the disease?” That from Rags.

“With the help of your medic, Wink Doctor,” Droc said. “He saw a trail we had not seen.”

“Bet he loved that,” Gunny said.

Droc continued: “The agent is not natural, nor a pathogen per se, but a kind of complicated poison that creates a toxin. The body’s defenses cannot overcome its own reactions. This lessens the worry about an epidemic.”

“But makes it a crime,” Leeth added. “For which the perpetrators will be found and punished.”

“This is what Kay and Doc are doing?” Jo asked.

“Yes. They follow leads.”

“And you don’t know where they are?” Rags said.

“My sister prefers to do things her own way. She has not informed me of her movements, save generally. She will probably check in within a few days, at which time I can tell her that you have arrived.”

“Or we can go look for her ourselves,” Cutter said. He wondered: If Kay had called her sister, wouldn’t Leeth have her com number?

Maybe she just didn’t want to give it to her . . .

“That would not be the wisest path. You are unfamiliar with our laws and social mores. Wandering around on your own could put you in no small amount of danger.”

Jo saw all of her team grin at that though they kept those expressions close-lipped.

“We have Mish here as a native guide.”

Leeth looked at Em, rattled off a spate of Vastalimi, of which Jo caught three or four words.

Em responded, her tone deferential but not overly so.

“Still,” she said, switching to Basic, “half a dozen humans will cause a stir wherever they go. I would prefer that you keep an escort should you risk traveling around the city.”

Cutter said, “Of course. We don’t want to be part of the problem.”

Jo held her grin. They had no intention of allowing a tail to stay with them when they went looking for Kay and Wink. And if the local cops believed they would, that might make it easier to lose them.

“We will take you to a place where you can stay,” Leeth said.

Formentara said to Droc, “Any progress on a cure for the toxin?”

He looked at her. “No, nor do we expect any. The goal is to catch those responsible and stop them from doing further harm. Those who have already been infected are dead or dying, and other than palliative care, there is nothing to be done for them. By the time we know, it is too late.
Tzit dogoditi se.
”

Jo knew that phrase, she had heard Kay use it several times.
Shit happens.

She glanced at Rags. He gave her the tiniest of shrugs.

Hard people, the Vastalimi.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Kay and Wink arrived at another big house, not as rustic as the hunting guide’s but large enough to get lost in. They were admitted by a servant and led down another tall and wide hall into a big room, again with vaulted ceilings. They really seemed to like that here.

Instead of stuffed trophy animals or their heads, however, the hall and walls were home to paintings, with sculptures on stands here and there, including a couple of busts of Vastalimi, as well as quarter-sized statuettes of The People. All carefully lighted to show them to their best advantage.

“You suppose all this art was done by Jares?”

Kay shrugged. “Who can say? They look enough alike to have been rendered by the same hands.”

“They any good? They look pretty good to me.”

“They display a mastery of the craft. That statue of the pair of running
vepar
? Very dynamic and just slightly exaggerated anatomically, for effect. That twice-life-sized painting of the
div macka
? The big cat? It looks almost alive, the colors are vibrant, electric, and it is as good as any such illustration I have seen. This artist knows exactly what he is doing.”

“Thank you,” came the voice from behind them.

Wink turned and saw something he had not seen before:

A fat Vastalimi.

Not morbidly obese, but certainly carrying fifteen or twenty kilos of excess weight, most of it in the belly and hips. Huh. He hadn’t really thought about that before, but now that he saw this one, it struck him: These people were in better shape than any other intelligent species he’d been around.

Jares caught Wink’s look. “I am Jares. I don’t hunt as much as I once did. Too much sitting in front of a canvas or a mound of clay these days. Makes staying fit hard.

“Please, sit, have some refreshments. How may I assist a fem with such good taste in art? And a human? I don’t suppose you’d consider posing for me? I haven’t had a chance to sculpt a human before.”

Kay said, “I suspect you know who we are and why we are here if our experiences of late are any indication.”

Jares whickered. “Yes, that is so. Certain of my . . . ah . . . colleagues have contacted me. Let me echo them: You are growling at the wrong burrow, Kluth. None of us would do such a terrible thing.”

“This from a Vastalimi who arranges assassination by Challenge?”

He whickered again. “
Allegedly
arranged such assassinations, dear fem. If the Shadows had proof, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because I would be dead. Besides, my work has gained a certain favor among collectors; it provides all that I need or want. Even if I
had
once engaged in such illegal activity as you suggest? Those days would be behind me.”

He looked at Wink. “I expect I could get a hundred thousand ND for a statue of you, maybe more. Pose for me, you can have half of what I get.”

Wink shook his head. A human could make a good living on this world, assuming he lived long enough to collect the money . . .

“Are we being recorded?” Jares asked.

“Not by us,” Kay responded.

“Then let us be candid, dear fem. Whoever has unleashed this plague upon the people is a monster. Those of us who have, from time to time, trodden upon paths less—shall we say—pristine, in realms not strictly legal, have certainly done things that most would shun. But even we have our standards, our ethics, and no Vastalimi in my acquaintance would lower him- or herself to such a vile depth.

“It is perhaps natural to assume that those who pander to vices—drugs, sex, gambling and the like—would be where to seek one who’d inflict wholesale death upon his or her fellows: If you want a serpent, you go to where the serpents slither. However, in this case . . . ?”

“Your reasoning seems specious. Kill one, kill a hundred, it is only a matter of numbers.”

“Really? Then consider it from a different stance: It would be extremely bad for business. Such a heinous crime, if it has been determined that this is the case, will draw the most vigorous response from the
Sena
anything has drawn in my memory. They will turn over every rock, poke into every crack, dig up every buried bone looking for the perpetrators. Nobody who sells a cloudstik, accepts a wager on a game, sends out a paid companion would be safe from scrutiny. And in the looking, other things would certainly turn up that many would prefer to stay hidden.

“Who among us would call that down upon him- or herself? How stupid would you have to be to
not-know
what a scatstorm you’d create?”

Kay nodded, and Wink found himself also doing so. Yeah. Somebody smart enough to create this killer infection and get it out there was not going to be categorized as “stupid” . . .

“We have taken up too much of your time,” Kay said, as she came to her feet.

“Not at all, dear fem. In this matter, I am as willing as any Vastalimi to help.” He looked at Wink. “If you remain on our world for a time, please consider my offer to become my model. It would be my honor to have you as a subject. Three-quarters of our fee?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Excellent!”

As they walked away, Kay said quietly to Wink, “Better than your last offer.”

“I’m not sure of that. Jares seems to have a big appetite. Who knows what he might do after the sculpture got done . . . ?”

She whickered.

_ _ _ _ _ _

“So are we gonna go find Doc and Kay?”

“Oh, yeah, Gunny, we are,” Rags said. He turned to Formentara. “No bugs?”

“No.”

Not “None that I can find.” Just “No.”

“Okay. Here’s the deal: Em, can you secure a vehicle large enough to haul us around without being visible? As soon as possible?”

“Of course. It might be tricky to make sure the
Sena
don’t know about it, but I still have some contacts here who can help. We will need at least two—we leave in one, go to a hidden location, and switch to the second. The first can continue on to lay a trail—Vastalimi are very good trackers, none better than the Shadows. If we bring that one to a place nearby where they might see it? They will be looking for that.”

“Good. We’ll need a diversion for the watchers to get going. Gramps?”

“How about Ah take care of that part?”

Gramps looked at Gunny: “You still pissed off at me for shooting that APC on Far Bundaloh, ain’tcha?”

“Look up ‘killjoy’ in the pedia, there’s a picture of you,” she said.

“I thought you said that was next to the entry for ‘dirt.’”

“Different picture, but still you.” She smiled. “Singh can help me, he needs to learn some more about the fog of war.”

The young man smiled at her. “Sah.”

“Fine,” Cutter said, “you can create the diversion. Formentara, can you rig up something so they think we’re still here?”

Zhe stared at him as if he had turned into a giant roach. “Excuse me? To whom do you think you are talking?”

Cutter grinned. “It was a joke.”

“Not funny,” zhe said.

“Your reaction was,” Jo said.

“Remember that next time I tune you up—I might decide to give you a nervous tic.”

“Let’s move it along,” Cutter said. “We have colleagues to find.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

“Now what?”

Kay said, “Something is wrong here. Jares said it: This is too large a hammer to squash gnats. Some of the worst criminals would happily torture an enemy to a long and painful end, but none of those who have been killed by the infection seem important enough to justify such a wide-ranging attack.”

“Maybe one of them
really
pissed somebody off?”

She shook her head. “It does not make sense. It is too complicated—a couple of missiles that would take out a compound? Simple. If you wanted to hide it, you could fire a score of such rockets at different targets to cloud the investigation.

“Vastalimi tend to be more direct about such things.”

“But we don’t know that whoever did this was after just one person. Maybe they are crazy, and they just wanted to create a panic?”

“Vastalimi don’t panic.
Tzit dogoditi se.
We all know this.”

“Doesn’t rule out ‘crazy.’”

“No. There are those who are mentally disturbed. And if it is truly random? That will make it almost impossible to find them. However, it does not feel like madness. There is a purpose here. Find out why, we can uncover who.”

“Brings me back to my question: What now?”

“There is one more possibility about which I have been thinking. You know the phrase that Demonde Gramps sometimes uses? ‘Follow the money’?”

“Yeah?”

“Perhaps somebody has made a profit from this infection, the deaths.”

“Who? Undertakers? Insurance sellers?”

She shrugged. “I cannot say, and while the idea of somebody’s doing this for money seems particularly outrageous, especially for a Vastalimi, it is something to be considered. We might be looking for a different kind of criminal altogether.”

“You need to call your sister in on this?”

“She would be able to find out such information, she’ll have access to banking records. However, there are others with access to these data.”

“Anybody you know?”

“Yes. I’ll put in a com to Jak.”

“Jak.”

“Yes.”

“Just to make him dance because you can?”

“That would be but an additional benefit.”

He chuckled.

“We about ready?”

Jo nodded. She accessed her aug and its chronometer. “Five minutes from . . . now.”

“Formentara?”

Zhe looked at the tracker zhe held in hir hand, half the size of hir palm. “I got Wink located. He’s way the hell and gone away from here, 394 kilometers to the northeast.”

“You tried his com’s opchan?”

“You enjoy insulting me, Colonel?”

Rags grinned.

“If they are on com, they are way out of range, assuming they are even using any of the usual bands or their own equipment.”

“Just checking.”

“You should check on people who need it.”

Em said, “Our vehicle should be on-station. The escape window will be small and will close quickly.”

Rags nodded. “Everybody set?”

They were.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Gunny and Singh crouched behind a power transformer that routed energy for the area. The device, the size of a small van, was marked with a danger sigil, but there was no barrier around it, no fence, nothing.

Singh had remarked upon this: “But is this not dangerous? Anybody could wander over here and accidentally hurt themselves. Or do as we are about to do.”

“Yep. Ah asked Em about it. She said they don’t spend much time and energy protecting stupid folks from themselves. The symbol for danger should be enough.”

“What if a passerby cannot read the sign?”

“Tough shit. Improves the gene pool.”

He nodded. “I understand that people sometimes take that to extremes. I remember a shipment of carbines we imported once. There was an imprint on the barrels, warning users not to point the muzzles in unsafe directions.”

She chuckled. “Has to do with legal liability. You’d think anybody smart enough to pull a trigger would know what the gun was for, but apparently there are some who aren’t. Not that they’d be smart enough to read the fuckin’ warning and understand it, either, but there you go. All right. Let’s move.”

The two of them came up and moved away from the transformer.

They kept to the shadows, and there were plenty of those. They didn’t see anybody else on the street as they headed for an alley nearby.

“Two minutes,” Gunny said quietly.

“Stet that,” came Cutter’s voice in her earbud.

“So here we have the basic ingredients in the art of distraction,” Gunny said to Singh, as they walked toward the rendezvous point. “When in doubt, wait until dark, turn off the lights, and blow shit up. Gets people’s attention
stat
.”

“Sah.”

“Now, since we aren’t in a hostile situation with regard to our hosts here, we don’t want to cause a lot of damage. So the popper shorts out a switch on the transformer, don’t cost much to fix, but the neighborhood gets dark. Well, dark
er
, since they keep things kinda dim around here anyhow.

“And the light and noise from the spew-rocket draws their attention since it’ll be the only thing to look at, come the sudden darkness.”

“And while they are looking at that, CFI sneaks away,” Singh said.

“There you go. And Formentara will have rigged up something so they hear voices and see things behind the window shades. I expect it won’t take ’em long to catch on, but by then, we’re long gone, and we haven’t done much damage and probably broken no more’n a couple of minor laws.”

“Still, I cannot imagine they will be happy with us, the Vastalimi police.”

“You step onto a mat for a sparring match, and the other player smacks you in the nose, whose fault is that? You know what he intends to do, and you know what to do to prevent it. He hits you? You need to be better.”

“Sah.”

“Not our job to make ’em happy. They supposed to be watching us, so if we get away, and they miss it? Their fault. Everybody knows how tricky humans are.”

Singh grinned. “Yes, sah.”

She accessed her timer. “Got about a minute. Best we move along.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

The laser rocket had been programmed to emulate a series of explosive-artillery airbursts a couple of hundred meters up. It wouldn’t fool anybody for long, but the flashes and attendant
booms!
set to go thirty seconds after the transformer shut off power would be impossible to miss—and you wouldn’t be able to tear your gaze away for the duration. Like humans, Vastalimi eyes were attracted to motion, and a light in the darkness? They’d have to look at it.

All they needed was thirty seconds to get clear, and once that happened, Jo knew, they were golden.

Even a suspicious cop who suspected a diversion would be off-balance for a minute or two, plenty of time to be long gone.

Yes, there could be some minor legal consequences, but that would be dealt with later.

“Stand by,” Jo said, “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”

The lights went out. She accessed her visual aug. The ambient heat residual and warmth generated by the others and herself was enough to navigate by, and it would be brighter outside with the city glow.

Jo took a couple of deep breaths and oxygenated her system more than it already was. In thirty seconds, the sky would light up to the southwest, and the two Vastalimi watchers they knew about would look that way and wonder what the fuck was going on.

There was always a chance something could go wrong. Maybe somebody out walking the local equivalent of his dog, or a drunk in an alley, an unexpected bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time? No way to be a hundred percent sure of any operation, but the odds were in their favor. And that’s what you had to play, the odds . . .

“Stand by,” she said again. “Coming up five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”

The rocket was supposed to go off a thousand meters away and a couple hundred up. Jo had done the calculation on how long it would take the sound to arrive—three . . . two . . . one . . .

Boom! Boom!

“That’s us, people. Asses and elbows.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

They were in the middle of nowhere, night heavy upon them, and Wink was tired of riding. They had not passed a vehicle coming their way for twenty kilometers, and there was nothing to either side of the road but empty fields and distant hills.

“We could continue on to find lodging,” Kay said. “There is a small town an hour farther ahead.”

“It’s a warm night,” he said. “And I bet I can find a soft spot on the ground more comfortable than this damned cart’s seat. Unless you need a bed?”

She whickered.

“We have any food left?”

“Some,” she said. “Enough to get by for another day or two, nothing fresh.”

They found a place to pull the cart off the road near a field with grasses growing a half-meter high.

“Anything we need to worry about in the way of insects or predators?”

“Local insects probably won’t know what to make of you, nothing poisonous, and there’s nothing dangerous large enough to sneak up on us we won’t hear before it gets close.”

“Assuming you aren’t too heavy a sleeper,” he said.

She whickered.

They walked out twenty meters from where they’d parked the cart, tramped the grass down in a ragged circle, and lay on it. The ground wasn’t that hard, and the grass padding made it comfortable enough. They lay on their backs, looking into a clear night sky, with unfamiliar constellations dotting the darkness.

“So . . . Jak?” he said.

“Yes. He concerns himself with wealth. He will have ways to find out what we need to know. I’ll call him again in the morning.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“I think it does.”

He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her. It was dark, but there was enough star- and moonlight—the double moons were visible, one full, the other just a sliver—to see her clearly.

She mirrored his pose, a meter away.

“Well. It seems that you might not be done with Jak altogether. Past him having information we need, I mean.”

She blinked at him.

“You think I harbor feelings for him?”

“Yes.”

“I am past caring for Jak.”

“But not yet indifferent.”

“I don’t take your meaning.”

“He screwed you over. You had a long time to live with that, and while I don’t think you feel anything like what you did before you left Vast, the anger is still there.”

“So?”

“Not saying that you aren’t justified in feeling it. Only that until you get past hatred and anger, you aren’t done with him. There is a connection still. It gets severed when you no longer feel anything toward him at all.”

She didn’t say anything for a time. Then, “I see. Is this the voice of experience?”

“It is.”

“Ah. And will you tell me the story?”

“Probably. Another time.”

He lowered himself to his back. She did likewise.

He heard a noise, it sounded like a short series of coughs, not close.

“What was that?”

“Gray bear taking prey,” she said. “Not close.”

“I thought you said there wasn’t anything big enough to be dangerous out here.”

“I said we’d hear it coming. Besides, the bear has taken prey. It won’t be hungry for a while.”

He grinned into the night. What an interesting fem Kay was . . .

“A question?”

He looked at her. “Go ahead.”

“You are first among our company in the willingness to take risks that might end in your injury or death.”

“Yeah?”

“Why is that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s always been that way.”

“Always?”

“Far as I can remember. There’s a rush connected to it, striving and surviving. An intensity of sensation afterward. Nothing like it.”

“Interesting, You cannot recall the first instance?”

“Nope. I can’t. I—” He stopped.

Of a moment, he could.

“Leilani Zimmer,” he said. “Man.”

“I don’t understand.”

He looked at her, but what he was seeing was his own past with a new clarity.

She raised an eye ridge in question.

He nodded, and told her that story.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Leilani Zimmer.

She was sixteen, nearly two years older than he, and if she had noticed he was alive, he couldn’t tell. Drop-dead gorgeous, Leilani was, with short, curly hair puffed into a tight electrostatically held cap, lush in the breasts and hips, the first-string left striker on the clubball team at their school.

Like most boys his age, Tomas Wink walked around in a cloud of lust, shedding testosterone like a summer dog losing its winter coat, and Leilani—Elzi, to her friends—passing by was worth an automatic erection. Hard enough it would hum.

He had no chance with her, not a prayer. He wasn’t a jock; he was six centimeters shorter; and not that great a student. Not rich, not in with any of the smart sets, not handsome, your basic fourteen-year-old tweek. A face in the crowd.

He actually recognized her voice when he heard her scream since he went to all the clubball games and knew it from her yelling at her teammates.

“No! Get off!”

He was crossing the yard behind the school, where the back gate opened into the park, and he turned the walk into a run.

“—asslick nodick! No!”

Tomas homed in on the sound, and with the voice, there came a slap.

“Slit! Hold fucking still!”

A break in the carefully groomed trees, and there they were: Leilani, on her back on the ground, her shirt ripped open, her shorts pulled down around her knees.

Sitting on her belly about to backhand her face again, Mars “Stone Leg” Yeng, the captain of the men’s clubball team.

No question in Tomas’s mind what was going on. However it had started, it had turned to rape.

In an instant, Tomas had to make a decision.

If he yelled, he might distract Yeng.

If Yeng saw him coming, he could take Tomas apart like an overcooked chicken. He was twenty centimeters taller, thirty kilos heavier, and could probably lift the back of a pubtrans bus by himself.

Time stretched into infinity . . .

Tomas was no jock, not all that fit, but he did know some basic physics.

He sprinted at Yeng. Three meters away, he jumped, pulled his knees against his chest, and leaned back a hair. He kicked as hard as he could with both feet, aiming at Yeng’s back.

He was a little high, which was undoubtedly what saved him from getting beaten into a bloody mess. His right heel smacked into the back of Yeng’s head, knocking him off the young woman under him, sprawling facedown onto the soft ground.

Tomas came down, skidded, rolled, banging himself up pretty good and rattled, but not within a parsec of the deeply unconscious state Yeng had just entered.

Leilani came to her feet at the same time Tomas managed that.

It was a glorious view. Shirt open to reveal her breasts—she had pale, pinkish brown nipples—her shorts down, her pubic hair gleaming darkly in the sunshine, trimmed into a long, narrow strip.

Tomas figured he could die now, never to surpass this moment for joy, but that would have been wrong.

“Tomas,” she said. “Oh, thank you! He hit me. He was going to—to rape me.”

“Yeah, well, not anymore, he isn’t.”

What she did then surprised him more than anything he had ever seen in his fourteen years. She bent, slid her shorts down and off, and walked toward him. She reached out, hugged him, bit his shoulder, and moaned.

Surprised? No. Astounded. Stunned.

He went with it.

Thirty seconds later, she was on the ground again, and he was on top of her, and being guided into a place about which he had only fantasized.

“Oh, yes!” she said. “Do it!”

Oh, hell yes!

Better than his best fantasies, it was.

Oh!

In that moment, he didn’t worry about what might happen if Yeng woke up. Or why on Earth Leilani Zimmer was gifting him with herself. Later, when he learned more about how emotions worked, it made more sense. Her hormones and his were in full battle mode, and he was pumping enough adrenaline to rouse a graveyard full of men long dead.

Pumping other things, too.

The juices flowed, all of them, and the end was so intense he lost himself. He fell into the Void, and a million years of bliss.