A Gathering of Widowmakers (The Widowmaker #4)
Read A Gathering of Widowmakers (The Widowmaker #4) Online
Authors: Mike Resnick
A GATHERING OF WIDOWMAKERS
by Mike Resnick
Copyright © 2005 by Mike Resnick
Prologue
The old man looked up from his garden, shaded his eyes from the sun, and stared off into the distance. The clouds were gathering in the west, obscuring two of the three moons; the rain would be here in another two hours, three at the most. He'd have to hurry if he wanted to finish planting his flowers today.
He walked to the potting shed, picked up the seeds, stuffed them in a pocket, grabbed a hand trowel, and returned to the section of black dirt where he planned to work. But before he could start digging, a woman's voice called to him.
He turned toward the house. "What is it?" he called out.
"Lunch is ready."
"I'm busy," said the old man. "I'll be along in a couple of hours."
"You'll come right now," said the voice firmly. "I didn't cook this so that it could sit out on a counter and get cold. Whatever you're doing, it can wait."
The old man looked regretfully at the unturned dirt, then lay his trowel down on the ground with a sigh. He felt a tiny shooting pain in his back when he bent over, and he straightened up very carefully.
He wiped the sweat off his face with a shirtsleeve, paused for just a moment to watch a flock of avians soaring overhead, and then trudged off to the small house to join his wife.
He seemed a perfectly ordinary old man. Tall, lean, wrinkles around the eyes and the jawline, hair gray and well on its way to white, a few liver spots on the back of his hands.
To look at him, one would never guess that he was the most dangerous man alive—or even how many times he had lived before.
1.
The two boys looked out through the store window.
"Are you sure it's him?" asked the first.
"I've got his holo on my computer," said the second. "It's him, all right. And see that little guy? They say they always travel together."
"Why would he need any help?"
"
Him
?" was the reply. "He doesn't need any help, not now, not ever. Maybe he just wants someone to talk to."
"But why would he come here to Dominion?" asked the first boy, still unconvinced. "Who do we have that he'd want to come after?"
"Why don't you go out and ask him?" shot back the second boy.
"Not me," said the first boy firmly. "They say he kills people just for staring at him."
The object of their attention suddenly turned and began approaching the store where the two boys were speaking.
"Omygod, omygod, omygod!" said the second boy, terrified. "He heard you! He's coming in here!"
"He couldn't have heard me, not through that window."
"He's the Widowmaker!" said the second boy, almost crying. "He can do anything!"
"He's too young," said the first boy. "Look at him. He couldn't have killed half as many men as they say. You're wrong; it's not him."
"The hell I am!"
"We'll find out soon enough," said the first boy. "Here he comes."
The door irised, and the young man and his companion entered the store.
"Welcome to Flynn's Emporium," said the robot clerk. "May I be of service?"
The young man walked over, disassembled his laser pistol, and placed the battery on a counter in front of the robot.
"I need half a dozen of these," he said.
The robot's eyes extended on long metallic stalks and examined the battery.
"Model H-314," it intoned. "We have seventeen in stock, sir."
"Six will do."
"I have already ordered them from the stock room. They will be here in approximately forty seconds, sir."
"Thanks." The young man looked around the store. He spotted the two boys; they were crouched behind a large holographic landscape projector, created especially for use during long voyages in spaceships that didn't possess Deepsleep chambers. "Who are you hiding from?" he asked pleasantly.
The second boy stood up, hands straight above his head. "We didn't do anything, sir! Honest we didn't!"
"Nobody said you did."
The first boy stood up and approached him, eyes wide. "Are you really the Widowmaker?"
"That's what some people call me."
"Some people?"
"My friends call me Jeff."
"I know," said the second boy, his hands still reaching for the ceiling. "Jefferson Nighthawk."
"That's right."
"Who are you here to kill?"
"No one," said Jeff.
"The Widowmaker never lands on a planet unless he wants to kill someone," insisted the second boy. "If you tell us who it is, maybe we can tell you where to find him."
Jeff looked amused. "Sometimes I go a whole day without killing anyone."
Both boys looked unconvinced.
Jeff noticed that his batteries had arrived, and he turned back to the counter. "How much?"
"Four hundred eighty credits," replied the robot. "I can also accept payment in New Kenya shillings, Far London pounds, and Maria Theresa dollars."
Jeff nodded to his companion. "Give him his money and let's go."
The first boy approached him. "Can I have your autograph, sir?"
"Are you sure you want it?" asked Jeff. "I'm not an athlete or an actor."
"Yes, please, sir. This way when I tell people I saw you, I can prove it."
Jeff shrugged. "All right. What do you want me to sign?"
The boy seemed suddenly distressed. "I don't have anything."
"It's all right." Jeff picked up his discarded battery, took a stylus from his companion, and signed his name on it. "Here," he said, tossing it to the boy. "Now you can tell your friends you've got the battery from the Widowmaker's burner."
"Wow!" said the boy. "Wow!"
Jeff and his companion walked to the door. When they reached it, he turned to the second boy. "You can put your hands down now."
"Thank you, sir," said the second boy, looking as if he might faint at any moment.
"Don't you ever get tired of it?" asked Ito Kinoshita as he and Jeff stepped out onto the slidewalk and let it take them south.
"I'm eighteen months old," replied Jeff. "I'm not tired of
anything
yet."
"Right," replied his companion. "I've been serving Widowmakers for so long I assume you've all had the same experiences."
"We share the same DNA, not the same lives," said Jeff. He paused. "I wonder if the old gentleman is keeping track of how his latest creation is doing?"
"You make yourself sound like some Frankensteinian monster," said Kinoshita. "You're a clone, that's all. And in answer to your question, yes, he knows what you're doing."
"I thought you didn't keep in touch with him."
"I don't. I'm only to contact him in an emergency, and— knock wood—we haven't had one."
"Then how does he know what I'd doing?"
"He's the Widowmaker," said Kinoshita, as if that explained everything.
"He used to be," said Jeff irritably. "I'm the Widowmaker."
"I just meant that—"
"I know what you meant."
They rode in silence for two more blocks, and then came to the end of the southbound slidewalk.
"I guess this is where we catch the transit back to the spaceport," said Jeff.
"Looks like it," agreed Kinoshita. "You know," he added thoughtfully, "Dominion's got a couple of hundred thousand men living on it. As long as we're here, we might as well check and see if there's some serious paper on any of them."
"Not interested. Leave it to the locals. We've got business on Giancola II."
"But—"
"I was created and trained to go after the men no one else can take," said Jeff. "If any of them were here, we'd have known it before we landed."
"You don't
always
have to go after the most dangerous men on the Wanted list," said Kinoshita.
"If I don't, who will?"
Kinoshita sighed. "Counting you, I've served four Widowmakers—and I don't remember ever winning an argument with any of you."
Jeff smiled. "Don't give up. There's always a first time."
They became aware of four more boys peeking at them from behind buildings.
"More autograph seekers," suggested Jeff.
"Or advice seekers," said Kinoshita. "Every kid out here wants to grow up to be the Widowmaker. You'd make their whole year if you'd stop and talk to them for a minute."
"What would I tell them?" asked Jeff with a wry grimace. "Say your prayers, eat your greens, listen to your parents, study hard in school, go to church, shoot first, and don't miss."
Kinoshita chuckled. "Well, two out of seven isn't bad."
"Depends which two," replied Jeff. He waved at the boys. Three of them immediately ducked out of sight, the fourth waved back.
Then the transit vehicle floated down the street, hovered a foot above the ground while the two men got on it, and headed off to the spaceport. When the passengers realized who had boarded the vehicle, they practically fell over each other to climb off at the next stop.
"Does that bother you?" asked Kinoshita.
"In the beginning it did," admitted Jeff. "I'm getting used to it."
"After we finish this," suggested Kinoshita, "what do you say to taking a vacation, maybe go out on the Spiral Arm where no one knows us?"
"If you need one, take one."
"I was thinking of you."
Jeff shook his head. "I've got too much work to do."
"The bad guys will all be here when you get back."
"And there'll be another hundred or thousand corpses, too."
"Don't you get tired?"
"I don't work that hard," said Jeff.
"You've worked every single day since I teamed up with you."
"I work about ten or twenty seconds every couple of weeks. The rest is just busywork and travel time."
"That's an interesting way of looking at it."
"I love my work," said Jeff. "I'm the best there is at it, and more to the point, if I stop working people die."
"When you work, people die," said Kinoshita.
"The
right
people die," said Jeff. "How many men can truly say that they've made the galaxy a safer place?"
"Doctors, soldiers, lawyers, politicians, clerics, police— the same people who said it while we were still Earthbound."
Jeff looked his contempt. "If they were telling the truth, they wouldn't need me, would they?"
Kinoshita smiled. "I keep forgetting."
"Forgetting what?"
"You seem like such a nice, friendly young man," said Kinoshita. "I keep forgetting that you're a younger version of
him
."
"Not really," said Jeff. "I only knew him for three or four months."
"But you've got that same steel beneath the surface. Your experiences are different, maybe even your thoughts and beliefs, but the core is the same." Kinoshita looked at the young man. "Don't be so quick to take offense. There are worse people to be like."
"So you keep telling me."
"Have I ever lied to you?"
"You don't understand," said Jeff.
"Enlighten me."
"He's not my father, or my teacher, or my mentor."
"He's all three," said Kinoshita.
Jeff shook his head. "He's much more than that: he's my
creator
. I'm like Adam's rib. I'm part of him in a way no one else will ever comprehend. And sometimes it's a very uncomfortable feeling, to be an exact replica of someone else, an artificially created replica, and to know that somehow you'll never quite be your own person."