The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (33 page)

To his fans – and despite his conviction and fall from grace he still had many fans – he was a gadfly genius, a rogue intellect who took great risks to prove radical theories that the establishment tried to suppress. To his fellow academics, he was a highly irresponsible egotist who used his notoriety to promote fantasies as risible as the lost continent of Mu or the Venusian origin of flying saucers, heedless of the damage he caused to serious scholarship. As far as the UN was concerned, he was a criminal willing to take every kind of risk with Elder Culture technology. He was beyond our reach on Liberteria, but he remained on our watch list.

And now he was heading out for parts unknown, either in possession of code mirrored from a navigation program, or of the whereabouts of the code’s original. Given the huge risk he’d taken coming back to Port of Plenty, it seemed likely that he believed the code had something to do with his crazy idea about finding the homeworld or a surviving remnant of an Elder Culture. It also seemed likely that he had killed Jason Singleton and the mercenary, Abuelo Baez. Even if the code was harmless, Niles Sarkka still had to answer for those deaths.

The problem was that we had lost track of his ship. It could be anywhere in the wormhole network, heading for any one of the other fourteen stars – it might even be heading back to First Foot’s star by a circuitous route. During the early years of exploring the network, the UN had tried to set up a monitoring system of spy satellites around the wormhole throats, but it had been sabotaged by various factions over the years, and in the end it had proven too expensive to maintain.

“Even if Sarkka and Hughes go to ground on Libertaria, we have no jurisdiction there,” Marc said.

“We can try to negotiate with them,” I said.

“Perhaps. It would help if we knew exactly what Hughes and Singleton stole,” Marc said.

“That’s why we need to talk to Meyer Lansky again,” I said.

But Lansky had disappeared, and so had his wife and their two young sons. A police detail had been watching the front of the house; it seemed that Lansky and his family had left through the back, escaping across the golf course. Either of their own free will, or because someone had come for them.

A safe sunk in the floor of a walk-in closet in Lansky’s residence had been left open but still contained large amounts of cash and jewellery, and credit cards and phones registered to a variety of names. Traces of blood belonging to Lansky and his family were found on a wall and the carpet in the adjoining master bedroom. I believed that they were dead, their bodies dumped in the sea or in the fern forests beyond the edge of the city, or incorporated into the foundations of a new building or freeway overpass, and their killers had probably taken from the safe copies of the records for the code farm detailing legitimate and black-market transactions.

After a brief conference with Marc and the assistant city attorney, I issued an APB for the Lanskys and made an appointment to visit Meyer Lansky’s boss, Pak Young-Min. Marc thought it a waste of time, but I had a bad feeling that the case was going cold. I wanted to stir things up a little. Besides, I had papers to serve regarding search and seizure of the code farm’s assets, and because Meyer Lansky had disappeared, it was only logical to hand them to his boss.

Pak Young-Min was the youngest son of Pak Jung-Hun, a former head of the American-Korean Family Boyz gang in Seattle who had “retired” to Port of Plenty. Like most gangsters who’d grown rich enough to escape the clutches of law enforcement agencies, Pak Jung-Hin had ambitions to legitimise his family. Three of his sons were involved in real estate and construction, an insurance and loan company, and casinos in First Foot and Mammoth Lakes. But Pak Young-Min was a throwback: an old-school kkangpae with a volatile temper and a taste for baroque violence who had been given control of Meyer Lansky’s code farm by his father in an attempt to wean him away from the street life.

I arranged to meet him in the offices of the development company helmed by his eldest brother, Pak Kwang-Ho. This was on the top floor of a brand-new ziggurat – white concrete, glass tinted the pink of freshly-cut copper, broad terraces dripping with greenery – with a stunning view across the city towards Discovery Bay, the spaceport and the river delta on one side, the power plant and docks on the other, and the great curve of the Maricon and the beaches between. Up there, the city looked as neat and clean as a map, with no sign of the squabbling territories carved out by different nationalities. Up there, it was possible to believe that the future had arrived. You wanted to search the sky for flying cars and dirigibles.

Pak Kwang-Ho met me at the tall double doors of his private office. A slim and intensely polite man dressed in a crisp white shirt and intricately pleated pants, he shook my hand, offered me a choice of ten different teas, and introduced me to two lawyer types who afterwards did their best to fade into the background, and to his brother, Pak Young-Min.

The young gangster was looming over an architectural model of a shopping mall and entertainment complex, a bulky, broad-shouldered bodybuilder stuffed into a sharkskin suit and a yellow silk shirt and snakeskin boots. Tattoos webbed his neck and his hair was shaved at the sides, high above his ears, leaving a glossy black cap on top of his scalp. He didn’t look up when Pak Kwang-Ho introduced me, pretending to be more interested in pushing a model car around a plaza, knocking over model pedestrians one by one.

Pak Kwang-Ho assured me that his family were always happy to help the police with their enquiries, but in this case, since his brother had business ties with Meyer Lansky, he had to ask me to confirm that my enquiries were purely informal. I assured him that I wanted nothing more than background information on Meyer Lansky, although I did have papers to serve with regard to the code farm.

“I hope this means I can reopen it,” Pak Young-Min said. “I lose money every day it is closed. Most inconvenient.”

“Here’s another dose of inconvenience – we’re sealing it up until further notice,” I said, and held out the envelope that contained the twenty-page court order.

Pak Young-Min took it and scaled it towards the lawyer types, saying that his people would check it out and get back to me.

“You need to sign it,” I said.

“Why don’t you ask me what you came here to ask me?” Pak Young-Min said. “I’m a busy man. I have a lot of stuff to do. Important stuff.”

I decided to meet him head on and locked gazes with him and said, “When did you last see Meyer Lansky?”

“Days and days ago. I heard he ran away after you questioned him about those two geeks who burned to death,” Pak Young-Min said. “If you catch up with the old rogue, let me know. I have some questions for him myself.”

“You have no idea where he might be?” I said. “Him and his family.”

“I’ve been in Mammoth Lakes for the past week,” Pak Young-Min said, and took out a gold cigarette case and, ignoring his brother’s warning that he couldn’t smoke here, lit a black Sobranie with a match he ignited on his thumbnail.

“One of the bodies in the motel room was that of Jason Singleton. An employee at your code farm.”

“Meyer Lansky’s code farm,” Pak Young-Min said.

“You own it.”

“He runs it. I wouldn’t know who he employs. When can I reopen the place, by the way?”

“When we’ve finished our investigation. Although by then there probably won’t be anything left of your little operation.”

Pak Young-Min looked at me with insolent amusement. “I know about you and your crusade,” he said. “Word is, you lost your husband to bad code, and now you see bad code everywhere. Even when it isn’t there.”

I didn’t rise to his bullshit. If you show any kind of weakness to someone like him you’ll lose authority and never get it back.

“You are certain that you have never met Jason Singleton?”

“I’ve never had anything to do with those freaky little geeks.”

“Have you ever met Everett Hughes?”

“Is he the other one who burned up in that room?”

“He’s the one who got away,” I said. “The other body in the motel room was that of Abuelo Baez, a former US soldier who served in the Special Forces.”

“I’ve never heard of any of these people,” Pak Young-Min said.

“Perhaps you know the face,” I said, and showed him the printout of Abuelo Baez’s reconstructed death mask.

Pak Young-Min breathed out a riffle of smoke and said, “He isn’t one of mine.”

“You might know him as Able Martinez,” I said. “That’s the alias he used when he came to Port of Plenty. We identified him from a file in the gaming commission’s records. Every employee of every casino has one. I’m surprised you don’t know him, Mr Pak. He worked on the security detail of the casino in Mammoth Lakes owned by your family.”

“My brother has nothing to do with the running of the casino,” Pak Kwang-Ho said. “And neither do I.”

“We’re looking into everything Mr Baez was doing here, and everyone he associated with,” I said. “If you remember anything about him, it would be better if you told me now.”

Pak Young-Min shrugged.

“You should speak to the manager of the casino,” Pak Kwang-Ho said.

I told him that I would, and thanked them for their time and turned my back on both of them and walked towards the big double doors of the office.

Pak Young-Min called after me – he was the kind of man who had to have the last word. “Come find me in Mammoth Lakes. I’ll show you a good time. Loosen you up a little.”

I paused at the doors, turned. The corny old Columbo trick, but it’s sometimes useful. “One other thing. Have you heard of Niles Sarkka?”

The two brothers looked at each other. Pak Young-Min said, “Isn’t he the crazy guy who had that TV show?”

“He and Everett Hughes took off together,” I said, and left them to think about that.

Later, I told my boss that I was certain that Pak Young-Min knew all about Hughes and Singleton. “Lansky was not a stupid man. He probably discovered the deletion in the navigation package and the alteration in his records after they dropped out of sight, and decided to come clean about it to his boss. Pak Young-Min sent his muscle man, Abuelo Baez, aka Able Martinez, after the two coders.”

“Baez tracked them down to the motel room but he was killed by Niles Sarkka,” Marc said.

“I’m not sure what happened there, but I don’t think it matters,” I said. “Sarkka was definitely involved, and I’m certain that the Paks didn’t know about that until I told them. If we’re lucky, they’ll start making enquiries around the spaceport, and incriminate themselves. I can ask them, why are they looking for the killer of Abuelo Baez if Baez had nothing to do with them?”

“It is a long shot,” Marc said. “I would prefer something tangible.”

“So would I,” I said. “But even if we can’t tie them to Baez, we’ll get them for Lansky. Pak Young-Min killed him. I’m sure of it. Lansky’s family, too. He knew that we talked to Lansky, and he didn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut. He probably took copies of incriminating records from Lansky’s floor safe at the same time. If we have a pretext for arresting him, we might be able to get hold of those records. And somewhere in them is the location of the original of the code Hughes and Singleton stole. We need to find it.”

“Do you really believe that Sarkka and Hughes are chasing after it?”

“They haven’t turned up at Libertaria, or anywhere else we have representatives or reliable sources.”

“That leaves about ten thousand habitable but uncolonized planoformed worldlets, and any number of rocks and moons,” Marc said.

“We need to find it,” I said. “So we know what we are dealing with. So we can destroy it, and make sure that no one else can mirror it.”

“If Pak Young-Min has any sense, he will have destroyed those records.”

“Not if he hopes to restart his black-market business.”

Marc looked straight at me and said, “I hope you did not set the Paks after Sarkka because you believe that Sarkka has escaped justice.”

“Of course not,” I said.

But that was exactly why I’d told the Paks about Sarkka, and although Marc probably knew that I was lying, he didn’t call me on it. Perhaps, like me, he wanted Niles Sarkka to answer for the deaths of Jason Singleton and Abuelo Baez, and for all his other crimes. Is that such a bad thing? Of course, I would have preferred to go after him myself, but at the time I didn’t think it would be possible. So I had decided to stir things up a little.

While I’m being candid, I suppose I should mention my husband here – my second husband. Not because Pak Young-Min’s silly jibe in any way hurt or upset me, but because certain commentators who should know better, amateur psychologists who aren’t ashamed to speculate foolishly and wholly irresponsibly about the motivations of people they’ve never met, have suggested that I set out after Niles Sarkka because he was dealing in stolen code, and Jules’s addiction to code is the key to my personality. My secret wound. The tragedy for which I have to atone for the rest of my life. Well, let me tell you that’s so much pseudo-Freudian bullshit. I don’t mean that it wasn’t a tragedy. Of course it was. But I got past it and I got on with my life.

Really, it was all such a long time ago, back in the palmy days when everything in this brave new world of ours was fresh and wonderful. Back then, we didn’t know that doing code could hurt you. It wasn’t even illegal. It was something clever and sophisticated people did for kicks. A clean and perfectly legal high.