Voice of the Whirlwind (26 page)

“Four-A and seven up,” Steward said. He mentally took command of the audio and turned down the volume. “Shifting to station power.”

Reese was already stripping off her harness. “Indian Ocean this time, buck,” she said. “Kenya, the Seychelles, then Western Australia. Maybe the Barrier Reef for dessert. I’m gonna spend at least half my time underwater.” She looked at him pointedly.
“You,”
she said, “are not invited.”

He pulled the plastic interface disk from his mastoid. “Fine, billie,” he said. “I’m sick of you, too.”

Reese was grinning at him. “No offense.”

Steward grinned back. “None taken.”

Reese floated free of her webbing, turned an awkward somersault that spoke of strained muscles and complaining bones. “God, I hate gravity,” she said. She kept her eyes focused on Steward as she tumbled in slow motion. “Where you planning to spend your leave?”

They had six weeks’ leave coming, and back pay to spend. Crews exploded off long haulers like shrapnel from a grenade.

“I’m going to get some sleep,” Steward said, “then think about it.”

“What else have you had to think about, the last fifty-two days?”

Steward floated out of his webbing, stretched his muscles, kicked for the exit port. “My investments,” he said.

*

Steward didn’t see Reese leave, but she left him a sardonic farewell on his message recorder, along with a stock market tip just in case the remark about investments had been serious. An old friend she’d met onstation had mentioned that Brighter Suns stock might take a fall. It had already lost a couple of points, and Reese’s friend, who was a transportation executive, had told her about a charter shuttle of executives, originating in the policorps that actually owned Brighter Suns, heading for Vesta at a steady point nine g. Reese advised Steward to sell short.

Fast work, Steward thought. Those dossiers had probably raised all sorts of questions concerning just why Brighter Suns thought it needed a military. Steward concluded that Brighter Suns might just release all its surplus cash in a big dividend for its stockholders, just by way of showing they couldn’t afford armed forces. Selling short might be the wrong thing to do.

Steward drifted to the lounge to drink a bulb of coffee and punch up a Charter scansheet to see what exciting attractions the station currently had to offer. They seemed much the same as six months ago.

His muscles were still aching from the deceleration burn, so he decided to find a quiet bar someplace and contemplate the stock market from over the rim of a trailing willow.

*

The sound of business rose around him as soon as he left the airlock, the purposeful bustle of life in Charter. The gravity was light here, and the air was filled with the liberated crews of commercial freighters, leaping from bar to hostel to bar in a continual, noisy celebration of their temporary freedom. Bridge and todo music bounced from metal walls. Laughter sounded brittle in the air.

This seemed too sudden for him—Steward wanted to adjust a little more slowly to station life. He stepped on a Velcro moveway that would take him down to the original Mitsubishi spindle. A brain supercharger whined as it passed on the next moveway. Holograms burned overhead, advertising the station’s attractions. Gravity drifted slowly through him, growing until it stood at point nine g. The Vesta reflexes were still working; Steward found himself scanning ahead and behind, looking for faces, silhouettes. He came out of a tunnel to see a curved material sky over his head, the vast tent divided into squares and rectangles, reflecting day and somber night, bits of green shining here and there. Bright ultralight aircraft floated by the polished spinal mirrors in an aerial ballet. Habitats this open weren’t built anymore. Steward stepped off the moveway and knew he wasn’t alone.

He was being followed, and a cold humming built in Steward’s nerves and blood, a hum like the sound of Charter, the noise of something happening. There was one tail at least, a middle-sized man in a dark blue jacket with zips. Zippers suggested Earth origin: people who lived in space usually preferred Velcro tabs, which couldn’t jam or catch on things.

Steward smiled. The Vesta reflexes were still working, but this wasn’t Vesta; this wasn’t enemy turf anymore.

He noticed a bar built on a corner, something called the Kafe Kola. It had a lot of exits. He entered and sat with his back to a wall. A woman two tables away was smoking, and the taste in the air made Steward want a cigarette. He suppressed the longing and ordered his trailing willow.

The man in the dark blue jacket came in, sat across the room, at an angle so Steward could see his profile. He seemed about forty, brown-haired, dark-skinned, clean-shaven, unremarkable. There was a delicacy to his hands that suggested genetic alteration, and his ears seemed too perfect to be real, but the hint was not reflected in his face, which didn’t have the sculptured prettiness so common among the altered. He ordered a cup of coffee and a biscuit. When they came he took them, stood up, and walked over to Steward’s table.

“You spotted me,” he said.

“Yes.”

He was altered, Steward saw now, but care had been taken with the face. He’d been created with the intention of looking ordinary, blending in with a nonaltered population. Born into the trade, Steward thought. Like Curzon.

“My name’s Stoichko. I was going to talk to you anyway. If you weren’t busy.”

Steward sipped his drink. “About what?”

“Can I sit down?”

Steward put his trailing willow on the table. “About what, buck?” he asked again.

Stoichko gazed at him quietly, thoughtfully, without offense. “About those files you stole on Vesta,” he said.

Steward grinned and thought of connections coming into being, springing into existence at the speed of light from the first moment he’d bounced a communiqué to Marie Byrd Land. “Sit down,” he said, and nudged a chair away from the table with his foot.

Stoichko sat down, put his coffee and biscuit on the table. “First thing is,” he said, “I don’t particularly care that you took those files. In fact, the people I work for think it was a pretty good trick.”

The trailing willow burned down Steward’s throat, merged with the humming warmth that moved through his body. Business. Connections. All that was represented by Tsiolkovsky’s Demon.

“Since you brought it up,” Steward asked, “who is it you work for?”

The man shook his head and laughed. “Those files got incredible distribution, Steward. Your friends in Antarctica had one hell of an auction. One price for exclusive rights to the file, one price for nonexclusive rights. It went on for days. People in the Pulsar Division were having apoplexy. They kept trying to buy their stuff back.”

“The Pulsar Division wasn’t supposed to find out.”

“The auction was too public. Of course they found out. After a while, the people I work for told them.”

Evidence fell into place. “You work for Group Seven,” Steward said.

Stoichko was still reminiscing, a happy smile on his face. “Pulsar got what they deserved. A bunch of dumb cowboys is what they were. To get taken by a drive rigger. You’re smarter than all the cowboys put together.” Tears of mirth were sparkling in his eyes. “You never saw such panic.” He shook his head. “Vesta deserves people with more delicacy running things, not all those ex-military types. A policorp in Vesta’s position requires individuals capable of subtlety.”

Steward tried to repress his own smile. Stoichko was too jolly to be quite real. “Group Seven,” he said again. “Right?”

Stoichko raised his biscuit as if in salute. “The
professional
Brighter Suns intelligence service.”

“And you want to recruit me. To work for the people who tortured me.”

Stoichko laughed. “
Pulsar
tortured you, buck. Not us.” He bit into the biscuit. “You’re really too good to stay in Starbright, you know. And as for your friends in Antarctica—well, they’re amateurs. They’d never have come up with anything like this on their own.” He leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms. “We wouldn’t want you on staff. You’re too independent, and your talents would be wasted. We’d just want to hire you for special contract work. You could always refuse.”

“I could retire. I made a lot of money on those files.”

Stoichko’s expression remained benevolent, but Steward saw his pupils contract just the slightest bit. “You could,” Stoichko said. “But you’d never see the Powers.”

A warning chimed through Steward, resonating in his bones. This was important. He looked down to conceal the knowledge from Stoichko, then sipped his drink to gain time. “Yes,” he said. “I’d like to see them again.” Steward let his eyes drift away to a point above Stoichko’s shoulder, remembering how Griffith looked when he talked about the Powers, how Sereng’s eyes had seemed clouded, turned inward. He tried to will himself into that state, that dream.

“Look, Steward,” Stoichko began. Steward snapped his eyes away, stared at Stoichko as if in surprise at being startled out of a reverie. The agent went on. “I don’t know what your plans are while you’re on leave. You probably want to do some partying. Here.” He unzipped a pouch on his jacket sleeve and pulled out a gleaming rectangle of brushed aluminum bound in dark plastic insulation. He pushed it across the table toward Steward. Steward reached a hand toward it. The object was cold to the touch. A wave of recognition passed through him as if in response to the chill. He’d seen this before, in the box that Sereng had taken off the Power ship. It was a drug inhaler, the same sort Griffith carried, but it had a refrigeration unit built in it, with a small rechargeable power supply and a socket to take a power jack.

“Take it with you to your party,” Stoichko said. “Have fun. I don’t want to put any pressure on you. But if you want some work for a lot of cash, and maybe see the Powers again, give me a call.” Steward took the inhaler and put it in an outside jacket pocket. His fingers were chilled even through the plastic insulation. He wondered how much it would cost to buy the use of a chemist.

“Thanks,” he said. He tried again to pretend he was seeing the object of his desire over Stoichko’s shoulder.

“Something else, Steward,” Stoichko said. “We’d want to hire you first for ice work.”

There was a bad taste in Steward’s mouth. “I don’t know if I’d want to do that.”

“You might, if I told you the name of the target. It’s Colonel de Prey.”

Steward’s heart lurched. He was suddenly aware of small details, all of them somehow important—Stoichko’s level gaze, no longer quite so jovial, the pattern in which one of the fluorescent lights over the bar was flickering, the way the liquid surface of his trailing willow reflected a blue hologram advert gleaming from all the way across the room. Steward gazed at Stoichko and controlled his words carefully. “He’s dead. They couldn’t revive him.”

Stoichko shook his head. “He’s dead to Vesta. But three weeks before de Prey was shot, Consolidated Systems bought a hidden controlling interest in LifeLight as part of a friendly stock exchange. When de Prey died, he was revived successfully, but Consolidated took possession of the clone and brain recording. They told Pulsar the revival failed.” He laughed. “Consolidated’s been getting some of the best people out of Coherent Light’s old operation that way. Sometimes, if their information is valuable enough, they just revive them without waiting for the Alpha to die. It’s a good trick. Pulsar doesn’t know about it yet.”

Steward’s mouth was dry. He tried to summon saliva. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Hey,” Stoichko said, and smiled. “I didn’t mean to dampen your party. Have fun. Use the stuff I gave you. No one else onstation has what’s in that inhaler, so make the most of it.” He reached out and touched Steward on the wrist. “We’ll talk,” he said. “I’m at the Hotel Xylophone. Just call when you want to talk.”

Steward licked his lips. “I’ll do that,” he said. “Sure.”

Stoichko grinned and finished his biscuit. He zipped up the pocket on his sleeve. “Be seeing you,” he said, and ambled away.

Stoichko, Steward thought. A face and manner to set one at ease. His genes must have come from ten generations of salesmen. Friendly, jovial, complimentary, and inside nothing but liquid helium. There should have been a chill mist rising from his eyes.

De Prey, he thought. Still alive. Cold revulsion tugged at him. He felt sick. The inhaler was heavy in his pocket. He wondered if it was poison, if Vesta’s revenge was supposed to be self-administered.

He left without finishing his drink, and then followed an elaborate escape and evasion procedure to make certain he wasn’t being followed. He didn’t think he was.

The Charter directory gave him the names of a number of chemists. He jacked a credit spike into a telephone and called the first.

*

“Interesting.” Zhou gazed with clear plastic artificial eyes at a three-dimensional hologram of a complex molecule. The model of the molecule looked like a geometric abstract of a sperm cell, with an indole ring making up the bulky head and a hydrogen-carbon chain forming a long tail. Something deep in Zhou’s eyes gleamed silver.

Zhou was twenty years old and a pharmacology student. One of the chemists Steward called had suggested he might be available for hire. He lived in a cubbyhole apartment crammed with apparatus, with computers and cryogenic units and chemical synthesizers. He wore bright stripes of fluorescent paint on his cheeks and forehead. The chemist looked at a comp printout, then back at the hologram model.

“It’s a neurohormone of some sort,” Zhou said. “The kind that’s on the juncture between hormones and B vitamins. But it’s not registered. I’d say you got hold of an experimental hormone that hasn’t been trademarked yet. It’s complex, and it would cost a lot to synthesize.”

“Is this artificial or natural?” Steward asked.

Zhou shrugged. “Can’t say. But I don’t think something like this would appear in nature. I’ll show you why later.”

Steward had told Zhou that he’d got the chemical from a rigger friend of his who didn’t know what it was. He suspected Zhou didn’t believe him, but if Zhou was skeptical, it hadn’t affected his work. It had taken Zhou only a few minutes to analyze the sample Steward brought with him. It had taken him two hours to decide what the analysis meant.