Balance Point (13 page)

TWENTY-ONE

An hour after I left Syrene at Jazen’s, I finally got pinged with a meet setup for Ya Ya Cohon.

I had used my hour productively. Orion had always told me there was nothing you could do at three in the morning that you couldn’t do just as well during the day. In Shipyard the reverse was true.

I cashed Syrene’s check at only a modest discount for the transaction to go unreported, then cleaned out my other accounts. I could’ve raked off a boatload from Kit’s and my petty cash field account here on Mousetrap—ops maintained several at various locations around the union—and rationalized it to myself as “a loan.” You’d be surprised what qualifies as petty for a team that kills people. But I never stole from any employer, or from anybody, except to keep Orion and me from starving, and I wasn’t about to change now.

I also pulled up the compassionate leave form I had to file. I clicked the duration box marked “Indefinite,” typed into the contact information space “To be provided when determined.”

I left the optional “Explanation” block blank. If I entered the true explanation, I would be confessing intent to violate about a dozen regs and four statutes. If I filled in the “Explanation” block, but lied, I would only be violating one statute. But fraudulent procurement of leave constituted constructive desertion. For constructive desertion, they hung you.

Finally, I backdated the “Effective Date” box for yesterday, but set the “Submit” timer for tomorrow.

Next, I checked on the next outbound from Mousetrap inbound to Yavet.

Iwo Jima
upshipped in the Trueborn morning. In Shipyard we defined “Trueborn morning” as the dead space between seven a.m. and noon when only mad dogs and Trueborns went out.

I didn’t check further into the schedules after I thought about it. Cohon was the smuggler, not me, and there were plenty of zig-zag routes to Yavet. How best to get a scrubbed package like me onto Yavet was what I was paying Cohon for. I hoped.

The contact info that came to me via Syrene was innocuous for her profession. Some things hide best in plain sight.

I did what I was told, which was to show up at 4 a.m. and wait in front of the Nasty Nurse.

The Nasty was a Jazen’s competitor, and its reputation for dirty needles and dirtier glassware was beneath reproach. I did have to concede that its waitress uniforms were supremely slutty.

At 4:21 a.m., two large gentlemen escorted me into the utility passage alongside the Nasty. They bagged, gagged, detagged, then zagged me.

Bagged and gagged are self explanatory. Detagging was an unpleasant procedure that removed or blocked tracking devices on or within the person. Zagging was what was done in Shipyard to a bagged, gagged, and detagged visitor who the visitee wanted to insure was so disoriented that the visitor would be unable to return uninvited.

So after being run around and up and down for thirty minutes, I couldn’t tell you where Ya Ya Cohon’s place was if I wanted to.

I can tell you it was luxuriously appointed and spacious for Shipyard. The large gentlemen unbagged and ungagged me, then chucked me into an office two stories tall, and left me there.

The deck plates were covered wall-to-wall with imitation grass. That would have impressed me in the years before I first saw the real thing, which on Earth even grows wild. Behind a desk in the room’s center hung a spot-lit, gilt-framed painting of dogs playing poker. If you’ve spent time on the Motherworld, you know that’s a schlocky, mass-produced Trueborn picture that Edwin Trentin-Born’s lawn boys might have hung in their shed, if Edwin would have allowed them to defile the place in that way.

A cart, the kind that could hold cleaning supplies, was parked near the office’s door, and a dwarf with his back to me stood tiptoe on a stool, lovingly dusting the painting’s frame with a puffball on a long handle.

I sat down in a faux-leather wing chair and waited.

A gold-encrusted analog wall clock clack-clacked toward six a.m. as the dwarf kept dusting.

Finally, I asked him, “When does Mr. Cohon usually get up?”

The small man waddled down off the stool, turned, and I saw that he wore an eyepatch that matched his black brocade vest and trousers.

“Ya Ya up earlier even than this time most day.”

I raised my eyebrows.

Cohon’s butler was peep. “Peep” were Yavi little people, in the sort of pejorative slang that the Trueborns condemned as “politically incorrect.” A little person could call another little person or himself “peep.” But if a mid-levels Yavi addressed a cook or utilities sweep as “peep,” that was rude. Orion was peep. This guy was peep. But he wasn’t like Orion, who was short, but not a dwarf.

Another difference between Orion and this guy was that Orion and I lived in Yaven, Yavet’s two-hundred-level, three-billion-population stack-city capital. This guy, by his accent, was from Yot, a one-hundred-level, hundred-million-population hick stack in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Yot was known today for its odd-talking little people, who tended toward dwarfism. Yot was also known for having once been Yavet’s opium capital, when Yavet’s cities weren’t stacked and her poppies grew as wild as grass.

I said, “I grew up downlevels, too. In Yaven.”

He turned and looked me up and down with his eye. Then he scratched a three-day-old beard and shook his head. “You see Ya Ya, you better no lie to him.”

I smiled. “So I’ve been warned. Don’t worry. My mother raised me to tell the truth.”

When you thought about it, Cohon was a damn shrewd crook. When the nerds devised our cover legends they always tried to bring in planetary locals so we got the details right. This little guy had offworlded on his own somehow, or Cohon had upsmuggled him. Either way, this dwarf’s perspective made him worth his weight in gold to a businessman whose cash cow was Yavet and its billions of junked-up little people.

A guru in the Cold War I Soviet Union said that religion was the opiate of the masses. On Cold War II Yavet, opiates were the opiate of the masses.

And this guy was worth his weight in gold when sniffing out competing opium smugglers trying to milk his boss’ cash cow.

Hair rose on my neck.

This guy didn’t just
happen
to be dusting. Cohon had assigned his resident Yavi to interrogate me, because Syrene would have let Cohon know where I wanted to go.

I pointed at the painting. “That’s superb. It hardly looks like a copy.”

“No copy. When comes gambling Ya Ya go first class, always.” He narrowed his eye. “You know Trueborn old masters. You Trueborn big. No peep. How you growing up downlevels?”

“My parents were Trueborns, passing through, so no permit, and I arrived early. My midwife raised me.”

“Is possible. Many midwife soft spot in head.” The little butler nodded his own great head. “Good boy go home visit little mother?”

I nodded back. “She,” I took a breath. “She’s dying.”

“Oh. What her name?”

“Huh?”

The dwarf squinted his eye. “Good boy not know little mother’s name?”

The
Iwo Jima
, if that turned out to be the ride I needed, upshipped in three hours. Between then and now I still had to get scrubbed. But if Rumplestiltskin here hadn’t even finished playing his name game, price negotiations with Cohon remained a distant hope.

I rolled my eyes. “Orion Parker. The midwife who raised me was named Orion Parker.”

My little interrogator stepped to the desk, waved his stubby fingers above the universal while he kept his eye on me.

“Accounting. This is Bobbi.” The voice was disembodied, female, and yawned.

“Bobbi, we do business ever with Orion Parker, midwife of Yaven?”

Syrene always said that a successful businesswoman knew her customer base. But Cohon’s organization served more little people on Yavet than McDonalds of Earth served hamburgers. At any given moment the practicing midwives in Yaven alone may have numbered in the tens of thousands.

Pause.

I slumped into the faux leather and stared at the clacking clock while the dubiously original dogs played poker.

Bobbi the yawner said, “Well . . . I don’t
see
—”

I came up out of my wing chair. “Seriously? This is the stupidest—”

“Here we go! She just hasn’t ordered in awhile. Last: Mid-cavity forceps, two boxes of sponges. Frequency: Customer twenty-seven years. Pays: Never late.”

The dwarf smiled. “You in very early, Bobbi. Or stay very late night?”

“Both. End of quarter closing.”

The dwarf grunted. “Give yourself raise three percent.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Cohon.”

I plopped back into the faux leather so hard that it made a human noise that sounded embarrassingly un-faux.

Ya Ya Cohon waved his stubby fingers over his universal and hung up, then flicked his hand at the door. “This one no lie, Peter. You go now. Take cart, too, and pack up.”

I leaned out of the chair and looked back toward the office’s door. One of the two goons who had delivered me here to Ya Ya pointed at the cleaning cart that had been alongside the door, nodded.

I hadn’t even realized he was standing there, which now appeared to have been the idea.

Before he departed, he used his left hand to unscrew the suppressor from the barrel of the gunpowder pistol that he held in his right.

I suppressed my own shiver.

Syrene had warned me about Ya Ya Cohon’s testing program. Apparently he really was a tough grader.

“You owe life to little mother. But you think little person just fit come in early, clean office.”

I shook my head. “Orion always said good things come in small packages. I’m a big but my heart’s peep.”

Ya Ya Cohon smiled, nodded. “Okay. I make for boy of Orion most first class passage to Yavet.”

I bowed my head, not just for show. “Thank you, Mr. Cohon.”

“How long she kick?”

“Uh. She may have less than six months, sir.” I swallowed.

He stroked the whiskers on his cheek, narrowed one eye. “My people get you quick scrub, then we go
Iwo Jima
today together.”

I stiffened.

A couple introspective, luxurious months of most first-class passage aboard a starship? Great. Road trip with a sociopathic, one-eyed dwarf? Less great.

I waved my hand, palm out. “You’ve already been so kind, Mr. Cohon. That’s hardly necessary.”

Ya Ya waved his hand over the universal again, and Peter poked his head through the door.

My heart thumped.

Maybe Ya Ya had made me an offer I shouldn’t have refused.

Ya Ya waved Peter in, and it turned out that he was the mob equivalent of a utility infielder. Behind himself Peter now towed the formerly-empty cart I mistook for a cleaning cart. The cart now squealed beneath the weight of more matched luggage than a Trueborn trophy wife needed for a roundtrip to Pluto.

Ya Ya smiled, patted my arm as he rocked past me toward the door. “Ya Ya already booked on
Iwo
today anyway.”

“Oh.”

Ya Ya smiled up at me while he circled his arms horizontally and swayed side to side. “Downlevels peeps bust it together. Will rock?”

I was not a little person, but I may well have been the first downlevels-raised person Ya Ya Cohon had made the acquaintance of off Yavet since he had left home. And it was probably tough to upgrade acquaintances to pals when you kept blowing their brains out. And I really, really needed this ride.

I nodded. “Will rock.”

Peter delivered perfectly-scrubbed me, Ya Ya, and the trophy wife luggage into
Iwo
’s inprocess lounge with ten minutes to spare.

I cleared the retinal as smoothly as I ever had with a scrub job from Howard’s finest nerds. In the time it took to walk twenty feet, Captain Jazen Parker disappeared from the official universe. That alone justified Ya Ya’s price to me, which had turned out to be less peep-to-peep friendly than his dwarf boogie had implied. In fact, if it had been any less friendly, I would have been broke.

“Most first-class passage” also implied better than steerage, which was what my berthing turned out to be. Not that I’m complaining. Quad-bunk compartments and shared lavatory facilities beat the Legion’s platoon bays and gang showers. Steerage passage also included meals, but not alcohol. Ya Ya, who berthed in a suite up in
actual
first class, got all of both of those that he cared to stuff himself with.

One thing that was included with steerage class but
not
with first class was a full body cavity search at boarding. Again, I’ve endured far worse indignities in my life, but it was a stuffing I didn’t care for.

Ya Ya and I agreed to meet after
Iwo Jima
got underway, in her electronic gaming facility, a repurposed elongate bay that in the days when cruisers transported infantry had served as a pistol practice range. On all cruisers it was called the “Slot Slot,” a phrase the Trueborns liked so well that they trademarked it.

We agreed on the Slot Slot because it was a common facility open to all classes. Also because it turned out that when Ya Ya vacationed from running dope and guns, and bankrupting suckers desperate for identity scrubs, he recycled his obscene profits by gambling.

Ya Ya actually wound up spending most of our underway time in the casino forward, which was first class only. I didn’t feel deprived, either of his company, or of the experience.

When Kit and I traveled, we visited starship casinos when our “Mr. & Mrs.” legend of the moment was posh, and when you’ve seen one gilded pleasure drome, you’ve seen ’em all. First-class casinos offered high-stakes games with names like
chemin de fer, roulette
, and
trente et quarante
. Kit translated all of them for me from the original Trueborn French as “lose your entire ass here.” When Kit tried them, she usually won. When I did, they lived up to their names.

I squirmed through the Slot Slot’s crowds, and between rows of honking, ringing machines, until I found Ya Ya.

It wasn’t hard. He had changed into a shiny green silk suit with matching eyepatch. His legs dangled from the high stool atop which he sat, and he played an entire row of machines like it was a pipe organ, while a waitress pair shuttled him drinks.