Gridlinked (16 page)

'Best to get moving,' said John Stanton, looking down at him.

Pelter sat up and looked at himself. His body, like Stanton's, was covered with pinheads of dried blood. He lifted his legs from the coffin and tried to stand. His legs started to give way and Stanton caught hold of his arm.

'Takes a moment for the blood sugars to kick in. Your blood is full of food, but the cells of the rest of your body are starving. You'll know when it happens,' he said.

Pelter tried standing again and this time got control of his legs. The burning sensation began to retreat like the frost on the walls. The feeling that replaced it was an endorphin rush. For a brief minute he got the buzz that turned people into heroin addicts. He hated it. He shook off Stanton's supporting arm and carefully stooped down to take up his frigid clothing. The intercom crackled its phoney crackle.

'We're into atmosphere now and will be landing in about an hour. As part of the service, you'll find a wallet of Carth shillings in the black holdall. It's your entry fee. They're desperate for Polity currencies. Customs here are pretty relaxed, but it's best to lubricate the wheels of their bureaucracy,' Jarvellis told them.

Pelter looked at Stanton. 'Customs?'

'Yeah, we're not in the Polity now. You'll find that if you want anything done here, you'll have to do a fair bit of lubricating,' Stanton told him.

Pelter nodded thoughtfully as he pulled on his jacket. 'Tell me about this place,' he said.

'Nothing much to say,' Stanton replied. 'The only habitation here is at the poles. At the equator the average temperature is not far below the boiling point of water. They're eight solstan years prior to Polity subsumption, and what government they have is on the edge of collapse. It's completely corrupt and therefore just what we need. You can do anything you want here, if you have the money.'

'Dealers?' Pelter asked.

'You'll be falling over them. You can get just about anything. Fortunes are made out here on the edge, fhrough technologies coming out of the Polity and proscribed weapons going in. Huma's become a trading outpost.'

'I'll want a dropbird, seeker bullets and missiles -proton guns as well.'

'You'll be able to buy all that. Not cheap, but anything you want. We should be able to get it all through the dealer Jarvellis used.'

Pelter nodded and looked closely at John Stanton. 'I'll find a dealer. I'll want you to find the boys and sort out one or two other things,' he said.

'Whatever you say, Arian.'

As they sat out the hour until landing, sipping from

Grldlinked self-heating soup cartons, Pelter could almost feel the image in his missing left eye.
The thin-gun.
It seemed to push a cold ache through the centre of his head, and he knew that place to be the hole the pulse would burn right the way through.

The door irised open and bright lemon sunlight flooded the hold, before a wave of heat and spicy perfume. Pelter led the way out into that light, with Mr Crane walking a step behind him, holding the briefcase. Stanton paused at the lip and glanced back in, before hurrying after them.

The landing field was compacted greenish dirt webbed with plants similar to liverworts or some spillage of boiled spinach. From these plants sprang long hairlike stalks topped with spherical pink buds the size of peppercorns or the two-petalled flowers they opened out as. As he walked on a patch of these and got a stronger waft of their spicy perfume, Stanton remembered his last time here. Twenty solstan years ago he had come this way on his route into the Polity to make his fortune. Things had been different then. For one, there had not been as many ships here then as there were now. He looked around at the multifarious vessels. They were, on the whole, small cargo haulers, though of every conceivable design. He could guess what an awful lot of them were hauling too, and that was another change. At that time, the government here had put restrictions on arms, much the same as those in the Polity, and there had also been very strict laws concerning landing permits, passes and codes of conduct. Now nobody bothered. Why should they, when the Polity was soon to step in and take control? Why bother when there were fortunes to be made in the intervening years?

The two customs officials who approached were one example of the indolence and greed that affected the citizens of a world about to be subsumed. Their clothing was a mixture of uniform and personal clothing. The man wore the green peaked cap and jacket of customs personnel over a dusty pair of monofilament overalls. The woman wore the jacket over a brown leaf-shaped skirt, but no cap. She carried a scanner on which Stanton could see the charging light flickering, and as such was useless until charged. She also had an organic-looking augmentation behind her right ear. It had the flat bean shape of most augs, but was a greenish colour and seemed to be covered with glinting little scales.

'Do you have a permit for that?' said the man, pointing at Crane.

'Permit?' replied Pelter flatly.

Stanton quickly stepped up beside him. 'We're not sure of what is required. Perhaps you can help us out?' he said, noting how intently the woman was staring at Pelter.

'We can issue you with a permit. The cost will be… ten New Carth shillings, or the equivalent in New Yen. Then there is the matter of your visas,' said the man.

Stanton pulled out the wallet Jarvellis had provided for them and opened it, making sure the man could not see how much it contained. Ten shillings was a derisory sum back in the Polity. Out here it was probably a day's wages.

'Perhaps you could tell us how much the visas cost?' Pelter asked.

The man studied them. They looked, Pelter knew, somewhat ragged round the edges. He could also see how the man's eyes kept straying to the briefcase Mr Crane carried. That case was obviously new.

'Visas are eight shillings per person. You will of course need three,' he said.

'Three? Why do we need a visa
and
a permit for Mr Crane?' Stanton asked.

'Just pay him,' said Pelter.

Stanton shook his head. It was the wrong thing to do. You gave people like this any leeway and they'd have you. Nevertheless he pulled out four ten shilling notes and handed them over. The man folded them and put them in his pocket.

'That's six shillings change,' said Stanton.

The man made no move to search for any change. 'I will need to look in the briefcase,' he said.

Abruptly Mr Crane stepped forwards and raised his head, which until then had been bowed. The man took an involuntary step back. He licked his lips. Stanton thought that, though Mr Crane's marbles were scattered far and wide, he did 'menacing' very well.

'You will not need to look in the briefcase, and we will not require change,' said Pelter.

The man was obviously riled by this. 'Just one word and I can have ten men here with proton guns,' he said.

Pelter's face went dead. 'I don't even have to speak. It would take a second for Mr Crane to rip you in half. Now get out of our way'

The man bridled and the woman slapped her hand on his arm.

'Jarl, leave it,' she said.

'But—'

'Jarl!'

The woman and Pelter were staring hard at each other again. Stanton wondered what the hell all that was about. She pulled at Jarl's arm and gestured to another ship that was landing over the other side of the field.

'Another one coming in,' she said, then glanced towards a gate in the far fence where some uniformed guards were lounging. To Pelter she said, 'There will be no trouble over there, Arian Pelter. They'll let you through.' She pulled at Jarl and they moved away.

'What the hell was that all about?' Stanton asked Pelter. Pelter's dead face had now taken on an expression of puzzlement. He looked at the retreating woman, then back towards the
Lyric.

'How much would Jarvellis have told them here?' he asked.

'She wouldn't have said anything more than that she had some passengers. I know her, Arian, and she does stick to her word. I specifically asked her not to say anything, because if they'd run some sort of search on us they'd know to ask for bigger bribes.'

'How did that woman know my name then?'

Stanton was at a loss. He too looked towards the
Lyric
again.

Pelter continued. 'I was going to charter her for the trip back out of here. It's best to stay with those you know so long as they don't get too greedy.'

Stanton wondered what double meanings there were in that comment. He said, 'You want me to talk to her? She'll wait until we're well clear - ' he glanced meaning- fully at Mr Crane ' - before she'll come out, but I can guess where to find her.'

'Yes, do that.'

They started walking.

'But before you do that,' Pelter continued, 'see if you can find the boys.' He turned to Crane, and in response the android opened the briefcase, extracted a single sapphire, closed the case and held out the gem in the palm of his brass hand. 'This will be payment to them on account.' Pelter continued staring at Mr Crane, and then abruptly lost patience. 'Give it to him!' Mr Crane's hand jerked and the gem shot towards Stanton's face. He snatched it from the air.

'What will you do?' he asked, pocketing the gem.

'I will find a dealer.'

Stanton glanced at the position in the sky of the lemon sun, and then he pointed to the urban sprawl in the distance. Between the fence and the town was a wasteland scattered with adapted acacia trees and low silvery sages. Amongst these were the corroding parts of star-ships and the occasional ruined AGC. The town began with the low spread of three-storey arcology buildings. Beyond them were city blocks and onion-shaped spires as from some Scheherazade tale; but AGCs flew among them, rather than magic carpets. How much of a difference was there? Stanton wondered.

'There's a place called The Sharrow at the centre of Port Lock. I'm told it's still open, and little changed from when I was last here. Shall we meet there this evening?'

'Yes, I'll find it,' said Pelter.

Stanton left it at that and looked with puzzlement at the guards at the gate. They all just stared at Pelter and made no move to block them or extract bribes. Each of them also had one of those strange scaled augs. Beyond the gate three AGCs of dubious safety were parked in a row. Three drivers came over to make their pitch. Two of the drivers were lucky. The third just went back to his vehicle and waited; there would soon be someone else. Ships were landing here and taking off with increasing regularity.

Mennecken, Corlackis, Dusache and Svent were not so similar in appearance as they were in inclination. The four of them liked danger, liked violence, and liked money. They were not at the metrotel where they had said they would be. Stanton was totally unsurprised to find them at the arena. As he came from the entrance tunnel between the tiered seating areas, he looked down into the ring and saw that a match was about to commence. A huge man with boosted musculature, twin augs linked by a sensory band across his eyes and a ceramal skull exposed above his ears was up against a smaller man with bluish skin. The boosted man was armed with fist blades. The blue man had a long commando knife and a hook. They were circling, checking each other out. The four mercenaries were lounging in seats close to the ring itself - what were called the wet seats, for obvious reasons. Stanton made his way down to them.

'Bit uneven,' he said, sitting behind the four men. Casually, all four of them looked round at him. Mennecken and Corlackis were twins. Both of them looked neat in their businesswear suits, chrome augs and cropped black hair. The only distinguishing feature between them was that Mennecken was built like a weightlifter and Corlackis was slim. Neither of them was boosted. Boosting, they felt, led to overconfidence; it dulled their edge. Dusache had black curly hair, was boosted and tended to dress in leather and denim, but normally he went without an aug, though he had one now. Svent had a new aug too. The weaselly little killer liked every mechanical advantage he could get hold of and considered any kind of biological advantage a waste of time. He seemed small and weak, but Stanton knew this not to be the case. Svent had reinforced bones and cyber-motors at his joints. He was easily as capable of tearing your arm off as Dusache was, though he would be inclined to do it more slowly.

Dusache nodded to the opponents in the arena. 'Blake there wanted to make himself some money. He's made a mistake. The little guy is a Hooper from Spat-terjay. Easy to underestimate,' he said.

Stanton studied the litde man more closely now. He saw that the blue coloration was due to thousands of blue ring-shaped scars all over his body. He returned his attention to the mercenaries and pointed to Dusache and Svent.

'Those augs, what's the story?'

The two men simultaneously reached up and touched the scaly organic augs nestling behind their ears. Stanton thought there was something creepy about this twinned response.

'Good tech,' said Svent. 'You can access just about any server real fast, even get in a little on AI nets, damned near a gridlink, and these little dears ain't far off AI themselves. About a hundred New Yen, plus fitting. Made by Dragoncorp.'

'They look like biotech.'

'Nah,' said Svent. 'You should know me better than that. I wouldn't drop a Yen on that shit.'

'Speaking of Yen,' said Corlackis softly, and gazed at Stanton with tired patience. Stanton reached into his pocket and took out the sapphire. He tossed it to Corlackis. The mercenary's hand snapped up cobra fast and caught the gem. He studied it for a moment, then dropped it in his top pocket.

'Down payment,' said Stanton.

'Hey, I didn't see that,' said Dusache.

'One hundred thousand New Carth,' said Corlackis. 'I will break it at the hotel bank and give you your share then.'

Dusache relaxed and turned his attention back to the fight. Together they all focused their attention on the opponents, for now came the sounds of metal on metal. The two fighters were in close, trying to smash through each other's guards. Blake got through and drove his fist blade straight into the Hooper's stomach. All over, thought Stanton, until the little man drove his hook through Blake's shoulder, hooked it round his collarbone, drew in close and began pumping his blade in. Blake got another couple of hits in, but it was almost as if they were irrelevant to the Hooper. Stanton noted that the little man, though he had huge gashes open on his body, did not seem to be bleeding. Blake was bleeding plenty, and after a moment he started to scream thinly. He dropped to the ground and lay there making horrible gasping sounds. The Hooper detached his hook and walked away holding it up in the air. The cheering had an edge to it. Stanton watched a medbot zip in from the side and start driving blockers and tubes into Blake's butchered flesh.