The Credulity Nexus (18 page)

Even after Veb
stopped speaking, Rik didn't reply for a long, long time.
Eventually, he said, “Thanks, Veb. Thanks for telling me, and
thanks for taking care of things. I guess I must have missed the
funeral by now. I know who's behind this.” The bastard whose ship
he was flying in. The ghost he'd agreed to help. That
smartly-dressed creep with a broom up his virtual ass, who hadn't
happened to mention the fact that he'd just had Rik's wives
murdered.

He smashed his
fist into the wall of his cabin, shattering the flimsy plastic.
Just a couple of casualties in a private war no-one even knew was
being waged.

“
They won't bother you again, Veb,” he told
his friend. At least while Rik helped them, Lanham's people would
leave Rik's family and friends alone. But when this was over... “I
promise you, there will be a reckoning. At least you guys got the
killers. Saved me a job.

“
I don't know where I'll be for a while.
There's something I need to do. But I'll get back to Heinlein as
soon as I can. Goodbye, Veb, and thanks.”

He hung up the
call and went to see the medic.

“
You cut your hand,” she said as Rik
dripped blood across her floor.

He looked down
at his hand and grunted. “That's what you get for picking fights
with walls.”

She took his
hand and looked at it, then busied herself with ointments and
bandages.

“
It wasn't that I came about, doc. It's
this.” He held up his left hand and showed her the faint line of
the scratch Peth Cordell had made, back when she tagged him with a
tracer. “I need you to get some nano junk out of my
system.”

After that, he
went to the ship's armoury. He had the run of the place now, and
could do what he liked. Lanham kept his little runabout stocked
with a nice selection of lethal and non-lethal weapons. There was
even a collection of explosives, including mines, demolition
charges, and blocks of plastique, all with a variety of detonators
and remote triggers. There were also mortars, rocket-propelled
grenades and shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. All of it
was completely illegal, of course. Rik spent a long time studying
it all, then got to work.

-oOo-

Veb Degen 1
Rea listened as Rik's final words came through the phone. “But I'll
get back to Heinlein as soon as I can. Goodbye, Veb, and
thanks.”

“
Wait, Rik. Don't hang up. I haven't told
you about Maria.” But the end-of-call tone had already sounded and
the line was dead. “Damn!”

“
Problems?”

Veb turned to
find a small, thin-faced man at the bar.

“
Greet-Greet McGregor.” The upload's tone
could have been bottled and used as rat poison. “How long have you
been there?”

The little
Scotsman wore a long, shabby coat – the kind you'd expect to have
knocked-off wristwatches hanging from the lining. His eyes flitted
about as if he had a nervous disorder, and wouldn't settle on
anything for more than an instant.

“
Long enough to hear that was Rik on the
phone, aye?”

“
What if it was?”

“
Ah, so it was then. I'd like to speak to a
human, if ye could just call somebody.” Greet-Greet's tone was
polite enough, but the slur was one Veb wasn't going to let
pass.

“
I'm running this bar, McGregor. If you
don't like it, go elsewhere.”

The Scotsman
raised his hands as if amazed at the upload's hostility. “Ach,
ye're a touchy wee bugger. I just wanted to speak to whoever's in
charge. There's no need to get so uppity about it.”

“
Well I'm the one in charge. What do you
want?”

The prejudice
against uploads that had driven Veb away from Earth was not so
strong here in Heinlein, but he still met enough of it to make him
want to smash things. The worst kind was from religious types like
McGregor who refused even to accept that uploads were human.
According to them, the soul left the body at death and that was
that. Robots with human minds were just soulless machines in their
eyes.

“
Well that's great, just great,” McGregor
said, pronouncing the word “greet”. “I'm glad to see that someone
has the charity to trust the likes of you with such
responsibility.”

“
Before I was uploaded, I ran a corporation
big enough to buy and sell the likes of
you
ten thousand times over.”

“
Aye, no doubt, but that was when you were
a living man, not the poor, miserable creature you've since
become.”

“
All right, pal, that's it.” He leapt over
the bar in a single, graceful movement – something easily done in
the Moon's gravity. “You're leaving.” He landed lightly beside the
Scotsman and towered above him.

McGregor began
to back away. Veb advanced on him, herding him towards the door.
The few customers drinking quietly at their tables watched with
mild interest.

“
I just wanted to know where to find Rik,”
McGregor said, quickly. “You know, he's doing a wee job for me at
the moment and the people who commissioned me are asking some very
awkward questions.”

“
Rik's not here.”

“
No, but you talk to him, right? I heard ye
just a moment ago.”

“
So what?”

“
So you should tell him he's upset some
awfully powerful people. They say he's stolen their property and
they want it back, or he's a dead man.” He was almost at the door
now, speaking faster all the time to get his message out before Veb
chased him into the street. “They're refusing to pay up. They want
what he took or they're coming for him – and me!” He put on an
expression that was probably meant to convey that he was giving a
friendly piece of advice. “And if they found out about this place,
they'd no doubt come for you too. Not that they'll hear it from me,
mind you. I'm just saying.” He stumbled out over the
doorstep.

“
You'd better tell him,” McGregor shouted
as the door closed in his face. “I can't stall them forever. Tell
him he's an unreliable shite and I'm done wi' him. You tell him
that, you undead bastard!”

Veb stared
thoughtfully at the door for a moment, then went to collect a few
glasses.

-oOo-

Travelling at such a tiny fraction of the
speed of light, time dilation should have been barely noticeable.
Yet for Rik, cooped up in
The Phenomenon of Man
hour after hour with only his grief and anger for
company, the ship's clocks were running painfully
slowly.

Zero-G didn't
help much, either. Nor did complaining about it to the captain. It
turned out that a gentle acceleration to the mid-point and a gentle
deceleration thereafter was out of the question. The focus fusion
reactors ran so much more efficiently at high power, the captain
told him, that bone-crushing accelerations and long stretches of
coasting were just how things were done in space.

Rik suspected
the captain – an apparently stolid and sensible upload called
Campos – was secretly pissed about having to ferry Rik about and
wanted to get some small revenge. Rik had flown the Earth-Moon
shuttle many times without a hint of zero-G except at the
mid-point. Whatever the truth, it didn't help his mood to spend the
day drifting around the ship like a Macy's parade balloon with its
strings cut.

His calls to
Fariba Freymann weren't getting through, either. He tried to tell
himself she was OK, but he worried all the same. That damned zombie
girl had left her for dead on the tarmac at LAX and didn't know or
care whether Fariba had still been breathing when they took
off.

If she was
alive, the Feds would have her. What would happen then? He couldn't
guess – anything from a quiet interrogation to a major
international incident, he supposed. He wished he could talk to her
and make sure she was all right. He wished he knew why it bugged
him so much. The woman had been his gaoler, not his buddy. She was
a trained agent, not a helpless bimbo. What's more, he'd known her
for less than a day. Yet he felt a powerful need to know she was
safe.

And the Drew
sisters were dead. Every five minutes, his thoughts came back to
that. Nephele and Carlotta had been borderline certifiable, they'd
made his life hell, and they'd shown him some of the best times
he'd known. They'd picked him up when he was a homeless stray and
they'd stuck a firecracker up his ass. He might not have loved them
nearly as much as he thought he did in those wild, early days, but
he'd loved them. And Martin don't-bother-me-with-the-details Lanham
was going to pay for setting his dogs on them.

But grinding
his teeth and smashing the furniture didn't make him feel better at
all. What he needed was to do something – preferably to someone. He
also needed a plan and he needed it before he got back to
Earth.

So he made an
effort and settled himself into a frame of mind where he could at
least begin to think about the future. That's when Rivers decided
to pay him a call.

“
Howdy, partner,” she said as the door slid
open.

Annoyingly,
she was standing upright on the floor, her gecko-skin soles holding
her firmly in place.

“
What do you want?”

She sashayed
into his cabin as if he'd invited her. “Well, what do you think?”
she asked, striking a pose. She had transformed her coal-black skin
to a bright, candy pink.

“
You're hurting my eyes.”

“
I did it just for you. I thought since we
were working together, I'd change my outfit, so I didn't look so
mean and intimidating.”

“
It makes your ass look big.”

“
Keep your eyes off my ass, zombie-lover.
The Boss said I should be nice to you, but there are
limits.”

“
Fuck you, and fuck your boss, and fuck
Lanham. The only reason you're not dead right now is because you,
personally, didn't have a hand in hurting my friends or killing my
wives.”

Rivers
laughed. “What are you gonna do, asshole, threaten us all to
death?”

Rik's temper
snapped. He threw himself at the upload, only to find himself
tumbling awkwardly across the room. Still laughing, she batted him
aside as he passed her. He drifted on to the wall, shouting in
impotent rage. He managed to get his feet onto the wall and pushed
off hard in Rivers' direction. He shot across the room at high
speed and would have hit her full in the chest if she hadn't dodged
out of his way with humiliating ease. Almost before he realised
he'd missed her, he slammed into a table and then into another
wall. Flailing wildly, he caught a light fitting and saved himself
from bouncing back into the room.

He hung there,
panting and dishevelled, bleeding from a small cut on his forehead,
cursing himself for being such an idiot. What was he thinking,
starting a fight in zero-G, with an upload, for Chrissake? That
robot body was faster, stronger and harder than he was – and it
could stick to the floor while he bounced around like a beach ball.
He needed to get a grip. Sure, his life had turned to shit and
people he loved had been hurt, but getting himself killed wasn't
going to make anything better.

Rivers walked
to a chair and sat down. She regarded Rik with a smug smile and
crossed her legs.

“
Have you finished showing me how tough you
are?” she asked. “'Cause I'd like to talk about what happens
next.”

“
What do you mean, next?”

“
I mean, Celestina tells me I have to play
nice because you are the only one who can get the package for us.”
The way she looked at him, he could tell she doubted that very
much. The way he felt that minute, he doubted it too. “So, what do
we do, Einstein? What's our next move?”

“
Do you even know what's in that package?
Have you got any idea what this is all about?”

The pink
upload shrugged. “What do I care? All I know is I've got a deal
with Celestina. She expects me to deliver, and that means I
deliver. Period. No questions. No mistakes. And on top of that
you've become a big, fat pain in my ass. I want this stupid
assignment over so I can get on with my life. I'm pretty sure you
want the same thing, right?” She raised her eyebrows – or would
have, if she'd had any – apparently waiting for him to contradict
her. “Right. So stop screwing around and tell me what the plan
is.”

Rik couldn't
think. Emotions roiled inside him. He wanted to smash things. He
wanted to grieve. He wanted revenge. He wanted to be somewhere
other than hanging from a light fitting in a strange spaceship. He
wanted to know Maria was safe. And Fariba, and Blake, and Brie. He
wanted to knock the expression off that upload's creepy pink face.
He wanted to lean on the bar at The Harsh Mistress, get maudlin
drunk and tell Veb his troubles. He wanted to find Newton Cordell
and push his face into a wall. He wanted to find Martin Lanham's
plug and pull it out.

But somewhere
under the emotion, he knew he needed to find that package and put
an end to all this. All his personal problems amounted to nothing.
There was a whole world of misery sitting in those six small
phials. Enough to make his current predicament look like a stroll
in the park.

And even as he
acknowledged the thought, his mind began to see what it had missed
so far. Blake would not have hidden the package.

“
Well?” Rivers demanded.

“
What? Shut up. I'm thinking.”

Blake had
opened the package. He'd seen it was dangerous. He didn't want it
around him. He didn't want the responsibility. He should have
turned it in to the Feds. He would have except that would have got
Rik into trouble. Yet he couldn't risk putting it somewhere where
it might have been found.