The New Space Opera 2 (57 page)

“Your ID says you're Karl Terrine,” the woman said. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” Karl said.

“I saw you yesterday in Triolet's with my old friend Boris,” she said. “You and that younger boy. And now, while my friend here treats your wounds, I want to know what Boris is doing back here, and who you are to him and why, in all the seven pits of hell, you came strolling into Day Market loaded with expensive tech.”

Karl started at what he considered the beginning. “Some men grabbed Bryce—”

“That's the name he's using now?”

“Yes, of course. It's his name…you said he had another name? So it's not his name?”

“It is now,” she said. “Go on.”

“They said they were bounty hunters. They said there was a warrant on him. And he said the code phrase, the one that meant run.”

“So you ran…but there were two of you, in that store.”

“My brother. Evan. I was farther away…and I moved when Bryce said, but Evan, he froze for a moment, and…and they got him, too.”

“How old is Evan? I'd have guessed maybe twelve.”

“He's only ten. We have to get him out—”

“Your brother or…or Bryce.”

“Both of them! Those men, I don't know what they'll do…”

She kept asking questions; Karl kept answering—it was the only hope he could see.

 

Bryce closed his eyes against the glare of the lights. His stomach cramped, hinting at the hours since he'd eaten, but that was the least of his troubles. If he could just rest for a moment…he could feel the effects of the drug leaving his system, and maybe this time he'd have a chance…one of them yanked his hair, then banged his head into the unyielding wall.

“Wake up! You want us to hurt the kid again?”

He opened his eyes. Evan, still in the bodywrap, was staring at him, eyes wide. They'd used the stinger on both of them, though on Evan, so far, only through the bodywrap and his clothes, to prevent leaving marks. It still hurt, as he knew from experience. Cosgrove, who'd been Cossie years back, tapped the stinger against his other palm; Merrick leaned against the wall paring his nails with a knife. Pretending to, at least.

It had to have been Glia. No one else should have made him, not with his new appearance, his new identity. If he'd spoken to her, would she have done it? Was it new anger, or old resentment, or something else?

“We have your papers,” Merrick said. “You know that—so why not just tell us. Who is the boy? Not your nephew, that's for sure. And not your toy, unless your tastes have changed since you left here. You're taking him—them—somewhere for somebody, that's clear enough. Merchandise? Or it is a family?”

Evan's safety depended on his silence. Bryce stared at Merrick, trying to project befuddlement, but knowing it would not work for more than a few seconds. Merrick and Cosgrove knew him—knew Boris—far too well.

“Another little touch?” Cosgrove said, glancing at Merrick, then at Evan. “The boy?”

“Not at the moment,” Merrick said. “Maybe he needs a little time to think. Not much time—” He pushed himself away from the wall, flipping the knife and then closing it and tucking it in his pocket—“but a little. Maybe he can explain to the boy, or the boy can explain to him, what the real situation is, while we eat.”

Cosgrove shrugged, put the stinger in a back pocket, and the two of them left, closing the door behind them.

“Bryce?” Evan's voice was trembling.

“Yes,” Bryce said. “I'm all right.”

“You…you yelled.”

“Well,” Bryce said, trying for a calm tone. “It hurt. People do yell when something hurts.”

“But you're a grown-up!”

“Yes, but that doesn't make much difference.”

“Where's—where's Karl?”

A good question. He'd seen Karl back away, just as he'd been told…but had the boy remembered what to do? If he'd raised an alarm at a security kiosk, he'd have expected some response by now. His captors were acting as if nothing had happened. And if Karl hadn't done that, what would he have done? “I don't know,” Bryce said. He closed his eyes again. “I hope he's getting help for us.”

“But it's been hours. Maybe days. And nobody's come, and I'm really hungry and it still hurts where they hit me. Somebody will come, won't they, Bryce?”

“I certainly hope so,” Bryce said. He tested the bonds that held him. Some play, though probably not enough. The cell must have surveillance; Merrick hadn't ever been careless about that sort of thing. If only he'd had his kit with him…if only he hadn't been captured in the first place. Merrick probably had the kit now. He had their IDs, their room keys, their tickets—he might even have their luggage, if he'd managed to get into the
Altissima
luggage bin.

“I'm scared, Bryce.”

“I don't wonder.” Bryce looked around the small, bare room. It could be anywhere on the station; it could even be one of the smaller hotel rooms, if they'd been able to penetrate Blue Zone.

“Could you…could we get out?”

“I doubt it,” Bryce said. “Not without help.”

“Are you really a criminal?”

“No.” Bryce shook his head automatically, and winced. “I was—” A scared little boy, like Evan. Would it help Evan to know that? Would anything help? “I was at one time,” he said. “Before I escaped here. It's in my dossier. Your—” He shouldn't say “father.” They wanted to know who Evan really was, what Bryce's role really was. “When I was hired for this job,” he said instead, “I told them all about it.”

“You told my—” At Bryce's gesture, Evan stopped. Tears glittered in his eyes, spilled over and ran down his cheeks. “I wet myself,” he whispered.

“It's all right,” Bryce said. “You couldn't help it. Nobody can.”

 

“So,” Glia said. “There's two maybe-dead men back in your hotel…you normally go armed lethal?”

“I didn't,” Karl said, then stopped, breath hissing past his teeth as Glia's friend spread something pungent and orange on his side. It burned like fire, then subsided. “I didn't have any weapons. So I got a sprayer of stuff out of the cleaning closet. In case there were people like those who snatched Bryce and Evan hiding in our room.”

“And?”

“They had our luggage; they were packing everything away…they didn't expect me.”

“And you beat them unconscious with your bare hands, did you?” Her brows went up; she sounded as disbelieving as she looked.

“Sort of,” Karl said. “They shot drug darts at me. When I'd knocked
them out, I stuck darts in them. But I got beat up some.” He winced as Glia's friend wiped a wet rag across his face.

Glia grunted. “You got beat up a lot, altogether. How'd you knock down two adults?”

“I've had a lot of martial arts,” Karl said. “But mostly I was lucky.” He felt better; the pain in his side was gone completely now, and fading wherever Glia's friend put turquoise or orange goo. “I could sit up now,” he said.

Glia grinned. “You could, could you? I think you better lie there and let the knit work. You don't want it knitting crooked.”

Glia's friend grinned too, his thick, purplish tongue with the little white sucker-like nubs extended. It still looked scary, but Karl was becoming used to the face that had been hidden behind the mask, the flat nose, the slit-irised yellow eyes. The—Glia's friend gulped again and spat another glob of orange goo onto his three-fingered hand—the complete weirdness and alienness.

“Are you…?”

“Human?” The voice was human enough, the words accented the same as Glia's. “Some don't think so. My line was terminated.”

“You were designed?” Why would anyone design something this…this ugly?

“For work on the fourth planet, yes, during terraforming. This is—” he held up his hand, covered with the goo, “—modification of human saliva into a healing paste. So we would not need any medical supplies. Ocular mod for the ambient light and weather conditions.”

“But—why'd they terminate your—your line? That stuff's valuable—”

“Project completed,” he said. “Project completed, no need for freaks and mutants…but some of us, still in the bottles and not yet chipped, were saved. By her—” he nodded to Glia, “—and others like her. To her, we're human.” He had spread the orange goo down Karl's leg. Now he looked directly at Karl. “To you—maybe not.”

Karl evaded that. “Are there others?”

“Like me?”

“Like you, or different—I'm just curious.”

“You're just young,” Glia's friend said, sighing. “Next thing, you'll be asking if I have a tail, or if I'm part reptile. So no, I don't have a tail, and it was amphibian genes, not reptile, responsible for my colored spit.”

“They're called human-modified, or humods,” Glia said. “Mostly de
signed for scutwork in places unmod humans can't work without a lot of extra support. But we call ourselves chameleons.”

Karl looked at her, and saw nothing different there. “You're not—”

“Oh, I am,” Glia said. “But I can pass. My modifications don't show unless I choose.” She sat back in her chair and right there in front of him her skin changed color and texture, a dizzying array of such changes—plain colors, patterns of stripes and spots, and geometric patterns, all moving across her face, her arms, her hands. Then it went back to looking like ordinary human skin, the face and hands he was already used to. Another change, and it was a child's face—the skin smooth, unmarked, soft-looking—and it aged as he watched, half-horrified and half-fascinated.

“How do you do that?”

“Practice,” Glia said. “And both cephalopod and reptile genes. There are other mods that don't show on the surface—I'm able to function at temperatures that are fatal to most.” She had reverted to her usual look. “I've foxed the medical scans for years. That way I can help the others.” She waved at the others in the room.

Karl really looked this time. In the corner, a stack of masks and five-fingered gloves, plus two complete arms, fully clothed in gray shirtsleeves. On the moving forms, hands with too few fingers, or tentacles, faces with features that would always be conspicuous. “How many?”

“Forty-three at the moment. Free, that is. The station uses some for special work whole-gene humans can't do, but they'll never pass. They're on file.” She smiled, but it was a sad smile. “Now here's the thing, Karl. I know your identity is legal only. You're someone else. I want to know who you really are.”

“I can't tell you that,” Karl said. “I'm not supposed to.”

“Do you trust us?”

Did he? He wasn't sure. “If you know Bryce,” Karl said, “then how do I know you aren't the one who told those men about him, about us?”

“Not a bad question. Can you describe them?”

Karl tried, but the most striking thing had been those fake uniforms, the weapons, the wrap they'd put on Evan.

“Could be that stiz Merrick,” one of the others said. “He'd take a job like that in a flash.”

“Merrick,” Glia said. “He's in our file…” She went to a cabinet and opened a drawer, coming back to Karl with a handful of flatpics. “Was it one of these men?”

Karl recognized one instantly, and then another. “And that's one of the ones in our room.”

“Merrick, Cossie, Dumont. Not good. Karl, these aren't people I'd ever work with, but they did know Boris—Bryce—back when he lived here. Merrick's working for Andren, who runs the mafi here, but he sometimes takes jobs on his own.” She turned back to the others. “Dob—get the word out to our group that we need to find someone who saw Merrick and Cossie with a kid in a wrap and a man, going somewhere about…when was this, Karl?”

“After breakfast…maybe oh-nine-thirty?”

“Go, Dob.” A skinny man across the room slung the pair of artificial arms across his shoulders and forced them into the sleeves of his work coverall with his tentacles. “And Elin, start trying to find their hidey-hole. If Merrick's doing this off Andren's ticket, he'll be holding them somewhere else.” A woman with four eyes, two of them turreted like a chameleon's, pulled a mask over her face to hide the extra eyes, and went out.

“The problem we have with you is this,” Glia said when they'd gone. “Until you trust us, we can't trust you.”

“But why do you need my real identity?”

“To prove you trust us. You're a danger to us unless you do—if you reported us to the authorities, half these people would be in custody from which they'd never return.”

Karl shivered. “Just because they're modified?”

“Yes. And they're not supposed to exist.”

“Bryce said I mustn't. No matter what. It could be used against us—me.”

Glia cocked her head. “You're obviously rich, and Bryce didn't have any siblings left—so he can't be your real uncle. My guess is he's your escort—possibly part of a security detail. That's what he was acting like in the store. Giving you space, but watching over you. So, you have a wealthy family, and you're considered a target. Someone might hold you for ransom, or diddle your brain and turn you into a passive agent. So—here's the deal. We've already helped you. We can help you more; we can probably—no promises—get Bryce and your brother back in one piece. But you
owe
us. You owe us your real identity, and you owe us a promise that you will do something, someday, for chameleons—humods.” Karl opened his mouth, but she held up her hand to silence him. “I know you're just a boy, but if things go as your family wants, you'll be a rich man someday, a man in position to pay what you owe. Promise you'll do
something—remember us, remember the humanity of humods, make life easier for some humods somewhere. And give us your name…just to me.” She leaned close.