The Vastalimi Gambit (11 page)

The opposition’s representative arrived precisely on time.

“Colonel. I’m Proderic.”

Cutter gestured at the chair across from him. “Please. Just Proderic?”

The man said, “Yes. I hold no military rank, I’m a facilitator. My CO is a retired career army officer; he handles all the field operations.”

And not very well. Maybe he was a quartermaster or photon-pusher, but he hasn’t demonstrated much ability in the field, Cutter thought. He kept that to himself.

“That salt-and-pepper pair to the right,” Proderic said. “Those yours?”

Cutter grinned. So his field guy might be crappy on the ground, but Proderic here had sharp eyes. And that he wanted to play said something. Cutter considered his comments and decided to make a little leap: “And yours would be the two fems left of the door, and the two men to my left.”

He smiled. “Not bad, sah.”

The waiter came and poured wine into two glasses. It had been ordered before they’d arrived. It was a pale blue. The waiter set the bottle down and left.

Both men picked up their glasses and sipped the wine.

It was dry and crisp, a hint of citrus and legroberry, a Ferling, made locally. Gramps had picked it out.

“Nice choice, I’ll have to get a case of this. So, what’s Totomo’s offer?” Proderic asked.

“You’re sure that’s why I’m here?”

Proderic’s teeth were very white against his tan. “Absolutely. You are better than my guys—I didn’t expect TM to send anybody this fast, much less a first-class unit, so I cut corners. A calculated risk—I’ll upgrade my guys, if that’s what it comes down to. But if your employer wants to pay us enough to go away, we aren’t unreasonable.”

Cutter nodded. He wasn’t a haggler. Yes, he could pinch a tenth coin tight enough to make it squeal, but bargaining back and forth? Not his thing. He named the maximum figure TM had given him. It was going to be take it or leave it.

Proderic nodded. “Actually, it’s more than I expected.”

“But . . . ?”

“I’m afraid I have to decline.”

“You came prepared to do that no matter what I offered, didn’t you?”

“Well, you might have come up with a figure I’d have been unable to refuse, but I didn’t expect that.”

“You wanted to see how much effort TotalMart was willing to put into this.”

“Guilty of that, yes. And now I know.”

“As you say, it’s a fair offer.”

Proderic sipped more of the wine. “Yes. But my employer—”

“Masbülc,” Cutter cut in.

“I didn’t say that. My employer sees this as an opportunity for, um, growth. How about a counteroffer?”

Cutter looked at him.

“We give you, say, half again that much, and you melt your igloos and lift?”

Cutter grinned. “And now we know how much Masbülc values this operation.”

“I take that as a ‘No’?”

“My employer is a long-standing and valued client. The loss of that business would be major. And even if you came up with a number big enough to offset it? I couldn’t. We have a contract. I feel I must honor such. A personal quirk.”

“They buy, but they don’t sell in this situation, is that it?”

“I don’t make corporate policy.”

“Ah, well. It was good to meet you. Thanks for introducing me to this fine wine. I’d stay for dinner, but I have some pressing business. A new CO seems to be in order.”

“I’d wish you good luck with that, but . . .” Cutter gave him a palms-up shrug.

“I understand. Well, things might still work out, you never know. Colonel.”

He stood.

The two couples Cutter had marked as belonging to Proderic stood. He felt good about that—until two
other
single diners also arose: an older woman who looked like somebody’s granny and a dark-skinned man who appeared old enough to be granny’s father. Good disguises, those. And it made Proderic seem to be a man who crowed
and
zipped his jacket and was letting Cutter know that by revealing his backup team.

Maybe Jo had made them when they came in, or Gramps and Gunny had, but Cutter had missed them.

Interesting.

The second Vastalimi to die of the illness was a fighting teacher near the north edge of the Southern Reach. She’d had a place in a village nestled into the foothills, three hundred kilometers away from the slaughterhouse where
Cedom
masc had worked.

Nobody had been able to establish any connection between the two. There was no evidence they had ever met, and as best as anybody could track their movements in the weeks before they died, they hadn’t been any closer than the village and the city were to each other.

Neither of them could be linked in any way with Teb, the third to kick off.

The teacher,
Tard
fem, was older, had been a well-known local fighter in her prime, and had a dozen students in her
skola
. She was well liked by her neighbors and the village in general, fit for a fem her age, and had outlived all her enemies. Unmated, and she’d lived alone.

Nobody locally could recall anything unusual in Tard’s life in the days before she sickened. She taught classes, she nodded to people she passed, her place was quiet.

One morning, she didn’t show up for class. Students went to find her, and she was already deep in the grip of the malaise. She was transported to the local Healer’s but died en route. Must have been pretty tough to be that sick and not go for treatment on her own.

On the flight back from the village, Wink turned it over in his mind every way he could. The only possibility he could see that they could have caught the disease from the same source was that a carrier had been in the city and the village.

If you drew a three-hundred-kilometer circle around both victims, there were no Venn intersections at all.

Nobody seemed to keep records of travel that were particularly detailed. Vastalimi came and went a lot freer than humans tended to do on their planets. When you could just borrow a cart and leave it when you were done, that was loose enough; that there didn’t seem to be any carts taken from the village and left in the city, or vice versa in the week before the teacher died?

Had somebody made a round-trip to cause the infection? Maybe there were few enough people in the village to check them all; no way to do that for the bigger city . . .

“Not getting any easier,” Wink said.

Kay nodded. “Not yet.”

“We are missing something.”

“Obviously. But the
Sena
will look, and there are no eyes sharper than theirs. What we missed? They will find.”

“You seem sure about that.”

“Nothing is certain, but if it is there, the Shadows will eventually uncover it.”

“Lot of people could die between now and ‘eventually.’”

She shrugged. “We can only do what we can.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

Cutter took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to calm himself.

Across from his desk, Jo said, “She’s on her way in.”

Cutter nodded. He pulled his sidearm from its holster, pivoted it forward via the trigger guard around his finger, and gave it a half twist, so the butt was toward Jo.

She took the pistol. Raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, I know, I can kill her with my hands, but that would take a little more effort than just drawing and shooting.”

Jo shook her head. “You don’t have to do this at all. I could talk to her. Find out whatever.”

“No. I need to do this.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

He was behind his desk when Melinne came in.

She looked good. Even this close, she could still pass for her early twenties. She was fit, taut, full-breasted, with an athletic swing to her step. Her hair was cut in a buzz, maybe two centimeters long, dyed to a golden bronze that complemented the tone of the chem tan on her exposed, smooth skin. She wore a pearl gray, sleeveless tunic over a sleeveless black skintight, with ballet-style slippers that matched the tunic. No jewelry, no tattoos, nothing else necessary to gild the lily . . .

She sat in the chair facing the desk and crossed her legs.

“Hello, Cutty.”

He had thought about this moment more than a few times over the years; what he might say, how he might feel. He had gone back and forth in his imagination, which way he would go, icily cool, foaming rage—what his first words would be. Until he spoke, he wasn’t sure of what he was going to say.

“Why did you run?”

“Because I was afraid you would kill me. You thought about it, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “I considered it. What makes you think I won’t do it right now?”

“It’s been a decade. If you had wanted to find and kill me, you could have done it long ago. I know what happened to Mandiba.”

“He had an accident.”

She nodded. “Right.”

“Why are you here, Melinne? It’s no coincidence.”

“No, of course it isn’t. Masbülc hired me to talk to you. They want to recruit you to run their corporate military department, starting right now.”

He blinked. He hadn’t expected that. “What?”

“Apparently, your little army has come up against elements of their little armies from time to time, and yours has always won. They figure it is cheaper to have you working for them than losing battles.”

That made sense. When it was cheaper to buy than fight? Buy. “And they thought
you
were the person to convince me?”

She laughed, and for the smallest moment, he remembered how it had been to make her laugh. It had been the most uncontrived thing about her, her laugh, and it had been infectious. It didn’t make him want to laugh now, but the memory was there. “I told them that I’d be the last person in the galaxy whose advice you would take. Apparently, their shrinks did a profile based on something and decided it was worth a shot. They gave me a lot of money to try.”

He shook his head. “They need to get new shrinks. Is that it? For the money?”

“Mostly, yes. I—we—I never had a chance to say some things. And I was curious. You and I had a short run, but there were some good times.” She shrugged. “How have you been, Cutty?”

“You don’t get to ask, and you don’t get to call me that anymore.”

She nodded, sighed. “He was my son, too. I get up every day and remember it. I was young and stupid, and you cannot know how much I regret it. I would have traded places with Radé in a heartbeat, Rick. He . . .” She stopped, gathering herself.

He was tempted to look down at the screen built into the desktop, to check the stress analyzer whose cams and mikes were recording her image and parsing her voice and microexpression, the sensors that picked up her heartbeat and respiration and blood pressure. He could be fooled by a good liar, and she was good, but he heard the ring of truth there.

“He was so brave. Charged in, fist swinging, to defend me. I—” She sobbed, once. “I am so sorry.” Tears flowed freely down her perfectly sculpted cheeks.

He could see the scene in his mind, as he had a hundred times before. His eight-year-old son, attacking the man hurting his mother. It was all he could do to keep his own tears back.

There was far too much bottled-up anger in him to release. He felt no desire to walk around the desk and comfort her, the woman he had married, with whom he’d had a son. But he also didn’t feel the need to walk around the desk to choke the life from her.

That was something, at least.

It took him a few seconds to find his voice, to keep the emotions from boiling up to overwhelm and drown him. “Tell Masbülc they wasted their money sending you here.”

“I told them that before I got here. I’m meeting the local rep when I leave.”

“Proderic.”

“Yes, that’s his name.”

“I can’t say it’s been good to see you,” he said. “And I don’t think I can ever forgive you. But you don’t need to worry that you’ll open your door someday and find me there ready to shoot you. Go on about your life, whatever it is. We’re done. Whatever your griefs, I won’t be one of them.”

“You’re wrong, Cutty. You’ll always be that, until the day I die.”

After she was gone, Jo slipped back into his office. She tossed his pistol to him, he caught it and reholstered it.

“You heard it,” he said.

“Yep. And she was telling the truth, far as your system and my onboard aug can determine it.”

“Doesn’t change anything.”

“No? You wouldn’t consider working for Masbülc once this op is done?”

“That? Oh, sure. Depend on the money, of course, and if TotalMart wanted to match it for an exclusive. But we don’t switch in the middle of a contract. If they still want us after we kick their asses here? I’ll listen to their offer.”

“You figure that Proderic will get himself a better CO?”

“I would in his place. He didn’t strike me as stupid.”

She grinned at him. “Well, it’s been too easy so far, except for the Vastalimi. Hope the new guy can’t find any more like her.”

She didn’t speak to the other part of this; he appreciated that.

_ _ _ _ _ _

There were a dozen or so Vastalimi on the walk in front of the shops next to the spot where Wink and Kay were about to cross the street. They seemed to be about their own business, but Wink saw a female who appeared to be watching them.

Well, he was a human and unusual around here, but that didn’t seem to him to be why she was looking their way.

She sauntered in their direction.

“Somebody coming to say hello,” he said.

“I see her,” Kay said. “But she’s not a fighter; it won’t be a Challenge.”

“You can tell that?”

“Yes.”

The fem arrived and stopped three meters away. She was a bit taller and thinner than Kay, seemed younger as far as Wink could tell, and she wore nothing save her own fur.

“Should I speak Basic?” she asked in their language.

Kay shrugged. “If you need the practice. He will understand if you speak
NorVaz
,
Govor
, or
Jezik
.”

“Really?”

“If you have a message to deliver, it is only necessary that
I
understand it. Do you have a name?”

“Call me
Glasni
fem.”

Kay grinned. “Very well, ‘
Messenger
.’ Speak.”

“There are people who know things regarding your inquires that would be helpful to you. They are willing to share these things; however, they are concerned that they would be in danger if their identities should be revealed.”

“I understand. Continue.”

“Meetings can be arranged if you agree to terms.”

“Which are . . . ?”

“No
Sena
. No one save you and your human should know of this offer. You must be ready to meet with only short notice, and we must be assured of your complete circumspection regarding the matter.”

“I understand. I have questions.”

“I am not the person to ask for answers. I know no more than I have just told you.”

“Very well, then. I will abide by those terms.”

“I will tender your agreement to those concerned. Someone will be in touch.”

The fem nodded at Kay, but not at Wink. She stood there and watched as they crossed the street.

“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Wink said, as they approached the door to the hospital.

“In many ways.”

“It could be just what we need.”

“Yes.”

“And it could be some kind of a diversion. A trap.”

“Yes. But either way, it is a trail to follow.”

“What makes me nervous is the part about nobody’s knowing but you and me.”

“I can understand that.”

“But you agreed to those terms.”

“I did. But
you
did not.”

He grinned.

“Teeth, Wink Doctor. We are on a public street.”

He tightened his smile to lips only. “So if I told your sister about this, it wouldn’t bother you?”

“Why would it? You are a sentient being with your own will. You did not enter into any agreement with the fem who named herself Messenger. Nor did she ask it of you.”

“They don’t believe I might say something?”

“Unlikely. Most of the Vastalimi we interact with will assume that you somehow belong to me and will do as I tell you.”

“It does seem that way from what I’ve encountered here.”

“Please do not take it personally, but humans are not held in particularly high regard here. Had they considered you an equal, they would have asked for your agreement. They did not.”

“I noticed.”

“Which is good. Always better to be underestimated by one’s enemy, is it not?”

“Yep. Now what?”

“Now, we go see my brother.”