The Wind After Time: Book One of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy (12 page)

After a moment the man moved his head a trifle vertically.

“I’m looking for a friend of mine by the name of Sutro. Since he likes to gamble, I thought you might be familiar with him.”

The man’s dead eyes gazed at Joshua.

Wolfe took out a bill, folded it, and held it out. The man didn’t take the note, nor did he respond. Joshua put the bill away.

“My apologies, friend. I thought you were sentient,” he said, and started for the exit.

Joshua jerked back from the display as an Al’ar glared at him.

Around the holograph, words formed:

… which was coming very soon, less than two E-months away, to Morne-des-Esses, fresh from triumphs on Worlds A, B, C, and so on, and Joshua would be well advised to buy his tickets in advance, for the demand for this Educational Opportunity would be Most Great …

“Never underestimate the absolute goddamned stupidity,” Joshua began in some disgust, about to punch out of
New and Notable on Trinité
but he was interrupted.

“We have visitors,”
the ship announced.
“It is the girl Thetis and an old man. Shall I extend the loading platform?”

“Go ahead.” Joshua got up, started for the lock, then turned aside, opened the arms cabinet, and tucked a small blaster in his waistband at the small of his back.

“Give me a visual.”

He saw Thetis and a fierce-looking old man with archaic sideburns that ran up into a walrus mustache that bristled rage. He shrugged.

“Open the port.”

It slid open just as the man and girl were getting out of the wooden speedboat.

“Good evening,” Wolfe said civilly.

Without preamble: “I’m Jacob Libanos. You gave Thetis quite a bit of money today. I want to talk to you about it.”

“I’m listening.”

“Trinité can make you think everything’s for sale. There’s some things that ain’t. Thetis is one of them.”

The girl looked embarrassed.

“I never thought she was,” Joshua said dryly.

The old man studied him for long moments, then nodded. “I’ll work on the assumption you’re telling the truth. But that isn’t the only thing I wanted to talk about. You asked her to look around for somebody named Sutro. You puttin’ her to risk?”

“No,” Joshua said. “Sutro’s a legitimate resident of Diamant, or my sources say he is. I just want to know more about him.”

“I’d say you was law, but I checked your ship’s registry. Damned odd sort of Federation man’d come out of Carlton VI.”

A half smile came and went on Joshua’s face. “You’ve been there.”

“I have. It tries just as hard to be decadent as Trinité, but it ain’t got the credits to pull it off.”

“That’s a pretty good description,” Joshua agreed. “Come aboard if you want the grand tour.”

Libanos nodded and followed Joshua inside.

“Damned big ship,” he observed, “for just one man. Or is there crew out of sight?”

“Just me. Ship’s automated.”

“Heard they’d finally got that down. Haven’t been aboard one yet.” They went up to the control room. Libanos studied the main station carefully. “Looks pretty easy to run,” he observed. “All those damned gauges and readouts that did nothing but beep at you — glad to see them gone. All they did was clutter the mind, anyway. By the time they told you were in trouble, generally you were ‘most dead.”

“You have your papers?”

“Commercial master, passenger master, the mate buttons to go with ‘em. But it’s been a long time.”

Joshua waited for the man to volunteer his current occupation, but nothing came.

“Let me ask you something, Mister Wolfe.”

“Joshua.”

“We’ll keep it mister for a while, if you don’t mind. Thetis … or maybe me … finds out about your Sutro, what happens then?”

Joshua didn’t reply.

“I didn’t figure you’d answer that one.” Libanos thought for a while, trying to stroke his mustache back into some sort of order.

“All right. We’ll do what we can.”

Without saying more, he turned toward the port.

• • •

Joshua put one hand over the two cards, waited while the bettors made their decisions, then pushed counters across the line.

“Carte,”
he said, and a card slid across the green baize. He looked at it calmly.
“Non.”

The banker turned his cards over. He had seven. He took another card. A queen stared haughtily up.

Joshua turned his cards, showing six, and let the croupier’s paddle take away more of his counters.

The banker touched the shoe, and Joshua
felt
what would happen.

“Banco,”
he said.

The banker looked pointedly at the small pile of credits beside Joshua. Wolfe reached into an inner pocket of his formal jacket, took out a small plastic card, spun it across. The banker looked at it, buried surprise, and handed it back.

Two cards whispered out of the shoe to Joshua, to the other man playing, and to the banker.

Joshua, without looking at his hand, flipped his cards over. He held a natural.

The banker lifted the corner of his cards and grimaced. The croupier carefully pushed the large stack of credits across, then ceremoniously moved the shoe to Joshua.

The man who’d been banker stood, bowed, and left the table. Another player slid into his seat.

“Gentlemen,” Joshua said, and waited for the bets.

• • •

Joshua cashed in his winnings, turned away from the cage, and noticed the beefy man. Joshua nodded politely, stepping around him.

He hesitated, then started for the dinner theater. “If you’re going to be one, be a big red one,” he said to himself wryly.

The line stretched out the door of the theater almost into one of the main gambling rooms. Joshua saw his photographer friend and wife. They beckoned, and he went over.

“Is the show that good?”

“Supposed to be. Sold out an hour ago.”

“Oh, well,” Joshua said, putting mock sorrow into his voice. “Guess I’ll settle for plain food, then.”

“Hang on a second, Mister Wolfe. We’ve got a whole table reserved,” Dorena said. “Whyn’t you join us?”

Joshua smiled thanks and joined them in line.

“More wine?” Arabo Hofei said.

Joshua shook his head. “I’ll have a drink with the show.”

“So what did you think of the meal?”

“All right,” Joshua said. “But it seems that places trying to feed your eyes don’t pay that much attention to the rest of you.”

Arabo laughed loudly. He was a little drunk. A couple at the next table looked over and smiled, pleased to hear someone enjoying himself. “Now isn’t
that
the truth,” he said.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Dorena said, “but there sure wasn’t very much of it.” She patted her stomach with a bit of pride. “I’d be a shadow if I had to eat here every night.”

“So what are your plans when the show’s over, Joshua?” Hofei had assumed first-name terms before the salad.

“Have a drink at the bar. Maybe go back on the tables. Maybe go for a walk.”

“You do a lot of gambling?”

“A bit.”

“Would you show me — show us — how that doggoned red-dog game works? I’ve always wanted to play it, but it goes so fast, I’m afraid,” Dorena said.

“That’s the way the dealers want it,” Joshua said. “Keep the action going, never let people think, and you end up with a bigger piece. But you don’t want to play red-dog.”

“Why not?” Arabo asked.

“Because the odds will eat you alive. They’re about fourteen to one, plus the house generally takes five percent or so off the top.”

“I never understood numbers,” Dorena complained. “It just looked like fun.”

“Winning is fun. Losing isn’t,” Joshua said flatly. “If you want, I’ll show you — ”

He was interrupted by an orchestra fanfare. The dance floor opened like a gigantic clamshell, and dancers spun frenetically as the stage hydraulicked up.

• • •

There were acrobats; comedians blue, straight, and robotic; tigers; aquabats; jugglers; horses; giant sloths; singers; musicians; and women. Mostly there were women in every stage from nearly naked to spacesuited, dancing, posing, singing, and talking. Joshua guessed it was a very good show for those who liked that sort of thing.

His eyes kept roving the crowd, trying without luck to pick out a man who might match the description he had of Sutro. Once he saw the two Chitet, now joined by a friend, sitting near the stage, watching as intently as they might observe a spreadsheet run.

One dancer caught everyone’s attention. She was small, Afro-Oriental, Joshua thought, with long black hair and a pert figure. For a moment he thought she was nude, then realized she was wearing a bodysuit. Her partner was equally striking: tall, strong-muscled, white, platinum blond. The two of them performed alone with no music other than a metronomelike drum and a swirling synth-tone that might have originated on the Japanese long bamboo flute.

The woman floated, hung, turned, seemingly only to touch the earth or her partner’s waiting arms for a moment’s rejuvenation before taking off once more.

“How does she
do
that?” Dorena sighed. “I used to dance before I met Arabo and he told me it was all right to eat. But even at my best I never dreamed I could …” Her voice trailed away, and she looked momentarily disconsolate. Hofei patted her hand.

The tune ended, and the two dancers took their bows and left the stage.

The next act, a hatchet-throwing comic, complete with blond and brunette barely missed “targets,” seemed flat to Joshua and his companions. Joshua slipped a debit card into the table’s slot before Arabo could get his out in spite of the man’s protests.

They were in the lobby when they heard the woman scream, the scream choked off.

The tall white-blond dancer cowered beside the casino’s entrance. His partner, the small Afro-Oriental woman, lay sprawled on the concrete nearby.

There were three men in front of them. Two of them were heavy, hard-faced, half grinning, enjoying their work. The third was thin, average build, expensively dressed. He reached down, jerked the dancer to her feet, snarled something, and drew his hand back.

Joshua was across the lobby and through the door. “I’m sorry, sir. But artists aren’t permitted to mingle with the guests.”

“Funny man,” the small man snapped. “Now butt out or get hurt.”

“Sorry,” Joshua said, and strolled toward them.

“Take him, Bej.”

“Right, Elois,” one of the goons said, and started toward Wolfe. His hand went into his pocket and came out with a whip club; he slashed as it sprang open. Wolfe ducked, let the lash go overhead, and rapped the man’s elbow with the heel of his hand. The man yelped, dropped the club, and grabbed his crazy bone. Wolfe raked a kick down the front of his leg, crashing onto the arch of his foot, and the man screamed loudly, the scream broken into silence as Wolfe hammer struck the front of his skull.

The second thug came in, hands in a shifted cat stance. Wolfe took the same stance for a moment, ignored the other’s feint, blocked the following midsection punch, then snapped his blocking hand up, smashing the goon’s face with the back of his wrist, ripping his nose away from the cavity. The man gurgled agony, lost interest, and stumbled away.

The small man Wolfe had heard called Elois was backing away. His hand slid into his jacket and came out with a small nickel-plated gun, lifted as Wolfe’s hand blurred to the back of his neck, then darted forward.

A shiny dart of black obsidian protruded from the man’s wrist. He let go of the gun, stared at the bubbling blood, said “Oh” in a surprised tone, and sat down on the concrete.

Wolfe stepped over, pulled the knife free, wiped it on the man’s jacket, and resheathed it. He paid the short man no further mind but turned to the woman. “You need an escort somewhere?”

The woman smiled shakily and touched a finger to the corner of her mouth, where the bruise was beginning to blossom. “I don’t know,” she said. “You appear more dangerous than he is.”

“No, ma’am,” Wolfe said. “I’ve spent my spleen for at least another week. From now on out I’m a pink pussycat.”

The woman hesitated, then said, “All right. If you’d walk me to my lifter.”

“My privilege.”

The woman gazed at her partner. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks
so
much.” The tall blond man shrank back as if she’d struck him.

Joshua looked about, saw the Hofeis staring wide-eyed, waved a farewell, took the woman’s arm, and led her away, leaving a crowd gathering around the two sprawled men. It had taken just a few seconds. There was still no sign of security or police.

Joshua concentrated on his breathing: in through the nose, out through the diaphragm. After forty breaths his heartbeat was normal.

“You follow the Way,” the woman said.

“You have sharp ears,” Joshua said. “One of them … and another discipline.”

“I once became curious about things like that and studied enough so I could write a dance that would be realistic. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the effects rather than merely the motions.”

“And perhaps,” Joshua said dryly, “I should have paid more attention to the end product of the motions myself.”

“You mean you should not have intervened.”

“I won’t say that. But someone taking a quiet vacation doesn’t need the sort of attention I most likely just set myself up for.”

“Yes,” the woman said. “A ‘vacationer’ mustn’t ever get in the spotlight.” She put obvious quotation marks around ‘vacationer.’ “When you are not on ‘vacation,’ might I ask how you spend your time?”

“Traveling. Meeting people.”

“That covers quite a range of professions,” the woman said.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Joshua agreed. “By the way, we haven’t formally met.” He introduced himself.