Meouit
THE ADVANCE CREW OF THE NAUTILUS HAD DONE AN effective job. The warehouse was dingy and located in a poor neighborhood, but it was close to the spaceport and easily accessible even to someone who had never been there before. The small signboard said, in both the Com trading language and in Zhosa, the local tongue, Durkh Shipping Corporation. It seemed old and worn, not brand new as it actually was.
It was chilly and near dusk in Taiai, largest city on Meouit, and flakes of snow floated in the air here and there. A young Rhone woman clad in an expensive fur jacket studied the scene accompanied by several larger Rhone males.
She looked barely in her teens, not beautiful but pleasant, even a bit sexy, with long, brown hair. Her skin was a light brown, her pointed ears jutted up slightly on either side of her head and seemed to swivel independently of each other. At the waist, the near but not-quite-human torso faded into short-cropped light-brown fur that covered a perfect equine body. She needed only the jacket for warmth; below the torso she was well insulated by fur and subcutaneous fat.
“Not bad,” she said admiringly, “not bad at all.”
The male Rhone who stood closest to her, much taller and more obviously muscular than she, was pleased.
“Shall we go inside and greet the others?” she suggested, and he moved to slide one of the doors open for her. The lights inside created an illuminated wedge in the semi-darkness as the door slid back, admitted them, and then was closed by the last centaur.
The young female Rhone sniffed slightly, then looked toward a corner. “How have you been making out, Marquoz?” Mavra Chang called.
The small dragon stalked out of the shadows puffing on a fat cigar. “Pretty crappy, if you must know,” he snorted. “How’d you like to be locked up in a barn on an alien world with only religious fanatics for company for two days?”
She looked sympathetic. “Sorry, but we had to sneak you all in when we could. You could have let Obie make you a Rhone,” she reminded him, “and have spent the last couple of days out in the open and comfortable.”
“Thank you, I like to remain me,” he grumbled. “I can see Gypsy was the smart one, though. He’s back on the Nautilus sleeping on feather beds and eating like a horse, I’ll bet.”
“Well, we’ll be getting down to the spaceport shortly,” Mavra told him. “The ordeal’s almost over. Our man is in orbit now and due down to sign the customs forms and releases in about two hours.”
An Olympian stepped from the shadows. “Remember your word!” she warned. “He is to be brought to us!”
“We’ll keep our end of the bargain,” Mavra promised. She turned to face two of the Nautilus crew. “Well, come on, bodyguards. I’d like to get down there as soon as possible. I don’t want to miss him.”
She bade the others farewell and turned. One of the crewmen slid the door open and then shut it behind them again. A blast of cold air was all that was left now besides the waiting.
The Olympians stepped back into the shadows, and the leader turned to the other three. “Two hours,” she whispered. “Are you ready?”
One of the others turned and removed her cape, taking from the lining four small, very sophisticated pistols. She handed one to each of the others, keeping the fourth for herself.
This was yet another reason why the Olympians had not wanted to reach Meouit through Obie.
Marquoz was busy passing the time with the Rhone-shaped crewmen; one had some dice. They paid no attention to the Olympians whatsoever; all of them had been trying to tune out the strange women for two full days as it was. Which was just the way the Olympians wanted it.
“Check your charges,” the leader whispered. The small activating whine went unheard.
Mavra Chang lounged around the shipping office trying to look bored, but deep inside her she felt almost like a little girl expecting the arrival of a favorite uncle but afraid at the same time that the uncle might have forgotten her.
Nathan Brazil . . . . The name had been so small a part of her long existence that it shouldn’t mean much at all, yet it had haunted her since childhood. As a freighter captain herself back in the old days, she had known of him, heard the legends of the hard-fighting, hard-drinking captain who never seemed to grow old. From her grandparents she’d heard fairy tales of the magical Well World and Brazil’s name had been there, too, always in the hero’s role. And Brazil had plucked her as a small child from the forces of totalitarian repression that had engulfed her relatives and her world, he had passed her into the hands of the colorful Makki Chang, who raised her on a great freighter. Later, on the Well World, Brazil’s name was mentioned everywhere, sometimes with reverence, sometimes with fear. Then too, there was Obie’s playback only a few months ago of her grandparents’ memories of a hideous, throbbing six-limbed mass that proclaimed itself master of reality, of all space-time, as the creator of the Universe. All Brazil.
The tugs had already established the craft’s orbit, now the pilot boat would descend with the in-system pilot and the captain to process the cargo through customs, then the wait while cargo ferries transferred that cargo from the massive bulk of the freighter, which never made planetf all.
Mavra watched and her heart seemed to skip a beat as the information board inside the port authority office flashed the name jerusalem, her registry numbers, and the words in port.
Outside, lights locked on the small pilot boat as it drifted down and gently settled into the first of the eight cradles around the port authority building. Mavra turned expectantly, watching the far door, where the captain and the pilot would enter in a few moments. She held her breath. Time dragged, and after a while she grew afraid that the captain hadn’t made planetfall, that he was deadheading somewhere.
One of her two crewmen, playing at filling out some forms, leaned over and whispered, “Why don’t you relax? Right now you look like you expect your long-lost husband to come home any moment now.”
Suddenly conscious of how obvious she must have seemed, Mavra turned and pretended to be looking through some cargo manifests stacked in the anteroom. That, she could do more natually. But if Brazil didn’t come out shortly somebody in the port authority was going to wonder why it was taking her so long to choose the correct form.
Suddenly the door slid open with a pneumatic hiss. The pilot, his face lined and elderly, which seemed perfect for his spotted gray coloring, led the way, clipboard in hand, and, behind, she saw the massive load-master. Both were apparently talking, and it was a few seconds before she realized that they were talking not to one another but to a third party almost hidden between them.
Mavra’s first thought was that Korf was too tall; almost 170 centimeters, wearing a curious porkpie hat from under which massive folds of gray-white hair drooped and mixed with a full beard of similar color. Only the eyes and the nose were visible, and the rabbi’s general build was obscured by a heavy black coat that reached his knees. If appearances were worth anything, he was twenty kilos too heavy and a century too old.
The voice, too, was unpleasant; very high-pitched and nasal, quite unlike the low tenor Mavra remembered of Nathan Brazil. Her heart sank; this, certainly was not the man they were after. She glanced surreptitiously over her forms and tried to find any of the qualities of that funny little man she’d known as a child—some of the warmth, the gentleness, anything.
That’s it, she decided, crestfallen. We’ve blown it. All that work and we’ve blown it. She looked over at her crewmen and saw the same emotions mirrored in their expressions. One gestured slightly with his head toward the door and she nodded almost imperceptibly. They walked toward the door, hooves clattering on the hard, smooth plastine surface, walking right past the two Rhone and Rabbi Korf as they wrangled over the bill of lading.
“The maize, then, is in two-hundred-ton containers ready for gripping?” the loadmaster’s deep bass was asking.
Korf nodded and pointed. “Yes. Shouldn’t take but two, three hours to get that section. It’s the building supplies that—”
At that moment, her mind now far from this place, Mavra had not made allowances for bureaucracies that wax floors and she stumbled slightly. Korf and the two Rhone looked up.
The rabbi, seeing she was all right, turned back to the papers then did a double-take, head shooting back up to stare at her. Embarrassed, Mavra barely noticed the movement but something in the corner of her eye told her that she had attracted more than usual attention. She stopped, carefully, just short of the door and half-turned her human torso to look at the human; for an instant their eyes met, and something in those eyes and that expression caused a chill to go through her.
Her crewmen, oblivious to what was happening, were already outside before they noticed her absence.
Mavra’s rational mind told her that the strange man was more likely Father Frost than Nathan Brazil, but something in his reaction and her gut feelings said otherwise. No human would look at a Rhone woman that way, no human except one who might not be.
“I’m sorry if I interrupted you with my clumsiness,” she said smoothly, trying to control herself. “My associates and I had been waiting to see the captain of the ship that just came in, but you must be he and I see that you’ll be tied up for some time.” She looked shyly nervous. “I—I’m afraid I’m not used to business yet.”
The captain recovered quickly, although he still kept staring at her with that odd look in his eye. “I am the captain, Madam Citizen. What did you wish of me?”
“My father is in the import-export business. He and his associates are attending a conference at Hsuir where they just completed a big transaction. They asked me to find out what ships were coming in and might be—is deadheading the correct term?—well, leaving empty. I’m not really involved in the business, you understand, but with everybody at the convention I’m the only one they could call.” She sounded so sincere that she almost believed the lie herself. “But I see I’ve come too early.”
The captain nodded. “I’m afraid so. This stuff will take hours, and I wish to have a real bath and sleep soft and long tonight to put myself on your time. I am empty at the moment, though—could we talk tomorrow afternoon?”
She smiled sweetly and nodded. “Of course. Where are you staying? I will call you there. I know your name and ship from the listings.”
“At the Pioneer. The only place here with rooms that also have individual kitchens—I have special dietary requirements.”
She nodded. “I’ll call—not too early,” she promised.
“What did you say your company’s name was?” he came back. “And yours, in case things clear up earlier?”
“Tourifreet, in your pronunciation,” she answered glibly. “It is the Durkh Shipping Corporation—the number is listed.” Again the smile. “We’ll talk tomorrow, then,” she added and walked out, leaving him staring at the door closing behind her.
“You’re sure it’s him?” Marquoz grumbled. “The boys don’t seem to think so.”
Mavra nodded. “I’m as sure as I can be. Our little mimic trick worked. He knows who I look like, all right—there’s nothing wrong with his memory. It was like he’d been hit with a stun bomb. You could see it in his eyes, the war between his mind, which told him that this just had to be an amazing coincidence, and that emotional backwash that was winning control.”
One of the crewmen who had been there said, “I still think you’re nuts. He’s too tall, too broad—nothing at all like the descriptions of Brazil.”
She smiled slightly. “He wore well-made thick boots, I noticed, very much like those I normally wear when I have feet instead of hooves. With that long coat he has on to further disguise things he could have been on stilts for all we know, certainly lifts high enough to give him a dozen centimeters of lift. He had the old man’s walk, which would further discourage things—and he’s had a long time to practice, too. The coat is padded, who knows with what, to make him broader. Even the dark gloves poking out of those oversize sleeves obviously came from arms too thin and too short for that body. The beard’s good, but I’ve seen good false beards before. And the hat helps. No, it’s him, all right. I’d bet my life on it.”
“Don’t you think it was a bit risky just to let him go like that?” the Olympian leader asked Mavra. “We have no idea that he wasn’t put off by your appearance so he would suspect a trap.”
“I seriously doubt he suspects a trap, but he’ll check anyway. There really is a trading convention in Hsuir, which is about all he can check, since it’s on the other side of the world. The next thing I’d expect him to do is punch in the company name and see if he gets a number—he will. Finally, he might sneak over here late this evening or in the morning to establish that there really is a company warehouse. He’ll find us here, old sign in place.”
“And if you’ve made a mistake somewhere?” the Olympian pressed.
Mavra chuckled, reached into her coat, and pulled out a small transceiver. She switched it on and a tiny red light glowed. “Halka? How’s our man doing?” she asked into it.
“He cleared port about an hour ago, Mavra,” came a tinny response. “Went immediately to the Pioneer with one large bag. Went straight to his room, four-oh-four A, and hasn’t been out since, nor has anyone else gone in.”
She composed a knowing smile to the Olympian, a smile caressed with confidence and frost. “Satisfied? We’ll be on him every step of the way now. Borsa will even have his hotel line tapped in short order. We’ve got him.”
The Olympian remained skeptical. “If he is in fact Nathan Brazil, I wonder? . . .”
“Well, I’m satisfied,” Marquoz announced, yawning. “I would suggest that we all get some sleep. It looks to be quite a busy day tomorrow, and none of us knows how or when it’ll turn out.”
Room 404-A, the Hotel Pioneer
AS SOON AS HE ENTERED HIS ROOM AND LOCKED THE door, the man who called himself Captain David Korf checked the room for bugs. Satisfied, he sat on the comfortable bed in the hotel room, one designed to resemble first-class accommodations in the human part of the Com, and tried to think.
Somebody was on to him, he knew that much. Somebody who knew a lot about him, somebody who had baited their trap so that it would be irresistible to him. They had only really slipped once, in the shadows, which was very, very good—but it’s tough to trail a sophisticated alien through a city when you’re four-footed and huge, particularly late in the evening when few others are about. Hooves clatter no matter how muffled, and five hundred or so kilos of bulk is not easily faded into the shadows.
Korf glanced at the phone beside the bed. There were several people he could call, even the cops. No, the cops would only arrest a few of the tails and wouldn’t tell him who or how or why. People so well prepared wouldn’t employ stooges who broke easily.
He had no local friends, although he had cultivated several on his regular stops. But this planet was new to him. There were a few humans about from other ships or on layovers who he knew, even one or two he might count on in a fight. They should be looked up, he decided, if his choice was to find out who these people were instead of running.
Running appealed to him despite his curiosity, but that would not be easy. A human could not help but be conspicuous on a world inhabited almost solely by centaurs. The lone spaceport would be covered, of course. Not impossible to get through, no, but it would mean sneaking in using cargo containers or, perhaps, stealing a ship—weight tolerances would betray a stowaway. He rejected the cargo route because it was likely the containers wouldn’t be pressurized. He could steal a pilot boat or somesuch, of course, perhaps a tug—but then what? The cops would have the Jerusalem covered, and there wasn’t anyplace in range at the slow speeds the tugs could manage. Drifting in space for eons appealed to him not at all.
He sighed. No, running held too many risks and too many ifs. He would have to face them. He rather preferred the idea of a confrontation; his curiosity was piqued.
He would walk into no trap unprepared, though. Again he glanced at the phone, thinking of the few humans he could call, and he’d almost made up his mind to call when he thought better of it. No, anyone so well organized would have bribed the hotel operator by now—he would have, in their place—and it wouldn’t do to tip his hand just yet. He needed out—a public call box. One selected at random would be best. He also needed to watch the watchers a bit, to see what he was up against. The Pioneer was a transient spacer hotel, though small. Just a glance into the human lounge off to his left on the way in had revealed about two dozen men and women even at this late hour.
He started thinking about what the watchers would expect him to do, then turned, grabbed the phone, and punched for the Durkh Shipping Corporation. A number immediately appeared in the little readout screen, which surprised him not at all. Durkh might even be a real company. He didn’t bother to check on the import-export convention; if they were thorough enough to establish a corporate cover there would be, even if they’d had to throw it themselves to get people out of the way.
But—who were they! Not the cult, certainly. Maybe mercenaries hired by the cult—but what mercenaries if that was the case! Frankly, he just didn’t see the Fellowship of the Well as having enough smarts to pull something like that. But if not them, then who? Moreover, who would have the contacts not only to trace him but actually to trace him all the way to Meouit, to this little bit of nowhere, and be ready with Rhone agents—and the girl!
She disturbed him most. Plastic surgery? Neoform? No matter what, there was no way they could have done that to anybody in the time between when he had taken the contract and the time it’d taken him to make planetfall.
Worse, who could know what she had looked like? Only people on the Well World, so very long ago, would know that and they were all dead, all except, perhaps, that scoundrel Ortega—but even he would have no way of extending his influence beyond the Well. It didn’t make sense. Only a very few people had ever returned from the Well World, and they were all accounted for—certainly all who might have known what she had looked like back then.
He kept thinking about it. There was something new here, something potentially quite dangerous. The rip in space—time those assholes had caused— might it have strange side effects? He had not been on the Well World in generations; had someone capitalized on the rip to come back or come through to this space? Was it possible that anything could live in there?
Nothing makes sense, he told himself. There was only one solution. He got up from the bed and heaved his suitcase onto it, opening it carefully. He took off his heavy coat and the false padding that filled him out, kicked off the uncomfortable lift boots, carefully removed the massive beard by applying a chemical from a tiny kit he carried with him. Slowly he removed Rabbi David Korf completely, the bushy white eyebrows, the lines around the eyes, everything. Next he went to the window and looked out. Not far up, certainly not impossible. A sheer drop, though; it would be tricky to get down. The descent could be managed, though. Worse would be getting the window open wide enough—and it was damned cold out there, snowing fairly steadily now.
But—once down, then what? The snow would help, of course, but any group that knew Wuju’s form would be familiar with every cell in his body. It would have to be a good disguise, one of his best, one that would foul up even the most expert shadow. He had one for that. He didn’t like to use it, but it was effective; he’d even used it once or twice in staging deaths.
He returned to his suitcase. He always carried the disguises with him, both as insurance and because he occasionally wanted to get out on worlds without attracting undue attention. The last-gasp disguise, he’d named it; but it was effective.
Much of “Korf’s” hair was also fake, of course, but Brazil wore a fair amount of his own, stringy black, underneath. He trimmed it short with a set of clippers, then carefully shaved a large part of his body. Now actor’s cream to smooth his natural wrinkles and ruddy complexion, and to darken it. A professional actor’s cosmetics case aided him as he worked methodically, transforming himself into someone who resembled him very little. He couldn’t hide the Roman nose, of course, but he could smooth it out and flare the nostrils slightly so that it looked quite different. Finally the wig, which he’d paid a fortune for over two centuries before. More work, then the special clothing. He was a very small man, which aided this particular disguise. In his emergency kit he carried five identities. His actor’s kit could produce variants.
All of his outfits were reversible to black; that made it handy, although a white coat would have been nice out there right now. Well, so be it.
After over an hour of painstaking work he stood and studied himself in the mirror. Perfect. But he had no matching heavy coat for the fierce wintry weather outside; he would be very cold and very uncomfortable for a while.
Although this was his best disguise he had never liked it; still, he did enjoy the challenge. When you’ve been around familiar places long enough you need a way to get away, to be other people, talk to people you don’t dare be seen talking to—and duck people who want to see you, as now.
He had to make himself up to resemble his description in the fake ID papers he carried. On most planets they’d be good enough to get him in and out without a second glance but customs and immigration at the planet’s only port of entry would have no record of his arrival. On a larger human world that would make little difference, but here it would provoke an inquisition.
He gave the disguise a last look, then walked to the window. God, it looked cold out there! He raised it, not without difficulty for he was trying to be quiet. Barely large enough to get through, but it would do, he decided. The blast of icy air stung him; he hated being so uncomfortable, but he loved the challenge. Almost as an afterthought he went over and programmed some Rhone music so that it would shut off in fifteen minutes, then put in a wake-up call for the next morning with the desk. Just so, he decided, just so.
Taking a clear gel from a small jar he rubbed it onto his hands, took a deep breath, went out the window, positioned himself, and, with the gel’s aid, used his hands as suction cups to carry him down the thirty meters of brick wall to the alley below. Once on the ground he spotted the rear entrance, entered, allowed himself a few moments to thaw out and to roll up and discard the gel, then strolled openly down the corridor toward the lobby.
It was getting very late now, but, as he suspected, the human lounge was still filled with people, most relaxing with pleasure drugs or social drinking, a little dancing—all the things an alien lifeform might do for companionship on a winter’s eve in a strange place.
There was a cloakroom, conveniently unguarded. Who’d bother to steal a human-fitted coat here? He went there, selected one that fit both the disguise and his body, coolly put it on, returned to the lobby and with a nod to the front desk walked through the front door into the wintry weather. When no alarms flashed, no yells arose behind him, and no noticeable shadows materialized, he relaxed a little and began to whistle a little time. This was getting to be fun.
The sun was coming up; it had been a quiet if chilly night for the crewmen watching the warehouse and the Hotel Pioneer. All would swear that none of them had been observed and that, so far as they knew Korf had slept the night away.
One of the Rhone shadows down the hall from Room 404-A jumped at a distant sound and realized that he’d been dozing. He looked down the hall as the elevator, a huge cage built with centaurs in mind, came up to a stop and the door slid back. A single person got out and walked down the hall. It appeared to be a young and pretty woman, dressed fit to kill, her walk an open invitation on a hundred worlds. She brushed back long brown hair and took out a small pad, consulted it, then started checking the numbers on the rooms until she reached 404-A. That perked up the watch, both the man at the end of the hall and the others hiding in nearby rooms. She knocked and there seemed to be an answer from inside, then there was some fumbling and the door opened slightly. She pushed on it and strode in, closing the door quickly behind her.
“I’ll be damned,” snapped a tinny voice in the guard’s ear. “I thought he was a holy man or some-thin’.”
“You never know,” another cracked. “Now that’s my kind o’ religion!”
The men would have been startled to discover that room 404-A held but a single occupant. The woman kicked off shoes and removed her wig and some plas-tine body molding but did not bother to get rid of the entire disguise. It was already dawn and Nathan Brazil wanted some sleep before he had to become Rabbi Korf again; he flopped on the bed and drifted off almost instantly. A slight smile lingered on his face at the thought that, should his shadows check the room after he left tomorrow, they’d get a hell of a shock from the case of the disappearing woman.