Icy stares greeted them as they swung to a vacant booth and slid themselves in, their long legs tangling under the synthetic pineboard of the stick-table.
“It must be harder for you,” Jonah said. “Your home.”
She looked up at him with quick surprise. He was usually the archetypical rockjack, the stereotype asteroid prospector, quiet, bookish, self-sufficient, a man without twitches or mannerisms but capable of cutting loose on furlough—but perceptive, and rockjacks were not supposed to be good at people.
Well, he was a successful officer, too, she thought. And they do have to be good at people.
A waitress in some many-folded garment of black silk floated up to the privacy screen of their cubicle and reached a hand through to scratch at the post. Ingrid keyed the screen, and the woman’s features snapped clear.
“Sorry, so sorry,” she said. “This special place, not Belter food.” There was a singsong accent to her English that Jonah did not recognize, but the underlying impatience and hostility came through the calm features.
He smiled at her and ran a hand over his crest. “But we were told the tekkamaki here is fine, the oyabun makes the best,” he said. Ingrid could read the thought that followed: Whatever the fuck that means.
The frozen mask of the waitress’s face could not alter, but the quick duck of her head was empty of the commonplace tension of a moment before. She returned quickly with bowls of soup and drinking straws; it was some sort of fish broth with onions and a strange musky undertaste. They drank in silence, waiting. For what, the pussies to come and get us? she thought. The Catskinner-computer had said Markham was on the level—but also that he was capable of utter treachery once he had convinced himself that Right was on his side, and that to Markham the only ultimate judge of Right was, guess who, the infallible Markham.
Gottdamned Herrenmann, she mused: going on fifty years objective, everything else in the system had collapsed into shit, and the arrogant lop-bearded bastards hadn’t changed a bit. . . .
A man slid through the screen. Expensively nondescript dress, gray oversuit, and bowl-cut black hair. Hint of an expensive natural cologne. Infocomp at his waist, and the silver button of a reader-bonephone behind his ear. This was Markham’s “independent entrepreneur.” Spoken with tones of deepest contempt, more than a Herrenmann’s usual disdain for business, so probably some type of criminal like McAllistaire. She kept a calm smile on her face as she studied the man, walling off the remembered sickness as the kicking doll-figures tumbled into space, bleeding from every orifice. Oriental, definitely; there were Sina and Nipponjin enclaves down on Wunderland, ethnic separatists like many of the early settlers. Not in the Serpent Swarm Belt, not when she left, Belters did not go in for racial taboos. Things had changed.
The quiet man smiled and produced three small drinking-bulbs. “Rice wine,” he said. “Heated. An affectation, to be sure, but we are very traditional these days.”
Pure Belter English, no hint of an accent. She called up training, looked for clues: in the hands, the skin around the eyes, the set of the mouth. Very little, no more than polite attention; this was a very calm man. Hard to tell even the age; if he was getting good geriatric care, anything from fifty minimum up to a hundred. Teufel, he could have been from Sol system himself, one of the last bunches of immigrants, and wouldn’t that be a joke to end them all.
Silence stretched. The oriental sat and sipped at his hot sake and smiled; the two Belters followed suit, controlling their surprise at the varnish-in-the-throat taste.
At the last, Jonah spoke: “I’m Jonah. This is Ingrid. The man with gray eyes sent us for tekkamaki.”
“Ah, our esteemed GVB,” the man said. A deprecatory laugh and a slight wave of the fingers; the man had almost as few hand gestures as a Belter. “Gotz von Blerichgen, a little joke. Yes, I know the one you speak of. My name is Shigehero Hirose, and as you will have guessed, I am a hardened criminal of the worst sort.” He ducked his head in a polite bow. Ingrid noticed his hands then, the left missing the little finger, and the edges of vividly-colored tattoos under the cuffs of his suit.
“And you,” he continued to Jonah, “are sent not by our so-Aryan friend, but by the UNSN.” A slight frown. “Your charming companion is perhaps of the same provenance, but from the Serpent Swarm originally.”
Jonah and Ingrid remained silent. Another shrug. “In any case, according to our informants, you wish transportation to Wunderland and well-documented cover identities.”
“If you’re wondering how we can pay . . .” Jonah began. They had the best and most compact source of valuata the UN military had been able to provide.
“No, please. From our own resources, we will be glad to do this.”
“Why?” Ingrid said, curious. “Criminals seem to be doing better now than they ever did in the old days.”
Hirose smiled again, that bland expression that revealed nothing and never touched his eyes. “The young lady is as perceptive as she is ornamental.” He took up his sake bulb and considered it. “My . . . association is a very old one. You might call us predators; we would prefer to think of it as a symbiotic relationship. We have endured many changes, many social and technological revolutions. But something is common to each: the desire to have something and yet to forbid it.
“Consider drugs and alcohol . . . or wirehead drouds. All strictly forbidden at one time, legal another, but the demand continues. Instruction in martial arts, likewise. In our early days in dai Nippon, we performed services for feudal lords that their own code forbade. Later, the great corporations, the zaibatsu, found us convenient for dealing with recalcitrant shareholders and unions; we moved substances of various types across inconvenient national frontiers, liberated information selfishly stockpiled in closed data banks, recruited entertainers, provided banking services . . . invested our wealth wisely, and moved outward with humanity to the planets and the stars. Sometimes we have been so respectable that our affairs were beyond question; sometimes otherwise. A conservative faction undertook to found our branch in the Alpha Centauri system, but I assure you the . . . family businesses, clans if you will, still flourish in Sol system as well. Inconspicuously.”
“That doesn’t answer Ingrid’s question,” Jonah said bluntly. “This setup looks like hog heaven for you.”
“Only in the short term. Which is enough to satisfy mere thugs, mere bandits such as a certain rockholder known as McAllistaire . . . You met this person? But consider: we are doing well for the same reason bacteria flourish in a dead body. The human polity of this system is dying, its social defenses disorganized, but the carnival of the carrion-eaters will be shortlived. We speak of the free humans and those in the direct service of the kzin, but to our masters we of the ‘free’ are slaves of the Patriarchy who have not yet been assigned individual owners. We are squeezed, tighter and tighter; eventually, there will be nothing but the households of kzin nobles. My association could perhaps survive such a situation; we are making preparations. Better by far to restore a functioning human system; our pickings would be less in the short term, more secure in the longer.”
“And by helping us, you’ll have a foot in both camps and come up smelling of roses whoever wins.”
Hirose spread his hands. “It is true, the kzin have occasionally found themselves using our services.” His smile became more genuine, and sharklike. “Nor are all, ah, Heroes, so incorruptible, so immune to the temptations of vice and profit, as they would like to believe.
“Enough.” He produced a sealed packet and slid it across the table to them. “The documentation and credit is perfectly genuine. It will stand even against kzin scrutiny; our influence reaches far. I have no knowledge of what it contains, nor do I wish to. You in turn have learned nothing from me that possible opponents do not already know, and know that I know, and I know that they know . . . but please, even if I cannot join you, do stay and enjoy this excellent restaurant’s cuisine.”
“Well . . .” Jonah palmed the folder. “It might be out of character, rockjacks in a fancy live-service place like this.”
Shigehero Hirose halted, partway through the privacy screen. “You would do well to study local conditions a little more carefully, man-from-far-away. It has been a long time since autochefs and dispensers were cheaper than humans.”
Shigehero Hirose sat back on his heels and sighed slightly.
“Well, my dear?” he said.
His wife laid the bamboo strainer down on the tray and lifted the teacup in both hands. He accepted her unspoken rebuke and the teacup, raising it to his lips as he looked out the pavilion doors. Even the Association’s wealth could not buy open space on Tiamat, but this was a reasonable facsimile. The graceful structure about them was dark varnished wood, sparely ornamented, carrying nothing but the low tray that held the tea service and a single chrysanthemum. Outside was a chamber of raked gravel and a few well-chosen rocks, and a quiet recirculating fountain. The air was sterile, though; no point in a chemical mockery of garden scents.