“I knew it,” he muttered. “It wasn’t logical, they didn’t do as much damage as they could have.” The kzin had not thought so, but then, they had a predator’s reflexes. They just did not think in terms of mass destruction; their approach to warfare was too pragmatic for that. Which was why their armament was so woefully lacking in planet-busting weapons: the thought of destroying valuable real estate did not occur to them. Montferrat had run his own projections: with weapons like that ramship, you could destabilize stars.
“And humans do think that way.” So there must have been some other point to the raid, and not merely to get an effective ship to the Free Wunderlanders. Nothing overt, which left something clandestine. Intelligence work. Perhaps elsewhere in the system, pray God elsewhere in the system, not in his backyard. But it would be just as well . . .
He crossed to the desk. “Axelrod-Bauergartner,” he said.
A holo of his second-in-command formed, seated at her desk. The meter-high image put down its coffee cup and straightened. “Yes, Chief?”
“I want redoubled surveillance on all entry-exit movements in the Greater Munchen area. Everything, top priority. Activate all our contacts, call in favors, lean on everybody we can lean on. I’ll be sending you some data on deep-hook threads I’ve been developing among the hardcore ferals.”
He saw her look of surprise; that was one of the holecards he used to keep his subordinates in order. Poor Axelrod-Bauergartner, he thought. You want this job so much, and would do it so badly. I’ve held it for twenty years because I’ve got a sense of proportion; you’d be monkeymeat inside six months.
“Zum befhel, Chief.”
“Our esteemed superiors also wish evidence of our zeal. Get them some monkeymeat for the next hunt, nobody too crucial.”
“I’ll round up the usual suspects, Chief.”
The door retracted, and a white-coated steward came in with a covered wheeled tray. Montferrat looked up, checking . . . yes, the chilled Bloemvin 2337, the heart-of-palm salad, the paté . . . “And for now, send in the exit-visa applicant, the one who was having the problems with the paperwork.”
The projected figure grinned wickedly. “Oh, her. Right away, Chief.” Montferrat flicked the transmission out of existence and rose, smoothing down his uniform jacket and flicking his mustaches into shape with a deft forefinger. This job isn’t all grief, he mused happily.
“Recode Till Eulenspiegel,” Yarthkin said, leaning back. “Interesting speculation, Claude old kamerat,” he mused. The bucket chair creaked as he leaned back, putting his feet up on the cluttered desk. The remains of a cheese-and-mustard sandwich rested at his elbow, perched waveringly on a stack of printout. The office around him was a similar clutter, bookcases and safe and a single glowlight, a narrow cubicle at the alley-wall of the bar. Shabby and rundown and smelling of beer and old socks, except for the extremely up-to-date infosystem built into the archaic wooden desk; one of the reasons the office was so shabby was that nobody but Ogreson was allowed in, and he was an indifferent housekeeper at best.
He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. Have to crank up my contacts, he thought. Activity’s going to heat up systemwide, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t take advantage of it. Safety’s sake, too: arse to the wall, ratcats over all. This wasn’t all to get our heroic Herrenmann in the Swarm a new toy; that was just a side-effect, somehow.
“Sam,” he said, keying an old-fashioned manual toggle. “Get me Suuomalisen.”
* * *
“Finagle,” Jonah muttered under his breath. Munchenport was solidly cordoned off, antiaircraft missiles and heavy beamers all around it, and the shuttle station had been moved out into open country. The station was a series of square extruded buildings and open spaces for the gravitic shuttles, mostly for freight; the passenger traffic was a sideline. “Security’s tight.”
Ingrid smiled at the guard and handed over their ident-cards. The man smiled back and fed them into the reader, waiting a few seconds while the machine read the data, scanned the two Belters for congruence, and consulted the central files.
“Clear,” he said, and shifted into Wunderlander: “Enjoy your stay planetside. God knows, more trying to get off than on, what with casualties from the raid and all.”
“Thank you,” Jonah said; his command of the language was adequate, and his accent would pass among non-Belters. “It was pretty bad out in the Belt, too.”
The lineup moving through the scanners in the opposite direction stretched hundreds of meters into the barnlike gloom of the terminal building. A few were obviously space-born returning home, but most were thicker-built, as those brought up under even as feeble a gravity as Wunderland’s tended to be, families with crying children and string-tied parcels, or ragged-looking laborers. They smelled, of unwashed bodies and poverty, a peculiar sweet-sour odor blending with the machinery-and-synthetics smell of the building and the residual ozone of heavy power release. More raw material for the industries of the Serpent Swarm, attracted by the higher wages and the lighter hand of the kzin off-planet.
“Watch it,” Ingrid said. The milling crowds silenced and parted as a trio of the felinoids walked through trailed by human servants with baggage on maglifters; Jonah caught snatches of the Hero’s Tongue, technical jargon. They both wheeled at a sudden commotion. The guards were closing in on an emigrant at the head of the line, a man arguing furiously with the checker.
“It’s right!” he screamed. “I paid good money for it, all we got for the farm, it’s right!”
“Look, scheisskopf, the machine says there’s no record of it. Raus! You’re holding up the line.”
“It’s the right paper, let me through!” The man lunged, trying to vault the turnstile. The guard at the checker recoiled, shrieked as the would-be traveler slammed down his metal-edged carryall on her arm. The two agents could hear the wet crackle of broken bone even at five meters’ distance, and then the madman’s body disappeared behind a circle of helmeted heads, marked by the rise and fall of shockrods. The others in the line drew back, as if afraid of infection, and the police dragged the man off by his arms; the injured one followed, holding her splintered arm and kicking the semiconscious form with every other step.
“Monkeymeat, you’re monkeymeat, shithead,” she shrilled, and kicked him again. There was solid force behind the blow, and she grunted with the effort and winced as it jarred her arm.
“Tanj,” Jonah said softly. The old curse: there ain’t no justice.
“No, there isn’t,” Ingrid answered. “Come on, the railcar’s waiting.”
* * *
“And the word from the Nippojen in Tiamat is that two important ferals will be coming through soon,” Suuomalisen said.
Yarthkin leaned back, sipping at his coffee and considering him. Suuomalisen was fat, even by Wunderland standards, where the .61 standard gravity made it easy to carry extra tissue. His head was pink, egg-bald, with a beak of a nose over a slit mouth and a double chin; the round body was expensively covered in a suit of white natural silk with a conservative black cravat and onyx ring. The owner of Harold’s Terran Bar waited patiently while his companion tucked a linen handkerchief into his collar and began eating: scrambled eggs with scallions, grilled wurst, smoked kopjfissche, biscuits.
“You set a marvelous table, my friend,” the fat man said. They were alone in the dining nook; Harold’s did not serve breakfast, except for the owner and staff. “Twice I have offered your cook a position in my Suuomalisen’s Sauna, and twice she has refused. You must tell me your secret.”
Acquaintance, not friend, Harold thought. And my chef prefers to work for someone who lets her people quit if they want to. Mildly: “From the Free Wunderland people? They’ve been doing better at getting through to the bands in the Jotunscarp recently.”
“No, no, these are special somehow. Carrying special goods, something that will upset the ratcats very much. The tip was vague; I don’t know if my source was not informed or whether the slant-eyed devils are just playing both ends against the middle again.” A friendly leer. “If you could identify them for me, my friend, I’d be glad to share the police reward. Not from Montferrat, from lower down . . . strictly confidential, of course; I wouldn’t want to cut into the income you get from those who think this is the safest place in town.”
“Suuomalisen, has anyone ever told you what a toad you are?” Yarthkin said, butting out the cigarette in the cold remains of the coffee.
“Many times, many times! But a very successful toad.”
The shrewd little eyes blinked at him. “Harold, my friend, it is a grief to me that you take such little advantage of this excellent base of operations. A fine profit source, and you have wonderful contacts; think of the use you could make of them! You should diversify, my friend. Into contracting, it is a natural with the suppliers you have. Then, with your gambling, you could bid for the lottery contracts—perhaps even get into Guild work!”