“Well.” What was there to say? “Long time, no see. Glad you could make it. The last time, you seemed to have a pressing appointment elsewhere. I showed up on time, and there the ‘boat was, boosting like hell a couple of million klicks Solward. Me in a single ship with half a dozen kzin Slashers sniffing around.”
Ingrid’s face went chalk-white. “Let me explain—”
“Don’t bother. Closed account.” He paused, lit a cigarette, astonished at the steadiness of his own hands.
“Claude know you’re here?”
“No, and it’s best he doesn’t.”
“Sure. Let me guess. Now you’re back, and Mr. Quick-Draw here with you, on some sort of UN skullbuggery, and need my help.” He looked thoughtful. “Come to that, how did you get here?”
“Jonah Matthieson,” the Sol-Belter said. “Yes. How we got here isn’t important. We do need your help. Damned little we’ve gotten in this system that hasn’t been bought and paid for, and half the time we’ve been sold out to the pussies even so.”
“Pussies? Oh, the ratcats.” He laughed, a little wildly. “So you haven’t found legions of eager, idealistic volunteers ready to throw themselves into the jaws of the kzin to help you on your sacred mission, whatever it is. How can that be?”
Yarthkin’s finger touched behind one ear, and the mirror behind the bar went screenmode. It showed an overgrown park, flicking between micropickups scattered wholesale through the vegetation. There had been lawns here once; now there was waist-high grass, Earth trees grown to scores of meters in the light gravity, native Wunderlander growths soaring on spidery trunks. The sound of panting breath, and a naked human came stumbling through the undergrowth. His legs and flanks were lashed and scratched by thorns and burrs. He reeled with exhaustion, feet pounding with careless heaviness; the eyes were flat and blank in the stubbled face, mouth dribbling. Behind him there was a flash of orange-red, alien among the cool greens of Earth, the tawny olives of Wunderland. A flash: two hundred kilos of sentient carnivore charging on all fours in a hunching rush that parted the long grass in an arrow of rippling wind. Not so much like a cat as a giant weasel, blurring, looming up behind the fleeing human in a wall of flesh, a wall that fell tipped with bright teeth and black claws.
The screaming began at once, sank to a bubbling sound and the wet tearing noises of feeding. Shouts of protest rose from the dance floor and the other tables, and the sound of someone vomiting into an expensive meal. Yarthkin touched the spot behind his ear and the screen switched back to mirror. The protests lasted longer, and the staff of Harold’s went among the patrons to sooth with free drinks and apologies, murmurs. Technical mistake, government override, here, let me fix that for you, gentlefolk . . .
“And that,” Yarthkin said, “is a good reason why you’re not going to be finding hordes beating down your door to volunteer. We’ve been living with that for forty years, you fool. While you in the Sol system sat fat and happy and safe.”
Jonah leaned forward. “I’m here now, aren’t I? Neither fat, nor very happy, and not at all safe right now. I was in two fleet actions, Mr. Yarthkin. Out of four. Earth’s been fighting the kzin since I was old enough to vote, and we haven’t lost so far. Been close a couple of times, but we haven’t lost. We could have stayed home. Note we didn’t. Ingrid and I are considerably less safe than you.”
Ingrid and I, Yarthkin thought, looking at the faces, side by side. The young faces; at the Sol-Belter. Hotshot pilot. Secret agent. All-round romantic hero, come to save us worthless pussy-whipped peons. Tonight seemed to be a night for strong emotions, something he had been trying to unlearn. Now he felt hatred strong and thick, worse than anything he had ever felt for the kzin. Worse even than he had felt for himself, for a long time.
“So what do you need?”
“A way into the Datamongers’ Guild, for a start.”
Yarthkin looked thoughtful. “That’s easy enough.” He realized that Ingrid had been holding her breath. Bad. She wants this bad. How bad?
“And any other access to the—to networks.”
“Networks. Sure. Networks. Any old networks, right? Want into Claude’s system? Want to see his private files? What else would you like?”
“Hari—”
“I can do that, you know. Networks.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Help. You want help,” he said slowly. “Well that leaves only one question.” He poured himself a drink in Jonah’s water glass, tossed it back. “What will you pay?”
“Anything we have. Anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Of course. When do you want me?”
“Ingrid—”
“Not your conversation, Belter. Get lost.”
* * *
The club was dim, with the distinctive stale chill smell of tobacco and absent people that came in the hours just before dawn. Yarthkin sat at the table and sipped methodically at the verguuz; it was a shame to waste it on just getting drunk, but owning a bar did have some advantages. He took another swallow, letting the smooth sweet minty taste flow over his tongue, then breathing out as the cold fire ran back up his throat. A pull at the cigarette, one of the clove-scented ones well-to-do Baha’i smoked. My, aren’t we wallowing in sensual indulgence tonight.
“Play,” he said to the man at the musicomp. The Krio started and ran his fingers over the surface of the instrument, and the brassy complexities of Meddlehoffer lilted out into the deserted silence of the room.
“Not that,” Yarthkin said, and knocked back the rest of the Verguuz. “You know what I want.”
“No you don’t,” Sam said. “That’s a manti-manti mara,” he continued, dropping back into his native tongue: a great stupidity. “What you want is to get drunk and manyamanya, smash something up. Go ahead, it’s your bar.”
“I said, play it.” The musician shrugged, and began the ancient melody. The husky voice followed:
” . . . no matter what we say or do—”
A contralto joined it: “So happy together.”
They both looked up with a start. Ingrid dropped into a chair across from Yarthkin, reached for the bottle and poured herself a glass.
“Isn’t there enough for two?” she asked, raising a brow into his scowl. The musician rose, and Yarthkin waved him back.
“You don’t have to leave, Sam.”
“Do I have to stay? No? Then it’s late, boss, and I’m going for bed. See you tomorrow.”
“Where’s the Sol-Belter?” Yarthkin asked. His voice was thickened but not slurred, and his hand was steady as he poured.
“In the belly of the whale . . . still working in your office.” And trying not to think about what we’re doing. Or will be doing in a minute, if you’re sober enough. “That’s a pretty impressive system you have there.”
“Yeah. And I’m taking a hell of a chance letting you two use it.”
“So are we.”
“So are we all. Honorable men, all, all honorable men. And women. Honorable.”
“Hari—”
“That’s Herr Yarthkin to you, Lieutenant.”
“If you let me explain—”
“Explain what?”
“Hari, the rendezvous time was fixed, and you didn’t make it! We had to boost; there were hundreds of lives riding on it.”
“Oh, no, Lieutenant Raines. The ships had to boost, and we had to keep the kzin off your backs as long as we could. Not every pilot had to go with them.”
“Angers was dying, radiation sickness, puking her guts out. Flambard’s nerve had gone, Finagle’s sake, Hari, I was the best they had, and—” She stopped, looking at his face, slumped. “Long ago, long ago.”
Not so long for you as for me, he thought. Her face was the same, not even noticeably aged. What was different? Where did the memory lie? Unformed, he thought. She looks . . . younger than I remember. Not as much behind the eyes.
“Long ago, kid. How’d you get here?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Probably I wouldn’t. That raid—”
She nodded. “That raid. The whole reason for that raid was to get us here.”
“For god’s sake, why?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“It’s part of the price, sweetheart.”
“Literally, I can’t,” Ingrid said. “Post-hypnotic. Reinforced with— The psychists have some new tricks, Hari. I would literally die before I told you, or anyone else.”
“Even if they’re taking you apart?”
She nodded.
Harold thought about that for a moment and shuddered. “OK. It was a long time ago, and maybe—maybe you saw things I didn’t see. You always were bigger on romantic causes than the rest of us.” He stood.
She got to her feet and stood expectantly. “Where?”
“There’s a bedroom upstairs.”
She nodded. “I’ve—I’ve thought about this a lot.”
“Not as much as I have. You haven’t had as long.”
She laughed. “That’s right.”