He felt a brief pang at the thought. Thirty years. It had been more than a livelihood; it was a mood, a home, a way of life, a family. A bubble of human space in Munchen . . . A pseudo-archaic flytrap with rigged roulette, he reminded himself ironically. What really hurts is selling it to that fat toad Suuomalisen, he realized, and grinned.
“What’s so funny?” Ingrid said, stepping out of the cleanser. Her skin was dry, the smooth cream-white he remembered; it rippled with the long muscles of a zero-G physique kept in shape by exercise. The breasts were high and dark-nippled, and the tail of her Belter crest had grown to halfway down her back.
God, she looks good, he thought, and took another sip of the maivin.
“Thinking of Suuomalisen,” he said.
She made a slight face and touched the wall-control, switching the bed to .25 G, the compromise they had agreed on. Harold rose into the air slightly as the mattress flexed, readjusting to his reduced weight. Ingrid swung onto the bed and began kneading his feet with slim strong fingers.
“I thought you hated him,” she said, rotating the ankles.
“No, despised,” Harold said. The probing traveled up to his calves.
She frowned. “I . . . you know, Hari, I can’t say I like the thought of leaving Sam and the others at his mercy.”
He nodded and sipped. Tax and vagrancy laws on Wunderland had never been kind to the commonfolk. After two generations of kzinti overlordship and collaborationist government, things were much worse. Tenants on the surviving Herrenmann estates were not too bad, but urban workers were debt-peons more often than not.
“I know something that Suuomalisen doesn’t,” Harold said, waiting for her look of inquiry before continuing. “Careful on that knee, sweetheart, the repair job’s never really taken . . . Oh, the pension fund. Usually it’s a scam, get the proles more deeply in debt, you know? Well, the way I’ve got it jiggered, the employee nonvoting stock—that’s usually another scam, get interest-free loans from the help—controls the pension fund. The regular employees all owe their debts to the pension fund . . . to themselves. In fact, the holding company turns out to be controlled by the fund, if you trace it through.”
Ingrid’s hands stopped stroking his thighs as she snorted laughter. “You sold him a minority interest?” she choked. “You teufel!” Her hand moved up, kneading. “Devil,” she repeated, in a different tone.
“Open up!” A fist hammered at the door.
“Go away!” they said in chorus, and collapsed laughing.
A red light flashed on the surface of the door. “Open up! There’s a ratcat warship matching trajectories, and it wants you two by name!”
* * *
“Two hundred and fifty thousand crowns!” Suuomalisen said, looking mournfully about.
He was a vague figure in bulky white against the backdrop of Harold’s Terran Bar, looking mournfully down at his luncheon platter of wurst, egg-and-potato salad, breads, shrimp on rye, gulyas soup . . . His hands continued to shovel the food methodically into his mouth, dropping bits onto the flowing handkerchief tucked into his collar; the rest of his clothing was immaculate white natural linen and silk, with jet links at his cuffs the only color. It was rumored that he had his shirts hand-made, and never wore one for more than a day. Claude Montferrat-Palme watched the light from the mirror behind the long bar gleaming on the fat man’s bald head and reflected that he could believe it.
Only natural for a man who wolfs down fastmetabol and still weighs that much. It was easy to control appetite, a simple visit to the autodoc, but Suuomalisen refused. Wunderland’s .61 G made it fairly easy to carry extra weight, but the sight was still not pleasant.
“Not a bad price for a thriving business,” he said politely, leaning back at his ease and letting smoke trickle out his nostrils. He was in the high-collared blue dress uniform of the Munchen Polezi; the remains of a single croissant lay on the table before him, with a cup of espresso. Their table was the only one in use; this was a nightspot and rarely opened before sundown. Just now none of the staff was in the main area, a raised L-shape of tables and booths around the lower dance floor and bar; he could hear mechanical noises from the back room, where the roulette wheels and baccarat tables were. There was a sad, empty smell to the nightclub, the curious daytime melancholy of a place meant to be seen by darkness.
“A part interest only,” Suuomalisen continued. “I trusted Hari!” He shook his head mournfully. “We should not steal from each other . . . quickly he needed the cash, and did I quibble? Did I spend good money on having lawyers follow his data trail?”
“Did you pay anything like the going-rate price for this place?” Claude continued smoothly. “Did you pay three thousand to my late unlamented second-in-command Axelrod-Bauergartner to have the health inspectors close the place down so that Hari would be forced to sell?”
“That is different; simply business,” the fat man said in a hurt tone. “And it did not work. But to sell me a business actually controlled by employees . . . !” His jowls wobbled, and he sighed heavily. “A pity about herrenfra Axelrod-Bauergartner.” He made a tsk sound. “Treason and corruption.”
“Speaking of which . . .” Claude hinted. Suuomalisen smiled and slid a credit voucher across the table; Claude palmed it smoothly and dropped it into his pocket. So much more tidy than direct transfers, he thought. “Now, my dear Suuomalisen, I’m sure you won’t lose money on the deal. After all, a nightclub is only as good as the staff, and they know that as well as you; with Sam Ogun on the musicomp and Aunti Scheirwize in the kitchen, you can’t go wrong.” He uncrossed his ankles and leaned forward. “To business.”
The fat man’s eyes narrowed and the slit of his mouth pulled tight; for a moment, you remembered that he had survived and prospered on the fringes of the law in occupied Munchen for forty years.
“That worthless musician Ogun is off on holiday, and if you think I’m going to increase the payoff, when I’m getting less than half the profits—”
“No, no, no,” Claude said soothingly. “My dear fellow, I am going to give you more funds. Information is your stock in trade, is it not? Incidentally, Ogun is doing a little errand for me, and should be back in a day or two.”
The petulance left Suuomalisen’s face. “Yes,” he said softly. “But what information could I have worth the while of such as you, Herrenmann?” A pause. “Are you proposing a partnership, indeed?” His face cleared, beaming. “Ha! Hari was working for you all along?”
Montferrat kept his face carefully blank. There is something truly almost wonderfully repugnant about someone so happy to find another corrupt, he thought. Aloud:
“I need documentary evidence on certain of my colleagues. I have my own files . . . but data from those could be, shall we say, embarrassing in its plenitude if revealed to my ratca—noble kzinti superiors. Though they are thin on the ground just at this moment. Then, once I have usable evidence—usable without possibility of being traced to me, and hence usable as a non-desperation measure—a certain . . . expansion of operations . . .”
“Ah.” Pearly white teeth showed in the doughy pink face. Suuomalisen pulled his handkerchief free and wiped the dome of his head; there was a whiff of expensive cologne and sweat. “I always said you were far too conservative about making the most of your position, my friend.”
Acquaintance, if necessary. Not friend. Claude smiled, dazzling and charming. “Recent events have presented opportunities,” he said. “With the information you get for me, my position will become unassailable. Then,” he shrugged, “rest assured that I intend to put it to good use. I have taken a vow that all resources are to be optimized, from now on.”
* * *
“This had better work” the guerrilla captain said. She was a high-cheeked Croat, one of the tenants turned off when the kzin took over the local Herrenmann’s estate, roughly dressed, a well-worn strakaker over one shoulder. “We need the stuff on that convoy, or we’ll have to pack it in.”
“It will,” Samuel Ogun replied tranquilly. He was a short, thick-set black man, with a boxed musicomp over his shoulder and a jazzer held by the grips, its stubby barrel pointed up. It better, or I’ll know Mister Claude has fooled this Krio one more time, he thought. “My source has access to the best.”
They were all lying along the ridgeline, looking down on the valley that opened out onto the plains of the upper Donau valley. Two thousand kilometers north of Munchen, and the weather was unseasonably cold this summer; too much cloud from the dust and water vapor kicked into the stratosphere. The long hillslope down to the abandoned village was covered in head-high feral rosebushes, a jungle of twisted thumb-thick stems, finger-long thorns and flowers like a mist of pink and yellow. Scent lay about them in the warm thick air, heavy, syrup-sweet. Ogun could see native squidgrass struggling to grow beneath the Earth vegetation, thin shoots of reddish olive-brown amid the bright green.