While the blond one ordered, the other three looked across at Ikuro, staring at him brazenly, an undisguised malice in their pale, blunt faces. Ikuro drained his bowl, letting the strong red maotai burn his throat. It was time to go. Before any trouble started. My brothers, he thought, setting the bowl down quietly and pushing it away from him. I must get back to my brothers. But it was already too late. “A drink, friend?”
The offer was ominous. To accept would be to place himself in greater danger than he already was. He had heard the tales. They all had. Tales of men being drugged, then stripped and robbed of everything. Tales of men killed for their eyes and organs. And of others who had been lobotomized and sold into prostitution. He shuddered inwardly at the thought of it. Never would he submit to such humiliation. Yet to refuse the blond man’s offer would only cause offense. To be frank, what choice he had was poor. He could fight them now or later.
Ikuro stood, moving back away from his chair. He would lose. He knew that for a certainty. But he would not be humiliated. He would take at least one of them with him. Two, if it were possible. He looked at them, studying them carefully. They were big men, the muscles on their arms clearly visible beneath the thin cloth, but they would be slow. He could see that by the way they moved. Moreover, they were sure to underestimate him; to think him much weaker than he was. They were used to the low gravity of Mars, he to the artificial one-g spin of the asteroids. That was good. It would give him an advantage in the first few moments: an advantage that his natural agility would add to. And yet, in truth, it wasn’t much. They had only to grasp and hold him and it would be over. Brute force would do the rest.
He bowed, facing them squarely. “You are most kind, friend. Another time I would be most honored to join you for a drink, but I am afraid I must go. I have promised an old friend that I would meet him for breakfast, and I shall be late if I do not leave right now. So forgive me. Another time, perhaps, ch’un tzul” There was laughter at that. A nasty, brutish laughter. “Another time?” the blond one said, lifting his chin challengingly. “I don’t think there’ll be another time, friend.”
They stood, fanning out slowly, one of them moving to block his route to the door, the others forming a rough half-circle about him, two or three paces distant. Which one? he thought, looking from one to another and weighing them up. Should I take the weakest first, or the strongest? “Leave him, Bates,” someone said, close by. “Touch him and I’ll finger you to the guards.”
Ikuro stared. At the end of the bar the stranger was looking directly at him. In the overhead light his mask shone whitely, the cheeks like two smooth surfaces of stone.
The blond-haired one—Bates—had turned and was looking down at the man, leaning over him threateningly. “Mind your own fucking business, creep. Or you want some of the same?”
The man stood, pushing his empty bowl away. As he turned to face Bates, Ikuro could see that he was far from small himself. If anything he was bigger than the other man.
“Leave him,” he said, a hint of steel behind the softness of his voice. “I mean it.”
For a moment Bates stood his ground, all menace, his face pushed out at that awful, empty mask, glaring back at the man beyond it, and then he turned, his face dark with anger, his muscles bunched, tensed with resentment and frustration. Raising one hand he pointed savagely at Ikuro. “You’re safe now, Chink, but watch your back. Because I’ll have you, you little fucker. See if I don’t.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, then he turned and headed for the exit, his friends peeling off to follow him, turning at the door to give Ikuro the finger.
Ikuro watched them go, feeling the adrenaline wash through him. Not relief, strangely, but disappointment. He turned, looking at the man, at that strangely elongated mask which, for that moment, stared away from him.
The man turned, looking back at him. Blue eyes, he had. So blue that they seemed to burn through the whiteness of the mask. “Come on,” he said quietly. “You’d best come with me. He meant what he said. You’ll not be safe in these levels. That one’s got many friends.” Ikuro bowed. “Thank you, but I must get back. My brothers will be expecting me. What you did—“ The man lifted a hand. “You don’t understand. Bates is a big man in the FFM. After this he’ll have them all out, combing the corridors for you. Your only chance is to come back with me. You can stay until things blow over.”
Ikuro stared back at him, suddenly uncomfortable. “I. . .” The eyes in the mask registered sudden understanding, their expression changing to something that resembled amusement. “Oh, don’t worry, friend, I’m no yellow eel. I’ve no designs on your ass, I promise you.” Ikuro looked down, embarrassed by the others bluntness. Yet it was exactly what he had been thinking. He lifted his head, meeting those startlingly blue eyes once again. “Thank you ... I mean, for helping me. My family is indebted to you, but I would be better off making my way back to my brothers.”
The man reached out, taking Ikuro’s upper arm. Ikuro looked down at the fingers where they gripped him, impressed by their strength, their unexpected perfection.
“Look, I understand,” the stranger said, the words drifting— disembodied, it seemed—from the mask, “but for once you have no choice. Either you come back with me, and come now, or you’ll find yourself out there, under the stars, a hole in the back of your skull and your body stiff as stone. Now, what’s it to be?”
Ikuro stared back at the man, trying to see him clearly through the mask.
To see exactly what and who he was. Then, making up his mind, he bowed.
“Okay. . . .”
“Good,” the man said curtly, releasing him and making for the door. “Now, keep close. And don’t stop running until I tell you it’s safe.”
outside, the martian night seemed vast, impenetrable. Two li up, the searchlights of the speeding cruiser appeared to punch holes in the blackness rather than illuminate it. Below, concealed from human sight, the land climbed slowly toward the Hesperian Plain—a bleak, uncompromising landscape pockmarked by craters formed more than three billion years before.