"'Great king of squid,'" Stake mumbled again, remembering the pictures of Dai-oo-ika that Yuki had shown him on her wrist comp. "My God, Janice."
"Yeah," she said. "So, what I was thinking is, was John able to salvage some of the research or technology at Alvine? And did he use that when he designed Dai-oo-ika for his daughter?"
"Janice," Stake said, "if I ever need to hire a partner, you're in the front running." He sat up in her bed, the gears in his mind fully lubricated now.
"So what if that were true, and Tableau suspected it, too? Put it together like you did? Would he want to steal Dai-oo-ika from his rival not so much out of spite, but because he wants access to that research himself?"
"Hard to do a job for John when he keeps you in the dark, isn't it?"
"I'd like to know just how much dark there is. The first time he told me he bought up Alvine Products, he admitted that he did a lot to cover up the situation there himself."
"Can you come right out and ask him about this stuff?"
"He'd have told me if he wanted me to know. He might feel it's not relevant to the task he's given me. He might not trust me with knowledge like that. But if I need to confront him, then I will."
"Still, you're not a forcer solving a crime, you're a private dick collecting a paycheck." "Exactly."
"You're my private dick, too." She squeezed his groin beneath the skin sheet.
"You mean Crow Tidwell's dick," Stake remarked.
"Ohh, jealous of your own face now, huh?" She rolled on top of him. "It's still you, isn't it? Always you." She kissed his bland, android-like visage. "My little plaything."
He awoke with a start. He had fallen asleep beside her. She might have killed him while he was vulnerable. But she hadn't.
A pounding at the thick wooden door, glazed a glossy blue. Stake sat up, heart thudding, then looked down at the woman beside him on the mattress. She lay on her back staring up at him. The way the light touched her black eyes at this angle, they glowed at him a laser red.
How long had he been asleep? And had she dozed off, too? Or been watching him all this time?
"Sir?" a voice called through the door. Private Henderson. Now, when Stake came in here, he posted only Henderson outside the door. He trusted him the most.
Corporal Jeremy Stake jumped to his feet and struggled into his blue-camouflaged uniform as swiftly as he could, but with his nerves singing it was an awkward enterprise. "Right there, Henderson," he said. He fastened his belt. There were no weapons holstered on it. He didn't bring them into the Earth Killer's room.
Still, she could have found another way to kill him while he slept. Had she spared him out of a sense of humanity, or was it only that she felt killing him would gain her nothing except her own death?
Hearing her move, he turned to see her pulling her own clothes toward her, more peasant attire than anything like a uniform: a sleeveless top that fastened down the front and pants that ended at the calf, in a darker shade of blue than her skin; her lovely, sky blue skin. Even as he rushed to get his boots on, he could barely take his eyes off her small, lithe body while she dressed. Her hips only subtly flared, but the thick mat of black hair below her smooth belly belied her body's child-like appearance. In leaning forward to step into her pants, her long, long hair spilled down like ink to hide her little breasts with their nipples the same soft pink as her lips against that cool blue skin.
Finally Stake could go to the door and crack it open. Henderson was a good man, didn't try to peek in past him. "I'm okay," Stake told him. "Just, uh, trying to get her to talk to me."
In a lowered voice, Henderson said, "Yes sir; sorry, sir. But I thought you'd want to hear what the other prisoner was telling Private Martin. She just came and told me. It's about the Earth Killer."
As he left the room, Stake threw a glance back at the woman named Thi Gonh. Now that she had dressed again, she sat cross-legged on her mattress on the floor. She gazed at him in return, her face unreadable. Stake shut and locked the door between them.
Private Martin was the only female in their unit, and as they walked (another Colonial soldier had come to guard Thi Gonh in Henderson's place), Henderson suggested that this was the reason the male prisoner had opened up to her.
They came to the room-one of those the clerics had utilized as their quarters before the Earth soldiers captured their monastery-that was being used as the young prisoner's cell. The guard posted at the door was Private Cortez, and he smiled as Stake approached him.
"Hey," he said, "when can I have my turn, ah, interrogating that little blue bitch?"
Stake stopped in front of the man. "Shut your mouth, Cortez. You aren't to touch her."
"I see. Want her all to yourself, huh?"
"I said shut your blasting mouth. Now get the fuck out of my way."
"Yes… sir." Cortez stepped aside, and Stake unlocked the door to let himself and Henderson into the male Ha Jiin's tiny cell.
The male prisoner, who had not given his name, looked better off now that the medic had seen to his wound. He was as small and light in frame as the woman, with a short, bristling haircut. The light made his eyes flash red when it refracted off them, too. He lay on his thin mattress, the end of it doubled over to prop up his back.
"I hear you've been conversing with our Private Martin," Stake said to the young man, who had to be less than twenty. He wanted this information straight from the source. If the youth wouldn't talk as readily to him as he had to an attractive young Earth woman, then he'd get the story from her instead. "You said something to her about your partner, the Earth Killer?"
"Earth Killer." A grin spread open in his face; it seemed to flash back the light itself. "How could that traitor ever be known as Earth Killer again?"
His English was very good; this was the most Stake had heard him say. He stepped closer. "Why do you call her a traitor?"
"She let us be caught, with no fight. There are not many of you now. Maybe in here we could have beat you, or pushed you back."
Henderson couldn't stop himself from speaking up. "I seriously doubt that, partner."
"You did the right thing, surrendering," Stake told him. "Now maybe you'll make it out of this war alive. A smart choice doesn't make you a traitor."
"She is a traitor. Letting you take us-that is not her true crime." Now he turned his smile to Henderson. "You were one of the soldiers in the clearing. Reading your friends' letters. I remember your face."
Stake looked to Henderson. "What's he talking about?"
Henderson dropped his eyes. "It was a few hours before we came to the monastery, the day after Lindy and Lieutenant Babouris were killed by the sniper. Me and Privates LeDuc and Devereux were. well, we were all on the move, sir, but it was when the unit stopped to take a rest. The three of us crept aside into a tiny clearing. We had the personal belongings we'd taken off Lindy, and Privates Nguyen and Howland. We found some mail they'd printed out. We began to read the messages to each other, quietly. I don't know why. Maybe to pay tribute to them. LeDuc began it, by reading a letter Lindy's wife sent him. There were pictures in there of his children. And then I read a letter Howland's mother sent him, and there were even a few cookies in a little bag. I don't know if she shipped them to him or if he brought them with him. It looked like maybe he was just saving them, to have them. We each ate one of the cookies. And LeDuc was the first to start crying."
Stake glanced down at the Ha Jiin boy. His grin appeared wider.
"We all three of us were crying, very quietly so no one would hear us. Not the enemy. And not our friends."
"But we did hear you," the Ha Jiin broke in. "And we were watching you. And the woman had you in her sights all that time. Her finger on the trigger."