“Wrong.” Whitey shook his head. “That asteroid miner has probably sung the Solar Patrol a whole opera by now. Every security guard on the moon will have memorized little sketches of us. We’ve got to establish some kind of cover identities first, not to mention something by way of disguises.”
Dar felt his stomach sink. “I should’ve known it couldn’t be something straightforward and simple.”
“Not on Terra,” Sam agreed, “and the moon’s just as bad.” She turned to Whitey. “What kind of cover did you have in mind?”
“I didn’t.” Whitey started climbing out of his gear. “I recommend we rack these suits and find some place to hole up while we think about it.”
Whitey had indeed emptied out his purse for the old miner—but he had another one hidden inside his belt. A brief stop at a department store turned up a coiffeured wig and translucent dress for Sam, some hair dye and baggy tunic-and-trousers for Lona, some more hair dye and business outfits for the men. A somewhat longer stop at a comfort station produced remarkable changes in their appearance.
Whitey lined them up in the hallway, looked them over, and nodded. “You’ll do. Just barely, maybe, but you’ll do. Now, the odds are that your prints are on file somewhere—oh, you’re sure of it, Dar? Well, the rest of you don’t take chances, either. Don’t put your thumbprint to anything. Don’t look into anything that might want to scan your retinas, either—no peekholes in amusement galleries, eyepiece 3DT viewers, or lens-fitting scopes. Understand? Good. Because you’re in the Big Sapphire’s computer net now, folks, and every step you take is liable to monitoring by a computer tied into Terra Central.”
“Is it really that bad?” Dar asked.
“Worse,” Sam confirmed.
Whitey nodded again. “Have no illusions, folks. Our chances of getting away free, back to the colony planets, are slightly worse than a dinosaur’s caught in a glacier. I can only hope the gamble’s worth the share-time. Okay—from now on, we’re a free-lance production crew, looking for work. Anything I say about you, just confirm it, and don’t look surprised. That includes your names; I’ll be thinking up new ones for you as we go along. Ready? March!”
The “march” took them to a twenty-foot-high façade sheared out of the lunar rock, decorated with the modest gleam that comes of vast wealth, and the words “Occidental Productions, Inc.” carved over the doorway and sheathed in platinum.
“This’s just the production house,” Whitey explained. “Manufactures most of the entertainment for one of the anglophone channels.”
As they passed through the door, Dar found himself somehow totally certain that each person’s height, weight, build, and coloring was registering in a computer somewhere deep inside the complex, which was trying to correlate it with the descriptions of all known criminals who might have a grudge against OCI. It was almost enough to make him turn right around and try to hijack the next outgoing spacer.
That didn’t quite do it, but the foyer nearly did. Oh, the carpet was thick and the decoration superb; that wasn’t the problem. It was the three uniformed guards, two androids, and five cameras, every one of which seemed to be looking directly at him. He stopped in his tracks, swallowing something that he hoped wasn’t his heart.
But Whitey strolled ahead, confident and nonchalant, looking totally like your ordinary, everyday plutocrat.
“Service, citizen?” the lead guard asked with perfect, impersonal politeness.
“Gratitude, citizen. Mr. Tambourin, to see Mr. Stroganoff.”
“Do you have an appoi …” the guard began, out of habit. But he closed his mouth, and gazed up at Whitey for a moment. Then he said, “Of course, Mr. Tambourin.” He turned to murmur into a shielded com unit, waited, then murmured again. A delighted yelp sounded faintly from the unit. The guard listened, nodded, and turned back to Whitey. “He will be up in a few minutes, Mr. Tambourin. I regret the delay, but …”
“Of course.” Whitey smiled indulgently. “He didn’t know I was coming—but then, neither did I. Old friends, you understand.”
“Perfectly.” The guard was a good liar, anyway. “If you’ll step into the lobby, Mr. Tambourin …?”
Whitey smiled with a gracious, affable nod, and turned back to the “team.”
“Come along, children.” He turned and ambled away toward the big interior doors.
Dar could fairly hear Sam bristling as they followed.
The androids swung the doors open, inclining in a slight bow as Whitey passed through. As Dar filed by, he definitely did not receive the expected impression of being scanned. What with one thing and another, it boosted his opinion of Whitey’s status till it almost soared.
They entered a world of sybaritic luxury—parqueted walls with huge, inscrutable paintings that fairly screamed, “ART!” surrounding chairs that seemed to mold themselves around the sitter’s body, a carpet so thick that it must have had a heartbeat, and a tastefully almost-dressed hostess who bent low to murmur, “Refreshment, citizen?”
A month ago, Dar would have grabbed her and enacted the wildest scene of animal lust ever recorded (which it no doubt would have been). But, with Lona in the same room, the woman just didn’t seem interesting. “Yes, something to drink, thanks. Nothing too stimulating.”
When she handed him the drink, he took a tiny sip—and euphoria/ecstasy/exaltation/Nirvana rose up behind his eyeballs and exploded in streamers that enveloped his brain. He sat rigid for a moment, then coughed delicately into his fist, and set the drink down. He’d had occasional experiences with the pipeweed of Wolmar, during prairie grass fires, and knew a depressant when one hit him. The lady had taken him at his word, and then some; he wondered if he’d unwittingly spoken a code phrase.
Then a medium-sized man with a giant of a personality swept into the lounge. “Tambourin! You infernal old scoundrel! Welcome back!”
Whitey stood up just in time to be almost knocked down by the dynamo’s enthusiasm. All that kept him up was the bear hug as Stroganoff’s rolling laughter boomed in their ears.
Then Stroganoff held Whitey back at arm’s length, grinning from ear to ear. “Let me look at you, ancient my wastrel! … Not a day! Ten years, and he hasn’t aged a wrinkle!”
“Well, I was old enough the last time I saw you.” Whitey slapped Stroganoff on the shoulder. “Solid meat still, eh? You’re not doing so badly yourself, David!”
“Not since they gave me that new stomach, no. But let me put on my manners a second. Glad to meet you, folks, I’m David Stroganoff. Who’re your friends, Whitey?”
“Oh, this is Fulva Vulpes.” Whitey stretched a hand out to Lona, whose eyes registered only the faintest of surprises. “She’s my assistant director and director of editing.”
Stroganoff’s eyebrows went up. “Unusual combination.” He pressed Lona’s hand. “You must be very good with computers.”
Now Lona did show surprise. She glanced at Whitey. Stroganoff chuckled. “And who’s this enchantress?”
Sam answered the compliment with a glare, which brought even more charm feeding back from Stroganoff. “Watching to make sure the compliment’s not more than its subject is worth, eh? Believe me, it’s sound as an erg. What is she, Tod—your unit manager?”
“If it comes in a bureaucratic package and is wrapped with red tape, I can cut it,” Sam said warily.
“Unit manager, it is! And you, citizen?”
“Cobum Helith, research and script development. Co’s the one who came up with the idea for tying my verses into a story, Dave.”
“Wh … Tod’n’ I’ve been talking for some time now.” Father Marco shook Stroganoff’s hand without batting an eyelid. “I work from fundamental mythic structures—which means I have trouble thinking commercially, of course.”
“Well, don’t let it worry you—the myth hasn’t been born that can’t be debased,” Stroganoff said with a perfectly straight face. He turned to Dar. “And the young one, Tod?”