As he topped the final dune Snow raised his image intensifier to his eyes and scanned ahead. The station was, in reality, a small city, the centre of commerce, the centre of life. Under his mask he frowned to himself. He did not know about the three men specifically, but he knew their type would be there. Unfortunately, he needed water to take him on the last stage of his journey and this was the only place. A confrontation was inevitable.
Snow strode down the face of the dune and onto a dusty track snaking towards the station. At the side of the road a water thief lay dying at the bottom of a condensation jar. The man scratched at the hot glass with blistered fingers as Snow passed, but Snow ignored him. It was harsh punishment, but how else to treat someone who regarded his fellow human beings as no more than walking water barrels? As he drew nearer to the station the cries of the hawkers and stall-holders in the ground city reached out to him like the chorus from a rookery, and he could see the buzz of activity in the scaffold maze. Soon he entered the ground city and its noisy life, soon after, his presence was noted and reported. By the time he passed through the moisture lock of the Sand House — a ubiquitous name for hostelries — and was taking off his mask in the cool interior, the three killers were buckling on their weapons and offering prayers to their various family gods.
“My pardon, master. I must see your tag. The Androche herself has declared the law enforceable by a two-month branding. The word is that too many outlaws now survive on the fringe.” The waiter could not help staring at Snow’s pink eyes and bloodless face.
“No problem, friend,” said Snow, and after fumbling through his robes produced his micro-etched identity tag and handed it over. The waiter glanced at the briefly revealed leather-clad stump that terminated the end of Snow’s left arm and pretended not to notice. He put the tag through his portable reader and was much relieved when no alarm sounded. Snow was well aware that not everyone was checked like this, only the more suspicious looking customers, like himself.
“What would you like, master?”
“A litre of chilled lager,” said Snow.
The waiter looked at him doubtfully.
“Which I will pay for now,” said Snow, handing over a ten-shilling note. The waiter looked alarmed by such a large sum in cash money and hurried off with it as quickly as he could. When he came back with a litre of lager in a thermos stein with combination locked top, many eyes followed his progress. Here was an indication of wealth. Snow would not have agreed with this. He had worked it out. A litre of water would only have cost two shillings less, and the water lost through sweat evaporation little different. Two shillings, plus a little, for imbibing fluid in a much more pleasant form. He had nearly finished his litre and was relishing the sheer cellular pleasure of rehydration when the three entered the Sand House. He recognised them for what they were almost immediately. Before paying the slightest attention to them he drained every last drop of lager from the frictionless vessel.
“You are Snow, the albino,” said the first, standing before his table.
Snow observed her and felt a gnawing depression. Even after all these years he could not shake an aversion to killing women, or in this case, girls. She could not have been more than twenty. She stood before him attired in monofilament coveralls and weapons harness. Her face was elfin under a head of cropped black hair spiked out with gold-fleck grease.
“No, I’m not,” he said, and turned his attention elsewhere.
“Don’t fuck with me,” she said with a tiredness that was beyond her years. “I know who you are. You are an albino and your left hand is missing.”
He returned his attention to her. “My name is Jelda Conley. People call me Whitey. I have often been confused with this Snow you refer to and it was on one such occasion that I lost my hand. Now please leave me alone.”
The girl stepped back, confused. The Andronache honour code did not allow for creative lying. Snow glanced past her and noted one of her companions speaking to the owner who had sent the nervous waiter over. The lies would not be enough. He watched while the owner called over the waiter and checked the screen of his tag reader. The companion approached the girl, whispered in her ear.
“You lied to me,” she said.
“No, I didn’t,” said Snow.
“Yes, you did!”
This was getting ridiculous. Snow stared off into the distance and ignored her.
“I challenge you,” said the girl.
There, it was said. Snow pretended he had not heard her.
“I said I challenge you.”
By the code she could now kill him. It was against the law but accepted practice. Snow felt a sinking sensation as she stepped back.
“Stand and face me, coward.”
With a tiredness that was wholly genuine Snow rose to his feet. She snatched her slammer. Snow reacted. She hit the floor on her back with the front of her monofilament coverall breaking down and a smoking hole between her pert little breasts. Snow stepped past the table, past her, strode to the moisture lock, vomit held back by clenched teeth. Hoping the whole thing had been too fast for anyone to be sure of the weapon he had used.
It rested on the violet sands at the edge of a spaceport, which was scattered with huge flying-wing shuttles, outbuildings and hangars. It stood between the spaceport and the sprawl of Vatchian buildings linked by moisture-sealed walkways and the glass domes that covered the incongruous green of the parks. And in no way did it resemble any of the constructs around it. It was standard; to be found on a thousand planets of the human polity, and it was the reason the expansion of the human race beggared the imagination. The runcible facility was a mirrored sphere fifty metres across, seemingly prevented from rolling away by the two L-shaped constructs of the buffers on either side of it. All around it, the glass-roofed embarkation lounges; a puddle of light. Within, the Skaidon gate performed its miracle every few minutes; bringing in quince, mitter travellers, from all across the polity, and sending them away again.
Beck stood back from the arrivals entrance and watched the twin horns of the runcible on its dais of black glass. He watched the shimmer of the cusp between and impatiently checked his watch, not that they would be late, or early. They would arrive on time to the nanosecond. The runcible AI saw to that. Precisely on time a man stepped through the shimmer, a woman, another man, another woman. They matched the descriptions he had been given, and his greeting was effusive as they came through into the lounge.
“Your transport awaits outside,” he told them, hurrying them to exit. The Merchant did not want them to stay in the city. He wanted them out, those were Beck’s instructions, amongst others. Once they were in the hover transport the man Beck took to be the leader caught hold of his shoulder.
“The weapons,” he said.
“Not here, not here,” said Beck nervously, and took the transport out of the city.
Out on the sand Beck brought the transport down and as the four climbed out, he pulled a large case from the back of the transport. He was sweating, and not just because of the heat.
“Here,” he said, and opened the case.
The man reached inside and took out a small shiny pistol, snub-nosed and deadly looking.
“The Merchant will meet at the pre-arranged place, if he manages to obtain the information he seeks,” he said. He did not know where that was, nor what the information was. The Merchant had not taken him that far into his trust. It surprised him that he had been allowed knowledge of this; hired killers here on Vatch.
The man nodded as he inspected the pistol, smiled sadly, then pointed the pistol at Beck.
“Sorry,” he said.
Beck tried to say something just as he became aware of the arm coming round his face from the man who had moved behind him. A grip like iron closed around his head, locked, wrenched and twisted. Beck hit the sand with his head at an angle it had never achieved in life. He made some choking sounds, shivered a little, died.