“I—”
She turned and pushed through the crowd. A few heard, and I got some black looks. Johann put down his mug carefully. Without looking at me he asked about it and I told the story as objectively as I could.
He sighed and took a deep draft of the beer. “He asked for it. He changed a lot since Nova left. He’s been on Nikolai’s team for over two years and they’re a mean bunch. Damned near got thrown out of the Union because of the Planeta Rojo mine affair. Rough, but not nasty too often.” He paused and I felt his eyes on me. “All by yourself, huh?”
I felt foolish. I had never thought of myself as a fighter, a rough-house killer of men. I had studied with Shigeta for exercise and a feeling of confidence. I had never really thought I would ever use it, despite an alley fight in Montevideo’s Canelones sector and one in the
“Instant Slums” of the sprawling, shoddy Rangoon archotological complex of three million starving Indians.
But there I had been Brian Thorne. One helicab fare and I was dining with the governor or telling about the affair as an amusing anecdote in the Bolivar Tower’s penthouse.
Here I was Diego Braddock, Publitex outsider, clean-boot intruder, and someone associated with Nova.
Or was I? Was it boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl?
I didn’t ask for those brain-mushed goons to clutch at Nova. She couldn’t have handled it—except by relaxing and enjoying it—despite her newfound earthside savoir-faire.
Pelf came out of the crowd and leered at me and melted away. Why couldn’t it have been Pelf who had the glommy hands?
“That’s quite a cargo you brought with you,” Johann said.
“Looks more like you plan to open up a business here than pound out copy.”
“I thought they might be needed. Or wanted.”
“Oh, the girls will kiss your left tube for the shimmercloth! That’s for certain. But you must think we’re millionaires out here. That herd of frozen cows you have there will cost a fortune to house and feed. Lucky for you that Casey’s Lolium italicum has been working out.”
No luck, just Brian Thorne’s intelligence service feeding him information about almost everything on Mars, including Dr. Lorraine Casey’s transplanted mutated grass, used for holding down the sand and highly suitable for cattle feed.
“If someone here can adapt the beasties to this air pressure,” I said.
“Oh, Doc Hoffman has been working on that with those piglets of his.”
Ralph E. Hoffman, Ph. D., University of California at Davis. See attached bio and time schedule. Return soonest to Red Dossier file.
“Seems to me you are coming out here at about the right time,”
admitted Johann. He took another gulp of beer. “Things are sort of coming together. I took care with those seedlings of yours. Those farmers over at Burroughs will pay plenty for first crack at those.”
Marta Dolores Farms, Silva & FitzGerald, Deimos Fecundity,
Geoponics,
Promised
Land,
Inc.,
Burroughs.
Astroagronomy, the Alfonso VI Hacienda, Silverberg Kibbutz, Lambardar Ranch, Canalalgae, all near Bradbury. Aragom Rancho, Herbert Farms, Pantheon Nursery, George Grange & Mineral Company, Wells. Olericulture of Mars, the People’s communes, Peteler Ranch, Polecanal.
Thank you, Huo.
“That some sort of drinkables in those stasis capsules?” Johann asked with great solemnity and a twinkle in his eye. I nodded. “I peeked at the invoices. You really have that many Raven Blacksword adventures in that tape library?”
I nodded again and with continued solemnity Johann raised his finger. “Tender of the bar, a drink of alamajara for this gentlemen from my personal bottle.” We waited in silence, even if no one else did, until the smokey purple glasses were filed, then he toasted me. “May your air never give out and your strike be a pure one.”
I tipped my glass back at him. “May the wind be at your back and the printouts never fouled.” We drank in silence and the fluid was liquid fire all the way down.
“You!”
There was a great rumbling growl and I turned to see the crowd parting. It became as silent as that place was ever going to get. Faintly I heard the sounds of lovemaking and a gasp of distant passion. Someone laughed near me, then choked it off.
Nikolai stood near the door, the front of his yellow warmsuit drenched in blood. The white steriplast was startling against his sunburnt face and dark beard. He was glaring at me.
I looked him over. He wasn’t armed as far as I could see, which made me feel slightly better. Now that he was forewarned against the mazeru, I couldn’t hope that he would fall for the same thing again. I hoped they had a good surgeon in Ares Center.
“Stomp that cleanboot, Nik!” Some partisan to my left.
“Hah! Git ’em, fancy foot! He needs it!” I was not completely alone.
“You kill Wheaten.” The gutteral statement was news to some and I felt the shift of sympathy.
Survival of self is a constant. I heard Shigeta speaking. Never do the expected unless the expected is the unexpected. I still hadn’t quite figured that one out, but then I hadn’t intended to use any of this. He came toward me suddenly, almost at a run, with a determination I found appalling. We’re supposed to be above such things, I told myself. We’re climbing to the stars, step by step. Fledgling gods in torchships. Apprentice godlets do not have barroom brawls with giant bullies whose brains are mismeshed on Eroticine.
But no one ever informed Nikolai of his latent godhood, and he knocked me into a wall of miners and tried to stomp me. I rolled aside and kicked upward, kissing his hip with my boot. I rolled again and took a glancing blow in the thigh that all but numbed me. I used a drunk in a worn crimson warmsuit to climb erect, then dodged Nikolai just in time, hitting him a jinzoo in the kidneys.
I backed quickly to get some room and when he charged again, with a frightening animal growl, I feinted a face kick and got him in the groin. As he doubled over I brought up my knee and broke his jaw. Blood, teeth, and gobbets of flesh spattered me, but he fell limply to the floor.
There was a silence, then a low roar. With all senses alert I expected someone to take up where he left off, but the roar became a cry for more beer and almajara and hands were slapping me on the back.
“Had it coming to him! Goddamn, boot, you sure toss a mean stomper!”
“Drinks on me, Diego. I never liked that sander anyway.”
“Wheaten, huh? Well, the Guild won’t ask much blood money for the likes of him.”
“Hey, Johann, your bunkie here’s not bad!”
“Where the hell did Nikolai get his degree, anyway? Caveman U?”