I laughed at myself. I remembered when even a million New Dollars seemed like the largest sum of power and energy there was. Yes, Huo could steal more than he would ever make as my assistant, even limiting himself to the “legal” thefts that would never be discovered if I died. He could steal himself a lifetime of luxury in a year. Real power, real luxury, came very high indeed on our overpopulated Earth. Even second-in-command to Brian Thorne could not hope to live as Brian Thorne might.
Just like the boss, huh, Huo?
Women. Lots of women. Big bosomy blondes, all silken and eager. All your sexual fantasies fulfilled, Huo. Overpopulation made life cheap. Fathers sold their daughters into contract slavery just to be certain they survived and were fed. And those women would be quite eager to please, to get out of the megacities, to get out of the lower depths of the arcology cities, to submit to the power of their contractors. Power. All kinds of power in a world bulging with the weak and the weakened. Toy with lives, change their reality, play God. And all the rest. Food, homes, delights, services, protection, fame.
But only if I am dead.
And not dead as Brian Thorne, but as Diego Braddock.
Was it so simple that all I had to do was send a tight-beam to my board of directors, saying I was alive and well on Mars and to slap Huo in jail?
No, he’d produce the double. It was probably a good double. When was the last time I had met with the board? Four months before the trip out—that was five months ago. A man can change a lot in five months, Huo would say, if anyone noticed the double’s slight differences. Wait, I had seen Fredrickson a week or so before I left. No, that still left two months or more, time for a lot of changes. How long had Huo been planning this? There was all that time after Madelon, all those many, many months of just not wanting to be concerned with all the businesses, all the decisions. Huo had done a fine job then. I had given him an enormous bonus, enough to retire on. But not live in the luxury he saw around me.
Envy is such a useless emotion. At least you can understand greed. Greed was responsible for most of our technology, and I suppose we deserve what we got.
Suppose I just got on a return flight and went home? Could I be certain one of the crew or one of the passengers was not an agent? Was I trapped here? I started getting mad again. No one tells Brian Thorne what to do! Some of my victor’s elation returned. I would go home on the next ship, and damn any claw-fingered zongo to stop me! I’d walk into my office and laser that son-of-a-bitch right at my own desk! He’d fall down in bloody chunks and—
I was feeling sick again.
I returned the reader after wiping the tape, then double-wiping it for any residual magnetism. I dropped the tape into a torch-labeled container on the street and checked into a Guild-operated hostel. I paid extra for a private room and I lay there a long time trying to figure it out. By now Huo knew I knew someone was trying to kill me. He wouldn’t know I suspected him, or I thought not, at any rate. Were the three I killed Osbourne and Sayles and some hired gun? Were there others?
I got up, went out, climbed back into my one-eyed sandcat, and took off for the Sunstrum mine. I climbed down off the cat tired and scratch-faced and just stood there, holding onto the door. Sven Sunstrum cycled the lock and came out to me himself. He looked at me and at the beat-up cat and at the patch I had welded over the broken lock so I could pressurize the cabin.
“Come in,” he said.
I sat down in the living room of their dome, slumped into a chair. They looked at me expectantly, waiting. “My name isn’t Diego Braddock,” I said. “It’s Brian Thorne.”
“The Brian Thorne?” Nova asked, her eyes wide. I nodded. “I came here incognito so I could avoid trouble.” I smiled sadly at that. “Now I’m afraid I might get someone hurt.”
“Do you need help?” Sunstrum asked.
“Someone is trying to kill me.” I took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. “And I don’t know why. Or which why.”
Sunstrum looked at his daughter, then back at me. “Over Nova?” he said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Probably not. They are very professional.”
Li Wing said, “There are many types of men here. They were many things before. It attracts certain kinds of men, men who would know how to kill.” Her eyes went from me to her husband.
“Who would want to kill you?” asked Sunstrum. “As Thorne, I mean.”
I shrugged. “Many, I suppose.”
“Brian Thorne,” Nova said thoughtfully. “I thought you were much older.”
I grinned wearily at her. “Right now I am.” The exhaustion was setting in as my body ran out of adrenaline.
Nova said to her parents, “He’s Brian Thorne.”
“I heard him explain, dear,” Li Wing said softly.
“No, you don’t understand. He’s Brian Thorne.” Her face clouded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I sighed and her father spoke. “He didn’t want you hurt.” He looked at me. “What are you going to do now? Do you want us to protect you here? We could get a message off to Earthcom right away.”
“No,” I said. “To tell the truth, I don’t know what I want. I just wanted to tell you . . . Nova and you.”
“You didn’t tell me before,” Nova said, “because you wanted me to love the real you, not all that money, right?”
“Please, dear,” Li Wing said.
“Well, isn’t it?”
“I’ve told you now,” I said. “I think I’d like to sleep.” And I think I did, right then, right there.
10
I awoke in the dark with a warm, soft body slithering up my torso. A fruit-fresh mouth coming to me in the night, bearing gifts of love. I held her rounded bare hips in my hands and said, “No.”
“It will make you feel better, darling.”
“My mind wouldn’t be on it,” I said, and grinned. “And that would be a waste.”
She took the rebuff without rancor and snuggled next to me, and we held each other. “What are you going to do now?” she asked at length.
“I’m going back to town to see if there is anything in yet.” I stopped her protests with fingers on her lips. “I may have gotten them all, so don’t worry.”
“But suppose you haven’t!”
“No one lives forever, not even with the longevity treatments, love. I’ll be careful. But I must have information to work on.”
She hugged me tighter and I felt the rich bounty of her breasts against my side and the protective thigh across my loins. I breathed her black mist of hair and for moment I just wanted to stay there, safe, until the bad guys went away.
But they weren’t going away. They wouldn’t be paid for missing. If they were locals recruited for the job they’d want the money. If they were professionals they had their reputations to maintain. Even assassins have egos and images to maintain, I thought ruefully. No, they’d try again. If I had gotten the local crew there would be another, or the local control would recruit another team. Because of Nova there might be more than a few ready to prepare me for a burial in several parts.
I had to return to town, though. Null-Edit tapes are delivered only to the addressee. I needed information, and even a bland Don’t worry, boss from Huo would tell me something, in a negative fashion. Sunstrum had fixed my sandcat’s headlight and recharged my laser. Nova took it badly that she couldn’t go, and was angry when neither her father nor I would allow any of the miners to go along to watch for backshooters. It wasn’t that I didn’t want one, I just couldn’t ask any of them to risk his life for a man he probably didn’t like anyway, just to obey his boss, whom he did like.