The maglev whooshed to a stop and the doors opened. Tetsami scanned the lobby of the office building. She didn’t see anything she thought dangerous. But they were deep into Central Godwin, not her territory. The exec with the chrome suit could be the spotter for a hit and she wouldn’t know.
Calm down, she told herself.
“You were planning to start over from scratch?”
Dom led her toward the doors. There was little emotion in his voice. “I did it once. I’ll do it again.”
The doors slid open, and they walked out on to West Vanzetti. Now that day had hit, crossing the street was out of the question. Groundcars were zooming by, apparently at random. Dom seemed at a bit of a loss. He didn’t seem to know how to get around in the city.
Tetsami tapped his shoulder. “Let me borrow your hand comm.”
A trace of suspicion crossed Dom’s face even though she didn’t know the codes. He handed it over.
Tetsami walked as close as she dared to the speeding traffic and raised her right hand, holding the comm up toward the air traffic.
It took three seconds for a Leggett Luxury contragrav to swing a dangerous arc and pull to a low hover in front of Tetsami, barely above the speeding groundcar traffic. Three aircraft had to swerve to avoid it, one pulling a full vertical.
The Leggett cab slid over the pedestrian walkway, pivoting its passenger doors toward Dom and Tetsami.
She handed the comm back to Dom. “Where do we want to go?”
“Let’s just get airborne.”
* * * *
CHAPTER TEN
High-Risk Investments
“Money can be neither created or destroyed. It can only be taken from other people.”
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
“Money often costs too much.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)
The aircar was laid out more like a limo than a cab. The back of the Leggett was a study in leather and earth tones. It was obvious that the driver was an independent doing business with the corp HQs in Central Godwin. They both got in the back before the driver could get a good look at the condition of Dom’s suit and have second thoughts.
The driver didn’t look enthusiastic. “Let’s see some money, folks.”
Sheesh, another perfectly chiseled blond. Tetsami wondered if it was contagious. Dom wordlessly typed a command on the comm and the driver looked at the balance change on his meter. The driver nodded. He didn’t seem too surprised. “Where?”
Dom looked at Tetsami and said to the driver, “Circle the city for a while. And close the partition.”
Tetsami saw a knowing expression cross the driver’s face as the partition closing the driver’s section opaqued. Things had been going so fast lately that it took her a few seconds to realize the conclusion the driver must have jumped to.
Yeah, she thought, I wish.
Dom looked all right. Okay, admit it, he looks damn good. Especially after all the maggots you been hanging with, girl. But there were computers that showed more emotion than he did. Tetsami tried to picture Dom having an orgasm, or even getting slightly aroused. She couldn’t.
Tetsami wondered exactly what was going on behind those brown eyes of his. She knew that there was a lot more under there than he let up to the surface. She’d caught glimpses of it—
Like the fact he hadn’t let on that the Confederacy had been the folks who took down GA&A. That was the biggest operation she’d ever heard of the Confederacy pulling on this rock. The risk—GA&A was now guaranteed to have a dozen paramilitary groups attack it, just on the grounds that the Confederacy was involved—and the cost of the operation made it pretty obvious that Dom was pretty high on someone’s shit list.
Maybe it was his deadpan personality, in the face of all that, that made her believe him when he said she was going to eventually get her fifty kilos.
But when?
“How much you need to start operations again?”
Dom took a few minutes to answer her. He stared out the window, watching Godwin rush by below them.
“GA&A was covered for a thousand megs, give or take. But that’s a bit more than I need. That would assume rebuilding from the ground up. A friendly takeover of an existing operation, I could leverage that with two hundred—maybe less.”
“Two hundred megagrams?”
Dom nodded.
What did he have? A third of a percent of that?
She was never going to get her money. She was never going to get off this rock. What’d he expect to do, she thought, rob a bank? Yeah, and what’s to prevent the bank from devaluing the currency afterward?
“Who the hell has that much money?” She was barely aware she spoke aloud.
Dom heard her. “There are more millionaires per capita on Bakunin than anywhere else in the Confederacy.”
Tetsami snorted. “Also more rackets, screwballs, hustlers, political dissidents, and religious fanatics.”
“—and two hundred megagrams is not really that much.”
Tetsami gaped. “Not that much?”
“Not in corporate terms. GA&A had at least three, maybe five, hundred megs in hard currency on the premises just for clandestine expenses. For things we didn’t want records— Problem?”
“No.” You couldn’t rob a bank ... “Tell the cab to put down somewhere.”
Dom looked out the window. “Where?”
“Anywhere.”
Dom tapped on the partition. It went transparent again. “Put us down at the nearest hotel.”
There was another knowing look from the driver as they started down.
“What’s on your mind?” Dom asked her.
“Wait.”
The Leggett set down on the roof of a high-rise on the west side. Tetsami figured it was expensive as hell, but Dom could afford it. They stepped out on to a small landing field next to a restaurant that took up half the roof. The cab lifted off, leaving them alone in the center of a number of parked contragravs.
The restaurant was enclosed by a transparent dome and seemed to be doing a healthy business with the breakfast crowd. Tetsami walked away from it until she reached the railing marking the edge of the roof.
She noticed a slight hesitation before Dom joined her by the railing.
Fear of heights? she wondered.
When Dom asked her again, he had to raise his voice over the sound of the wind. “Now, what is it?”
“Where is all this money?”
Dom turned toward her, and cast a glance back at the restaurant. No one was paying attention to them. “A safe bunkered in the third sublevel of the office complex at Godwin Arms.” Realization seemed to strike him. “You can’t be thinking—”
Tetsami laughed. “What the hell else would I be thinking?”
The hotel was set on a rise. They were maybe half a klick above the city. Hell of a view of East Godwin, craters and all. Dom was staring east, toward the mountains.
“Do you have any idea—” he started, shaking his head. “A Confederacy troop-carrier. A Paralian-built Barracuda-class drop-ship. That means at least a hundred marines, ten secondary transports, weaponry that I don’t even want to think about.”