"Life's been acceptable," Chetwynd said neutrally.
The two men stared at each other as the barmaid delivered drinks, was paid, smirked at the two, and wobbled back to the bar.
"So you made it," Chetwynd said then.
"So I made it," Sten agreed.
"Did my, uh, message get delivered?"
"It did. At the highest level."
"And?"
Sten answered by sliding a case across the table. Chetwynd glanced to either side, snapped the case open a crack, and then, at light-speed, closed it.
"Someone," he said, "out there likes me."
Sten smiled. "We love you, Chetwynd."
The case was stuffed full of Tahn money.
"And what am I expected to do with this?"
"Whatever you want. An estate in the country, if that's what turns you over."
"Nah. I've learned."
Chetwynd had learned. He had spent time reestablishing contacts and making them very happy. He had a chubby finger in almost anything crooked that went on around Heath's spaceports. He had even begun making most vague noises about unions. But this time he was not messing with the longshoremen, having realized that someone with a size twenty-six neck and a size three hat who got political might be easily replaceable. Instead, he was listening with great sympathy to the dispatchers, ramp rats, controllers, and bookkeepers around the spaceports. Technicians were hard to retrain.
"That's nice," Sten said. "A suggestion. Are you still a loyal prison guard?"
"I've thought about—"
"Don't," Sten ordered. "That gives you a nice solid ID. Keeps you from getting sent back to Dru."
Chetwynd shuddered, then understood. "You want a pipeline into Koldyeze?"
"You have learned."
"Anything else. Mister?" Chetwynd spit.
"None. Just keep on keeping on. I'll be in touch every now and then. If you need more gelt, just ask."
Chetwynd considered. "How deep's your purse?"
"How wide is the Empire?"
That was a correct answer. Sten was prepared to give Chetwynd, or any other Tahn, a limitless amount of units—flawlessly counterfeited units that would further inflate the economy. Every five thousandth bill had its serial number duplicated. When two bills, perfect examples of Tahn currency, showed up at bank clearinghouses, there would be hell to pay—further lessening the Tahn's willingness to trust their own monetary system.
Sten got up. "Oh. There was one other thing. Don't have me tailed. And don't show up at my nice safe home." He reached across and tweaked Chetwynd's cheek. "I want you to be my back-street girl. You'd look clottin' stupid with a tag around your toe."
And Sten was gone.
St. Clair systematically laid the markers, scrawled in various stages of desperation and sobriety, across her desk. The young woman on the settee sobbed convulsively.
"Come, now," St. Clair said. She crossed to the side bar, poured a drink, and waited while the woman choked it down.
"Are you all right?"
The woman nodded.
"Let's look at it from my point of view," St. Clair began. "Of course you didn't know what you were doing. Mayd, I've gotten myself into the same kind of problem. When I was young."
There were perhaps no more than three or four years between the two women. But St. Clair knew how to play the script.
"And you can't pay.
"And if you ask for units from your family, you'll be out in the cold. Your father doesn't sound like the understanding type.
"If this were the livies, I would be twisting my mustaches and—what would I be doing? Suggesting that you become available, since you are very young and very attractive, to some of my older guests? Or maybe stealing the family gems? No. I have it. You should deliver all your family secrets into my keeping. Blackmail, that's how the livies play it.
"No wonder I haven't seen a livie in years.
"I am certainly a loyal Tahn. And would do none of those sillinesses.
"Mayd, I like to think of you as my friend. I have always been honored that a woman of your caste honors my establishment with your presence. The fact that you have had unspeakable luck on the tables doesn't change that.
"But..." St. Clair sighed and swept the markers into a pile. "I am also a businesswoman. I frankly don't know what to do.
"I can tear these markers up—" She paused and Mayd looked at her hopefully. "But then I would be forced to bar you from being allowed here ever again.
"Still worse, I would be forced by my agreement to mention what happened to the Casino Owners' Security Block. That could be embarrassing if you were blacklisted in all of Heath's establishments."
St. Clair pretended deep thought. "Wait. I have an idea. I am a gambler. As you are. But, well, I like an edge. As you did."
The woman blushed, not wanting to remember the time that she had tried to introduce a set of shaved dice into a game.
"Your father's conglomerate produces rare metals. I have been interested in taking a plunge in business investments. Maybe you could tell me how your father's business is doing. Nothing specific, of course. But strange things that help an investor. For instance, I know that a lot of the metals go out-system. But where?"
Mayd looked at St. Clair's smiling, open face. "That won't work, Michele," she wailed. "I don't know anything about business. You just asked about where the metals go. I can't tell you. All I know is that Daddy keeps complaining about having to go somewhere called Aira... Airabus, where it's nasty and cold and Daddy says they don't treat a nobleman the way he deserves.
"You see? I'd like to cooperate, but I don't know anything."
Erebus. The long-secret shipyard system of the Tahn. That information was worth, to the Emperor, a year's income.
"Oh, well," St. Clair said. "We tried. Look. Here's what we'll do. I'll keep these markers. And I'll personally guarantee you an open line for, say, ten thousand more units. Your luck is due to change—and maybe next time I'll be asking you for markers. Mayd, this is on my personal guarantee.
"Do me a favor. One gambler to another? Stop doubling the bet when you're losing. The way to come out on top is to double up when you're winning"
Mayd behaved as if St. Clair had presented the six lost commandments to her. St. Clair knew that it would not matter; all she had to figure out was how to keep the woman so confused that she never remembered when she had lost the next ten grand.
It was too good to be true.
"It's ta braw't' b't true," Kilgour muttered to himself as he glowered across into the park from his position under an abandoned gravsled—abandoned, he was realizing, because of a total hemorrhage in its lubrication system as the oil soaked through his rather becoming, he thought, suit.
The contact had come most skillfully, Alex admitted.
One of his agents—very trusted, at least until twelve minutes earlier—had asked if Kilgour would be interested in talking to a certain minor bureaucrat in the Tahn naval payroll department. The man was upset, the agent said, evidently because he had been passed over for a promotion. He was prepared to deliver—for hard Imperial credits—the payroll roster for any naval unit anywhere in the Tahn Empire.
The meet had been set up twice, and blown twice, supposedly because of the bureaucrat's paranoia. Third time lucky.
They were to meet in a certain park—which looked, to Alex's country eyes, more like a vacant lot—minutes before curfew. The money would be passed in exchange for a complete roster of Tahn Council operations personnel.
The bureaucrat had said that if anyone else was in the park at the time of the meet, he would vanish once again.
Too good, indeed.
Kilgour had shown up hours earlier and cased the park and surrounding buildings. He found it most interesting that the apartments surrounding the park appeared to be very interested in livie transmissions, and all of them could afford new 'cast antennas on their roofs.