She scanned about herself, not quite sure where to go now. Across the body of the ship from her was the mouth of one of those tunnels, curving down into darkness. There? No, to her right the mouth of another tunnel emitted heat a little above the ambient. Stepping over hull beams, she began to make her way toward it, then silvery tentacular fingers eased out around the lip of the tunnel and heaved out an object two yards across and seemingly formed by computer junk from the ship compressed into a sphere. Lights glimmered inside the tangle and it extruded antennas, and eyes like the one she had seen outside. Settling down, it seemed to unravel slightly, whereupon a fleshless golem unpeeled from its surface, stood upright and advanced a couple of paces, a thick ribbed umbilicus still keeping it connected.
During the Prador-Human war it had been necessary to quickly manufacture the artificial intelligences occupying stations, ships and drones, for casualties were high. Quality control suffered and these intelligences, which in peacetime would have needed substantial adjustments, were sent to the front. As a matter of expediency, flawed crystal got used rather than discarded. Personality fragments were copied, sometimes not very well, successful fighters or tacticians recopied. The traits constructed or duplicated were not necessarily those evincing morality. Some of these entities went rogue and became what were described as black AIs.
Like Penny Royal.
Standing at his shoulder, the boosted woman, Gene, gave Koober the confidence to defy me. I’d already told him that I knew Jael had bought the gabbleduck from him, I just wanted to know if he knew anything else: who else she might have seen here, where she was going …
anything really. I was equally curious to know how Broeven’s ex-employee had ended up here. It struck me that this went beyond the bounds of coincidence.
“I don’t have to tell you nothing, Sandman,” he said, using my old name with its double meaning.
“True, you don’t,” I replied. I really hated how the scum I’d known twenty years ago all seemed to have floated to the top. “Which is why I’m prepared to pay for what you can tell me.”
He glanced back at his protection, then crossed his arms. “You were the big man once, but that ain’t so now. I got my place here at the Arena and I got a good income. I don’t even have to speak to you.” He unfolded his arms and waved a finger imperiously. “Now piss off.”
Not only was he defiant, but stupid. The woman, no matter how vigilant, could not protect him from a seeker bullet or a pin, coated with bone-eating nanite, glued to a door handle. But I didn’t do that sort of stuff now. I was retired. I carefully reached into my belt pouch and took out one of my remaining etched sapphires. I would throw it, and while the gem arced through the air toward Koober and the woman I reckoned on getting the drop on them. My pepper-pot stun gun was lodged in the back of my belt. Of course I’d take her down first. I tossed the gem and began to reach.
She moved. Koober went over her foot and was heading for the ground. The sapphire glimmered in the air still as the barrel of the pulse-gun centered on my forehead. I guess I was rusty, because I didn’t even consider throwing myself aside. For a moment I just thought, that’s it, but no field-accelerated pulse of aluminum dust blew my head apart. She caught the gem in her other hand and flipped it straight back at me. With my free hand I caught it, my other hand relaxing its grip on my gun and carefully easing out to one side, fingers spread.
“I believe my boss just told you to leave,” she said.
Koober was lying on the floor swearing, then he looked up and paused-only now realizing what had happened.
I nodded an acknowledgment to Gene, turned and quickly headed for the stair leading up from the pens, briefly glimpsed an oversized mongoose chewing on the remains of a huge snake on the arena floor, then headed back toward the market where I might pick up more information.
What the hell was a woman like her doing with a lowlife like Koober? It made no sense, and the coincidence of her being here just stretched things too far. I wondered if Broeven had sent her to try to cash in-guessing I was probably after something valuable. Such thoughts concerned me-that’s my excuse. She came at me from a narrow side-tunnel. I only managed to turn a little before she grabbed me, spun me round and slammed me against the wall of the exit tunnel. I turned, and again found myself looking down the barrel of that pulse-gun. People around us quickly made themselves scarce.
“Koober had second thoughts about letting you go,” she said.
“Really?” I managed.
“He is a little slow, sometimes,” she opined. “It occurred to him, once you were out of sight, that you might resent his treatment of you and come back to slip cyanide in his next soy-burger.”
“He’s a vegetarian?”
“It’s working with the animals-put him off meat.”
I watched her carefully, wondering why I was still alive. “Are you going to kill me?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
“Many people, but in most cases the choice was theirs.”
“That’s very moral of you.”
“So it would seem,” she agreed. “Koober is shit-scared of you. Apparently you’re a multiple murderer?”
“Hit man.”
“Murderer.”
Ah, I thought I knew what she was now.
“I think you know precisely who I am and what I was,” I said. “Now I’m a xeno-archaeologist trying to track down stolen goods.”
“I stayed here too long,” she said distractedly, shaking her head. “It was going to be my pleasure to shut Koober down.” She paused for a moment, considering. “You should stay out of this, Rho. This has gone beyond you.”
“If you say so,” I said. “You’ve got the gun.”
She lowered her weapon, then abruptly holstered it. “If you don’t believe me, then I suggest you go and see a dealer in biologicals called Desorla. Apparently Jael visited her before coming to see Koober, and their dealings involved Jael shooting out the cameras and security drones in Desorla’s office.”
“Just biologicals?”
“Desorla has … connections.”
She moved away and right then I felt no inclination to go after her. Maybe she was feeding me a line of bullshit or maybe she was giving me the lead I needed. If not, I’d come back to the pen well prepared.
In the market, one of the stall holders quickly directed me toward Desorla’s emporium. I entered through one of the floor-level doors and found no activity inside. A spiral staircase led up, but a gate had been drawn across it and locked. I recognized the kind of lock immediately and set to work on it with the tools about my person. Like I said, I was rusty-it took me nearly thirty seconds to break the programs. I climbed up, scanned the next floor, then climbed higher still to the top floor.
The office was clean and empty, so I kicked in the flimsy door into the living accommodation. Nothing particularly unusual here … then I saw the blood on the floor and the big glass bottle on her coffee table. Stepping round the spatters I peered into the bottle, and, in the crumpled and somewhat scabby pink mass inside, a nightmare eyeless face peered out at me. Then something dripped on top of my head. I looked up….
Over by the window I caught my breath, but no one was giving me time for that. Arena security thugs were running toward the emporium and beyond them I could see Gene striding off toward the exit. I opened the window just as the thugs entered the building below me, did a combination of scramble and fall down the outside of the building and hit the stone flat on my back. I had to catch my breath then. After a moment I heaved myself upright and headed for the exit, closing up the visor and hood of my envirosuit and keeping Gene just in sight. I went fast through an airlock far to the left of her, and some paces ahead of her, and was soon running down counting arches. I drew my carbide knife and dropped down beside one arch, hoping I’d counted correctly.