Just a hint of frown lines appeared between Dacco’s brows. “I’m supposed to be doing a major piece about him for CAJO.”
Waxman thought, Honest work? How unusual.
“About Raven,” Dacco reminded.
“Ah yes. Raven,” Waxman temporized. “Very independent woman.”
“I know that. But you promised me that you could, ah, break through her defenses.”
Waxman nodded. “I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”
“But I do worry, Evan. I can’t stay here much longer. I have obligations back Earthside, you know.”
“And the article you have to write about Tómas Gomez.”
“Yes. That too.”
Waxman drummed his fingers on his desktop for a few moments. “I’ll get Raven for you.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow night.”
Dacco’s beaming smile returned. “Tomorrow night. Good.”
Waxman smiled back. Bind him to you with hoops of steel, he told himself. Send him back to Earth happy and satisfied.
Vincente Zworkyn stood on his two legs without a tremble. The legs felt fine, quite natural, completely healed. In the privacy of his hospital alcove he dressed quickly in the clothes that he’d been wearing when his accident occurred. They were stained and dusty but, thankfully, untorn.
Only one of his team was waiting for him at the hospital’s discharge lobby, the chunky, heavy-featured Leeanne Russell. The instant Zworkyn pushed through the lobby’s door, she jumped up from the chair she’d been waiting in.
“They wouldn’t let me in,” she said apologetically.
“That’s all right, Lee,” Zworkyn replied. “It was good of you to come and collect me.”
She grinned at him. “Where do you want to go?”
“Back to work. We’ve got a hypothesis to prove.”
HOOPS OF STEEL
Raven stared at the viewscreen in her living room. She had finished breakfast and was just about to leave for the boutique when Waxman’s call came through.
Despite the early hour, Waxman appeared to be in his office, dressed for a working day, all business.
“How’s your shop doing, Raven?” he asked, with a pleasant smile.
He’s not calling about the boutique, Raven told herself. He gets our sales information automatically. What does he really want?
“Sales are moving upward,” she said to the screen. “We’ll have to order more merchandise next week.”
“Really?”
“Really. But you could see that in the daily files we automatically send you.”
Waxman’s smile thinned just the tiniest bit. “Do you really think you can make a success of your little shop?”
“Look at the sales record,” Raven replied. “The trend is upward.”
“It’s not a very steep climb.”
“But it’s better than a downward spiral. Word’s spreading throughout the habitat, Evan. Women are coming in, looking at what we have to offer, and buying.”
He conceded the point with the barest of nods. But then, “My computer calculates it will take at least six months for you to reach a break-even point. Even if your sales keep climbing at their present rate.”
“But they’re not climbing at our present rate,” Raven countered. “They’re accelerating.”
“Slowly.”
Raven’s patience ended. “Look, Evan, I’ve got to get to the shop. Are we finished?”
“Not quite,” he said, his smile evaporating. “There’s the matter of Noel Dacco.”
“Noel Dacco? I’m not interested in him.”
“But he’s interested in you.”
So that’s it, Raven realized. “And you’re pimping for him.”
Waxman’s eyes flashed angrily. But he quickly took control of his temper. “What a pleasant way to put it.”
“Aren’t you?”
For a long moment Waxman said nothing. Then, “It would be good if you spent an evening with Dacco. He’s very interested in you.”
“And you’ve told him about my life in Naples.”
“Of course. Why do you think he’s interested in you? For your intellect?”
Raven gritted her teeth.
“It won’t hurt you to spend a night with the man.”
“I spend my nights with Tómas.”
Waxman broke into a grin and pointed an accusing finger at her. “Not true. Gomez sleeps in his own quarters most nights.”
“Not every night.”
With a careless shrug, Waxman said, “You can spend a night with Dacco. If you don’t, I’ll have to shut down your boutique.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Can’t I? Just try me.”
“I’ll tell Reverend Umber!”
“Hah! Our beloved minister. What do you think he’d do, once I’ve told him that you’ve been whoring here in his precious Haven?”
“That’s not true!”
Waxman smiled thinly. “It doesn’t have to be true, Raven dear. It just has to be believable. And I’ll make him believe me.”
Raven stared at the viewscreen, trying to think of something to say, some way to get out of this trap. I don’t want him to close the shop; that would destroy Alicia and everything she’s dreamed of. But if I do what he wants and Tómas finds out…
Then she realized that if she did what Waxman wanted, he’d have that to hold over her forever. Tómas would leave her. She’d be right back where she was before she came to Haven.
Waxman understood her silence. “You should go to the shop now. Call me this evening, when you get back home.”
Raven nodded wordlessly.
“The bastard!”
Alicia’s eyes blazed with fury.
Raven sat with her partner behind the boutique’s counter. It had been a slow morning, yet it wasn’t until nearly noon that the shop went empty enough for Raven to tell Alicia of her conversation with Waxman.
“I’ll never get him off my back,” Raven whispered, surprised at how weary, how desperate she felt.
“He’ll be pulling my strings as long as I live,” she added, close to tears.
Alicia stared at her in silence for several moments. Then she said, “As long as he lives.”
Raven’s eyes went wide as she realized what Alicia was thinking.
“No,” she said softly. “We can’t go that way.”
“Why not? You, yourself, were all for it a few weeks ago. He’s trying to kill you, isn’t he?”
“Not murder.”
“Justice,” said Alicia.
“No.”
“I’ll do it. Gladly.”
Raven leaned toward her friend and slid her arms around Alicia’s shoulders. “Don’t talk that way. That’s not the way to go.”
“How else are we going to get free of him?”
Raven straightened up and looked into Alicia’s ice-blue eyes, murderously cold.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know.”
Alicia shook her head pityingly. “Reverend Umber’s really changed you, hasn’t he?”
Before Raven could reply, the shop’s front door slid open and a trio of women strode in, their eyes goggling at the displays of clothing.
EVIDENCE?
Tómas Gomez sat in the living room of his quarters, staring fixedly at the wall screen, his makeshift laboratory jammed with analysis equipment, sensor receivers, and computers of half a dozen different types.
He ignored the mug of chilled malteada that he had made for himself. The drink rested on his cluttered coffee table, unnoticed.
Gomez studied the readouts from the analyses of the battered debris recovered from the seabed. Every reading of their age centered around the two-million-year mark.