Weird Space 2: Satan's Reach (10 page)

“But Denphrey,” the alien said, chewing, “I understand that congratulations are in order? The lady has found you, I take it?”

Harper was thrown. “The lady?”

“Yesterday a large human woman – one Sharl Janaker, she called herself – came to the inn and enquired after you. I assumed she had found you, and that you were here to celebrate.”

Harper sipped his drink, quelling the first stirrings of alarm. “Celebrate what?” he asked.

“Ah,” said the alien, “then your paths have not crossed, and you are in ignorance of your good fortune! It falls to me to relay the good tidings. The woman said that she was seeking one Den Harper, as enquiries at the port had led her to this very establishment. Apparently your uncle on Nova Rodriguez passed away five years ago, leaving you a legacy of some half a million units. The woman, Janaker, is a representative of your uncle’s solicitors, come to bestow the bequest.”

Zeela was looking at him with wide eyes, smiling in anticipation of his own delight.

Harper, however, felt anything but delight. True, he had had an uncle on Nova Rodriguez and, according to his mother, he had possessed wealth... but that a ‘large woman’ should be sent into the Reach to inform him of his legacy was unlikely to say the least.

“Can you describe the woman?” he asked.

The Endolon closed its eyes. “Tall, broad, white-skinned, thick dark hair. Masculine in appearance, and muscular. I should guess given to combat, as she was armed with a side laser. She wore the dark raiment of the Expansion, and spoke in clipped Anglais.”

Harper drained his flagon, a sick feeling curdling in his gut. The Endolon had described no individual of his direct acquaintance, but the type he knew well: she fitted the description, down to the laser side-arm, of a bounty hunter the Expansion would send after him.

He kept his tone even. “What did you tell her?”

“I said that you came to DeVries from time to time, and always dropped by for a flagon. I said that I had not seen you for a good three months, but that all things being even you would show yourself before long. She gave me an address where you might find her – the Old Rose hotel beside the spaceport.”

“In which case,” Harper said, setting his empty pot on the bar, “I had better go in search of my fortune. It’s been a pleasure, as always.”

“The pleasure has been mine entirely, and I look forward to hearing you sing, Zeela Antarivo.”

Harper slipped from the stool and, as he hurried from the bar, he took Zeela’s hand and tugged her along after him.

“Something tells me that all is not as it seems,” she said as they emerged into the sunlit street.

He paused under the overhang of the inn. “I think the woman was lying. She would not come all the way to the Reach just to inform me of a bequest.”

“Then?”

“A bounty hunter...”

Her big eyes expanded. “So... what now?”

Harper considered his options. He was torn by conflicting impulses. A small, rational voice in his head told him to flee, to get out while the going was good; another voice – prompted by the insatiably curious side of his nature – suggested that it was always wise to know one’s enemy.

“Now we go to the Old Rose.”

She looked alarmed. “But you said that she might be a bounty hunter!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not so foolish as to go up to her and introduce myself. I just... need to know for certain. We’ll go to the hotel and keep a safe distance, and with my ferronnière...” He tapped his jacket pocket.

“Ah,” she said. “And then, when you have established whether or not this woman is pursuing you?”

He set off along the busy street, Zeela trotting after him. “Then I will either flee, or accept my Uncle’s largesse, unlikely though that scenario is.”

“And what of me?” she asked, hurrying after him.

He turned and regarded her, slowing down. “I don’t know.”

She called out, “Please, don’t leave me here. If you flee, take me with you. But if the woman is not who you fear she is... then, might I stay with you also?”

He steadfastly refused to meet her gaze. He said, “There would be no sense in either scenario. If she did turn out to be a bounty hunter, and if you came with me, your life too would be in danger. And if she was who she said she was, and I came into a fortune... then you would be better off taking a ship directly to Kallasta, which I would gladly pay for.”

Zeela said nothing but ran along at his side as he turned down alley after alley towards the spaceport. Her silence burned like an accusation.

The boulevard that approached the spaceport was a hotchpotch of architectural styles, from the latest soaring towerpiles to old brick-and-timber buildings, the later occupying narrow niches between the former. A kilometre away, at the far end of the boulevard, starships came and went like bees at a hive.

The Old Rose was the grandest hotel in DeVries, a palatial stone-built pile in its own lawned grounds. Across the thronged street was a restaurant with a second floor balcony at which afternoon teas might be enjoyed. Harper gestured to the elevated tea room and told Zeela, “From there we will have a safe view of everyone who comes and goes from the hotel.”

Minutes later they were established on the balcony with china cups of green tea and dainty sandwiches.

Harper removed his headgear – a dun beret this time – and pulled the ferronnière from his pocket. He placed the device inside his beret and sat with it on his lap, ready to don the hat should anyone fitting the woman’s description show herself.

He sipped his tea and stared across the thoroughfare towards the long lawn of the hotel. Guests came and went, humans and aliens. The street below was busy with pedestrians, and from time to time an air-car passed slowly by on level with where they sat.

Zeela glanced at his ferronnière and said, “And will you read my thoughts when you put that thing on?”

“The woman’s thoughts only, Zeela.”

“You can be so selective?”

“Of course. My talent is directional, if you like. I can filter out much of the mind-noise around me, after a few seconds, and concentrate on the subject. Anyway, I promise not to pry into your mind.”

“It’s okay if you did,” she said. “I have nothing to hide.”

He glanced at her and smiled. “Nothing? Are you absolutely sure about that? Everyone has something to hide.”

She looked away and said quietly, “Not from people they trust.”

He did not deign to reply to that, and concentrated on the entrance of the Old Rose hotel.

A little later Zeela said, “This is amazing...”

He glanced at her. “Your cucumber sandwich?”

“No.” She gestured all around her. “This. The city. The spaceport. All these different people. I mean... all the aliens. I never knew so many different kinds existed!” She leaned forward, placed a hand on the balcony and propped her chin on her closed fist, staring at the boulevard in wonder.

She pointed. “That one, for instance... Do you know what it is, Den?”

She was indicating a being like a puce octopus garbed in diaphanous robes; it flowed along the street on a dozen tentacles, trailed by half a dozen smaller versions of itself.

“That one is... if I’m not mistaken... a Zuban from a planet in the Procyon star system. The smaller ones in its wake are clones, which accompany it everywhere in case of an accident. They share one mind, though, and are unique amongst extraterrestrials.”

“And that one?”

“The incredibly tall, stick-thin blue man?” he said. “That’s a Glaydian from Glay in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. They’re traders, and drive a hard bargain as I’ve found out to my cost. And see that one there, in the yellow rolling bubble? That’s an Ooom from Betelgeuse III – I forget the name of its homeworld. It doesn’t breathe our air, so must go everywhere accompanied by its own sulphurous atmosphere. You don’t see many of them abroad, so it’s probably someone important like an ambassador.”

“So many aliens...” she said in awe.

“They tend to frequent the Reach in preference to the Expansion,” he explained. “The authorities there impose stringent trade restrictions, which don’t maintain here.”

“And can you mind-read them all?”

He smiled. “In theory, yes. That is, I can access their minds, though often their thoughts are sometimes just too
alien
for me to make any sense of. And with some extraterrestrials I’d get a raging migraine just trying to achieve mental contact.”

She looked at him. “Your ability has obviously made you what you are.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She frowned. “Superficially friendly,” she said, “but in actual fact reserved, distant. But that’s understandable, I think.”

He was about to defend himself and say that if
she
had read the minds he had, if
she
had had to protect herself from the machinations of others... then she would be reserved, distant – but he supposed that that was exactly her point. He said nothing, and returned his attention to the long path leading up to the hotel.

Ten minutes later a figure emerged from the foyer of the Old Rose hotel and strolled down the path. Harper sat forward, his heart racing. The woman was human, tall – strapping, he would have said – with a hank of jet black hair, handsome in a severe, masculine kind of way, and armed with a laser side-arm.

Something about her poise and swagger, the way she held her head erect and forever on the look-out, suggested she was an Expansion bounty hunter.

“Den?” Zeela said.

“It’s her,” he whispered.

He took his beret and arranged it on his head, activating the ferronnière as he did so. The minds around him flared like so many miniature supernovas, throwing at him a radiation of competing emotions. Before he could filter it out, he caught a mental emanation from Zeela – something which he would rather not have read. He thrust this to one side, quelled the pulsing jealousy from the waitress to his left, and concentrated his probe on the advancing figure of the woman... what had the Endolon said she was called?... Sharl Janaker?

As he’d expected, and feared, Janaker was shielded.

“Can you read anything?” Zeela asked, leaning forward and touching his sleeve.

“No.”

“Do you think...?”

“That she’s a bounty hunter?” He nodded. “I’m sure she is.” He felt sick.

As he watched, the woman stopped and turned to look behind her, and a second later Harper received another unpleasant shock.

A tall figure strode from the foyer of the hotel and joined her.

Harper swore to himself and sat back.

Zeela was watching him with alarm. “What is it?”

“Her sidekick,” he said, “is a Vetch.”

The alien was a good half metre taller than Janaker herself, clad in black leather and armed with a laser rifle strapped to its back. It walked like a military killing machine, which to all effects and purposes it was. It was also hideously ugly, with a proboscis that appeared to have been sliced into bloody strips, and huge, doleful eyes.

“I take it,” Zeela said, “that that’s not good?”

“You take it correctly, girl.”

Harper had only ever seen a Vetch on one other occasion – a prisoner captured by Expansion marines after a border skirmish. The two races occupied bordering sectors of space, and rarely did the twain meet. He wondered what the hell the bounty hunter was doing with a Vetch accomplice.

He sent out a probe in the Vetch’s direction, but the alien was shielded too.

Harper pulled off his beret, and with it the ferronnière. The minds around him became blissfully silent, and with them Zeela’s.

“So... we get out of here?” she suggested.

He watched the pair cross the boulevard and pass from sight beneath the restaurant’s striped awning. “Never a truer word spoken. Let’s go.”

He stood and strode from the balcony, entering the café and heading for the spiral staircase. He stopped at a sound from below: the Vetch speaking in guttural Anglais.

He turned on his heel, grabbed Zeela by the elbow and led her back to the balcony. He resumed their table with his back to the door, his heart tripping like a Geiger counter.

“Sit down opposite me,” he said. “There’s only one other table free, and it’s out here. Lean forward and hold my hand like a lover whispering sweet nothings, okay?”

“That shouldn’t be too hard,” she said, and Harper flashed on the emotion he’d read in her head minutes earlier.

She said, “Please, you won’t shoot them, will you?”

“It’s okay, Zeela. I’m not armed. No bloodbath in the Boulevard Tea Room, I promise.”

“But if you were armed...?”

“What do you think I am, a conscienceless killer?” he hissed. “I wouldn’t take the risk when there are other options.”

She took his hands and leaned towards him, looking into his eyes. Her glance took in the woman and the Vetch, who were seating themselves at the vacant table behind Harper.

He clutched Zeela’s hand, surprised at how small it was. But then in comparison to him she was tiny, bird-boned. She could have passed for his daughter, and he wondered if their guise of star-crossed lovers might be a mistake which would only draw attention to themselves.

Janaker and the Vetch were conversing in Anglais. Harper listened, trying not to smile at what he heard. Here they were, a trained killer and a bellicose Vetch, bickering over sandwich fillings.

“You know that egg makes you vomit,” Janaker was telling the Vetch. “You’re safer with meat.”

“You humans don’t know what meat is,” the Vetch began.

“Just because your lot eat it raw – and still living.”

Zeela whispered, “They sound just like man and wife.”

“Shhh, Zeela. Listen...”

The mismatched pair were silent for a time, and then gave their order to the waitress. Seconds later Janaker sighed and said, “Well...?”

“Maybe he’s up and left,” the Vetch said. “He could be anywhere in the Reach.”

“True. But you heard what the fat bastard said – he returns every few months.”

“Which might mean we’ve got weeks to wait.”

“Do you never cease complaining?” Janaker said.

“I am merely stating a fact,” said the Vetch with a growl.