Acts of Conscience (23 page)

Epimetheus
. Interesting. 40 Eridani A2i, 9.72 light-years from Tau Ceti, closer than any colony world except Shayol at Epsilon Eridani, 5.25 light-years. And Prometheus, of course, 40 Eridani A2. You don’t see much about Prometheus and Epimetheus on the vidnet back home. Creepy, unsavory places that...

The library AI whispered, We did what checking we could. Santos Delakroë appears to be a legitimate businessman, president of the
Keravnos
export-import service, dealing mostly in interstellar luxury trade futures. Mr. van Rijn, though, has a police record and appears to be some kind of smuggler, though of what we couldn’t find out. It’s difficult to say what the two of them have in common.

I snorted softly. Failure of imagination is a common failing of artificial minds, just as it is with your natural sort. I said, “So. What’s this illegal cargo you want me to risk my license for?”

Delakroë blinked and sat back in his chair, obviously surprised. Van Rijn glanced at him, then back at me, that unpleasantly toothy grin spreading his fat cheeks again. “Oh, Mr. du Cheyne.
You
don’t have a license.”

Delakroë, recovering: “Or a pilot.”

I cracked my knuckles and shrugged. “I do know how to fly my ship.”

Van Rijn snickered, “We were sort of hoping you did.”

Delakroë: “What would you say if I told you we could get you a pilot’s license that would be acceptable to the authorities on Kent?”

Kent, Alpha Centauri A4, where there are any number of decent shipyards. I said, “
Legitimately
acceptable to the Kentish Space Command?”

Van Rijn laughed. “If you take your license to the portmaster of astronautics at Bakunin Cosmodrome, People’s Republic of the Vardon River Valley Project on Kent, he will see to it that you receive a valid Solar System flight endorsement.”

The expression on my face must have been enlightening.

Delakroë smiled and slid a white cardboard square across the table to me, green letter embossing the Orikhalkan address for something called “Club
Gámoi
.” He said, “You come here tonight at midnight and give this card to the doorman. We’ll... show you the prospective cargo and talk over the details.”

o0o

Club Gámoi was in a section of town down by the oldest, shabbiest part of the waterfront, a section so deserted it made me a little nervous. Walking through, I didn’t see a soul, though I did once stand in the shadows of an empty alleyway while a police car cruised slowly past, console radio muttering softly to the car’s two officers, a reedy voice filtered by window glass.

Quiet in the alleyway. No rustle of rats, or whatever passed for rats in a Cetian night. The library AI whispered, Rats descended from early laboratory animals, now interbred with other strains brought in on poorly packaged S.A. cargo pallets. They are a nuisance in the cities, but apparently cannot survive in the wild, where they are out competed by native scavengers and subject to severe predation.

Unlike some other terrestrial life forms we all know and love.

No smell in the alleyway either, just a faint, stale tang, like old, sterile dirt. No rats because no garbage because no one lives here anymore. The little gun became a comfortable bump in my pocket, protecting me from nothing.

The club doorman, a skinny, homely young man chewing your classic toothpick, seemed to sneer through his grin as I approached. “What can I
do
for you,
ska’fai
?”

The translator whispered,
Ska’fai
—possibly a contraction of
skatá
, excrement, and
fai
, an emphatic form of eat. I silently handed him the business card. He frowned, then said, “Oh. I took you for a new scumbag. Sorry.” He handed it back. “Go on in and sit down, Mr. du Cheyne. I’ll let the boss know you’re here.”

Inside,
Gámoi
was the usual big room, a half-amphitheater rather than in the round like the wolfen pit, tables on tiers not quite so steep, arrayed around a small proscenium stage, dark now, room filled, I noticed with a slightly stark pang of...

God damn, I feel... strange. Like my hair’s about to stand on end, like... Nothing but men here. Men at every table, some in groups, laughing and talking, others alone, silent and staring. Where is it you don’t find women? Homosexual clubs? Oh, there are always a few faghags hanging around around. Stripjoints always have women in the audience too, as well as up on the stage, slumming lesbians and curious “tourists,” the inevitable I’ll-do-whatever-you-want girlfriends of domineering men.

I took a table off to one side, away from what I perceived as excessively crowded tables, sat and... Creepy. God damn it I feel... I took a deep breath and wondered just why the hell I was getting so sweaty. I... There’s a smell in here. Something I can’t quite put my... finger on. I...

The house lights fell away and what little noise there was hushed, leaving us in near darkness, darkness filled with an uncanny prickle of anticipation. Anticipation and that smell. Stage lights rising, ever so slightly, putting a rosy flush on the curtain and...

What the hell is... that? Someone already on the stage. A little girl, perhaps, dressed in a white cowgirl outfit. Little girl with long, pale, golden brown hair, white cowgirl outfit just touched with brown as well, maybe the tips of all those fine little tassles streaked with golden brown, moving as she swayed, swayed when she walked...

The faint, tingling pang I’d felt when I first came in here turned to a distinct dread at what I imagined I was going to see next. Hell. This sort of thing’s illegal in the Solar System. Illegal and one of damned few things actually persecuted by the authorities. Persecuted and prosecuted. Now we’re going to see that little girl, size such that she must be no more than eight or nine years old, take off that elaborate, obscuring costume, show us her naked flesh and... I realized with a horrid little shock that the little fat man at the next table was lolling back in his chair, muttering softly to himself, that he’d gotten his dick out and was already masturbating. Christ, was just the
idea
of the little girl on the stage enough to...

Now there were two little girls on the stage, dressed in identical, weird looking little cowgirl costumes. Two forlorn little... Well, no, you can’t tell just
how
forlorn those little girls are. Three little girls now, with some kind of mask covering their little faces. Animal masks, making them look like some kind of little white teddy-bear cowgirls, with big, sad eyes that...

Memory of watching pornography, just once, with Garstang, so long ago. We’d watched a movie together, gotten aroused, made love on the floor, wallowing right into the misty depths of the vidnet display, had spent ourselves, and were lying back, still watching, as the actors and actresses went on and on, though we ourselves could not.

She’d said, I always thought part of the attraction of pornography was seeing the sad look in the people’s eyes. Ineradicable sadness, no matter how they grimace and posture and... The very word
pornography
, with it’s deep Latin roots.
Stories about whores
. Sad-eyed whores, presumably.

As opposed to what? Erotica? Is
erotica
really stories about Eros and love? What about
romance
then? Garstang had laughed, and said, Yeah? What about it?

Four little girls now, fat man at the next table still muttering as he mopped up his mess with a napkin. What a waste of time. What will you do
now
? Now that you’ve spent your... Five little girls dancing in a chain, dancing across the stage to a little flight of stairs, stairs leading down toward the audience, men in the darkness stirring now, filling the room with an electricity of anticipation. Electricity and that... smell.

Something so God damned very
odd
about those little girls. I... Oh, Jesus. Why do I have an erection? I’m not... Little girls conga dancing toward us, dancing down the stairs.

Dancing now between the tables, men muttering and moving, soft moans here and there, my fat neighbor... for Christ’s sake, erect again, jerking off again. Somebody with pretty solid hormones, maybe on some kind of special vitamin regimen, or with his system adjusted to... Why the hell would anybody do that? It’s bad enough having to be just
ordinarily
horny, I... Note that hard-on, straining at your pants? Like something out of
Alice
, screaming
eat me
and... Someone moving through the deeper shadows along the wall, a tall black figure walking along, paralleling the girl’s dancing, moving its arms as if directing an orchestra. See. The little girls are watching that figure and... Fat man holding his swollen dick in one hand, waving a fat handful of Orikhalkan
drakhmai
in the other. Dark figure by the wall snapping the fingers of a raised hand.
Click
.
Click
. And pointing. One of the little girls broke away and began dancing over to the fat man, getting closer and closer and...

I don’t want to see this, but... right. Not looking away.

Little girl in cowgirl costume dancing up to the fat man. I could feel my hair sort of standing on end, sweat trickling under my shirt like thin, cold, crawling snakes. Little girl rubbing herself on him, tickling him with the strands of her costume.

Any minute now, she’ll start to take it off, I...

Instead, she just crawled up in his lap, straddled him, fat man squealing faintly, like a faraway pig in the clutches of the butcher, little girl straddling his lap, already moving in some ineffably coital rhythm.

Look at the men, watching her.

Look at yourself watching her.

Almost a cheat, for the rest of us. Why is she still wearing that costume? Why can’t we
see
? The little girl straddling the fat man’s lap, so obviously impaled on his dick, turned and briefly looked at me, her animal mask... Dark eyes, wide open, looking at me. Muzzle, wet black nose of a little dog over a dog’s cleft lip, mouth agape, panting, little teeth plainly visible.

Not a mask at all.

A living face.

What the Hell am I seeing here
?

Long, empty silence in my head as I watched the fat man convulse, watched the... thing get off his lap, take his money, dab briefly at its crotch with his napkin, then dance away, rejoining the conga line of teddybear cowgirls. Over on the other side of the room, another man was holding up money, and that unidentifiable smell was like mist in the air.

The spacesuit’s voice whispered, We can find nothing in the Orikhalkan InfoNet on this.

I heard the fat man whisper, “Oh. Oh my
God
...”

Then a voice in my ear, black shadow leaning over me: “Mr. du Cheyne? If you’ll come with me please.”

o0o

My erection persisted, even after I left the room of the dancing... things, as I followed an unknown man down an unknown hall. When I came into the office where van Rijn and Delakroë were waiting, they saw it, saw the front of my pants poking out, and van Rijn laughed. “I guess you liked our little dollies, huh?”

Dollies
. I felt scattered memories linking up, falling into place. I sat down, mopping my brow with a slightly less damp palm. “Jesus. I thought they were little girls at first.”

Delakroë looked pained; van Rijn gave a vidshow-class bellow of coarse amusement. “I guess that’s part of it,” he said.

Part of it. My God. Delakroë said, “I suppose you’ve guessed the rest of it then?”

I nodded slowly.

Van Rijn said, “We’ve got a cargo of fifty dollies that will be ready for, ah... shipment. Yes. Ready for shipment to Epimetheus in about four weeks. We normally ship them frozen as S.A. cargo, um, mixed in with... other commodities, accompanied by a factor who... rides as a passenger you see and...”

“And you’ll get a higher price if there’s an unexpected shipment?”

Delakroë: “No one will be expecting us. And the dollies will be in... much better shape if they’re not frozen.”

I can imagine. “How high?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How much will you get for the... dollies?”

Silence. Then van Rijn, eyes narrow, said, “That’s none of your business, Mr. du Cheyne.”

I looked at him for a long moment. “Sure. How were you expecting me to handle and store fifty live... um. Animals?”

Van Rijn: “We’ll provide appropriate... handlers. And we’ve looked at your ship. We know you can land in pretty rugged territory.”

I nodded. They wouldn’t be expecting to transship their goodies at the cosmodrome.

Delakroë: “We’re offering you a hundred thousand livres to do the job.”

I felt a little spark of surprise at the figure, but... Well. There’s a shadow of the truth in their eyes. “Not enough.”

Silence. Then Delakroë folded his hands on the top of the desk, fingers neatly interlaced, and smiled. “Well, I’m sure we can work this out, Mr. du Cheyne. It’s... always a pleasure to do business with an honest man.”

Right. It only took a few minutes, and I’d run them up to 225,000 livres before van Rijn balked and wouldn’t budge. Wouldn’t budge though I could tell I hadn’t made much of a dent in their profit margin. As for me, I’d be pulling close to eight times what I’d gotten to haul passengers, and... “The license.”

Van Rijn grinned a grin I was already quite sick of, reached into the front of his tunic and pulled out a thick white envelope, tossing it on the desk between us. “There’s a hundred thousand livres in there, Mr. du Cheyne, along with a document for the authorities on Epimetheus. Consider it your down payment. When we get to our destination...”

“We?”

The smile broadened. “I’ve never been to another planet, Mr. du Cheyne. I’m looking forward to this trip.” When we stood, shaking hands, van Rijn looked down at the hump in the front of my pants, and laughed. “You ought to do something about that, Mr. du Cheyne. Why don’t you go on out and enjoy the rest of the show?”

On the way out of the building I went into the restroom, intending to jerk off and be rid of the damned thing, but the stalls were already full of gasping men, including one fellow furtively crouching over the sink.