Blonde Bombshell (10 page)

14

Novosibirsk

The two men who quite definitely weren’t werewolves were rummaging in a dustbin round the back of Novosibirsk’s premier restaurant. After a while, they found what they were looking for.

“Will you look at the size of that?” one of them said.

The other one was indeed looking. “What sort of animal—?” His friend shrugged. “Not a cat, anyhow. Though they’ve got some fair-sized cats on this planet.”

“This big?” the other one said hopefully.

“But they just let them wander about wild. No, I reckon this is
cow.”

“C—?”

“Sort of a big
m’dddt,”
the other one explained. “But without the scales.”

That gave them both pause for thought. Then the first one said, “What the hell, a bone’s a bone,” and tucked his prize inside his suit jacket. Then he adjusted his tie. “We’d better clear out before anyone sees us,” he said.

They walked quickly round the corner on to the main street, slowed down and headed east. Nobody seemed interested in them, two middle-aged men in smart suits, though one had his jacket buttoned up and his lapels round his ears, and was hugging himself.

“A
m’dddt
without scales. That’s weird.”

“It’s all in the FAQ,” the other one said reproachfully. “And they also eat birds.”

“So?”

“With the feathers
off.”

That killed the conversation for a while. Then one of them said, “We’d better check on George Stetchkin. Did you bring the monitor?”

The other one held up something that would’ve passed for a mobile phone. “Life-signs are OK. He’s asleep.”

“Ah. Goes to bed early, then.”

“Something like that.” The not-werewolf paused, then said, “Are you sure he’s up to it? I mean, he didn’t strike me as—”

“He figured out about the aposiderium, didn’t he? That’s smart, for a primate.”

“But he ingests harmful toxins known to impair brain functions. That doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s what they do. He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”

His colleague blinked. “Really?”

“That’s what they think, anyway. It says so in the FAQ.” He frowned. “Maybe we should help him some more, though. But subtly. We don’t want to freak him out.” He stopped. To his right, a dark, narrow alley led off the main drag. “Do you…?”

The other one nodded. “Let’s chew it over for a while.” They took turns with the bone. When there was nothing left but splinters, one of them said, “Tastes a bit like
y’rwwt.”

“You reckon?”

“It sort of grows on you. Hey, do you think we could buy some cows and take them home?”

His friend shook his head. “You don’t know what they eat.”

“Well?”

He told him.

“You’re kidding.”

“Damn straight.”

“I really wish you hadn’t told me that.”

“Only when they’re young, mind. When they’re older they eat grass.”

“Even so …” The other one shook himself, as though he’d just been in water. “I say we get the job done and get off this planet as soon as possible.”

“Agreed.” The not-the-slightest-bit-werewolf eased a sliver of bone from between his front teeth. “So, how do we point Stetchkin in the right direction without scaring him to death?”

The other one thought about that. “We could teleport him up to the ship under heavy sedation, and use the mind probe to implant the clues in his subconscious mind,” he suggested. “Then, we programme him to respond to a latent command, like a password or a sequence of prime numbers or musical notes, and that’d activate the command and he’d remember the clue. Or,” he went on, “we could dose him up with psychotropic drugs and install a hidden back-up consciousness primed to fulfil specified tasks in response to specified stimuli, like exposure to phaleron radiation. Or we could—”

“Or we could write him a letter.”

15

Novosibirsk

Eventually, George found a proper drink. A considerable time after that, he woke up in a gutter in an alley. His wallet was empty, his shoes were missing, and he had a headache.

But surely, said a little voice inside his head, surely the whole point of drinking is to make you feel better, or else why do it? But you don’t feel better, do you?

Shut up, he told the little voice.

In fact, you feel considerably worse.

Yes, he told the voice, I know. It hadn’t escaped my attention.

So why—?

Because I’m an idiot, he said to the voice, and himself at large. Because I’m a loser and a mess. And would you mind keeping my inner voice down, please?

Ah. Right. Sorry.

He got up, groaned, staggered a pace or two and sat down again. As he did so, something in the inside pocket of his jacket prodded him in the ribs. He investigated — he’d never realised before what a complicated mechanism an inside pocket is, and how hard it can be to operate — and found a brand new Warthog. The Mark Six, which he didn’t own. Hell, he thought, I must’ve picked it up by mistake in some bar, thereby adding theft to my litany of cardinal faults. Wonderful.

The you’ve-got-mail light was flashing. Its little green winking eye was burning into his soul. He pressed the Play button just to make it stop.

Greetings, George Stetchkin. Contact Lucy Pavlov immediately. This is a hint.

He closed his eyes. There were huge green smears on the insides of his eyelids.

Lucy Pavlov, the PaySoft genius. He shuddered. Right; as if the world’s richest, most successful and most enigmatic woman would give a wreck like him the time of day. Somebody’s idea of a joke— Greetings.

That word rang a bell; so loudly, in fact, that he could feel the walls of his skull vibrate. “Greetings,” the lunatic with the gun had said, and then he’d pulled the trigger.

This is a hint.

But I don’t want a hint, he raged silently. I want my money and my cards and my ID and my shoes. I want my job back. Hints are like socks at Christmas.

He scowled at the message on the screen. It appeared to have grown.

PS Lucy Pavlov’s direct line is

He stared. Nobody knew Lucy Pavlov’s direct line. It was the Holy Grail of snoop journalists and paparazzi everywhere. If this really and truly was the genuine article, he could sell it and drink himself back to the vegetable kingdom on the proceeds.

Or he could try the number.

On the Mark Six, the working-please-wait cursor is a little running pig. Just looking at it made him want to burst into tears, so he turned his head away and tried to think of something to say, just in case rich-and-famous Lucy Pavlov actually answered. He’d got as far as— “Hello,” he croaked. “You don’t know me, my name’s George Stetchkin.”

Silence was what he’d been expecting. But instead of a click and a whirr, he got “Really?”

“Um .”

“But that’s
amazing.
I was just this very second about to call you.”

It was a beautiful voice, though rather too loud, but he hardly noticed.
“What?”

“Where are you?”

George looked around. “You know,” he said, “that’s a very good question.”

“Doesn’t matter, I can use PinPoint. Ah.” Pause. “What are you doing there? Doesn’t matter. Look, are you terribly busy right now?”

He didn’t laugh, but only because he lacked the necessary fine control of his motor functions. Instead, he made a noise that came out something like
snurge.

“Sorry? Didn’t quite catch—”

“No. I mean, I’m not terribly busy right now. Only—”

“Stay right there, I’ll send a car.”

The line went dead. For a matter of fifteen seconds or so, George didn’t move. Instead, he thought, Here I am, sitting in a gutter, and Lucy Pavlov is sending a car. This is sooo much better than real life. Then a couple of men came out of the back door of the building. They were carrying white plastic garbage sacks.

“Oh,” said one of them, “it’s you, is it?”

His tone was not altogether friendly, but George grinned at him. “It’s all right,” he said. “Lucy Pavlov’s sending a car.”

“Move,” the main said.

Clearly the man hadn’t heard him. “I said,” George repeated slowly, “Lucy Pavlov is sending a car. All right?”

“Now.”

George noticed the man’s boots. They were so large, he probably needed planning permission every time he walked across a room. George tried to get up, but something, probably low-level seismic activity, made him wobble and lose his footing. He slid back until his shoulder blades met the wall. “Lucy Pavlov,” he said. “She’s sending—”

A hand that could only have belonged to the owner of the boot grabbed his shirt-front and heaved. That got George on his feet, but not for very long. As he landed face-down on the pavement, he felt the ominous sensation of stomach contents shifting. He swallowed hard, as a pint of acid hit his hiatus hernia.

Boots had gone, but his colleague lingered, looking down at George with a confused expression on his face. “Hey,” he said.

“Mm?”

“Did you just say Lucy Pavlov?”

George nodded feebly. “Sending a car, yes.”

The main hesitated, then stuck his hand in his top pocket and pulled out a waiter’s order pad and a pencil. “You think you could get her autograph for me?”

“No.”

“It’s not for me, it’s for my nephew, he’s really into computers and stuff.”

“No.”

“Oh.” The main considered George for a few seconds, then put the pad away. “Screw you, then,” he said, and went inside.

Ah well, George thought, as the civil war in his digestive tract eased towards an uneasy ceasefire. Just goes to show, there’s two sorts of people in this world: those Lucy sends cars for, and those who want her autograph and can’t get it. For some reason, that made him laugh for nearly four seconds.

16

Desperation Springs, Queensland, Australia

You have mail, said the brand-new computer.

Jack Willis stared at the screen in disbelief. He’d only bought the thing a week ago. He’d been the last farmer in the district to hold out against the new technology. Ever since it had arrived, and Snowy Jones’s boy from across the road (the road was fifty miles away; across was an extra twenty miles) had set it up for him, he’d applied every excuse he could think of to keep from turning the power on. Snowy’s lad had offered to send him an email to make sure it was working, but he’d told him not to bother. So who could it be?

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Only Jack Willis’s rhino-horn thumb could have survived contact with Jack Willis’s carborundum-bristled chin without being shredded to the bone. The government? Possibly. Jack knew that the government watched every move he made from their spy satellites, poised like a cat at a mousehole to catch him out. In which case, should he look at the message or not? If he opened it, would they construe that as an admission of defeat, Jack Willis finally conceding that he was at their beck and call like everybody else? But if he didn’t — suppose it was some new addition to the livestock-movement-records legislation. If he didn’t read it and did something that infringed the new rules, they’d be on him like a snake, you could bet your life.
But you must ‘ye known, Mr Willis,
they’d say, as they dragged him away,
we sent you an e-mail.

Bastards, he thought. They get you coming and going.

He sat looking at it for an hour, then broke down and did the business with the plastic box on a string, like Snowy’s kid had shown him.

It wasn’t from the government after all. It was from a Mr S’ghnff, and it said URGENT.

Needless to say, Jack didn’t recognise the name. None of the seven people Jack knew were called S’ghnff. Just possibly it could be the newcomer down the road, who’d bought the old Hawkins station, but he’d only been there seven years so naturally Jack didn’t know his name. Could be S’ghnff. After all, he was a city boy, and they were proverbially capable of anything.

URGENT. He didn’t like the look of that at all. Maybe S’ghnff was an assumed name to disguise the identity of a well-wisher, and someone was tipping him off that the government were on to him. He didn’t dare risk it. He opened the message and read it.

Dear Friend, it said.

Jack didn’t like the sound of that at all. He’d heard about the sort of people who said things like that. On balance, he’d have preferred the government. But, since he’d got this far—

I represent the Ostar Unitary Credit Authority. We are in possession of the sum $800,000,000,000,000 (eight hundred trillion dollars), being proceeds of withdrawals from your banks. Interplanetary banking regulations prevent us from transferring said sum outside the jurisdiction, we being legal aliens. Therefore we require a partner inside the jurisdiction (yourself), you having been referred to us as person of great honesty and integrity and not in league with government authorities, to assist in said transaction. We propose your share of said funds will be 500/a (fifty per cent). On receiving your reply, we will furnish a secure number to proceed. To ensure your participation, kindly call the number below with your full name and contact number and age.

With warmest personal regards and best wishes

Ig’uu S’ghnff (Principal)

Jack stared at the screen, his eyes as wide as soup bowls. Fifty per cent; four hundred trillion bucks. His lucky day, or what? He read the message again, just to make sure. A tiny flicker of doubt crossed his mind once or twice, but the bits about honesty and integrity and not being in league with the government convinced him. ‘Whoever these Ostar were, they knew all about him, for sure. And the situation itself — borderline currency transfers, banking regulations, cunning plans to circumvent the letter of the law —well, he knew all about that stuff. Once a month, when the supply truck stopped by, there were always old newspapers stuffed in the boxes as padding. He read them all, every last word, and the financial pages were full of that sort of thing. After he’d overcome his initial shock and bewilderment, it all made perfect sense.

He looked down at his hands; they were shaking a little. He pursed his lips. All right, it wasn’t sheep-farming, which was all he knew and had ever known. On the other hand, how often does an opportunity like this drop into a bloke’s lap?

He thought, A man can buy a hell of a lot of barbed wire for four hundred trillion dollars.

“Dear Friend” still bothered him, a little, until he figured that, whoever these Ostar were, they had to be foreigners, presumably with a quirkily imperfect grasp of English. For the first time in his life, he regretted not paying attention to the geography on schools radio when he was a kid. Ostar, he thought: rings a bell. He dived into the furthest recesses of his memory. Ostar, he was pretty sure, was the German word for Austria.

That clinched it. Austria, he knew, was right next to Switzerland, in Europe, with mountains. Switzerland was where they had loads of posh banks, so presumably they had a few in Austria too, the ones that wouldn’t fit in Switzerland, a notoriously small country. And Austria must be a pretty fair dinkum sort of a country, or why had they called Australia after it?

He called the number. The voice at the other end of the line was tinny and almost mechanical-sounding, but he assumed all Austrians sounded like that.

“You’re on, mate,” he said. “I’ll give it a go.”

It all went very smoothly, with a minimum of fuss; and sure enough, twenty minutes after he’d finished his call, eight hundred trillion dollars were deposited in an account in his name at the First Queensland Bank in Rockhampton. Twenty minutes after that, four black helicopters from the Australian People’s Revenue Militia set down in the paddock behind the farm, and armed officers stormed the farmhouse and led Jack away in handcuffs.