House of the Sun (5 page)
I nodded.
"Good. Then I have a request for you. I have a message that I need delivered to a ... a
colleague
of mine. I would like you to deliver it for me, Mr. Montgomery."
I snorted. "You want me to be a delivery boy?"
"I wouldn't put it quite like that," Barnard hedged.
"But it's accurate."
He shrugged. "If you wish."
"Why can't you do it electronically?" I asked. "Or virtually, over the Matrix?"
Barnard's dark eyes hardened, and I felt my internal temperature drop a couple of degrees. "I have my reasons, I assure you," he said coldly. But then his mien softened an iota. "Personal contact is required in this situation, Mr. Montgomery. Circumstances are such that nothing else would be acceptable."
He was trying to win me over by being reasonable, by actually
explaining
—to some degree, at least. But I wasn't going to get sucked in that easily. "So why not send one of your flunkies from Kyoto?" I shot back. "There's got to be hundreds of keeners just
dying
to—
to
kiss
hoop,
is what I started to say, but at the last moment I reconsidered—"to do the executive veep a personal favor.
Neh
?"
Barnard frowned. "Perhaps. But that would be ...
inappropriate
... in this case."
"Why?"
"Because the contact must be untraceable, Mr. Montgomery. I need a deniable asset."
"You mean an
expendable
asset, don't you?"
Barnard sighed in mild frustration. "Not in this case, Mr. Montgomery." He gave a wry half smile. "Under other circumstances"—he shrugged—"who knows? But not in this case, I assure you."
"Why
not?" I asked sarcastically.
"
You'd hang someone else out to dry, but not me. Because of my winning personality, no doubt?"
I snorted again. "Look, Mr. Barnard, I'm willing to go along with you because I owe you for the arm, and I'd rather pay off my marker than be hunted down by Yamatetsu hard-men. But please don't insult what I like to consider my intelligence,
so
ka?"
For a moment I thought I'd gone that one step too far. For nearly ten seconds Barnard just stared at me out of the screen, his eyes like targeting lasers. Then he leaned forward, and again the vid pickup adjusted, putting the statues out of focus. "Listen," he said, "I'll tell you this once, and only because I want you to understand. I'm not calling in a marker, Mr. Montgomery. You've already paid back for the arm, and more." He smiled faintly and gestured around him. "Do you think I'd be sitting in this office if Adrian Skyhill was still undercutting me with the Board of Directors at every turn?" The smile faded, and for a moment the executive looked even older than he had before. "And there's more to the debt, of course, but I'd rather not discuss it, even via a cold relay."
I nodded slowly. He meant the insect spirits, of course. "The way I view the matter, Mr. Montgomery," Barnard continued smoothly, "Yamatetsu owes
you
for your services." He spread his hands in a disarming gesture. "This is part of the payback. I understand you need the work, and the credit." I forced a laugh. "Mr. Barnard, you'd better give your information conduits a swift kick. I've got contracts out the hoop; I don't have the time to be your glorified messenger boy and—"
His voice was no louder, but the edge to it cut me off as short as a gunshot. "No, Mr. Montgomery, you
haven't
got contracts, as you say, 'out the hoop.' The one matter you have to concern you at the moment—since you so smoothly discharged the matter with The Avalon for one Jennifer Amequist—is a minor contract with Sharon Young." He smiled—he was enjoying this, the slot. "And, as a matter of fact, the business for which Ms. Young has contracted you is directly connected with my request, so there's not even any conflict there."
I sighed. Corporators. I should have known better than to try and run a bluff. I raised my hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay, you've got me."
Barnard paused. Then he said quietly, "You know, I
would
rather you take this matter on voluntarily."
"Why
?"
He paused again—longer, this time. "Do you want the truth, Mr. Montgomery?"
"If it wouldn't strain you too much."
His expression changed. Not quite a smile, but something very close. "Because I
respect
you, Mr. Montgomery. And further, I
like
you."
He waited, as if he expected me to come back with some hard-hooped rejoinder. I always like being unpredictable, so I kept my trap zipped. Eventually, he smiled, his "business" smile again. "You know, Mr. Montgomery, you haven't asked the major question yet."
He
was
enjoying this. "Okay, Barnard," I said wearily. "Where am I going?"
He chuckled. "Have you ever been to the Kingdom of Hawai'i, Mr. Montgomery?"
I
must
be
losing
my
fragging
mind
. . .
I sat back, staring at the telecom screen. The vidphone pane had cleared and vanished, but the data display still burned with its plasma glow. According to the data onscreen, I had an open ticket on the Global Airways suborbital hop from Casper to beautiful downtown Honolulu about twelve hours from right then. A corp ticket, no name on the manifest, and enough "don't-worry" flags that ticket agents, customs officers, and the like wouldn't dig too deep into my supposed identity. According to the datawork, which I could download onto my own credstick whenever I felt like it, I'd be traveling under the auspices of some outfit called Nebula Enterprises. A minor subsidiary of Yamatetsu, no doubt ... or maybe not, come to think of it, if Barnard was so hinky about this whole thing getting traced back to him. Maybe Nebula was some independent that owed Yamatetsu as a whole, or Barnard individually, a Big One, or that chummer Jacques had under his corporate thumb.
In addition to the ticket itself, the flatscreen display showed me that my account at the Sioux I-face Bank had just more than quintupled, with an infusion of 22-Kay nuyen "contingency funds."
Finally—also for download onto my credstick—was an "electronic password," I guess that's the best way of describing it. The message I had to deliver to Barnard's "colleague" in Hawai'i wasn't something I could memorize and recite verbatim—of course not, that would mean I'd know what the message was. Instead, it would be delivered to me on optical chip—no doubt encrypted and loaded with enough ice to chill a good-sized lake of synth-scotch—when I arrived at the Casper International Airport for my boost to the islands. The electronic password would identify me to the appropriate gofer at the airport for the handover.
I stared at the data displayed on the screen, and I fretted. Not because my comfortable little life was getting turned upside down and shaken out like a garbage can—well, not
only
because of that, at least. No, what worried me the most were my own reactions. Just a few hours before, I'd been thinking I didn't have the instincts to survive in the shadows anymore (if I'd
ever
had them ...), and now I had proof.
Proof? Yeah.
I found myself wanting to trust Jacques Barnard, wanting to believe he was telling me the chip-truth about the trip to Hawai'i. About the fact that he didn't consider me in hock to the corp. That he'd picked me for the messenger job because he respected and—maybe—liked me. Worse, I found myself wanting to like him.
Trust him?
Like
him? Get fragging real. Barnard was the Johnson to end all Johnsons—I'd had enough personal proof of that four years before, hadn't I? If I thought he would—or
could
—feel any genuine human emotion for a convenient tool like me, I was naive at best, schizophrenic at worst. And the fact that I felt an urge to reciprocate those nonexistent feelings . .. well, maybe it was time to hang up the old trenchcoat and hip flask and carve out a nice, safe career selling greeting cards or some drek.
With a snarl I shoved my credstick into the telecom's slot and punched Download. As the system transferred the data—ticket, operating funds, and password—I forced myself to think through the situation coldly and logically.
Okay, no matter how Barnard couched the "request" in polite and friendly terms, the fact was that I didn't have much choice but to go along with him. Debts are debts, and megacorps are even harder on welchers than loansharks. I was going to Hawai'i, carrying a message that I couldn't read, to a person that I didn't know, under circumstances that I couldn't control. Anything I'd missed? Oh yes—facing potential opposition that I couldn't analyze or estimate. Great, better and better. In other words, this situation was the exact opposite of the "shadowruns" I usually chose, I thought bleakly. Maximum exposure, minimum leverage, and probably zero backup. Going in blind and stupid.
Well, at least I could do
some
research. I groaned as I thought of spending the next four or five hours whipping together another smartframe like Naomi to scope out any and all connections that Yamatetsu as a corp, and Barnard as an individual, had with the independent Kingdom of Hawai'i. Well, hell, I could sleep on the plane, I supposed.
Wait a tick here—there might be another option. I had one resource that might be able to tell me something useful. This resource seemed to have an almost encyclopedic memory for facts, factoids, and scurrilous rumors about corps the world over, and key players within them. Considering that he'd been involved with Yamatetsu and Barnard himself—albeit indirectly, through the intermediary of one Dirk Montgomery—he might be able to shed some interesting light on the subject, on what I was getting myself into.
I leaned forward again, rattled a command string into the telecom's keyboard, then waited while it dialed a CalFree State LTG number. For the second time tonight—my time for cold relays, apparently—I watched the icons blink as my call was routed through a couple of intermediary nodes. Then, finally, the Ringing symbol flashed on-screen.
Someone answered immediately—through a blank screen, audio only—a thin, somewhat asthmatic voice that brought to mind images of a weasel-faced punk.
"Do
desu
ka
?"
"Get me Argent," I told the screen.
The weasel paused. "And who the frag are you?" he demanded.
"The fact that I know about this relay means I don't have to answer that, doesn't it?" I pointed out.
"Look,
priyatel
," the weasel snarled, "you want to play fragging games, you play them somewhere else
,
neh?
I imagined him reaching for the Disconnect key with a dirty forefinger and shrugged. "Okay,
omae
," I told him, "we'll play it your way." It didn't really matter anyway. "Tell Argent that Dirk Montgomery wants to talk to him, okay?"
"Montgomery?" The weasel's voice changed, the habitual hostility vanishing. "Hey, the Man talked about you,
priyatel
, told me some stories. We got something in common, you know that?" I didn't really want to think about what that might be, but the weasel went on, "We're both refugees from the Star. How about that, huh? Small fragging world,
neh?"
"Yeah," I said, muffling a sigh. "Small fragging world. And you are ...?"
"You can call me Wolf."
"Oh." I tried again. "I need to talk to Argent, Wolf."
"Can't do it,
priyatel,
he's over the wall and out of the sprawl. On biz."
"When's he due back?"
Wolf/Weasel chuckled thinly. "You ever known Argent to give you a straight answer to that one?" He paused, then went on more seriously, "I'll get him to call you when he gets back, that's the best I can do. Got a relay number?"
I gave Wolf the LTG number for a voice-mail service in Cheyenne. Nowhere near as secure as a true cold relay, of course, but since the voice mailbox was rented in the name of a dead man, at least it wouldn't lead interested parties
directly
to my doorstep. I exchanged a few more empty pleasantries with Wolf/Weasel and logged off as soon as I could.
I sighed again and checked the time. Close to eighteen hundred. It had been a full couple of days, all in all, and it didn't look like the pace would be slowing any time soon. I reviewed the details on my S-O ticket: departure, oh-six-hundred, check in and be in the boarding lounge no later than one hour before dust-off. No worries there ... at first glance. Unfortunately, however, the only airport in the Sioux Nation capable of handling full-on suborbitals is in Casper,
not
in Cheyenne—and almost 300 klicks away. Which meant a short-hop "Skybus," which left from downtown Cheyenne. Which, in turn, meant a cab from my doss to the Skybus terminus, unless I wanted to pay an arm and
two
legs for parking my car. Which meant ...
I sighed one more time. I'd better start packing.
Traditionally, the screamsheets and datafaxes have absolutely nothing good to say about the many short-hop carriers in the Sioux Nation. Too many companies, too little inspection, too many cases of pilot error, too few meaningful afterincident investigations, drekcetera. So when I boarded the Federated-Boeing Commuter VTOL, all shiny in its Sioux Skybus livery, and strapped myself into the window seat, I was expecting a hairy ride.
No flap, chummer, smooth as synthsilk. Okay, it's true, I
could
see past the little bitty curtain into the flight deck, and it
did
disturb me a tad to watch the pilot and copilot—jacked into the flight systems via fiberoptic cables—playing a heated game of crib while we were climbing out. But other than that, no problems.
