Ship Who Searched (29 page)

Lermontov was a typical station for tramp freighters and ships of dubious registration. Not precisely a pirate station, since it
was
near a Singularity, it still had station managers who looked the other way when certain kinds of ships made port, docks that accepted cash in advance and didn’t inquire too closely into papers, and a series of bars and restaurants where deals could be made with no fear of recording devices.

That was where Alex went—wearing one of his neon outfits. Tia was terrified that he would be recognized for what he was, but there was nothing she could do about it. He couldn’t even wear a contact-button; the anti-surveillance equipment in every one of those dives would short it out as soon as he crossed the threshold. She could only monitor the station newsgrids, look for more clues about “their” ship, and hope his acting ability was as good as he thought it was.

Alex had learned the trick of drinking with someone when you wanted to stay sober a long time ago. All it took was a little sleight of hand. You let the quarry drain his drink, switch his with yours, and let him drain the second, then call for another round. After three rounds, he wouldn’t even notice you weren’t drinking, particularly not when
you
were buying the drinks.

Thank the spirits of space for a MedService credit account.

He started out in the “Pink Comet,” whose neon decorations more than outmatched his jumpsuit. He learned quickly enough there that the commodities
he
wanted weren’t being offered—although the rebuff was friendly enough, coming from the bartender after he had already stood the whole house a round. In fact, the commodities being offered were more in the line of quasi-legal services, rather than goods. The bartender didn’t know who might have what he wanted—but he knew who would know and sent Alex on to the “Rimrunners.”

Several rounds later, he suffered through a comical interlude where he encountered someone who thought he was buying feelie-porn and sex-droids, and another with an old rock-rat who insisted that what he wanted was not artifacts but primitive art. “There’s no money in them arty-facts no more,” the old boy insisted, banging the table with a gnarled fist. “Them accountants don’t want arty-facts, the damn market’s
got glutted
with ’em! I’m tellin’ ya—primy-tive art is the
next
thing!”

It took Alex getting the old sot drunk to extract himself from the man—which might have been what the rock-rat intended in the first place. By then he discovered that the place he really wanted to be was the “Rockwall.”

In the “Rockwall” he hit paydirt, all right—but not precisely what he had been looking for.

The bar had an odd sort of quiet ambience; a no-nonsense non-human bartender, an unobtrusive bouncer who outweighed Alex by half again his own weight, and a series of little enclosed table-nooks where the acoustics were such that no sound escaped the table area. Lighting was subdued, the place was immaculately clean, the prices not outrageously inflated. Whatever deals went on here, they were discreet.

Alex made it known to the bartender what he was looking for and took a seat at one of the tables. In short order, his credit account had paid for a gross of Betan funeral urns, twenty soapstone figurines of Rg’kedan snake-goddesses, three exquisite little crystal Kanathi skulls that were probably worth enough that the Institute and Medical would forgive him anything else he bought, and—of all bizarre things to see out here—a Hopi kachina figure of Owl Dancer from old Terra herself. The latter was probably stolen from another crewman; Alex made a promise to himself to find the owner and get it back to him—or her. It was not an artifact as such, but it might well represent a precious bit of tribal heritage to someone who was so far from home and tribe that the loss of this kachina could be a devastating blow.

His credit account had paid for these things—but those
he
did business with were paid in cash. Simply enough done, as he discovered at the first transaction. The seller ordered a “Rock’n’Run”—the bartender came to the table with a cashbox. Alex signed a credit chit for the amount of sale plus ten percent to the bar; the bartender paid the seller. Everyone was happy.

He’d spoken with several more crewmen of various odd ships, prompting, without seeming to, replies concerning rumors of disease or of plague ships. He got old stories he’d heard before, the
Betan Dutchman,
the
Homecoming,
the
Alice Bee.
All ships and tales from previous decades; nothing new.

He stayed until closing, making the bartender stretch his “lips” in a cheerful “smile” at the size of the bills he was paying—and making the wait-beings argue over who got to serve him next with the size of his tips. He had remembered what Jon Chernov had told him once about Intel people:
They have to account for every half-credit they spend, so they’re as tightfisted as a corporate accountant at tax time. If you’re ever doing Intel work, be a big spender. They’ll never suspect you. And better a docked paycheck for overspending than a last look at the business end of a needler.

Just before closing was when the Quiet Man came in. As unobtrusive as they came, Alex didn’t realize the man was in the bar until he caught a glimpse of him talking with the bartender. And he didn’t realize that he was coming towards Alex’s table until he was standing there.

“I understand you’re buying things,” the Quiet Man breathed. “I have some—things.”

He opened his hand, briefly, to display a miniature vase or bottle, a lovely thing with a rainbow sheen and a style that seemed oddly familiar, although Alex couldn’t place it. As if one had fused Art Nouveau with Salvadore Dali, it had a skewed but fascinating sinuosity.

“That’s the sort of merchandise I’m interested in, all right,” Alex said agreeably, as he racked his brain, trying to place where he had seen a piece like it before. “The trouble is, it looks a little expensive for my pocket.”

The Quiet Man slid in opposite Alex at a nod. “Not as expensive as you think,” the Quiet Man replied. “The local market’s glutted with this stuff.” The Quiet Man’s exterior matched his speech; gray jumpsuit, pale skin, colorless eyes and hair, features that were utterly average. “I have about a hundred little pieces like this and I haven’t been able to unload them, and that’s a fact.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” Alex told him, allowing his surprise to show through.

The Quiet Man shrugged. “You’d find it out sooner or later. The bosses only wanted the big stuff. Some of the other guys took jewelry; I thought they were crazy, since it was only titanium, and the pieces weren’t comfortable to wear and a little flimsy. But some of the earlier crews must have brought back these perfume bottles, because I haven’t been able to dump even one. I was hoping if you were buying for another sector, you’d be interested. I can give you a good deal on the lot.”

“What kind of a good deal?” Alex asked.

The Quiet Man told him, and they began their bargaining. They ended it a good half hour after the bar was officially closed, but since Alex was willingly paying liquor prices for fruit juice—all that was legal after-hours—the bartender was happy to have him there. The staff cleaned up around them, until he and the Quiet Man shook hands on the deal.

“These aren’t exactly ancient artifacts,” the Quiet Man had admitted under pressure from Alex. “They can be doctored to look like ’em with a little acid-bath, though. They’re—oh—maybe eight, nine hundred years old. Come from a place colonized by one of the real early human slowships; colony did all right for a while, then got religion and had themselves a religious war, wiped each other out until there wasn’t enough to be self-sustaining. We figured the last of them died out maybe two hundred years ago. Religion. Go figure.”

Alex eyed his new acquisition with some surprise. “This’s human-made? Doesn’t look it!”

The Quiet Man shrugged. “Beats me. Bosses said the colonists were some kind of artsy-craftsy back-to-nature types. Had this kind of offshoot of an earth-religion with sacramental hallucinogenics thrown in to make it interesting, until somebody decided
he
was the next great prophet and half the colony didn’t see it that way. I mean, who knows with that kind? Crazies.”

“Well, I can make something up that sounds pretty exotic,” Alex said cheerfully. “My clients won’t give a damn. So, what do you want to do about delivery?”

“You hire a lifter and a kid from SpaceCaps,” the Quiet Man said instantly. “I’ll do the same. They meet here, tomorrow, at twelve-hundred. Your kid gives mine the credit slip, mine gives yours the box. Make the slip out to the bar, the usual.”

Since that was exactly the kind of arrangement Alex had made for the gross of funeral urns, with only the time of delivery differing, he agreed, and he and the Quiet Man left the bar and went their separate ways.

When he returned to the ship, he took the stairs instead of the lift, still trying to remember
where
he had seen the style of the tiny vase.

“You look cheerful!” Tia said, relief at his safe return quite evident in her voice.

“I feel cheerful. I picked up some artifacts on the black market that I’m sure the Institute will be happy to have.” He emptied his pockets of everything but the “perfume bottle” and laid out his “loot” where Tia could use her close-up cameras on the objects. “And this, I suspect, is stolen—” He unwrapped the kachina. “See if you can find the owner, will you?”

“No problem,” she replied absently. “I’ve been following your credit chit all over the station; that’s how I figured out how to keep track of you. Alex, the two end skulls are forgeries, but the middle one is real, and worth as much as everything you spent tonight.”

“Glad to hear it.” He chuckled. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to the Institute and Medical if they found out I’d been overtipping and buying rounds for the house! All right, here’s my final find, and I have a load of them coming over tomorrow. Do
you
remember what the devil this is?”

He placed the warped little vase carefully on the console. Tia made a strange little inarticulate gargle.

“Alex!” she exclaimed. “That’s one of SWOT’s artifacts!”

He slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Of course! That’s why I couldn’t remember what book I’d seen it in! Spirits of space—Tia, I just made a deal with the crewman of the ship that’s running these things in for a whole load of them! He said—and I quote—‘the bosses only wanted the bigger stuff.’ They’re not really artifacts, they’re from some failed human art-religious colony.”

“I’m calling the contact number Sinor gave us,” she said firmly. “Keep your explanations until I get someone on the line.”

Tia had been ready to start sending her servos to pick lint out of the carpet with sheer nerves until she figured out that she could trace Alex’s whereabouts by watching for his credit number in the station database. She followed him to three different bars that way, winding up in one called “Rockwall,” where he settled down and began spending steadily. She called up the drink prices there, and soon knew when he had made an actual artifact purchase by the simple expedient of which numbers didn’t match some combination of the drink prices. A couple of times the buys were obvious; no amount of drinking was going to run up numbers like he’d just logged to his expense account.

She had worried a little when he didn’t start back as soon as the bar closed—but drinks kept getting logged in, and she figured then, with a little shiver of anticipation, that he must have gotten onto a hot deal.

When he returned, humming a little under his breath, she
knew
he’d hit paydirt of some kind.

The artifacts he’d bought were enough to pacify the Institute—but when he brought out the little vase, she thought her circuits were going to fry.

The thing’s identification was so obvious to
her
that she couldn’t believe at first that he hadn’t made the connection himself. But then she remembered how fallible softperson memory was. . . .

Well, it didn’t matter. That was one of the things she was here for, after all. She grabbed a com circuit and coded out the contact number Sinor had given her, hoping it was something without
too
much of a lag time.

She could not be certain where her message went to—but she got an answer so quickly that
she
suspected it had to come from someone in the same real-space as Lermontov. No visual coming through to them, of course—which, if she still had been entertaining the notion that this was really an Institute directive they were following, would have severely shaken her convictions. But knowing it was probably the Drug Enforcement Arm—she played along with the polite fiction that the visual circuit on their end was malfunctioning, and let Alex repeat the details of the deal he had cut, as she offered only a close-up of the little vase.

“Go through with it,” their contact said, when Alex was done. “You’ve done excellent work, and you’ll be getting that bonus. Go ahead and receive the consignment; we’ll take care of the rest and clear out the debits on that account for you. And don’t worry; they’ll never know you weren’t an ordinary buyer.”

There was no mention of plague or any suggestions that they should take precautions against contamination. Alex gave her a significant look.

“Very well, sir,” he only said, with careful formality. “I hope we’ve accomplished something here for you.”

“You have,” the unknown said, and then signed off.

Alex picked up the little vase and turned it around and around in his hands as he sat down in his chair and put his feet up on the console. Tia made the arrangements for the two messengers to come to the ship for the credit chits and then to the bar for the pickups—fortunately, not at the same time. That didn’t take more than a moment or two, and she turned her attention back to Alex as soon as she was done.

“Was that stupid, dumb luck, coincidence, or were we set up?” she asked suspiciously. “And where
was
that agent? It sounded like he was in our back pocket!”

“I’m going to make some guesses,” Alex said, carefully. “The first guess is that we
did
run into some plain good luck. The Quiet Man had tried all the
approved
outlets for his trinkets—outlets that the Arm doesn’t know about—and found them glutted. He was desperate enough to try someone like me. I suspect his ship pulls out tomorrow or the next day.”