Four
I stood with my back pressed against the armored door, scanning the night, for four minutes, while my heart pounded. When the door finally opened, I nearly fell in on my ass.
A stooped man in coarse coveralls, stevedores’ medallion pinned to his collar, relocked the door behind us. He faced me, scratching a beard the color of wash water. ‘‘This is the freight terminal. Ground transport is—’’
‘‘I want the freight terminal.’’
‘‘Then lucky you.’’ He turned and limped toward a counter flanked by thirty-foot tall crate stacks.
Panting and wide-eyed, I pointed back toward the floor plaque and twisted bars. ‘‘You should keep this door unlocked. I could have—’’
His back to me, he waved his hand like he was discarding a candy wrapper.
‘‘Modern bars are grezzen-proof. And there hasn’t been one grezzen attack inside the Line since the Rover ’bots went operational ten years ago. Tourism bureau updates the plaque, and shines up the welds, every month. Heightens the adventure for visitors.’’
I rolled my eyes. ‘‘The whole thing’s a fraud?’’
‘‘Oh, that grezz got Thom Webb right out there, alright. Tore him apart, bone from bone, like a wolf on a rotisserie chicken.’’
I rolled my eyes again. ‘‘If it’s part fraud, why do you believe any of it?’’
He stepped behind his freight counter, and tapped real papers edge-up into a stack. ‘‘Thom Webb was my daddy.’’
I dropped my jaw and my duffle. ‘‘I’m sorry.’’
He shrugged. ‘‘S’alright. There’s not a person on Dead End hasn’t lost family to the grezzen. They got my mother, too. My daddy used to say, if you meet a grezzen and the devil walking down the street together—and on Dead End you might—kill the grezzen first.’’
The Handtalk in my thigh pocket shivered, and I answered it.
‘‘Parker?’’
‘‘I’m at the freight terminal, Mr. Cutler.’’
‘‘Parker? Speak up. Christ! These things are crap.’’
His crap, though he didn’t know it. Handtalk was a wholly owned Cutler Communications subsidiary, but a mere pimple on its colossal corporate ass. There was no gain in pointing that out to Cutler, a self-described big picture guy. ‘‘The Handtalks are top-shelf, Sir. But they’re line-of-sight, and we’re both in a ditch. DE 476 has no satellite net.’’
‘‘Seriously? Christ. This hole makes the boondocks look like Manhattan.’’
I covered my mouthpiece with my hand and sighed. Most citizens of the Human Union knew what boondocks looked like. Only a Trueborn few, like Bartram Cutler, knew what Manhattan looked like. In fact, he owned two penthouses there.
‘‘We’re going on to the hotel, Parker. That flight was a bitch.’’
For me down in the cargo bay, too, thanks. I had been hired by Cutler sight unseen and didn’t know much about him beyond what anybody could read in the ‘zines. But he was easy to dislike.
‘‘Parker, did you see those bars and that plaque in the passage?’’
‘‘I did.’’
‘‘You don’t really get a sense for the power of these things from the holos. I was right to order hand-reloaded brass.’’
Bartram Cutler, most trailwise bwana in all Manhattan. ‘‘We couldn’t have bought rounds off the shelf. The gun’s too old, sir.’’
‘‘Which is why the thing cost so much to restore. Make ’em uncrate everything before you sign for it. I don’t care how long it takes.’’
I cared.
Cutler said, ‘‘Remember, at their rates even one scratch is unacceptable! Goodnight. Out. Whatever the hell you say. Christ!’’
I sat on my duffle and sighed. Legionnaires were scorned everywhere, but on Earth, evidently, this Christ had us beat. I rubbed sleep from my eyes, and wondered how long it would take to pump out the crappers.
The wall behind the orphan clerk’s counter was pinned with curled papers, flapped by a lazy ceiling fan. He squinted as he ran his finger across lines on the one fresh sheet. ‘‘Two consignments on this shuttle. Seventy-one ton container, declared as prepacked. Six-ton container, declared as replacement Line Rover ’bots. You’re waiting for the seventy-one ton.’’
‘‘I never said that.’’
‘‘Didn’t have to. Only Wrangler that’s in off the Line just now squats to pee. You don’t. At least not in my warehouse.’’
I frowned. ‘‘Is everybody on this planet a comedian?’’
The orphan stared at me. ‘‘ ’Til you got here. Hold still.’’ He drew back his hand, then slapped my forearm.
A life-raft yellow spider as big as a saucer bounced off the floor, flashing fangs as thick as knitting needles. The clerk stomped it with a thick boot. ‘‘Goddamn eight-legged rats.’’
I shuddered, gasped, and pointed at the bright splatter. ‘‘Thanks. I take it that’s poisonous?’’ Survival 101: On every planet, creatures who advertised themselves did so for a reason.
He shrugged. ‘‘Lemon bug venom’ll kill a woog—six-legged water buffalo to you—in thirty seconds. But not you or me. Different planets, different organic chemistry.’’
‘‘But it would hurt?’’
He shook his head. ‘‘Nah. Your hand would swell up like a sweet potato for a while. You’d puke for a couple days.’’
He jerked his thumb at a door behind him. ‘‘I sleep in there. It’s cramped. But you’re welcome to sleep out here in the freight bay ‘til the shuttle taxis over from the passenger terminal.’’
I stared down at the yellow goo on the floor. ‘‘Any more of these in here?’’
He pointed at the space behind his counter, and rapped on the countertop. ‘‘I spread Bugout back here every morning. You can bed down fine. And I keep a shovel under the counter to whack ’em before they get too close.’’
A ringing testimonial for Bugout.
Ten minutes later the clerk retired to a back room and turned out the lights. The room seemed uncomfortably vast to a Yavet native like me. I wedged behind the clerk’s counter, curled on the Bugoff-dusted floor, then laid the shovel close at hand and kneaded my duffle into a pillow. Lemon bug legs tapped, somewhere in the dark. Like a bounty hunter’s boots in the corridor outside a down-level Kube’s wall back home, when I was four.
With my eyes squeezed shut, I could still hear Orion’s voice as I clung to her warmth.
She touched her fingers to my lips and whispered, ‘‘It’s all right, babe. He’ll walk right on past.’’
The bounty hunter coughed, a squealing wheeze.
Orion said, ‘‘It’s Jack, alright. I should’ve killed him the first time he came after you. The smoking will, but not soon enough.’’
‘‘Why didn’t you?’’
She sighed. ‘‘All life is precious, Jazen. Even a killer’s. And especially an Illegal’s. That’s a thing that should never be forgotten.’’
‘‘Am I one?’’
My fingers rested on her lips, so even in the dark I could feel her smile. ‘‘A killer? Never. An Illegal? Sure, but that’s just a stupid name thought up by stupid people.’’
‘‘No. I mean am I a thing that should never be forgotten?’’
‘‘What? I’d never forget you. Why would you ever even wonder about a thing like that?’’
‘‘They forgot me.’’
She squeezed me tighter. ‘‘Oh, sweetheart, your parents didn’t forget you. Never, ever.’’
I hugged her tighter, and I felt her tears on my fingertips.
She said, ‘‘It’s complicated. You’ll understand, someday.’’
‘‘Will Jack get me before someday?’’
‘‘Never, ever. I persuaded him. Now he won’t mess with us.’’
‘‘What’s persuaded?’’
‘‘They call him One-eyed Jack, now. We’ll leave it at that.’’
The coughing outside faded, then disappeared.
Like she did every night, Orion rocked me, hummed, and I closed my eyes.
I woke in the warehouse on Dead End to gray daylight, and someone whispering, ‘‘Come to momma.’’
I creaked to my knees, peeked over the counter, out across the warehouse, and Dead End surprised me again.