Four
Feighan settled gingerly onto the terrace railing. The night wind moaned in his ears; all around gleamed the light jewels of Manhattan. Shock waved tremors through his voice: “Why do they want you?” He gripped the cool wrought iron for support.
Greystein rattled another sheet of paper. “Because of this.”
“What?”
“Do you know they put a detective on me?”
“What?”
“That bastard Davis hired a detective to investigate me, and this is what she came up with.” It crackled when he passed it over. “She listed all my alleged violations of the FNC Code. You ever seen such crap?”
“Can I see?” asked Sam.
“No,” said Feighan instinctively. “This is, ah, this is grownup stuff here.”
“Aw, come on, he’s my roommate too.”
“Sam,” said Feighan in a warning tone.
Greystein bounced impatiently on the balls of his feet. “Just look at that, can you believe it? The NAC spent good money on a detective just to smear me!”
“Listen, ah—” He glanced from Sam to H’nik. The Actuni’s eyespines pointed right at him; Sam had cocked his head attentively. “Let’s talk about this inside, okay? H’nik, please excuse us.”
“Of course. Sam, perhaps you can point out to me some of the city’s major landmarks?”
“Sure, H’nik.” He flicked his tongue at Feighan, then turned his back on the two. “Over there is—”
Feighan led Greystein by the arm. “Now what is this?” he said, when they had closed the living room door behind them.
“I need a drink; you want one?”
“No, and—”
“Order, Oscar: Pour one beer; do it now.” He stalked across the room to the bar and tapped its wood-grain panel. “C’mon!” But he had to wait. He rested his elbows on the countertop and lowered his face into his hands. “I don’t believe that bastard Davis hired a detective …”
Feighan skimmed the legal-sized sheet of paper in his hand. Headed “Surveillance Report: Marion Jefferson Greystein,” it was subtitled, “Summary of Violations.”
The compiler, one Avis Louder, had numbered the offenses in chronological order. Feighan skipped down the list. “Flinging for Personal Gain” cropped up more often than any other. The last entry, #67, was dated 3 June 2105; it accused Greystein of rape on the planet Canopus XVIII. He shook his head. “Are these true?”
Greystein looked up just as the bar delivered his beer. He downed half the stein before wiping the foam off his lips with the back of his hand. “What do you mean, true?”
“Did you do all these?” He checked the printout. “On May 10, did you charge William N’komo five thousand dollars for passage to Delurc?”
“No, dammit!” He slammed the empty mug on the counter. “Look, McGill, Bill’s a good buddy. He came to me, he said his father’s on Delurc and they just got a message that the old chief’s really sick, and could I Fling him there ’cause the waiting list is four months long. What the fuck was I supposed to say, ‘Gee golly whillikers, Bill, I wish I could, but the rules say I can’t’? Huh?”
“Did you charge him five kay for it?”
“Christ, no! What do I need money for? Transportation?” He told Oscar to give him another beer and twirled an ashtray on the counter while he waited.
Feighan consulted the list again. “I know you made all these trips to Hideaway—”
“Yeah, I did.” His tone was belligerent. “You wanna make a big deal about it, too? I’m a Flinger, dammit, and if I want to go to Hideaway or Rehma or wherever, I’m going.”
“But the rules—”
“Would you get it through your head that I don’t give a shit what the rules say?”
Feighan threw down the printout. “You idiot! The only reason we never got called in for behavior modification before was because we pretended we’d already been brainwashed. We followed the rules in public; we made sure nobody noticed the b-mod hadn’t taken—and now you go, and you blow the whole thing, and you have the audacity to complain that you got caught? Jesus Christ, all you needed was a little discretion.”
Greystein leaned against the counter, a sour smile on his face. “You know, I sort of thought you’d worry more about yourself than me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m in a bind and you’re worried that maybe they’ll notice you.”
“Well, what do you think I am, a saint? My head’s at stake here, too. For Christ’s sakes, Greystein, I never asked you not to visit Hideaway, or Fling your friends around, or—or—” He kicked the list of accusations. “Or any of that! All I asked was that you not be so blatant about the fact that you jammed the b-mod program when we were rooming at the Academy. And what do you do? You—”
“No.” His hand slashed the air diagonally. “I did not flaunt it. You and Sam and Oscar are the only people with any connections to the NAC who know what I’ve been doing.”
“And Walking Mule and whoever else was listening when you were talking about that mirror.”
“But that was the first time, and that was this afternoon!” He raised his hands above his head, imploring the heavens to grant Feighan understanding. “Oh, McGill, McGill, don’t you see? I was discreet. I did behave—in public, at least. And they got me anyway. And I don’t have the faintest … I mean, look at that. Go on, look at it.”
Feighan bent over to pick it up. “Yeah? What am I supposed to see?”
“Let’s start with the fact that the detective listed my destinations.”
“Uh-huh. So? It’s the destinations that make the violations.”
“Feighan, I didn’t take any detective with me. I mean, granted, somebody’s watching me, she can see when I ping out—but how the hell does she know where I’m going? Can you tell me that?”
“Ah …” He frowned. The crisp typescript had suddenly lost much of its authority. “Did she get it right, though? Did you really go to these places?”
“Yes! But how the hell did she know?”
“Maybe you bragged about it in a bar?”
“God save me from fools! How many years have you known me? Have you ever heard me brag about that kind of thing in a bar—or anywhere else, for that matter?”
He thought about it. It made no sense. “How—wait a minute. I know how she did it.” Then he scowled. “No, that’s crazy, too.”
“What?”
“Well … one Flinger can follow another Flinger—”
“What?”
“Ah, come on, Greystein, you’ve felt the pull when I’ve Flung out—didn’t you know you could let it take you along?”
He waved a hand. “Now I know what you mean, yeah. But you’re saying the detective is a Flinger, then.”
“She’s got to be!”
“You mean one of our own spied on me? I can’t believe that …” But from his expression as he ordered another beer, it was clear that he could believe it—and maybe did. When the beer came, he chugged it down. “Oscar, order: pour one beer; do it now.” He belched. “Jesus, a spy in our midst.”
“And she’s got you cold.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to turn yourself in?”
Greystein narrowed his eyes. “You know me better than that, McGill—or at least I thought you did. Do you really think I’d let them brainwash me?”
He laughed with both affection and sadness. “Since you wouldn’t even let them do it to you in the Academy, no … although I think, now that things have gotten to this stage, maybe you ought to give the idea some consideration.”
“I think you’re crazy!”
Before Feighan could reply, the gliding glass door opened; Sam and H’nik came in from the terrace. Wind swirled through the living room. Feighan winced: he had promised Sam help with the coloring book, and H’nik help in its research, but he was devoting all his time to Greystein. And yet Greystein was closer to him than any man alive; he could not just say, hey, you worry about your problems, I’ll worry about mine. Briefly, Feighan wished that others could manage to need him one at a time—and only about half the time, at that. Then he sighed. That would never happen.
“Hey, McGill,” said Sam. “H’nik’s hungry, and—”
“I am very sorry, H’nik,” said Feighan. “I have been a thoughtless host. What may I get you?”
Sam slapped his tail on the Chinese rug to draw his guardian’s attention. “It can’t eat our food, McGill. Well, it can, but it’s not good enough for it.”
He opened his mouth and shut it again. He did not know what he could or should say except, after a moment’s thought, “May I get you some water, or—”
Again it was Sam who lacked the patience to wait for the alien to scrape out a reply. “It’s the fruit thing on its, um-um, head there—that’s what it can eat, and it’s what it wants to eat, and it asked me to get it, but even when I jumped, I couldn’t reach that high, so—” He pointed to the purplish gourd jutting out of its upper body. It had grown to cantaloupe size in the course of the afternoon. “So why don’t you pick it for us?”
“Oh, okay. Sure.” He reached for it—
H’nik jumped back.
“Ah …” Baffled, he spread his hands wide and looked from Sam to Greystein and back to H’nik.
The Actuni said, “Forgive me if my action seemed rude, for it was not so intended. The—” It rasped out one syllable so alien Feighan could not remember it, much less pronounce it. “—is coated with many millions of tiny glochids—barbed hairs—that would penetrate your skin and initiate an allergic reaction; the itching is said to be maddening.”
Sam’s tongue flickered. “How come you didn’t tell me that?”
“Because your physiology, my bud, is different, and your skin is thicker; the glochids would not penetrate your epidermis.”
“What’s a epiwhatchamacallit?”
Greystein answered that one. “It’s the outer layer of your skin, Sam.” He finished another beer and shoved the stein back in for a refill.
In the meantime, Feighan had crossed to the bar, where he rummaged around for the ice tongs. They were behind a row of dusty shot glasses. Holding them up to the light, he approached H’nik. “Would it cause you pain if I were to use these to remove the, ah, the—”
“The—” It made that sound again. “No, not in the least.”
He closed the jaws of the tongs on the fruit. “Should I pull, twist, or—”
“Twist first, then pull.”
Taking a deep breath, he tried it. The fruit popped off easily, but slipped out of the tongs and fell, bouncing once on the thick rug, flustering Feighan immensely. “I’m sorry, I—”
But H’nik scuttled forward until its spread roots straddled the fruit. Lowering its body a few centimeters, it sat on it like a bird on her egg. Its lower body slurped. The fruit disappeared. Squish it went, and crunch. Then silence.
In the interim, Greystein had had his mug filled. “That is the goddamnedest thing I have ever seen.” Elbow on the bar, he tilted back his head and poured the beer down his throat. His Adam’s apple rose and fell again and again.
Feighan wanted to speak to H’nik but did not know if Actuni conversed during meals. He did know that they hated to be kept waiting, so it impressed him that H’nik had displayed any patience at all, much less calmness. Even a Terran would have been insulted by a fourteen-hour wait.
H’nik’s lower body … belched. “Thank you. My inner half had grown restless.”
“Inner half?” said Sam.
“We are symbiotes, Sam—that is two life forms who need each other so much that each would die without the other.”
“Like me and McGill, huh?”
Feighan’s face flamed.
H’nik spared him the embarrassment of having to comment. “Your symbiosis—your mutual interdependence—is of an emotional nature. Mine is physical. I—”
Greystein interrupted. “You’re a monk, aren’t you?”
H’nik shuffled about to face him. “That is, perhaps, your language’s best approximation of my actual vocation. Not accurate, you must understand, but it is approximate.”
“Well I got a question for you.” He burped; a silly smile spread across his face.
“Then by all means ask it, Marion Jefferson Greystein.”
No, don’t, thought Feighan. You’re drunk, it’s going to be a stupid question.
Swaying back and forth, Greystein raised a finger to strike a forensic pose. “Do you believe, most reverend vegetable—”
“Greystein!” hissed Feighan.
He blinked owlishly at his roommate. “Whatsh the matter?”
“You’re drunk, that’s what’s the matter.”
“In vino veritas, old boy, which is to say that if I weren’t a little on the inebriated side, I probably wouldn’t have thought to ask this question, which is, when you come right down to it, a very serious kind of question indeed, and desh—deserving of the most serious form of reply. Do you, kind sir and honored visitor, believe that intelligent beings should be required to submit their innermost selves—verily, their souls!—to the tampering of temporal authorities?”
“As Actu boasts a theocracy,” said H’nik dryly, “that question is one to which we have devoted little debate.”
Sam pulled on Feighan’s pants leg. “What’s a theocracy?”
“Ah … where the church is the government.”
“Oh.” He made a face. “Can I watch the holo?”
“If you keep it soft.”
“Thanks.” He waddled over to the set and turned it on. In the background, Greystein looked nonplussed. H’nik stood quietly, asking nothing, apparently ready to answer anything.
The holovision came alive: the cube swirled with light that coalesced into three-dimensional shapes that sharpened into a line of medics kneeling over the victims of a hotel fire. A woman in her thirties with red eyes and a soot mark on her forehead walked straight toward the camera, hands outstretched, crying, “Jim! Jim, oh god, where are you, Jim?” Her voice rose as she swelled in the cube and filled it and blurred away when she passed through the focal range.
The voice-over said, “Mrs. James Winsocki of Philadelphia outside the Seven-Come-Eleven Hotel in Las Vegas, just minutes after the century’s worst fire claimed four hundred and seventy-six fatalities.”
In the silence imposed by the camera’s slow pan of the bodies in their tagged green bags, H’nik asked, “Have you come yet to a decision, Marion Jefferson Greystein?”
“About what?”
“In connection with your consortium’s directive.”
“Huh!”
Feighan said, “Maybe you ought to go in.”
“What, worried about yourself again?”
His cheeks warmed. “Cheap shot, Greystein.”
“So what are you worried about?”
“You, dammit! You’re my best friend—”
“I thought I was,” said Sam from the floor before the cube. Puzzlement—hurt—pinched his ward’s face.
“You are, Sam—Greystein’s my other best friend.”
“Oh.” He nodded, wrinkled his scaled forehead, and swung his attention back to the holo, now aglow with the low-slung sleekness of a Kwama sports’hove.
Feighan turned to Greystein. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Come on, McGill—they can’t hurt me! Hell, The Organization’s been trying to get you for years, and they’ve never succeeded for the same reason that the NAC will never be able to hurt me—we’re Flingers. We can vanish anytime anybody attacks us—no matter who it is.”
Feighan dropped into a black forcechair. What he heard disturbed him; it took him a while to organize a logical rebuttal. “Greystein, The Organization has never tried to hurt me—it’s been trying to capture me, alive and well, so it could use me. There’s a world of difference between that and what the NAC will do if you don’t submit. They’ll Rogue you!”
Greystein burped, covered his mouth a second late, and shrugged. “So?”
“Are you dense or are you just drunk? If they do that, if they Rogue you, anybody, anywhere in the universe except in the psychiatric care section of a Flinger Building, can kill you—and get paid for it!”
“What?” At last, Greystein looked shaken.
“That’s right. A reward, a bounty. One million dollars, payable in any currency of the Network including fancies.”
He raised his eyebrows. “They think I’m worth a million, huh?”
“For God’s sakes, man, this isn’t a joke! With that kind of price on your head, somebody, somewhere, is going to shoot you just to claim it. Please! Don’t let things get that far.”
“They won’t.”
“Not if you report—”
Greystein’s eyes cleared, and blazed. “No! I will not be brainwashed. Order, Oscar: pour one—”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, I don’t believe you …” He looked around the room for support, but H’nik seemed content to observe in silence, and Sam lay rapt before the holo, where a man-sized purple bird, briefcase tucked under one wing, was emerging from the Embassy of Rehma to say, “We have no comment on reports that our government has fallen, and we will have no comments until such time as we are able to contact our capital city.”
While Greystein wobbled to the bar, Feighan picked up the phone. Punching the number, his finger shook.
“Yo.”
“Walking Mule? Hi, it’s McGill. Listen, we’ve got a major problem here—Greystein’s just been ordered to report to the b-mod center, and—”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” said the Senior Flinger. “You go on and offer him my sympathies, will you?”
“Doesn’t he get a hearing—any kind of chance to defend himself?”
“Nope. He waived that right when he signed his last contract—hell, McGill, the two of you should know that, shouldn’t have to ask me about it. First thing Running Bear taught me was to read what I signed.”
“Sixty-two pages of fine print? Give me a break, Walking Mule … but isn’t there something you could do, a string you could pull or—”
“Nope.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry as all hell, McGill. It’s a damn shame, I agree, but there’s nothing I can do to help the boy. This comes straight from Director Davis himself.”
“But why is he doing it? I mean, it’s not like the charges against Greystein are thoroughly substantiated or anything—Walking Mule, they’re all anonymous accusations. That’s unconstitutional.”
“Now, I wouldn’t talk too fast if I were you,” said the older man. “Truth to tell, there was a test case on this twenty, thirty years back—and the Supreme Court held that, given the circumstances, the NAC had the right to impose whatever sort of discipline it felt necessary.”
“But—”
“McGill, you’re old enough to know that the only reason we Flingers are tolerated is because we’re disciplined.” Impatience sharpened his voice. “You get somebody like Greystein kicking up his heels, you got bad press—that means a queasy government—that means feuding with the FNC—and the next thing you know, Flingers all across the galaxy are in one heap of trouble.”
Feighan winced. “Yeah, but—”
“Look. You tell Greystein to get his butt into the PsychSection. He’ll be out in a week or two. And McGill, I swear this on my ancestors’ burial grounds, he ain’t going to be able to tell the difference, and neither will you. He just won’t be as stupid as he is now, that’s all.”
“I’ll tell him, but I don’t think—”
“You just remind him that it’s his ass, McGill. Talk to you later.”
“Yeah.” Feighan hung up. He liked the situation not at all.
He liked it even less when he raised his gaze to the holocube: an old-style marketplace with thousands of stalls. Vaguely humanoid figures in masks and breathing tanks moved past racks of glassware and stacks of produce. They paused only to lift another body onto another litter. The voice-over said, “This was the scene this afternoon in Hotu Botai, a provincial capital on Inta Leina. The plague struck with deadly swiftness; authorities—”
From across the room, Greystein called, “Hey! That’s where I got you your mirror. What happened?”
“Plague.” He leaned forward to hear the announcer.
Greystein tottered over to plop into the other forcechair. “Plague?”
The ʼcaster said, “It is suspected that the plague was released on the planet by a Terran Flinger who was seen wandering through the marketplace yesterday, our time.”
Feighan’s eyes widened. “My God! They’re blaming you.”
“McGill, I—” All color had drained from his cheeks. His voice shook, but it no longer slurred. “I’ve been there lots of times. The books say—hell, they prove!—that Inta Leinans and Terrans are mutually imcom—communicable. I couldn’t have—”
Feighan shushed him with a wave of his hand.
From the speakers came “—not of Terran derivation, but of Rehmal origin. It is suspected that the Flinger—”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, shut it off!” Hand to stomach, Greystein looked as though he might vomit.
“You took a Rehmal to Inta Leina?” said Feighan in disbelief.
“She—”
“You did?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Jesus Christ, Greystein!” He threw his head back and his arms up. “You stupid ass! You Flung someone to another planet without going through Immigration? Bad enough doing interstellar Flings on your own time, but—but—” He pointed to the cube. “I don’t believe you did that!”
Greystein slumped deeper in his chair. “I didn’t know,” he said softly. “If I had, I never would have—but I didn’t. She didn’t tell me she was sick. I didn’t know …”
In a tone equally, incongruously soft, H’nik said, “Your burden is heavy. You should seek to lighten it.”
“How?” snapped Greystein.
“I am unfamiliar with your culture’s means of expiating guilt, but surely you are not.”
“I don’t believe in religion.”
“It requires not faith but sorrow, shame—do you believe in them? Or do you believe that you have done no wrong?”
“Of course I’ve done wrong!” He made a fist and pounded it against his knee. “But the answer isn’t going to the PsychSection and getting my head scrubbed. I know that isn’t the answer.”
“Then—”
The doorbell rang.
Feighan said, “Oscar, query: who is at the door; answer it now.”
As Oscar hummed, prepatory to replying, Sam picked himself off the floor and raced for the vestibule. His spine fins had stiffened.
The computer said, “Three Terrans; unfamiliar; NAC uniforms.”
“Something’s wrong, McGill,” called Sam.
“What?”
“They’re not nice; they want to—to hurt. But not you or me. It’s—” He touched the door and squeezed his eyelids shut. “It’s Greystein, I think.”
“Oscar, order: run ID check; do it now.”
Tension mounted in the few brief seconds before the computer came back online: “The visitors are Jayeff Washington, P. Thomas Schintrino, and Kay Bechett. NAC Central Computing vouches for them; they are attached to Internal Security. They have been issued an NAC warrant for—”
“Oh, shit,” said Greystein. He levered himself to his feet. For a moment, he stood unsteadily, looking from Feighan to Sam to H’nik to the great glass doors opening onto the terrace. He took a step toward the doors.
Feighan said, “Greystein, please: go with them. Walking Mule says—”
“No.” He stumbled away. “It’s my head, it’s my brain, I won’t let anybody fuck with it, anybody.
“But who will forgive you?” said H’nik.
“What?”
“To accede—to submit—”
The doorbell rang again, longer, more harshly.
“—is to initiate the rites of expiation.”
“I don’t need them!”
“But you do. Without them you will never forget those alleyways, those bodies, that guilt. Without expiation your every sleep will raise monsters against you. Every sapient everywhere will hunt you. Go with them, Marion Jefferson Greystein. Only they can bring you peace.”
“No, dammit, no!” He took another step, and—
Feighan felt the other Flinger’s Talent tug his own as Greystein teleported away. He shook his head. “Thank you for trying, H’nik.”
The doorbell rang four times, short and sharp.
The Actuni said, “I only wish I had succeeded.”
Sadly, Feighan crossed the room. Sam stood with his tail cocked and fists raised. “Don’t let ’em in, McGill. They’re—they’re nasty!”
“I have to, Sam.” He turned the knob.
A shoulder caught him in the chest and bowled him over. A deep voice said, “Shit, I’m sor—” then cracked, and yelped.
Flat on his back, Feighan lifted himself on his elbows. The InSec who had knocked him down was trying to shake Sam loose from his calf, but Rhanghan jaws are strong. The female in the trio was drawing her weapon. The third cop was grabbing at Sam’s thrashing tail. “Sam!”
The Rhanghan dropped off and backed away, tail high, tongue waving. He hissed and spat. “He hit you!”
“It was an accident, Sam.”
“Little bastard,” said the woman. Automatic out, now, she was drawing a bead on Sam’s head.
Before Feighan could react, the third guard grabbed Bechett’s wrist and yanked it behind her back. “Uh-uh, Kay. Drop it.”
The gun thudded onto the floor.
The first guard, the one with J. Washington embroidered above the pocket of his steel-blue tunic, was twisting his right leg into an awkward angle to inspect it. “Shit, I’m bleeding!”
Feighan got to his feet—slowly, cautiously, a little fearfully. InSecs had reflexes, not brains. “Ah—if you’d like, I could Fling you to the Infirmary.”
“Shit, yes,” said Washington, straightening. Crimson stained both his fingers and his pants leg. “He got poison in his fangs?”
“No.” He bit down on a smile. Trust an InSec to ask a question like that! “And he’s in perfect health, too. If you had to get bitten here, he’s the one to get bitten by.”
Bechett was muttering to Schintrino. Her narrow face was flushed, her eyes slitted. “Gimme my gun back.”
Feighan strolled over to her. “Listen, lady: that’s my ward. His name is Sam. You touch one scale on his hide, and you know what I’ll do to you? I’ll set you down halfway across the galaxy, on the reef where the baby Delu grow up. They’re little things—barely half Sam’s size—so when they go to eat you, they’ll only take little bites. I don’t know how many rounds you’ve got in that gun of yours, but the reef’ll have thousands of baby Delu. Hungry baby Delu. You’ll live for ten or twenty minutes—until one of them chews through your eye into your brain. Now. You gonna keep your mouth shut? Or are you going to keep on making me mad?”
She paled. She did not meet his eye. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.”
With a hand in the small of her back, Schintrino pushed her into the hallway. “Wait there.” He closed the door, then turned around. “All right. You know why we’re here. Has he Flung out?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay—why don’t you pop Jayeff over to the Building, then let me take a look around—for the report, you know? We’ll lose our jobs if we don’t eyeball the place.”
“Sure.”
“Hey!” said Washington. “Is this gonna hurt?”
“Not really—but don’t worry, I do this for a living.”
Washington bit his lip.
Feighan closed his eyes—concentrated on the other’s tall gauntness—visualized the admissions desk in the emergency room of the Flinger Building Infirmary—felt how to place the first before the second—and—
Washington was gone.
“Thanks,” said Schintrino. “Now, if you don’t mind—?”
“Help yourself.” Stepping back, he made a mock-bow and waved Schintrino into the living room.
The Internal Security agent gasped at the sight of H’nik, but quickly regained his composure. “Got enough aliens around here?” he said in a low voice.
“Sam’s my ward; H’nik’s visiting.”
“You Flingers …” He opened the cupboard doors, walked through the kitchen and the bedrooms—though he disdained to look under the beds—pulled aside the sliding glass door of the shower so he could glance inside, and then said, “Okay. He’s not here. Not that I expected him to be, but—” He shrugged. “Bureaucracy, you know?”
“I know.”
“If he comes back, you will, of course, call us immediately.”
“Of course.”
“Of course. Let me find Officer Bechett and we’ll get out of your hair.” At the door, he dropped to his haunches and said to Sam, “Hey, you.”
“What?” said Sam with a snarl.
“What you did—biting Washington’s leg ’cause he knocked your boss on his can—it was dumb. I was a little slower, you’d be dead now, and you wouldn’t have helped Feighan at all. But your heart’s in the right place, and that’s good. Next time: wait to see if the guy’s really going to hurt Feighan—and if he is, tear out his throat. Got that?”
“Yeah. Why are you telling me this?”
Schintrino extended a hand—carefully—to rub Sam on the head. “Because my job is to protect Flingers, too—and if you’re going to be doing the same thing, you at least ought to know how to do it right. Okay?”
“Okay.” Sam twisted his neck so Schintrino’s fingers could scratch to better effect. “I’ll remember that.”
“You do that.” He rose.
Feighan said, “You’ll never catch him.”
“You don’t need to tell me that. But …” He shrugged and started to turn.
Feighan grabbed his arm. “But what?”
“You’re his friend; I hate to say this; but … but about five minutes after we report to Director Davis, we’ll be ordered not even to try to catch Mr. Greystein. He goes Rogue, we don’t have to. All we have to do is shoot straight.”
Wincing, Feighan released him. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”
Schintrino left.
Half an hour later, the phone rang. It was Walking Mule; he sounded tired and dispirited. Without preamble, he said, “The Hunt’s on.”
“Rogue Hunt?” The words clogged his throat.
“Yup. It’s official. Davis just held a press conference. Shoot on sight. One million dollars cash, no questions asked, to whoever brings in the body. And—” He stopped.
“What?”
“The detective—”
“Who is this Avis Louder, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Honest. I don’t. Davis is handling all that on a confidential basis. But she forwarded a holo; took it with a tele-setup, she said. It showed Greystein eating lunch on Rehma with a man named Milford Hommroummy. Ring a bell?”
“I don’t believe, it,” he said. “No. Not—not Greystein. He—he—”
“The computers have the ID cold, McGill. There is no chance whatsoever of any kind of mistaken identity. It’s Milford Hommroummy. The man The Organization assigned to get you.”