I had read his file. It clearly said what he was: a little guy with no relevant qualities. That’s all he was, at first sight. A high-security cell isn’t the best place for bulking up on steroids, installing a super-cyborg arm, or getting plastic surgery. He still was more skinny than stout, more short than tall, just another Slavic-Latino, ordinary face, average intelligence.
But did I say no relevant qualities? Sorry, my mistake.
A minor detail. Almost nothing. The statistical genetic lottery has also cursed him with the strongest, most uncontrollable, least comprehensible, least desirable Psi gift of them all.
You guessed it. Vasily Fernández was the only other known Gaussical. Not counting that first furious Grodo, I mean. He was also the only Gaussical born on Earth in the past 150 years. That is, since the aliens made contact with the human species. If there were others before him (I suspect that Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte may have been Gaussicals, for example, but I can’t prove it), they probably had the same experience he did at first: they had no idea what they were.
Orphaned so young he never knew his parents, after leaving the charity orphanage Vasily began to make his way as a purse-snatcher, pickpocket, small-time thief, forger, and two-bit flimflammer. And he seemed to be doing a decent job of it. His hard work earned him a nickname, El Afortunado, for his incredible luck.
But his career took a wrong turn when he finally realized that what he was getting away with couldn’t be a simple matter of good luck—or bad luck for everybody else. Having access to information supposedly off-limits to Homo sapiens (one of these days the aliens are going to have to get serious about the dark Web), he connected the dots and realized he was a living unlikelihood, a Gaussical. That made him cocky, ambitious; he figured there was no chance he’d ever get caught. He was right about that for several months. So long as he stuck to Earth, Mars, and the asteroids.
But when he tried expanding his operations to the Burroughs, for reasons he never spilled, it only took my buddies five days to detect and catch him. I admit it wasn’t easy. Vasily worked alone, he was slippery and cautious, and while his weird abilities never came close to the controlled power that Makrow 34 displayed in his escape, my buddies Ivan and Miyamoto suffered a few setbacks during the investigation that they put down to bad luck—until it occurred to them to add an anti-Psi force field to their “hunting gear.” That was the end of the strange happenings. Soon they netted their fish, and then Vasily El Afortunado’s forays came to a stop. After that, Ivan was no longer just Ivan; he became Ivan Stalin.
But even as he fell, El Afortunado somehow managed to land on his feet. His track record and psychological profile showed that he wasn’t a deviant or a sociopath. In plain words, not such a bad guy. He just didn’t know a better way to make a living than by dodging the law. He hadn’t committed any serious crimes on Earth, Mars, or the asteroids, and hadn’t caused significant damage. On our station he simply hadn’t had time to do much. So he avoided the death penalty usually meted out to wanton Psis and only got ten years in prison.
He’d done three of them right here on the Burroughs, of course. Anywhere else in the Solar System would have been unthinkable. The aliens wouldn’t have allowed humans to access the necessary Psi-proof force-field technology in a thousand years. So it was either keep him here, let him go, or kill him. The humans never would have accepted the second option, and the aliens refused to consider the third, so here he stayed.
A good thing, too. Their paranoid precaution would now give a huge boost to me, the Galactic Trade Confederation, and—if he treated me straight—maybe even Vasily himself.
“I got nothing to tell nobody they ain’t already dragged out of me a hundred times with their damn drugs, and I ain’t interested in the shitty benefits of any fucking rehab program,” he politely informed me by way of greeting when I stepped into his cell. “Maybe they made me a snitch against my will, but they won’t make me a bootlicker for the aliens like you guys. Come on, pozzie, you look ridiculous in that B-movie detective get-up,” he went on. “Who do you think you are, Dick Tracy?”
I activated the compressor pumps in my chest and sighed. It sounded exactly the way I wanted: melodramatically impressive. The truth is I was worried, though. Did he know as much about twentieth-century crime fiction as he seemed to?
I’d have to tread carefully. I’d already figured out from his file that he’d be a hard nut to crack. He was a perfect example of a person convinced that, if the world had had enough of him, he’d had enough of the world. He was kind of right about that, from his point of view: he didn’t have anyone or anything waiting for him on the outside.
But I had to get him on my side. I didn’t have any choice, if I wanted to catch Makrow 34 before he screwed over the entire Solar System. Only one choice for him, and it had to be yes.
I took off my fedora, like I was getting ready for a long, sincere conversation, and pulled what looked like a supersophisticated wristwatch from a trench coat pocket to show him. “My name is Raymond, Vasily, and I’m here to make you an offer you can’t refuse—not unless you’re a complete idiot. Know what this is?”
It was a rhetorical question, of course, but he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “I suppose it’s your videophone-ballscratcher-wristwatch, Dick Tracy,” he growled, and I felt a little better. My trick had worked: at least now I knew he’d never seen The Godfather. If that was true, and the gods were smiling on me, maybe he hadn’t watched 48 Hours either. It seemed he was just a fan of the yellow-hatted cop in the funny pages.
“Wrong. It’s a portable anti-Psi field generator. Pure nanotech, an experimental prototype, courtesy of our good friends from the Galactic Trade Confederation. Don’t let the shape fool you. You wear it around your neck, not your wrist.”
He shrugged, a perfect show of not giving a damn, but I caught a dim spark of interest deep in his green eyes. He’d taken the bait! Now all I had to do was reel him in slowly, carefully, and I’d have him.
“So,” I went on, feeling more and more sure of myself. “Want to know what it does? It goes around a Psi criminal’s neck, and whenever he’s about to use his ability, this little baby activates and stops him. It doesn’t have to stay on all the time—a real energy-saver. Sweet invention, isn’t it?” A sly grin came across Vasily’s face. It didn’t take Psi powers to guess what he was thinking. “Oh, I almost forgot. Some paranoid sadist who’s allergic to trusting other people’s good intentions decided at the last minute to add a little explosive capsule to the design. A precisely calculated quantity of Ultrasemtex. There’s no risk it might blow up by accident from getting bumped or what have you, but if somebody tries taking it off and ditching it—boom!” I luxuriated in the explosive onomatopoeia. “The guy ends up minus a head, and nobody around him gets a scratch. That’s why we don’t put it on your wrist or ankle—some people wouldn’t mind trading a limb for freedom. Especially with all the regeneration tech they have these days, it’s not like losing a hand is forever. But even a Grodo can’t live long without a head.”
“Neat toy,” Vasily allowed. “But what’s it to me? I ain’t no fucking alien lover.”
We’d have to do something about his language.
“This interesting little device represents your conditional freedom,” I said, and tossed it into his lap, casual. “The decision is yours. If you agree to wear it and give me some help, you won’t have to spend the next seven years of your sentence in this little box. Well, let’s call it six years, because they tell me your behavior has been exemplary. They’ll knock a few months off, count on it.”
El Ex-Afortunado lifted his hands—then stopped, halfway to his neck. “I knew it was a trick. Pozzies never play square.” He dropped the collar like a kid who’s tired of a toy and pushed it my way with one foot, scornful. “Might as well leave, pozzie. I’m doing okay here. I got room to exercise, I got enough books to read and enough tapes to watch to last me three lifetimes, all the virtual sex I could want, and—”
“And nobody to share it with and nobody to talk to. No streets, no freedom, no real life.” I cut him short, triumphant, and picked up the collar without offering it to him a second time. “So don’t tell me you’re not interested, because I’m not going to believe you.”
“Hmm, maybe,” he admitted, reluctantly. “Come on and spit it out, pig. Tell me what you want from me. You gotta have something pretty heavy on your hands or you wouldn’t be taking a chance with a superdangerous Gaussical like me.”
I didn’t set him straight about how dangerous he was—not yet. I told him the whole story in broad strokes, even about the stash of energy crystals that Makrow 34 might have hidden somewhere in the asteroid belt.
When I was done, Vasily let out a short but infectiously lighthearted laugh.
“I get it. Cute little assignment your bosses dumped on you, pozzie. Interesting. Maybe I even know somebody knows something about this Makrow guy. Ain’t too many Cetians out in the asteroid belt. Ain’t supposed to be any at all, right? One thing I’m not clear on: you want me to help you find a needle in a haystack, then grab it without getting stabbed?” He was using my own metaphor. I guess humans have a limited number of analogies in Standard Anglo-Hispano. I nodded, glad to see how well we understood each other. “But all you offer me is to spring me from this force-field cage so as I can spend the rest of my life with an electronic dog collar.”
“Plus we erase your record. You get a clean slate,” I added, suspecting he was going to turn me down. But I wasn’t about to give up.
“A clean slate.” Vasily cleared his throat loudly and spat on the immaculate pseudo-wood floor of the cell. The nanocomponents built into the phony parquet began bustling around the little puddle of sputum, absorbing it with the efficiency you’d expect from alien tech. He looked on with a hatred bordering on tenderness. “Oh, pardon my manners. I just can’t get used to this air conditioning,” he said snidely. “Besides, the little bugs are fun to watch.”
I summarized our situation: “In other words, you want more.” We were off to a good start—and he still hadn’t found out that Makrow 34 was a freak just like him, except a thousand times worse. “All right. We might be able to negotiate the collar. A portion of the time, anyway.”
“Give it a break, machine-boy. I’m locked up here, sure, but I’m alive. You ain’t told me what’s so special about this Cetian, but he’s gotta be real, real dangerous.” If I had a genuine throat, I would have gulped. “Don’t tell me there ain’t nothing special about him, either. I ain’t so dumb as I look. Damned if I’ll jump out of the frying pan so as I land in the fire. I don’t know the strength of my own Gaussical power—I was just starting to test it when they nabbed me. In fact, I only learned what it was called right here in this cell, and that there were others like me. You know how the aliens don’t just control human access to their technology but to information, too. The illegal Web is barely a drop in the ocean compared with what they censor from us. Look here, tinman, I’m gonna ask you one question. Yes or no, that’s all. Don’t try pulling one over on me.” His green eyes stared straight into my fake pupils. “If there’s anything kept me alive out there, it was my old friend, intuition. Right now she’s whispering into my ear that this Makrow 34 guy must be more than a match for me, Gaussically speaking. ’Cause he’s gotta be a fucking Gaussical to make you come here looking for me, am I right?”
I nodded, astonished by the soundness of his reasoning. You could tell Vasily had spent a lot of the past three years educating himself. I doubt he’d have been quite so articulate when he first landed in prison. Or so logical.
Fuck it. I told him everything, with all the gory details.
“I knew it.” He half-smiled, shaking his head emphatically. “In that case, sorry, my answer’s still no. I’m no match for a freak like that. If I coulda took care of you pozzies like you say he did, I wouldn’t even be here.”
“But he had help,” I objected, trying to win him over. “I’ll be with you.”
“Oh, right. I forgot about that detail. Best reason for me to refuse. Like the Cetian’s not bad enough already, you want me to take on a Colossaur too? I never liked the things—half gorilla, half armored tank. No thanks. Plus the human, on top of it all. I don’t want to get within a thousand miles of any human crazy enough to shoot at a pozzie and to survive three seconds fighting hand-to-hand with a Colossaur. Even if it was staged.”
I looked down. The nanos were finishing up their task. Hardly any traces remained of the enormous gob of spit. My hopes of finding help were vanishing almost as quickly. I decided to play my last card.
“So they were right about you, Vasily, what they put in your file.” I tried to sound as disillusioned and as rude as possible. “You’re just a coward.”
“Better a poor coward and alive than a rich hero and a corpse,” he replied, unperturbed.
Failure. I stood up. Like Marlowe, if I was defeated, I could at least go get myself killed in style. “Live your long, miserable cowardly life, Vasily. Don’t worry. With or without your help, I’ll catch them in the end, if it takes me a thousand years. I’ll get them all. The Colossaur, whatever its name is. That monster, Makrow 34. And that human rat, Giorgio Weekman.”
Sometimes I think the gods do exist, and at that moment I’d even have sworn that they loved me in particular. Just as I was turning to leave, Vasily stopped me. I saw a touch of astonishment as well as bottomless spite in his eyes.
“Hold on a sec. Did you say Giorgio Weekman? Weekman the smuggler?”
“Yeah. We ID’d him on the video,” I said, going over both of their files in my mind. No, not a hint that the two knew each other—but recorded facts, as complete as they pretend to be, are never more than a pale reflection of reality. A map isn’t the landscape it reflects; a résumé isn’t the person it describes.
“Gimme that gizmo.” Standing up, he reached for the collar. “When do we leave?”
“Right now.” I handed it to him. Sometimes everything falls into place. Could this be the famous “detective’s intuition”? Who could say. “So you know this Weekman fellow? Have any idea where he might be?”
“Do I ever.” Vasily Fernández grabbed the collar and turned it over in his hands a couple of times. Slim hands, long fingers, more like a concert pianist’s than a criminal’s. “What’d you say your name was, pozzie?”
“Raymond,” I quickly replied, then went on: “Did you and Weekman ever work together?”
“We were supposed to, pozzie,” he answered thoughtfully. “But that pig son-of-an-alien left me holding the bag. After he stole everything out of it—all my life savings, gone. You think I’m so stupid or so green I didn’t know I’d be falling into a trap by coming to the Burroughs? I came because I didn’t have a choice, Dick Tracy. Too many of the wrong people knew me, all over the Solar System, for me to start over from scratch somewhere else.”
“So we’re in this together?” I held out my hand for him, as I’d seen the detectives in Spillane’s movie collection do when they were making a deal.
But he didn’t take it. Placing the portable anti-Psi generator around his neck, he snapped it shut without hesitation. It made a loud click. I made a mental note of his interesting ability to handle tech gear he’d never seen before. The people who wrote up his file were evidently so frightened by his Gaussical powers that they forgot human beings sometimes have (or learn) more than one skill.
“Yeah, sure. You might say we’re in it together, Raymond,” Vasily sighed, calling me by my name for the first time. He rolled his head a few times as if to get used to the new bauble around his neck. “Now I know how dogs must feel,” he muttered. “But under one condition,” he went on, looking me in the eye. “I don’t care what you do with the Cetian when we meet up with the merry trio. But Weekman, he’s mine. No discussion, or the deal’s off.”
That worried me. “You aren’t thinking of…?” His face told me clearly that he was. “But you’ve never killed anyone, Vasily,” I reminded him, a little astonished to see in living color what I’d read in so many novels: that revenge can push a man to do things no other feelings could.
“I am,” he said grimly. “There’s a first time for everything, ain’t there?” He ran his hand along the collar. “After all, if I’m never really going to be free, thanks to something I never wanted and couldn’t help having, what difference does it make if I have to live in the shadows because of something I’ve been dreaming of doing these past three years?”
I didn’t know what to tell him. I suppose, from a human point of view, he was right. So I changed the subject. “Do you have any clues about where to find Weekman?”
He laughed. “Me have clues? You forget I been stuck inside here for three years. But I got a good idea of where to start looking for clues. I’ve also had three years to think it over. We’ll go see Old Man Slovoban. What he don’t know about underworld business in the Solar System ain’t worth finding out.”