The trip back to Earth took a long time: three-and-a-half days, with half a day of accelerating and decelerating at two-G at either end. Rik and his new partner did not spend the time getting to know each other.
Rivers explained her position even before Rik was back on his feet. “Just stay out of my way, asshole,” she said.
“Fine,” Rik replied.
“As long as we understand each other.”
“Up yours.”
After that, even though The Phenomenon of Man was not a large ship, Rik saw nothing of the upload except when they accidentally bumped into one another in the narrow corridors.
Rik used his enforced leisure time to catch up on his sleep and to let some of his bruises heal. He also made all those calls he had been trying to make since he reached LA.
His calls to Maria were disturbingly fruitless. When he got through to her sister, an eight minute time lag made conversation almost impossible. Not that she was in any mood for conversation. From what he could gather, between her angry shouting and the many inventive ways she found of cursing him, she and her husband had been beaten up, tied up and held prisoner in their home while their captors waited for Maria to show up. For reasons she couldn't understand – but which Rik could – the 'thugs' had just got up and gone away a few hours ago.
“I'm glad you're OK,” Rik replied, but what he had assumed was the end of the tirade was just a pause for breath. In the rest, she explained how the day Maria met Rik was the sorriest day in her sister's life, and that she hoped whoever he owed money to caught up with him and beat it out of his miserable hide. And, what's more, if any harm came to Maria, the damned Solar System would be too small for him to hide in when she came looking for him.
He hung up without attempting any further pleasantries.
Despite the harangue, he felt much better for the call. At least he now knew they hadn't found Maria. Somehow she had known they were after her, and she had gone to ground.
It was a different story with his current wives. They seemed to be permanently disconnected – both of them. So he called the bar and Veb answered.
“Why are you behind the bar, Veb?” The delay was a little under three minutes by that time, but a sensible conversation was still hopeless. They kept talking over one another and interrupting one another until Veb said, “Look, Rik, this isn't the right way or the best way to say this, and I can't get it out at all with you asking me questions and talking when I talk. So I'm just going to tell you everything and keep on talking 'till it's over, and I hope you'll stop talking at some point and listen, 'cause it's bad news, and you've got to hear it from someone. So be quiet for a minute, huh?”
Then Veb began the story of how Rik's wives had died. He told it from start to end without a break, and by the time he'd finished, Rik was silently listening on the other end.
“I'll just wait now, Rik,” he concluded, “in case there's something you want to say, or something you want me to do. Don't worry about the bar. I've fixed it up and I'm running things.”
Even after Veb stopped speaking, Rik didn't reply for a long, long time. Eventually, he said, “Thanks, Veb. Thanks for telling me, and thanks for taking care of things. I guess I must have missed the funeral by now. I know who's behind this.” The bastard whose ship he was flying in. The ghost he'd agreed to help. That smartly-dressed creep with a broom up his virtual ass, who hadn't happened to mention the fact that he'd just had Rik's wives murdered.
He smashed his fist into the wall of his cabin, shattering the flimsy plastic. Just a couple of casualties in a private war no-one even knew was being waged.
“They won't bother you again, Veb,” he told his friend. At least while Rik helped them, Lanham's people would leave Rik's family and friends alone. But when this was over... “I promise you, there will be a reckoning. At least you guys got the killers. Saved me a job.
“I don't know where I'll be for a while. There's something I need to do. But I'll get back to Heinlein as soon as I can. Goodbye, Veb, and thanks.”
He hung up the call and went to see the medic.
“You cut your hand,” she said as Rik dripped blood across her floor.
He looked down at his hand and grunted. “That's what you get for picking fights with walls.”
She took his hand and looked at it, then busied herself with ointments and bandages.
“It wasn't that I came about, doc. It's this.” He held up his left hand and showed her the faint line of the scratch Peth Cordell had made, back when she tagged him with a tracer. “I need you to get some nano junk out of my system.”
After that, he went to the ship's armoury. He had the run of the place now, and could do what he liked. Lanham kept his little runabout stocked with a nice selection of lethal and non-lethal weapons. There was even a collection of explosives, including mines, demolition charges, and blocks of plastique, all with a variety of detonators and remote triggers. There were also mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. All of it was completely illegal, of course. Rik spent a long time studying it all, then got to work.
-oOo-
Veb Degen 1 Rea listened as Rik's final words came through the phone. “But I'll get back to Heinlein as soon as I can. Goodbye, Veb, and thanks.”
“Wait, Rik. Don't hang up. I haven't told you about Maria.” But the end-of-call tone had already sounded and the line was dead. “Damn!”
“Problems?”
Veb turned to find a small, thin-faced man at the bar.
“Greet-Greet McGregor.” The upload's tone could have been bottled and used as rat poison. “How long have you been there?”
The little Scotsman wore a long, shabby coat – the kind you'd expect to have knocked-off wristwatches hanging from the lining. His eyes flitted about as if he had a nervous disorder, and wouldn't settle on anything for more than an instant.
“Long enough to hear that was Rik on the phone, aye?”
“What if it was?”
“Ah, so it was then. I'd like to speak to a human, if ye could just call somebody.” Greet-Greet's tone was polite enough, but the slur was one Veb wasn't going to let pass.
“I'm running this bar, McGregor. If you don't like it, go elsewhere.”
The Scotsman raised his hands as if amazed at the upload's hostility. “Ach, ye're a touchy wee bugger. I just wanted to speak to whoever's in charge. There's no need to get so uppity about it.”
“Well I'm the one in charge. What do you want?”
The prejudice against uploads that had driven Veb away from Earth was not so strong here in Heinlein, but he still met enough of it to make him want to smash things. The worst kind was from religious types like McGregor who refused even to accept that uploads were human. According to them, the soul left the body at death and that was that. Robots with human minds were just soulless machines in their eyes.
“Well that's great, just great,” McGregor said, pronouncing the word “greet”. “I'm glad to see that someone has the charity to trust the likes of you with such responsibility.”
“Before I was uploaded, I ran a corporation big enough to buy and sell the likes of you ten thousand times over.”
“Aye, no doubt, but that was when you were a living man, not the poor, miserable creature you've since become.”
“All right, pal, that's it.” He leapt over the bar in a single, graceful movement – something easily done in the Moon's gravity. “You're leaving.” He landed lightly beside the Scotsman and towered above him.
McGregor began to back away. Veb advanced on him, herding him towards the door. The few customers drinking quietly at their tables watched with mild interest.
“I just wanted to know where to find Rik,” McGregor said, quickly. “You know, he's doing a wee job for me at the moment and the people who commissioned me are asking some very awkward questions.”
“Rik's not here.”
“No, but you talk to him, right? I heard ye just a moment ago.”
“So what?”
“So you should tell him he's upset some awfully powerful people. They say he's stolen their property and they want it back, or he's a dead man.” He was almost at the door now, speaking faster all the time to get his message out before Veb chased him into the street. “They're refusing to pay up. They want what he took or they're coming for him – and me!” He put on an expression that was probably meant to convey that he was giving a friendly piece of advice. “And if they found out about this place, they'd no doubt come for you too. Not that they'll hear it from me, mind you. I'm just saying.” He stumbled out over the doorstep.
“You'd better tell him,” McGregor shouted as the door closed in his face. “I can't stall them forever. Tell him he's an unreliable shite and I'm done wi' him. You tell him that, you undead bastard!”
Veb stared thoughtfully at the door for a moment, then went to collect a few glasses.
-oOo-
Travelling at such a tiny fraction of the speed of light, time dilation should have been barely noticeable. Yet for Rik, cooped up in The Phenomenon of Man hour after hour with only his grief and anger for company, the ship's clocks were running painfully slowly.
Zero-G didn't help much, either. Nor did complaining about it to the captain. It turned out that a gentle acceleration to the mid-point and a gentle deceleration thereafter was out of the question. The focus fusion reactors ran so much more efficiently at high power, the captain told him, that bone-crushing accelerations and long stretches of coasting were just how things were done in space.
Rik suspected the captain – an apparently stolid and sensible upload called Campos – was secretly pissed about having to ferry Rik about and wanted to get some small revenge. Rik had flown the Earth-Moon shuttle many times without a hint of zero-G except at the mid-point. Whatever the truth, it didn't help his mood to spend the day drifting around the ship like a Macy's parade balloon with its strings cut.
His calls to Fariba Freymann weren't getting through, either. He tried to tell himself she was OK, but he worried all the same. That damned zombie girl had left her for dead on the tarmac at LAX and didn't know or care whether Fariba had still been breathing when they took off.
If she was alive, the Feds would have her. What would happen then? He couldn't guess – anything from a quiet interrogation to a major international incident, he supposed. He wished he could talk to her and make sure she was all right. He wished he knew why it bugged him so much. The woman had been his gaoler, not his buddy. She was a trained agent, not a helpless bimbo. What's more, he'd known her for less than a day. Yet he felt a powerful need to know she was safe.
And the Drew sisters were dead. Every five minutes, his thoughts came back to that. Nephele and Carlotta had been borderline certifiable, they'd made his life hell, and they'd shown him some of the best times he'd known. They'd picked him up when he was a homeless stray and they'd stuck a firecracker up his ass. He might not have loved them nearly as much as he thought he did in those wild, early days, but he'd loved them. And Martin don't-bother-me-with-the-details Lanham was going to pay for setting his dogs on them.
But grinding his teeth and smashing the furniture didn't make him feel better at all. What he needed was to do something – preferably to someone. He also needed a plan and he needed it before he got back to Earth.
So he made an effort and settled himself into a frame of mind where he could at least begin to think about the future. That's when Rivers decided to pay him a call.
“Howdy, partner,” she said as the door slid open.
Annoyingly, she was standing upright on the floor, her gecko-skin soles holding her firmly in place.
“What do you want?”
She sashayed into his cabin as if he'd invited her. “Well, what do you think?” she asked, striking a pose. She had transformed her coal-black skin to a bright, candy pink.
“You're hurting my eyes.”
“I did it just for you. I thought since we were working together, I'd change my outfit, so I didn't look so mean and intimidating.”
“It makes your ass look big.”
“Keep your eyes off my ass, zombie-lover. The Boss said I should be nice to you, but there are limits.”
“Fuck you, and fuck your boss, and fuck Lanham. The only reason you're not dead right now is because you, personally, didn't have a hand in hurting my friends or killing my wives.”
Rivers laughed. “What are you gonna do, asshole, threaten us all to death?”
Rik's temper snapped. He threw himself at the upload, only to find himself tumbling awkwardly across the room. Still laughing, she batted him aside as he passed her. He drifted on to the wall, shouting in impotent rage. He managed to get his feet onto the wall and pushed off hard in Rivers' direction. He shot across the room at high speed and would have hit her full in the chest if she hadn't dodged out of his way with humiliating ease. Almost before he realised he'd missed her, he slammed into a table and then into another wall. Flailing wildly, he caught a light fitting and saved himself from bouncing back into the room.
He hung there, panting and dishevelled, bleeding from a small cut on his forehead, cursing himself for being such an idiot. What was he thinking, starting a fight in zero-G, with an upload, for Chrissake? That robot body was faster, stronger and harder than he was – and it could stick to the floor while he bounced around like a beach ball. He needed to get a grip. Sure, his life had turned to shit and people he loved had been hurt, but getting himself killed wasn't going to make anything better.
Rivers walked to a chair and sat down. She regarded Rik with a smug smile and crossed her legs.
“Have you finished showing me how tough you are?” she asked. “'Cause I'd like to talk about what happens next.”
“What do you mean, next?”
“I mean, Celestina tells me I have to play nice because you are the only one who can get the package for us.” The way she looked at him, he could tell she doubted that very much. The way he felt that minute, he doubted it too. “So, what do we do, Einstein? What's our next move?”
“Do you even know what's in that package? Have you got any idea what this is all about?”
The pink upload shrugged. “What do I care? All I know is I've got a deal with Celestina. She expects me to deliver, and that means I deliver. Period. No questions. No mistakes. And on top of that you've become a big, fat pain in my ass. I want this stupid assignment over so I can get on with my life. I'm pretty sure you want the same thing, right?” She raised her eyebrows – or would have, if she'd had any – apparently waiting for him to contradict her. “Right. So stop screwing around and tell me what the plan is.”
Rik couldn't think. Emotions roiled inside him. He wanted to smash things. He wanted to grieve. He wanted revenge. He wanted to be somewhere other than hanging from a light fitting in a strange spaceship. He wanted to know Maria was safe. And Fariba, and Blake, and Brie. He wanted to knock the expression off that upload's creepy pink face. He wanted to lean on the bar at The Harsh Mistress, get maudlin drunk and tell Veb his troubles. He wanted to find Newton Cordell and push his face into a wall. He wanted to find Martin Lanham's plug and pull it out.
But somewhere under the emotion, he knew he needed to find that package and put an end to all this. All his personal problems amounted to nothing. There was a whole world of misery sitting in those six small phials. Enough to make his current predicament look like a stroll in the park.
And even as he acknowledged the thought, his mind began to see what it had missed so far. Blake would not have hidden the package.
“Well?” Rivers demanded.
“What? Shut up. I'm thinking.”
Blake had opened the package. He'd seen it was dangerous. He didn't want it around him. He didn't want the responsibility. He should have turned it in to the Feds. He would have except that would have got Rik into trouble. Yet he couldn't risk putting it somewhere where it might have been found.
Suddenly, it was obvious. Blake would have passed it on to someone else.
But who in LA could he trust? Rik ran through all the people he knew, all the people Blake knew, and drew a blank. Somewhere else, then. Of course! Blake had arrived at work late that morning, but only by fifteen minutes. Not long enough to do much, but plenty of time to stop off at a post office and send it to someone.
And there was only one, screamingly obvious choice of who that would be; only one mutual acquaintance Blake would be sure could be trusted to protect Rik's interests.
Maria.
“God, I'm so stupid!”
Rivers got up from the chair. She didn't even bother to make a snide comment. “You know where it is!”
“I know where it was a few days ago. And I know where to start looking.”
“So?”
“So tell your friends to have that scramjet waiting for us. Tell the captain we need an orbit that's handy for a landing in North America. And get out of my room before I kick you out.”
She looked at him for a moment, then shook her head and headed for the door. “You are so full of shit. This better be a good lead.”
Rik didn't answer, just watched her go. The problem now was how to find Maria without tipping off Celestina's people too soon that she might have the package. He was under no illusions that they'd leave the tracking to him once they got a sniff of their quarry. They'd go after her themselves and try to beat him to it.
An idea began to form, but it needed work. He pulled himself round to face the door. The first thing he needed was to get to the galley. Hunger had started gnawing at him, and he felt the need for thick sandwiches and good strong coffee to kick his brain back into action.