part0007

A large black van waited for them outside the Galactic offices. People on the sidewalk stopped in midstride and stared, gaping, as Bria walked through the double doors on the side of the building, lumbered across the dirty New York sidewalk, and climbed into the back of the van. The car’s shock absorbers squeaked loudly in protest of her great mass. Tarkos and Yeats followed her, and the driver—a serious-looking young man in a Galactic Executive uniform, with short-cropped hair who studiously acted as if Bria were just another everyday passenger—closed the doors behind them. Inside, a low pad allowed Bria to sit, and Tarkos and Yeats strapped into chairs along the wall opposite her.

“I’ve been researching the CEO of Genmine,” Yeats explained as the car pulled away. She pulled the restraints tight. “A man named Alfonso DiAngelo. Aged sixty. He has never been in any legal trouble. He’s not really a manager. He’s a private equity raider.”

Tarkos turned to Bria, concerned that her translator program might stumble over that phrase. “He buys and cuts up and sells economic organizations,” he explained in Galactic. To Yeats he said, “Unusual for him to stay CEO of this company then.”

“Right,” Yeats said. “He’s been head of Genmine for a year now, running it after he bought it. That’s rare for his kind of investor. He’s known for being tough. He’s infamous in New York for his office, for example. The Wall Street Journal had a story about it. They say he keeps it very cold, and doesn’t sit at his desk, and has only one chair. In meetings, he makes everyone stand there, shivering. It’s his way of forcing all meetings to be short.”

“Will not be cold,” Bria said. She flexed, making her thick fur puff up. “Will not need chair.”

Tarkos smiled. “Just looking over the news feeds I can reach with my implants, I see he’s on the board of the Met Opera. He gave one interview questioning the benefits of joining the Alliance. But Genmine Company made most of its profits from selling rights for patented terrestrial organisms to other members of the Galactic Alliance. He is not likely to speak Galactic.”

“No translationware,” Bria said. She nodded at Tarkos. “Too crude. You speak.”

“Yes, Commander,” he said.

Genmine had most of the floors of a narrow but tall glass and steel building that flashed blindingly in the sun. People in suits stopped and stared as Bria crossed the lobby, Tarkos and Yeats flanking her. The two security guards, hands shaking as they punched at buttons and whispered into microphones, glanced nervously at Bria, seemingly afraid she would leap over their little guard station partition at any moment. Finally, they waved toward an elevator that rose express to the top floor. The doors opened onto a reception room, where a severe-looking blond woman waved them into DiAngelo’s office.

Cold air slapped Tarkos the moment he opened the door. Tarkos felt surprise that his breath did not show white as he exhaled, so cold it felt. DiAngelo stood in the center of the room, before a huge mahogany desk, and behind a tall mahogany podium of matching design. He wore a three-piece pinstripe suit. Wiry gray hair fringed his bald head. He fixed his defiant gray eyes on Tarkos, then Yeats, and finally Bria.

“Mr. DiAngelo, I am Amir Tarkos, and this is Commander Bria, of the Harmonizer Corp. This is Dr. Yeats. She works for the UN.”

DiAngelo hooked his thumbs into the vest of his three-piece suit and nodded towards Bria. “What’s this thing? This your pet?”

Tarkos stopped, mouth open, so surprised he could not speak for a moment. Fortunately, his Predator training took over: when the opponent tries to push you off balance, orient yourself. He stood still a long moment, thinking, forcing himself to look around the room and assess the situation.

The walls were spare, without a single personal effect. The view from the tall windows looked south down the long avenue, toward Wall Street. There was only one chair in the room: behind DiAngelo’s desk. It was exactly as Yeats had warned. DiAngelo did everything in his power, from the first moment, to make those around him uncomfortable. The cold office without chairs, the naked impersonal space, the crass and immediate attack.

Tarkos took two breaths.

Bria stepped to Tarkos’s side, her nails tearing audibly at the carpet.

“As I said,” Tarkos continued, “Bria is a Harmonizer Commander, and a member of the great and noble Sussurat race, among whom her task as a defender of life is sacred. She is in charge here. I am talking only because of my familiarity with your language.”

DiAngelo snorted once. “My language? My language? You seem to know it pretty well, kid. I’d guess it’s your language too. You don’t look like someone who was born on Venus or something, speaking Galactic.”

Tarkos said nothing.

“OK. I get it. You’ve gone native,” DiAngelo said. He pointed at Bria, “But, here’s my question for you: is that thing supposed to intimidate me?”

“No,” Tarkos said, very slowly and clearly. “I am the one who’s here to intimidate you. She should fill you with awe.”

DiAngelo snorted again in mirthless laughter. “Cute. Real cute. Let me tell you something, son. I don’t recognize the galactic empire in this office. Here, I’m the sacred warrior. I’m one of the great and noble race of Wall Street private equity investors. You understand that?” He put both hands on the sides of his podium, as if preparing to leap over the heavy wood pedestal. “You got a ray gun? Big fucking deal. I buy and sell ray gun factories every day. You fly in a space ship? Whoop-dee-doo. I own a spaceship.”

Bria leaned forward and set a cube on the podium, just before DiAngelo’s face. The man couldn’t help himself: he flinched back. As Bria pulled her hand away, she pulled her long gray claws along the mahogany top. They left six deep, pale scratches in the wood.

“Cute,” DiAngelo said again. “Real cute.”

The cube on the podium, a three-d projector of Neelee design, shimmered for a moment. Then an image sputtered in the air above it and solidified into clarity. It looked real there, floating in the air: the image of a waterbear, hugely magnified until it was about as big as a house cat.

“Tardigrada,” Bria hissed. Tarkos started, surprised by her very passable English—or, in this case, scientific Latin. “Hypsibius dujadini.”

DiAngelo stared at the image.

“It’s one of yours,” Tarkos said. “And it has been… used in a lifecode violation.”

“Yeah? What kind of violation?”

“A very, very serious lifecode violation.”

“I said, what violation?”

Tarkos shook his head, making it clear that this information would not be shared. But he did note that either DiAngelo had great skill as an actor, or the raider felt genuine surprise and shocked curiosity.

“We must be told who has purchased these organisms from you,” Tarkos said. “Or who bought rights to its use. And also who might have had access to it.”

“That’s a waterbear,” DiAngelo said. “The whole fucking planet has access to it. They live everywhere. There’s probably one on your shoe right now.”

“Uh, well, not this one,” Dr. Yeats interjected. She took a step forward. “This one is quite rare. Or, rather, geographically specific.”

“Who are you again?” DiAngelo asked.

“Dr. Yeats. I’m a bio-informaticist.”

“Yeah, well, big deal. My goddamn receptionist has a Ph.D. You can’t pour coffee around here unless you’ve finished your dissertation. So don’t think I’m impressed.”

“Right,” Dr. Yeats said, seemingly unperturbed. “Let’s call her in, if she’s the brains of this outfit.”

Tarkos suppressed a smile. He pulled a piece of paper from his belt pocket. “Here is the warrant.”

DiAngelo took the page. “I’ll have legal look at it,” he said. He tossed it onto the podium. It fell on the three-d projector and the waterbear image disappeared. “I’m sure our lawyers will get back to you before year’s end.”

“OK,” Tarkos said, losing patience. He was accustomed to even the most ancient and fearsome races of the Galaxy showing respect to the gray uniform of the Predator. And, he was accustomed to everyone, and everything, showing respect to Bria. Tarkos had seen Neelee parliamentarians stamp their hooves in homage before her. He had seen a Kirt ship captain scrape its shell on the floor in deference to Bria as she passed. He had seen giant Hurlkor floating through the clouds of gas giants inflate their zeppelin bodies out of respect when she spoke, tiny though she seemed standing before them on the hull of her ship.

“Here’s what will happen before this day’s end,” Tarkos said. “One of two things. Either you give us total access, so that our people can find what they need to find, as fast as they possibly can find it; or, you resist us, and we send copies of that warrant to the press, while some unnamed high-level government sources explain that your corporation is under investigation by the Galactic Harmonizer Corp for horrific, monstrous lifecode violations—and that you are resisting the investigation. That you, personally, Mr. Alfonso DiAngelo, are resisting the investigation. Before closing bell today your equity stake won’t be worth shit, as everyone on this planet dumps shares in your companies because they know—every human being knows, what you, Mr. DiAngelo, are pretending you don’t know: the Predators will get their prey.”

Tarkos took a step forward. “And after you lost everything, after this company is worthless, after your private equity firm is unable to raise a penny of capital anywhere in this galaxy, after the United States government is working to figure out how to imprison you so they can hide away the embarrassment that you have caused to their efforts to fit into Galactic society, then we still will get in here and find what we need to find.”

DiAngelo sneered. He looked at Tarkos, then Yeats, and finally Bria. Bria fixed him with her huge green eyes, nose pointed down so that she could peer at him as if he were some kind of noxious specimen. Yeats did not change her expression, but stared steadily at DiAngelo.

DiAngelo abruptly sighed and turned. He walked over to the window and stood a moment with his back to them. Then he pointed. “What the hell is that?” he asked.

Tarkos frowned, surprised by the sudden change of topic.

DiAngelo shook his finger impatiently, still pointing. “I said, what the hell is that?”

Across the street, a narrow tower, really just a pylon, stood half completed. The triangular base was about three meters on a side. It rose in the narrow gap between two gray buildings, each just four stories tall, bordered with limestone scrollwork. The strange shimmering surface of the pylon betrayed an alien ancestry. Small robots climbed all over it, affixing panels, slowly building the eerie moiré surface.

Tarkos looked at Bria but the Sussurat betrayed nothing. He looked at Yeats and the scientist shrugged.

“We don’t know,” Tarkos said.

DiAngelo turned to face them again. “No one does. But they’re going up all over town, and all over the planet. The goddamn Galactics are putting their machines everywhere, and no one can even tell you what they’re for. They’re pushing the human race around, like we’re fools. They can do it because they own an army of punks like you: a boy gets a raygun, and he pushes around the chief executive of a major corporation. I’m a guy who employs forty thousand people. I make jobs. I create wealth. I put food on people’s tables. What do you do? Shoot rayguns. Well, enjoy it while you can, kid.”

Bria reached forward and pushed the warrant aside with a single claw. She picked up the projection cube. Again, as she withdrew her hand, it left another six deep gouges in the table. DiAngelo stared at the scratched wood, his expression more thoughtful than angry.

“He is ready to submit,” Bria told Tarkos in Galactic.

“When will you have an answer for us?” Tarkos asked.

DiAngelo grunted. “I never said no, kid. I just don’t like your attitude. But you know the answer. This is all just a pissing match here, right? I’m just explaining to you and your geekmistress and your teddy bear here that in my office, you are polite. You have the rayguns, right? So you can have whatever you want. But in my office, you ask nicely. Now get out of my office.”

“We can arrange for Dr. Yeats to come here tomorrow, then?”

“Lovely. She can geek out with all the eggheads downstairs, or whatever she wants. Right now my secretary can make the introductions.”

“Perhapssssss,” Bria said, again in surprisingly passable English. “You and I will meeeeet again.”

“God, I hope not,” DiAngelo said.

“Shall go to this great forest,” Bria said, as she climbed back into the van. “Shall go to Amazon.” The van driver, holding the door, frowned and shook his head, thinking that Bria had just instructed him to drive to Brazil.

“We shall eat,” Tarkos said. “There’s no point in going to the Amazon till we know if Dr. Yeats can find something in these records.”

“Dr. Yeats will not find culprit. Too easy.”

“I know you’re probably right,” Tarkos said. “You always are. But we need to have Yeats with us in the Amazon, right? And she has to at least start up the investigation here. And right now, I’m starving.”

Yeats climbed into the van and Tarkos followed her. As they strapped in, he turned and looked into the scientist’s wide blue eyes. “Doc,” he said in English, “let’s set this worry aside a minute. First thing: I haven’t eaten human food in three years. Where can we go, and bring Bria?”

The driver closed the doors and a few seconds later climbed into the driver’s seat.

“What do you want?” she asked.

Tarkos almost said Greek, or Turkish, in the hopes of getting an approximation of homestyle food. They were in New York City. One of the capitals of Earth, as far as he was concerned. And that meant he could eat whatever he wanted, in principle. Probably even somewhere in Manhattan a restaurant served passable Sussurat cuisine. But finally he said, “Pizza. Italian.”

She nodded. She looked at Bria. “But suitable for a carnivore. And no place small. Commander Bria is large.” She nodded again and shouted to the driver, over Tarkos’s shoulder, “Pizzeria Otto, Please. Down on the end of Fifth.”

The driver nodded and the car pulled away.

“You’re going to eat pizza, Bria,” Tarkos told his commander. “Or veal, maybe. And then I promise I will clear our flight path for the Amazon, assuming Dr. Yeats finds nothing, as you predict.”