CROWELL

2 This was where it got interesting.

Morgan had asked us to bring a Tarot card, which we didn’t even have, to a far-away colony, to someone who’d long been thought dead, including all the copies of him. Yeah, the body morphing thing: instigated by the Ultras in a clever secret invasion to create hybrids so that the dying Ultras could live in our universe in human bodies. Didn’t I already say it was complicated?

Terl Plenko had gained notoriety as the leader of the interstellar terrorist network known as the Movement. Evil terrorist Plenko turned out to be a copy of the original, however. My old partner Alan Brindos unwillingly became another Plenko and paid the ultimate price for it. But that was another story, and a painful one.

What about the original Plenko, though? The one who’d died in the Rock Dome on Coral Moon? Coral was destroyed, causing colony planet Ribon to become uninhabitable. That was just it. He died.

“Was it ever proven?” Forno asked me, scanning the DataNet on his comm card.

It was the next morning, and we were sitting in Zola’s, a café a few blocks from my office that doubled as a hangout for data-heads and the like. Actually it was called Zola II, but very few patrons called it that. Louise Nichols, the new owner, was doing her best to revive it after it had shut down three years ago. Alan Brindos and I used to eat at the old Zola’s, back when we worked our first detective agency, before the contract work with the Network Intelligence Organization. Before the Ultra scare. I’d even been here before that, sitting with my partner Shirley McCoy during my tenure with Seattle Authority. Not much had changed about the place, except the name, and maybe the French fries, which weren’t quite as good.

“Was what proven?” I asked.

“That Plenko died.”

“Hard to look into that when the whole moon is gone,” I said.

“Good point.”

The staff at Zola’s liked Tem Forno. Sure, he stood out like a sore, well—Helk—but he had developed a taste for coffee. He drank a lot of coffee. Zola’s was full service, and I didn’t drink coffee. I sipped at my preferred blue poison, Temonus whiskey. It clashed with the French fries, but what did I care? I was having a drink at 10:00 in the morning.

Forno somehow looked smaller in here, another reason why he was so welcome in Zola’s. We sat at a back table, and he always took the low-rider chair, and he slouched a little, his bulk somewhat hidden in his overcoat, which once belonged to Terl Plenko, and then to Alan Brindos. He smiled a lot more, too, and gave customers the idea that even Helks could be friendly.

“Did you find anything on the DataNet?” I asked.

“Not really.”

I fumed inside, not happy with his nonchalance. “What about your famed underworld contacts?”

“I’m still recovering from the last time you had me use them.”

Our waiter, Ian, passed by. I asked for more Ranch dressing.

Forno grimaced. “Don’t you ever get tired of French fries?”

“There aren’t many Earth delicacies left.”

“Please don’t spend all of the Morganism’s expense money on French fries.”

I popped a fry and gazed out toward the front of the café. Several data-heads laughed as they lost themselves in their immersion specs. I ignored them. If Louise wanted help, she’d give me a sign and I’d send Forno to scare them. With a Helk around, I didn’t get the chance to show off my own muscles these days. Damn it.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I can understand how Morgan’s pockets can be so deep, having been an Envoy—”

“And retired.”

“—but that line of work, helping mediate interstellar squabbles, doesn’t put him in Terl Plenko’s path, real or copied.”

“You are so wrong, I’m surprised you can live with yourself.”

I tried to ignore that, but my impatience won out. “What do you mean?”

“Envoys travel the Union. They get around. Your dad? And Greist? Both Envoys, and see where that got them. Plenko. Ultras. Right in the thin of things.”

“Thick of—goddamn it, why do you do your stupid-Helk act when there’s no one around to appreciate it?”

“Because it upsets you.” Forno straightened a little bit in his chair and came about a foot closer to the ceiling. “Look, the Morganism knows something about your dad. He has to.”

“Why? Because he knows—or thinks—that Plenko is alive? Because he had a Tarot card we were missing, and mentioned another?”

“Because he said he promised someone he’d bring Plenko back.”

“What does that prove?”

Forno chugged the rest of his coffee, his third cup, which had only been brought to him five minutes earlier. He used the menu inset into the table to order another one, his finger skimming across the flashpaper. “What do you remember about the Rock Dome and what happened there?” he asked.

“You’re not answering my question.”

“‘Answer a question with a question and you’ll be a wise Helk,’” Forno said, quoting a Helk aphorism. “Humor me.”

Ian brought me more Ranch. I thought back two years ago, when I’d sent Brindos to Temonus to look for Plenko. It happened after seeing a holovid of an ill-fated attempt to gain information from a Movement sympathizer.

Dorie Senall. She’d fallen 100 floors to her death in the city of Venasaille rather than give the NIO any clue about Plenko. She’d done so willingly because she’d been a copy. The real Dorie Senall, who was still alive, had been married to the real Plenko. They had gone to Coral Moon to tour the Rock Dome.

I humored Forno with that story. “When Coral blew, Dorie escaped,” I finished, “but Plenko was lost at the Rock Dome, and didn’t get off that moon.”

“What else did she say about that time?”

“Lost while they were there touring or some such. Left the area with a be-right-back to her, and never returned.”

“You went to visit her last year after the Ultra shit went down,” Forno said. “On Ribon, in one of the new reclamation domes.”

I nodded, but I didn’t like where this was going. Dorie and I based our friendship on the few interactions we’d had over the past few years. We were friends, but distant as colony worlds. Close enough, he guessed, if you counted the jump slot possibilities. “If anyone knows anything about Terl Plenko,” I said, “it’s Dorie Senall.”

“Last year, you had a TWT voucher, and free passage, thanks to a gift from the Kenn. Is it any easier getting visas to Ribon these days?”

“Maybe a little.” I wondered if it was Dorie who Morgan promised about finding him. The question was: if that was true, would she risk having him brought to her? He might have enemies. She’d be better off going to wherever he was hiding.

Ian brought Forno’s coffee. “Here you are, Mr. Forno.”

Forno beamed. “Ah, thank you, young Earthling,” he said, perpetuating his benevolent alien act. Humble and appreciative of all the finer things Earth had to offer. Which wasn’t much.

“Well,” I said as he gulped down half the cup, “we know someone who can help.”

“You mean NIO Assistant Director Jennifer Lisle.”

I nodded.

“She’s not still mad at you for the incident last month with the RuBy bust, is she?”

“Almost everyone is mad at me. NIO, Seattle Authority—”

“Because that was priceless.” He paused. “The shipment that got away, I mean.”

“Shut up, Forno. How was I supposed to know Jennifer had them staked out?”

“If you ask her for visas to Ribon, you’ll want to get the visas for Barnard’s Star, too. If, that is, you’re willing to take this job.”

“We promised Morgan we’d tell him later today.”

“What’re we telling him?”

It was insane, of course. I recalled Dorie Senall’s words to me when I hinted I still had a desire to look for my dad. If alive, he was in another universe. Moving away from us. Closed to our kind amid our miniscule understanding of the truth of it. I’d given in to her practicality. An alternate universe made of antimatter? How could I possibly get there? Or my dad get back here? By magic?

But. Was that what these Tarot cards were for? The fact that Morgan had acknowledged the cards, however, and even gave us one of his own, suggested there was something important about them that extended beyond fortune telling. And bringing in his trump card, the once-thought-dead Terl fucking Plenko?

Jesus. Insanity breeds insanity, they say. At least I thought that’s what was said. Sometimes I confused old sayings and well-meaning nostalgia with wishful thinking.

Forno was waiting for an answer. I ate my last French fry and wiped my hands on my own jacket. I felt my blaster tucked in there. “Do you think we should tell Morgan yes?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Yes, why? Because he’s given new hope?”

“What kind of hope would that be?”

Once again, I fought back an angry retort. It wasn’t fair of me. Forno had weathered his own storms on Helkuntannas. Lost people, too. He understood loss just as much as hope.

For a full fifteen seconds, we just stared at each other. I guessed we should accept the job. “There’s an old saying, Forno. ‘Hope is not a strategy.’”

“Do you believe that?”

“Not really,” I said. My expectations for finding my dad weren’t just a feeling. Any time I thought about my dad, I felt that those expectations could influence a positive outcome. “You get what you expect,” I continued. “If you don’t have hope, even the most brilliant plan is doomed from the start.”

Forno seemed to find this statement true. He grinned. “So?”

“Looks like we’re working for Morgan.”

“The Morganism.”

“I’m not calling him—”

“A retired Envoy who’s been around. He breathes, functions, and has a mind of his own.” He grinned. “See? Morganism.”

“Shut up, Forno.”

I pinged Jennifer Lisle at NIO headquarters in Chicago after we left Zola’s. An automated message looped me to her answering service.

“Regarding what, sir?” a man’s voice said.

“Travel visas.”

“I’m sorry, Assistant Director Lisle doesn’t handle that sort of thing—”

“Just tell her Dave Crowell called with an urgent message. She’ll want to call me back.” At least I hoped so. In my mind I saw the RuBy bust downtown near the old Authority building go down in flames when I showed myself and tipped off the sniffers. I’m sure she wasn’t still angry about that.

Forno disappeared somewhere, and I went for a run. Forty minutes later, I entered my preferred workout “gym” near my place and spent another forty minutes lifting. It was possible Morgan’s size and hefty build had prompted me to work harder.

Later that day, back at my desk, I awaited word from Jennifer. I was a little miffed she hadn’t called right away. Maybe she was still upset. Morgan had checked in too, but I had to put him off for a while longer. I picked up The Fool, Morgan’s Tarot card, and looked at it closely. Of course, I’d looked closely at all the cards Forno and I had found, but I couldn’t place any extra significance to them, other than that they were in remarkably good shape for being as old as they were. One thing we hadn’t done yet was hire someone to analyze and test them. We couldn’t begin to appraise the value of the cards, since it wasn’t even a complete set. I didn’t want to draw any attention to them in case anyone other than me was out there looking for them.

If there was any significance to The Fool, it was the symbolic meaning: that whole reluctant journey thing. Seems I was destined to start one. That is, if Jennifer Lisle ever called me back.

I shivered, equally surprised and relieved that she’d contacted me. I’d already decided to go see Dorie, and now here she was, contacting me with an urgent matter. Dorie, the widow of Terl Plenko. There was a real possibility she wasn’t a widow after all. It didn’t seem likely, but if what Morgan had said was true, I had to believe my fool’s journey had indeed begun.

My comm card beeped a few minutes after I read Dorie’s message, and belief turned to certainty. NIO Assistant Director Jennifer Lisle was on the line.

Well, now. Looked like I had a good reason to go to Ribon.

“Hi, Jennifer,” I said cheerfully. “Thanks for calling me back.”

“The answer is no, Crowell,” she said.