CROWELL

8 I followed Forno through the streets of Bestus, Dorie beside me, and I was confident he knew where to go. I was also confident because he was in front of us. He was a massive walking shield. This was his thing.

The humans here seemed no different than on Earth in their disregard for the Helk. Prejudice had no borders. They kept their distance from him and cast sidelong glances at him; curiosity, dislike, and fear trailed in his wake. I glared back at them when I could. I was shielded from their contempt in more ways than one.

The avenues twisted and turned, opposite of what I’d expected. I’d expected an ordered, purposeful grid that mirrored the technological efficiency of several longstanding alien civilizations. Even with the haphazard layout, we made general progress to the west. We passed an open market that seemed more ordered than the surrounding streets. It was filled with tech sellers: dataheads, programmers, flash spammers, and the like. Dorie was intrigued by a booth advertising portable, foldable transparent protection domes for individual use, but I steered her away from it. She’d just become free of domes for a while, and she didn’t need that distraction.

Forno had to duck under a low beam crossing the avenue as we left the market behind. The avenue narrowed, becoming more of an alley, the brightness dimming, the impossible buildings suddenly grayer. It was still early afternoon, but the sudden change in light was alarming. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I glanced behind me more often, worried about getting hemmed in.

Teska’s location had been easy to pinpoint; he might not know we were coming, but I didn’t know what he’d do when he found out. I scanned the buildings, craning my neck, searching windows, doors, and nearly hidden nooks and crannies. With the buildings closing in on us, the blaster in my coat pocket reassured me.

“This keeps narrowing,” Dorie said. “Forno, are you sure we’re going the right way? This seems like—”

“It’s one way to get there.”

“The best way?”

“I’m not sure at this point if there is a best way.”

“Because?”

I answered. “Because they all lead to Teska.”

Forno stopped. We all stopped. I watched Forno’s shoulders, waiting. They rose slightly. He lifted his left arm and gave a signal only I would recognize. A curling of his fingers.

Shit.

In two seconds, I drew my blaster, powered it up, and raised it. I cradled it against my chest and waited. Dorie noticed, sidestepped closer to me, and froze. We were tucked in behind Forno, and anyone directly in front of him wouldn’t see us. Our position behind him could be a good thing or a bad thing. I continued to watch his back. His left arm was still raised. I’d let Forno decide where he wanted us once he assessed the situation.

I chanced whispering. “What’ve we got?”

Three fingers.

“Where?”

Two fingers, forward. One finger up and left. At least no one was behind us. Yet. That was my job. I pivoted, still close to Forno, and scanned the avenue behind us.

Because the light had dimmed dramatically in the alley, it took a few seconds before I noticed a shadow near one of the nooks I’d taken note of earlier, twenty-five or thirty yards behind us. The shadow separated slightly from the wall, and I confirmed it was human. I saw no one else.

“One,” I said. “Left. Thirty yards.”

“Stay on him. Everyone needs to see each other, I think.”

I agreed. “Dorie, slide right, move up to Forno, and keep facing the front.”

She did, and I slid the other way, still looking back. I inched my blaster away from my chest a little.

“Now what?” Dorie whispered.

I asked, “Forno?”

“Could try that new dance number.”

“We want something that won’t get us killed,” I reminded him.

“Oh. Right.”

Dorie looked at him. “Seriously?”

“It worked to get us this far,” Forno said.

“Not far enough, looks like,” she said.

My guy stepped away from the wall enough to lean against it, his own weapon visible at his side. He wore a black leather coat that came to his waist, purple and green leggings, and a brown derby hat. So much for fashion sense.

I raised my voice and shouted, “We’re looking for Heston Teska.”

One of the men in front of Forno chuckled. “Keep looking. We’ve never heard of him.”

“Maybe one of you is Teska,” I said. I didn’t actually believe that. What I did believe, early on in this encounter, was that they didn’t expect us to reach Teska at all. I really believed they had orders to eliminate us. “You’re the leader, aren’t you?”

“Think so?” the voice said.

“Why don’t you come out so we can see you? Have a civilized discussion?”

I heard footsteps. “Civilized?”

“Switch,” I said softly.

Forno turned to face Bowler Hat, but Dorie stayed where she was. I turned to face the man who’d emerged into the narrow avenue. He wore a black longcoat that brushed the pavement, and the hood of his gray sweatshirt covered most of his face. He was taller than me, but certainly not taller than Forno. One other man was behind him, indistinct from this distance. They aimed their weapons. The man in the longcoat didn’t have a weapon showing. I looked up and to the left and saw the man Forno had spotted earlier. His rifle tight against his shoulder, he looked through its scope, covering us.

Forno growled. “The guy in the back is closing.” He raised his voice. “Stay back or I’ll shoot your bottom.”

That elicited a few laughs from Teska’s men.

I held out my hands, trying to defuse the standoff. We’re all friends here. Of course, I still had the blaster in my right hand. “See what I have to deal with?”

“What about the girl?” Longcoat asked.

I glanced at Dorie. “What about her?”

“Why’s she with you?”

“Because she’s with me. She’s okay.”

“Who says you’re okay?” Longcoat asked. The man behind him raised his weapon higher. “I think my boys should just put you down now.”

“Let me smack his lights out,” Forno said.

“I really need to talk to Heston Teska,” I said. “I’ve got a message for him. It’s important.” I put my blaster back in my right-hand coat pocket, kept my hand around it, then rummaged around with my left hand in my other pocket until I found the stack of Tarot cards Forno and I had collected. Earlier I’d put The Hermit on top, so I pulled it out and waved it at Longcoat. The light was dim enough that I didn’t think Longcoat could see it very well.

“What is that?” the man said.

“Teska knows what this is, and why it’s important. He knows how to find the one I’m looking for.”

“But what is it?”

“See for yourself.” I flicked the card at him.

It sailed right toward his head, until it somehow flipped and, its momentum lost, fell to the ground five feet in front of him. He bent down to pick it up.

“You’ve got up,” I said, and pulled my blaster. To Dorie, I said “Down.” The whine of my blaster powering back up prompted Forno, and he started shooting. Me too. A quick shot to the right of Longcoat, and his buddy fell. I heard a shot that might have come from the guy up above, but I was still standing without a hole burned through me.

I trained the blaster on Longcoat and held him there, mid-crouch. He gripped the Tarot card in his hand. “Stay right where you are, just like that,” I said. “Forno?”

“Got both,” he said.

“Dorie?”

“I’m okay.”

A short gun battle was the best gun battle.

I took three steps forward, reached Longcoat, and put the blaster against his temple. Then I rummaged around in his coat until I found his weapon. A blaster similar to mine, though with considerably more firepower. You didn’t find a weapon like that just anywhere on the street.

Longcoat still hadn’t moved. He wasn’t even cussing me out. I took The Hermit card from him, turned it so he could see the back, and said “Heston Teska. His name’s right there. Your men are done. You’re going to lead us the rest of the way.”

He nodded, suddenly very compliant. The fight had gone out of him. I could tell it didn’t make any sense to him to die here on this darkened Bestus alley.

“Any more of you?” I asked him.

“At the house, but you’ll be okay with me.”

“Take off that hood, for Christ’s sake.”

He did, but slowly. His hair was fiery red and cut short.

“What’s your name?”

“Rob.”

“How’d you know we were coming, Rob?”

Rob shrugged. “The kiosk. We have a lookup trace on it, and it alerted Teska when you looked him up.”

Forno came up beside me. “Bloodshed. How fun was that?”

“Not too,” I said. “You alerted them with your dance number.”

“At least he was easy to find.”

I turned to find Dorie had also come close. I handed her Rob’s weapon. “Now you have one.”

“Oh joy,” she said, looking it over. She flicked a release, pulled the power cell out, snapped it back in, then gave it a half twirl until she had it snug in her grip and pointed at Rob, who backed up. He looked at Dorie with both surprise and worry. She closed one eye as if she were sighting down the barrel. “Do I have to have one?”

She knew her way around a blaster, that was for sure. “Nope,” I said. “But then you aren’t going any farther with us.”

“Oh.” She kept her aim steady at Rob’s head and said, “Pew.”

Rob flinched.

“And you are going with us,” I said, “so it looks like you’re stuck with it.”

“You are one bad-bottom governor,” Forno said to her.

“You mean bad-ass.”

Forno grinned.

“Lead on,” I said, waving Rob down the alley in the direction we’d been heading when we first entered it. “You saw what happened to the rest of your crew. If you fuck us over, send some kind of signal, or alert Teska in any way—”

“I won’t,” Rob said. “I mean, Jesus. You killed three of my men like that. And then you pinned me down. I promise.” He said it to me, but he kept his eyes on Dorie the whole time. It was fear, I saw there. Maybe admiration.

Totally bad-bottom.

Turns out we’d been pretty close to Teska’s compound when Rob and his men ambushed us. Five minutes after we started down the alley, we took a left turn and came to a tall but narrow doorway. Forno had a full two feet of head space when he passed through. We shuffled down a passage lit with old overhead fluorescents, then a similar doorway on the other end opened to a full, well-lit avenue again. The avenue led to a dead end, and there, surrounded by both marble pillars and green leafy trees, was the compound.

Compared to the rest of what we’d seen in Bestus—the tech-heavy glitz of the avenues and buildings and the disorienting structure—the compound was old-fashioned and reminded me of Earth during its better days. It was as if Teska had the same penchant for Earth nostalgia that I did. He was a Helk, though, not human, and that disconnect bothered me.

The largest structure was a white two-story plantation-style house with a red roof and a wraparound wooden porch and railing. A man and a woman stood on either end of the porch. The man was smoking a real cigarette, and a blaster sat on the railing in front of him. The woman had a rifle over her shoulder. I figured Teska had other security nearby. Probably some inside. My stomach churned, and I worried about being hemmed in again.

The size of the house surprised me, but the number of surrounding buildings—well, the size of the whole compound, actually—seemed over the top for someone like Heston Teska, a Helk I knew nothing about. Because Forno’s access of the kiosk had led us right to him, we’d not taken any time to find a DataNet terminal to research him.

He’d been easy enough to find, but I bet I wouldn’t dig up a lot about him on the DataNet; that is, if I could even locate and access a terminal.

We kept Rob in front of us and spread out behind him in a small V: Forno directly behind Rob with his Helk-sized blaster aimed at his head, and Dorie and I on the wings, blasters at our sides.

Rob raised his hands and waved them reassuringly, gesturing that the two shooters on the porch should stand down.

The woman shrugged. A question.

“Here to see Teska,” Rob said.

“So what?” she asked. “Why do they get to see him? They tripped the location trace. That’s fishy. Why was nothing arranged?”

I took a chance and spoke up. “It’s important. We have some—”

“Shut up,” she said, “I’m not talking to you.”

Huh. Okay. I shut up, but I was ready to enter overly-verbose mode at a moment’s notice.

“Where are the others?” the man with the cigarette said.

“Dead,” Rob said.

“Dead, how?”

“How the fuck do you think? Why do you think I’m standing here with these three and their blasters ready to take me out?”

“They’re not getting in,” she insisted. She stared at me with hard eyes and contempt. “If you manage to get past us, there are twice as many armed folks on the inside waiting to zip you up the moment you open fire. You won’t have a chance, even with your sulky Helk here.”

Forno snorted. “Sulky?”

Rob looked back at me. It seemed to be my cue to speak. “We don’t want more bloodshed,” I said. “It was unfortunate what happened earlier, but if we’d done nothing, we’d be dead.”

She scoffed. “What’s wrong with that?”

“We just need to talk to him.”

“You’re not talking to him.”

Then Rob surprised me. He was still looking at me over his shoulder, but now he turned and held out his hand.

“Give it to me,” he said.

I knew what he meant, and I didn’t hesitate. I fished in my coat for the Tarot card and offered it to Rob. The Hermit. The card with Heston Teska’s name on it.

Rob withdrew his hand without taking it and shook his head. “No. The other one.”

I was taken aback. “The other one? What other one?”

Rob put out his hand again. “The other Tarot card. You know which one.”

In the alley, Rob had held the Tarot card for just a few moments. He barely had time to glance at it. If he had enough time to see it was a Tarot card—if he even knew what one was—had he seen which Tarot card? Why would he know about any others, or assume we had any others?

I reached into my coat pocket again.

Dorie said, “Dave, no. You don’t know what they’ll do—”

“It’s okay, Dorie,” Rob interrupted. His eyes were soft and comforting as he looked at her.

What was going on? Every time Rob looked at her, I saw so many emotions crossing his face, it felt like someone else was controlling him.

“It’s not okay,” she said, frowning. “You’ve no idea what’s going on, or why we must do this.”

He did know something, though. That was the frustrating thing. I had no idea how he knew about the card, unless—

Morgan. Of course. Morgan. I’d bet anything he tipped Teska off somehow, told them I was coming. And if Teska knew, and Rob knew, then these two on the porch would know.

“Well, somebody say something,” Forno said.

“Or do something,” Rob added. His hand was still outstretched, waiting for the card.

Then I knew the real reason why he knew something.

Dorie.

Son of a bitch. He’d called her Dorie. No one had said her name since the moment we entered that alley. He knew her.

Or—he knew who she was.

I didn’t hesitate any longer. I pulled out my partial deck of Tarot cards. I thumbed through them and found the right card.

“Dave. Please.” Dorie’s voice was distant.

I ignored it. “Here,” I said, and handed the card to Rob.

Death.

“Ah,” he said.

Bring Plenko Death.

Rob turned and walked to the porch.

“Be ready,” I said to Forno. “I’m not exactly sure where this is going to lead us.”

“You made a mistake, Dave,” Dorie said.

“No, I don’t think so.” I gripped her shoulder but kept my eyes on the porch. “Just—just be ready.”

The man on the porch had finished his cigarette. He threw it down and met Rob at the top of the stairs. The woman still had the rifle on her shoulder when she joined them. Rob held out the card so they could see.

The three of them looked back at us. The man and woman went back to their ends of the porch and Rob waved us up.

“Here we go,” I said.

By the time we stepped onto the porch, Rob had the wide double doors open. “Wait,” he said, and disappeared inside.

It happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to object. We were now at the mercy of our weapon-toting bookends on the porch. We’d lost our “hostage”—if we could consider him a hostage at all. Our weapons were still drawn, but Bookend One and Bookend Two seemed in no hurry to zip us.

Rob reappeared without the Tarot card. “No weapons.”

I shook my head. “We’re keeping them.”

“Put them away at least.”

Dorie and Forno looked at me. In the silence, the porch seemed gigantic and the front door far away. It was disconcerting to stand there in that hushed tableau, everyone waiting on me to decide.

I nodded, and weapons disappeared into coat pockets or slipped into pants and under shirts, out of sight.

With a slight nod, Rob stepped aside, and that was our go-ahead to enter the house.

“Are you sure?” Forno asked. “You heard them. More firepower on the inside, our weapons hard to get to. A set up.”

“No,” Rob said. “It’s safe. Teska’s by himself. He’s waiting for you. There’s nothing to fear.”

Famous last words. But I had a feeling.

“It’s safe,” I said. I was playing my hunch. Rob knew something about Dorie. He knew about the other card. Showing it to the Bookends seemed to pacify them. Heston Teska was ready to see us, and Rob had nearly guaranteed us safe passage. There really weren’t too many other explanations as to why this was all so.

I took Dorie’s hand and pulled her with me, ahead of Forno. She needed to be next to me when we talked to him. We crossed the threshold into the house. I heard Forno thump along behind me.

The front room was dim and dark, I thought, when I stopped and surveyed my surroundings. It was, but it wasn’t so much because of the light. It was because the walls were dark. Almost matte black. I knew what I was looking at, having seen a lot of it last year.

Blackrock.

Thick slabs of it coated the walls. This wasn’t that surprising. He’d told Dorie that Barnard’s World incorporated internal Helk structures and design.

No, that wasn’t surprising at all. What was surprising was the Helk standing in the middle of the room waiting for us. He held the Death card in his giant left hand. It wasn’t really a surprise to me because I’d made a weak guess at it. But I imagined right now Forno, and most especially Dorie, were surprised as hell. Our entire mission on Barnard’s had now changed, and maybe I should be happy about that. We’d been looking for a Second Clan named Heston Teska.

Except that he wasn’t Heston Teska, and he wasn’t Second Clan.

“Hello, Dorie,” the Helk said.

It was Terl Plenko.