Morty breathed a sigh of relief as the maître d’ settled them in a semi-private room just outside the kitchen and left menus.
“Shouldn’t we be making our way to Talyarkinash’s backup place?” Xiomber asked soberly before taking a long drink of water.
“Yes and no,” Morty replied, studying his brother for signs of wear or fear. “The lab’s been burned now. And we know the other two got away, or the cops would have made a much bigger stink about catching a human. Somebody would have leaked that to a news crew, regardless of the situation.”
“Okay, so we all got away,” Xiomber agreed. “And?”
“So now we have a secondary duty to look after ourselves, egg-brother,” Morty said. “Like Gareth said, if he gets taken, it will be up to us to build a new generator array and kidnap another cop from Earth, if we want to stop Maximus. We can’t do that from inside a jail cell.”
“You think Talyarkinash’s other place will get raided?” Xiomber asked.
“I don’t know,” Morty admitted. “But we’re hiding from the cops, the Constables, and Maximus now. That doesn’t leave us a lot of places to go, because Talyarkinash would have needed underworld help to set up her bolthole in the first place. Somebody knows. The question is how quickly they’ll talk, and that hinges on either fear of Maximus or a good enough reward from the cops.”
Xiomber followed Morty’s logic as he emptied his water glass. It had been a nerve-wracking couple of hours. He was a scientist, not a bank robber. A good salad and a pasta right now would help calm him, because they needed to find a way to set up their own bolthole on this planet. One where they could hide from agents of Maximus and the law at the same time.
“How long can we run?” Xiomber asked, calming enough to go through the implications.
“We spent a month setting this gig up,” Morty reminded the man. “Once we realized that Maximus wasn’t going to just settle for being the kingpin of the criminal underground but wanted to rule everything. It was only a matter of time before he brought in more humans to help. I’ve got eight more credit accounts we can access right now, and connections to a couple of brokers for more, so we’re good for money. I know a few places we might could hide, but it depends on the Constabulary now. I’m expecting random, armed raids on a number of them tonight, expressly looking for any of four known fugitives. We cleaned up Talyarkinash’s lab well enough, but we were in a hurry and the cops will find enough.”
“So hiding in plain sight at a restaurant is a good idea?” Xiomber rolled his eyes.
“Cops aren’t going to roust this place,” Morty replied. “And there are probably thirty other Yuudixtl in here right now, so we don’t stand out. This buys us another couple of hours, then I know an all-night tea house in a nice part of town, over by the university. We can hang out there, as long as you don’t mind open mic poetry night.”
Xiomber rolled his eyes again, but Morty expected that. His egg-brother was not a bohemian by any stretch of the word. But cops would never look in a tea house filled with weird kids playing guitars and chanting bizarre performance art to total strangers.
In the morning, if they were still able and the idea still sounded good, they could make their careful way to where Talyarkinash was hopefully hiding with Gareth, and move on to the next step. Or just run and find themselves another place to hide while they worked on a different plan to save the universe.
Damn the Constables for being good enough, smart enough, or maybe lucky enough to have broken things so wide open, so early. Morty had been counting on having at least a another week, and then it would have been someone from the old gang sniffing around.
Talyarkinash could have deflected them long enough, and then Morty and his brother could have unleashed an avenging angel on people who seemed to want to take the whole damned Accord of Souls down.
Didn’t those fools understand that you had to have a working society first?
Morty could see a dark future where Maximus got himself made over into an emperor. He would have to institute a reign of brutality to keep power, which would mean more humans, until all of the old species of the Accord, bound by their psionic empathy, became a permanent slave class to a caste of humans and other murderous criminals.
If Morty had realized all this a year ago, when Cinnra decided he needed a personal killer to keep power, Morty might have quit and turned state’s evidence then. Better jail than the sort of dystopian future Morty might have personally helped give birth to.
He could only hope that it truly was possible to fight fire with fire.
At least he and his egg-brother had managed to destroy the wormhole station back on Zathus. Maximus wouldn’t be able to bring in more humans until he built a new one, and that would take time, especially if the cops were watching, and the overlord had lost his two best physicists to crises of conscience.
The waiter came and took their orders. Morty had wanted some wine, just to help with his nerves, but Xiomber overrode him. And he would let his brother do that. It was only fair, if he was going to drag Xiomber to a poetry slam later.
“I hate you, by the way,” Xiomber mentioned as the waiter left.
“What did I do this time?” Morty asked.
“You’re going to turn me into one of the good guys, you bastard,” his brother snapped. “All our lives we’ve wanted to be criminals, you know. Could have gotten legitimate jobs, but that was too staid. And now I’m running for my life from every goomba and cop in this town.”
“Sorry,” Morty offered.
“Is it ever going to get better, you suppose?” Xiomber asked.
Morty shrugged.
“We have to save galactic civilization from a madman first,” Morty replied. “And then deal with a human cop that we’ve turned into a god, and a criminal underworld that won’t forgive us, either way. I’m happy enough to be in the frying pan right now, because the alternative is the fire itself.”
“Do we turn ourselves in?” Xiomber asked. “Tell the cops everything, including what we plan for Gareth, and see if they can stop Maximus?”
“They won’t believe us,” Morty said. “We’ve already shredded the law books at this point. Fardel only knows how many centuries we’d be sentenced too, even with time off for good behavior. Gareth would be in the cell with us, or a zoo, which is the same thing. Maximus would dance right around any traps they thought they could set to catch him, and then end up grand poohbah of everything.”
“No,” Xiomber countered. “I mean everything we know. The crooked cops. The suborned prosecutors. The Constables Maximus secretly recruited. Everything.”
“We wouldn’t live to see the inside of a jail cell, brother,” Morty replied mournfully.
“It might be worth trying,” Xiomber said.
“We’ll give Gareth a shot first,” Morty said. “I think he has what it takes to do this.”
“And if he succeeds, brother?” Xiomber snapped. “We’re still guilty of breaking just about every law on the books. You think they’ll just kiss us on the snout and send us on our way?”
“I think that I would enjoy spending the rest of my life in the next cell over from Maximus,” Morty retorted. “At least the rest of the Accord of Souls would have survived, at that point. That’s way better than some of the options I can see right now.”
Xiomber wanted to say something sarcastic and biting to that. Morty could see it in his eyes, almost taste it in the scent his egg-brother gave off. But Xiomber held his silence.
Morty knew why.
He was right.
In the end, if the Accord didn’t survive, being outside the jail wouldn’t mean much of anything.
Because Morty had been the one who had done the most to tear it down.