The Sagittarius Whorl Read online

  Fair numbers of aliens mingled with humanity on the Path. The city center had embassies for four of the five star-going Insap races. (The grotesque Kalleyni, who found Earth gravity oppressive, kept a legation at Luna Landing— a fortunate thing for human dignity, since they were such appalling practical jokers.) A stroller on the Path might expect to encounter towering Joru in elegant black-and-white habits, irascible little Qastt, pale Y'tata under strict orders from their protocol people to take their charcoal pills and an-tiflatulence medication, and—most numerous of all—the Haluk. They had flocked to the human capital in droves after the signing of the treaties. Their blue-skinned trade attaches lobbied relentlessly in the halls of government, and their commercial reps infested the executive suites of half the Hundred Concerns, wheeling and dealing.

  The Haluk were the only aliens who adopted human clothing during their Earth sojourn. I had never been able to get used to the sight of them, striding boldly through the underground thoroughfares, always in groups of three or more, dressed in expensive high-style outfits. Members of the Joru, Y'tata, and Qastt races lived in apartments scattered throughout the central city; but all of the Haluk resided in their embassy, which comprised the top two-thirds of the enormous Macpherson Tower on Edward Street, just across from the headquarters of Sheltok, the Big Seven energy Concern.

  Like the restricted Haluk planets, their embassy was strictly off limits to humanity.

  Thanks to my sister Beth, I was late for my meeting with Chief Superintendent Jake Silver.

  I took the McCaul Street leg of the Path north to the edge of the university campus, then turned east beneath the teeming government area until I reached CCID Tower on College Street. An escalator brought me into the historic lobby, which is part of the original Toronto police headquarters. I found Jake fidgeting and glaring at his wrist chronometer. He was wearing a natty camel-colored overcoat and a black beret.

  I sidled up to him and deactivated my visor. "Yikes! The fuzz!"

  He gave me a dirty look. "It's about time. You know what happens to people who come late for a reservation at Carman's? Come on. We'll save time walking outside."

  He strode through the front doors, with me trailing apologetically after. I turned my privacy visor back on. "Don't get all in a snit, Jake. They won't throw you out of the place if you're with me. I'm a star! Rich, too."

  "Wiseass. When was the last time you had dinner at Carman's?"

  "Recently," I prevaricated. But I actually hadn't been there for over two years, back when I was still a political wannabe, wining and dining Liberal party Delegates sympathetic to Reverse notions, hoping they would allow me to address their open committee sessions and badmouth the Haluk.

  "Did you get a line on Barky Tregarth?" I inquired.

  "I'll answer that," Jake said, "when I have a tumbler of Clynelish scotch in my fist and my steak is smiling up at me. You better pray that the maitre d' is in one of his good moods."

  "Is Albert still there?"

  "He is. And merciless to the tardy."

  The restaurant was only a couple of blocks away, on Alexander Street. Damp cold struck through my anorak, making me wish the garment had environmental controls instead of armor. April can really be the cruelest month in middle North America. Down on the Path, daffodils and tulips were in exuberant bloom. Aboveground, it still felt like winter.

  Jake and I charged along the crowded sidewalk without speaking until the traffic signal at Yonge Street caught us. VIP cars and taxis were in a state of gridlock, as usual, waiting to get onto the computerized high-road ramps. The City Council's latest proposal to ban private ground vehicles from central-core streets had once again been shot down by the Hundred Concerns.

  "Have a hard day, Chief Superintendent?" I asked Jake neutrally.

  "The usual. Squabbling with a Zone Patrol liaison, chewing out the idiot droids in Data Processing, accepting shit with a smile from the powers that be." He paused. "And renewing an old and very unsavory acquaintance, thanks to you. I got what you wanted, but you're probably not going to like it."

  He didn't say another word until we reached the 275-year-old steak house. We were twenty minutes late, but Albert's austere face lost its scowl as I hove into view, shucking my anorak. An attendant took it and Jake's overcoat.

  "Helly!" The maitre d' beamed at me. According to Rampart's standard operating procedure, Jane Nelligan had booked the table in the Concern's name, not my own. "Welcome back! I was afraid you'd forgotten us."

  "Never. I've just been working my butt to the bone, forced to live on junk food."

  Albert nodded. "The trial of the century! Your name is on everyone's lips."

  Everyone who reads the Wall Street Journal, anyhow. I gave a wry smile as I slipped him a fat gratuity. "How about a spot in a very, very quiet corner?"

  "Certainly." He'd make certain that no newshounds or table hoppers annoyed us during dinner. It was all part of Carman's service.

  More than one head turned as we were conducted through the crowded main room, where copper and pewter pans and utensils hung thickly from the ceiling like metallic bats. The air was filled with the smell of pricey broiled meat and garlic toast.

  Our table was secluded, in one of the cellarlike annex rooms. We perused leather-bound menus while sipping aperitifs. I had a dry sherry while Jake knocked back a double of the fiery Highland single malt that was his favorite.

  "Seems a pity to anesthetize your taste buds with that kiltie coffin varnish in a restaurant like this," I murmured. "What the hell proof is it, anyhow?"

  "A hundred twenty-two cask strength, sonny-boy, and only an ignorant Arizona shitkicker would insult this nectar of the gods. All my years exiled on K-L, I only managed to get two bottles of Clynelish from the local bootleggers. Now I'm back on the Blue Marble, I'll make up for lost opportunities—especially since you're paying."

  "I apologize. Have another wee dram."

  "Damn right I will. And I expect a decent wine with the meal, too."

  So I got us a noble Haut-Brion '21. Jake ordered a grilled T-bone, potatoes Lyonnaise, and sauteed morels garnished with Aeolian krill—which he Insisted were kosher. I decided on a flash-seared Wagyu filet, a side of asparagus with mustard miso, and a salad of nittany ears. He had an appetizer of artichoke-stuffed ravioli. I chose tiny last-of-the-season Quilcene oysters, definitely not kosher.

  "You want to tell me what you found out about Barky Tregarth?" I asked him after his second double scotch arrived.

  "Give you a little back-story first. Long time ago, when I was young like you and full of the same sort of sappy ideals, I got the goods on a superior of mine named Ram Mahtani. A tipoff and a data-trail seemed to show that Ram had taken juice—probably from the Carnelian Concern—to quash an investigation into violations of the Y'tata high-tech weaponry embargo. Mahtani had always been a decent boss to me. And he was a devoted family man with a daughter who had lots of medical problems. So before I filed a report with Internal Affairs, I asked him if he had an explanation for the suspicious behavior."

  I said, "Oops."

  "Exactly. I used to be a hopeless softy. Anyhow, overnight the incriminating data disappeared in a convenient computer crash, and my tipster changed his story. Poof went the case against Mahtani. Three weeks later I was bounced from Criminal Investigation, transferred to Public Safety, and outward bound to a jerkwater world in the Perseus Spur. Ram Mahtani took early retirement from CCID the following year and became a highly paid security consultant for Carnelian."

  "Sad." I nibbled on a garlicky breadstick.

  "I remembered Ram when you asked me about Barky Tregarth. It's an open secret that Carnelian wholesalers in remote Sectors wink at contraband transactions. Their security people are alleged to keep a secret roster of trustworthy smugglers. I contacted Mahtani—anonymously, of course. He told me that Tregarth is very much alive. I said that my client had a business proposition for him and wasn't out to nail him. Mahtani might or might not have believed that
. His price for Barky's current alias and address is two million in untraceable funds."

  "Holy shit!"

  "I told you you wouldn't like it."

  "Like it? I haven't got it."

  "Come on. You own a quarterstake in Rampart, for chrissake. Two mil isn't chump change, but it wouldn't even fuel that muscle starship of yours for a round-trip to the Spur."

  "Rampart pays my fuel bills. I do get a sizable draw—a salary—as a corporate officer, but I've been treating it like Monopoly money, funneling almost all of it off to needy Re-versionist causes as soon as it hits my account. I've done the same with the income from my Rampart quarterstake."

  "Tell the party to give some of it back."

  "It's probably spent. You know pols."

  The succulent little oysters arrived. I gave them my full attention for the few minutes it took to wolf them down.

  Jake said, "So you really can't hack the bribe? I thought all you Frosts were richer than God."

  "I have some money of my own, but I was planning to use it to grease Tregarth." And for other upcoming expenses. "You think this Mahtani might haggle?"

  "The man's no street-corner fink, Helly. Two megabux was his price. And you might want to think very seriously about why he set it so high."

  I gave a gloomy nod. "To see how badly some anonymous party wants old Barky."

  "Here." Jake took a tiny notepad from his inner breast pocket, tore out a page and handed it to me. "Mahtani's contact number."

  The piece of paper had a phone code scrawled on it. "An ultrasecure routing server, I presume."

  "Of course ... And there's something else you should consider before you deal with this joker. He's a top-notch professional investigator and he has Carnelian resources to back him up. If you pay him, even with a blind EFT, he might be able to track you down and screw up your operation."

  "Yeah. Gran dinero leaves big footprints."

  All I needed was a Carnelian bloodsucker snatching Barky before I could milk him. Or interrogating him after the fact, which would be even worse—provided the guy did have crucial information about the Haluk. Adam Stanislawski's warning about lethal retaliation from threatened Haluk Consortium Concerns was still vivid in my memory. The question was, did Ram Mahtani know enough about Barky's past to make the Haluk connection?

  Rats. Maybe I'd have to forget about the old gunrunner. Unless I could spike Mahtani's guns, get what I wanted while simultaneously warning him off...

  The waiter appeared with our main course. We waited until he had finished arraying the planks with their sizzling chunks of meat and the various side dishes.

  I said to Jake, "I just had a brilliant idea. I'm going to try a loanshark for that two mil. A very large shark that Mahtani might not want to mess with."

  Jake shrugged. He tucked in with gusto while I entered a code into my pocket phone. It was one that I had never had occasion to use before, and I held my breath wondering whether the call would go through.

  But a familiar face finally appeared on the small screen. We stared at each other for a moment and then I lifted the instrument to my ear, cutting off the video.

  "What is it, Helly?"

  "Sorry to disturb you at home, sir. I have an urgent need for a large sum of untraceable credit. Naturally I will personally repay the loan at a future date, along with whatever interest you deem appropriate."

  "I see," Adam Stanislawski said. "How much?"

  "Two million, right now."

  "Very well."

  "Can you load a blind EFT card so that the hidden source of the funds will be Macrodur, not A. E. Frost, Esquire?"

  "Yes. Is this payment going directly to the person I mentioned at the end of our visit this afternoon?"

  Crafty old Adam. "Unfortunately not. It's a bribe to a go-between, a highly placed informant in Carnelian who knows the whereabouts of this person. The informant might be able to do me damage—but probably wouldn't dare go up against you."

  "The name."

  "Ram Mahtani."

  "I understand completely."

  "Let me level with you: I can't afford this steep a bribe, even if I wasn't scared stiff of Mahtani."

  Stanislawski laughed. "I can afford it. And I'm not afraid. Plug your card into the phone."

  I complied. The instrument's data strip indicated a transfer of funds, triple the amount I'd requested.

  "A contribution to the war chest," said the Macrodur chairman. "If Tregarth comes through, you'd better bring him back to Earth for safekeeping. Tell him I'll personally make it worth his while."

  "Will do. Thanks for the vote of confidence, sir."

  He nodded and broke off.

  "So that's how the simple folk do business," Jake marveled.

  "You ought to know," I said, very quietly.

  He sat still, his fork poised halfway to his mouth. The faintest trace of guilt shadowed his eyes. Then he calmly resumed eating.

  Gotcha, Jake. How else would Adam Stanislawski have known about the Barky Hunt?

  I picked up the phone again, engaging maximum encryption, a voice disguiser, and a masked code of my own to accommodate the server-link to Mahtani.

  A robot voice said, Code entered. Please hold.

  I put the phone down and we ate and drank in silence for a few minutes. Jake didn't meet my gaze. The Bordeaux was splendid and my chunk of pampered Japanese cattle flesh so tender that it surrendered to the knife with hardly any pressure. I only managed to gobble a few subtly flavored quivering slices before my phone, sitting on the table beside the asparagus, began to blink.

  I picked up and said, "Yes."

  "Do you accept my terms?" a disguised voice inquired. The view screen remained blank.

  "I have the EFT card ready."

  "Transmit the agreed-upon honorarium."

  I sent the mordida winging through the ether. Words popped up instantly on my instrument's readout strip.

  BARNEY CORNWALL-PHLEGETHON, ZONE 3

  "It has been my pleasure to assist you," said Mahtani, or whomever. "The information is accurate, as of today. Good evening."

  And he was gone.

  I showed the phone to Jake. "Where is this place? I've never heard of it."

  He munched a 'shroom redolent of shallots, wine, and exotic Crustacea before answering.

  "It's a hollow asteroid in a Sheltok Sagittarian system. One of the way stations for Shel UH carriers traveling from assorted R-class hellmouths in Zone 1 to the Orion Arm. Over the years, it attracted small-time human operators who traded with the local Joru and Y'tata worlds. The place expanded internally—sort of like an old tree getting hollowed out by more and more termite galleries. Now Phlegethon is a entrepot for all kinds offences and sleazy little trading outfits. Some are even legitimate."

  "Sounds like a perfect place for Barky."

  "Let's see if his Barney Cornwall alias computes," Jake said.

  He pulled out his own personal communicator, a police jobbie with more bells and whistles than mine, unfolded it, and summoned information from the CCID database. There was no trace of Barky Tregarth's revised moniker in any official listing.

  "Can you get direct access to the Phlegethon resident census through Sheltok?" I asked.

  "Officially, no. Unofficially ..." He entered a confidentiality override code, but gave a muttered curse of disappointment. "No one using the Cornwall or Tregarth names is on the asteroid's roster. Mahtani could have jerked us around, but I don't think so. He has a certain reputation to maintain. I think old Barky is lying low. You'll just have to go to Phlegethon and start digging." He grinned at me. "I'd lay odds that he'll know somebody's looking for him, too."

  "It figures," I said. "What else can you tell me about that part of the galaxy? How about checking the ZP crime stats for Zone 3?"

  He did so. "Hmm ... There's been a severe outbreak of piracy in those parts during the last couple of years. Twenty-one Sheltok megacarriers vanished without a trace, and others had close calls. I can get detail
s from Zone Patrol."

  "I'd be obliged."

  His search indicated that the energy-ship attacks had been laid at the doorstep of Y'tata freebooters, denounced—but of course!—as outlaws by the righteous Y Federation. Jake popped me a data-dime with full particulars and I filed it for later study.

  "There could have been other hijackings that Sheltok didn't report to ZP," Jake said. There was something elusive in his tone that I didn't pick up on immediately. "Just rumors."

  I nodded. Sheltok might have good reasons of their own not to publicize the attacks, especially if they'd been skimping on fleet security. It was unusual for Y'tata crooks to be hijacking transactinides so aggressively. They were an ancient race of nearly humanoid albinos, with about a thousand planetary colonies on both sides of Red Gap. But their population was nearly stable, and they seemed content to piddle along with their relatively low-tech interstellar civilization, only occasionally resorting to piracy. Since they owned long-established ultraheavy element sources of their own in the Whorl, their marauders usually targeted freighters with more generalized cargoes ...

  For a while we ate in silence. I finished my main course and began on the salad. The nittany ears were crisp and tart, just the way I like them.

  After a time Jake said casually, "You planning to head for the Sag?"

  "In a few days, maybe. If Barky's inside that Sagittarian rock, I'll find him and wring him dry. Whether he has any useful information for me is another matter."

  "He might run," Jake said. "Mahtani is sure to warn him that someone's very anxious to meet him."

  "I'm betting he'll stay put, take precautions, and see what the deal is. I would, if I was in his position."

  "Whole lotta money to pay, long way to go, on an off chance."

  I gave him a cynical look. "Adam Stanislawski already knows why I'm interested in Barky Tregarth. No need to pump me, Jake."

  He grinned sheepishly. "What can I say?"

  Not much, I thought.

  "You're wondering what my price was," Jake went on. "The answer is: zero, zilch, zippo. You know I owe the Big M even more than I owe you. For my posting home. The agreement was, if I ever came across anything that might affect Macrodur significantly, I was to pass it along. Your peculiarly urgent need to interview Tregarth, a guy who once engaged in illicit trade with the Haluk, tripped the alarm."