She nodded slowly and read the address. “Why so mysterious?”
“Just a matter of Guild ethics. I wanted to write it down while it was still fresh. Uh…” I’d never seen a truly penetrating stare before. “But I might have more information tonight that would invalidate it.”
“If you say so, Ricardo.” She slipped the envelope into a drawer. I backed out, mumbling something inane.
Down to Slim Joan’s for a sandwich of stir-fried vegetables in Syrian bread. Slightly rancid and too much curry, but I didn’t dare go to the Council meeting on an empty stomach; !tang sonar would scan it and they would make a symbolic offer of bread, which wouldn’t be refused. Estelle was partly right about the “tang” food: one bite of the bread contained enough mescaline to make you see interesting things for hours. I’d had enough of that for a while.
I toyed with the idea of taking a weapon. There was a rental service in the pharmacy, to accommodate the occasional sporting type, and I could pick up a laser or tranquilizer there. But there would be no way to conceal it from the !tang sonar. Besides, Lafitte wasn’t the kind of person who would employ direct violence.
But if it actually were the Syndicate behind Lafitte, they might well have sent more than one person here; they certainly could afford it. A hitter. But then why would Lafitte set up the elaborate poisoning scheme? Why not simply arrange an accident?
My feet were taking me toward the pharmacy. Wait. Be realistic. You haven’t fired a gun in twenty years. Even then, you couldn’t hit the ground with a rock. If it came to a burnout, you’d be the one who got crisped. Better to leave their options open.
I decided to compromise. There was a large clasp knife in my bag; that would at least help me psychologically. I went back up to my room.
I thumbed the lock and realized that the cube I’d heard playing was my own. The door slid open and there was Lafitte, lounging on my sofa, watching an old movie.
“Dick. You’re looking well.”
“How the hell did you get in here?”
He held up his thumb and ripped a piece of plastic off the fleshy part. “We have our resources.” He sat up straight. “I hear you’re taking a flyer out to Pa’an!al. Shall we divide the cost?”
There was a bottle of wine in a bucket of ice at his feet. “I supposed you charged this to my room.” I turned off the cube.
He shrugged. “You poked me for dinner last night,
I raised the glass to my lips, flinched, and set it down untouched. “Speaking of resources, what was in that brandy? And who are these resourceful friends?”
“The wine’s all right. You seemed agitated; I gave you a calmative.”
“A
He waved that away. “The Syndicate’s a myth. You—”
“Don’t take me for an idiot. I’ve been doing this for almost as long as you have.” Every ten years or so there was a fresh debunking. But the money and bodies kept piling up.
“You have indeed.” He concentrated on picking at a hangnail. “How much is Starlodge willing to pay?”
I tried not to react. “How much is the Syndicate?”
“If the Syndicate existed,” he said carefully, “and if it were they who had retained me, don’t you think I would try to use that fact to frighten you away?”
“Maybe not directly… last night, you said ‘desperate men.’ ”
“I was drunk.” No, not Peter Rabbit, not on a couple of bottles of wine. I just looked at him. “All right,” he said, “I was told to use any measures short of violence—”
“Poisoning isn’t violence?”
“Tranquilizing, not poisoning. You couldn’t have died.” He poured himself some wine. “Top yours off?”
“I’ve become a solitary drinker.”
He poured the contents of my glass into his. “I might be able to save you some trouble, if you’ll only tell me what terms—”
“A case of Jack Daniel’s and all they can eat at Slim Joan’s.”
“That might do it,” he said unsmilingly, “but I can offer fifteen hundred shares of Hartford.”
That was $150 million, half again what I’d been authorized. “Just paper to them.”
“Or a million cases of booze, if that’s the way they want it.” He checked his watch. “Isn’t our flyer waiting?”
I supposed it would be best to have him along, to keep an eye on him. “The one who closes the deal pays for the trip?”
“All right.”
On the hour-long flyer ride I considered various permutations of what I could offer. My memory had been jammed with the wholesale prices of various kinds of machinery, booze, candy, and so forth, along with their mass and volume, so I could add in the shipping costs from Earth to Armpit to Morocho III. Lafitte surely had similar knowledge; I could only hope his figure of 1500 shares was a bluff.
(I had good incentive to bargain well. Starlodge would give me a bonus of up to 10 percent of the difference between a thousand shares and whatever the settlement came to. If I brought it in at 900, I’d be a millionaire.)
We were turning inland; the walls of the city made a pink rectangle against the towering jungle. I tapped the pi lot on the shoulder. “Can you land inside the city?”
“Not unless you want to jump from the top of a building. I can set you on the wall, though.” I nodded.
“Can’t take the climb, Dick? Getting old?”
“No need to waste steps.” The flyer was a little wider than the wall, and it teetered as we stepped out. I tried to look just at my feet.
“Beautiful up here,” Lafitte said. “Look at that sunset.” Half the large sun’s disk was visible on the jungle horizon, a deeper red than Earth’s sun ever shone. The bloody light stained the surf behind us purple. It was already dark in the city below; the smell of rancid fish oil burning drifted up to us.
Lafitte managed to get the inside lane of the staircase. I tried to keep my eyes on him and the wall as we negotiated the high steps.
“Believe me,” he said (a phrase guaranteed to inspire trust), “it would make both our jobs easier if I could tell you who I’m representing. But I really am sworn to secrecy.”
An oblique threat deserves an oblique answer. “You know I can put you in deep trouble with the Standards Committee. Poisoning a Guild brother.”
“Your word against mine. And the bellbot’s, the headwaiter’s, the wine steward’s… you did have quite a bit to drink.”
“A couple of bottles of wine won’t knock me out.”
“Your capacity is well known. I don’t think you want a hearing investigating it, though, not at your age. Two years until retirement?”
“Twenty months.”
“I was rounding off,” he said. “Yes, I did check. I wondered whether you might be in the same position as I am. My retirement’s less than two months away; this is my last big-money job. So you must understand my enthusiasm.”
I didn’t answer. He wasn’t called Rabbit for lack of “enthusiasm.”
As we neared the bottom, he said, “Suppose you weren’t to oppose me too vigorously. Suppose I could bring in the contract at a great deal less than—”
“Don’t be insulting.”
In the dim light from the torches sputtering below, I couldn’t read his expression. “Ten percent of my commission wouldn’t be insulting.”
I stopped short. He climbed another step. “I can’t believe even
