Patron of the Arts

The ignition on the assassins’ sandcat was untouched. It took me most of the day to take it out, repair my own cat, and transfer what supplies there were. It was almost sunset when I headed toward Bradbury.

Behind me was one of the most beautiful buildings in the System. And three dead men. But I had discovered two important things. First, just before I left I noticed that the broken crystals near the killers’ cat had glazed over. I examined the surfaces closely and thought I knew why the Star Palace was still so beautiful, even after all these sandy centuries. The crystals were regrowing, ever so slowly, but regrowing to the original formation, or perhaps to a new configuration.

The second thing I learned was about myself. Three hired killers had come after me and I had vanquished them. Despite the revulsion, despite the fear and pain, I was jubilant. Tested and not found wanting!

This time Shigeta and his eternal admonishments thrust into my consciousness. Believing yourself the best man can get you killed or defeated. Better to always be a little scared than to walk tough. Beware the reputation that makes men desire to test you. I was beginning to understand Shigeta more all the time. I didn’t expect an answer yet from Huo, but I checked anyway, just to be certain. What I did get was a surprise, a Null-Edit tape from Bowie, my chauffeur and personal guard.

“It came in on the Ivan Dimitri, right after you touched down,”

the dispatcher with the leg stumps told me. I kept my eyes off his stumps and kept the images away. “It’s been following you all around.”

I thanked him and borrowed a reader and the privacy of his toilet. I sat on the ceramic stool and read the code on the outside of the biskit and dialed it into the reader. Nothing. I depressed the personal code key and redialed. Perhaps it was Huo, routed through Bowie as a ruse. But all I got was gibberish.

I redialed, leaving off the personal code. The random numbers tape, on which this had been recorded, had been keyed to my own company code. When I hit the green tab I heard the coded beep on the audio track and knew it was synchronous.

The screen blipped and there was Bowie. He looked very nervous. “Sir,” he said almost in a whisper, “I know I’m not supposed to know where you are, but I had to warn you. There’s something wrong here. I can’t figure out what it is.” He looked around, as if in fear of being found. “I . . . I thought it was odd when you didn’t take me along, but I figured that was your business. Then I was assigned to Mr. Huo, but only in the outer cells.” He looked slightly hurt as he said, “You know my rank. It seemed strange that I’d be . . . well . . . overlooked like that. Unless they thought I was a little too loyal to you. Then I heard something, just a part of a conversation, and I figured you were on Mars.”

He grinned into the camera and said, “And good for you! I mean, that’s great! So I figured it was all a hush-hush so that you could do your number and everything would be null-zongo. I really envied you, if you want to know the truth.”

Bowie grew serious. “Then I saw Osbourne and Sayles going into Mr. Huo’s private elevator. They’re a shifty pair. No one ever proved anything about that Metaxa affair, but I have my ideas. After that no guardian company would bond them, so they started doing freelance muscle. At least, that’s the word.”

Bodigard, Commguard, the Burns Agency, and all the rest of the quality security agencies had a standard policy that was quite effective. If any of their bonded agents—a term they preferred over bodyguard and security man—ever violated that bond, the agencies were pledged not only to pursue that violator to the limits of the law, but to pursue him without stop and with little regard to extradition, legality, or anything else; that is, never to stop until he was legally or illegally dead, if his crime was sufficient. As a result, the bonded guards were loyal, well-paid, and intelligent.

“Franky, sir, I think they are going out to assassinate you. I’m sending this out on the Dmitri, but they are going out on it, too. I hope this gets to you before they do. Go to ground, sir, or get the hell back here in a hurry. Something definitely odd is happening! There’s a Brian Thorne out there in the boonies, but now I think it’s a double, not just a marker moving on paper. Watch yourself.”

The screen went blank and there was just electron rubble until the tape ended. I sat staring at the tiny rectangle. Thank you, Bowie. I suppose I should have felt shocked and betrayed, but I was just numb. Huo had been my right-hand man for years, always efficient, always loyal. If Bowie was correct, it was apparently a major change in the man’s character. But maybe this element had been there all the time, hidden, suppressed, kept waiting until the right moment. It seemed so unlikely. Before Huo started working for me he had been with Randall/Bergstresser, working his way up from junior urbomax programmer to department head. His record was spotless, his dossier portraying a model of the ambitious but ethical man. He had done some minor investing in the market and had made a modest profit, steadily adding to his portfolio over the years. He had bought into a number of my own corporations even before I put him under contract, and, with various stock options, he was respectably well off.

What would Huo gain from my death? If my Mars trip was not revealed to my board of directors they would think I was still running around in the hinterlands, a ruse I myself had help set up. That could give Huo time to shift a few million from Column A to Column B, to sell a company off at rock bottom price and to buy it himself, to rig the computer payouts, to rape a company of assets, and so on. But how much could he steal?

I laughed at myself. I remembered when even a million New Dollars seemed like the largest sum of power and energy there was. Yes, Huo could steal more than he would ever make as my assistant, even limiting himself to the “legal” thefts that would never be discovered if I died. He could steal himself a lifetime of luxury in a year. Real power, real luxury, came very high indeed on our overpopulated Earth. Even second-in-command to Brian Thorne could not hope to live as Brian Thorne might.