He merely stood looking at the guard as silence began to drag. Finally, the guard shrugged again and said a few words into a wrist mike. He slid off the stool he occupied, and with a negligent, 'C'mon,' headed for an inconspicuous door near the front of the store.
As soon as the door closed behind John, the big man whirled and slammed him against the wall. The point of a knife pricked John's neck.
'Hands up!' the man demanded. Then, 'You carryin'?'
John raised his hands above his shoulders. He had expected to be searched. He nodded slowly. 'Knife, behind my right hip. Nothing else. I heard the johns on Marchand were really rough about weapons.'
A rough chuckle sounded from behind his head. 'They are. It costs Joma a bundle to keep it that way.'
He felt a light touch at his hip, and then the knifepoint vanished and the man frisked him quickly but thoroughly.
'Okay,' the big man said, 'Come on. You go first. It's the third door on your right. And don't move too fast, okay?'
Joma Alcar looked more like a politician or aging vid star than the head of a criminal syndicate. He sat behind a large desk with a single uncomfortable-looking chair in front of it. The rest of the office was almost completely undecorated and shadowed. The dimness was relieved only by a pool of bright light on the desk area. John recognized the psychology. Put your visitor in a hard, uncomfortable chair in front of a massive desk, in a pool of bright light, with no distractions and yourself in a large, comfortable swivel chair. Instant dominance.
John took a seat in the hard chair at Alcar's casual wave. The distinguished-looking man flashed a bright smile that did not reach his eyes. 'So,' he said in a bass voice, 'You're a friend of Sarky's, huh?'
John smiled and shook his head. 'Naw, we worked a few jobs together, is all. But he give me your name in case I ever needed anything on Marchand.'
The man nodded, the phony smile still in place. 'Uh huh. Last I heard he was workin' for a pirate. That 'Terror' guy. You a pirate too?'
John laughed aloud. 'Me? Gods no! Too much blood an' guts. Besides, I don't think I could kill. I'm strictly a heister.'
Alcar seemed to relax slightly. 'So, what can you do for me?'
'Isn't that supposed to be 'what can I do for you'?'
The man's smile grew even wider as he shook his head. 'Nope. You're here because you need something from me. What's gonna make it worth my while to hear about it? Sarky was strictly a small-timer. He never put together a decent job in his life. How do I know you ain't just like him, and flat broke?'
John turned his smile nervous. 'Look, sire Alcar. I'm not gonna lie to ya. I'm pretty small time, too. But I got lucky, if you can call it that. A job I did turned out to be a lot richer than I thought it would be. Enough richer that the pigeon put out a contract on me and I hadda run. I heard there's still some bounty hunters on my tail. I've used up the entire score runnin' for months, now. All I got left is a beat up old ship and my emergency fund.
'As for what I can do for you…' He reached into his shirt pocket and removed a folded piece of velvet. Stretching, he put it on Alcar's desk and opened it. A seven-millimeter sunstone lay revealed. Alcar inhaled. 'Well!' he pulled the gleaming stone across the desk, and avarice showed even through the body sculpting as he admired its amazing beauty. Sunstones are the rarest gems in the universe. A seven-millimeter sunstone could buy a small, brand new starship on the few worlds still producing them.
'This is my emergency fund,' John continued. 'I've kept it for more than five years. Get me everything I need and it's yours.'
Alcar's eyes narrowed and the smile turned predatory. 'So why don't I just take it from you — or your body?'
John swallowed noisily and produced a weak smile. 'Because you don't work that way. I checked you out, sire Alcar. You got a rep for playin' it square with those who play square with you. And what I'm gonna ask for won't cost you a tenth the value of that rock.'
Alcar reluctantly pulled his eyes from the stone and nodded. 'Okay. Now we get to what I can do for you.'
John bobbed his head submissively, an obviously fake smile plastered on his face. 'Of course, sire Alcar.' He took a deep breath. 'I'll need a deep-level biosculpt. The whole package. DNA analysis and modification, as well as the usual hair and eye color, height and weight mods. I'll also need all the records of the procedures. The original records. I have to make sure there's nothing for the bounty hunters to find.'
Alcar frowned. 'The biosculpt's no problem, of course, though DNA mods can get expensive. But making the records disappear, now that could be a problem.'
John's smile changed, became cynical. 'I'm a small-timer, sire Alcar, but I'm not stupid. Biosculpt keeps Marchand on the star maps. It's one of, what, three? four? planets that still has the DNA analysis and modification capability. And you control Marchand, at least the not-so-legal side of it. Making records disappear is probably one of your standard services.' He sighed. 'Look, sire Alcar. You're already getting everything I have. I have to live aboard my clunker of a ship because I can't afford a hotel. Once I pay my port fees, I'll be running with empty pockets. I can't even try to pick up a small cargo because it might let them track me. I won't be back to Marchand, so the records won't do you any good for blackmail. And the third thing that stone has to buy me is your silence if the hounds track me this far.' He firmed up his expression, and sat back. 'If you can't help me, just let me know. I'll take my stone and keep running.'
Alcar straightened. 'I like you, kid. You've got brains. If you weren't hot, I could use a guy like you in my organization.' He smiled, a genuine smile this time. 'You got a deal. You'll get the whole package, including the original records. After that, I've never heard of you.'
John put on a desperately grateful expression. 'Thank you, sire Alcar. Keep the stone. I know you'll honor your word.'
After giving Alcar his Yor-Tarken name and berth, John allowed himself to be ushered out. He hurried back to the Scorpion.
'I've made the contact, Tess,' he told the ship's AI. 'I expect they will want to check me out. We have already cleared customs, so we shouldn't be having any official visitors. If we do, verify their idents, but refuse to let them aboard without my permission. And I haven't ordered any repairs. So any 'repairmen' that show up are fakes, no matter how good the signatures look on a work order.'
'Understood, sir,' Tess replied.
Within the hour, 'Sire Yor-Tarken' received a vid call 'reminding' him of his appointment at the DNA Scanning Center the next day.
Alcar was as good as his word. Within a week, Scorpion lifted. John was still confined to a float chair as the result of the surgeries that made him five cems shorter than John Smith, and racked by the pain of DNA restructuring.
After a month of discomfort and anguish, John Smith was gone. John Smith had been 178 cems tall; Cale Rankin was 173. John had weighed 90 kilos; Cale massed 80. Cale's darker brown skin, black hair, and brown eyes had replaced John's fair complexion, brown hair, and grey eyes. Scorpion 's papers showed that James Yor-Tarken had sold her to Cale Rankin, a native of Warden's World in the Sirius sector, some two years ago. Cale once again began growing a beard.
During the long hours in the regen booth, John, now Cale, had studied the various star atlases he had bought, searching for a refuge.
The Alliance of Free Systems would have been the perfect place to retire. It was the oldest and largest of the entities surviving the Fall. 'Released' by the declining Empire some four hundred years ago, the thirty-one inhabited planets of the Alliance enjoyed the highest standard of living in man-settled space. The Alliance had foreseen the Fall, and prepared for it. Among other things, unfortunately, that meant they had very effective border controls, a strong anti-pirate bias, and a deep suspicion of armed ships. If Cale approached the Alliance in Scorpion, his papers would be scanned for the slightest inconsistencies, and he would be asked some very hard questions. Cale decided it would be safer to stay in the Old Empire, where fewer questions were asked and fewer documents demanded.
Perhaps one of the old 'glory worlds.' The 'Mission for the Greater Glory of God' was a repressive theocracy. At its height, it had ruled twelve systems, with seven inhabited planets. Finally, some 275 years ago, its brutal excesses triggered a response from both the Alliance and the declining Empire. Even the Glory's large fleet had
