‘You are Snow, the albino,’ said the first, standing before his table. Snow observed her and felt a gnawing depression. Even after all these years he could not shake an aversion to killing women, or in this case girls. She could not have been more than twenty. She stood before him attired in monofilament coveralls and weapons harness. Her face was elfin under a head of cropped black hair spiked out with gold-fleck grease.
‘No, I’m not,’ he said, and turned his attention elsewhere.
‘Don’t fuck with me,’ she said with a tiredness that was beyond her years. ‘I know who you are. You are an albino and your left hand is missing.’ He returned his attention to her.
‘My name is Jelda Conley. People call me Whitey. I have often been confused with this Snow you refer to and it was on one such occasion that I lost my hand. Now please leave me alone.’
The girl stepped back, confused. The Andronache honour code did not allow for creative lying. Snow glanced past her and noted one of her companions speaking to the owner who had sent the nervous waiter over. The lies would not be enough. He watched while the owner called over the waiter and checked the screen of his tag reader. The companion approached the girl, whispered in her ear.
‘You lied to me,’ she said.
‘No I didn’t,’ said Snow.
‘Yes you did!’
This was getting ridiculous. Snow stared off into the distance and ignored her.
‘I challenge you,’ said the girl.
There, it was said. Snow pretended he had not heard her.
‘I said I challenge you.’
By the code she could now kill him. It was against the law but accepted practice. Snow felt a sinking sensation as she stepped back.
‘Stand and face me, coward.’
With a tiredness that was wholly genuine Snow rose to his feet. She snatched her slammer. Snow reacted. She hit the floor on her back with the front of her monofilament coverall breaking down and a smoking hole between her pert little breasts. Snow stepped past the table, past her, strode to the moisture lock, vomit held back by clenched teeth. Hoping the whole thing had been too fast for anyone to be sure of the weapon he had used.
It rested on the violet sands at the edge of a spaceport, which was strewn with huge flying-wing shuttles, outbuildings and hangars. It stood between the spaceport and the sprawl of Vatchian buildings linked by moisture- sealed walkways and the glass domes that covered the incongruous green of the parks. And in no way did it resemble any of the constructs around it. It was standard; to be found on a thousand planets of the human Polity, and it was the reason the expansion of the human race beggared the imagination. The runcible facility was a mirrored sphere fifty metres across, seemingly prevented from rolling away by the two L-shaped constructs of the buffers on either side of it. All around it, the glass-roofed embarkation lounges; a puddle of light. Within, the Skaidon gate performed its miracle every few minutes; bringing in quince, mitter travellers, from all across the Polity, and sending them away again.
Beck stood back from the arrivals entrance and watched the twin horns of the runcible on its dais of black glass. He watched the shimmer of the cusp between and impatiently checked his watch, not that they would be late, or early. They would arrive on time to the nanosecond. The runcible AI saw to that. Precisely on time a man stepped through the shimmer, a woman, another man, another woman. They matched the descriptions he had been given, and his greeting was effusive as they came through into the lounge.
‘Your transport awaits outside,’ he told them, hurrying them to exit. The Merchant did not want them to stay in the city. He wanted them out, those were Beck’s instructions, amongst others. Once they were in the hover transport the man Beck took to be the leader caught hold of his shoulder.
‘The weapons,’ he said.
‘Not here, not here,’ said Beck nervously, and took the transport out of the city.
Out on the sand Beck brought the transport down and as the four climbed out he pulled a large case from the back of the transport. He was sweating, and not just because of the heat.
‘Here,’ he said, and opened the case.
The man reached inside and took out a small shiny pistol, snub-nosed and deadly looking.
‘The Merchant will meet at the prearranged place, if he manages to obtain the information he seeks,’ he said. He did not know where that was, nor what the information was.
The Merchant had not taken him that far into his trust. It surprised him that he had been allowed knowledge of this; hired killers here on Vatch.
The man nodded as he inspected the pistol, smiled sadly, then pointed the pistol at Beck.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
Beck tried to say something just as he became aware of the arm coming round his face from the man who had moved behind him. A grip like iron closed around his head, locked, wrenched and twisted. Beck hit the sand with his head at an angle it had never achieved in life.
He made some choking sounds, shivered a little, died.
Snow halted as two proctors came in through the lock. They looked past him to the corpse on the floor. The eldest of the two, grey-bearded and running to fat, but with weapons that looked well used and well looked after, spoke to him.
‘You are Snow,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Snow replied. This man was not Andronache.
‘A challenge?’
