“Is Westerland really dead?”
“Sure, he’s dead. You know that as well as…hold it. Do you have information to the contrary?”
Smith grinned. “Nope.”
“They never found his body after that nukeboat explosion,” said Constiner.
Smith asked, “Who else is interested in this?”
“Could be most anybody.”
“Can you narrow that some?”
“No.
“Who tried to poison you?”
“Could be most anybody.”
Smith nodded. “I appreciate your taking me into your confidence this way, Deac,” he said. “I learn all sorts of stuff.”
Leaving the bunk, Constiner said, “We’ll be arriving on Zegundo in a few minutes. No doubt I’ll be running into you again.”
“No doubt,” agreed Smith.
CHAPTER 7
Smith didn’t feel as though he’d come home. Walking along the stretch of orange beach that fronted the cottage the Whistler Agency had rented for him, he didn’t feel this was a homecoming. He was back on the planet Zegundo, back in Selva Territory, yet he didn’t feel much of anything.
“Correction,” he said aloud, looking out across the clear blue of the sea.
When he thought about Jennifer Westerland and the fact that she was probably in the territory’s capital city right now, not more than forty miles from him, he did feel as…hell, that had nothing to do with the business at hand.
Far out in the hazy morning a scatter of bright yellow birds were gliding low over the quiet water.
“And her name’s Jennifer Arloff now,” he reminded himself. “Has been for-”
An incredible grating noise started up behind him.
Spinning, drawing the stungun he wore openly in his belt holster, Smith found himself facing the childsized servobot who came with the cottage. “The music, Bosco.” Smith let his gun slide back to rest.
“How’s that, tuan?” The silvery little robot cupped his metal hand to his plaz-trimmed earhole.
Smith reached out, tapped the portable radiobox that was magnetically attached to the mechanism’s tank- shaped torso and was blaring out some kind of godawful sound that might just be music. “Turn it off.”
“Ah, forgive me, bwana.” Bosco bowed, took a back-step, clicked off the radio. “It is merely that I’ve been designed to be not only efficient, loyal and trustworthy but also hep.”
“Hep?”
“I dig the jive, sahib,” amplified Bosco. “I’m a killerdiller.”
Something occurred to Smith. “Could that caterwauling have been a group called the Sophisticates?”
“You’re pretty hep yourself, gate. It was indeed, the solid goods,” replied Bosco. “Their latest hit platter, entitled
“Tell me the true purpose of your visit.”
“Ah, enough pop culture chitchat, yes. You are perfectly right to remind me of my mission, marse,” said the pintsized robot. “We’re being encroached on, I fear.”
“Explain,” requested Smith, gazing up at the glaz, plaz and neowood beach cottage a hundred yards away.
“A large, one might almost dub it flashy, landcar has rolled up in front of our domicile, sire,” he said. “Two relatively unsavory gentlemen are disembarking and before I give them the customary bum’s rush, I thought I’d best consult with you as to-”
“One is a big dark guy with a sleazy moustache, looks like he’s suffering from terminal horniness?” asked Smith. “The other’s a diminutive green gent you wouldn’t trust even with your everyday silverware?”
Bosco’s little metal hands made a bonging sound when he clapped them together in appreciation. “You are most astute and hep, tuan,” he exclaimed. “For you have deduced exactly what these two squatters look like without even-”
“I’m afraid,” cut in Smith as he started for the cottage, “they’re the guests I’ve been expecting.”
“Ah, sad,” said Bosco. “That’s a pisser, bwana.”
The morning sunlight came slanting into the parlor and caused Cruz’ right arm to glisten. It was an impressive arm, made of stainless impervium and packed with gadgets and weaponry. With his real left hand the large dark man was stroking his handsome black moustache and watching Smith from his wicker sling-chair. “Does self-pity come under new business or old?” Cruz inquired.
Smith was slouched alone on the tin sofa. “Do I look that glum?”
“We’re none of us,” put in the green-complected Jack Saint, “in tophole form, old boy, or we wouldn’t be employed by the Whistler blokes.”
“You’re running this operation and I get the impression you might want a somewhat less disreputable crew,” Cruz said to Smith. “If so, air your feelings. Next Saint and I can do some wailing, complaining about harsh fate and the like, and then we’ll get down to business.”
Smith grinned. “When I first heard who the Whistler folks had stuck me with,” he admitted, “I was nonplussed. No, make that ticked off. But then…well, I read over your dossiers a few more times and-”
“One hopes they’re not still using that beastly photograph of me taken when I wore my hair parted in the middle.” Saint bounced once in his glazbottom rocker.
“They are,” said Smith. “Anyway, I decided that both of you are well qualified for this job. Cruz, you know the wilds of this planet, and you’re a first-rate tracker and guide. You do tend to-”
“I get distracted,” admitted Cruz. “Pretty ladies are as lodestones, deflecting me from the path to true virtue.” He shrugged. “I’m going to make a supreme effort to reform, at least for the duration of this excursion.”
“Saint, you’re an excellent telek.”
“I’m a corker,” he acknowledged, rubbing his green palms together.
Smith opened the pale blue folder that rested on the plaz coffee table in front of him. “Myself, I haven’t been in such terrific shape for the past year or so,” he said. “I’d like to assure you that I’ve reformed, but I can’t guarantee it. We’ll all just have to put up with each other and hope for the best.”
Cruz tugged at the tip of his moustache with his metal fingers. “Once I courted and wooed a substantially structured lady whose husband was vice president of a banking satellite orbiting Murdstone’s second moon,” he said, glancing over at the oval stained glass window nearest him. “She thought that openly talking about money was just about the filthiest thing you could do. Often were the times I excited her by whispering, ‘One thousand trubux down,’ and ‘Seventy five trubux an hour,’ in her pudgy pink ear. The point of this amorous recollection is that I have never shared that view. Whistler offered me ten thousand trubux for this, half in front. How about you gents?”
“The same, old man.”
“I’m getting twenty thousand,” Smith told them. “Since you’re the boss,” decided Cruz, “that’s okay.”
Resting an elbow on the rocker arm, Saint leaned toward him. “I acquired an impressive ruby necklace from a plumpish banker’s wife on Murdstone some three years since,” he confided. “Might it be, do you think, the same lady?”
“This lady’s name was-”
“Let’s commence,” cut in Smith, picking up a sheet of faxpape from the open folder. “The agency’s already given you a general idea of what we’re supposed to accomplish.”
“Find a bunch of strayed tots,” said Saint. “Sounds deuced simple, I must say.”
