himself and his companions, where could they go?
The captives were sequestered in a storage bubble. Ali had been separated a few feet from the other gamers. The implication was perfectly clear: This was all about the Prince.
Judging by the degree of deference displayed by the others, the lead kidnapper was the one named “Shotz.” A golden-locked golem, as solid as a granite spur. His face could look flat and hard or masculinely attractive, depending on his expression. Shotz radiated a sense of disconnected amusement about everything, and Scotty wondered where the man had picked up the scars on the right side of his throat. His second-in-command seemed to be the red-haired Viking goddess they called Celeste. He had the ugly suspicion he had seen her before, briefly, in Switzerland. And wondered if she had recognized him in turn.
She and a couple of the others had entered and exited the room repeatedly. She was now looking down at them with a low flame in her eyes, as if she enjoyed their helplessness and hungered for the opportunity to exploit it. He reminded himself not to give her an excuse.
“These names: Michael Abernathy, Maud Abernathy, Angelique Chan, Sharmela Tamil, Wayne Gibson, Scott Griffin… move to this side of the room,” she said. “On your knees, hands behind your heads.”
Ali looked as if he wanted to faint. Scotty wanted to say something, but was cautious about announcing their relationship to these people. Why give them information they had, as yet, shown no sign of possessing? “What about me?” Ali said weakly.
“Ali Shannar? Excuse me: Ali Kikaya the Third. You will come with me.”
Time to forget caution. “I’d like to go with him.”
“And you would be…?” The blonde said, smiling pleasantly. Her eyes roamed over him.
“His friend.”
She chuckled. “Well, ‘friend,’ I think not.” She leaned close. “I think I know you, my friend.” So much for Switzerland. “We may have playtime later. But now, I think you had better get back on your knees. Shotz?”
Behind her, Shotz seemed to come out of his internal trance, almost like popping in and out of a separate reality. “Here is the situation: We have business with Ali Kikaya the Third. In fact, it is this business that brought us here. We have no interest in any of the rest of you, which may be to your advantage, assuming you cooperate. If you cooperate, you will remain unmolested. You will be reasonably comfortable, and will have all the amenities we can offer in exchange for your cooperation. Because we don’t care about you.”
A pause. “But… if you cause us difficulty of any kind, that will be an entirely different matter. Because we do not care about you. Do not care whether you live or die. It is marginally easier for us to keep you alive than it is to shoot you, or march you naked into the sunlight. I would suggest that you remember the word ‘marginally.’”
Behind Scotty’s shoulder, Angelique snarled. “You can’t get away with this. There are security forces.”
The woman looked at Angelique as if she were something in a petri dish. “If the dome is attacked, you die.”
Their bonds were checked carefully. Shotz left the room, and Celeste turned to face them. “There is nowhere for you to go. If you cooperate, you will be reasonably comfortable. If not…” She shrugged, but again, Scotty saw the little light go on in her eyes. This one wants to make an example of one of us, he thought.
As lightly as if he were a baby, she picked Ali up by the arm, and carried him from the room.
The door had just closed behind the kidnappers, and Wayne could no longer constrain himself. “Who the hell is Ali? I mean, I figured he was some kind of rich kid, but…”
Mickey picked up the topic swiftly. “But these bastards went to a hell of a lot of trouble to get their ’ands on him. People are going to die as a result of this.” He wiped his mouth against his shoulder. “Yeah, they’ve been polite enough so far, but this isn’t going to end well. I think that we deserve to know what the ’ell is going on.” Stress made his Cockney more pronounced.
For a long moment Scotty debated lying or stonewalling. But dammit, now they were all in this mess together, and they deserved better. He sighed. “His name is Ali Kikaya the Third. He’s heir to the throne of the Republic of Kikaya. His father thought that he might be at risk, but nobody could have anticipated this.”
Angelique looked like she wanted to skin him and roll him in salt. “So what do they want? What do they think they’re going to do? There’s no way out of here!”
“I don’t know. But I do know that they seem to know what they’re doing. And they haven’t made a mistake yet.”
Not yet, Scotty thought. But the day was young.
The room on the far side of the door was just more undecorated storage beneath a curved, unpainted gray ceiling. It wouldn’t have been a part of the game at all. Shotz was sitting on a corrugated cardboard box that probably would have folded under his weight on Earth.
“Frost,” Shotz said. “They said that Victor was dead. Why is this news to me?”
Thomas tried to meet Shotz’s eyes, failed, and then tried again. “It’s news to me, too. I knew nothing of it. He was alive when last I saw him.”
Shotz’s eyes glittered in the dim light, and for a moment he seemed almost buoyant, as if the two of them held a great and mysterious secret. “Was he? There will be more about this later.”
Kendra Griffin sat at her main conference table. The men and women around her, trained and experienced administrators, blinked and frowned furiously, as if trying to awaken themselves from a nightmare. She thought that they used to call the condition shell-shocked. “There are twelve people who checked into Heinlein base who are, at present, unaccounted for. All of them are tourists.”
Foxworthy bent his head, one hand cupping his left ear. “Kendra, Alex Griffin on line two.”
A ray of sunshine on a foggy, moonless night. Kendra clicked her tongue, triggering her com link.
The air in front of her cleared, and Scotty’s father appeared. “Kendra. What is happening up there?”
“I’m betting you’ve heard. Dad, you still have fingers everywhere. Who are these people? Who or what is a ‘Neutral Moresnot’?” Her pronunciation was perfect.
A quarter-million miles put a short but perceptible pause in every conversation, about a second and a half per comment. “Kendra, I’m linking with some of my people. Just bits and pieces right now, but ‘Neutral Moresnot’ is the code name for a kidnapping ring.”
“What nationality?”
Alex wagged his head. “I’m not sure. I remember hearing about this group before I retired. But nothing since. I’ll call Foley Mason. He keeps his hand in.”
“Please.”
There was a long, awkward pause. Then Alex spoke in a very quiet voice. “Kendra. Have you heard anything from Scotty?”
“Not a word,” she said. “And I have to assume that we won’t, until this thing is resolved.”
“Dear?” Millicent Griffin came online. Her expression was all business. “I’ve been researching while Alex was talking, and here’s what I’ve come up with. ‘Neutral Moresnot’ is the code name of an international kidnapping ring. Kidnapping is big business. Officially speaking in Esperanto to hide their nationalities, they take their name from the country Esperanto devotees once wanted to create. They have no politics. Current speculation is that they are there to kidnap Ali and put pressure on his father in the Republic of Kikaya: Abdicate, or lose a son.”
“Are they willing to kill?”
“Yes. And have. But only if their demands aren’t met.”
Neutral Moresnot had set up primary communications in bubble 37-C, twenty meters in diameter with a parquet floor and glow panels for windows. Their commander held up a hand, pointing to their observation screen. “We have a Scorpion inbound this way from Heinlein. No one on board. Automatic, riding the rails. Arrival in three minutes?”
“And nothing else approaching from any direction.”
“Excellent,” Shotz said.
Lunies and Earthers who had until quite recently believed they were in for a jolly adventure were clustered in bubble 35-C, supervised by McCartney and Gallop, two very professional, very unsympathetic men. Gallop was a
