But when he tried expanding his operations to the Burroughs, for reasons he never spilled, it only took my buddies five days to detect and catch him. I admit it wasn’t easy. Vasily worked alone, he was slippery and cautious, and while his weird abilities never came close to the controlled power that Makrow 34 displayed in his escape, my buddies Ivan and Miyamoto suffered a few setbacks during the investigation that they put down to bad luck—until it occurred to them to add an anti-Psi force field to their “hunting gear.” That was the end of the strange happenings. Soon they netted their fish, and then Vasily El Afortunado’s forays came to a stop. After that, Ivan was no longer just Ivan; he became Ivan Stalin.
But even as he fell, El Afortunado somehow managed to land on his feet. His track record and psychological profile showed that he wasn’t a deviant or a sociopath. In plain words, not such a bad guy. He just didn’t know a better way to make a living than by dodging the law. He hadn’t committed any serious crimes on Earth, Mars, or the asteroids, and hadn’t caused significant damage. On our station he simply hadn’t had time to do much. So he avoided the death penalty usually meted out to wanton Psis and only got ten years in prison.
He’d done three of them right here on the Burroughs, of course. Anywhere else in the Solar System would have been unthinkable. The aliens wouldn’t have allowed humans to access the necessary Psi-proof force-field technology in a thousand years. So it was either keep him here, let him go, or kill him. The humans never would have accepted the second option, and the aliens refused to consider the third, so here he stayed.
A good thing, too. Their paranoid precaution would now give a huge boost to me, the Galactic Trade Confederation, and—if he treated me straight—maybe even Vasily himself.
“I got nothing to tell nobody they ain’t already dragged out of me a hundred times with their damn drugs, and I ain’t interested in the shitty benefits of any fucking rehab program,” he politely informed me by way of greeting when I stepped into his cell. “Maybe they made me a snitch against my will, but they won’t make me a bootlicker for the aliens like you guys. Come on, pozzie, you look ridiculous in that B-movie detective get-up,” he went on. “Who do you think you are, Dick Tracy?”
I activated the compressor pumps in my chest and sighed. It sounded exactly the way I wanted: melodramatically impressive. The truth is I was worried, though. Did he know as much about twentieth-century crime fiction as he seemed to?
I’d have to tread carefully. I’d already figured out from his file that he’d be a hard nut to crack. He was a perfect example of a person convinced that, if the world had had enough of him, he’d had enough of the world. He was kind of right about that, from his point of view: he didn’t have anyone or anything waiting for him on the outside.
But I had to get him on my side. I didn’t have any choice, if I wanted to catch Makrow 34 before he screwed over the entire Solar System. Only one choice for him, and it had to be yes.
I took off my fedora, like I was getting ready for a long, sincere conversation, and pulled what looked like a supersophisticated wristwatch from a trench coat pocket to show him. “My name is Raymond, Vasily, and I’m here to make you an offer you can’t refuse—not unless you’re a complete idiot. Know what this is?”
It was a rhetorical question, of course, but he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “I suppose it’s your videophone-ballscratcher-wristwatch, Dick Tracy,” he growled, and I felt a little better. My trick had worked: at least now I knew he’d never seen The Godfather. If that was true, and the gods were smiling on me, maybe he hadn’t watched 48 Hours either. It seemed he was just a fan of the yellow-hatted cop in the funny pages.
“Wrong. It’s a portable anti-Psi field generator. Pure nanotech, an experimental prototype, courtesy of our good friends from the Galactic Trade Confederation. Don’t let the shape fool you. You wear it around your neck, not your wrist.”
He shrugged, a perfect show of not giving a damn, but I caught a dim spark of interest deep in his green eyes. He’d taken the bait! Now all I had to do was reel him in slowly, carefully, and I’d have him.
“So,” I went on, feeling more and more sure of myself. “Want to know what it does? It goes around a Psi criminal’s neck, and whenever he’s about to use his ability, this little baby activates and stops him. It doesn’t have to stay on all the time—a real energy-saver. Sweet invention, isn’t it?” A sly grin came across Vasily’s face. It didn’t take Psi powers to guess what he was thinking. “Oh, I almost forgot. Some paranoid sadist who’s allergic to trusting other people’s good intentions decided at the last minute to add a little explosive capsule to the design. A precisely calculated quantity of Ultrasemtex. There’s no risk it might blow up by accident from getting bumped or what have you, but if somebody tries taking it off and ditching it—boom!” I luxuriated in the explosive onomatopoeia. “The guy ends up minus a head, and nobody around him gets a scratch. That’s why we don’t put it on your wrist or ankle—some people wouldn’t mind trading a limb for freedom. Especially with all the regeneration tech they have these days, it’s not like losing a hand is forever. But even a Grodo can’t live long without a head.”
“Neat toy,”
