“I understand, and that is wise. Perhaps a taxi, then?”
“That should be okay, yes, sir.”
“All right. Can you stand up?”
Ashton eased to his feet. Niebecker handed him the ice pack.
“Here. Keep this on your face for about ten more minutes, then wait an hour and put it back on. Take it with you, and keep that up until bedtime. Now, are you dizzy?”
“Not so far, sir,” Ashton decided, turning his head about; his neck popped audibly several times. “Ow.”
“Whiplash, too. Lovely. That Garland consul is a damned piece of work. He’s one of the royals, you know. Distant cousin of the king. Not much loved by him, either, or he wouldn’t be out here; this is rather far afield to send a member of the royal family otherwise. Probably considers him a threat. With good reason, I’d say.” Niebecker took Ashton’s elbow. “All right, come with me, and we’ll get you out to the street without falling down the consulate steps and making matters worse. Then I’ll see about grabbing a cab and getting you into it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Niebecker was as good as his word; he saw a one-eyed Ashton safely to the sidewalk in front of the consulate, then signaled for a cab – there was usually a small fleet roaming Consulate Row. When one pulled up – it seemed to be at random, at least to Ashton – he helped Ashton ease into the back seat.
“There,” he told the driver. “I’ve just paid you enough to take this fellow anywhere he tells you to go, with a nice tip. Take him home, or to the nearest hospital, if he wishes.”
“Yes, sir,” the cabbie said.
“Nik,” Niebecker addressed Ashton, “keep that ice pack on tonight for about fifteen or twenty minutes, broken by an hour in between, all evening. Take whatever analgesics work for you, and try to sleep with your head propped up, if you can – you know, inclined. A recliner would work well if you have one, or just a pile of pillows in the bed. If things are still pretty uncomfortable tomorrow, pop me a message to that effect, and then stay home.”
“All right, sir. Thank you.”
“Try to get some rest.”
“I will. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, my friend.”
Niebecker closed the car door, stepped back, and the cab pulled away from the curb.
But he watched the taxi as it disappeared down the street, thoughtful.
Problems, Baby
“Oh my gosh! What the hell happened?” Honda exclaimed, when Ashton made it through the front door. “You look like you’ve been in a fight!”
“I almost was,” Ashton confirmed. “It seems that something went down back home – a feud between a couple of spies in the Alliance, from what I understand – and one killed another in a fit of pique, then got himself arrested for the murder. So both consuls showed up today to take it out on the new guy, figuring I was responsible for the death of one of their spies, and the disappearance of the other one… because of course the IPD puts the lockups in VR suppression. They roughed me up some, trying to get a confession out of me, when I honestly had no clue what they were talking about. Fortunately, Niebecker stopped them before they could get too rough. But I’m gonna have to be damn careful from now on.”
“Well, at least Niebecker believes you.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“Why?”
“When he sent me off in a taxi, he stood on the sidewalk and watched it the whole way out of sight. See, he offered his personal limo, and I turned it down…”
“Oh. What reason did you give?”
“A limo would look odd and out of place in our neighborhood.”
“Well, it would. And with some of the groups around here, that could cause trouble that we don’t need.”
“Yeah. I’m hoping, if he quizzes the cabbie, that’ll get confirmed and he won’t think any more of it. Still, I gotta be careful. And hey, you probably saved my life with those special little pockets.”
“Don’t tell me. You had to turn out your pockets?”
“I sure did. Pants, shirt, and jacket pockets. Not a thing showed.”
“Great!”
“Yeah. I was sure hoping it was gonna work the way we thought, and it did. They’d probably have beaten me to death otherwise.”
“Okay, look, Nick. You gotta sit down here and lemme see about this,” Honda insisted. “I see you have an ice pack.”
“Yeah. Niebecker sent it home with me. He’s already checked my face for anything broken; seems he used to be a field medic in his military service.”
“Are you sure he really checked, or just pretended to?”
“No, he checked. He had the touch of a medic – firm enough to feel through the tissues, not so hard that it hurt really bad. I think he sincerely wanted to protect me – he was damn stern to the other consuls, and he had the emergency security summons remote in his hand through the whole thing – that’s a backup system in the consulate, in case the attacker has a VR suppression system, see.”
“Oh. Yeah, I understand. Go on. So he was protecting you, but you dunno why?”
“Right. He’s not that much older than me, or I’d think he was doing the fatherly thing, sorta like Lee does. Maybe he thinks that, if you and I are lovers, he might get in on the action – I don’t know what his preferences are, and I’m not gonna ask, ‘cause it’s none of my business. But that could explain it. Or he might think of me as a friend; he calls me that, and I was literally the first person he ran into at the consulate, after all. I
