Time to become a safecracker. Those things aren’t exactly made to protect the crown jewels.
The contents of my now-destroyed purse lay strewn across the floor. I found the makeup compact and slapped it against my palm several times. I opened it to a mess of crumbled powder. I held it up to the safe and blew across the surface.
Brown, dusty makeup clouded the air around the safe. I stepped back and waited for it to clear up. Dust takes a long time to settle in Artemis. Atmosphere plus low gravity equals particles taking forever to fall.
Eventually the area cleared up. I took a good look at the keypad. A layer of makeup covered everything, but three of the buttons had more dust on them than the others. The 0, the 1, and the 7. Those were the ones with finger grease on them. With a hotel like the Canton, you could bet they cleaned everything in the room between guests. So those numbers had to be the digits Jin Chu chose for his combination.
According to the instructions on the safe, you set a four-digit code.
Hmm. A four-digit code with three unique numbers. I closed my eyes and did some math. There’d be…fifty-four possible combinations. According to the instructions, the safe would lock down if it got three incorrect combinations in a row. Then the hotel staff would have to open it with their master code.
I replayed my brief interaction with him in my head. He was on Trond’s couch…he drank Turkish coffee while I had black tea. We talked about—
Aha! He was a Star Trek fan.
I typed 1-7-0-1 and the safe clicked open. NCC-1701 was the registration number of the starship Enterprise. How did I know that? I must have heard it somewhere. I don’t forget stuff.
I opened the safe door and found the mysterious white case—the one Jin Chu had tried to hide from me. The outside still read ZAFO SAMPLE—AUTHORIZED USE ONLY. All right, now we were getting somewhere!
I popped open the case to discover…a cable?
It was just a coiled cable, maybe two meters long. Had someone taken the secret device and left the power cable behind? Why do that? Why not take the whole case?
I looked at the cable more closely. Actually, it wasn’t a power cord. It was a fiber-optic cable. Okay, so it was for data. But what data?
“Okay. Now what?” I asked myself.
—
The door beeped and slid open. Svoboda stepped into his studio apartment and dropped his Gizmo on the shelf near the door.
“Hi, Svobo,” I said.
“Svyate der′mo!” He put his hand on his chest and panted.
I’d smuggled in so many illegal chemicals for him over the years he’d given me the keypad-code for his apartment. It was just easier for me to deliver that way.
I leaned back in his desk chair. “I need some work from you.”
“Jesus Christ, Jazz!” he said, still breathing heavily. “Why are you in my apartment?”
“I’m in hiding.”
“What’s with your hair?”
I’d changed back into normal clothes, but I still had my whore-do. “Long story.”
“Are those sparkles? You have sparkles in your hair?”
“Long story!” I pulled a square of wrapped chocolate from my pocket and tossed it to him. “Here. I read somewhere you should always bring a gift when visiting a Ukrainian.”
“Ooh! Chocolate!” He caught the morsel and unwrapped it. “Rudy came by the lab today asking about you. He didn’t say why, but scuttlebutt is you’re involved in those murders?”
“The guy who killed them wants to kill me.”
“Wow,” he said. “This is serious. You should go to Rudy.”
I shook my head. “And get deported? No thanks. I can’t trust him. I can’t trust anyone right now.”
“But you’re here.” He smiled. “So you trust me?”
Huh. It never occurred to me not to trust Svoboda. He was way too “Svoboda” to be sinister. “I guess so.”
“Awesome!” He snapped the chocolate in two and handed me half. He popped the other half in his mouth and savored it.
“Oh, hey,” he said with his mouth full. “Did you get a chance to test the condom?”
“No, I haven’t had sex in the two days since you gave me the condom.”
“Okay, okay,” he said.
I picked up the ZAFO box and tossed it to him. “I need you to tell me what this is.”
He plucked it out of the air and read the label. “Huh. ZAFO. You asked me about that earlier.”
“Yeah. Now I have a sample. What can you tell me about it?”
He opened the box and pulled the cable out. “It’s a fiber-optic data cable.”
“What’s it for?”
He peered at one end. “Nothing.”
“What?”
He held both ends of the cable up. “These aren’t connectors. They’re caps. This cable can’t be used for anything. Not without connectors, anyway.”
“So what’s the point? It’s just a useless cable?”
“No idea,” he said. He coiled it up and put it back in the box. “Is it related to the murders?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.”
“Okay, I’ll take it to the lab right now. I’ll get you some answers tonight.”
I pulled out my Harpreet Gizmo. “Two thousand slugs?”
“What?” He gave me a look like I’d pissed on his mother’s grave. “No. Nothing. The price is nothing. Jesus.”
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“You’re in trouble. I’m helping you because you’re my friend.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t think of what to say.
He whipped his Gizmo from the shelf. “I assume you’re using an alias. Give me its ID.”
I shared my new contact info with him. He nodded curtly when his Gizmo received it. “Okay, ‘Harpreet,’ I’ll call you when I have something.”
I’d never seen him so annoyed. “Svoboda, I—”
“Forget it. It’s cool.” He forced a smile. “I just thought that would be assumed, is all. You need somewhere to stay?”
“Uh, no. I’ve got a hideout set up.”
“Of course you do. Lock up when you leave.” He left a little faster than necessary.
Well, shit. I didn’t have time for male ego or whatever the hell that was about. I had to hurry off to my next scheme.
—
“All right, Lefty,” I mumbled to myself. “Let’s see how well connected you are….”
Evening is the Arcade District’s busiest time of day. It’s when the richfucks come out to play. Freshly fed and liquored up, they hit the shops, casinos, brothels, and theaters. (If you haven’t seen lunar acrobats in action, you don’t know what you’re missing. Hell of a show.)
It was perfect. People everywhere. Just what I needed.
Arcade Square (which is a circle) sat in the center of Aldrin Ground, right in the middle of everything. It was only a collection of benches and a few potted trees—the sort of thing you see in every town square on Earth, but an incredible luxury here.
I glanced around and didn’t see Lefty anywhere. Very helpful of him to have a sling on. It made him easy to spot. Someday when I died and went to hell I’d thank Irina for slashing him.
Drunks and revelers crisscrossed the square. Tourists packed the benches and chatted or took pictures of one another. I pulled out my Gizmo and turned it on.
And when I say “my Gizmo” I mean my real Gizmo. It powered up and showed the familiar wallpaper—a picture of a Cavalier King Charles spaniel puppy. What? I like puppies.
I discreetly placed the Gizmo on the ground and kicked it under a nearby bench.
The bait was set. Now to see if anyone came nibbling.
I walked into the Lassiter Casino. It had wide windows looking out over Arcade Square so I could observe from a safe distance. Plus, it had a reasonably priced buffet on the third floor right up against those windows.
I paid for the all-you-can-eat Gunk bar with Harpreet’s Gizmo.
The trick with Gunk is to steer clear of stuff trying to taste like other stuff. Don’t get the “Tandoori Chicken” flavorant. You’ll just be disappointed. Get “Myrtle Goldstein’s Formulation #3.” That’s good shit. No idea what the ingredients are. It could be termite carcasses and Italian armpit hair for all I know. I don’t care. It makes the Gunk palatable, and that’s what matters.