Red Planet Blues

THIRTY





All right,” I said to Horatio Fernandez. “Spill it. Where is Rory Pickover?”

His eyes were wide, but he was showing commendable composure for a guy with a gun trained on him. He spread those massive arms. “I have no idea.”

“You know what he does for a living, right?”

“Sure. He’s a paleontologist.”

“And you know he recently came into some wealth.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Little academic suddenly had the money to transfer.”

“Well, yeah, I guess.”

“And you just opened up his chest to do repairs.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And while you had him open, you put in a tracking chip.”

“That’s illegal.”

“Yes, it is. But you did it.”

“Why would I?”

“You figure he’s found the Alpha Deposit, or some other major cache of fossils, and you want to know where it is. Rory had himself scanned for tracking chips after he initially transferred, but he’d all but told Joshua Wilkins that he was going to do that, and so Wilkins hadn’t put one in. And he could clearly see what was in your hands as you worked on his face before, so you couldn’t put one in when you were doing those repairs—but he had himself checked, just to be sure. But this time you were working in his torso, and he hasn’t had a chance to be scanned since leaving here, which means the chip you just put in is active. So where is he?”

“I tell you, I did no such thing.”

“You may, or may not, give a damn about Dr. Pickover. But Reiko was your coworker, and maybe your friend. Tell me where they are.”

“Mr. Lomax, honestly, I swear to you—”

“This argument ends now. There’s no security camera up here, is there? That’s what you said. So, I’ll tell the NKPD that you went nuts and came at me, and I had to shoot you in self-defense. It’ll get sticky for a while, sure, but I’ll get off—and you’ll be dead. Unless you tell me right now where Dr. Pickover is.”

I let him think for a few moments, then cocked the hammer. “Well?”

He blew out air then spoke over his shoulder. “Keely? Locate Rory Pickover.”

A portion of the wall nearest us changed to a map of New Klondike, with the radial avenues in red and the circular roads in blue. It took a few moments, but soon a set of crosshairs appeared over the map, with a glowing white point at their center. Rory—and presumably Reiko and the two meese—were located on Sixth Avenue and heading south. “Zoom in,” Horatio said to Keely, and the view expanded to show just the single block of Sixth Avenue between the Fourth and Fifth Circles. The dot was moving quickly; they must have been on a hovertram.

“Do you have a portable tracking device?” I asked.

Horatio went to a cupboard and got a small disk-shaped dingus. He made a few adjustments on it and handed it to me. One of its faces was a viewscreen showing a miniature version of what was on the wall. “All right,” I said. “You stay up here for five minutes, do you hear me? Start counting Marenerises, and don’t stop until you’ve hit three hundred.” I backed away, opened the door while keeping my gun on him, closed it behind me, and headed downstairs.

Mac was bent over, running his scanner along the floor.

“Pickover has a tracking chip in him.” I held up the device that Fernandez had given me.

Mac straightened. “Is that a fact?” he said, in a tone that conveyed he knew there was a story to tell.

“Aye,” I said, imitating his brogue. “’Tis.”

Mac had left the disruptor disk leaning against the cash counter. He retrieved it, and he and I headed out of the shop.

The little one-seater police car Mac had returned here in didn’t have a place for me, but it did have a rear bumper and a couple of handholds on the back that could be used to transport a standing person. I positioned myself there, Mac placed the disruptor in the little gap behind the seat, he got in, and we took off down the street, Mac navigating using the device I’d gotten from Fernandez.

From my perch at the back, I couldn’t see the tracking device, and I pretty much had to concentrate on holding on for dear life as Mac sent us careening along. But from what I’d seen on the display before I’d given Mac the tracking device, Rory, and likely Reiko and the meese, were heading toward the south airlock—or some point between it and here. The three transfers could just walk right out onto the Martian surface, but Reiko would have to be stuffed into a suit, and that would take time; if they’d actually wanted Rory instead of Reiko, I suspected they’d dump her before reaching the airlock.

Mac could call ahead to the airlock station and ask the guards there to try to detain the meese, but there wasn’t a lot biologicals could do against two giant transfers programmed for super strength, and Mac’s principal job was protecting Howard Slapcoff’s investment; the last thing old Slappy would want is the airlock station being wrecked.

Pedestrians were gawking at us, and at one point when we had to pause to avoid hitting a recycling truck, I gave them a jaunty wave.

The road we were on took us by the shipyard. It was possible that that had been the meese’s destination, but Mac was giving no sign of slowing down. I looked over at the sea of dead hulks—shattered dreams, broken lives, abandoned hopes. I just barely made out the descent stage we’d recovered off in the distance.

Mac hit the siren just then, and it startled me enough that I almost lost my grip. But as soon as the vehicle in front of us got out of the way, he shut it off. The dome was never far overhead anywhere in New Klondike, but it had now dipped quite a bit lower; we were at the outer ring where only one – and two-story buildings were possible.

Mac brought us to an abrupt stop. I hopped off the bumper and came around to the side of the car. The gullwing door rose, and Mac clambered out. He retrieved the disruptor, and we headed over to the complex of airlocks.

“They’re stationary,” Mac said, holding up the tracking dingus so I could see its circular display. “Outside—about half a klick southeast of here. I tried calling for backup, but the other three cops who are on duty today are dealing with a small riot over by the east airlock—somebody accused somebody else of claim-jumping, and it’s gotten out of hand.”

I nodded and started making my way to the suit-rental counter when Mac motioned me through a door labeled “Official Use Only.” Inside was a change room for the police, with four suits hanging from racks. Two were navy blue and bore the initials NKPD across the back and had the police crest on each shoulder; the other two were nondescript plainclothes affairs. We suited up. Mac opted for one of the blue suits, and I took one of the plain ones, in a drab gray.

We went through a personnel airlock and came out on the Martian sands. The sky was dark, and the stars were out in all their glory. Off in the distance was a spaceship, lying on its side. In the dim light, it was hard to make out its contours, but it was a small vessel—a hibernation ship, not a luxury liner with cabins like the Skookum Jim, and—

Of course. It was the Kathryn Denning, formerly the B. Traven, the infamous death ship, recently returned to the Red Planet.

And, judging by the display on the tracking device Mac was holding, the meese had taken Rory Pickover right to it.