“Hamaddi loqs suck,” Gorgo sneered, running a bypass with experienced ease. Corcey was impressed, and observed the surprisingly simple procedure with interest.
Gorgo flipped the final tumbler, and had his SLX drawn as he opened the door. They broke into a small work cubicle that did indeed smell like a Hamaddi was its occupant.
The Hamaddi occupant was gone, which was why Gorgo was using the workstation. He snapped on the lights, and satisfied of his safety, put away his piece. From a ceiling plant a bald hei hung batlike, and began to cheep in frequencies beyond their hearing range. Corcey quickly shut the door, and loqed it. As Gorgo went over to the work station, Corcey looked around.
Thick, fernlike moss filled half the room. On the wall above the workstation was the requisite poster of the patron Crime Lord. A different one from Gorgo’s Emperor, yet also seated on a throne in royal red. Tall, thin, dark skinned, with curly hair filling his face like the moss lining it. The moss obscured the name: Th(e...i)ero(p...n)t. At the top, Our Hero.
“Okay,” Gorgo hummed, accessing the qomputer. Even the qeyboard had the moss between its qeys, which reminded Corcey of spoorbeans with the Galaqommon alphabet on them. He was using this station in case they got caught. Gorgo had a grudge with the owner, so if their inquest was discovered, the Hamaddi would take the blame.
“How long ago?” Gorgo asked, navigating the system with difficulty.
“Here,” Corcey replied, and gave him Chip’s printout. Gorgo looked it over, finally finding the arriving flight number at the bottom of the page. Not an accomplished typist, it took a while for him to get the corresponding information from the New Ra’Mathian mainchain.
Arrival information came on the screen, which Gorgo trawled through until he found a match with the one on paper. He tapped the sensiscreen, causing the entry to highlight. Pilgrim Flight 46464, with twenty-three passengers. Liza Mohn was among them.
Corcey pulled a chair over and sat in it backwards. The spongy material was moist, and his camo fatigues became damp. Wriggling uncomfortably, Corcey said, “Pull up the vidio of her interview.”
“Do you know her Case Number or the arrest file?”
“No.”
He did a name search on Liza Mohn, but only found the mention of her arrival. There was no arrest record for anyone with that name, nor was there an exit or confirmed kill.
“I can’t find anything. Your boy have any connects on high?” Gorgo asked.
“I have no idea, but it’s possible. She’s a girl, by the way.”
“Oh,” Gorgo honked, half-heartedly apologizing for mistaking the gender. “Just wondering if she was picked up by clout and her file was classified.”
Gorgo glanced at the information. Pilgrim Flight 46464 was too large to land in Etam, so it unloaded its passengers onto Shuttle 5, which unloaded them on Etam in Hanger 5. Now that he knew where to look, Gorgo changed menus and went to the surveillance databank for that area at that time. The appropriate tapes were accessed, and the screen changed from qomputer print to vidio output. The two qameras had enough angle coverage that a hologram could have been produced, but Corcey specifically asked for 2-D vidio: better resolution.
A different room appeared, as did different guards, one of them a Saladrin. Another Saladrin appeared from the corner of the screen, stalking into the room on its arachnid legs. It had several pressurized pieces of luggage with it.
“That what you’re looking for?” Gorgo had already played some songs on his new Pandrovian water sax, so his devastated short-term memory misplaced the mention that Corcey was looking for a woman.
“Nope.”
Gorgo hit a squishy button, and the images sped up. In the lower left corner was a time code, which accelerated with the picture. The Saladrin was allowed through, but no sooner had it left than another Saladrin entered. The images slowed to normal speed.
“No” was all that needed to be said. Again he hit scan, and the Saladrin animatedly interacted with its inquisitors. It ended up being arrested for something in a secret compartment on its suit, though Corcey did not slow the vidio down to learn what. When authority thugs dragged it off, it was followed by another Saladrin.
According to the flight information, Tazza Drazon was one of twenty-three passengers on board.
She was the last to enter.
“Her” was Corcey’s only comment, a slight tone of enthusiasm in his voice.
“Her?” Gorgo echoed. “Hmmmmm...” he hummed, “Tastyyy.” Corcey betrayed no reaction to the comment as the tape rewound to just before she entered.
On the screen, Tazza strolled in and smiled at the guards. She placed a light blue suitcase on the table, along with a black meshlon tote bag. She fess-upped to the Human guard while the Saladrin one went through her things.
Immediately, Corcey noticed the presence of one item. Tazza pulled out an SLX, and paid one hundred credits for Privilege Papers.
Noticing what she did fess to, he also noticed what she didn’t: Ba’alistti. Either she had done a superior job of hiding it, or had managed to wean herself from dependency over the years since they’d parted. If she were declaring it, Corcey would have had a simple time tracking her through that alone.
She sold the Human a “broken” bottle of wine, the Saladrin a “broken” accent translator, and was allowed through under House Arrest.
Gorgo froze the image and made a quick inquest on the qeyboard.
“I see,” he honked. Corcey looked at him, surprised. He tapped the screen, causing a window to open. The file was for Liza Monh. “They spelled it wrong; that’s why it didn’t show up.”
Corcey mumbled “Let’s see it again,” Now that he knew what to expect, he could watch it looking for the subtle clues she would leave. Of course, he should have done that the first time around, he realized, but actually seeing her had put the hook in him for a moment.
Corcey concentrated on the dialogue. It was mostly smalltalk which revealed nothing. He didn’t believe most of it anyway, especially when one of the few serious questions was asked: the nature of her visit.
“Personal,” her soft voice replied. “Death in the family.”
Both guards said that they were sorry, and wished her well as she passed through.
See it again,” he mumbled, and he watched her with cold antiseptic calm as he listened to the nonsensical dialogue. He put her words under intense exegesis, but found no hidden metaphors or clues.
“Again,” he informed the operator, who promptly rewound it. The images spooled in reverse until they had reached their beginning, and then were set free to play at normal speed.
This time he focused on the luggage. He tapped the screen where the table was. “Any way you can give me a close-up on that?”
Qeys flew, and the image froze. A qomputer-generated box appeared in the centre of the screen. It quickly became obvious that Gorgo hadn’t done this since he was first trained on the system. He controlled the box with a giant mushroom toggle, and it floated up and to the right a tad, until it covered the suitcase. Then the square magnified, enlarging to the borders of the screen.
The azure case was popped open, revealing white lacy clothes and an assortment of personal affects. The Saladrin on screen probed around inside, lifting the occasional layer of blouses only to find more personal paraphernalia. The suitcase was shut, and attention was shifted to the nylon tote bag.
Without being told, Gorgo froze the image and began typing commands. The view panned up; the tote bag came into view and most of the suitcase disappeared. Press of a button, and play resumed.
The thug on the screen unzipped the bag and began to paw around inside. Unfortunately for the two viewers, the Saladrin removed very little—mostly things were just pushed around to access the rest. Few items were exposed, though Corcey recognized Sophia’s sketchpad, a notebook full of loose papers, a vidibooq player, and the back of a clipboard. Items were attached, though the angle of the vidio was such that Corcey couldn’t tell what they were.
“Freeze it,” he declared, and Gorgo quickly complied. “Can you give me a view from the other qamera?”
Buttons were pressed, and the image shifted to a close-up of the floor.
“What the phuq?” Gorgo wondered aloud, then realized what had happened. More qeys were tapped, and the view shrank back to normal. The enhancement square was present, flashing. From the other qamera, it would have shown the clipboard. From the present view, it was trained on the floor by the Saladrin guard chatting with Liza.
“Good,” Corcey mumbled. “Home in on the clipboard.”
Gorgo would rather have done some close-ups of the more delectable portions of her anatomy—that room was perennially hot and it didn’t look like she was wearing a bra. Humidity was wonderful stuff, causing teasing clingings of her clothing. Still, he complied with the request. He could always have fun later when Rambo left.
The box floated over to the partially exposed clipboard. Attached were several formal letters and at least one envelope characteristic of IntraGalaqtiq Parcel. Only the top letter could be read, and even that was partially obscured by the envelope cutting off the right hand of the page, as well as the edge of the tote bag cutting off the bottom portion.
“See if you can track in on the letter.”
The screen zoomed in on what was visible of the writing that wasn’t cut off by the adjoining envelope or zipper:
Corcey studied the screen silently, piecing bits of information into something coherent. He blinked, and suddenly his whole body twitched as the entire screen changed.
The black and green monitor before him had the remnants of an entirely different letter displayed on it. Characters of the Galaqommon alphabet were replaced by uncial majuscules of Koine running together without spacing. Even less of this epistle’s recto was preserved than the one recorded by the New Ra’Mathian vidio qameras, mostly the opening salutation from James to Paul. Beneath it was the remnant’s verso, dealing with the upcoming conference that the fragment said was being moved from Damascus to Jerusalem.
The screen shimmered in the heat that the dawn sun was bringing in numbers, and a bead of sweat was already forming when two voices spoke to him from the side. One came a soft feminine purr, its mate a throaty masculine mumble, both asking “Do you understand what you are reading?”
Corcey’s head whipped around, and Gorgo flinched. Light reflected on Corcey’s sun shades in such a way that the Ra’Mathian could see through them; ice white ovals with obsidian chips bore into him with a force that made him sorry he’d asked.
Corcey saw the lone guard sitting beside him, the lichen-green walls of the room behind him. He quickly turned to the screen. In colour, it displayed the upper left corner of Eden Marcom’s missif.
Several beads of sweat began working their way down his face. He took a deep breath, and turned his attention inward, harvesting his memory.
Sitting in the Negeb Athanćum in the early hours of the morning, idly munching a three-pepper salad and contemplating the qomputer-reproduced fragments from ancient Earth. His comprehension was as incomplete as the fragment itself. Just when he realized that he was getting nowhere, he also became aware of a presence standing next to him. He looked up from the screen to see a woman wearing regulation white with long, flowing, raven-black hair secured by a red headband smiling at him. Her gray eyes were a fifty-fifty mix of wisdom and attraction.
“Do you understand what you are reading?” she asked him.
“How can I,” he replied with a smile, “unless someone guides me?”
Onyx pupils disappeared into faint specs as he thought about how he had first met Sophia.
That was the beginning.
Distantly, he thought, where the beginning is, there will the end be.
Blessed is he who stands at the beginning, and he shall know the end...
But that wasn’t truly the beginning. The beginning was not fifteen years ago studying Vatican Fragment 333. The beginning was five weeks ago, studying Oxyrynchus Fragment 654.
He had stood at that beginning, too. At least until he stepped off the edge and into a whole new reality tunnel.
It was several long moments before his mind shifted from how he had first met Sophia and how his problems had started to how he would find her and end them. He looked back at the screen, and suddenly tasted something salty and spicy. A runner of sweat had found his lips, and it tasted like tybl peppers—an Aridian pepper so spicy it made you sweat. Good for heat ventilation, with enough kick to keep you awake in the wee hours of the morning when you’re studying the Schism.
Corcey licked his lips, and tasted more tybl, as well as the faint copper of blood.
“Pan right,” he said at last, “gimme a shot of the envelope.”
Gorgo complied, and the envelope appeared. In the upper left corner was a jet spray company logo: Stensor Merchandizing. Beneath that: Gilead Gershon, New Ra’Math. The date of sending was not visible.
They watched the rest of the tape but learned nothing additional. That was okay: he had enough leads to follow up.
Thinking that he was done with the vidio, something hidden suddenly became revealed. It was hidden in plain view, which was why he hadn’t noticed it before.
“Gimme a close-up of her neck.”
Now you’re talking! thought Gorgo, though he would personally have panned a bit lower than her neck. (ahhh, nipple humidity!)
Between the long, glossy folds of raven black hair and the collar of her frilly white button-down blouse, the simple white curves of her neck glinted with silver. It was the necklace choker he had given her for Equinox Easter. The thin argent band was Ouroboros, the serpent devouring its tail. It cradled her throat, and unconsciously, Corcey began running his fingertips over the tattoo that circled his neck as Ouroboros circled hers.
Distantly, he remembered the night he gave it to her. Lots of energy and excitement that night; partly from the Holydai, but mostly from who the gift was for. At that point, Corcey and Sophia were just starting to admit to themselves that they were crazy for each other. She was overjoyed by the gift, and her being happy made him happy.
Back then, he felt alive.
He wondered at her still wearing it. Was it out of sentimentality, fashion, or faith? The answer could help or hinder the outcome of all this.
Unfortunately, he did not have that knowledge.
...thump... ...thump... ...thump...
Deciding he was done, Corcey reached into his jacket, and pulled out a tiny transparent paqet. Inside was the pearl.
“Thanks,” Corcey said, carefully placing it in Gorgo’s grubby hand.
“Uh, what do I do with it, exactly? Eat it?”
This made Corcey grin.
“Sure.”
But only if you want it to grow inside you.
If one doesn’t overdose from the massive chemical output, the cactus thorns either poked something important or the leaves choked off vital plumbing.
It was the preferred method of suicide among the Thunes. Took a couple weeks, but most—if they could still talk—said it was worth it.
Never worked for Corcey, though: stress ulcers had made his stomach too acidic for the roots too take hold.
“Thanks,” Gorgo replied, looking at the seed greedily.
He left the cybersystem, and turned everything off. When the door closed, the hei flexed its deplumed wings and defecated on the floor.
Gorgo headed straight home to inspect his prize, and Corcey headed straight for the Etam shuttle bays.
He wanted to be off the station before Gorgo tasted the bitter almond surprise he had dusted the seed with.
Besides, his business was on the planet below.
With proof of a House Arrest and without any apprehend immediately flags in the system, Corcey bought a token for the shuttle down to Gilead Gershon. The next departure was in eighty-eight minutes, so he sat silently amid the cacophony around him.
...thump... ...thump... ...thump...
Fortunately, he did not trance out into the suspended body fugue while he waited.
Instead, he had that phuqing maggot dream again.