Into the Maelstrom - eARC Page 14

  “Thrones and palaces, no limit, winner takes all,” the small man replied.

  Hawthorn nodded. He swept the previous player’s coins onto the floor, replacing them with a handful of his own.

  “You’re familiar with Nortanian Rules?” the small man asked.

  “I’ll pick them up as we go along,” Hawthorn replied.

  Thrones and palaces was played in a series of rounds. Each player took it in turns to match or raise the bet of the preceding player so he could select a counter from his hand and place it face up on the table. Players tried to create combinations of tablets superior to all others by the end of round five. Rules governed what counter could be played depending on what was already displayed and what the previous player had elected to do. Nortanian rules turned out to be much the same as other versions.

  The barman came round and refilled glasses, including Hawthorn’s. Hawthorn played cautiously while he got the feel of the other players. Anyone who thinks a competitive gambling game is a question of luck is doomed to be fleeced. He won and lost by small amounts but generally was slightly down.

  When Hawthorn judged the time right he made his strike. His hand of counters at the time was no better than others he had received in earlier rounds and worse than some.

  He jacked up the bet sharply and placed a counter. A couple of players dropped out rather than match. On the next round he doubled the pot and only the small man and the young thug on his right stayed in. So far there was little advantage in the counters displayed by any of the players. It would come down to the last play.

  Hawthorn doubled once again on the final round and the small man threw in his counters. He sat back, sharp eyes watching. Hawthorn and the thug placed their last counters on the table, covering them by hands palm down while they made final bets.

  Convention decreed that the challenger reveal his counter first. Hawthorn turned his hand over to reveal a diplomacy counter. The thug laughed and slowly and slid his hand back still palm down to display an assassination counter. Assassination nullified diplomacy giving the thug the game.

  Nobody saw Hawthorn move until the thug screamed. He seized the thug’s wrist with his right hand. With his left he ripped the thug’s own knife from its holster and stabbed down hard. The sharp blade point thrust through flesh into the wooden table; that was when the screaming started. The thug struggled but Hawthorn kept his hand pinned like a beetle to a board.

  The small man scratched the side of his nose.

  “I take it that you’re not just a bad loser?” he asked Hawthorn,

  “I’m not a loser at all,” Hawthorn replied.

  He worked the knife free of the table and used it to hold the sobbing thug’s hand out revealing a raid counter pinned to the underside of the palm by the blade.

  “He’d two playing pieces concealed in his hand,” Hawthorn said. “I take it cheats are disqualified even under Nortanian rules?”

  Without waiting for an answer he scooped up the pot and put it in his pocket. The small man sighed.

  “Zitter, now you’ve embarrassed me. If you’re going to cheat at my table then at least try not to get caught. That palm slide trick wouldn’t fool my old mum.”

  The small man waved the injured thug away.

  “Get out of my sight. We’ll discuss this later.”

  The color drained from Zitter’s face. Perhaps it was just a shock reaction to loss of blood but Hawthorn doubted it. The small man didn’t raise his voice or threaten but the menace in his tone glittered like the sun on jagged glass.

  Zitter stumbled away clutching his wounded hand in the other.

  “I take it you are Bishop.” Hawthorn said flatly. It was a statement not a question.

  “You talk like a toff but you behave like a man who knows his way around. What do you want?”

  “Business,” Hawthorn replied. “I have some business for you.”

  “I suppose I’d better hear you out while I still have some men left. Not that they’re much bloody use.”

  Bishop looked at his remaining “soldiers” with mild distaste. They dropped their eyes rather than meet his.

  “You can’t get quality staff these days,” Hawthorn said with a cruel smile.

  “You have my attention,” Bishop said.

  “War is coming.”

  “So?” Bishop asked, shrugging.

  What has war got to do with me or my business? the shrug said. Wars came and went but the underworld prospered either way. Business was business and customers were customers. Who cared about the cut of their uniforms?

  Hawthorn took a sip of tonk before replying.

  “My principal will be taking an active participation. He will require information about his enemies’ intentions which I believe you through your business contacts will be admirably placed to provide.”

  “And why should I do that?” asked Bishop.

  “I can think of two good reasons,” Hawthorn replied. “First because I will pay well for accurate, timely intelligence and secondly . . .”

  Hawthorn paused and gave a humorless grin.

  “You will have made a friend with a long memory who intends to be on the winning side. I always pay people back, one way or another.”

  Bishop looked down at the blood-stained gash in his table.

  “So I see.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Icecube

  A full whiteout blizzard obscured the landing ground by Station Forty-Three. They would never have found the place without the automatics. The station itself was an ellipsoid dome half buried in ice and snow. Two open-topped torpedo-shaped frames rather larger than the barge were already parked outside on solid skids shaped like ventral fins.

  A repeller field switched on across the pad once Boswell shut down the barge’s frame field. This held off the snow and offered a degree of relief from the biting wind. Even so the chill factor was far below zero. The travelers wasted no time in making a run for the tunnel that passed from the dome to the pad. Allenson had brought a heavy coat for inclement weather but this was ridiculous.

  The tunnel was empty but a door slid aside when they reached the end to give access to the dome. Inside a stocky man met the party. He had several days’ growth of untidy facial hair under a peaked cap.

  “Good evening,” Allenson said, holding out his hand. “My name is—”

  “I know who you are, General Allenson,” the man said curtly, ignoring the hand. “The automatics announced you. What I don’t know is why you’re here.”

  Buller snorted in amusement.

  “So you’re not welcome everywhere, eh, Allenson?”

  Buller had not taken Allenson’s lionization by the Arcadians well. Of course, neither had Allenson himself but for a rather different reason.

  “I’d hoped for some hospitality for the night and a recharge for my barge’s fuel cells,” Allenson replied, somewhat nettled by the man’s incivility. “Obviously I expect to pay my way.”

  “You and your party are welcome to the use of the guest room,” the man said, unbending slightly. “You can buy meals in the staff canteen.”

  “And my barge?”

  “Won’t be recharged tonight,” the man said with a certain relish. “You may have noticed there’s a little bit of a blow on. The repeller field interferes with the charger.”

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  “Of course, right after we’ve recharged our own cars.”

  The guest room boasted but Spartan accommodation in the form of bunk beds but it was at least warm. A functional staff canteen provided basic meals that suited Allenson but caused a degree of moaning and gnashing of teeth from Buller and Redley. They also took exception that Allenson invited Boswell to eat at the same table as the gentlemen. Allenson was pleased to note that Todd kept his own council on the matter.

  None of the staff or employees in the canteen showed overt hostility but there was a definite coolness towards Allenson’s party that had nothing to do with Icecube’s climate. He
retired early to his bunk and spent some time on his datapad checking through the news on Icecube’s open access net. He found nothing that he didn’t already know beyond the fact that the station was a private venture by a Brasilian perfume company. He fell asleep before finding out why a perfume company would want a station on a Hinterlands snowball world.

  Buller skipped breakfast the next day. After he’d eaten Allenson tracked down the unshaven manager whose name, he discovered, was Whitbee.

  This morning Whitbee was all smiles, oozing what he no doubt fondly considered to be charm.

  “How pleasant to see you, General Allenson. I trust you slept well?”

  Allenson had slept tolerably well despite being woken in the early hours by Buller staggering into the room much the worse from a drinking session with some of the riggers. He gave an appropriate response.

  Whitbee clasped his hands to his breast and put on an expression of pious rectitude.

  “I regret I have some bad news, General.”

  “Oh?”

  “Our charger has broken down. I’m sure a mechanic will quickly rectify the problem but there’ll be a short delay before you can be on your way.”

  “I see,” Allenson replied.

  “We did get one of our cars recharged and the storm has passed so we’ll be sending out a hunt. I thought you might wish to accompany them to pass the time?”

  “What do you hunt?” Allenson asked, intrigued.

  “Spirotrich.”

  Allenson looked blank. Whitbee hastened to explain.

  “Spectacular marine organisms that filter feed on the plankton swarming around the edge of the ice sheets. The plankton congregate at the surface so we harpoon spirotrichs when they come up after them. The beasts themselves are valueless but they secrete fecal pellets in their digestive tract that are rich in a complex alcohol called ambrein. It’s prized for stabilizing perfumery so is valuable stuff back home. Terran women in particular will pay exotic prices for ambrein-based perfume.”

  “And the chemical can’t be cheaply replicated in an industrial process?”

  Whitbee shrugged.

  “Sure, but the top perfumers swear that the artificial compound is too pure and lacks the necessary complex organic contaminants that give natural ambrein its unique qualities.”

  Allenson suspected that natural ambrein based perfumes were simply another way for the ultra-rich to display their status through luxury unobtainable to the merely wealthy. Not that it mattered. Wealth display was a valuable way to recycle money back down the social system in a form that didn’t alarm the aristocracy. Redistribution of wealth without revolution was always a tricky issue in human society. Any system that had fat cats competing for the privilege of throwing cash at the proles was to be encouraged.

  “I believe I would find the hunt fascinating. Thank you, Master Whitbee.”

  “We’ll lend you a spare survival suit. I’m sure we have one somewhere that will fit you,” Whitbee said measuring up Allenson’s sizable frame with his eyes. “It gets pretty cold over the ocean.”

  The dresser finally located a suit that more or less fitted after a search in the deeper recesses of his lockers. Suitably clad, Allenson headed out to one of the cars. The air was still and clear. You could see right up to where the blue sky was so dark it was almost black.

  The car had the usual retracted frame pylons but what was unusual were the heavy turbofans mounted in pairs at the bow and stern. They must be incredibly power-hungry and Allenson could not for the life of him see what use they could be. No doubt all would be revealed.

  Technicians prepared the craft. They pulled covers off the open crew area to reveal a large harpoon gun on three hundred and sixty degree gimbals in the bow.

  Allenson introduced himself to the hunt captain.

  “I hope I won’t be in the way.”

  “Not at all, General, Master Whitbee has made the necessary arrangements. I ‘ve arranged for you to ride up front with the gunner where you’ll get a good view.”

  Allenson climbed up a ladder affixed to the bow to enter the small front compartment partly filled with the harpoon gun. The only other crewman stationed there was the gunner. The captain and the other two crew members rode at the rear where the flight controls were located. The crew compartments were separated by bulky fuel cells so it was not possible to move between the two in flight.

  The crew completed the final checks. They just switched on the drive when Todd hurtled out of the tunnel, still zipping up a survival suit. The captain stood up to wave him away but Todd ignored the man. He hauled himself into the crowded front compartment as the pylons extended and the field formed.

  “There’s only room for two up here. You’ll have to get off,” the gunner said, moving to intercept Todd who brushed him aside.

  “Room for a smaller fellow, I think,” Todd said, cheerfully, planting his back firmly against the rear bulkhead with the air of a man who would brook no argument on the matter.

  The gunner gave up and sat down behind the harpoon. Allenson leaned over from the co-gunner’s seat to put his head close to Todd’s.

  “What are you playing at, Nephew?” he asked.

  “Colonel Hawthorn gave me strict instructions to remain at your side at all times, Uncle.”

  “Colonel Hawthorn is an old woman with a paranoiac streak.”

  Todd folded his arms indicating that he was immovable on the subject.

  “Nevertheless, he was most insistent and I would not wish to disappoint him.”

  Allenson gave up.

  The frame lifted and phased almost immediately into the Continuum. After a short jump it semi-dephased low over a flat gray landscape of an ice sheet. Low rounded rocks thrust through the ice behind them, rising to jagged peaks inland.

  “Can you hear me, General?”

  The hunt captain’s voice sounded in Allenson’s helmet.

  “Loud and clear,” Allenson replied in the time-honored response.

  “The rocks mark the edge of the continent. We’ll move out to the edge of the ice sheet to look for plankton blooming in the mineral-rich upwelling currents. That’s where we’ll find spirotrichs.”

  They ice sheet started to crack and break up in the heavy swell a few hundred meters from the rocks. According to Allenson’s pad, the world ocean ran right around Icecube’s equator so there was nothing to stop the waves building into massive proportions. After a couple of hundred meters more the sea was ice free except for chopped up fragments.

  Like most people, Allenson had noticed over the years that solid water, ice, was lighter than its liquid phase. Icecubes floated in a cocktail but he had never considered the ramifications of this peculiar property before. It occurred to him that if ice sank then Icecube’s ocean would soon be solid with a thin veneer of water on top. Life would never get past the bacterial phase. Presumably the same was true of Old Earth and many other worlds.

  The craft turned parallel to the ice edge. It cruised slowly along, snaking out to sea and back. The gunner undid his seatbelt and stood up to look over the side so Allenson did likewise. All he saw was heaving gray sea and fragments of ice. He had no idea what a spirotrich looked like. He checked in his datapad for a picture without success. Recorded data were more concerned with the economics of spirotrich ambrein than the organisms themselves.

  He ran a general search on spectacular plankton-feeding organisms. The pad came up with an extinct air-breathing fish on Old Earth called a whale. Apparently this was the largest animal ever to evolve on humanity’s home world. Intrigued he wondered how a species with such a large biomass and fast metabolism could feed on tiny one-celled organisms.

  The answer when he found it was blindingly obvious. The food chain was all about productivity rather than biomass. Plankton had staggeringly fast turnover rates with massive productivity compared to the population of the whales that fed on them.

  He also discovered that evolution on Icecube had failed to produce anything resembling
a mollusk or vertebrate so presumably spirotrichs couldn’t be all that large. He prepared himself for disappointment.

  The gunner shifted suddenly, bumping into Allenson in the crowded compartment. The man shaded his eyes and looked down at the ice sheet. The craft descended and moved shoreward. The blades in the turbines started up one by one, rotors whining as they came up to speed, causing the craft to vibrate. The craft fully phased into reality while in the air. Color bled into the landscape and Allenson noticed that the sea had an orange tinge.

  The pilot handled the transition well from frame field to true flight with only a slight drop and wobble as he adjusted the rotors. These could swivel to provide horizontal thrust in any direction but tilted blades had to bite that bit harder to maintain lift. This required more power from the engines, causing the noise to rise to a scream that made talking difficult.

  Allenson had only been in an air car once before as a child. He’d been persuaded to ride in a modern copy of an antique vehicle giving rides at fairs. His brother Todd had whooped in pleasure but Allenson had not enjoyed the experience to say the least.

  The car lurched into a tightly banked turn to the left. Allenson’s stomach made a counter rotation to the right.

  He put his pad away and examined the bare ice but saw nothing of note. He looked quizzically at Todd who shrugged. Noticing the exchange the gunner pointed to where there was a moving darkness on the ice. Allenson thought it a cloud shadow but now he looked again something moved under the sheet.

  The shadow passed the ice edge and a bulge of water formed under the waves causing the tops to break away in wind-blown spray speckled with orange. The harpooner noticed his puzzled expression.

  “The plankton are orange,” the gunner said putting his head close to Allenson’s ear.

  The spirotrich broke surface. Allenson found that he was not disappointed at all. The beast was massive, perhaps a hundred meters long, an orange-tinged, semi-transparent, cone-shaped worm with a long trailing tail. There were no fins that he could see and the open end of the cone was at the front. Waves of spirals descended into the mouth of the cone turning rapidly counterclockwise such that the spirotrich rotated slowly in the opposite direction. It was a surreal sight, almost hypnotic.