Jack Chalker: Priam's Lens

Harker noted that even the roaches weren’t having a very good time with her. While he’d just go through a decontamination chamber on the way back to get rid of creepy crawling hitchhikers, they didn’t have a prayer with her. Every once in a while there would be a tiny snap and, if you looked hard enough at the right place on her all-encompassing dress, you’d see a tiny wisp of smoke or even a brief bright pinpoint of light. A personal force field, he thought. It was something you had, in combat gear, but he’d never seen one on a civilian of any stripe. She definitely had money, that was for sure, and connections, too, and those type of people could buy whatever they fancied or needed. Maybe she wasn’t kidding. The surprises she was revealing, bit by bit, indicated that any muggers might have an ugly surprise if they tried anything on her.

Harker cleared his throat. “Uh, ma’am? Why would you have an appointment with somebody like the Dutchman?” he asked her. “And what would he want with you, if I might make the comment. I mean—”

“I know just what you mean, young man!” she came back sharply. “What he wants with me, I suspect, is money, perhaps goods he can’t buy or hijack but requires for his own purposes. I don’t know the price. I do know that he claims to have something that is worth almost any price if it is anything close to genuine and not a gimmick to work some scheme on my family. He doesn’t want anything to do with me, I don’t think. In fact, I’m not certain he knows I exist, or at least that I’m still alive and mobile, such as I am. I haven’t gotten out much in the past century or so. It is why I had to be the one to meet him. I have no fear of death and I am not particularly worried about capture. I’m frail enough that almost anything coercive he can try would almost certainly kill me, and I’m tough enough not to be bothered by that. Many of the younger members of the family might well be taken in more by this, and be more vulnerable in other ways. Understand?”

Oddly, he thought he did understand her. All except what would bring her out here in the first place on the word of a murdering scoundrel.

“What does he claim to have, ma’am?”

He could almost sense a wary smile under that veil. “Some of it is best kept—private—for the moment. However, let us just say that he claims to have a method of getting into and out of occupied worlds, and that is of great interest to my family.”

Both the Navy man and the bartender laughed at that. “Sure, and to everybody else, too, if it could be done, but it can’t,” the latter said at last. “If it had ever been done, I’d know it. They all come in here, soon or later. All of ’em. Been a bunch of ’em claimed they could do it, but they left and they never came back. Ain’t nobody among these liars and braggarts claim they done it. None of ’em! ’Cause it can’t be done! People and machines and shit—pardon, ma’am—they get squooshed there, and while you might get down to the surface, you’ll never get back, and God knows what kind of hell you’re in once you’re stuck there. Nope, he’s givin’ you a line, lady. Now I know he’s pullin’ a con on you.”

“If he’d shown up at all,” the officer noted, looking over the half-deserted bar that nobody had entered or exited since the old lady entered. “Might be nothin’ to do with the Dutchman, really, ma’am. Ever think of that? Anybody in your family or businesses who might want to get you out of the way for a while?”

She seemed taken aback for the first time since entering the place. “Goodness! I never even thought of something like that! Young man, you must have an interesting background. Still, while I can’t see what good it would do anyone, it certainly provides a logical alternative to all this, doesn’t it? Perhaps I should check a bit and see if anything odd might be happening back home, though. It certainly seems clear that I have gone astray by coming here.”

“I wouldn’t trust this fellow one bit, ma’am, particularly because it’s obvious that your family has wealth and that’s all that motivates him. He’s a killer.”

“These days, aren’t we all?” she muttered, not quite loud enough to be fully heard.

“Ma’am?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Well, young man, if you will watch my back, as it were, I might as well leave. I assume you will be watching in any event, just in case this mystery man puts in some sort of clandestine appearance. I feel quite safe. It was a pleasure talking with you.”

He made pleasantries in response, not bothering to deny what she had said since it was so obviously the truth. Still, the idea that the Dutchman, the real Dutchman, would expose himself anywhere near a full military base and conventional spaceport was almost laughable.

As she shambled across the floor, vaporizing vermin as she went, he could see eyes following her from the darkened booths and private alcoves. These were a smart lot, though; they wouldn’t put their necks in a noose by so obviously following her out. Even so, he almost wished one would. While the Dutchman might not show up, somebody claiming to be him sure could. Who would know? The Dutchman was only a name and a colorful hologram on the radar screens. The name registered as several people from the distant past, but which, if any, of them it might have been was unknown. Those who had seen him and lived had seen only a darkened bubble on an environmental suit.

There was even a theory that the Dutchman didn’t exist at all, that it was just a cover name for a whole range of pirates and scoundrels who had imitated a trademark modus operandi and used it as an extra mask of concealment. Certainly there was some evidence for this; the same Dutchman who had been a cruel killer at one instance had been a polite and even noble thief at another. The only way to know for sure would be to blow him to hell and then see if “the Dutchman” showed up again.

He put his hand to his jaw and pressed in a certain spot. “Duty,” came a distant, thin voice in his ear, and only in his ear.

“Old woman leaving the Cuca, full dress and veil, slow as molasses,” he whispered in a voice so low it probably couldn’t be understood a meter or two away. “Put surveillance monitors on her the moment she comes out the front door and follow her progress. Prepare to move in if anyone approaches her. She thinks she’s here to meet the Dutchman.”

“The Dutchman! Ha! Okay, will do. Is she out yet?”

“Just about. You should see her on the street about… now. ”

“Yeah, got her,” responded the duty officer. “Let me do a scan.” There was a pause, then, “Wow! She’s got a fortune in electronics inside that rag!”

“Well, she’s got a personal force field.”

“She’s got a lot more than that. The readings here are very strong. She’s got some kind of weaponry, some robotic augmentation, and she’s radiating shit like a deep space probe. Infrared, UV, sonics—you name it. I wish I had a ship that well equipped!

The Navy intelligence man turned to the bartender. “I’ll get somebody else to cover in here. I think I should take a little walk myself.”

“Yeah? You really think she’s gonna meet the Dutchman?”

“I dunno, but she’s too smart and too well equipped to walk in here blindly and then leave so meekly.”

He made the exit a lot faster than she had, but she was still gone from immediate view. “Where away?” he asked the duty officer.

“Two blocks to your left, then down one. She walked a lot faster once she turned the corner. Now she seems stopped, like she’s waiting for a pickup.”

“Get me an unmarked tail car,” the Navy man ordered. “Have it ready in case we need to give some chase here. If she gets picked up by anybody except a limo or a service taxi I think I want to see who and what are really under that veil and dress.”