James Hogan - Entoverse

Nixie smiled, showing white and even teeth, and took Hunt’s hand. “Vic, how you do today? We go fuck? Have real good time.”

“No, no, you dumb broad.” Murray sighed. “He’s not a customer. Just visiting. Understand? Vis-it-or. Come here to say hello. Anyhow, it’s your day off.”

“Ah.” Nixie dismissed the error with a matter-of-fact shrug. “Is okay I guess.”

“How about a drink, then?” Murray said. “Can fix? Drink?” He raised his hand in a drinking motion. Nixie smiled, nodded, and turned toward a short passage that led to what looked like the kitchen, from which the sound of a popular jazz group was issuing-Terran, this time. Murray patted her behind as she moved away, then he steered Hunt into the lounge. “Put your feet up. Make yourself at home. I guess you’ve had a long trip.”

It was a cheerfully chaotic place, cluttered and colorful in an unapologetically gaudy kind of way, yet cleaner and better kept than Hunt’s impression of the exterior had prepared him for. It went with Murray’s hatband. There was a suite of puffy-looking chairs in gray and red that molded themselves into whatever shape the occupant assumed, with a couch of the same; a large table by the wall, bearing a vase of Jevlenese plants amid a litter of household oddments, a box of tools, and some magazines; and a fluffy pink carpet that looked like mohair. Various ornaments and knickknacks filled every shelf and recess, and most of the wall space was taken up by posters, pictures that included some raunchy girlie poses, both native and Terran, and several embroidered blankets of the kind that tourists everywhere liked to buy. A picture of the Golden Gate Bridge formed a centerpiece on one wall. It was surmounted by an American flag, with a Chicago University bumper sticker, dollar bills of various denominations, and an arrangement of Budweiser, Miller, Michelob, and Coors coasters framing the whole.

Murray tossed his hat across the room onto the table and flopped down in one of the chairs, stretching a leg out over a footstool. He had wiry hair streaked with gray, like his beard, that was beginning to show a thin patch at the crown. Hunt sat down in the chair opposite, pressing his body this way and that until the contours suited him.

“Her real name’s Nikasha,” Murray explained. “Don’t be taken in by the act. She’s smarter than she lets on. Keeps her sights on the real world out there-and that’s saying a lot for this place.” He reached up to a shelf near his chair and took down a silver metal box. Flipping open the lid, he offered it to Hunt. It was partitioned into two sections, holding rolled joints of different colors, thicknesses, and lengths in one end, and a selection of tablets and capsules in the other. “Burn up? Cool down? Blow a weed? Some of the local stuff’ll put you back into i-space.”

Hunt shook his head. “Don’t use it. I’ll stick to conventional poison.” He felt in his pocket for his cigarettes.

Murray snapped the box shut and threw it back on the shelf with an approving nod. “Damn right. Awful shit. I never figured it, either.”

Hunt still had not caught up with the turn of events. He pinched his eyes for a moment, then tossed his hand out vaguely. “You were obviously one of the first here…”

“Natch.”

“But not with any of the official parties, I take it?”

“I hitched a ride back on the first Thurien ship that showed up, right after the blowup with the Jevs,” Murray replied. “I guess most people still don’t realize that the Thuriens’ll take just about anyone for the askin’.”

Hunt shook his head in a way that said that many of the things Murray seemed to be taking as obvious were not obvious. “What was the attraction here?” he asked.

Murray tugged at his beard, his gray eyes glittering mischievously. He seemed to be enjoying Hunt’s bemusement. “Nothin’ that I’d ever heard of. It was more a case of having to get out of there. You know how unreasonable the Feds can get about anything they think they’re not getting their cut of.”

“What weren’t they getting a cut of?”

“Oh, a little bit o’ this, little bit o’ that… I was mainly in what you might call the ‘creative import-export’ business. It involved certain psychotherapeutic agents and other substances that aren’t covered by monopoly patents, which you can’t get approval for.”

“I see,” Hunt said, nodding. He should have guessed. “So you’ve been here…”

“It’s getting to be over six months, now.”

“Where from?”

Murray gestured at the Golden Gate picture below the flag. “Born and raised. Hell, where else is there?”

“What do you do here?”

Murray shrugged and looked vague. “Oh, bit o’ this, bit o’ that. Buy and sell, deal and trade in anything there’s a demand for. Jevlen’s a pretty easygoing place that way: not exactly what you’d call restrictive. The Thuriens don’t need a lot of telling to make them act smart and stay in line, so I guess they never thought to set up much of it here, either. Now that the lunatic fringe that were trying to play Napoleons are gone, there’s a lot of opportunity.”

Nixie reappeared carrying a tray with a bottle and glasses, a dish of broken ice, and a bowl of mixed snacks. “When Vic get here Jevlen?” she asked, setting the tray down and sitting by Murray.

“Today,” Hunt said. “An hour ago, maybe less.”

“Today,” Murray repeated, adding something in Jevlenese. “You drink rum?” he asked, looking back at Hunt.

“Sometimes.”

“Local gutrot. Something like rum, but kinda minty. It’s called ashti. Give it a try.” He poured Hunt a generous measure from the bottle, pushed across the ice, then half filled two more glasses for himself and Nixie.

Hunt took a sip neat and found it not bad. He added an inch of ice. “So Vic have no girl here yet,” Nixie said. “We fix. Know plenty girl. Find real pretty one. Good and kinky.”

“Jesus, don’t you ever think of anything else?” Murray grumbled. He lounged back and raised his glass toward Hunt. Nixie took a small case from a side table and began applying a pink cosmetic to her nails. “So what’s your story?” Murray asked Hunt. “Is there a Thurien ship in today?”

Hunt nodded. “I’m part of a group that UNSA sent to have a look at some aspects of Ganymean science. There are going to be big changes.”

“So, is that what you are-a scientist?”

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

“Originally nucleonics. But since the Ganymeans showed up, it’s been getting more general.”

Murray took a gulp from his glass and regarded Hunt quizzically. “So how in hell did you wind up being bounced around in the middle of a Jev banana parade? For somebody who’s been off the ship an hour, that takes real talent. You must have a guidance system that homes on trouble.”

“Not really. The tube in from the shuttle port wasn’t running-”

“Typical.”

“-so we used a bus. Our group will be based at PAC.”

“The old government center. Okay.”

Hunt shrugged. “The bus had to divert and got bogged down in the crowd. The Jevlenese who were with us decided to try and make it on foot. I got separated from the others. And then you showed up.”

“Probably just as well for you, too. They can get pretty wild. Most of them are headworld cases who forgot the difference between cuckoo-land and reality a long time ago-assuming they ever figured it out in the first place.”

“There was something else, too,” Hunt said. “On the way in from Geerbaine we passed an accident.”

Murray pulled a face. “It gets a bit like I-405 sometimes. How bad was it?”

“It wasn’t a pileup. A traffic bridge collapsed-part of an exit slipway.”