Mark Tiedemann: Chimera

He pocketed the optam and the palm monitor and slipped back through the bay door on the next cycle, just ahead of another huge pallet. All he had to do now was get out of the warehouse-and all the communications damping he had put in place-and signal his contact on Kopernik Station.

He imagined how angry Nyom was about to be.

"So what?" he mused as he recovered his overcoat. "Better she's righteously pissed off at me than dead from some trigger-happy blockade station." Ht; glanced back at the bay door. "Nova Levis! What are you thinking, Nyom? Or are you thinking." He trotted along the walkway toward the offices, muttering. "You've never been particularly impulsive, but when you are, you are absolutely unpredictable. Nova Levis. Damn."

When he reached the locker room, he punched a code into the palm monitor. All the little machines he'd released throughout the warehouse began to eat themselves into dust. Nothing would be left to analyze, if anyone ever found them. Just minuscule piles of refuse.

He checked the time, estimated that he had about six hours before that bin reached dockside on Kopernik. He could even clean up before he made his call…

He recovered the small button he had placed in the exit and stepped into the alley. He saw no one and quickly bounded across to where he had been hiding when the nightshift crew had left. He fished one more device from an inside pocket and opened it. He tapped in a code and waited for the comm to upload for him.

The screen remained blank. He ran a diagnostic. LOCALITY ERROR scrolled across the small screen. Coren hissed, annoyed. Something around here was interfering with the link. He should have tested it first. Probably being this close to the port was causing problems. He closed up the comm unit and headed down the alley.

He splashed through the accrued seepage and hunched his shoulders against the random drops of condensation from the unseen ceiling high overhead. He rounded the next corner and headed up a broad alleyway littered with abandoned shipping crates, refuse dumpsters, old and broken transports, and the scraps of traffic.

"Hey, gato."

Coren glanced to his right, at the source of the throaty voice. A tall man came out of the shadow of a receiving bay and loped toward him, hands in the pockets of a long overcoat. Coren's hand moved for the stunner he carried in his jacket. The stranger coughed heavily, a phlegmy hack Coren recognized as one of the recent strains of sublevel tuberculosis. Not contagious usually, but Coren liked to keep his distance.

"Not tonight," he said.

"Hey, that's not sapien," the man said. " Just wanting a share, you know."

Coren reflexively pulled out a few credits from his pocket and tossed them.

The man scooped them up with more alacrity than Coren would have guessed.

"Thanks, gato," he said and touched a finger to his hat.

Coren turned away.

A hand clenched around his throat between one breath and the next. Coren grabbed the wrist and pushed forward to relieve the pressure, but the hand held. The wrist, wrapped in a thick sleeve, seemed like steel. Coren tried to turn away from the encircling arm and drive an elbow back. He missed, tried again, and then dropped to his knees under a sharp blow to the left shoulder.

He choked. Sparks danced around the edge of his vision. He tried to sweep a hand around to catch the knees of his attacker, but he was too off-balance.

He closed his eyes, and the pain went away. Coren came awake lying on damp pavement, his throat burning as he choked on the sourness in his mouth. His shoulder throbbed and would not support his attempt to push himself up. He rolled over and stared up at dark walls, too close. He had been moved. He lay still for a minute or more until the acid subsided and his breathing calmed. He managed finally to sit up.

He was about three meters from the end of a narrow hallway, but still in the same general area of Petrabor, from what he could see beyond. His head spun and his legs trembled as he got to his feet. He needed to get to a medical unit, he knew, but not down here; no telling what kind of treatment he might get from the quacks practicing in the sublevels. He needed to get to a comm sooner.

He patted his pockets. His stunner was gone, as were his optam, palm monitor, and comm unit. But they had missed his ID, and he still had a few credits in a calf-pouch.

Coren tried to figure out what had happened. He was not a small man, and he had been trained well during his years with Special Service, but whoever had attacked him had handled him as if he were a child. Possible, but not the panhandler. Surely not.

He sighed heavily and coughed.

Later, he thought, stumbling from the hallway. Figure it out later…

When he returned to the hostel, all Coren wanted to do was fall into bed and sleep. He leaned against the door of his room, eyes shut, feeling his bruises and weariness. He had been beaten up once before, years ago, but the brain did not remember the pain.

He forced his eyes open. The clock above the bed said NINETEEN-TEN LOCAL.

"Damn. Five hours. "

He lurched to the small desk and pulled a briefcase from beneath it. He threw off his overcoat and tapped in the release code on the case, then took out his personal datum. He jacked it into the room comm and entered a string of numbers. He sat down then, anxiously watching while the link assembled itself through a secure channel.

"Come on…come on…"

"Palen here," a voice crackled sharply from the comm.

"It's Coren, Sipha. The package is on its way up."

"Already tracking it. We'll have it in the bay in…two hours and a bit. Where have you been? I expected your call-"

"I'll tell you later. I was delayed unavoidably."

"You still coming up?"

"As soon as I get clean. I'll be on a shuttle in an hour."

"If we get the package in station before you get here?"

"Can you delay opening till I'm there?"

"Within limits."

"I'm moving as fast as I can, Sipha. Thanks. "

Coren entered a new number and read over the shuttle schedules that scrolled onto the screen. Hand trembling slightly, he booked one, and closed down the link. He considered trying to contact the data troll who had told him about tonight's clandestine emigration, but that could scare her. She had been nervous anyway; their meeting had not gone smoothly. Coren had been in too big a hurry to question her anxiety, but now he wondered about it. He unjacked his datum and put it away.

He assembled his luggage quickly, then stripped off the grimy clothes. He showered, depilated his face, and dressed in tailored black and dark blue. The overcoat and coveralls went into the recycle chute.

Coren snatched his briefcase and single duffle, gave the cubicle a last look, gaze lingering on the bed. I really need sleep, he thought. On the shuttle, he decided, and left for the port. Coren gripped the armrests, unable to make himself relax. He knew the shuttle was in motion and, though he felt nothing, the knowledge made him sick. He forced himself not to slouch, grateful that the nausea was not worse.

"Big brave policeman," he muttered sourly, "scared of a little spaceflight. "

He glanced at his fellow passengers. One man slept soundly by induced coma-an option Coren found more repellant than the flight itself -and the only others he could see clearly seemed to be Spacers, tall and elegant and gathered together in one section in the front of the cabin, talking animatedly, unfazed by the fact that they were hurtling through space with less than thirty centimeters of hull between them and vacuum.

Coren closed his eyes and tried to think about what had happened to him.

It was possible that Nyom had hired someone to cover her back and that the panhandler had been her muscle. Possible, but inconsistent with Nyom Looms-at least, not the Nyom Looms Coren thought he knew.