Кристофер Банч - Vortex

Cind met Sten dressed to kill, in several ways.

And for once the male animal didn't screw up. Sten not only noticed and complimented her outfit, but asked intelligent questions—as if he were really interested—about how the cloth worked.

Still better, he brought a complementary flower.

Flower was not quite the right word. Aeons earlier, an Earth-orchid grower, exiled from his native tropics, had developed the ultimate oncidium orchid—many, many tiny little blossoms on a single stem, crossbred with a native chameleonlike and highly adaptable plant form. The result produced a living bouquet—a necklace—that exactly matched its wearer's garb.

She gave Sten a moderate kiss and a hug in thanks. And, as she pulled away, she allowed her little fingernail to trail across his neck and down his chestline.

She did not want him to think, after all, that she was a total virgin…

The bar-restaurant was secreted in an industrial cul-de-sac not far from Prime World's Embassy Row. Sten missed the turnoff and had to bring his rented gravsled—he had politely rejected the garish official transport he'd been offered—back for another approach. The building sat by itself, isolated in gloom, almost impossible to see. But as the gravsled grounded, bright lights flared.

Cind blinked in the glare. The lights seemed less intended to illuminate the path than to allow those inside to see approaching visitors. There was a very small sign halfway up the curving walk:

The Western Eating Parlor. Number Two.

"Not a very exotic name," she observed. Sten grinned. "There are wheels within wheels here. Supposedly this joint started back on old Earth, way, way back. Like pre-Empire back. Outside a city called Langley. It catered to an exclusive clientele, the story goes. Which hasn't changed in all these centuries."

"Okay, I'll bite. Who're the customers?" She raised a hand before Sten could answer. "Don't tell me. But give me a hint."

"Okay. Take the first letter of each word in the name: T-W-E-P. "

"Twep," Cind sounded.

"Long E ," Sten said.

Oh. Like in the old archaic term "Terminate With Extreme Prejudice." Cind had heard the term used by elderly intelligence types. Officially sanctioned murder.

Inside, the restaurant was a hush of real leather, murmured conversation, and skillful service.

The maitre d' was a horror.

Half of his face was gone, replaced by a plas mask. Cind wondered how long he must have been without medhelp—it was very rare to see, at least in what passed for civilization, someone whom reconstructive surgery did not take on. He didn't notice Sten and Cind for a moment. He was supervising two busboys, who were covering a large blast hole in the paneling. Then he greeted the newcomers as if they were strangers. "May I help you, sir?"

"She's clean, Delaney."

Delaney grinned with the half that remained of his face. "Indeed she is. I have an upstairs snug, Cap'n. An' your friend's at the far bar. I'll bring her up."

"You've been here before?" Cind whispered as Delaney led them through quiet luxury.

"No. Delaney and I go back a ways."

Delaney's hearing was very sharp. He paused. "FYI, the captain lugged me off a mountain once. A real big mountain. During a bad time. When I wasn't computin' real well." His fingers touched where his face was.

"I had to," Sten said. "You owed me money." A bit embarrassed, he changed the subject. "What happened to the wall?"

"You ever operate with an octopots with a service name Quebec Niner Three Mike? Called herself Crazy Daisy? Kinda cute if you go for cephalopods."

Sten thought, then shook his head.

"She retired as OC, outa Mantis 365," Delaney added helpfully. "Mostly out of NGC 1300 Central?"

"Must've been before my time—wait a minute. Was three-six-five the guys who stole the sports arena?"

"That's them."

"Okay. Know the team. Never met her. But isn't she on some renegade list?"

"You must be thinking of somebody else," Delaney shrugged. "She's clean-up with anybody here."

"Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt."

"Anyway, she was in this afternoon. Celebrating something. Kept climbing out of her tank and floppin' up and down the bar. Gettin' nasty. Pourin' down shots of jenevercut with dry ice. Anyway, she'd bought herself a toy. Old projectile weapon she'd had made up. Called it a goose gun. Anyway, she decided she wanted to show it around. I maybe shoulda said something, but—

"At any rate, she showed off how it loads—she'd had some special rounds built up for it—and then she says it'd put a hole in the wall you could throw a human through.

"Guy down at the end—ex-Mercury REMF Analysis, shoulda stayed quiet—says drakh. So Daisy blew a hole in the wall 'n started throwing the guy at the hole. He was right, and the hole wasn't big enough. But Daisy kept trying. I had to tell her to knock it off and go home after three, four tries."

Cind hid her giggle. Delaney led them into a small room and seated them.

"You'll have what, skipper? Scotch, or are you streggin' tonight?"

Sten decided to be reasonable. "Scotch. It's early."

"Do you pour Black Velvet?" Cind asked.

"We pour anything . Or if it doesn't pour, we'll get you the needle, the inhaler, or a suppository blank. And I'll tell Aretha—that's the name she prefers to use—to come on up." He left.

"This," Cind said, "is a spook bar? Correct?"

"It is. Mostly Mantis."

Every profession had its own watering holes, from politicians to pederasts. And each had its own requirements. The Western Eating Parlor was an almost perfect intelligence operative's bar. Situated in a capital— the capital, in fact—it was unobtrusive. It would serve its retired or active clients any of the exotics they had become fond of on a hundred hundred worlds. All of the help had some degree of intelligence background, from Delaney the maitre d' to the barman who was the son of a recently deceased planning type who was waiting his appointment to the appropriate university, to the busbeings who might just have done some contract wet work in the past. The Parlor was unbugged; it was kept that way with frequent, sophisticated sweeps. The press were discouraged, except for those journalists who needed deep background and would never blow a source.

The Parlor, like the dozens of other spook bars, gave its clients not only a chance to get radically unwound, but a chance to pick up on new information or what a new assignment really might bring down on the hapless operative whose control had been less than generous with the facts.

That was why Sten had asked Alex to book dinner at the Parlor. The Eternal Emperor was being entirely too generous with things for this to be anything other than a nightmare assignment.

Aretha sleeked into the room and curled onto an oversize ottoman, hooves tucked underneath her. She—question mark—might have been taken for a sextuple-legged herbivore, considering the swept-back, needle-sharp horns, the brown-white-striped fur coat, and the hooves on the first and rearmost set of legs. But when she put her head back and bayed amusement, the prominent canines and cutting premolars and molars said otherwise. She ordered mineral water to drink—Sten and Cind immediately put their drink intake at "nurse"—and a slab of animal tissue, pounded and raw. Sten had charbroiled Earth salmon, a relatively new addiction, with butter and dill sauce. Cind also sampled Earth salmon. Raw.

Aretha briefed them—as only a Mantis field operative could. Sten was grateful that she spoke through a synthbox after the initial, polite greetings. Translating someone else's speech, even when it was in one's own tongue, could get wearisome, especially if the speaker had a dual diaphragm and evidently was at home in a language with glottal stops and sibilants.