By Other Means Read online

  “We go way back,” Costarvis whined. “I saved your life. Saved it many times.”

  “I reckon we’re just about even,” Kade said, blinking, the images in black and white and the taste in his mind oh so good, oh so pure and although he could hear Carter, like a distant dream, like a distant ghost, screaming noooooooooo he did it anyway, lifted his boot and stamped down on Costarvis’ head, once, twice, three, four, five times, and left the skull cracked and leaking pulped brain-shit like a bad, sour, rotten egg.

  Kade sat down, then, and reaching forward, started tracing patterns in the mushed brains. He giggled, and fought the frenzy of Carter trying to come back from the dead; trying to emerge from the insanity of his own twisted mind. Finally, Carter broke free and Kade fled, with a last mocking laugh and Carter sat staring at the crushed skull of his old friend.

  Carter breathed deep. Pocketed his Browning. And feeling a million years old, climbed wearily to his feet.

  Without a backward glance, Carter walked from the terrorist’s den.

  “Kade, you’re a bastard,” he said as he climbed up a high alloy ladder.

  “I’m what you made me.”

  “Bullshit! You follow your own rules.”

  “No, my friend. I do what has to be done. I do what you’d do if you were a stronger man. If you really had the balls.”

  Carter considered this, as he emerged onto the pointed summit of the Pyramid Rig. An ice-chilled wind filled with rain snapped in from the Atlantic. Carter sent the ECube call to Mongrel, and as he stood, shivering, and somehow managed to light a bedraggled cigarette, he considered loyalty, and honour, and friendship, and betrayal, and wondered, wondered if, when he was finally dead and buried and done, wondered if the pain and violence would ever, ever end.

  You can read more about Carter and Kade in the novels SPIRAL, QUAKE, and WARHEAD by Andy Remic, published by Orbit Books.

  A Thing of Beauty

  Charles E. Gannon

  The children have become an unacceptably dangerous liability. Don’t you agree, Director Simovic?”

  “Perhaps, Ms. Hoon. How would you propose to resolve the problem?”

  “Director, it is generally company policy to…liquidate assets whose valuations are subpar and declining.”

  Elnessa Clare managed not to fumble the wet, sloppy clay she was adding to the frieze, despite being triply stunned by the calm exchange between her corporate patrons. The first of the three shocks was her immediate reaction to the topic: Liquidate the children? My children? Well, they’re not mine—not anymore—but, just last year, they would have been mine, when I was still the transitional foster parent for company orphans. How could anyone—even these bloodless suits—talk about “liquidating the children?”

  The second shock was that these two bloodless suits were discussing this while Elnessa was in the room—and only twenty feet away, at that. But then again, why be surprised? Their company—the Indi Group, LLC—was simply an extension of the megacorporate giant, CoDevCo, and evinced all its parent’s tendencies toward callousness, exploitation, and a canny ability to generate profits—often by ruthlessly factoring ‘human losses’ into their spreadsheets just like any other actuarial number.

  The third shock was that Elnessa could hear Simovic and Hoon at all, let alone make out the words. Because of the xenovirus which had hit her shortly after arriving on Kitts—officially, Epsilon Indi 2 K—Elnessa had suffered losses in mobility and sensory acuity. But every once in a while, she experienced an equally troublesome inversion of these handicaps: unprecedented (albeit transient) sensory amplification. Six months ago, she had had to endure a hyperactive set of tastebuds; all but the blandest of foods had made her retch. And now, just in the past four days, her steady hearing loss had abruptly reversed—particularly in the higher ranges. Suddenly extremely sensitive to high-pitched sounds (she had acquired a new-found empathy for dogs), Elnessa now could pick out conversations from uncommonly far-off—whereas only a week ago, she had been trying to learn lip-reading.

  She realized she had stopped working; had, in fact, frozen motionless. And Simovic and Hoon had fallen silent, were possibly watching her, wondering if she had—impossibly—heard them. Elnessa raised her hand haltingly, then paused again, hefting the clay. Then she shook her head, plopped it back, and began rolling it to work the water out. And she listened, hoping they had believed her depiction of “distracted aesthetic uncertainty.”

  Simovic’s voice resumed a beat later. “So, Ms. Hoon, do you have any suggestions for the most profitable method of divesting ourselves of these young, ‘high-risk commodities’?”

  “Director, at some point, the attempt to find a profitable method of divestiture can itself become a prime example of the law of diminishing returns: sometimes a commodity becomes so valueless that the simplest—and least costly—method of liquidating it is best.”

  Elnessa reminded herself to keep breathing: the good news was that Simovic and Hoon had believed her performance as “the Oblivious Artist,”contemplating the frieze before her. The bad news was that the discussion at hand had already moved from “should we get rid of the children?” to “how do we go about doing so?”

  Simovic carried the inquiry further. “So we just abandon the asset in place?”

  “Director, I would suggest junking ‘the asset’ at a considerable distance from the main colony, and even the outlying settlements. I suggest using an infrequently visited part of the planet: no reason we should be penalized for—discarding refuse—in a public place.”

  Elnessa was now acclimated enough to the horrific conversation that she could actually work and listen at the same time: she straightened up a bit, began layering in the thin strips of micro-fiber pseudoclay that would hold and provide a reflective receptacle for the back-lit acrylic inserts with which she would finish the high-relief center panels of the mixed media frieze. With one eye on Simovic’s and Hoon’s reflections in the inert monitor of her combination laser-level and grid-plotter, Elnessa smoothed and sculpted the materials while straining her ears after every word.

  Simovic chuckled: the sound was more patronizing than mirthful. “Ms. Hoon, sometimes the direct approach to seemingly low-value divestiture is not the best alternative—particularly if one has had the opportunity to plan in advance.”

  Hoon’s shoulders squared defiantly. “And what ‘advanced planning’ are you referring to, sir?”

  “Well, in fairness, it’s nothing that you could have been aware of. Suffice it to say that with the appearance of this—ah, unregistered vessel—in main orbit, the asset in question may not be wholly valueless.”

  Hoon sounded dubious. “And just why would a bunch of grey-world orphans be of interest to—to whoever it is that’s hovering just outside Kitts’ own orbital track?”

  Elnessa watched Simovic lean far back in his absurdly over-sized chair, and steeple his fingers. His smile had mutated from ‘smug’ into ‘shrewd,’ even ‘predatory.’ “Come now, Ms. Hoon; surely you can think of at least a dozen reasons why unrecorded corporate wards would be items of interest to any number of parties.”

  Hoon’s defiant frown slowly evolved into a smile—at about the same pace that Elnessa felt her blood turn into ice. People, particularly kids, who were ‘unrecorded’—who therefore lacked birth certificates and national identicodes—were rare, and therefore inherently valuable, black market ‘commodities.’ And there wasn’t a single use for such commodities that was anything less than hideously illegal and immoral.

  “And why,” Hoon asked in what sounded like a purr, “are you so sure that our mysterious visitors will be interested in such a—trade good?”

  “That,” Simovic answered with a self-satisfied sigh, as expansive and deep as had he just finished a very filling meal, “will become obvious within the next twenty-four hours.”

  Elnessa blinked and doubled the speed at which she was putting the finishing touches on the clay components surrounding the central space she had left open
for what she had silently labeled The Brazen City. She had to complete the frieze soon, and in particular, she had to finish on time today—because she needed to make an early visit to her dead-drop site.

  She had to make sure that Reuben came to debrief her—as early as possible.

  Sitting on the spongy, close-mowed kitturf that seemed half-lichen, half crabgrass, Elnessa surveyed the small patch of ground that served as the colony’s park, promenade, and grey market. She watched as Reuben led the newest batch of fresh-faced PDPs—Parentless Displaced Persons—to the rather sparsely- appointed playground at the other end of the public square. Although the orange-yellow disk of Epsilon Indi had almost dipped behind the horizon, the immense amber-white gas-giant Lee was in gibbous domination of the darkling sky. If one looked closely, the resulting double illumination created faint secondary shadows—with the stronger ones (generated by the system’s primary) rapidly losing ground to those created by the weak, but steadily reflected light of Kitt’s parentworld.

  Elnessa smiled as several of the younger children lagged behind, mesmerized by, the ghostly effect. Reuben cycled back to the end of the group, gently urged the stragglers to keep up, evidently throwing down the claim that he could reach the playground first. Cries of glee provided the soundtrack for the impromptu footrace to the dilapidated jungle-gym.

  Nice kids, thought Elnessa. And they almost always were, despite the hell-holes that invariably spat them out. Their parents or parent died on a Grey World, still indebted to the company store or transit office and—presto—the kids became the “cherished wards” of the corporations which had fed them grudgingly, clothed them generically, and had killed their parents “unintentionally.” Unintentional, insofar as a megacorporation’s work-force was all initially voluntary—albeit often desperate enough to resort to any alternative to earn a living. But once wearing the company yoke, the most abject of its employees discovered that they had to continually mortgage their futures just to keep working, since they accumulated debts faster than the checks they used to pay them off.

  Elnessa scowled: indeed, the corporations were nothing if not ruthlessly efficient, even in the smallest of matters. Here it was, only four days past Christmas, and the physical-plant flunkies were already making the rounds, taking down the ornaments that ringed the periphery of the park. Elnessa watched the strings of white and red lights wink out, one after the other, just before they were quickly recoiled into storage spools by the coveralled workers. ’Tis the season to be stingy, she thought. After all, what was the value in prolonging the modest, celebratory mood of the community when the company could burn a few less kilowatt hours? And all for the sake of something as intangible as joy? Bah, humbug.

  She emerged from her bitter reverie discovering that she was still watching the kids, drinking in their innocence like an antitoxin. A moment later she peripherally noticed that Reuben was approaching her.

  She spared a quick glance at the younger man as he strolled across the spongy kitturf, then she looked back to watch the kids playing. One of them standing at the edge of the playground looked to be the oldest—but he certainly wasn’t the biggest. He was a little short for his age, spare, standing quite still, milk-chocolate skin, dark brown eyes, and very straight black hair.

  “El,” Reuben said.

  She looked up, almost surprised: she had already quite forgotten about the approach of the young unofficial union rep. “Hi, Reuben. Have a seat.”

  “Okay. Jus’ for a second, though.” He flopped down on the ground; a slightly musky smell—the one given off by quickly compressed kitturf—rose up around them. “So what’s up, Mata Hari?”

  Elnessa snorted, stared down at herself. “Oh yes, I’m one spry, sultry sex-pot; that’s me.”

  Reuben—a good kid, but very new at coordinating the activities of Kitts’ illegal (hence, underground) union—seemed uncertain about how to respond. “El... Elnessa, you’re really not...not so—”

  “Christ, Reuben, I’m not fishing for a compliment, okay? Thanks to this damned xenovirus, my leg is almost shot, my muscle tone is going, and I stand zero percent chance of becoming a tantric master of the Kama Sutra. I know all that. And I know you didn’t mean to get yourself into this conversational mess, so let me help you escape it: I, your inside agent—‘Mata Handicapped’—heard some nasty chatter today between the big cheeses. Concerning your new PDPs.”

  Reuben looked relieved and thankful when Elnessa put aside the unfortunate reference to Mata Hari, and then frowned. “So tell me the news.”

  Elnessa did.

  Reuben blew out his cheeks, stared at the patchwork façade of the stacked modular uniroom worker’s quarters. “Damn,” he said, but he didn’t seem surprised.

  Elnessa narrowed her eyes. “Give,” she said.

  “Give what?”

  “Come on, Reuben, you’re going to have to portray innocent ignorance a lot more convincingly than that if you don’t want the suits sniffing you out and introducing you to your new private dancing partner, Mr. Knuckles O’Bicep.”

  Reuben turned very white. “I’ll work on the act, okay?”

  “Don’t do it to please me, Reuben; do it to save yourself. Now—what have you heard?”

  Reuben frowned. “Well, it’s not what we heard: it’s who was talking—and how much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Coded traffic spiked big time today. Bigger than during inter-Bloc naval exercises.”

  “What? You monitor military channels?”

  Reuben looked sidelong at her. “You think the megas are above calling in troops to keep us working?”

  “Their private security forces, no. But not the Blocs’. That’s your old-school union-dinosaurs talking, Reuben. Nations and corporations have been at each others’ jugulars for almost twenty years now—with the nations supporting the unions ninety percent of the time.”

  “Yeah, well, the industrial megacorporations haven’t become hostile toward the nations.” He leaned his index finger across his middle finger. “The Industrials and nations are like that. More than ever.”

  Elnessa shrugged. “Sure. I can’t argue that. But when was the last time the Industrials made a move that even looked like a prelude to strike-breaking?”

  “Well, in China—”

  “Don’t get cute, Reuben: we’re not talking about Beijing’s ‘companies,’ here. They’re not genuine corporate entities anymore than their army is. They just get their orders from different people. Sometimes. But in the other Blocs—”

  “Okay, okay, I get your point. But regardless of that, it’s still SOP for our membership on Tigua to monitor all spaceside commo, even the coded stuff. Increased activity is pretty positively correlated with impending operations—whatever those operations might happen to be.”

  “Makes sense. So what’s the best guess about the cause of the chatter? War?”

  “Maybe—but the command staffs of all the Blocs seem agitated.”

  “Well, they would be if they were on the brink of war.”

  “Yeah—but they’d be agitated at each other. Instead, the various Bloc naval commands were burning up the lascom beams, communicating with each other. If anything, the different militaries seem to be cooperating more, not less.”

  “So what’s your hypothesis?”

  “Well, the only thing that would worry all the Blocs and push them together would be something from—well, from outside.”

  Elnessa stared at him. “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning—maybe—that unidentified ship Simovic was talking about.”

  “So whose do you think it is?”

  “Look, El, we just don’t have any guesses about that. Maybe some military ship mutinied. Maybe the megacorporations have built their own warship, are throwing their weight around.”

  “Then why does Simovic think he can sell orphans to—?”

  “Okay, so maybe it’s a ship the megas have slipped into the hands of the local pirates—God knows there
are enough raiders out here in the Indis—and they might have an interest in kids without records.”

  Elnessa nodded; that seemed reasonable—and gruesome—enough. But even so—

  “El,” Reuben said after a moment, “have you changed your mind yet?”

  “About what?”

  “C’mon El, don’t make this harder than it is. Will you take a—package—inside corporate headquarters?”

  Elnessa shrugged, looked away. She heard Reuben lay something down on the kitturf beside her.

  “What is that?” she asked, not needing to look.

  “You don’t need to know, El. Any more than you already do. That way you’re not implicated if you’re caught.”

  She turned back to look at him, ignoring the “plain brown paper” package on the ground between them. “Hell, you’re not very good at this are you, Reuben? If anything in that package is selected for inspection when I go in, then I’ve got to have a plausible explanation ready, don’t I? So I’m going to need to know what each object is so I know how best to hide it, or how to explain it away if they take special notice of it. Right?”

  Now it was Reuben’s turn to look away. “Yeah, I guess so. I just don’t want you to be—you know...“

  “Look, Reuben—and look at me when I speak. Yes, I’ve been reluctant about doing anything more than listening and reporting. Which, admittedly, has worked out just the way you and your advisors back on Tigua thought: being nothing more than a nice, unassuming, crippled artist-lady, I’m an operational non-entity to them, well beneath the security notice of the suits. So it’s been easy enough to be your ears inside the lion’s den. But now...with them talking about the kids that way—well, I’ll take the next step. I guess I have to. But I don’t know anything about—”

  “El, we only want you to bring the materials inside. You can leave it anyplace you want. Just tell us where you’ve left it when you come out; we’ll take care of everything else.”

  Elnessa felt relief at not having to do the real dirty work—and in the same instant, felt like both a hypocrite and a coward. Damnit, if I’m in on this plan, then why shouldn’t I take risks equal to—?