Titans Page 3

  I laughed. Below us, his machines and employees went on assembling internal combustion-driven automobiles. Illegal in just about every developed country on Earth. Felix skated by, our reports said, by selling the replicas for "novelty purposes," and by selling the keys to the ignitions through a separate business.

  "I don't use the whole grounds," Felix allowed. "I could maybe lease you part of it."

  "Converting it back to its original usage lets us skip assembling a new factory from scratch," Baxter said. "Our prime goal is speed."

  "We have to be fast like a juiced-up Camaro," I added.

  "Camaro?" Felix laughed through his nose. "You a history buff?"

  "Sort of." We ambled along the catwalk and I stopped dead as the finished products swung into view—oversized, inefficient, and comically resource-intensive. "That is a 1965 Ford Mustang."

  "A replica," Felix corrected automatically. He drew his chin back, inspecting me. "Want to hop behind the wheel?"

  "Since 1964," I said. Baxter cleared his throat and speared me in the ribs with two fingers. We clacked down the grated metal stairs toward the dozen-odd cars. Felix popped the Mustang's door with an "after you" sweep. I settled behind the wheel and inhaled deeply, but the new-car smell wasn't there. In the 1960s I'd been, quite independent of what was going on around me, experimenting with a possession-free lifestyle, and by the time I started buying things again I'd forgotten how much I wanted one of these. I stomped the gas, which of course did nothing. "Vroom!"

  "I have no idea why they were obsoleted," Baxter said dryly. I cranked the wheel back and forth, toggled the dials of the silent radio.

  "What kind of mileage does this get?" I hollered out the window.

  "Except for real purists," Felix said, leaning an elbow on the glass, "we tweak the engine. Puts this one about sixty city, eighty highway."

  "Vroom! Ha ha ha!"

  Baxter tapped his nails on the glass. "Rob."

  I spilled out of the car. "I'll take it!"

  Felix shrugged his beefy shoulders. "It's already spoken for."

  "That's a shame." On the other side of the wall, a half dozen men welded steel, schlepped tires, and kept tabs on the relentless thrum of machines. The last arm of the American automotive industry. I slapped the Mustang's roof. "Thanks for showing us around, man. Let us know if you change your mind, yeah?"

  "You bet." Felix shook our hands, the first time he'd done so, and showed us out.

  "That, in case you were wondering," Baxter said outside, "is exactly what makes you more valuable to us than all the lawyers, MBAs, and technoshamans in the world."

  "So valuable I haven't been paid yet."

  He blinked up at the drizzling clouds. "Two weeks, we estimate. After three thousand years, is that so long to wait to find out who you are?" He blinked some more. "Well, is it?"

  "I'll find a way to suffer through it."

  We left the oasis of industry for the samtown block towers and the tens of thousands of government-subsidized stuff-buyers who lived there. Lately the Contract Party had been making so much noise about finally booting them off the public tit it left me with the rather insane impression they were jealous of the poorest people in the country. I didn't see how it mattered in the slightest. Everyone on either side would be dead within a hundred years while their grandchildren changed the nation in ways that would make them spin in their graves.

  I grinned at Baxter. We had Felix in the bag.

  Our minicar purred through the outskirts of Tukwila. At our south Seattle office, police hung around the lobby, interviewing Sammi the doorman.

  "I'm so sorry," she called to us. "His appointment checked out."

  Baxter and I exchanged looks. After a short argument with two city cops, we were let upstairs. Our office looked like it'd been picked up and shaken. File cabinets knocked across the floor. Drawers and paperwork spilled over every surface. Computer terms smashed, the fragments of their screens glittering on the short carpet. A single ketchup handprint dribbled down the far wall—they'd even raided the kitchenette.

  "Well, this is ridiculously old-fashioned." I hmm'd. "I told you we were being followed."

  "I am going to separate their insides from their outsides," Baxter said, stock-still. One of the cops raised his eyebrows. Baxter was so deep in the throes of the Furies he didn't notice. "They've been getting away with murder for years. It's time to hit back."

  The escape was as sudden as a light snapping off—one night an airlock malfunctioned, drawing off security, and Arthur, quick as always, browbeat him into running away on the spot. Can you believe that? They just ran off! With no plan whatsoever! And do you know what he carried? Arthur, the gun, and some money pilfered from the scientists and lab techs.

  I mean, really, did he think he was a cowboy? An outlaw? Loping through the rocks and dust, path lit by stars and two ugly little moons, he didn't know what he was going to do when he reached the city—how little they knew then!—but if there was anyone on Mars who would help them, it would be in New Houston.

  3

  "We are now going to do illegal things." Baxter stood behind his desk, eyes ready to combust with an anger that still hadn't cooled hours later. He'd left the detritus of the smash-and-grab on the floor. Like he wanted a physical reminder of this latest insult—not that I had any clue about the ones preceding it. Baxter's reaction, however, piqued my suspicions.

  The police had taken statements and scanned the place, then moved on to real crimes. The total lack of evidence as to the criminals' identity did nothing to dissuade Baxter from preparing his counterstrike against them.

  "If you're not prepared to do illegal things with me, you should leave and not tell anyone about this. For the sake of your integrity. If you don't have any of that, then do it for the sake of your health. I don't like squealers."

  I couldn't help grinning. I had a soft spot for anarchy. To my left, Deng the graybeard PI spat a piece of thumbnail at the mess of papers and electronics. To my right, former kickboxer/kali monk and present-day security consultant Pete Gutierrez made no move at all.

  "Silence means assent," Baxter said. "No wriggling out on technicalities." He offered a rare smile and, having twice sniffed the room for bugs, turned his omni face-up on his scuffed desk. His fingers danced across its surface and a web of data resolved in the space above its screen. Within the hologram, a 2D of the two office-trashers showed them entering the lobby and speaking briefly with Sammi. Chins tucked down, faces hidden by rain-soaked derbies, there was little to glean but their builds, which to the surprise of none were apish. We hadn't had any cameras in our office and Deng's DNA vacs had turned up nothing useful. All we had to show for ourselves were Sammi's vague descriptions, a few seconds of medium-range video footage, and that single ketchup-print left by a gloved hand. Baxter tapped another file and an array of 3D mugshots bloomed above the terminal.

  "This isn't enough for your police to work with, but we have resources they don't. By comparing the build and body dynamics of these men to all video records of known criminals in the greater Seattle area, we have narrowed the field considerably."

  Deng withdrew his thumbnail from his mouth. "Police know you have their vids?"

  "I doubt it."

  "Just checking."

  Baxter tapped up more files, mostly plain text. "Each man's associates, hangouts, and, when applicable, residence. Mr. Deng, you and your associates are tasked with narrowing the field to the guilty pair. Once that's done, Mr. Gutierrez will assist Mr. Dunbar and myself in the interrogation."

  "Mr. Dunbar?" I said.

  Baxter narrowed his eyes at me. "That's you, yes." He tapped his terminal and the holo compressed to a single fading point. "I know these men work for the Hemiterran Research Corporation, AKA HemiCo. It's your job to find proof."

  "Done," Deng said. Gutierrez shook our hands. Baxter transferred his intel to Deng's omni, chatted about brute force, then saw them out. I sat on his desk, kicking my heels against its dented
side.

  "How did you analyze all that video already?"

  "Prayer," Baxter said.

  "What makes you so sure they're HemiCo?"

  "Earthside companies don't do things like this. HemiCo's spent too much time outside this planet's gravity—and its laws. These are the people who started the Cor-Wars, for the sake of Jesus Christ."

  I snorted. "That was Forsun Interplanetary."

  "So you say."

  "So history says." I bulged my lower lip with my tongue. "You know, when the police look at suspects, they look for something called a 'motive.'"

  "To discourage competition. Or steal our business plan. Or gather the intel to make a buyout." Baxter steepled his fingers over his nose. "It was them. You'll see."

  "You're one of them, aren't you?"

  "One of what? The people who see through their lies? Yes. And I make no apologies for it."

  That afternoon, Deng fed us updates on ruled-out suspects while we finalized the purchase of Felix's automotive factory and ironed out the details of retooling it to vacunautical work. Convinced there was a personal angle to Baxter's enmity toward HemiCo, I pried him for details, but I would have had more luck pumping a cow about its plans for college. Baxter gazed through me when we spoke, a scowl forgotten on his face. I knew the look. Lost in memory.

  At the office two days later, as I packed it in for the day, he grabbed me by the sleeve. "Deng's got something. Let's go."

  "It better be to a bar."

  I lucked out. We met Deng at Asgard, a dim, elegant, but unpretentious downtown pub that brewed its own line of beers. I ordered a pitcher of pilsner with a faux-Greek name. Baxter knuckled down to business before the long-haired bartender had it filled.

  "Hop Cooper and Bart Silva," Deng mumbled over the rim of his stout. "Regular contract work from Brock, Inc. Demographics consultancy. Are the youth excited about french fries."

  Baxter glanced down the bar. "And?"

  "Brock's in bed with HemiCo."

  "Proof?"

  "Nothing courtroom." Deng produced a stack of paper. Hard copies were always a good way to convince the client they were getting their money's worth. Knowing Baxter would see whatever he wanted to see in them, I focused on the pleasant bitterness of my beer.

  Baxter looked up from his reading. "Where are they?"

  "Right now?" Deng flipped open his omni, squinted at it. "Drinking up their wages in Capitol Hill."

  "Get Gutierrez," Baxter said. "It is time to be sociable."

  We rolled out in a rented mini, a four-seat electric monster almost as big as the Mustang I'd climbed inside at Felix's factory. Baxter threaded us through traffic like a cranked-out shuttle while Deng exchanged terse updates with his spotter. Capitol Hill was a schizophrenic neighborhood of ancient dive bars, rock clubs, and secondhand stores mixed with steel-ribbed office buildings that stood over the stubby old apartments like pinstriped pant legs. An hour after sunset, we cruised past sidewalks and storefronts swarming with equal amounts of natty-suited professionals and ad-tatted samtowners.

  Gutierrez and Deng's spotter were parked in a dive across the street from the sports bar housing the two thugs. Inside, Baxter delved into strategy. Feeling extraneous, I ordered a double whiskey. Deng's spotter, a blunt-featured blond woman in an unraveling sweater that matched the Hill's vibe, left to post up inside the sports bar. Crowded into the booth of the bustling pub, I felt awfully exposed: I had concluded my existence as Robert Dunbar in the two weeks before Baxter caught up to me in Greece, but I hadn't had time for any surgical face rearrangement, and there was the chance, however slight, of being recognized by one of my friends from back East or a former student from my medieval studies class.

  But I supposed I'd been known for keeping odd company there, too. If any gin-flushed graduate caught me drinking with a wrong-eyed white businessman, a plump Asian in sweatpants, and a tanned ex-kickboxer who looked like the model for Rodin's Adam, it would at best confirm what they already suspected, i.e. I was never going to make tenure.

  "Stun guns, maybe they got." Deng thumbed his nose. "Pistols, no way. State gun laws are tighter than Hemingway."

  Gutierrez laughed. Baxter showed the same immunity to humor he'd donned since the break-in.

  "So," he said. "There is nothing to stop us from beating them in the street until they tell me everything I want to know."

  Gutierrez raised a finger. "Except a hundred witnesses and the street cameras."

  "And the stun guns," I said.

  "We don't know they have stun guns," Baxter glared. "Abducting people," he started, then lowered his voice to a reasonable pitch, "carries certain risks. I hired you to minimize them."

  Deng shrugged. "This here's a little spur of the moment."

  "Then figure it out!"

  Exasperated, I followed the hall at the back of the bar to a large, too-bright bathroom the bar shared with the restaurants to either side. I had a thing about public urinals and it took me two tries before I found a stall that didn't look like it had been recently abused by a dysenteric Vandal. Even so, considering its state, I would have worried about coming down with the plague if I hadn't already caught it twice. I washed my hands repeatedly and returned to the argument about how to confront the two alleged HemiCoers.

  "How about we just invite them over?" Deng said, eyes locked on his omni.

  Baxter showed his teeth. "Tragically, that's your best suggestion so far."

  "Not a suggestion. Lucy says they're coming inside."

  Everyone but Deng turned their head toward the front door. Baxter had shoved their pictures in our faces on the drive to Capitol Hill, and I recognized Cooper, a hefty white, and Silva, a skinny brown man, strolling in like a partnership from a cop drama. They elbowed their way to the bar and reeled the bartender over with the flash of a card.

  "How long you want with them?" I said to Baxter. "Just a minute? Or would you prefer a romantic weekend?"

  "Not likely to know much," Deng said.

  "I just want the name of the man they're working for." Baxter narrowed his eyes. "And to hurt them."

  I pointed over my shoulder. "Bathroom's big. With an escape route."

  "How do you get two grown men to go to the bathroom together?" Baxter said.

  "They gay?"

  Gutierrez shifted the hillocks of his shoulders my way. "All gay men leap at the chance for anonymous bathroom sex?"

  I silenced myself with a drink of whiskey. Well, give me a break. Even when you know better, old prejudices pop up now and then. Most of the time I thought I did pretty well for myself, considering I'd spent many of my most formative years in an age when child abuse was all the rage.

  "Bluff," Deng said. "Tell them you're from HemiCo and they need to meet you in the bathroom in two minutes. No one doubts a lie if it's crazy enough." We all stared at him. He shook his shaggy head, stole my drink, and tossed it back. "Guess I just volunteered."

  Baxter nodded. "Mr. Gutierrez will go in beforehand and pretend his bowel is obstructed. Rob and I follow them in, and then Mr. Gutierrez, whose bowel is in fact perfectly functional, jumps out of his stall and kicks them in the head."

  "Call me Pete," Gutierrez said.

  To my brain, it sounded stupid. To my instincts, it sounded good, and my feeling of being extraneous evaporated, replaced by the predatory excitement of an ambush. Lifetimes ago, I had soldiered for Babylon and Athens, for Milan and Amsterdam. Since then the closest I'd come to the unthinking oblivion of battle was when I'd discovered wing chun kung fu in a Chinese monastery near the end of the nineteenth century. I threw myself into it, a fast-striking system whose ideal operating range was too close for the eye to react to, forcing us to fight by touch.

  I had been docile for a couple lifetimes now, letting my skills rust—I tended to operate in phases, returning to old favorites I'd dropped cold years or even centuries earlier—and at times I missed the clarity of physical combat sweetly.

  We gave them time to have another
drink, then Pete excused himself. Five minutes after that, Deng walked up to the bar, planted his elbows, and made a pseudo-subtle examination of Cooper and Silva. Silva met his eyes. Deng stood, yawned, and muttered something. A few sips and a brief conversation later, Cooper shoved off and headed toward the back, Silva a step behind him.

  I crunched an ice cube between my molars. "You ready?"

  "For decades," Baxter said.

  We rose and followed. The talk and laughter and clank of bottles faded to a far-off place. As we reached the bathroom, the door had just stopped swinging. Baxter shoved it open.

  "This is a private restroom." Silva crossed his arms in front of the sinks, Cooper beside him. Whether through luck, or Pete clearing it out, the bathroom was otherwise empty.

  Baxter smiled. It was not a healthy expression. "I'm sorry?"

  "Turn the fuck around," Cooper said.

  "I swore, a long time ago, to never obey one of you ever again. So instead of turning the fuck around, I will now hurt you violently, ask some questions, and repeat as necessary."

  If I'd been in their spot, I would have laughed. But maybe they saw something in his face, that mineral coldness in his eyes. Both reached for their pockets. Four stalls down, a door banged open and Pete rushed out with the face-splitting grin that had made him famous ten years ago in the ring. Silva backpedaled and drew a smooth black object like an electric razor. It popped and Pete went stiff as a wooden dummy, sliding on his squeaking shoes until friction caught up with him. He bellyflopped with a fleshy thump.

  Baxter charged past me. From ten feet away, Cooper discharged his stunner. Baxter ran on without missing a step. Cooper's eyes bulged like a cartoon. Baxter crashed into him like an enraged ram. I closed on Silva. He held his stunner straight out from his shoulder and pulled the trigger. I stepped to his left, turning my hips to stay square to his body. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand and drove my right into his floating rib. It was a quick shot, and I had lost the snap of my wrist that might, in my better years, have cracked his rib, but he gasped anyway. I rolled his arm elbow-up and crashed my forearm down into his upturned joint. The stunner clattered to the tile.