“Okay. So: no money. And yet they manage to scrape together seventeen thou to pay us. So what’s the deal? They borrow the money from someone to pay for the retrieval, then that someone decides they’d rather have the painting than the promise of money?”
He shot her a sideways glance. “Maybe. Or it was never actually the organization who wanted it, at all. We might have been set up.”
“But then why make the final payment? I mean, we’re tough, but we’re not that tough. Are we?”
“More to the point, do they think we are? If so, not a bad thing.”
“Also besides the point, your ego aside.” And she squeezed his hand to soften the words. “Ignore who hired us for a minute. Who went after me? Did that same person kill poor old Bob? What do we have? An organization, poor as proverbial church mice, that still manages to retain us to retrieve an object that they claim they’re going to use to force political unity.
“Okay, here’s a question for you.”
Sergei nodded, indicating he was listening.
“Why did they bother to tell you what they’d be using it for?”
He let out a huff of breath. They walked in silence through the park, past human joggers running in pairs, and the occasional biker in bright spandex zipping through at high speeds. If any of the fatae were still watching them, they were being quieter about it.
“I’ve been wondering about that too. At first I thought the guy was just a talker. But then I started to think maybe his verbal diarrhea had a purpose. The assignment was the kind of thing you can’t help talk about, because it’s so different from the usual. But we don’t talk about clients outside the office…”
“You would have if I’d turned up dead. Especially if they’d done it in such a way to suggest that, rather than waiting to be handed the painting, they’d stolen it from us.”
Sergei stopped like he’d walked into a wall. “Chyort! Stolen it back, then used it to make peace. With your blood. Damn straight I would have talked. I would have blackened their reputation until they couldn’t stand under the weight of it.”
“And the talks would be undermined by doubt, maybe just enough to break them.”
Sergei started swearing again, alternating between Russian and English, until Wren was certain that she could see blue current sparking and shimmering in front of his mouth.
“We’re going to have to do something about them using us like that,” she said thoughtfully, almost to herself. “Bad for business, otherwise…”
–
Sergei had called the dinner date, his voice on the answering machine filled with such glee she could only imagine the retainer he’d managed to con out of someone. She wasn’t in the mood to party, her brain still filled with the annoyance of having been tricked into getting involved in politics, not to mention the attempt on her life, but dinner was dinner was dinner, especially if Sergei was buying. She threw herself into the shower, grabbed the first summer-weight dress she could find that wasn’t wrinkled, and threw it on. Things had changed enough in their relationship over the past year that she slicked on lipstick and mascara, and tied her hair up in a looked-more-complicated-than-it-was knot before heading out the door. Not that any of that was going to turn her into a raving beauty, but Sergei appreciated the effort. And she appreciated his appreciation.
They were regulars at Marianna’s, to the point where Callie, the waitress, didn’t even bother getting up to show her to their table. Of course, it wasn’t that large a place, either. She could see Sergei sitting in the back the moment she walked in. And he was grinning like he was about to choke on wee yellow feathers.
“You’re scaring me. What?”
“I had a little chat with an old friend of mine who was shocked, shocked to hear that criminals had their hands on any part of the ‘Fabulous Finds.’ A few hours later, this job came in. Since we are, after all, the only team who could pull something like this off…”
He slid a piece of paper across the table to her. She picked it up, noting first the weight of the paper, then the fact that it was letterhead stationery; and then her mind took in the words, and she started to laugh as Sergei called Callie over to open the wine.
“The Meadows Museum board would like to make use of your services to retrieve a painting that went missing from our premises on the night of July 14…”
Getting paid to take back what they took in the first place, and undercut any attempt the organization might make to go ahead with their plan anyway.
“I love this job,” Wren said, raising her glass.
“To karma,” Sergei agreed. “To karma, and the joy of being the boot that gives it a kick in the ass. Zdorov’ye!”
The Death of Clickclickwhistle by MIKE DOOGAN
“Is it dead?”
Probationary Intern to the second assistant undersecretary Oscar Gordon looked around for the speaker, but the hallway outside the delegates’ quarters was empty. Even in a small, busy spaceship, the crew was giving the alien diplomats a wide berth.
“Up here, mudfoot,” the voice said.
Gordon looked up. A pale, thin young man was standing on what was, to Gordon, the ceiling, his left hand wrapped around a gripfast to keep himself from floating away.
“Is it dead?” he asked again.
Gordon shrugged. “How can I tell if it’s dead if I don’t know what it is?”
The man sighed, flipped himself off the ceiling, tumbled through the zero gravity to another gripfast, and oriented himself with Gordon.
“Mudfoots,” he said to the air. Then, to Gordon, “It’s in contact with the deck, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead raising his voice, and saying, “Computer, is the object on the deck near the location of my voice an organic?”
“It is,” a voice drawled out of the air, “if you mean the other object besides Probationary Intern to the second assistant undersecretary Oscar Gordon of the Federated Planets’ Corps Diplomatique.”
Gordon laughed. “I guess starspawn don’t know everything,” he said to the young man.
“Probationary Intern Gordon,” the voice drawled, “name-calling with ship’s fourth officer John Carter isn’t really an occupation for a member of the Corps Diplomatique. You humans should get along better, whatever your superficial differences.”
Gordon recognized the justice of the computer’s rebuke. His command of diplomacy wasn’t all that it should have been. He’d only graduated from the academy at Alpha Cen six months before, and this was his first real assignment.
The sentient races were having a big powwow on Rigel A1101, called Ricketts by the humans who lived there. Protocol prevented any extraterrestial ships from approaching the inner system that held Ricketts, so the Chuck Yeager had been assigned, along with a dozen other ships, to meet the arriving interstellar vessels, pick up their legations, and ferry them to Ricketts. This was hardly a plum assignment, so the Brahmins had assigned the lowest-ranking and least-well-connected diplos to the ships.
Gordon looked at the young man hanging in front of him. He’s one of the reasons I don’t like spaceflight, he thought. So at ease in zero G, and so superior about it. Look at his uniform. Plain gray silk without an insignia on it. How does anyone tell who’s an officer out here?
His own uniform, the uniform of a very junior diplomat, was a thousand times nicer. Rainbow bodysuit, lavender cloak and spats, yellow gloves and boots. He might be short and dark and even a trifle plump from an endless round of practice state dinners, but compared to the other young man, who was long and pale from years of no-gravity spaceflight, he looked like a million credits.
Say what you want about the Corps Diplomatique, he thought, we know how to dress. Even if the magnetics he needed to keep from floating away in zero gravity did ruin the drape of his cloak.