Coyote Horizon (7 page)

“Are you all right?” Hawk couldn’t help but stare at her bandaged nose. “Looks like he beat you up pretty badly.”

“Yeah, well . . . nothing that the doctors couldn’t fix.” The corner of her mouth ticked upward. “Seriously, if you hadn’t shown up when you did, he might have killed me. That guy was completely psycho. I should’ve never . . .”

Her voice trailed off, and Hawk was surprised to see a blush appear on her face, nearly matching the bruises beneath her eyes. She glanced away for a moment, as if trying to find the right thing to say, then looked at him again. “Anyway, my name’s Melissa Sanchez. And you’re . . . ?”

“Hawk . . . Hawk Thompson.” As always, he hesitated before saying his full name.

“Glad to meet you, Hawk-Hawk Thompson.” A grin. “That is your real name, isn’t it? In my line of work . . . former line of work, I mean . . . a girl hears a lot of fake names. John Doe, John Smith, John Cooper . . . There’s a reason why we call them johns, y’know.”

“Never occurred to me.” Apparently she hadn’t heard of him, for there was no sign of recognition. Something she’d said, though, took him by surprise. “You’re no longer . . . um . . . ?”

“A prostitute?” Melissa shook her head. “Not anymore. Not since I got busted for operating without a license.” She idly traced her finger across the label of the unopened wine bottle. “Truth is, I was ready to get out of the business anyway. Never really wanted to do it in the first place, and I didn’t want to join the guild and have to pay a manager. But I couldn’t get a job anywhere else, and we all need to pay the rent one way or another, so . . .”

Hawk nodded. Unemployment was a chronic problem in New Brighton; immigrants were coming in faster than jobs were being created for them. And Melissa didn’t look much older than his own sister, nor did she appear to be particularly robust; it was hard to imagine her finding work in a timber crew or on a fishing boat, and impossible to picture her wearing a miner’s helmet. After that, her options were limited at best.

“Maybe you could . . .”

“Don’t worry. I’ll find something else, eventually.” A soft laugh. “Whatever it is, it can’t be any more dangerous than what I was doing before now. At least I won’t get beat up for refusing to . . . Well, never mind.”

Hawk didn’t know what to say. Melissa made him vaguely uncomfortable. There had been a couple of prostitutes in the timber camps where he’d spent most of his youth: fat, cynical whores his father frequently brought home and whom he’d tried to avoid as much as possible. She reminded him of them, yet he didn’t want her to leave. It was the first time since he’d moved in that anyone had come to visit him; even Rain stayed away from his flat, preferring not to venture into the tenements.

He also realized that, if Melissa noticed the bracelet on his wrist, she wasn’t saying anything about it. Perhaps she’d seen ones like it before; given her former occupation, it was all too likely that she had. Whatever the reason, the fact that he didn’t have to explain or apologize for his past made him more willing to overlook her sins.

So he turned back to the counter and, picking up the knife, began to cut vegetables again. “I’m making dinner. Not much, really . . . just some vegetable soup . . . but you’re welcome to join me. I always make more than I can eat.”

Melissa didn’t reply. When he looked back at her again, he saw that her face had gone pale, and she was staring fixedly at the knife in his hand. “Please put that away,” she said, very quietly. “Knives . . . scare me.”

He almost asked why, then thought better of it. None of his business, and he didn’t want to say anything that might jeopardize their relationship. “Sorry,” he murmured, and hastily put the blade back on the counter and dropped a dishrag over it. “Won’t happen again.”

“Thank you.” But the damage was done; she’d already risen from the chair and was heading for the door. “I need to get going. Just wanted to drop by and thank you for . . .”

“Sure. I’m just glad I . . . well, that I was there when you needed me.”

By then, Melissa had opened the door. She stopped, turned to look back at him. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m glad you were, too.” A pause. “Hey, if you ever need anything . . . anything at all . . . I’m right across the hall. All you need to do is ask.”

Hawk didn’t know how specific the invitation was meant to be; he decided to interpret it in a less-than-intimate way. “Thanks. I could always use a little company.” Realizing that this could be misconstrued, he quickly added, “Perhaps we could do dinner some other time?”

“Yeah . . . okay, sure. I’d like that.” She hesitated. “Y’know, maybe I don’t need to go anywhere just now. I mean, if you’d still like for me to stay . . .”

He shrugged. “Like I said . . . I always make too much for one.” Hawk figured he could finish cutting the vegetables while his back was turned to her; that way, she wouldn’t have to see the knife. He waved a hand toward the table. “Please . . .”

Melissa closed the door. “Thank you. Yeah, I think I will.” There was a twinkle in her bruise-shadowed eyes. “You know, Hawk-Hawk, I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

 

 

 

Spring came with the gradual warming of the days as winter reluctantly let go of its long, cold grip. The rainy season began in the fifth week of Asmodel; almost every afternoon, sudden downpours turned the streets of New Brighton into mud slides and caused leaks to spring in the tenement ceilings. Between arrivals of inbound shuttles, the skies above the spaceport were often filled by flocks of swoops, squawking as they made their return migration from nesting grounds in the Meridian Archipelago to the northern climes of Midland, New Florida, and Great Dakota. Once again, Coyote was waking up; change came slowly to this world, but it came nonetheless.

Hawk discovered that his life was undergoing change as well. The fact that he had someone to go home to made all the difference. Melissa wasn’t exactly a girlfriend—although she never gave him the impression that she’d reject sexual overtures on his part, he didn’t find the idea of sleeping with her very appealing—but it wasn’t long before she became more than just a neighbor across the hall. When he came home from work, he often found that she’d already made dinner for both of them; since she was currently unemployed, she had plenty of time to do the cooking. They began to go shopping together on the weekends, picking up the things they wanted to eat during the coming week. And if he had a little extra money on payday, they’d treat themselves by going out to dinner. Although Melissa avoided the taverns where she might be spotted by one of her former clients, Hawk soon learned that she knew which cafes were the best in town. One Zamael night, she even went so far as to insist that they both dress up so that they could get into a fancy restaurant in Riverside, the part of town near the docks that was the closest New Brighton had to a wealthy neighborhood. They dined on grilled redfish and roasted waterfruit stems as they watched fishing boats move along the Great Equatorial River, and pretended to be old friends of Morgan Goldstein, the billionaire entrepreneur whose manor stood near the lighthouse.

Hawk knew that her friendship didn’t come without a few strings attached. Melissa hadn’t been able to get a job, so part of his salary went toward helping her meet her rent. He’d also assumed the role of being her personal bodyguard; men often dropped by her apartment, still believing that she was “a working girl” (Melissa’s term for her former occupation), so he’d learned to listen for a signal the two of them had worked out—three hard raps against her door—that was her way of asking him to come over and help evict any would-be john who didn’t know how to take no for an answer. But Hawk had enough money to spare, and so long as he didn’t have to use force, he didn’t mind being her chaperone.

He decided not to let Bairns know about her; it wouldn’t do any good to have his parole officer find out that a prostitute, even one who was retired. had become his companion. So Melissa made herself scarce when Bairns came over for their weekly meetings, and if she happened to see Hawk while Joe was around, she pretended not to know either of them. As it turned out, though, Bairns never seemed to see her; as Melissa explained, most men tend to notice prostitutes only from the neck down. And since Bairns had seen her only once—and that when her nose was broken and her eyes were blackened—chances were that he wouldn’t recognize her unless she was nearly naked.

The two of them became close, but they still kept secrets from one another. Hawk never spoke to her about his father, and she never asked why he wore a bracelet and inhibitor patch. And although he learned that her fear of knives came from having been raped when she was a teenager, she never told him why she’d become a prostitute despite the trauma of that experience. Each had boundaries; so long as they knew where the lines were and didn’t cross them, their friendship remained untroubled.

Hawk hadn’t fully realized how lonely he’d been until he met Melissa. Having a friend, he discovered that his existence no longer seemed so bleak. His job was still boring, but as long as she was there to say good-bye when he left for work and hello when he got home, that was enough to get him through the day. And although immigrants continued to shuffle past his window in a seemingly endless procession, he no longer envied their desire to find new lives for themselves.

He’d almost come to enjoy his job when an incident occurred.

On schedule, the EASS
Magellan
returned to 47 Uma. Unlike the Western Hemisphere, whose relations with the Coyote Federation were still constrained by its refusal to sign the U.N. treaty acknowledging the Federation’s sovereignty, the European Alliance enjoyed full diplomatic relations with the new world. Even so, the Alliance hadn’t quite forgotten the showdown that occurred a few years ago when the
Magellan
had nearly opened fire on Starbridge Coyote during a short-lived rebellion by a handful of colonists. Few people remembered that Hawk had been involved in the affair, if only in a peripheral way, and it was one more thing that he didn’t like to talk about.

So he was always nervous whenever the
Magellan
’s crew shuttled down to New Brighton. None of them had ever recognized him, nor was it likely that they would. Nonetheless, Hawk tried to keep his face down as they went through passport control. Unlike its former sister ship, the
Robert E. Lee
, the
Magellan
was primarily a military vessel; the fact that it also carried cargo and a handful of passengers was almost an afterthought. So it was a relief that the next person to approach Hawk’s kiosk wasn’t wearing a uniform.

A young man, only a year or two older than Hawk, dressed casually in trousers and a zipped-up Windbreaker. A nylon duffel bag was slung from a strap under his arm, and, despite having just arrived, he seemed already accustomed to Coyote’s lighter gravity and thin atmosphere. From the corner of his eye, Hawk casually sized him up as he processed the passport of the ESA lieutenant who’d preceded him in line. Clearly not an immigrant—he wasn’t carrying enough baggage—but apparently neither was he a tourist or a tradesman: his clothes weren’t expensive, and indeed appeared to be a bit cheap. Hawk doubted that he was a diplomat or government official; nor did he look like any clergyman that he’d ever seen.

And he was nervous. It wasn’t obvious, but Hawk had learned to pick up the subtle signs of someone who was anxious about being here: the stiff stance, the constantly roaming eyes, the hand that surreptitiously left the bag strap to wipe sweat on his trousers. A smuggler? Perhaps . . . but what could he possibly be carrying in such a small bag?

The ESA officer finished filling out the declaration form and slid it through the window. Hawk made sure that everything was properly entered, then placed it in the OUT box. “Welcome to Coyote,” he murmured as he stamped the officer’s passport, then looked at the young man waiting behind next in line. “Next, please.”

The newly arrived passenger jerked slightly, almost as if trying to unlock his knees, then sauntered forward. “Good morning,” he said as he approached Hawk’s window; his voice had a faint British accent, and was much too cheerful to be entirely innocent. “How are you today?”

Hawk ignored the overture. “Name, please?”

“Desilitz. Peter Desilitz.” He’d already produced his passport and placed it on the desk, open and ready to be tagged.

“Citizen of Coyote or nonresident?” Hawk took the passport and slipped it past the comp’s eye. An instant later, all the pertinent data contained with its smartpaper appeared on the screen. The questions were little more than a formality, really; nonetheless, it was Hawk’s job to ask them.

“Nonresident.” Desilitz casually ran a hand through his sandy hair. “European Alliance . . . Great Britain, to be precise.”

“Reason for visiting?” Hawk pretended to study the passport as he watched the biometric scanner’s display. A real-time model of Desilitz’s face was rapidly being traced upon the screen; in the upper-left corner, dozens of pictures of men, each of whom somewhat resembled him, flashed by in rapid succession, as the comp sought to match the images in its database against the individual standing on the other side of the desk.

“Pleasure.” A grin meant to be easygoing trembled ever so slightly at the corners of his mouth. “Just here on holiday, really.”

A red bar appeared at the top of the comp screen: DETAIN FOR QUESTIONING. And below it, a blue bar that he’d never seen before: SUSPECT MAY BE DANGEROUS.

There was more, but Hawk didn’t have a chance to read it. Any hesitation might tip off Desilitz that he’d just been red-flagged. Instead, he casually shifted in his chair, as if making himself a little more comfortable, while letting his left hand drop beneath the desktop. “Expected length of stay?”

“Umm . . . two weeks.” Desilitz’s eyes missed nothing; his gaze followed Hawk’s hand as it briefly disappeared from sight. “No, four, I think.” A nervous smile. “I’ve got an open-ended ticket for return.”