No Going Back (27 page)

She waved her hand. “Enough of the past. What I want to talk to you about is your future.”

“It’s still my first day on the job,” I said. “Isn’t it a little early for that talk?”

She laughed. “Not your long-term future; your future five minutes from now.”

“Okay,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I need to go on a field trip,” she said, “and you’re coming to make sure I get back safely.”

CHAPTER 34

Jon Moore

I
waited until we were inside Lobo to say anything else. As soon as we were alone, I said, “What kind of field trip, and don’t you have security staff for this sort of thing?”

“To answer the second question first,” Zoe said, “they’re all fully subscribed, even over-subscribed, with the rehearsal.”

“So wait.”

She shook her head. “Not possible. After rehearsal ends, there’s a rest break of a few hours, then the show, backstage reception, hotel, and in the morning, we head out again. Where we’re going is only open during the day.”

“What kind of place is it?”

“An antique shop.”

“That’s not exactly the kind of store known for being dangerous,” I said.

“No, no it’s not,” she said, “but the neighborhood doesn’t appear to be the best, and we’ve been led into traps before.”

“By what?”

“Music, of course. We’re always on the lookout for songs we’ve never heard, recordings that haven’t been catalogued or that are so obscure that even the people who know they exist have rarely heard them. There’s a whole culture of enthusiasts who pass around information. We participate in these groups; it’s a great way to find new songs, and as marketing fodder—”

“—it helps bring more credibility to Passion,” I said. “I see that.”

“The problem is,” she said, “a few times the leads have been fake, data people used to lure us into places where they could hold us up or kidnap us. Our security protected us those times, but we couldn’t justify the risk any longer. Now, we make it clear to the community that Passion will never go to these places, and that if anyone does go, it’ll be someone low on her staff.”

“Except it’s always you.”

She nodded. “Yes. I’m the only one who knows what we have and what we don’t, who can listen and decide what’s worth buying and how much it’s worth. Plus, Passion knows I feel the same way about the music; I’m the only one she’ll trust to do it.”

“Kidnappers could make money abducting anyone on your staff, because Passion would have to pay even if only to avoid the PR nightmare of being portrayed as the big star who wouldn’t spend money to save her people.”

“Sure, it’s possible,” Zoe said, “but no one’s tried to kidnap me since we announced Passion would no longer go herself.”

“So why take me?”

“I said there’ve been no kidnapping attempts. A couple of times, people have tried to rob me. Security stopped them.”

“I’ve worked security before,” I said, “and I have to tell you that you should wait. One person is not enough to do it right. To watch for threats and deal with any that arise, and to get you out safely, takes multiple people.”

“The stash this place is supposed to have is worth the risk,” she said. “We have a show every day on Haven, and then when we finish on this planet, we head straight to Freedom. There isn’t another chance.”

“So let me go there first, check it out, and come back and get you if it’s safe.”

“I told you: There’s not much time. We go now.”

I stared at her for a few seconds. “This is that important to you?”

“Yes. Plus, it’s an order. Remember: I’m the boss.”

I nodded. “I can always quit.”

“True,” she said, and she smiled, “but you need the work. You said so.”

“I did, and I do. I’d rather lose a job, though, than risk your life. Any life.”

“The worst we’ve had are robbery attempts,” she said. “It’s not like anyone has tried to kill me.”

I considered explaining to her how few injuries and fatalities that occur during robberies are planned, that it’s the accidents you have to fear, but there was no point in it. “So if I say no, you’re going to fire me?”

She sighed and shook her head. “No. That would be wrong. If you say no, I’ll make Bing go with me. He’s so afraid of me that he’ll do it, and he thinks that gun he carries gives him a chance in any situation.”

“If he’s good with it,” I said, “it might help.”

She laughed. “I don’t think he has a clue how to use it. He picked it up after the first robbery attempt, when I joked about making him be my security for the next trip.” She took a deep breath. “So, are you going to take me, or do I go see Bing?”

“We
do
need this job,” Lobo said over the machine frequency. “Insist on bringing me, and I can cover everything outside the store.”

“I’ll do it,” I said, “but with two conditions.”

“Which are?”

“First, you tell me the name of the place and leave me alone up here for a little bit so I can study the area.”

“Sure, as long as you don’t take too long. And?”

“From the moment we leave here until we’re back here,
I’m
the boss, not you. To protect you, I have to know that if I tell you to do something, you will—and right then, without hesitation.”

“Deal,” she said, “but the moment we return, I run the show again.”

“Done,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me...”

“I’m going to check on the show,” she said. “Contact me as soon as you’re ready.”

She gave me the name of the store and left.

As soon as she was outside Lobo, he closed the hatch, brought up a holo of the store, and we went to work.

* * *

The neighborhood had looked bad in the live feeds, but it was worse in person. Lots full of rubble or razed clean to the dirt sat as empty as a politician’s promise in the midst of low-slung permacrete buildings faded to a washed-out gray the color of a decomposing corpse. Where York was riding the boon of being the capital and the home of some of the worlds’ wealthiest families, Mass was sliding down the other end of the unbalanced economic scale that is so common across humanity’s planets. Old security cams, many so ancient they almost certainly didn’t work, hung on every building like wards against evil—and were certainly about as effective. What businesses were open sold their goods cheaply, even those that sold sex. People hung out in front of the shops and in small apartments over them, no one in a hurry, everyone with more time on their hands than they wanted, everyone scanning for an opportunity.

At my insistence, we’d taken the few minutes necessary to have the paintbots remove Passion’s tour notices from Lobo. He’d stand out enough as it was; advertising that we were coming from really big money was a bad plan. We went in high, and we came down fast right over a vacant lot half a block from Old and New, the shop Zoe wanted to visit. Lobo hovered just above the rubble that covered the lot, and we climbed out as quickly as we could.

As soon as we were clear, he closed the hatch and lifted straight up.

“I didn’t know you could fly him remotely,” Zoe said.

“Being portrayed as a dumb object is really getting on my nerves,” Lobo said over the comm.

I turned away from Zoe for a second, as if checking something on my comm, and subvocalized, “You’re the one who reminded me that we need the job. Shut up.”

I held up the comm. “I can do the basics with this,” I said, “and that’s all we need. It’s just not safe to park him here.” What I didn’t tell her was that if anything went wrong, Lobo would land in the street in front of the shop so we could escape quickly. I’d rather have the challenge of explaining to her how he did that than the task of fighting our way back to here.

We picked our way through the rubble to the street and across it; traffic was sparse. Everywhere I glanced, people were watching us, some openly, others discreetly. No one bothered us, though, so I didn’t mind; if I’d lived here, I’d have checked us out, too.

We reached Old and New, but though a handwritten sign declared the store open for business, the barred metal door wouldn’t let us in.

“Got any weapons on you?” a tinny voice said through a speaker on the right of the door.

“A few,” I said. I was carrying a small gun, a large knife, and a baton. I’d made Zoe wear some of the body armor I’d used at Omani’s. I didn’t put it on because I didn’t want to lose the speed it would cost me. If there was trouble, I expected it to come from up close.

“I can see that, you fool,” the voice said. “I just wanted to know if you’d admit it. Why?”

I laughed. “We’re not from around here, obviously, but that doesn’t mean we’re stupid.”

“I heard you had some old Earth music recordings,” Zoe said. “I’d like to look at them.”

I pulled her closer and whispered, “The less data you give to everyone who’s watching and listening, the better. Let me talk.”

“You’d do well to heed your bodyguard’s advice,” the voice said. “Son, just because the mics are old it doesn’t mean they don’t work.”

I laughed and nodded.

“I might be old,” he said, “but like the mics, I work pretty darn well, and I’m not stupid. You’d do well to remember that.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“You lookin’ to cause trouble?”

I shook my head. “No, sir.”

“All right then,” he said. The door slid into the wall on our left. “Come on in.”

We entered. The door immediately locked us in.

Inside, the shop was well lit and tidy, though a thin layer of dust sat on pretty nearly everything I could see. Shelves of merchandise of all sorts—carvings and pottery, guns and swords, lamps and toasters, a huge variety of objects organized in no pattern I could discern—ran lengthwise on our left. On our right, a man who looked every day of a hundred and fifty but whose eyes were clear and who was still strong enough to be standing stared at us from behind a transparent booth I was sure was armored. Two beam guns on the ceiling tracked our movements.

“You must have done well, once upon a time,” I said, “to afford those guns and this setup.”

He nodded. “I’ve had better times, a lot of ’em.”

“So what’s next?” I said. “We’re just here to shop. Well, to be precise, she’s here to shop, and I’m here to make sure she gets home safely with anything she buys.”

“So look around,” he said.

“As I started to explain outside,” Zoe said, “I’m here for only one thing: music from Earth. You’re supposed to have a great collection, and I’m always looking to add to mine. Point me to what you have, and let me take a look. I’ll buy anything I don’t already have.”

“That stuff’s not cheap,” the man said, “but I suppose you knew that.”

“I did,” she said.

“I have to show it all to you personally, operate our players, that sort of thing,” he said.

“I understand,” Zoe said, “and that’s fine.”

“How about you and I go into the back and look at it, and your man stays here and waits?”

Before she could answer, I said, “No. I don’t leave her. And you knew that.”

He laughed. “I did, but if you were stupid or looking for something else here, you might have taken me up on the offer.” He stared at us for a few seconds longer. “Ah, heck,” he said, “you gotta trust people every now and then.”

He left the booth and reappeared behind a glass-paneled door opposite us. He opened the door and motioned us inside.

The room on the other side looked a great deal like the front room but darker, dirtier, more cluttered, and with even less apparent organization.

“Storage,” he said when he noticed me looking around, “and where I keep the good stuff. My filing system”—he waved his hand to take in the whole room—“makes no sense to anybody but me, which means anyone who managed to break in here would have a hard time finding what they wanted without me.”

“I believe that,” I said.

He laughed and led us to a workbench on the left wall near the back of the store. Sitting on it were a dozen different pieces of electronics I didn’t recognize, as well as a desktop shelving unit with rows and rows of small, open compartments. He ran his hand across half a dozen of them. “All of these data modules,” he said, “contain ancient recordings, some as far back as the mid-twentieth century on Earth. The newest is over a hundred years old, some songs from people here on Haven and on Freedom.”

“How many songs?” Zoe asked.

He laughed and shook his head. “To be honest,” he said, “this was my brother’s love, not mine, and he never cataloged it. Said he knew every single song and where it was.” He paused. “Didn’t help me much when he was gone.” He shook his head slightly, dusting off the memories. “What I know is that if you add ’em all up, they run something like five, six thousand hours. Ray—my brother, that is—he collected them before we started this place and for as long as we ran it together. He’d listened to them all. So, I can’t help you much there. Where do you want to start?”

Zoe stared at the shelves and shook her head. Her eyes were wide. “Nothing I read,” she said, “gave me any hint at all of how much you have here.”

“I let out only enough to attract people who’d be serious and have some money to spend,” he said. “I don’t see any point in making it look too good.”

She nodded her head. “Well, I’m glad you did that. Tell you what: I’ll pick a few, and you play me something from each of them.”

For the next half hour, she would pull out one of the data modules, and he’d put it in the right player. Music would come from the wall in front of her, and information would appear on the display of the player. She’d listen for fifteen or twenty seconds, scan the display, and pick another module.

I found the whole process annoying, because about when I’d start to get a feel for a song, she would move on.

Watching her, though, made it all worthwhile. She truly did love the music. Her face lit up with every new song she played. Every now and then she’d say a name or smile or say something like, “Wow.” She was radiating happiness. I hadn’t seen her full smile before, and it was dazzling.

Finally, she said, “I could do this for days, months, but we don’t have that much time. It is an amazing collection; your brother should have been proud.”