Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) (27 page)

He rode the EHB shuttle
into Bonemarche and got off at the Estrange with perhaps a dozen
other people who worked for the companies there. The largest group,
junior botanists and lab techs from NuGen, were talking loudly about
some new plant they were working on--
which
couldn't be that promising, Tatian thought, or they'd be keeping
it more of a secret
--while a couple of hard-muscled
secretaries were discussing the ranking system for the Nest's
full-contact
mattata
tournament. Tatian had dated one of them, briefly, smiled as he drew
even with her, and received a pleasant smile in response. It seemed
suddenly strange that no one was talking about the destruction of the
bars, and he said, on impulse, "Did you see the fire on the news
this morning?"

"Fire?" The woman
looked blank, shook her head.

"Oh, I saw that,"
the other secretary said. "The one by the harbor, right? It's a
good thing it wasn't by the warehouses." He looked at the first
woman. "Some bars burned down, on Dock Row. If it'd been a little
farther north, it would've taken out the Starsys warehouse."

"That would have been
bad," the woman said, and stopped at the entrance to the arcade,
where a gray-haired indigene in off-world clothes sold bread and
local honey from a folding cart. "We were lucky."

The
bar owners weren't
, Tatian thought, but their attention
was already on the breads spread out for sale.
Or
the people who went there
. He remembered the crowd at
Shinbone: not what he'd expected, less trade, or less obviously
trade, than what the indigenes called odd-bodied and the wry-abed,
mems, fems, and herms, and anyone whose sexual tastes didn't match
the indigenes' simple male/female model. It had been one of the few
places on Hara not run by off-worlders where he'd felt things
were--almost--normal, and he wondered suddenly if that was what the
indigenes were looking for when they did trade. And the money was
good, too, he reminded himself, striving for his usual detachment,
and went through the arcade into Drapdevel Court.

For once, Reiss was
there before him, perched on the edge of the secretarial desk in the
outer office, a chunk of spicebread in one hand and a stylus in the
other. He looked up as Tatian entered and hastily blanked his screen.
Tatian sighed, wondering what he was doing this time--
probably
more work on his jet cars, using our design systems
--but
said only, "I need to talk to you, Reiss. When you've got a
minute."

"Any time," Reiss
said, and used the stylus to flick virtual switches. "Now?"

"That would be good,"
Tatian said, and the younger man followed him into the office.

Tatian touched his
wrist, then winced, hit the override a fraction of a second too late
to stop the cascade of static. He touched the shadowscreen instead,
lighting the desktop, and glanced quickly at the update screen. It
showed nothing of immediate importance, and he looked back at Reiss.
He hated having to reverse himself, the more so because he had known
he was wrong, and said, "It's about that case you were involved
in, Destany Casnot's."

"So Raven came
through," Reiss said.

"You knew about
this," Tatian said, and controlled his anger with an effort. "You
work for NAPD, Reiss, whatever your clan affiliations are. I can't
afford divided loyalties, especially right now."

"No, it's not like
that." Reiss shook his head. "I had to tell them, tell Raven and
Haliday, and Destany, for that matter, and when we met to talk it
over, Raven said something about offering part of the surplus. I
didn't know if 3e could,
much less whether it'd be worth it. That's all I knew."

Tatian stared at him
for a moment. It was plausible enough--if nothing else, Reiss wasn't
the sort of person one trusted with a complicated plan--and he
nodded slowly. "All right--"

"One thing," Reiss
said. "Okay, maybe I should've told you, even if I didn't know
what Raven was going to be able to do, but what you were asking
wasn't right. I owe Destany--more than that, 3e's
got rights, even if 3e is
an indigene."

Tatian took a deep
breath, biting back an instinctive, angry answer. Reiss was right,
and more than that, he knew that NAPD was wrong. "You've lived on
Hara all your life," he said, after a moment. "You know who has
power--you know how much power the IDCA has, particularly if they
can connect a company to trade. To fight that, you need solid
backing, and for the Old Dame to give us that, well, we need a solid
reason, something the Board and the shareholders can appreciate.
Yeah, maybe I should've told you--like you maybe should have told
me--when I got the offer. In retrospect, I'm sorry I didn't. But
right now, we have Masani's support--you have Masani's support,
to make this statement. Let's go from there."

"Would you have done
it without the--offer?" Reiss asked.

I
don't know
. Tatian said, "I couldn't have. It's
that simple, Reiss."

There was a little
silence, and then Reiss looked away. "All right," he said, almost
inaudibly, then shook himself, "I'll talk to Haliday--Destany
will be pleased."

Tatian nodded and
looked back at the blinking desktop as the door closed behind the
other.
Would I have done
this without Warreven 's offer, without the lure, the bribe, of the
surplus? Well, I told the truth when I said I couldn't 't have
risked it, couldn't have taken the chance of getting the IDC A down
on us--but it's also the truth that it wouldn't have occurred to
me to take the chance without Warreven
. He sighed, and
reached for the shadowscreen, trailing his fingers through the
virtual controls until he could call up the communications system.
The mail screen was almost empty, only a few general circulars, and
nothing from Prane Am or the port. He swore under his breath at that
and switched to the general monophone system, punched in the numbers
Warreven had left on file. At least he could let Warreven know that
they were prepared to do business.

The communications
screen stayed empty for several seconds, then flashed a single
word--forwarding--and a second string of codes. Tatian raised an
eyebrow at that, raised both eyebrows as the connect notice appeared
followed by the message video n/a.

"Æ?" a voice said,
from the wall speaker.

"I'm looking for
Warreven," Tatian said, in
franca
.
There was a little silence, and Tatian made a face at the blank
screen, anticipating another routing error.

"I'll see if he's
available," the voice said, and was replaced by the hiss of a
holding signal.

Tatian sighed again,
and settled himself to wait, reaching for the shadowscreen to call up
another set of files. To his surprise, however, the holding signal
vanished within a minute, and Warreven's voice spoke from the wall.

"Yes?"

"Mhyre Tatian here. I
wondered if we could meet."

"Ah." There was
another little silence, live silence this time, and Tatian could
imagine Warreven's brows drawn together in thought. He missed the
video image, wondered where Warreven was that lacked such basic
capacity....

"I assume you have
good news," Warreven said, and Tatian dragged his attention back to
the matter at hand.

"Yes. At least, we're
prepared to talk."

"That is good,"
Warreven said. "I'm--I have some business to finish here, I'm
at the Harbor, Barbedor's club on the Embankment. Can you meet me
here, say, at noon?"

Tatian nodded, then
remembered the missing video. "All right. Does this club have an
address?"

There was a pause, and
Warreven's voice, when it came, sounded grimly amused. "No. But
you can't miss it. It's the one on the south side of the missing
buildings."

"I'll be there,"
Tatian said, and flattened his hand against the shadowscreen.

A new file had appeared
in the working window: Derebought had arrived and was passing on the
latest assessment of the Stiller surplus. Tatian paged through it
quickly, noting where she had been able to confirm the prices, then
filed back to the beginning and began to go through it item by item.
He wasn't quite finished by noon, but saved it and his rough notes
for her, and headed for the Harbor Market.

It wasn't a long
walk, across to Tredhard Street and then straight down the long hill,
and for once the sea breeze was relatively cool. He looked to the
horizon, flecked with sails, but there was no sign of the usual
afternoon storms. The year had turned already, he thought, and saw,
all around him, indigenes wrapped in
shaal
s
and jackets against the cooler air. The wind brought the sour smell
of cold ash as well, and he saw a few flakes of soot the size of a
man's hand blown against the corners of the buildings. More ash was
streaked in the gutter, carried by the overnight rain.

The
mosstaas
had set up a blockade at the end of Dock Row, bright orange wooden
barriers pulled haphazardly across the traffic way. A four-up was
parked beside it, but only a couple of troopers were in sight,
leaning bored against the nearest barrier. Tatian approached them
cautiously, aware of their holstered pellet guns and the heavy
fibreplast paneling along the four-up's sides and lining the
driver's cab. He was aware, too, of the weight of metal in his
pocket, good for bribes, but they paid no particular attention to
him. Or to anyone else, for that matter, Tatian thought. Pedestrians
were moving freely along the length of the street. The smell of smoke
was stronger here, and as he got closer, he could see the gap in the
roofline, and the charred beams that spanned it, all that remained of
the clubs. There were more
mosstaas
on duty there and more bright-orange barriers; he looked for the
investigators the news reports had mentioned, but saw only the
black-clad troopers standing in twos and threes.

As Warreven had
promised, Barbedor's was hard to miss. It stood next to the remains
of its neighbor, little more than fire- scarred brick walls and the
shattered remains of the roof tumbled in on itself. The same flames
had seared Barbedor's bricks, turning them from ochre to red
streaked with black. The fire had knocked out the sign lights as
well; Barbedor's name was a ghost of empty tubing over the doorway,
and one side of the stylized tree that labeled it as a bar had
cracked in the flames' heat, spilling chemicals down the brick
facing. The main door was open, though, and he could hear voices from
inside, and the low, insistent beat of a drum.

He stepped through the
open doorway, paused for a moment to get his bearings, wrinkling his
nose at the sudden stench of smoke. The band platform was empty, as
were most of the tables; the drumming came from the speakers that
hung above the dance floor. He looked around, not seeing anyone he
recognized in the shadows, and the bartender called from the bar, in
accented Creole, "Sorry, ser, we're not serving."

"It's all right."
Warreven's voice came from the side of the room, where a door had
suddenly opened, spilling yellow light into the bar. "He's with
me."

A big man, hair and
beard bleached a startling orange, followed 3im
out, scowling, and Warreven said, to him, "I told you I had another
appointment, Barbe. Hal or Malemayn will get back to you."

"Like it'll do any
good," the big man growled, and turned back into his inner room.

Warreven looked at
Tatian. "I'm glad you could meet me here. Have you eaten? I'm
starving--my day started a little earlier than I'd planned."

"I can eat," Tatian
said, with less than perfect truth. There were too many foods on Hara
that no off-worlder dared eat.

Warreven smiled.
"There's a place on the Embankment that serves off-world food. We
can go there, if you'd like."

"It suits me,"
Tatian answered, and followed the herm out of Barbedor's. Warreven
turned left, just skirting the barricades and the watching
mosstaas
;
following 3im, Tatian
could feel heat still radiating from the ruins, like the warmth from
an oven.

"I'm amazed nobody
was killed," he said aloud, looking at the charred beams, the
fallen walls, and Warreven snorted.

"Nobody was killed
because the fires started small, there was plenty of time to get out.
It's just the firefighters didn't show up for an hour or two, and
by that time, it was too late."

Ȝe
hadn't spoken loudly, but 3e
hadn't lowered 3er
voice, either, and Tatian saw the nearest
mosstaas
give them a hard stare. The noise of an engine came from behind him,
and he glanced over his shoulder, grateful for the interruption, to
see a big shay, its ironwood body painted in the firefighters'
yellow and silver, edging past the
mosstaas
'
barricade. Warreven looked, too, and made another face.

"So the promised
investigators finally make their appearance."

Tatian looked back, saw
that they were out of earshot of the nearest
mosstaas
. "Aren't
they a little late?"

"Only if they
actually want to catch who did it," Warreven answered. Ȝe
shook 3er head. "I'm
sorry, I'm not fit company. I've been up since about four when
Barbedor called. He's an old friend."

"I take it your group
is representing him?" Tatian asked, and they turned onto one of the
short stair streets that led down to the Embankment.

Warreven nodded. "He
wants us to, anyway. Just in case there's something he can do. He
had a part interest in the Starlik, that was the smaller club."

The Embankment was
crowded in the good weather, indigenes and a fair number of
off-worlders alike enjoying the cool breeze. Warreven led him to a
cookstall on the Harbor side of the Embankment--it was little more
than a three-sided shack with a row of grills along the back, and
Tatian hesitated until he saw the empty boxes labeled
Surya's
Samosaas
stacked along the wall by the power hookup. That
was an off-world brand, and safe; he bought two of the heavy pastries
and waited while Warreven picked out a thick yellow stew served in a
hollowed-out melon. They found a place in the sun along the broad
wall and sat, shielding their food from the wind. From this angle,
looking back up the hill, the burned-out buildings were very visible,
a break in the neat line of the street fronts. He could see the marks
of the fire on the building to the north, as well as on the front and
side of Barbedor's, and a scorched patch on the roof of the
building next to it, could see, too, three figures in silver
protective suits poking idly in the wreckage.