'Like hell I will,' he said, and walked over to his bedside table. There he picked up his comunit and made a particular connection.
'Arian,' Grendel said to him. 'Do you have what you… need now?'
'In one respect, yes. In others, no.'
'I do not understand.'
'It's a matter of hardware again,' said Pelter. 'Can you meet me at the warehouse.'
'The storm…'
'This is important, Grendel, and the storm's nearly over.'
'Very well. I'll see you there in an hour or so?'
Pelter clicked off the unit and turned to Mr Crane. 'Nobody controls me, and nobody controls you but me. Did they think I was so stupid?'
He gazed through the window. His problem did not lie in the aug, but in the force of the personality behind it. Dragon, he knew, could swamp him with a direct connection. Here, of course, the connection was not direct. Dragon was somewhere deep in the Polity. The link was an obese man who called himself Grendel.
The muted roar had been constant over the last fifty solstan hours. Storm gullies in the old hydrocar streets could barely contain the consequent torrents, and a long night had come to Huma. Occasionally, when the wind parted the curtains of rain, you could see the layer of cloud poised above like a ceiling made of old green jade. Stanton looked down. A hydrocar was edging across the AGC park. He saw that there were few AGCs left there, and that those remaining had been secured with the car clamps that had so puzzled him. Under each of those covers, about which he had asked the drunk outside The Sharrow, was a grav coil that interacted with the car's AG. It effectively stuck the car to the ground. A precaution he understood perfectly when he saw a driver-less AGC being shunted down one of the streets by the wind. He stepped back from the window.
'Come back to bed,' Jarvellis said.
'You know,' he said, 'I'm getting impatient. And I would reckon Arian is probably spitting magma by now. This is bad. We don't need this, not after wiping out a covert ECS group here.'
Jarvellis sat up and slid back so she was resting against the headboard. Almost without thinking about it she started playing with her right nipple. Stanton had been in battles that were less exhausting than twenty hours in a room with this ship captain.
'Bad,' she said. 'You didn't have to close up one of the Lyric's holds, then clear out a few thousand litres of water and storm sludge. I've had more fun—' An abrupt beeping stilled her tirade for a moment. 'What the fuck is diat?' she said, releasing her nipple and scratching at her belly.
Stanton walked over to the bed, reached under the pillow and pulled out his small comunit.
'You bring it to bed?' Jarvellis said, her voice rising.
Stanton held his finger to his lips and pressed his diumb to the pad on the side of the unit.
'In the bar, five minutes,' said Pelter.
Stanton removed his diumb and dropped the unit on the bed.
'Woof, woof,' said Jarvellis.
Stanton gave her a dirty look. 'Any more of that and I can always tell him you're here. Even though he's agreed to your extortionate price, I'm sure he'd still like to talk about it.'
'He is not getting anywhere near me, nor is that lump of homicidal scrap.'
Stanton grinned and began pulling on his clothes.
The metrotel was primitive by Polity standards. The rooms had no sleepfields, the showers only squirted hot water, room service came by way of a grumpy robot trolley and, rather than drop-shafts for transport, the building merely had express elevators. Stanton hit the pad beside the sliding doors and waited impatiently. Shortly the doors hissed open to show Dusache and Svent. Stanton felt uncomfortable getting into an enclosed space with them.
'Action, do you think?' he asked them.
'Yes,' they said simultaneously, then looked at each other. Svent went on. 'The hotel server has it that the storm should be finishing soon.'
The doors hissed open onto the lobby and they walked out across thick carpet. By the glass frontage a beetle-shaped robot was droning back and forth, cleaning up the mess tracked in by the hotel guests. Dusache glanced through that frontage before turning towards the bar.
'That isn't rain, it's a vertical sea,' he said.
To a certain extent Stanton agreed with him: it was a vertical sea, except when the wind turned it into a horizontal one. He followed the two mercenaries into the bar area and looked around. Corlackis and Men- necken were sitting playing cards at a low table. Corlackis had a stack of coins next to him and Men-necken a murderous expression on his face. He was gambling, and losing as usual.
'Where's Pelter?' Stanton asked. Corlackis shrugged and continued dealing out the cards. Svent and Dusache moved over to join the school. Svent looked up.
'He's on his way down,' he said.
The communication between the three of them was obvious, and why not? Any augs could link together like tfiat. What bothered Stanton was that such linkage was out of character for botfi Pelter and Dusache, just as wearing an organic aug was an odd thing for Svent to do. He walked over to the bar, where a metal-skin was waiting in obedient stillness.
'Give me a vodka cool-ice,' he said.
The skin immediately took up a glass and held it to the vodka optic. Stanton wondered if the ill-fitting shirt, bow-tie and black trousers it wore were an example of what passed for humour here. He watched the skin open the ice dispenser and select two of the rainbow cubes to drop into the vodka. It didn't need tongs - its metal fingers were tongs. Stanton was taking his first sip when Pelter walked in, Crane's presence behind him so expected now that Stanton found himself beginning to ignore the android. Perhaps not a healthy habit to get into.
'We go to the warehouse now,' Pelter said.
'You sure that's a good idea? It's only a little while until this shit stops,' asked Corlackis, glancing up from his hand.
Pelter moved further into the room. He stared at
Corlackis until the mercenary looked up again. There was a brief uncomfortable silence until Pelter spoke.
'Whether or not it is a good idea is irrelevant. You will go outside and get the transporter round to the front here. You will do it now.'
Corlackis dropped his cards on the table and stood. He glanced past Pelter to Mr Crane, then headed from the bar. Mennecken stood and followed him. Stanton watched the two of them go. Corlackis would do what he was told. He would complete whatever task was given to him and he would take the money. He would not try to kill Pelter; he was not that stupid. Pelter now looked at Stanton.
'A word,' he said and nodded over to the bar. The others watched them with curiousity as they moved beyond hearing range. By the bar Stanton waited on what Pelter had to say. Pelter reached up and touched the organic aug. Strain further distorted his features. He lowered his hand and glanced at Mr Crane. The android had now reacquired those small movements it had been devoid of over the last few days.
'You have a stun pistol?'
Stanton tapped his trouser pocket. 'I liked that one Corlackis has. They're cheap here,' he said.
'Very well. When we are at the warehouse and when I give you the signal, I want you to hit Dusache and Svent with it.'
'What?… Why?'
'Just do it,' said Pelter.
'As you say, Arian.'
Pelter closed his eyes for a moment and then glanced across at the two mercenaries. They were looking back with puzzled expressions.
Pelter went on. 'Contact Jarvellis. Have her at her ship within the hour. If she wishes she may stay in her cabin, but just make sure she has the B hold open for us, and is fully prepared to open the A.'
Stanton moved off to one side to do as bid, while Pelter returned to the others. He was starting to get an uneasy feeling about all this. Jarvellis, of course, greeted his news with a stream of very colourful invective. He grinned, pocketed his comunit, and joined the others.