She looked around again. “I — shit!” Her face fell. “I, uh, I have to give a message to you.”
“A message.” Frank had an itchy feeling in the palms of his hands. The lead item walking in off the street to spill his or her guts into the ear of a waiting reporter, the exclusive waiting to happen, was a legend in the trade. It so rarely happened, vastly outnumbered by hoaxers and time-wasters, but when it did — Let’s not get ahead of the game, he told himself sternly. He watched her eyes and she stared right back. “Begin with the beginning,” he suggested. “Who’s your message from? And who’s it for?”
She huddled in the corner of the sofa as if it was the only stable place in her universe. “It’s, um, going to sound crazy. But I shouldn’t be here. On this ship, I mean. I mean, I’ve got to be here, because if I stayed behind I wouldn’t be safe. But I’m not supposed to be here, if you see what I mean.”
“Not supposed — do you have a ticket?” he asked. His brow wrinkled.
“Yes.” She managed a faint flicker of what might have been an impish grin if she hadn’t been so close to exhaustion. “Thanks to Herman.”
“Uh-huh.” Is she a crazy? Frank wondered. This could be trouble … He pushed the thought aside.
“The — information — I’ve got for you is that if you visit Old New — sorry, portal station eleven, and go down to cylinder four, kilo deck, segment green, and look in the public facility there you’ll find a corpse with his head down the toilet. And, uh, behind the counter of the police station in cylinder six, segment orange, there’s a leather attache case with handwritten orders in, like, real ink on paper, saying that whoever the orders are for is to wipe all the customs records, trash the immigration tracking and control system — but bring a single copy home — and if necessary, kill anyone who looks like they’re going to notice what’s going on. Fat chance, as the customs and immigration cops were pulled out six months earlier, but the man in the toilet was in uniform—” She swallowed.
Frank realized that his fingers were digging into the arm of the sofa so tightly that the soft leather was threatening to rip. “Customs records?” he said mildly. “Who told you to tell me this?” he asked. “Your friend?”
“Herman,” she said, deadpan. “My fairy godfather. Okay, my rich uncle then.”
“Hmm.” He gave her a long, cool stare. Is she a crazy? “This message—”
“Ah, shit.” She waved a hand in front of her face. “I’m no good at lying,” she said guiltily. “Listen, I need your help. Herman said you’d know what to do. They’re, uh, he said the same people, the ones who killed the cop — he’s down as missing in the evacuation, nobody wanted to go back for him — are looking for anyone who might be a witness. They tried—” she took a deep breath. “No, someone tried to mug me a few days ago. Or worse. I got away. They’re looking for me because the shipboard security came back onto the station and found me and I’m one of the only loose ends, and now they’re not panicking over the evacuation they’re trying to tie everything up…” She subsided in confusion.
“Oh.” Oh very good, Frank, he told himself sarcastically. How very articulate of you! He shook his head. “Let me get this straight. You’re not alone. You ran across something on your station before the evacuation, right before it. Something you think is important. Now someone’s trying to kill you, you think, so you hopped aboard this ship. Is that substantially correct?”
She nodded violently. “Yeah.”
Okay. Heads she’s a kook, tails she’s tripped over something very smelly indeed. What should I do? Put that way, it was fairly obvious: run some background checks, try to prove she was a kook before accepting anything at face value. But she didn’t look crazy. What she looked like was a tired, shaky young woman who’d been booted out of her life by forces beyond her control. Frank shuffled against the cushions, struggling to sit up. “Do you have any idea who the, uh, killers might be?”
“Well.” She looked uncertain. “The ship that took us off was from Dresden. And the case with the orders was in the Captain’s luggage store.”
“It was—” Frank stared at her. “How did you get to see it then?”
“I guess you could say I broke in.” She screwed her face into something that might have been meant to look like an embarrassed smile.
“You—” Frank stared some more. “I think you’d better tell me all about it,” he said quietly. “By the way, the public spaces here are all monitored, all the time. But the staterooms are private. If you’re going to say anything that might incriminate you, we ought to go somewhere that isn’t being recorded. Do you have a room?”
“Uh, I guess so.” She looked at him uncertainly. “My ticket says I do, but I didn’t choose it. And I’ve only just come aboard.” She glanced at the doorway self-consciously. “I haven’t even bought any stuff yet. I was in a real hurry.”
“Okay, we’ll go wherever your ticket says. If you don’t mind, I’d like to record an interview and check some facts out. Then—” A thought struck him. “Do you have any money?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She looked even more uncertain. “My friend wired me some, I think.”
“You think?”
“There are too many zeroes.” Her eyes were wide.
“Hmm. Well, if that’s a problem, I’ll see what I can sort out for you. White-Star likes to soak you for extras, but at least on board this ship you won’t want for complimentary scented Egyptian cotton towels and luxury pedicure kits. And if we’re—” He paused. “Where did you friend buy you a ticket to?” he asked.
“Some place called, uh, Newpeace?”
Shit! An icy calm descended on Frank. “Well, I think we might just have to see about extending it a bit farther. All the way to Earth itself, and maybe back home afterward.”
“Why?”
“Newpeace isn’t somewhere I’d want to send my worst enemy. It’s run by scum who call themselves the ReMastered.”
“Oh no!”
Suddenly she was on her feet, looking alarmed. Frank blinked in surprise. “What have you heard about them?” he demanded.
“Herman said it was probably the ReMastered who killed my—” She choked up, her shoulders shaking.
“Let’s go to my room,” Frank said quietly, his pulse roaring in his ears. “We can talk about it there.”
SYBARITE CLASS
She’d gone to ground in the morning lounge on A deck, finding a niche between a potted coconut palm and a baby grand piano the color of stressed titanium. Eyes swiveling, refugee instincts humming. This wasn’t anything like the trash hauler she’d been on, years ago. Everything around her screamed luxury! at high volume. What am I meant to do here? If anyone finds me — She had a ticket. Nobody was going to haul her off to the nearest airlock and make her walk home. Still, just being there felt profoundly wrong, and then there was whatever had happened to her family. Just trying not to think about it was a draining experience.
“Okay, Herman, what have you got me into?” she muttered angrily. A twist of her storage ring got her into the files he’d left her. They were copious, but at least he’d left an introduction.
“As soon as you’re on board, search for Frank the Nose and tell him about the items you left aboard Old Newfie. Do so before the ship departs. That will give him time to file a news report, after which your pursuers will be unable to achieve their goal of concealing the existence of the items by killing you. Let me emphasize this: Until you publicize the existence of the sealed orders and the body, your life is in danger. Once you have done so, they can gain nothing by killing you and may only lend credence to your story. And here’s a second point. Don’t assume that all ReMastered are automatically members of the group hunting you. They’re riddled with factions, and whoever is after you may even be using them as a cover. Don’t assume anything.