“You find out after you take the contract, when and if you take the contract.”
I raised my eyebrows. There was more going on here than met the eye, but one of the prerequisites for getting a job like this is not asking too many questions. I asked the important one. “What's the pay?”
“Half a million stars.”
I raised my eyebrows. “For a destination in Known Space?”
He nodded. “Jinx.”
“That seems high.”
“The cargo is secret. That pays for you, your ship, and a hole in your memory when you come back.” He held up a paw and made a motion like he was triggering a sprayjector.
My eyebrows went higher. There were a bunch of drugs that would prevent short-term memory from getting stored to long-term memory. The new ones don't cause brain damage, or so they claim. “Why me?”
“Because you need the money and you have a ship of the required performance.”
Bodyguard had been doing his homework. I squeezed the last drops of Glencannon down my throat, then spun the bulb into the disposal behind the bar. “Okay, I'll do it.” It didn't sound like a healthy job to take on, but anything beat hanging around the Constellation watching my bank account swirl down the drain. Every singleship pilot smuggles when he thinks he can get away with it. Elektra and I hadn't had a contract in months, and the bank was going to call the mortgage on her. When the Consortium went to war with the rockjacks the demand for pilots went through the floor. No prospecting, no shipping, nobody could afford to go anywhere. I wasn't the only one in trouble. Even Nakamura Lines was running in the red, though they denied it officially.
He nodded. “We will talk in privacy.” He gestured to Joe, who in turn motioned to another bartender. The bartender came around counter and led us into the back. Joe has some private tables there with privacy fields. They're available to anyone who asks, but it seemed my new friend had his space prearranged. The woman came with us, and the busy background noise of the bar suddenly vanished as we came under the sound damper. We sat down to business. She unsealed her slingback and reached inside. Suddenly even the sounds at our table became muted, the way everything sounds faraway when your ears can't equalize to a pressure change. She had a portable damper in the bag and she'd switched that on too. I took it in stride. If they were willing to drop half a million stars to convince me to take a brain blank then doubling up on the privacy field only made sense.
Bodyguard nodded to her and she pulled out a sprayjector. She held it up. Her eyes asked the question. Ready?
My eyes widened involuntarily. Those drugs are restricted, not easy to come by, and I somehow hadn't expected them quite this soon in the game. It was the moment of truth. “I'd like to see the money first.” They could have had anything in that sprayjector, the whole thing could be a setup. Making them flash the cash wasn't a guarantee of safety, but at least it would ensure I wouldn't fall for some small-time scam.
Wordlessly the woman pulled a credit chip out of her pocket, thumbed it and handed it over. Why is she the one carrying everything? So she could run while he fought, if it came to that. This pair knew what they were doing. I verified the numbers on the front of the chip, thumbed it myself, and then slid it into my beltcomp. I tapped the keys like I was dumping the funds to my account, but I miskeyed the entry on purpose. When I put the comp down I slid the chip out with my thumb and palmed it. Another quick sleight of hand and it was in the little hidden pocket cut into the back side of my belt. That would make it a little harder for them to get their money back, just in case it was a scam after all. Singleship pilots need a lot of odd skills to survive. I can key a com laser in Morse code when the modulation fails, I can rig a fuel coolant system to scrub CO2 out of the air, and I can spot a dirty setup nine times out of ten on body language alone.
I met the girl's eyes, read them and saw nothing dangerous. “Okay,” I said, and held out my arm with my sleeve pulled back, hoping that this wasn't the tenth time. She pressed the sprayjector against my skin and triggered it. I felt the quick burn as the drugs went in, and the deal was done. I didn't feel any different, but the macromolecular labels from the sprayjector were now busy hooking up to binding sites in my synapses. The anticatalyst mixed with them would keep them from metabolizing for as long as it held out. My synapses would adapt to form memories normally during that time, but once the anticatalyst ran out the labels would attack the adaptations and undo any changes that had occurred since they were bound in the first place. A big chunk of experience would simply cease to exist for me.
You'd have to be desperate to take a deal like that. I was desperate.
I took my eyes off the patterned tile ceiling to look at Lieutenant Neels, brought back to the here-and-now. “And that's all I remember. I guess it worked.”
He just looked at me for a long, painful time, his expression hard and unreadable. I'd sold three weeks for half a million stars and now I was a witness with no memory in a murder investigation. I told all that to the cop. He dropped a holoprint in front of me.
“Is that the woman?”
I nodded. It would take more than a brain blank to make me forget her. “That's her.” I had a bad feeling about the way he asked the question, but I didn't know enough to start lying.
His lips compressed to a thin line. “Did you kill her?”
I looked at him in shock. I wasn't a witness, I was a suspect. The suspect, said a little voice at the back of my brain. I'd known the deal had something deep behind it, but Bodyguard had told me the job was a package delivery, straight up and simple. Kzinti don't lie, it's beneath their honor, and I wouldn't have taken anything dirtier anyway. A brain blank doesn't change the way you act, and I'm not a killer. I shook my head. “I didn't even know she was dead.”
“You wouldn't under the circumstances, would you?” His eyes bored in to mine. “There's about a gallon of her blood in your airlock.” He held my gaze for a long, uncomfortable time. “Anything you'd like to add to your statement?”
“Who is she?”
“Opal Stone.”
Opal Stone. I felt a sudden urge to look at my palm, to the place the red inked words had been. Instead I just looked at him, not knowing what to say. I didn't remember anything… Opal Stone.
He kept his eyes locked on mine for a long, long time, while I sat there feeling like a prey animal myself. Finally he turned away. “We don't have a body, yet. The UNSN has a ship scanning your last recorded course, and we're talking to Jinx.” He looked back at me and his voice hardened. “If you spaced her, we'll find her.”
“I don't…”
“Remember,” he finished for me. “I know. You can go. Your ship is under seal. Don't leave the asteroid.”
I left with my head spinning and cursing myself for taking the deal in the first place. I thought I was desperate before, but now… I thought back again, trying to glean some missed detail from my mind, but the brain blank was complete. My first memory after the meeting was of staring up at the time display. She'd died—nobody loses a gallon of blood and lives. It was supposed to be a simple delivery trip. What had gone wrong? I pulled out my beltcomp and tabbed my last transactions, another attempt to fill in the blanks. There was a half-million-star deposit a week ago, and then today there was the rental bill for the cube dorm on horizontal sixteen—I hadn't thought to check the location when I'd left with the cop. Now I knew the timeframe, but what was I doing staying in a place like that with half a million stars to my name? The answer came too easily. Hiding. That didn't help me believe in my own innocence. I took a drop shaft to level sixteen and found the place again. It was residential space awkwardly converted to daily rental cubes, the kind of place that takes cash and doesn't ask names. I had to ask the proprietor which cube was mine. He sent me to number twenty-three. The lock opened when I thumbed it, and I went inside.