Engineman - Eric Brown [42]
Mirren shrugged. "Asked me about my team. If I'd kept in touch. He asked how we'd fared without the flux."
"Does Paris stink!" Dan snorted.
"Exactly. He said enough to make me think he was selling flux-time."
Dan sat up.
"He arranged to meet me tonight. He wants to see us all. I said I'd contact you."
"I don't know whether to believe this."
"I'm not sure we should, just yet. A lot could go wrong. Shit, I don't even know how much he's asking, or if he's legit. Or even if he is selling flux-time. If he is, have you thought about this: we might be able to afford the first flux, but what then? We'll be craving like crazy - and back where we started from." The thought opened an abyss of depression within him.
"At the moment, I'm thinking no further than the first flux." Dan said. "Thing is, I always cursed these bastards as stinking opportunists, living off the dependencies of others. But every time I heard a rumour... I was out there searching with the rest of them."
"I just hope he's on the level."
Dan replenished his glass liberally from the bottle on the floor. "Who's the guy, anyway? He give you his name?"
Mirren withdrew the pix of the off-worlder from his inside jacket pocket, passed it across to Dan. "He called himself Hirst Hunter. Like I said, he had a couple of heavies with him. He drove a Mercedes roadster. Do you know how much those things cost to keep running?"
Dan regarded the pix, frowning. He looked across at Mirren. "But he didn't say for sure that he had a tank?"
"Not in so many words, no. But what else could he want from us? That's probably how he made all his money - fleecing Enginemen like us."
"He didn't tell you anything about himself, where he was from?"
"He mentioned he was from Fairweather, in the Drift."
Dan was nodding. "That'd figure. On some of the worlds in the Drift the settlers are born with viral epidermal infections."
"He said little about himself, other than that he'd trained and failed as an Engineman in his younger days. He told me he regretted the closure of the Lines. He knew a bit about our team - he'd read Mubarak's book."
"Have you contacted the others?"
"Not yet."
"I'll do it." He pulled a handset from his breast pocket, got through to his secretary and asked her to contact Fekete, Elliott and Olafson.
He handed the pix back to Mirren. "Have you any idea how much these guy's charge for just an hour in a tank?"
"I dread to think."
"I heard rumours it's a thousand an hour."
Mirren whistled. A thousand credits was what he was paid for two month's work at Orly.
Dan's handset buzzed. A small voice said, "No reply from Elliott and Olafson, Dan. But I did reach Fekete. He's on line now. I'll put him through."
The wallscreen flared. The three-dimensional screen gave the impression that Caspar Fekete was in the room with them. He was seated in a gold chair - more like a throne - in a plush lounge illuminated by a chandelier. He wore a zebra-striped djellaba, and his face suggested that the rest of him was running to fat: his cheeks on either side of his flattened nose were full, almost cherubic.
He leaned forward, peering. "Dan, is that Ralph you have with you? My word, this is a surprise. Long time no see, Ralph! I trust you are keeping well, sir?"
Mirren suspected that the honorific was sarcastic. He smiled. "Surviving, Cas. I thought you'd be rid of that thing by now." He indicated Fekete's occipital console, bulky beneath the shoulders of his djellaba.
"Get rid of it! Why, it comes in useful from time to time!"
"You still trying to record what's inside your muddled brain-box?" Dan said.
Fekete laughed. "Right you are, sir. When you possess something worthwhile, hang onto it, is my motto. You know I was always proud of what I had up top, gentlemen. To what do I owe this unprecedented pleasure?"
Dan said, "How would you like to flux again, Cas?"
"I might have known, you old believer! How many times do I have to tell this guy?" He winked at Mirren. "For me the flux means zero."
"Oh, yeah?" Dan said.