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By Root 348 0

the twins. Before their time, I guess, and probably no more than a blip on the screen even then. The second turned away and spoke quietly into his collar mike. The other stared impassively at me, jaws working slowly on some designer gum or coke pastille. The guy on the mike had to repeat my name. The answer took a long time coming. I was glad I didn’t have my gun anymore, or the trouble might have started there and then. I was a lone fool in Injun country, and there had been a time—a long, long time—when the only way I could get myself to sleep at night was fantasizing different ways of killing Johnny Vinaldi, when I had thought so often about his blood, his guts, his face ripped apart that it had become a nearly sexual thing. Then it had burnt out, or so I’d thought. As I stood there at that moment, I couldn’t really tell what I was going to do, but I knew that the longer I had to wait, the more ill-advised what I did was going to be.

Finally, the guy nodded at his colleague, and the gate behind them opened slowly and automatically. They both signaled for me to walk through, jerking their guns simultaneously. I wondered if they practiced it together in front of the mirror.

The Vinaldi house was a restrained pastel yellow, a shade he probably thought betokened good taste. In fact, it made it look like an oddly shaped banana that had been left out too long in the sun. The path led past a huge blocky wing, then on to a warmly lit pool area in the back. The laughter of hangers-on and coke whores echoed quietly over the water. Tanned and slick, they lounged by the pool—all of them competing to be Vinaldi’s chief confidante or main punch—none of them realizing that Vinaldi’s only meaningful allegiances were to himself, and money, and death.

By the time I. reached the gate I had attracted some attention. A couple of the men, who bore a family resemblance to each other, reached underneath their deck chairs and placed guns in clear sight on the tables. Two of the women stared at me, whispering to each other, a little pocket of paid-for beauty in the lamp glow around the pool.

And then I saw him.

Johnny Vinaldi had aged well, in fact barely at all. He stood about five ten, and was still whipcord thin. A gold necklace sparkled nicely against the major tan of his chest, and his eyes were small and black and hard in the clean lines of his face. He stood, wrapped a spotlessly white toweling gown around himself, and beckoned forward with his hand. He looked perfect, fit, and charismatic, and I wanted to kill him very much indeed.

I opened the gate and shambled out onto the flagstones that surrounded the pool. A couple of the girls were still horseplaying in the shallow end, but pretty much everyone else was watching me. I didn’t blame them. I felt I needed watching.

I stopped about three yards from him. He looked at me, one eyebrow raised. A pause, with only the sound of quiet splashing in the background. There were a lot of things I might have wished to put in that hiatus—the sound of gunfire, for example—but I knew none of them were going to happen. In fact, I hoped they didn’t. I didn’t have my gun, for a start.

“Lieutenant Randall,” Vinaldi said, eventually. “What a nice surprise.”

I gazed back at him. “I hope not. And I’m not flattered by the Lieutenant.”

“A formality,” he said, inclining his head toward me. “A sign of respect.”

“Bullshit.”

“Quite.” He smiled. “Well, as you can see, non-Lieutenant Randall, my friends and I are trying to relax at this difficult time and have a pleasant evening around the pool. Drink a little wine, maybe spark a few ulcers for the fool doctors to keep themselves in business over. You don’t seem to be dressed to join us, so tell me what’s on your mind, and tell me quickly because I have a feeling I’m not going to be very interested.”

“Mal Reynolds.”

Vinaldi frowned. An act of memory, or the facsimile of one. “Your former partner. What of him? I heard he was still living out in the Portal, chasing rainbows and worrying about dead women of ill repute.”

“He’s dead.”

“That I am not especially