French, so it was just so much empty noise to him. “Your effective jurisdiction ends at the airlock. Once we’re out in the cold, anything goes. You might think you’re living in a civilized society, but the Tetrax only run the administration and the legal system. People like Amara Guur run the underworld: vormyr, Spirellans, and every other kind of barbarian you can put a name to.”
I was too harsh; I should have taken more notice of the fact that he’d conceded the possibility that I really might have been framed. His hesitation before referring to my “talents” hadn’t been intended as a sly insult. He really was wondering what I had that might prompt Amara Guur—or anyone else—to take so much trouble to obtain total control of me.
“You know,” I said, to calm the atmosphere a little, “there’s one thing I’ve never understood about you Tetrax. Why do you have code numbers instead of first names?”
Usually, you have to be wary of asking aliens questions like that, in case they take offence. Fortunately the Tetrax don’t seem go in for taking mortal offence at personal questions, and 69-Aquila seemed enthusiastic to educate me while I was at his mercy.
“Humankind is not the only race whose members resent being numbered,” he told me. “Such refusals seem to be based in a fear of losing one’s individuality, a reluctance to think of oneself as a more-or-less insignificant unit in a much greater whole. We Tetrax do not require such illusions, and our guiding anxiety is precisely the opposite. We treasure our connectedness, our membership of a nested series of larger wholes. We bear our numbers proudly, because they remind us that we are not mere isolated irrelevancies, divorced from the context that gives our thoughts and actions meaning. As a species, humans are stuck in the last phase of a degenerate capitalism; as individuals, you are stuck in the last phase of a degenerate existential isolation. Wiser species have moved on.”
“So one of us is crazy,” I said, “and you think it’s not you. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?”
“I would be forced to worry if you began to agree with me,” 69-Aquila said, calmly. “I believe that I win again.”
Before he could lay his cards triumphantly down on the tabletop, however, his wristphone chimed. He consulted the display for a full minute.
“Someone is asking to see you.” he said. “It seems that they have a contract of employment to offer you.”
“What a pleasant surprise, “I said, grimly.
Amara Guur didn’t come in person, of course. I was half-expecting Heleb, who’d already made his desire to purchase my services a matter of public record, but discretion seemed to be keeping him out of the game for a while. The person who actually appeared on the other side of my glass partition was a Kythnan woman named Jacinthe Siani.
All the humanoid races making up the galactic community are built according to the same basic blueprint, although no one has figured out, as yet, how the original was determined. We all have two arms, two legs, and a head, and we all have two eyes, a mouth, and an asshole. Noses are more various, and so are the embellishments with which various kinds of skin comes equipped—horns, hair, scales, and so on. Humanoid species come in all colors and many textures; relatively few of them seem utterly loathsome or frightful to one another, but relatively few of them seem markedly attractive either. There are only a couple of dozen alien species that are sufficiently similar to humans that it wouldn’t seem in the least perverted for them to engage in cross-species sexual intercourse. Among those, there are maybe three or four which produce significant numbers of individuals who seem more beautiful to human eyes than actual humans do.
Kythnans are one of them. Among humans, the fact gives rise to frequent jokes about Kythnans and kin. Jacinthe Siani was an exceptional member of her species, as measured by human eyes.
I assumed that Simeon Balidar must have been the one who explained that circumstance to Amara Guur, given that the vormyr are at the other end of the spectrum. To Amara Guur, Jacinthe Siani probably looked just as loathsome as Balidar did; I didn’t dare to conjecture what she must think of him.
Her skin had a faint greenish tinge, but it wasn’t at all unattractive. Her features had a cast that would have been considered Oriental had she been human, but that wasn’t unattractive either—far from it. She didn’t have pointed ears though.
I really like pointed ears—but there was no way that Simeon Balidar could know that.
“Perhaps someone ought to explain to Amara Guur that we humans tend to do things the other way around,” I said to her, when 69-Aquila had formally introduced us. “We try the seduction first, and the bribery second. Then we bring in the heavy metal. There’s no point in putting on the velvet glove when I’ve already been floored by the iron fist.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about, Mr. Rousseau,” she purred. She had a soft, low voice that would probably have sounded very nice if she’d been talking English—or, even better, French—instead of pangalactic parole.
“No,” I said. “I bet my lawyer could search for days on end without tracing a manifest connection between you and Amara Guur, or any other petty crime-lord. I suppose you’re recruiting for your private stud farm, and you’ve just decided to start breeding humans.”
“I need a man with your expertise,” she said.
“Precisely,” I replied.
“Your expertise in lower-level exploration,” she elaborated.
“You don’t say,” I said. At least, I tried to. Parole isn’t geared to translate that kind of idiomatic expression.
“I do,” she assured me. “I represent a group of people who are mounting an expedition that will penetrate further into the core of Asgard than any previous one. We need to hire men who have extensive experience of moving into virgin territory.”
“And unlike the C.R.E., you don’t mind hiring convicted murderers?”
“You have a debt to pay, Mr. Rousseau,” she observed. “We are civilized folk, who do not harbor petty prejudices. You have the expertise we need.”
“So have a lot of other people,” I told her. “Saul Lyndrach, for example. Have you tried to buy him?”
For a fleeting moment, a shadow crossed her face. No matter how human or superhuman she seemed, I couldn’t be sure that I’d read the expression correctly, but it seemed to me like anxious suspicion. She was worried that I might know more than I seemed to know. She was worried that I might have more with which to negotiate than was apparent, even now.
I wished, fervently, than I had. “Amara Guur doesn’t have the situation under control, does he?” I said. “Framing me was a hasty move, urged on him by panic. There’s a loose cannon rolling around his deck, isn’t there? You don’t have Saul on the payroll, do you? Whatever he found and you’re trying to steal, it’s still out of reach. You want me because I’m a friend of Saul’s, don’t you? That’s what makes me so much more valuable than any other freelance scavenger.”
Every word we exchanged was being recorded, of course. My trial was over, but that didn’t mean the Tetrax weren’t still taking an interest in the case.
“We are prepared to offer you a two-year contract,” she said, doggedly following her script. “It will not pay off more than a fraction of your debt, but the rate of repayment is considerably greater than you would earn by any other means of employment. There are risks
