He’d done three of them right here on the Burroughs, of course. Anywhere else in the Solar System would have been unthinkable. The aliens wouldn’t have allowed humans to access the necessary Psi-proof force-field technology in a thousand years. So it was either keep him here, let him go, or kill him. The humans never would have accepted the second option, and the aliens refused to consider the third, so here he stayed.
A good thing, too. Their paranoid precaution would now give a huge boost to me, the Galactic Trade Confederation, and—if he treated me straight—maybe even Vasily himself.
“I got nothing to tell nobody they ain’t already dragged out of me a hundred times with their damn drugs, and I ain’t interested in the shitty benefits of any fucking rehab program,” he politely informed me by way of greeting when I stepped into his cell. “Maybe they made me a snitch against my will, but they won’t make me a bootlicker for the aliens like you guys. Come on, pozzie, you look ridiculous in that B-movie detective get-up,” he went on. “Who do you think you are, Dick Tracy?”
I activated the compressor pumps in my chest and sighed. It sounded exactly the way I wanted: melodramatically impressive. The truth is I was worried, though. Did he know as much about twentieth-century crime fiction as he seemed to?
I’d have to tread carefully. I’d already figured out from his file that he’d be a hard nut to crack. He was a perfect example of a person convinced that, if the world had had enough of him, he’d had enough of the world. He was kind of right about that, from his point of view: he didn’t have anyone or anything waiting for him on the outside.
But I had to get him on my side. I didn’t have any choice, if I wanted to catch Makrow 34 before he screwed over the entire Solar System. Only one choice for him, and it had to be yes.
I took off my fedora, like I was getting ready for a long, sincere conversation, and pulled what looked like a supersophisticated wristwatch from a trench coat pocket to show him. “My name is Raymond, Vasily, and I’m here to make you an offer you can’t refuse—not unless you’re a complete idiot. Know what this is?”
It was a rhetorical question, of course, but he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “I suppose it’s your videophone-ballscratcher-wristwatch, Dick Tracy,” he growled, and I felt a little better. My trick had worked: at least now I knew he’d never seen The Godfather. If that was true, and the gods were smiling on me, maybe he hadn’t watched 48 Hours either. It seemed he was just a fan of the yellow-hatted cop in the funny pages.
“Wrong. It’s a portable anti-Psi field generator. Pure nanotech, an experimental prototype, courtesy of our good friends from the Galactic Trade Confederation. Don’t let the shape fool you. You wear it around your neck, not your wrist.”
He shrugged, a perfect show of not giving a damn, but I caught a dim spark of interest deep in his green eyes. He’d taken the bait! Now all I had to do was reel him in slowly, carefully, and I’d have him.
“So,” I went on, feeling more and more sure of myself. “Want to know what it does? It goes around a Psi criminal’s neck, and whenever he’s about to use his ability, this little baby activates and stops him. It doesn’t have to stay on all the time—a real energy-saver. Sweet invention, isn’t it?” A sly grin came across Vasily’s face. It didn’t take Psi powers to guess what he was thinking. “Oh, I almost forgot. Some paranoid sadist who’s allergic to trusting other people’s good intentions decided at the last minute to add a little explosive capsule to the design. A precisely calculated quantity of Ultrasemtex. There’s no risk it might blow up by accident from getting bumped or what have you, but if somebody tries taking it off and ditching it—boom!” I luxuriated in the explosive onomatopoeia. “The guy ends up minus a head, and nobody around him gets a scratch. That’s why we don’t put it on your wrist or ankle—some people wouldn’t mind trading a limb for freedom. Especially with all the regeneration tech they have these days, it’s not like losing a hand is forever. But even a Grodo can’t live long without a head.”
“Neat toy,” Vasily allowed. “But what’s it to me? I ain’t no fucking alien lover.”
We’d have to do something about his language.
“This interesting little device represents your conditional freedom,” I said, and tossed it into his lap, casual. “The decision is yours. If you agree to wear it and give me some help, you won’t have to spend the next seven years of your sentence in this little box. Well, let’s call it six years, because they tell me your behavior has been exemplary. They’ll knock a few months off, count on it.”
El Ex-Afortunado lifted his hands—then stopped, halfway to his neck. “I knew it was a trick. Pozzies never play square.” He dropped the collar like a kid who’s tired of a toy and pushed it my way with one foot, scornful. “Might as well leave, pozzie. I’m doing okay here. I got room to exercise, I got enough books to read and enough tapes to watch to last me three lifetimes, all the virtual sex I could want, and—”
“And nobody to share it with and nobody to talk to. No streets, no freedom, no real life.” I cut him short, triumphant, and picked up the collar without offering it to him a second time. “So don’t tell me you’re not interested, because I’m not going to believe you.”
“Hmm, maybe,” he admitted, reluctantly. “Come on and spit it out, pig. Tell me what you want from me. You gotta have something pretty heavy on your hands or you wouldn’t be taking a chance with a superdangerous Gaussical like me.”
I didn’t set him straight about how dangerous he was—not yet. I told him the whole story in broad strokes, even about the stash of energy crystals that Makrow 34 might have hidden somewhere in the asteroid belt.
When I was done, Vasily let out a short but infectiously lighthearted laugh.
“I get it. Cute little assignment your bosses dumped on you, pozzie. Interesting. Maybe I even know somebody knows something about this Makrow guy. Ain’t too many Cetians out in the asteroid belt. Ain’t supposed to be any at all, right? One thing I’m not clear on: you want me to help you find a needle in a haystack, then grab it without getting stabbed?” He was using my own metaphor. I guess humans have a limited number of analogies in Standard Anglo-Hispano. I nodded, glad to see how well we understood each other. “But all you offer me is to spring me from this force-field cage so as I can spend the rest of my life with an electronic dog collar.”
“Plus we erase your record. You get a clean slate,” I added, suspecting he was going to turn me down. But I wasn’t about to give up.
“A clean slate.” Vasily cleared his throat loudly and spat on the immaculate pseudo-wood floor of the cell. The nanocomponents built into the phony parquet began bustling around the little puddle of sputum, absorbing it with the efficiency you’d expect from alien tech. He looked on with a hatred bordering on tenderness. “Oh, pardon my manners. I just can’t get used to this air conditioning,” he said snidely. “Besides, the little bugs are fun to watch.”
I summarized our situation: “In other words, you want more.” We were off to a good start—and he still hadn’t found out that Makrow 34 was a freak just like him, except a thousand times worse. “All right. We might be able to negotiate the collar. A portion of the time, anyway.”