The Credulity Nexus Read online

  THE CREDULITY NEXUS

  by

  Graham Storrs

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2014 Graham Storrs

  ISBN: 978-0-9924988-0-1

  Book design by Graham Storrs. Cover design by Kate Strawbridge, Dwell Design & Press.

  Published by Canta Libre

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorised, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to my wife, Christine.

  Chapter 1

  Rik Sylver 3 Drew clenched his teeth and swore to himself that if that child screamed one more time, he would draw his stunner and shoot it – and its parents, and everyone else in the gondola. His week had been a disaster, his life was down the toilet, and the last thing he needed just now was a wailing brat whose voice was drilling through his skull and turning his brains to soup.

  “Come on, Rik. It'll be a breeze.”

  That had been the thick Scottish accent of Greet-Greet McGregor in a bar in Heinlein. The slimy little Radionuclidian had played every wheedling card in his deck to get Rik to take the job, but in the end, it was the big, fat fee that had cinched it. Rik was in the kind of circumstances that only large slabs of credit could get him out of. So, despite everything; despite the Turgu hunting him down; despite his double divorce being finalised; despite the pain in his head from that damned cheap cogplus upgrade he'd had done last week; despite trusting Greet-Greet as far as he could kick him, he took the job.

  And that's how he found himself on the old Florida Space Bridge, travelling economy class, grinding slowly down to Earth and feeling homicidal.

  “The client just wants you to pick up a wee package and deliver it to his business associate.” Greet-Greet again, running in Rik's memory like a dripping tap. “How hard can that be, big guy?”

  Plenty hard, if the size of the fee was anything to go by. But Rik was in no position to argue. He hadn't had a client in weeks and, apart from all his other troubles, the renewal of his PLEO license was due. The Radionuclidian was a two-faced slime-ball, but he was the only source of business Rik had left.

  “Sir?”

  Business or no business, if this job turned out to be dangerous, there wouldn't be a crater on the Moon deep enough for Greet-Greet to hide in. He'd hunt down the little rat and–

  “Sir?”

  A woman's hand touched his shoulder. He jumped and reached for his gun before he saw that it was only one of the flight attendants. The seat beside his was empty and the hostess was leaning in from the aisle, looking nervous.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  What the hell was this? “Of course I'm all right. Why shouldn't I be?”

  The stewardess took the full brunt his angry glare and swallowed hard. Rik was a big man, and he looked like he'd as soon pull your head off as pass the time of day with you. With a two-day stubble and his clothes crumpled from three days of non-stop travel, he was enough to make anyone think twice about approaching him. The young woman gathered her resolve and went on.

  “You were sort of growling and muttering, sir. It was making the other passengers nervous.”

  “What?” He looked around at the people nearby, all of whom quickly turned away.

  “I'm having a bad day,” he said loudly so they'd all hear him. “I'm having a bad week. Hell, I've been having a really shitty five years, if you want to know.”

  Everyone kept their faces buried in whatever they could pick up and pretend to be reading. Rik turned back to the flight attendant. “How long till we land?” The view from the gondola windows was still black, airless space.

  “About two more hours, sir.”

  Rik leaned back with a sigh and regarded the woman. He felt a wave of sympathy for her, riding up and down in that stupid machine day after day, having to deal with bored, tired, angry jerks like him.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I'll try not to growl so loud. All right?” He flashed one of his sudden, self-deprecating grins and the attendant was surprised into smiling back.

  -oOo-

  New York was a mess. A three metre rise in sea level and a big increase in wild storms had led to what the newsfeeds had taken to calling “Venicification.” Salt water, not tarmac, ran between the high-rises in many parts of the city, and it had made islands of several suburbs. Unfortunately, unlike ancient Venice, much of New York’s infrastructure had been underground when the big floods came. Now the subways were mostly used by cavers with aqualungs, and most of the flooded suburbs had decayed into slums.

  Cringing away from the ever-advancing ocean, New York had retreated into the West and North, leaving the precarious, storm-tossed wrecks of Manhattan, Staten Island and Jersey City behind it. John F. Kennedy Airport was a distant memory, a couple of conning towers and derelict buildings poking up out of Jamaica Bay. Rik's flight landed at Barak Obama Airport in Fairport, way out in the west.

  He rented a car and drove himself down to Newark. There, where the old Route 78 plunged into the waters of Newark Bay, Rik pulled into the drive of a white, clapboard house that almost overlooked the sunken remains of Newark Liberty International Airport.

  He got out of the car and leaned against it, enjoying the feeling of sunshine on his face. He hadn't known he'd missed it until he felt it again. Rik always dressed for summer, even in Heinlein, the underground, lunar rabbit warren he called home. For once, his bright shirt and white pants didn't look at all out of place. A sea breeze came off the bay and he took a big noseful of it. It ruffled his light-brown hair. Closing his eyes, he let the strain of his long, long journey melt away.

  “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

  He cracked one eye and saw Maria, his first wife, stomping down her porch steps and then down the drive towards him. Despite the angry scowl on her face, he opened the other eye and took a good, long look.

  Maria Dunlop was a woman worth looking at. Tall and slender, she had the long-limbed grace of a young colt combined with the sensual curves of a catwalk model. She might not be pretty, the way some women were – her face was a little too long, maybe, and her mouth a fraction too big – but Rik knew from the ache in his heart that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, or would ever see, if he lived to be a thousand.

  “Hi, Maria. Nice to see you, too.”

  She stopped in front of him and glowered into his face, fists clenched. “You can't just come around here any time you feel like it, Rik. I've got a life. You remember what that is? Having a life?”

  Even her accent was beautiful, a kind of polished English that even ten years of living in the States hadn't managed to touch. Rik could almost wish she'd keep shouting at him, just so he could hear her speak. But she didn't. She just kept looking at him, lips pursed and eyes narrowed, waiting for him to explain himself.

  He took a deep breath and let it out. “I was in the neighbourhood.” Well, he was on Earth, anyway. That was close enough. “I thought I'd come by and see how you are. We can still say hello, can't we?” But, even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true. The old pain hit him
again and he turned away, pretending to examine the street.

  But Maria saw it. She always saw right into him, as if his face was a viewscreen showing pictures of his heart. Her manner changed in an instant. She spoke his name in a tone so full of sympathy and regret that he almost got right back in the car and drove away.

  It had been a stupid idea, coming to see Maria. What had he expected? That she'd throw herself into his arms and forgive him? Again. And what if she did? How many times would he let himself break her heart? How many times could he do that before the pain of hurting her tore him to pieces once more? Hadn't they already passed that point?

  He made himself look her in the eyes, blue eyes beneath a mop of blonde hair. “I'm sorry,” he said. She was so close, he could reach out and hold her, pull her to him. “This was a mistake. I should be going.” Despite his words, his face begged her to ask him to stay.

  And although he knew Maria could see just how much he wanted her to relent, she gave a tight-lipped nod and said, “Yes. You should go.”

  Then a man's voice called from the porch. “Mare, honey, is everything OK?”

  Rik winced and slowly turned his head to find a tall, muscular man coming down the drive towards them.

  “This the life you were talking about?” Rik asked. His voice was soft but full of bitterness.

  Maria narrowed her eyes again. “Rik, this is David Miller, my boyfriend. David, this is Rik something something something, I forget now. One of those funny lunar names.”

  David arrived at Maria's side, grinning, and slipped a possessive arm around her waist. “Oh, right, you must be the ex. You got into some kind of offworld group marriage thing, right? Man, you spacers are like from another world or something! How's that working out, huh?”

  Rik looked away from the big, grinning boyfriend to give Maria a look that said, “Are you really going out with this jerk?” As far as he could tell, David wasn't being deliberately snide or provocative. He was just a big, dumb ox.

  “We're getting a divorce,” Rik said, to Maria.

  Maria clearly didn't know what to say, but David did.

  “So you thought you'd come around here and see how Maria was fixed? Thought you might pick up where you left off, huh?”

  The accusation was near enough to the truth that Rik felt a rush of embarrassment. And that made him mad. “Look, pal, this has got nothing to do with you, so why don't you just get back in your box?”

  David took his arm from around Maria and stepped up to Rik. Rik was big, but David was bigger. Not only did he have a few more centimetres of height, he also had several more kilos of muscle. Rik didn't feel the least bit bothered by it. His experienced eye could see that David got all his muscle from working out in gyms. He didn't have that hard, fast, mean look of a street fighter. The look that Rik had in spades.

  “Please, Rik, don't hurt him,” Maria said, seeing what was coming.

  David glanced at her with a puzzled expression.

  Rik grinned, keeping his eyes on David. “You see, you shouldn't have said that, sweetie. Now you've hurt his feelings and he's going to have to try and prove his manhood by taking a swing at me.”

  “Rik, please!”

  “Relax, honey. I'll play nice.”

  David pushed a finger in Rik's face. “That's it. Get in your car and get on the road, spaceman.”

  Before the new boyfriend had any idea what was happening, Rik had doubled him over with a straight-fingered jab to the solar plexus, then spun him round and pushed him to the ground. The big man lay dazed and face down on the drive, gasping for air.

  Maria ran to her boyfriend and knelt over him. She glared up at Rik. “Are we enjoying ourselves yet?”

  Rik found he couldn't meet her eyes. “I just wanted...” But whatever he'd wanted, it wasn't going to happen now. With a sigh, he turned and opened the car door. “I'm sorry,” he said over his shoulder, then got in and drove away.

  “Yeah, me too,” said Maria, watching him go.

  Chapter 2

  Rik kicked himself all the way back to Fairport, where he boarded another hopper – this time to Berlin. He wished now that he'd gone straight there like he was supposed to, instead of making a complete ass of himself by visiting Maria.

  The two-G vertical take-off crushed him into his seat. That's another thing he should have done: taken a few days to get used to standard gravity again. After two years on the Moon, being on Earth felt like carrying a couple more guys his size on his back all the time. His body was geneered to adapt quickly – probably the one and only investment he'd made that he hadn't grown to regret – but he'd been pushing his luck to expect he could just walk off the space bridge and start hopping around like he'd never been away.

  The flight from New York to Berlin would take two hours. Luckily, after a short period of high-G, the flight was ballistic until the engines came back on for the landing. His cogplus was linked to the hopper and he used it to leave a message for his contact in Berlin, saying when he'd arrive. He let the acceleration push him down into his couch and began to drift off into sleep. No point regretting what he'd done, he told himself. Just take it on the chin and move on.

  He saw his mother and sister dressed in black, standing by his father's grave. There were no other mourners. He was fourteen, already big and bulking out. He looked at the dark brown coffin, thinking, “You miserable old bastard, what did you have to die for? Another year, maybe two, and I'd have been big enough to take you. Then you wouldn't have hit none of us no more.”

  Without it seeming at all odd, he led his mother and sister from the graveside to the car, the old, spluttering hybrid they had a few years later, when he was nineteen. They all got in and he drove – really drove, with gas pedal and steering wheel and SatNav, just like it was back then. He drove them out onto the freeway and his mother was saying something and laughing. And then a big robot semi swerved off the other carriageway straight in front of them. He stamped on the brake and tore at the wheel, but he knew it was no good. He turned to his mother just as she turned to him, the smile still fading from her face.

  He woke up with a jolt when the hopper’s engines fired. He shook his head, trying to clear out the images. His doctor, when he asked her for something to stop the dream, had said it was post-traumatic stress disorder. She said he might have to relive that moment, over and over, for the rest of his life. But he hadn't had the dream for months now. Not until he saw Maria again.

  He used his cogplus to call up a clock and a map, both of which told him he was landing at Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport. He checked the weather – overcast – and thought about all the places he'd rather be than right there, right then.

  -oOo-

  “You're late.” The woman in the arrivals lounge had to be Peth. Not only was she incredibly, stunningly beautiful – the way only the very rich can afford to be – but she had that treating-you-like-snot attitude that people like to adopt when they are paying for your services. She looked about nineteen, but that didn't mean a thing these days. He set a search running on his favourite face-recognition service.

  “You're armed,” Rik replied, noticing the almost invisible bulge under her tailored jacket.

  She took a better look at him. “You're good.”

  Rik shrugged, hefting his bag and following her. “Not so much. A woman with a body like yours shouldn't hide her gun about her person. It's the first place a man would look. In fact, in your case, it's the only place he'd look.”

  “Funny guy,” she said, over her shoulder. “You should be on the stage.”

  “Nah. Never liked the stage. Too many lights and not enough shadow. You'd do OK, though. You wouldn't even need an act. The way you look, people would pay just to watch you standing there.”

  Peth laughed. “That's where you're wrong, tough guy. We all need an act.”

  She led him outside to where her car was waiting. He had expected a stretch limo – something big and flashy, maybe in white – but she got int
o a muscular, silver Mercedes sports car and popped the trunk for his bag. He joined her inside, sitting opposite her on a white leather bench seat. The car was fully automatic: no steering wheel, no dash, nothing except the seats at each end and the deep-pile carpet in between. She crossed her shapely legs and he took a moment to enjoy the show.

  The car started up – Peth was obviously instructing it through her cogplus – and moved smoothly and silently out into the traffic. Two other cars moved out from the kerb at the same time. Rik hoped they were just Peth's security.

  “So you're what?” she asked. “A professional bodyguard?”

  Rik didn't think for a minute that Peth was doing anything but teasing him.

  “PLEO,” he told her, pronouncing it plee-oh, like everyone else did, not spelling it out like other plee-ohs he knew. “This isn't the kind of work I normally take on.” As a UN-licensed private law enforcement operative, he was basically a PI, but with a permit that covered most of SolSystem.

  She smiled, but not in a nice way. “Hard times, huh?”

  “That's enough about me,” Rik said. “Let's talk about you. You're not what I expected when they said I'd be meeting someone at this end. It must be a very valuable package.”

  “How do you figure that, Mr. Drew?”

  “Call me Rik. I'll call you Peth, even though that's not your full name, Mrs. Newton Cordell.”

  “Wow, he can run database searches too! I'm impressed.”

  “So, what is the wife of the system's richest man doing running little errands in the company of strangers?”

  “I'm just taking you to pick up a little parcel.” She smiled to herself, enjoying some private joke. “It belongs to my husband. It's something I want to see delivered safely to him. His office did some research and your name came up. I hope you're up to the job, Rik.”

  “It's going to be tough, keeping my eye on you, but I think I'll manage.”