Fixer Page 16

  “I was supposed to contact someone after I arrived,” she told me. “I remember an address of a place to wait for him until he made contact. That’s all I know. The address.”

  The brain leech hadn’t left much current information, but we might as well take advantage of the memories she still had.

  “Okay," I agreed, “give me the address. If it’s not too far, we’ll go there.”

  It was less than three blocks away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The safehouse was in a residential part of the station.

  Most of the neighborhoods outside of the docks appeared to be run-down. It wasn’t until you worked your way two levels up that the environment improved. There were some places that were still in good shape down here, though. Small pockets of hard-working beings who did their best to keep up the grounds and make the needed repairs. Sometimes, they sat back in alcoves carved out of the original asteroid; sometimes, they were designated locations that families moved into generations ago and refused to relocate to the higher levels.

  We walked into the small crevice of Terrantown an hour after I’d left the scene of Drez’s killing. So far, Zilpha hadn’t said much. I could see that her brother’s death was still weighing on her mind. I didn’t want to bring it up, and I was certain she didn’t want to be reminded of it. I knew that at one time, the two of them were close.

  “It’s right down here,” I told Rashina as we made our way toward the address she’d given me. The residential section gave way to a small industrial court, which didn’t surprise me. This would be a good area if you were bringing people in and out during the day. Someone would notice the activity if it took place in a neighborhood where working people lived.

  The address was a section that had four units in it. Since this was an industrial area, none of them had a storefront or any kind of picture window at the entrance. It wasn’t even easy to tell the name of the company that occupied each slice. The light from the cavern roof was turned down to simulate nighttime on Old Earth.

  “This is the place,” I informed Rashina. “Do you know the name of which company the safehouse is? They all have the same address.” A flashlight would’ve been nice in that situation, but I had to make do with the ambient light.

  Rashina walked down the line and looked at each card that listed the name of the company inside. Each had a security lock on the front door. We stood in a small parking area, but there were no vehicles around.

  I’d glanced at the names when we arrived. There was a transport repair shop, a metal fabricator, a locksmith, and a glue company. I betted on the locksmith.

  I bet wrong: “Here it is,” Rashina announced. She pointed at the glue company.

  “So, how do we get in there?” I asked her. “Is there a way to deactivate the alarm, or do I have to bust the window?”

  Rashina walked up to the security lock and punched out a few numbers. There was a click, and the red light on the lock turned green. She swung the door open and stepped inside. Zilpha and I followed quickly.

  The light came on the moment we were inside. Rashina held the door and shut it behind us the moment we were all past. I heard the click of an automatic lock.

  The front office wasn’t much more than a few desks, file cabinets, and sample cases. I could see a larger desk in a joined room and several other doors that led to other offices. Anyone who stopped by would assume the name of the company fit what went on inside it.

  Rashina went over to the back door, which would, in most cases, lead to a storage section. It too had a security lock on it. She punched out a code, and it unlocked.

  Need to get those codes, I thought to myself.

  This time, the door opened to what I expected. There was one hallway that terminated at a steel door to the outside. On either side of the hallway were smaller rooms. Some had large beds, some bunks, and a few with tables. One room was a kitchen area with a refrigerator that I later found to be well-stocked. This was what you wanted in a safehouse.

  We fanned out and looked at the back area. Nothing that could tie the people who set it up to the outside. No inflammatory political books, no magazines about guns... nothing you would expect dangerous radicals to own. Everything in there was a popular publication or a latest bestselling book.

  “Somebody’s been here recently,” Zilpha called out from another room.

  We went to her and found the room to contain several bunk beds. One of the beds was unmade. The last person who’d slept in it had left in a hurry.

  “Do you have any idea who runs this place?” I asked Rashina. “Any logbooks or people who show up to work on the weekdays?”

  She shook her head. “All I knew was this was the place I was to report to,” she explained.

  “Do you remember who it was that sent you here?” I asked her as we looked the room over. There were no windows that faced the outside. It wasn’t that they were bricked over; the unit was a middle section of the small building in this part of the industrial court.

  “I don’t know,” she answered as her eyes slowly looked the room over. It was hard to tell how long the last person had been here, but they had left recently.

  “I don’t remember much about what happened from the time I boarded the ship to when I arrived,” Rashina explained. “I don’t remember much about my past at all. There’re some things I do know, like the location of the safehouse and the numbers that unlocked it, but not much more. I can’t explain it better.” Rashina seemed to be in a daze.

  “The brain leech,” Zilpha concluded. “It took a lot out. Figures my brother would’ve used it on her. He didn’t have much regard for anyone other than himself.”

  “Not much we can do about discovering what he took,” I responded. “We need to lay low for a while until I can figure out how to get us off-world.”

  “You think we can do that?” Zilpha asked. “They’ll be watching every port. It won’t be like walking out of the Irunian legation. They have to check our ID cards multiple time before we can leave. Ditto for any place we want to visit. Most decent places don’t care for fugitives showing up unannounced.”

  “They have to know who we are,” I pointed out. “There’s always ways to fix that. I know people who do it all the time. I just locate them and get the help I need. It won’t be cheap, but I’ve got some cash hidden away.”

  “You better have a lot of cash,” Zilpha observed. “The militia will tie you into Drez’s death and then, you’ll be on the run from them too.”

  “I’ll worry about that later,” I said by way of a dismissal.

  I decided that some decent food was in order. I’d already checked out the refrigerator in the kitchen area. It was stocked with enough food to keep us fed for another week. The trashcan was empty, but I had no idea if it was cleaned daily. None of the waste cans in the outer office had trash in them, so it was safe to assume that no one came here often, unless the trash out there was also disposed every day.

  I sat the two women down at a table and went to the refrigerator to pull out some ready-mix food. I don’t like to cook, but sometimes, you need to do things yourself. I didn’t know what kind of condition the women were in now. Zilpha was in a bit of shock at her brother’s death. As for Rashina, I didn’t know a whole lot about where she came from. Plus, she was not someone I’d want doing complicated tasks right away. If Drez had used a brain leech on her, there was all manner of side effects we needed to keep in mind.

  To tell you the truth, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, he’d used one on her. She seemed to remember the important things. I don’t know how the information of where she was to go and how to unlock the door was implanted in her mind, but it seemed odd that she had those memoring but couldn’t remember anything else of value. For all I knew, she could be a plant too, just like Dentata.

  “You’re hurting over Drez,” I said to Zilpha as I sat the food down in front of everyone. “I can tell.” And there was the fact that I’d been the instrument of his death. Th
is wouldn’t go over well at all.

  “I’m glad it’s over,” Zilpha told us, as she looked up from her food. “I knew it would happen someday, so I can’t say I was surprised. At least, my parents never lived to see him end up the way he did.”

  “Maybe when this is all over, you can arrange a memorial," I ventured.

  “No!" she shouted with a slam to the table with her fist. “He’s dead. I’m glad he is! He was the death of my mother. She worried and blamed herself for the way he turned out. The bastard killed her, as far as I’m concerned.” She looked at the table and glared. I could tell she was in a bad place, and it wasn’t a good idea to try pulling her out yet.

  “I know you’ve lost someone close,” Rashina said to Zilpha as she placed her hand on Zilpha’s shoulder.

  The effect this had on Zilpha was immediate. I saw Zilpha raise her head and open her eyes wide. I could see her skin flush red. Her eyes changed color several times as I sat there and stared. It was a reaction unlike I’d ever seen. I’d known the Angelikans could send out signals that allowed them to empathize with people, but this was an effect I’d never witnessed before.

  Rashina kept her hand in place and closed her eyes. I watched as she jerked a few times and opened her mouth a bit. There was something going on inside her that I couldn’t understand, but she’d found a way to connect with Zilpha. Once more, I understood why these people were considered holy by every major religion in the galaxy. Why had Drez bought her from the whorehouse? Did he recognize something in her? I’d thought he did it for the information in her mind, but how did he know what she held in there if Korth hadn’t told him to do it? Drez was gone, and there was no way we would ever find out.

  Unless Korth obtained the dead body and used a brain leech on what was left. I didn’t think Korth would do that, because it would tie him too closely to Zilpha’s brother. The last thing he wanted was to find himself the target of a war crimes investigation, which is how the use of a brain leech on a live subject would be interpreted.

  Rashina removed her hand and put it down to one side. Zilpha stayed in her moment for a few minutes, blinked her eyes, then turned to look at the Angelika woman next to her. I watched her eyes turn purple once again. This had to be one of the fastest cases of love at first sight I’d ever encountered.

  “I wasn’t sure you would look good in my clothes,” Zilpha said to her, “but I think you look very nice in them.” Zilpha reached her hand out and stroked the fabric on the jacket Rashina wore. I noted she was careful enough not to contact the other woman’s bare skin.

  She looked across the table at me. “Stefan, “she said with throaty breaths. “Do you think it’s safe for me to go outside for a few minutes? I need to smoke and don’t want to mess up the air inside this place.”

  “Sure," I replied to her. “You can go out the same way we came in. Have Rashina give you the numbers for the pass codes. I could use them myself, just in case any of us get separated.”

  Rashina spoke the code numbers several times until both of us had them committed to memory.

  “Do those ever change?” I asked her. “I’m guessing they’re good for today, but I don’t know about tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know,” Rashina responded. “It’s all I could remember. The location and the lock codes.”

  Zilpha turned back to me and smiled. “I’d feel safer if you would come out there with me,” she said. “Rashina should be fine in here by herself.” She turned back to Rashina. “We won’t be gone long.”

  Rashina nodded her head and went back to her food.

  I had some idea what went through Zilpha’s mind the moment Rashina touched her. We’d been together long enough that I could probe Zilpha without much resistance. She didn’t like it and would politely ask me to stay out of her fucking mind whenever I did try, unless there was a specific reason she wanted me to be probed. Tonight, she went wide open when Rashina touched her. I saw every passionate moment in Zilpha’s life, including the ones she hadn’t mentioned. I made a note to ask her about one of them later, one that involved her and five Terran men (she was in the middle of that dogpile).

  I didn’t know you smoked," I said the moment we stepped out of the front door. The night warmed up a bit, which meant the air compressors were working hard.

  “I don’t," she told me as she leaned on the front door of the business next to the safehouse. “At least, not cigarettes. You know what I mean. Holy shit, that Angelika almost made me go change my underwear.”

  She moved away from the wall and placed one arm around my waist. “Stefan, I know I caused you no end of trouble on account of my brother,” she said, “but I do appreciate you.” She leaned on my arm.

  “I know you were close with him at one time,” I said. “I didn’t want it to end the way it did, but he left me with no choice." I could tell that the loss was still hard on her.

  “Better it be you than one of Korth’s goons,” she told me. “I’d warned him most of his life that he’d end up that way. He wouldn’t listen and now, it’s too late.”

  She was silent for a seconds before she changed the subject. “Rashina.". “What do you think about her?” she asked as she looked up into my eyes.

  In the distance, I could hear the rotors of VTOL as it brought a supply of something to one of the starships on the dock. There were other sounds in the night, but very few from the residents of this place. Most of the people who lived here went to bed early.

  “It’s hard to know much of anything about her,” I answered. “I can’t penetrate her mind. I get a complete blank on her. Happens with some people, but I think a lot was damaged in her deep memory. Most of the time, memories are holographic and reconstruct themselves. Not with her. I don’t know what your brother did or took, but she’s almost wiped clean on the inside.”

  Zilpha took a few steps from me and looked into the distance. Now, her eyes were deep purple.

  “I want her," she said. “You might think it’s silly, but we connected hard when she touched me. That girl made things light up inside me that few women ever have.”

  “A bit different from me?” I asked her. I had to go there. I did.

  “It’s a lot different with women than men,” she tried to explain. “And not in the plumbing. It’s one of the reasons I can’t give up those old girlfriends of mine, as big of pains in the ass as they might be. That Angelika girl made we want to settle down and have babies.”

  “Be sure to send me a wedding announcement.”

  “Hah, you’re funny. It’s not like I’m in a situation where that can happen. Besides, dammit, I still want you. Am I making sense?”

  “You make as much sense as any other woman I’ve ever been with.”

  “That wasn’t nice,” Zilpha pouted.

  “What do you expect me to say?” I tossed back at her. “Do you want my blessing so you can go back in there and show her page 56 of the Art of Oral Love? She’s not right in the head. Can’t you tell that? I can’t agree to you pulling Rashina into your sleeping bag when she may have damages that can’t be repaired."

  “Is there any way you can fix her head?” Zilpha asked me.

  I thought for a minute. I wasn’t certified to do deep mental probing, which was required if I was going to repair the kind of damage Drez had done to her. Still, if there were some basic memories of her past life inside her Angelika head, all I needed to do was find where they were located, and her mind would take care of itself.

  “I can try," I told her. “Can’t promise that what we’ll find out will be the same innocent little animal you’ve fallen in love with. You do know that she put a fix on you when you made contact with her?”

  A touch like that could turn a person into a love addict. I’d witnessed the effects of that before, and they never ended prettily. I didn’t think Rashina did it on purpose, but it didn’t matter. Right now, Zilpha wanted to be under the sheets with Rashina and nibble on her ear. I blinked. Well, she did want me there too, but that
position just wasn’t practical… Change that. It would be practical for the two women if I was on my back and they....

  Dammit, I thought, that glamour she put on Zilpha is leaking into me. I need to get it under control.

  “Let’s go back in there and see what I can do,” I offered.

  We went back into the safehouse and sure both doors were locked behind us. I could hear Zilpha’s rapid breathing and knew she was excited. I picked up a bit of it and looked down. Damn, that one was a boner for the record books. I hadn’t been this ready since I was in the barracks on aa battle day.

  We found her in one of the solitary bedrooms.

  Rashina had turned down the light to a soft glow and toned it to a seductive shade of red. We walked into the room and found her in the largest bed in the room, which, with irony, was round. There was a net around it, which let me know what this room was reserved for in the past. Also, there were an assortment of toys and personal lubricants laid out on the counter of the nightstand next to the bed.

  Rashina was stretched out on the bed, looking up at us. Her icy skin glistened with a thin layer of moisture. She looked up with her big eyes and parted her lips.

  “I’m ready,” she spoke to us. “Don’t make me wait much longer, or I’m going to explode” She moved one hand between her legs and moaned.

  Zilpha pulled the netting away from one side of the bed and lay down next to her. I parted the other side but stayed upright as I sat down.

  “It seems Rashina hasn’t forgotten everything,” I said. I reached out one hand and took Zilpha’s in mine.

  The moment Zilpha took Rashina’s free hand, she closed her eyes. I could feel the erotic energy flow through her body, through our joined hands, and into me. There was one more thing I needed to do.

  I reached out and laid one hand on Rashina’s back.

  I almost passed out.

  I don’t think I’d ever experienced a whole-body orgasm until that moment. It’s a bit hard to describe, but suffice it to say, my mind was sent into another dimension and took my balls along with it. I was reduced to a series of lightning bolts sent across the sky of some distant planet where the needles of power seared into my skull.