Man-Kzin Wars XII, Larry Niven [readnow .TXT] 📗

Now I knew the timeframe, but what was I doing staying in a place like that with half a million stars to my name? The answer came too easily. Hiding. That didn't help me believe in my own innocence. I took a drop shaft to level sixteen and found the place again. It was residential space awkwardly converted to daily rental cubes, the kind of place that takes cash and doesn't ask names. I had to ask the proprietor which cube was mine. He sent me to number twenty-three. The lock opened when I thumbed it, and I went inside.

Something slammed into me from behind, and suddenly my face was jammed into a corner. Something soft and strong had me by the neck, and three sharp needles pressed delicately against my jugular vein. A kzin. I made a mental note to complain to the management about their security.

"Where is my client, Dylan Thurmond?" he snarled.

"What client?" My life was getting progressively more confusing.

He spun me around to face him, and I found myself staring into bared fangs. "Opal Stone." The kzin was Bodyguard. "She is missing from your ship. I will have an answer." The needles pressed harder.

I shook my head as well as I could. "You were there when she brain-blanked me. I don't have any answers."

"Then I will have your life." His eyes got big and his ears swiveled up.

"I didn't kill her. I know that much." I didn't know that much, but I said it. I hoped it was true.

"I watched her board your ship. Now her blood is all over your airlock." His grip tightened again and I began to have trouble breathing.

"It wasn't me," I gasped.

"Prove it."

"It's too obvious, I've been set up." His eyes bored in to mine, his fangs inches from my face. "With a brain blank I can't even defend myself." The kzin's grip didn't slacken. "Whoever framed me did it." I was grasping at straws, making it up on the fly. "If you kill me you lose your only link to them."

He let go and I slumped to the floor, rubbing my neck. "Thanks for your restraint."

Bodyguard snarled. "My honor has been insulted with the death of my client. That has earned quick death for those responsible." His eyes were still locked on me. "Except if I find that it is you after all. Deception added to insult will make your death slow and painful."

I nodded slowly, and fervently hoped I wasn't deceiving him. Kzinti earn high as bodyguards because they make the consequences of even a successful attack too severe for the most determined assassin. Any smuggler who gets to Centauri System knows better than to cross a kzin. Their honor code demands vengeance regardless of cost, and they're all too enthusiastic about following it.

I went over to the bed and sat down. The tiny space was barely big enough for me. With me and a hostile kzin it was decidedly claustrophobic. "What happened after the Constellation?"

"Hrrr. Opal boarded the ship with you."

"What was in the package?"

"She was the package."

I tried to control my surprise. "Did you see her get on?"

"Yes. I watched until the ship left. Her safety was my responsibility."

"Tell me what you know, about Opal, about anything that might be important."

He turned over a paw and studied his extended talons. "Dr. Stone is senior vice president for finance at the Consortium."

"Dr. Stone?" My eyebrows went up. I had assumed she had a bodyguard because she was a holo actress. Now I knew better, and the news wasn't good. I was in way over my head. It occurred to me that she hadn't said a word to me in the entire encounter in the Constellation. Had she said anything on board Elektra?

"Where was she going?"

"Jinx."

"And when she got to Jinx?"

"I do not know that."

"Do you usually go with her on trips?"

"Sometimes. At other times not. I am not privy to the details of her business arrangements."

Another advantage of kzinti bodyguards is their lack of insight into the subtleties of human interaction. Opal Stone, what were you doing that you needed some desperate singleship pilot to take a brain blank? I might have refused to take her if I knew who she was. Relations between the Consortium and us independents are hardly smooth. And why didn't she take a Consortium ship?

I needed the money badly, but if I'd thought a little more carefully I never would have taken the job. A brain blank is just too serious. I'd counted on myself to be smart enough to not get into exactly this kind of trouble. Obviously I'd been wrong. Whoever framed me had done a good job.

Whoever had framed me. When I put it that way there was only one answer. Opal Stone worked for the Consortium, at war with the rockjacks and controlled by Reston Jameson. The room had a vidwall and on a hunch I pointed up Reston's last interview. It was dated yesterday, and his image filled the screen.

". . . very upset about this. This man already has a record for smuggling. I have being saying all along that the cost of allowing these fly-by-night singleship operators . . ."

I muted the audio and pointed texttrans along the bottom of the image so I didn't have to listen to his voice. He mentioned me by name and the thrust of his argument was the same as it always been. The major lines could handle cargo and passengers, the major exploration companies could handle prospecting and mining, and the murder of Opal wouldn't have happened if only . . .

I switched it off in disgust, unable even to read the text. He was going to use me as an excuse to shut down the singleships. I couldn't believe he was holding my smuggling record as a strike against me. Every pilot smuggled, it was practically expected.

"I smell your tension, Dylan Thurmond." Bodyguard wrinkled his nose in way that suggested my tension didn't smell very good.

Would Reston Jameson kill one of his own senior directors? It didn't