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  Sallow Behdul lay not far away, similarly unconscious. The thick soles of his shoes had completely disintegrated. Or rather dissipated, the artfully shaped and solidified chemicals of which they had been fashioned having by now completely filled the security room and much of the storage complex with a narcoleptic gas that was odorless, colorless, undetectable by the sensors that continued to sit silently in their respective holders, and very effective. Focused on the edgy Subar, the beauteous Zezula, and the garrulous Chaloni, Boujon and his subordinates had made the mistake of paying little attention to the silent and complaisant Sallow Behdul. Big mistake.

  Behdul was soft-spoken. Not stupid.

  Several minutes passed. Within the security room and the complex at large nothing moved. Then a portal opened at the east end of the main building. A small stolen transport vehicle entered as the door closed behind it. Several alarms went off and were ignored. No one notified the nearest police facility of the unauthorized intrusion because the last thing the owners and operators of the complex wanted was representatives of local law enforcement poking through their diverse inventory of highly illegal imports. The complex had been tailored to be guarded and protected from within.

  Not this morning.

  The transport whined to a halt halfway into the complex and pivoted neatly on its axis so that it was pointed back in the direction of the doorway. Two figures emerged, one from each side of the vehicle. Over their faces they wore recycling masks to protect them from the persistent, long-acting gas. Walking quickly but without panic toward the security center, they found captives and captors alike collapsed on the floor. A nearby console was alive with warning lights, which were ignored.

  Working swiftly and efficiently, just as they had practiced, Dirran and Missi slipped masks over the faces of their four anesthetized friends. Once this was done, injectors packed with revival antidote were slapped onto arms or legs. Coughing and swallowing repeatedly, Chaloni, Subar, Zezula, and Sallow Behdul rapidly regained consciousness. Small sidearms matching those the two newcomers carried were provided to the revived, though if everything went according to Chaloni’s plan these would not have to be used.

  So far, Subar decided as he wiped at his eyes and struggled to his feet, everything had gone exactly as rehearsed.

  The alchem broker who had sculpted the shoe-sole-shaped gas solids had assured Chal that in the absence of the antidote, anyone inhaling a good, stiff lungful of the stuff would remain asleep for hours. That should give them more than enough time, Subar knew, to pick and choose the choicest items from among the storage complex’s inventory. Rising, he brushed himself off. So subtle had been effects of the gas that he could barely remember passing out.

  His opinion of Chaloni, which had always been a mix of respect, admiration, and wariness, rose considerably. It had all gone just as he had enthusiastically described it. The security staff lay sprawled all around them, maskless and insensible. The whole point of their elaborate individual attempts to penetrate the building’s security had been to distract and preoccupy the guards—mentally as well as physically—and to get them off station and gathered together in one place. He smiled. They had been so busy bringing in him and his friends that once that had been accomplished, they had relaxed. It was critical that they do so, because as tough as he and his friends thought themselves, Chaloni knew they could never have outmaneuvered or overpowered trained adult professionals.

  Gathered together in one place, however, they could then be brought down by the solidified gas that formed the soles of Sallow Behdul’s shoes. Of course, for the subterfuge to work, it would hardly do for Subar and his friends to be found with antidotes, much less face masks, on their person. They had to subject themselves to the knockout effects of the same gas as their targets.

  Now that Dirran and Missi had entered and revived them, they could get down to business. Subar let his gaze take in the impressive contents of the storage complex. Chal was right. They were going to be rewarded with cred beyond their wildest dreams. And the best part of it was that the illegal importers, whoever they were, couldn’t report the boost to the police. Making sure his mask was sealed tightly to his face, he started for the doorway. A voice made him halt and whirl.

  “Tlali!” It was Dirran, calling out from the back of the security room. “One of these scrugs is still kicking!”

  Literally, Subar saw as he and the others hurried to respond to Dirran’s cry of distress. Lying on his right side on the floor, the guard called Joh kept kicking out with his left leg, like a dreaming dog. Chaloni looked disgusted.

  “Is that all he’s doing? If it bothers you, make him stop.” He hesitated a moment before adding, “Don’t kill him. So far we haven’t had to kill anybody. Let’s try to keep it that way. Not that it makes any difference to me,” he added smarmily, “but a ’radication might force whoever runs this operation to bring in the authorities even if they don’t want to.” Turning, he and the others left to begin rifling through the building’s inventory.

  That left Subar and Dirran alone with the semi-conscious guard. Subar eyed the body uncertainly. “He’s breathing funny, too.”

  “Sure he’s breathing funny.” In Chaloni’s absence, Dirran readily assumed the mantle of leader. “His respiratory system is full of the gas. Here, I’ll show you how it’s done.” Looking around, the older boy chose a chair, raised it above his head, and brought it down on the side of the prone guard’s head with just the right degree of emphasis. The reflexive leg-kicking stopped immediately.

  Pleased with himself, Dirran set the chair aside. “See? If you don’t want to kill somebody, it’s better to hit ’em lighter but more often, until you’ve achieved the desired effect.”

  Leaning toward the body, Subar frowned uncertainly. “Looks like you might’ve smashed in part of his skull. I see a definite depression where you hit him.”

  “Yeah, well.” Dirran sounded less assured. “Can’t be too bad. I didn’t hit him that hard.” Resolutely adopting a more cheerful note, he added, “Let’s go join the others. Don’t want to be left out of the looting.” He turned and headed for the entrance.

  Subar lingered just a moment longer. There was something peculiar about the now entirely inert guard. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Something about the way that leg had kept kicking out, about bulges of muscle where there shouldn’t be any and a lack of muscle where it ought to be prominent. About how the right side of the head had been partially caved in by the swing of Dirran’s chair, but without the expected echo of cracking bone. His natural curiosity drove him to want to examine the body further.

  But Dirran was right. If he stayed here, poking and prodding the unconscious guard, he’d miss out on the chance to pocket a few small souvenirs of his own. That interested in the guard he was not. Turning, he broke into a run as he hurried in Dirran’s wake. Like his companions, where Subar was concerned, cred triumphed curiosity every time.

  Having thought better of Subar, Flinx would have found the younger boy’s blanket identification with his friends simultaneously enlightening and depressing.

  Deprived of its watchful sentries, the warehouse was a giant candy store. An ordinary group of youths would have found it interesting but would have been overwhelmed and confused by the surfeit of merchandise on offer. Not Chaloni and his gang. Having been apprised of the nature of its most valuable stock prior to planning the raid, he had a pretty good idea what to ignore and what to pull for loading onto the transport Dirran and Missi had brought.

  Larger Terran objects such as the Roman-era statue were ignored. While immensely valuable, they were too conspicuous to be hauled around Malandere. “Take nothing bigger than you can carry by yourself” was Chaloni’s directive.

  Into the transport went a Sung dynasty plate, all blue-and-white earthly ceramic and bonded against the elements in its transparent protective cocoon. Even to Subar’s uneducated eyes it was a thing of beauty. Chaloni had to explain to a curious Sallow Behdul that the e
ncasement was necessary to preserve the plate because it could easily be broken. Behdul absorbed this information in disbelief. Poor as his family was, he had never encountered or even heard of a serving dish that was neither biodegradable nor impervious to shattering.

  Missi found a small, vacuum-sealed bottle full of flower seeds. Flowers from Earth! As an organic, it was a doubly illegal import. That would not matter to the wealthy collector who would pay whatever was asked to acquire such a prize. The bottle had the additional virtue of being small, nondescript, and easily concealed. Other venerable antiques existed only as fragments of what had once been: half a Russian gold coin, a manual bottle opener with the insignia of the long-vanished Terran brewery still visible on the handle, a printed two-dimensional poster of an unknown actress from the distant past, half a dozen garishly imprinted drink cups made of the early and rare artificial material known as Styrofoam, a real book composed of pages fashioned of tree paper written by a long-forgotten author named Aram Fotep, and much, much more.

  As they worked, electronic sensors tracked their movements. Relayed to security central, these set off alarm after alarm. The visual ones the laughing, frolicking young intruders could not see. The audible alarms they ignored. Their rampage was frenetic but controlled; a frenzy of unzipped cartons, debonded containers, and shredded shipping packets.

  Though the original plan called for all plunder to be gathered in one place and the proceeds to be shared equally, youthful venality rapidly triumphed over collective purpose. A fair number of smaller objects found their way into shoes and pockets. Subar managed to secrete on his person a battered spoon fashioned of some cheap metal whose head flaunted a depiction of something called THE GATEWAY ARCH and a small, square package of pepper on which was printed the name of a restaurant. Astonishingly, and adding greatly to the value, it still contained its minute quantity of venerable if no longer viable Terran spice. He had no idea what these things might be worth, only that they were worth something.

  Coincidental with the arrival of the first hint of morning sunshine, they shut the rear and side doors of the transport, piled in, and abandoned the building to its still-unconscious security staff and its surfeit of winking, wailing alarms. No one challenged them as they drove off. As they made their way out into the maze of the commercial district, going neither too fast nor too slow, other similar vehicles could be seen taken on cargo or delivering goods. Their vehicle, stolen especially for the early morning’s work, drew no attention. Once out of the commercial district, they kept clear of the main transportation arteries, sticking to lesser surface accessways, sacrificing speed and automated navigation for control and continued anonymity.

  At last convinced that they had pulled it off and were safely clear, the whoops and hollers of the excited perpetrators resounded inside the goods-filled transport. Even the normally jaded and indifferent Zezula joined in the joyful celebration. The kiss she bestowed on a startled Subar was as shocking and unexpected as anything that had happened to him that morning, and as valued as anything he had managed to conceal on his person. It left him feeling at once confused, agitated, and energized in ways he could not describe as he began to peel away his facial sprayon.

  Around him, his companions were doing likewise. Chaloni, who had chosen the appearance of an older, pudgier youth of Oriental mien, was flinging shards of collated collagen in all directions. Missi was carefully peeling away her albino visage to reveal the much darker natural complexion beneath. Sallow Behdul exposed his naked and tattooed pate by dispensing with the long black wig he had worn. Nearby, Zezula had slipped out of the shoes that had added six centimeters to her height and was busily divesting herself of the false stomach that had given her the look of a woman in the middle stages of pregnancy.

  The warehouse’s automated monitoring devices, both prominent and concealed, that would undoubtedly have recorded their activities would reveal to anyone reviewing the numerous recordings a group of six active youths in the process of pillaging the warehouse—not one of whom bore any readily distinguishable relationship to Subar and his friends. The cosmetic sprayons they now gleefully discarded had been created by Missi, the most artistically inclined of the group. They had then been rendered in Shell, purchased anonymously, and applied in secret. There was no trail for any active pursuer to track. Let the outraged owners of the storage complex put out huge rewards for all of them. They would be attached to idents that bore no visible relation to the half a dozen buoyant youths who were presently celebrating their good fortune in the interior of the shrouded transport.

  They had only one bad moment, when a police skimmer appeared directly in front of them. It did not slow as it approached them, however, and thrummed past overhead without slowing or pausing to challenge the vehicle with the hastily altered ident code. No further interruptions ensued as they reached the inner-city rental storage facility, identified themselves to the automated security system, entered, and backed the transport into the secure holding compartment Chaloni had rented.

  Working silently and in tandem, it took barely an hour to unload, catalog, and stack the spoils. More time was expended piling used household goods of little value on top and around the booty. Leaving their pickings suitably camouflaged, they drove out the transport and sealed the storage locker behind them. So that none of them would feel the least bit apprehensive or slighted, Chaloni magnanimously allowed each of them to enter their signature retinal and bioelectrical impulses into the facility’s security system. Now any one of them could access the rented unit.

  “We don’t want to go putting anything up for sale right away,” he counseled his companions as the abandoned stolen transport exited the area and drove itself off. “We need to let the boosted nap, need to let the noise subside a little.” His face was flushed with the excitement and triumph of what they had just pulled off. “Then we’ll start selling. A few items at a time, to different fences. The cred will flow!”

  Following Chaloni’s final programming, the stolen transport headed for Inatuku, a city on the far side of Visaria. The likelihood of it being traced back to him, or to any of them, was remote. They then split up, traveling separately by public transport and on foot, until they rendezvoused later that afternoon at the priv place on the roof of the old building in Alewev District.

  The brief, earlier celebration inside the transport notwithstanding, it was only then that they all really cut loose. Even Sallow Behdul was smiling and laughing, though he said as little as ever. Chaloni surprised them all by breaking out a packet of mojolo stim-sticks. Very high quality, imported from Fluva, and a varietal they had heard of but had not previously been able to try out. Everyone promptly lit up. Within minutes, the interior of the meeting room was awash in the fragrant airborne stimulus. Colors intensified, the sour stink of their immediate surroundings was banished, and all the troubles and tribulations of their otherwise barely tolerable, wretched existences were wafted away on a haze of aromatic smoke.

  After a while, Subar was aware someone was in his arms. At first he took her to be Missi, but soon realized it was Zezula. Her eyes were glassy, her expression beatific. Sprawled across an old couch on the other side of the room with less than a third of a stimstick remaining clamped in his slash of a mouth, Chaloni was grinning across at him. Subar had always been by turns respectful, chary, and envious of the gang leader. But at that moment, he would have died for him.

  Though it did not seem so at that especially mind-blowing moment on that particularly jubilant afternoon, it was a possibility that was not as far from reality as he might have wished.

  CHAPTER

  10

  They should have waited several months before trying to market the first of their spoils. Being of a youthful and impatient age, they waited several days. Not even the usually reflective Chaloni was immune to the insistent lure of instant cred. They were each and every one of them dead broke, having spent everything they had been able to accumulate or borrow to finance the raid. In the e
nd, the temptation proved too great.

  Chaloni chose the fence carefully. First he vetted the woman via contacts throughout Alewev. Then he paid a visit in person to sell a comparatively inconsequential packet of activated medicines Missi had picked up off the street. Finally satisfied with the choice, he selected a couple of small but extremely valuable items from the hidden stockpile and set off across Malandere with Subar in tow. Pretending to be his “slow” younger brother, Subar would serve as a second pair of eyes and as armed backup.

  “I’ve never used a gun before,” he argued when the older boy explained his intentions. “Knives, a stunner—but never a gun.”

  Chaloni pressed the compact pistol into Subar’s reluctant hand. “Since everything is going to go according to plan, you won’t have to use it this time, either. But there are times, y’know, when it’s enough to let someone else know that you have a gun.”

  Subar indicated his understanding, conflicted between secret pleasure at having been chosen by Chaloni to accompany him in place of the older Dirran or Sallow Behdul, and concern at having to tote a high-powered weapon.

  He relaxed a little when they entered the shop.

  It looked a lot like a miniature version of the storage facility they had raided, only with all the goods crammed together, out on display, and none concealed by packaging. The assortment struck him as highly eclectic: a lot of junk interspersed with a few objects of real value. The presence of so much of the former might be intended to draw attention to the latter, he decided.

  The middle-aged woman seated behind the long counter flashed maternal as they entered. “Wellup, wellin, boys.” She had a permanent squint, a relic of imperfect ocular surgery, and wagged a finger at Chaloni. “You sold me those pop-pills, as I recalling.” Her gaze flicked to Subar. “Who’s this sprightly youngster?” Subar bristled at the “youngster.” She might tag him differently if she could see the pistol presently residing in his right front pant pocket.