my holster on the outside of my suit. I pulled out my gun and ran toward the stalled vehicle—and the sight of me charging in with weapon drawn had the effect I wanted. Lakshmi popped the canopy on Juan’s car—it opened mechanically rather than electrically, for safety reasons—and she and Reiko scrambled out.
My legs were longer than theirs, and I soon overtook them. We stood facing each other with just five meters of rusty, dusty plain between us. Reiko was in a suit of a darker green than my own and Lakshmi again had on a red one. All of us still had our fishbowls polarized, meaning the women might not have yet identified me; I, of course, could tell which of them was which by their heights.
Behind me, as a glance over my shoulder confirmed, Gargantuan Gargalian was waddling in, and he was now raising his rifle. It looked like Lakshmi Chatterjee’s stint as Shopatsky House writer-in-residence was about to end with a bang.
FORTY
Ilooked down at my wrist controls to see what frequency my radio was using, then held up my left hand with three fingers raised, then changed it to four fingers.
Lakshmi dipped her opaque helmet slightly in a nod. Both she and Reiko touched their own wrist controls, presumably punching in frequency thirty-four. But neither of them said anything, instead waiting for me to speak. And so I did: “All right. The jig is up. Let her go.”
I glanced over my shoulder again, just to get a sense of where Ernie now was, and—
Oh. He’d never met either of them, and their helmets were polarized. He’d had to choose which woman to take a bead on, and he’d mistakenly chosen Reiko. I opened my mouth to say something, but stopped when a pair of hands reached for the butterscotch sky. One of the raised hands, I saw now, was holding a tiny pistol. But the person raising her hands in surrender wasn’t Lakshmi Chatterjee—it was Reiko Takahashi.
Lakshmi reacted instantly, her right arm lashing out to seize the gun, which she promptly pressed into Reiko’s side. In the second it took for that to happen, it hit me: it hadn’t been Lakshmi who had kidnapped Reiko; it had been Reiko who had kidnapped Lakshmi, so that she could force Lakshmi to show her where the Alpha was. Reiko must have broken her own door lock before going to get Lakshmi—preparing an alibi for when she returned home alone; no one would blame her if she’d had to off her captor to get away.
“Back off, Lomax,” Lakshmi said, “or the little bitch gets it.” She must have recognized my voice, since all four of us still had polarized fishbowls—which was half the reason I hadn’t figured out the dynamic between Lakshmi and Reiko; I hadn’t been able to see their expressions.
I kept my gun aimed at Lakshmi. “You won’t shoot me. I’m the only one who knows the code to turn your buggy back on.”
“If I shoot you,” Lakshmi said, “a seat opens up on that airplane—so I don’t need the code.”
I chinned the control that depolarized my helmet; the sun was high enough now that it wouldn’t be in my eyes facing this way. Lakshmi must have decided it was indeed better that we see each other, because her fishbowl grew transparent, too.
Ernie was on the same radio frequency as me, of course. He spoke for the first time. “My dear lady,” he said, “we’re all after the same thing. But the Alpha Deposit has wealth galore, enough to satiate the desires of each of us. There’s no call for anything disagreeable to happen here.”
“Who are you?” Lakshmi said.
“Ernest Gargalian,” he replied, with a portly, courtly bow. “Proprietor of Ye Olde Fossil Shoppe.” He depolarized his own helmet, revealing his round face and slicked-back hair.
Judging by her expression, Lakshmi recognized neither his name nor that of his establishment, which was too bad because no one who did know Ernie would ever threaten him. His operatives would avenge his death—and some of them were transfers. “Just so you know,” I said to Lakshmi, “if this godforsaken planet has a Mister Big, he’s it.”
Reiko must have chinned her polarization control, too, because her helmet also grew clear. Her voice was filled with wonder. “You’re Ernie Gargalian?”
“At your service.”
“I—I didn’t know you were on Mars. I didn’t know you were even still alive.”