Drifter by William C. Dietz

Author:William C. Dietz [Dietz, William C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0-441-16813-2
Publisher: EReads
Published: 2008-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

11

Lester Haas was bored and had been for some time. He was a small man, strong for his size, and as plain as an unmarked envelope. That's why it was so easy for him to sit in the middle of the arrival lounge without attracting attention. Something he'd done every day for the past three weeks.

It was fun at first, a nice change from life as a bounty hunter, living off a Mega-Metals expense account while waiting for people to happen by. But it was extremely boring. You spot someone, file a report, and sit around some more. Haas would have enough money to buy his passage out in another week or two. Maybe he'd try his hand at roid mining or join someone's army. Anything would be better than this.

Haas crossed his legs, refolded the news fax to the sports section, and scanned the immediate area. The synthi-leather-covered seats started right in front of Techno's entry point and radiated outward like ripples in a pond. About a third were occupied.

Very few of the people around Haas were waiting for incoming passengers. Most were too poor to live in anything more spacious than an hourly sleep slot, and used the lounge as a communal sitting room. They read, watched portable holo players, or munched on the wide variety of food available from the roving robo-vendors.

And others, even those with a bit more money, came to enjoy the high ceiling, the lush islands of green plants that dotted the lounge, and the slowly moving star field that could be seen through the transparent duraplast high overhead.

Bit by bit the lounge had come to serve as a social center,

much like the town squares common to recently settled rim worlds, or the gigantic shopping malls of Terra.

So there were all sorts of people in the lounge, long-time residents and newcomers alike, walking, talking, or just taking a nap.

Haas compared their faces and body types to the hundreds that had been chemically and electronically memprinted onto his cerebral cortex, found a zero correlation, and turned his attention to the sports page.

Like any large corporation, Mega-Metals had a lot of friends and a lot of enemies. Both bore watching. In the dog-eat-dog world of competition, today's friend could be tomorrow's enemy. Information could spell the difference between profit and loss.

That's why Mega-Metals paid Haas, and thousands of others, to gather information. And Techno was the perfect place to do it. The scientific habitat functioned as a sort of economic and political crossroads, a place where all sorts of sentients met, and intrigue was a way of life.

That made the place worth watching, not just by Mega-Metals, but by all the larger corporations, and the government as well.

Haas smiled to himself. He wondered what would happen if he stood on his chair and asked all the spies to raise their right hands. The ex-bounty hunter imagined a hundred hands stabbing the air all at once. Would anyone be left? Was anyone an innocent? Or were all of them watching each other?

Haas felt a chill run down his spine.

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