A Gathering of Widowmakers (The Widowmaker #4) Read online

  2.

  Giancola II was an unimpressive little planet, as were so many of the worlds of the Inner Frontier. The soil wasn't much good for farming, the ground didn't hold a lot of treasure, the mountains were too low for climbing and too lacking in snow for skiing, the oceans and rivers were filled with fish that humans couldn't metabolize, there were no indigenous sentient species, the climate was unexceptional.

  "Why did anyone ever settle here in the first place?" muttered Jeff as he checked the computer's readout prior to disembarking.

  "It was a neutral world where we held a lot of meetings with various alien species at the end of the Tamorian War," answered Kinoshita. "Some of the folks involved just stayed here. It does some banking, a little shipbuilding, and it has a pretty good hospital for cases that either can't make it back to the Oligarchy, or don't want to."

  "It's a dump."

  "You've spent your whole life out here on the Frontier. This looks like most of the other worlds you've seen."

  "That's right."

  "Then what are you comparing it to?"

  "I was created on Deluros VIII," said Jeff, referring to the Oligarchy's capital world.

  "I didn't think you'd know what you were seeing," said Kinoshita.

  "I was born a fully-formed adult with an adult's education and memories. The memories weren't mine, and I soon began replacing them, but I was always cogent, always aware of my surroundings and what I was doing." Jeff paused "You lived there for years. Do you ever miss it?"

  "The conveniences, sometimes. The crowds, the cost, the corruption, the total impersonality of it, never."

  "Then Giancola II should be just your speed."

  They emerged from the ship and walked into the small spaceport. A robot that was literally part of the Customs kiosk greeted them.

  "Welcome to Giancola II, garden spot of the Inner Frontier," it said with minimal inflection while Jeff fought the urge to argue with it. "Are you here for business or pleasure?"

  "Business."

  "May I inquire the nature of your business?"

  "That all depends," said Jeff.

  "On what, sir?"

  "On whether the laws of Giancola II say that I am required to tell you."

  "Yes, sir, you are."

  Jeff placed a disk on the counter. It began to glow as the robot scanned it with a long metallic forefinger.

  "I am a licensed bounty hunter. As you can see, the particulars of my license are appended to my passport."

  "Still checking . . ." murmured the robot. "Your passport and license are in order. I have transmitted this information to our local law enforcement officials, so that there will be no interference in the execution of your duties."

  "Nice choice of words," remarked Jeff dryly.

  "I do not understand, sir."

  "That's all right. Check my friend's passport and we'll be on our way."

  The robot examined Kinoshita's disk. "Sir, I must alert you that your bounty license will expire in forty-three days."

  "I know," said Kinoshita. "I'll take care of it."

  "You are cleared to pass through the spaceport. Enjoy your stay on Giancola II."

  Jeff and Kinoshita, tired of eating in the ship's galley, stopped at a small restaurant in the spaceport, then took an aircar into the only city on the planet, which was also called Giancola, after the member of the Pioneer Corps who had originally opened and mapped the world.

  "You'd better make a note to renew your license," remarked Jeff as they skimmed a few inches above the surface.

  "I'm thinking of letting it lapse," replied Kinoshita. "If you ever need my help, we're in deep shit."

  "Whatever makes you happy," said Jeff with a shrug. He looked ahead and saw they had almost reached the city.

  "Take us to the best hotel in town," he instructed the aircar.

  "I am incapable of making value judgments," replied the aircar.

  "Okay, take us to the most expensive hotel."

  "Yes, sir," said the aircar, altering its course and heading off to the southwest. In another moment it came to a halt in front of the Da Vinci Hotel and hovered motionless until its occupants stepped out.

  A robot doorman walked up to take their luggage, then froze when it saw they didn't have any. Jeff walked by it without giving it a second look and approached the front desk.

  "May I help you?" asked a middle-aged woman.

  "A real live human being," said Jeff. "You're the first I've seen since I landed."

  She smiled. "There are a lot of us, really there are. But the spaceport is fully automated. Have you a reservation?"

  Jeff shook his head. "No. I'd like a suite if you have one available, and my friend will take a room." He pressed his thumb down on a Spy-Eye scanner. "Charge both and all extras to my account at the Far London branch of the Bank of Deluros."

  "Yes, sir. Suite 319 will respond to your thumbprint or voiceprint. If your friend will please give me his print and say a word or two."

  "Beautiful day," said Kinoshita, placing his thumb on the scanner.

  "Room 320, sir," she said. "You'll be right across the hall from each other. How long will you be staying?"

  "I'm not sure," answered Jeff. "I wonder if you could do me a favor?"

  "If it's within my power," responded the woman.

  "I'm looking for someone, and I have reason to believe he may be on Giancola II."

  She glanced down at a hidden screen on her side of the registration desk, then looked up disapprovingly. "You are a bounty hunter, Mr. Nighthawk."

  "My credentials are in order. I'm here after a very dangerous man."

  "May I ask what he's done?"

  "Murder, extortion, probably treason. He's killed at least nineteen people, including a couple of kids."

  "He sounds like a terrible man," she said. "I wonder what makes someone do things like that?"

  "I don't know," replied Jeff. "I tend not to meet them until after they've committed their crimes."

  "It sounds like an awful way to make a living."

  "It has its compensations. And its satisfactions. Anyway, let me give you his name and—"

  "Just a minute, Mr. Nighthawk," she interrupted. "If he's all that you say, then he doubtless deserves whatever you're going to do to him. But we don't want any violence in the hotel. I'll tell you if he's registered here, and if he isn't, I'll try to help locate him—but in exchange, I want you to promise not to do anything on the premises. That's my quid pro quo."

  "Fair enough," agreed Jeff. "The man I'm looking for is Jubal Pickett. If the name is unknown to you, I can show you a holograph."

  "Jubal Pickett?" she repeated, surprised. "You must be mistaken."

  "Why should you say that?"

  "He's an wonderful man! He donated a wing of the hospital, he paid for improvements in the spaceport, and he doesn't even live here permanently."

  "There's paper on him on a dozen worlds, ma'am," replied Jeff. "The last three lawmen and bounty hunters who tried to bring him in are dead."

  "Mr. Pickett?" She shook her head. "I'm sure there must be some mistake."

  "I'm afraid there isn't." He turned to Kinoshita. "Have the ship's computer transmit some of the warrants to the desk here."

  Kinoshita gave a brief order to his pocket computer, and an instant later the woman stared at her hidden screen, her eyes wide in disbelief.

  "I don't believe he could have done those things—not Mr. Pickett!" she said adamantly.

  "With all due respect, that's not my concern," said Jeff.

  "That I don't believe it, or that he didn't do it?" she said quickly.

  "Both."

  "And what if he's innocent?"

  "They don't put out dead-or-alive warrants on innocent men," said Jeff. "He's been judged, and he's killed the first three men who tried to bring him to justice." He paused. "I assume he's staying here?"

  "I will not be a party to this," she said adamantly. "And I hold you to your promise: you will not kill
or harm anyone on the premises."

  "As far as I'm concerned, you've answered me," he said. "Since you kept your part of the bargain, I'll keep my part. No violence in the hotel or on its property." He walked to the airlift, followed by Kinoshita. Just before it took them to the third floor, he turned back to the woman. "If you were to warn him, I would consider that an abrogation of our agreement."

  A moment later he entered his suite, motioned Kinoshita to join him, and sat down on a couch made from the leathery hide of some alien animal.

  "Tomorrow morning we'll go hunting for his house," said Jeff.

  "But he's staying here."

  "Not a chance," replied Jeff. "He knows there's paper on him. Any bounty hunter who comes to town is going to stay in this hotel, and his holograph is all over the Inner Frontier. He might chance it for a night, but we know he's been on Giancola for at least six days. No, he'll have a place out of town, and since he's been an angel to the hospital and spaceport, none of the locals are going to tell us where it is."

  "Then why didn't the woman downstairs tell us he was here and buy him a little time?"

  "She kept her mouth shut because for all she knew you had a Truthtell pen trained on her and would know if she was lying. If she was a little smarter she'd have lied about something trivial when we were checking in, and then she'd have known for sure." He paused. "And she won't warn him, because she's sure if she does I'll come back and kill her."

  "Would you?"

  "Probably not. You don't kill an uninformed person for misguided loyalty."

  "Then what's the 'probably' about?"

  "If she refuses to tell me where he is, or even if she warns him to get off the planet, she gets a pass. If she's complicit in trying to set me up for Pickett, she doesn't." He looked out the window. "It'll be dark in about half an hour. I think we'd better go out to the ship and bring back some clothes."

  "The hotel can clean the ones we're wearing in twenty minutes."

  "And if some friend of Pickett's has spotted me or works in the laundry, I could wind up going after him in the morning wearing nothing but my shoes."

  Kinoshita sighed. "We'll go to the ship." He paused and looked at the young man. "He taught you well. He was always the most careful, meticulous man I ever met. At first it surprised me, a man with his reputation—but I guess that's how he lived long enough to get that reputation."

  They took an aircar to the ship, picked up what they needed, and came back to the hotel. The woman at the registration desk stared at them when they returned, but didn't say a word.

  Kinoshita went to his own room, and Jeff entered the suite, activated the room's computer, had it bring up maps, building permits, tax records, anything it could find that might help him figure out where Pickett was staying. When he was finally satisfied that he'd learned all he could, he went to sleep.

  He was up with the yellow-orange sun the next morning. After he'd shaved and showered he stopped by Kinoshita's room, waited a few minutes for him to finish his ablutions, and then they went to the hotel's restaurant for breakfast.

  "Have you got any idea where he is?" asked Kinoshita as he finished his coffee.

  Jeff nodded. "Yeah, I think so. There's an unimpressive little house about six miles east of town, not near anything. Gets its water from a well. I think that's where we'll find him."

  "Any particular reason why?"

  "Yeah," said Jeff. "A house like that on a world like this can't be worth much than twenty or twenty-five thousand credits."

  "So?"

  "I checked the real estate tax rolls. It's being taxed on an estimated value of four hundred thousand credits."

  "Maybe it's sitting on a couple of square miles," suggested Kinoshita.

  "It's on three barren acres," said Jeff. "That means most of it is hidden from view. The guy has built himself a luxury home for when he's here, and he obviously doesn't want certain people to know. Now, the locals are aware of how much he's worth, because he donated a wing of the hospital, so it's obviously not an attempt to mislead them. Put it all together and you've got someone with a pile of money who doesn't want any off-worlders to figure out he's living there."

  "Not bad," said Kinoshita, visibly impressed.

  "You ready?"

  "Yes, I suppose so. I just keep wondering if the desk clerk warned him. She's not here this morning."

  "Just how many hours a day do you want her to work?"

  "You're not worried about it?"

  "Would worrying help?" asked Jeff.

  Kinoshita sighed deeply, feeling out of his depth, as usual. "Let's go."

  They walked out the front door and summoned an aircar. Jeff gave it the coordinates—the place was too far out of town to have an address—and then they sat back and rode in silence across the brown, empty countryside until the vehicle approached the house.

  "Stop here," said Jeff when they were eighty yards away.

  The aircar stopped and hovered above the ground while Jeff and Kinoshita got out.

  "Wait for us," Jeff ordered the aircar, then turned back to the house. He stood perfectly still for a long moment, then began walking. "Okay, I don't see any booby traps. It sure doesn't look like much of a house, does it? If I didn't know how much of it was hidden under the ground, I'd say a team of robots built it in less than a day."

  When he was fifty feet from the house a lean, well-muscled man, his hair starting to turn gray at the sides, stepped out of the house and stood on the sparse grass, facing them.

  "Stop right there," he said, "and tell me why you're here."

  "I'm looking for Jubal Pickett," answered Jeff.

  "You don't want him."

  "I'll be the judge of that," said Jeff.

  "Then let me put it another way," said the man. "You can't have him."

  Where have I heard that voice? thought Kinoshita. I know it from somewhere.

  "There's paper on him, dead or alive," said Jeff. "He can save a lot of wear and tear on all of us if he'll surrender—but one way or another I'm taking him back with me."

  "Don't believe everything you read or hear," said the man. "Jubal Pickett has never killed anyone in his life."

  "Of course he did," said Jeff. "Along with everything else he's wanted for, he killed two lawmen and a bounty hunter who were after him."

  "No he didn't."

  Jeff stared at the man. "You did," he said at last. "Who are you?"

  "My name is Jason Newman," replied the man. "As for who I am, I'm the guy who's not going to let any harm come to an innocent man."

  "An innocent man who pays you to protect him."

  "With people like you after him, he needs all the protection he can get," was the response.

  He's so familiar, thought Kinoshita. The way he carries himself, even his choice of words. Where the hell have I seen him before?

  "Enough talk," said Jeff ominously. "You're standing between me and the man I've come to collect."

  "I've already told you: you don't want him."

  "What gives you an insight into what I want?" said Jeff sardonically.

  Newman looked amused. "Tell him, Ito."

  "Omygod!" exclaimed Kinoshita.

  3.

  Jeff turned to Kinoshita, puzzled.

  "It's you, isn't it?" said Kinoshita, never taking his eyes from the man facing them.

  Jason Newman nodded. "It's me."

  "But . . . but you look so different!"

  "The last time we saw each other I told you that I was going to change my face," said Newman. "And of course this"—he held up his left hand—"is prosthetic, thanks to our friends back on Pericles. And since so much else was new, I thought I might as well take a new name too."

  "Jason, son of Jefferson," said Kinoshita. "And Newman for the new identity. I approve."

  "Are you who I think you are?" said Jeff.

  "Probably," replied Newman. "It all depends on who you think I am."

  "The clone who survived—the one who overthrew Cassius Hill o
n Pericles IV."

  "That's right. And since the first clone died before I was born, I have to assume you're a new one."

  "I was created, to quote our progenitor, to take over the family business."

  Newman looked at Kinoshita. "How's he been doing?"

  "He's the Widowmaker," said Kinoshita, as if that was answer enough.

  "The galaxy can use one," said Newman.

  "Why did you stop?" asked Jeff.

  "Being the Widowmaker, you mean?" replied Newman, as a sudden wind blew clouds of dust through the air. "I completed my assignment. I was created to earn enough money to keep the original alive and frozen in his cryogenic cocoon until they came up with a cure for his disease. Once I'd done that, I figured I'd earned the right to live my own life." He stared curiously at the younger clone. "Haven't you ever felt that way?"

  Jeff shook his head. "This is my own life. Your mission was performed with the knowledge that if you were successful, the original Widowmaker would be revived and live again, so your term as the Widowmaker had a finite limit. Me, I'm here so that he could retire from the Widowmaker business. My mission is permanent; there's no time limit on it."

  "So are you just a bodyguard called Jason Newman now?" asked Kinoshita, brushing the dust from his tunic as the breeze died down as suddenly as it had begun.

  "Not exactly."

  "Then what are you doing here?"

  "After I recovered from the injuries I suffered on Pericles, I got myself a new face and a new identity, and Cassandra and I moved to the Outer Frontier, way out by the Rim. It seemed a good place to start a new life."

  "How did you tean up with Jubal Pickett?" asked Jeff.

  "A man named Willis Nordstrom tried to hold me up at gunpoint out on a world named Mistover."

  "Not smart," commented Kinoshita.

  "I killed him. And two weeks later I saw that there was paper on Jubal Pickett for killing Nordstrom and half a dozen others. I flew to Mallachi VII, where the warrant was issued, to explain that whatever else he'd done, he hadn't killed Nordstrom." Newman paused. "They didn't give a damn. They wouldn't even take Nordstrom's name off the warrant."

  "Why not?" asked Kinoshita.