Tandem Unit Read online

  “I hear nothing,” the Garon replied in a voice like someone gargling with gravel, cutting his one large purple and green eye evasively to one side. Even Sadie could tell he was lying and Holt apparently could as well.

  “Come on, Snuggly, don't give me that. If there's anything illegal within a million miles it comes through your bar. The Slice sees more action in one night than the rest of this Goddess-forsaken end of the Solar System does in a year.” Holt drained his glass and shook his head when the Garon made as if to pour him another.

  “Why you always bother me, Holtstein? I got enough problems without you and your partner come around squeezing my balls.” The Garon set down the glass he'd been cleaning daintily and picked up another. “Where is your better half, anyway?” he asked.

  “Working the other end of town,” Holt answered shortly. He fished in the pocket of the beat-up work pants he was wearing and withdrew a fifty credit chip. “I know you know something, Snug. Maybe this will jog your memory.”

  The Garon eyed the chip thoughtfully for a moment, then slid it off the bar and made it disappear into one of the embroidered pockets of his frilly apron. Sadie wondered if he wore it on purpose or if he was so big that no one had the nerve to tell him it was a tad girlie for his massive physique. After pouring a round of shots for a rowdy crew of star-hoppers that had just walked in he went back to Holt who was leaning against the counter waiting patiently.

  “Okay, Holtstein, I tell you what I know. Only because I like you, though. You and Blakely never fuck me yet. Better not start now.” He glared warningly at the blond detective, his eye going completely purple for a moment.

  “Don't worry, Snuggly. You're not exactly our type,” Holt said dryly. “What do you know? It better be good.”

  “Is good.” Snuggly nodded his massive bald head. “Or bad, depending on how you are seeing it.” Holt just raised one blond eyebrow and waited for the Garon to continue. “About a month ago a prostie trader is coming into my bar,” Snuggly said. “And he is how you say? Slick willie—very smooth talking. He is saying he is representing a new company just set up right here on Iapetus. New kind of prostie-borg that is extra good. Extra cheap.”

  “Did you get a name?” Holt asked casually although Sadie saw the tension in the set of his well defined shoulders. They could definitely be onto something here. The Garon shook his massive bald head.

  “No names. He says he is only passing through town but he will like to make me a bargain before he leaves to sell his borgs on Titan. He says he had extra, would I like to buy.”

  “Did you?” Holt asked, leaning forward on the bar. Sadie found herself leaning forward as well. If the Garon was telling the truth, there was an illegal prostie-borg plant right here on Iapetus. Since the delicate synthetic brains that powered legal prosties couldn't be shipped off planet until they were hardwired into a tank-grown body, the only legal flesh tanks were located on Mars where Synthenex, the main manufacturer of the brains was located. If someone had set up flesh tanks here, they must either have their own synthetic brain manufacturing facility which was highly unlikely, or they were using black market transplant brains. Real human brains that had been ripped from their living hosts and forced to occupy a body grown in the flesh tanks made for sex. Sadie was so excited by the implications that she nearly missed the huge Garon's reply to Holt's question.

  “I am buying,” Snuggly said stolidly. “I am thinking it is good for business, yes? But after slick willie leaves, prostie goes bad after only two days. Is rip-off.”

  “Goes bad? What do you mean?” Holt asked. “Did she stop functioning or what?”

  “Stop functioning, you could say this, yes,” Snuggly replied morosely. “She is refusing to service customers, is punching, kicking, screaming, making a scene. I try to throw her out but she won't go.”

  Looking at his hulking form, Sadie had a hard time imagining any sort of prostieborg the Garon would have difficulty evicting from his bar. Maybe they were making them super-size now?

  “What happened to her? Where is she now?” Holt stood up straight and looked around.

  “Is in the back room drinking a bottle of my best Flare juice and teasing the daemon.” The Garon cast a morose glance towards the back of the bar.

  Holt whistled under his breath. “Goddess, Snuggly, you still have that thing? Aren't you afraid it'll get loose someday and kill you or one of the customers?”

  The huge shoulders shrugged. “Daemon is never leaving dark side of back room and is very good for business. Stupid drunks like to see how brave they are, how long they can stay before they have to run. Slice is the only bar on Iapetus to be having a daemon on the premises.” The Garon sounded almost proud of the fact.

  “Yeah, because you're the only bar that straddles the dark side line,” Holt said. “How long has the prostie been in there?”

  Garon shrugged again. “Don't know. Long time. Is very much rip-off. Worst prostie I ever have.”

  “Thanks, Snuggly. I'm going back.” Holt slapped the bar with one hand and turned to make his way through the drunken miners.

  “You are being careful, Holtstein,” the huge Garon called. “Prostie is there a long time. Daemon is getting strong.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Thanks.” Holt waved over his shoulder and continued to press through the crowd. Sadie had no choice but to follow him.

  At the back of the bar there was a long, dim corridor. Holt stepped into it without hesitation but Sadie stopped for a moment to read the warning scrolling tiredly across the holo-loop in twelve languages above her head. 'Enter at your own risk, management assumes no responsibility.' Could they really be keeping an Iapetion daemon back here, she wondered, clutching the shardi-knife tightly. Shivering, she remembered the chilling stories she'd heard about the creatures that lived solely on the dark side of Iapetus. How much of what she had heard was true?

  Sadie looked from the holo-loop to the hallway. Holt's golden head was disappearing down the gloom of the long corridor, his wide shoulders clad in the black leather jacket barely visible now. She had followed him to get information but now he was going into danger. Going alone. No—not alone. Squaring her shoulders and raising her chin in a little gesture of defiance, Sadie took a deep breath and plunged into the gloom after him. She would have done the same for Blakely.

  Walking quietly so as not to let Holt hear her, Sadie crept down the hallway. Just as she thought it was about to end she saw him make an abrupt left and disappear. She followed him so quickly that she barely saved herself from running into him and for a moment all she could see was his broad, leather-clad back. Then he moved out of her line of vision and Sadie could see tha t the hallway opened out into a room—the strangest room she had ever seen.

  It was shaped like a dome, perfectly round with a high, curving ceiling that was made of some transparent material which let light pour in from above. But the light filled only half the room, Sadie saw. There was a definite demarcation, a line almost directly down the center of the round room and the light that poured from the ceiling remained on one side of the line like a curtain of brilliance. On the other side was a blackness more complete than any Sadie had ever seen. She frowned, the light should have illuminated the entire room with radiance but it didn't. Instead, the brightness on one half of the room only served to make the darkness of the other half more impenetrable. What could keep the light that filled one side of the room from spreading to the other side as well?

  As if to answer her question, she heard a muffled thump that drew her eyes to the pitch-black half of the room. It was like a pit filled with midnight and it hurt her eyes to look at it. She looked anyway, at first seeing nothing. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the strange duality of the room, Sadie felt her skin trying to crawl right off her body. Something was moving in the blackness. She couldn't see much but there was a suggestion of power in its coiled form and a sound like a heavy weight dragging across the floor when it moved. Crimson gashes glittered in the blackness and she re