"From our money!" bellowed Wulf, interrupting. "From our money!"
And with that he bundled Johnny out of the door and back into the bar.
"Want to tell me what that was about?" whispered Wulf as he steered Johnny across the floor. "Gronk, we are leaving!"
"Squid ripped us off!" said Johnny.
"You're drunk," said Wulf. "Stop looking for a fight."
"I nearly got killed," said Johnny, his words slurring. "
We
nearly got killed! They stole the Gronk and shot us up and we could have died out there."
Wulf produced a fold of paper creds from his pocket and peeled off two hundreds.
"And that snecker!" yelled Johnny, pointing back at the Ladies' for emphasis. "That snecker stole our snecking corpses."
The Gronk padded along behind them as they left the bar, having trouble following the conversation in slurred slow motion. Deep down inside the Gronk, its overworked judder gland was drip-feeding it a new batch of chemicals.
"You there," called a voice.
"
Jävlar
," muttered Wulf under his breath, turning to see the uniformed bulk of a ship security mook. Just one man, with Electronux still sheathed at his belt. Sure, Wulf could take him alone, but he didn't want any more trouble.
The guard came closer, his face red with the exertion of running up the steps from several bars below. Wulf guessed he'd been stationed in Doughnut Paradise for about six years.
"I got word there's a disturbance up here."
The man's mouth was all but hidden beneath a curiously shaped moustache. Wulf had seen a lot of them as a youth, when fellow Vikings concealed scars with elaborate facial hair. But the guard didn't look like the sort; he was hiding something else.
"Yes," said Wulf, carefully. "Someone in der Ladies'. Nothing to do with us."
"Is that so?" said the security guard, sizing up the two large men and the unknown white furry quantity that shivered behind them. His fingers twitched tensely on the Electronux and the nightstick at his belt. Both hands bore telltale white scarring along their outer edge. Someone had been born with twelve fingers.
"We left der money for our drinks on the bar," said Wulf, trying not to stare.
"You did?"
"We did. And a big tip."
"Really?"
"About a thousand per cent."
The guard looked back at the bar, noting the two paper hundreds fluttering in the aircon breeze, pinned down beneath a fragment of a metal ashtray.
"You know," said the guard. "The serve-bots don't take tips. They're not set up for it."
"Is that so?" said Wulf. "I guess that money will just sit there, then. Good evening, officer." They liked being called officer.
"You take care, now," said the guard, heading inside. He made a beeline straight for the bar - checking the toilets could clearly wait.
A few more steps took them into another drinking establishment, all shadows and leather sofas and self-conscious, groovy jazz.
"This will do," said Wulf.
"Nice," said Johnny.
Wulf steered Johnny onto a couch. The Gronk waited anxiously by his side, wringing two of its hands.
"This isn't about Vaara, is it?" hissed Wulf.
"He ripped us off," Johnny said quietly.
"Stop saying that," said Wulf. "We would have done der same."
"He needs to stay away. He needs to stay away from my-"
"From your sister?"
"That's
our
job," said Johnny. "We saw it first."
"Fair is der fair," said Wulf. "We'll get to her first."
"Squid won't be going anywhere for a while," said Johnny. "I made sure of that."
"Er... yes," said Wulf uneasily. "I noticed."
"And stealing my corpses was still a felony. He won't shop us."
Wulf slapped Johnny on the face.
"Wake up, Johnny," he said. "I have never seen you like this."
Johnny blinked in shock.
"Are you going to beat up every bounty hunter on Tammerfors?" hissed Wulf.
"If I have to," said Johnny.
"Johnny. Listen, I believe you, there is more to this than meets der eyes, yes. But you are in der conflict, yes? You are having der conflict of der interests."
"You snecking bet I am!" shouted Johnny, a little too loudly over the quiet jazz. A few patrons shot him huffy glances.
"We will get to her, and find out the truth, yes?" said Wulf.
Johnny nodded, slowly, his head seemingly unsteady on his neck. He flopped forward onto the glass table, his head coming to rest with a conspicuous thunk. There was silence for a moment, and then low snores began to wheeze through his nose. A slow river of saliva began to pool across the table from his open mouth.
"Mister Wulf," said the Gronk, tugging at Wulf's cape. "Is Mister Johnny all right?"
"No," said Wulf, with Scandinavian frankness.
NIGEL LESS
Tammerfors was also known as a piercing shriek, truncated by a sudden slurp - "Home" in the language of its avian aborigines. One teetered past Johnny, its legs unfeasibly long and thin, seemingly bending in all the wrong places. It pushed a hospital gurney in front of it with stubby, uncooperative hands. It didn't look happy, but nobody from Tammerfors ever did.
"Are you sure this is der right place?" asked Wulf.
Johnny looked down at the foldout map.
"Maybe you are holding it upside-d-" Wulf began.
"I am
not
holding it upside down," said Johnny. The signs in the Tammerfors Central Hospital were in seven different languages. English was nestled snugly in between Spanish and something that looked like an accident with a Scrabble bag. The walls were giving Johnny a headache. As a rule, hospitals were painted in soothing colours. For reasons likely to have something to do with Tammerfors' indigenous inhabitants, the walls of Tammerfors Central were painted fiery red with fluorescent lime-green spots.
Wulf squinted at the sign. They had tried to find their ward from three different angles and kept ending up in Proctology. Tammerfortian signs indicated direction with something that looked like a swastika, which didn't help. It had taken Johnny twenty minutes to work out that the thirteenth floor was actually the ninth, thanks to the three-taloned Tammerfortian custom of counting in some bizarre variant of base six. Or was it base nine? Johnny could never remember.
"Stay with me, Gronk," said Wulf. "I don't want you getting lost."
He turned to see he was talking to empty air.
"Johnny," said Wulf. "We have lost der Gronk."
But Johnny was already out of view, having turned a corner in lighning speed.
"Wait," shouted Wulf, trying to decide which way he should go. Right now, Johnny and the Gronk were both posing a danger to themselves and others. Reluctantly, Wulf left Johnny to it, and went in search of the only member of the team that couldn't be trusted to punch its way out of trouble.
Overhead, the tannoy yodelled a fifteen-second screech, the word "Malcolm" then something that sounded like a coughing fit.
Johnny took the stairs two at a time and was rewarded with a sudden sense of utter calm. The walls were gunmetal grey. He had found the human section at last.
A long line of doorways stretched out ahead. Each was dark and open, the private ward behind it empty and lifeless. Only one, at the far end, was occupied. Rays of yellow light streamed out through the half-closed blinds in the observation window. A tall, humanoid figure was silhouetted outside, its arms folded. It looked up at Johnny as he crested the top of the stairs, and the hands went slowly to its hips in a "don't-sneck-with-me"
stance. Security.
Perhaps it was the sudden return to acceptable décor. Perhaps it was the realisation that his goal had been reached. Whatever it was, Johnny suddenly felt good. At last things were going right. Ruthie's disappearance might be a mystery, but there was, quite literally, light at the end of this tunnel. And while the Tammerfors cops might have been too dumb to post the right information with the Doghouse, at least they had been smart enough to put muscle at the door. Nigel was in safe hands.
"Hi," yelled Johnny as he marched towards the guard. "I'm a Search/Destroy Agent," he added, as if his armour and badge was not enough. "I'm here to see Nigel Less."
The guard waited in silence, the hands ominously perched on the hips. As Johnny neared, he spied a topknot of silvery hair and a pug-faced, snub-nosed visage. Just his luck - curse Tammerfors and its open policy on alien immigrants.
"You may be here for that," bellowed the guard imperiously as Johnny slowed his pace, "but I, the great Blarg, may not be in a position to allow it."
Johnny was close enough to see the guard's skin colour for himself. It was an unmistakeable green. He was stuck dealing with a Betelgeusian.
"I just want to ask him a few questions," he said, feeling the tense coils of annoyance gathering once more.
"Everyone wants just one little thing," said the guard absently. "A taxing load for the wondrous Blarg, righter of wrongs, pursuer of criminals..."
"And guardian of...?" prompted Johnny.
"Yes, guardian of the witness," said Blarg, magnanimously, as if Johnny had just scored a point on a test. "I am his guardian, his protector, the last line of defence between him and his enemies."
"That's what I'm here about," said Johnny. He could see Blarg staring surreptitiously at his SD badge.
"It's not a fake," Johnny added.
Johnny pulled his badge off his sash. The guard stared at it with one eyebrow raised.
"Johnny... Alpha..." he said carefully.
"That's right."
"Well, Mister Alpha, you are the first to arrive."
"Good."
"I expect there will be more after you. The gangs round here are doing such a good job of killing each other... I doubt there are any other crimes to investigate at the moment."
"Mister Blarg?" called a male voice from inside the room. "It's okay, let him in."
Thinking like a Gronk, Wulf shied away from coffee trolleys with squeaky wheels. He ducked away from public arguments and scary-looking nurses; at least, what he imagined the Gronk would consider "scary". The route took him halfway across the hospital floor and down a quiet stairwell, until he was stopped dead by a crossway. Four corridors led away from a central information desk. There were chairs for outpatients, but none of them were occupied. The loudest thing in the area was the wallpaper.
Wulf leaned on the information desk and tried to look as unlike a Viking raider as possible. A human woman was tapping on a keyboard, her long dark hair falling over one side of her face.
"Excuse me, cucumber," said Wulf. "Have you seen a little white furry thing?"
She looked up and stared at Wulf without comment.
"A what?"
"A little white furry thing. Perhaps it has been eating the scalpels?"
The nurse at the desk kept her eyes locked on Wulf.
"Dr Malcolm," she called, a little too loudly.
"You look out of place," said a voice.
Wulf turned to see a balding, bespectacled human wearing a white coat. He was pulling a lump of cotton wool from his ears.
"David Malcolm," he said, proffering his free hand. "Are you here about reconstructive surgery?"
"No," said Wulf. "I was looking for der Gr-"
"Good," said Malcolm, "coz you're in the wrong section for your species. You want the annex on the eleventh floor. You can't miss it - it has '15' written on the signs."
Wulf blinked unsteadily. The nurse at the workstation got up, clutching a sheaf of printouts. She headed off down the corridor with a polite smile to Dr Malcolm. As she passed, Wulf caught a glimpse of the side of her face that had been previously hidden. It was a sickly, necrotic purple, puckered and covered with ridges and calluses.
Dr Malcolm clicked his fingers in front of Wulf's eyes.
"Hey," he said with a practised smile. "You know it's rude to stare. Take a seat."
Wulf wasn't in the habit of taking orders from anyone except Johnny. But something about the white coat and the clipboard made him do as he was told.
"She's saving up," said Malcolm.
"Is she?"
"Uh-huh. Janice there is working double shifts, and in about two months' time, she'll have enough creds."
"Creds for what?"
"For me to get rid of those lesions for her."
"She's a mutie."
"Mister...?"
"Sternhammer."
"Mister Sternhammer. She makes the best of what she's got." Malcolm's voice was calming, almost hypnotic. Wulf felt warm and fuzzy just listening to him, as if everything was going to be all right. "We all make the best of what we've got, right? And since you found this place, I'm guessing you want to make the best of what you've got, too."
"No," said Wulf. "No, I am looking for der Gronk. It is a small, furry thing. Very irritating."
"Mister Sternhammer, this is a xeno level. The only human medicine we do here is on this floor because our clients don't want to make a big thing about it."
"I'm sorry, I don't-"
"Janice grows her hair long to cover it up. But she's only got lumps and swirls. I can get them off her and graft some better skin. Now, what's your problem?"
"I don't have one."
Wulf saw a Tammerfortian orderly pushing a gurney towards them. It was empty, but the unmistakeable outline of a Gronk could be seen clutching at the support struts. The Gronk was getting a free ride and it was heading back his way.
"As you wish," said Dr Malcolm. "I understand. It takes a lot for most people to even come here for their first consultation. But Mister Sternhammer, please remember, there is
nothing
wrong with you."
"
Jah
, that is what I just told you."
"It is society that is biased against the genetically different. If you want an easier life, I can help you."
"I am not a mutant," said Wulf, his voice echoing down the halls.
Dr Malcolm cringed noticeably.
"Sure," he said placatingly. "None of us are. We're all just people."
The room was bare but clean. A screen above the bed showed rolling coverage of the Tammerfors stock market, the sound muted. There was water by the bed, a receiver for a screenphone and a few magazines. A nervous man sat up in bed, his fingers drumming nervously on the tray on his lap.