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“I’ve got an old partner signed up with Protogen,” Miller said.
“They’re not bad,” Sematimba said. “Almost wish I’d picked them in the divorce, you know?”
“Why didn’t you?” Miller asked.
“You know how it is. I’m from here.”
“Yeah,” Miller said.
“So. You didn’t know who was running the playhouse? You aren’t here looking for work.”
“Nope,” Miller said. “I’m on sabbatical. Doing some travel for myself these days.”
“You’ve got money for that?”
“Not really. But I don’t mind going on the cheap. For a while, you know. You heard anything about a Juliette Mao? Goes by Julie?”
Sematimba shook his head.
“Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile,” Miller said. “Came up the well and went native. OPA. It was an abduction case.”
“Was?”
Miller leaned back. His imagined Julie raised her eyebrows.
“It’s changed a little since I got it,” Miller said. “May be connected to something. Kind of big.”
“How big are we talking about?” Sematimba said. All trace of jocularity had vanished from his expression. He was all cop now. Anyone but Miller would have found the man’s empty, almost angry face intimidating.
“The war,” Miller said. Sematimba folded his arms.
“Bad joke,” he said.
“Not joking.”
“I consider us friends, old man,” Sematimba said. “But I don’t want any trouble around here. Things are unsettled as it stands.”
“I’ll try to stay low-profile.”
Sematimba nodded. Down the tunnel, an alarm blared. Only security, not the earsplitting ditone of an environmental alert. Sematimba looked down the tunnel as if squinting would let him see through the press of people, bicycles, and food carts.
“I’d better go look,” he said with an air of resignation. “Probably some of my fellow officers of the peace breaking windows for the fun of it.”
“Great to be part of a team like that,” Miller said.
“How would you know?” Sematimba said with a smile. “If you need something… ”
“Likewise,” Miller said, and watched the cop wade into the sea of chaos and humanity. He was a large man, but something about the passing crowd’s universal deafness to the alarm’s blare made him seem smaller. A stone in the ocean, the phrase went. One star among millions.
Miller checked the time, then pulled up the public docking records. The Rocinante showed as on schedule. The docking berth was listed. Miller sucked down the last of his noodles, tossed the foam cone with the thin smear of black sauce into a public recycler, found the nearest men’s room, and when he was done there, trotted toward the casino level.
The architecture of Eros had changed since its birth. Where once it had been like Ceres—webworked tunnels leading along the path of widest connection—Eros had learned from the flow of money: All paths led to the casino level. If you wanted to go anywhere, you passed through the wide whale belly of lights and displays. Poker, blackjack, roulette, tall fish tanks filled with prize trout to be caught and gutted, mechanical slots, electronic slots, cricket races, craps, rigged tests of skill. Flashing lights, dancing neon clowns, and video screen advertisements blasted the eyes. Loud artificial laughter and merry whistles and bells assured you that you were having the time of your life. All while the smell of thousands of people packed into too small a space competed with the scent of heavily spiced vat-grown meat being hawked from carts rolling down the corridor. Greed and casino design had turned Eros into an architectural cattle run.
Which was exactly what Miller needed.
The tube station that arrived from the port had six wide doors, which emptied to the casino floor. Miller accepted a drink from a tired-looking woman in a G-string and bared br**sts and found a screen to stand at that afforded him a view of all six doors. The crew of the Rocinante had no choice but to come through one of those. He checked his hand terminal. The docking logs showed the ship had arrived ten minutes earlier. Miller pretended to sip his drink and settled in to wait.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Holden
The casino level of Eros was an all-out assault on the senses. Holden hated it.
“I love this place,” Amos said, grinning.
Holden pushed his way through a knot of drunk middle-aged gamblers, who were laughing and yelling, to a small open space near a row of pay-by-the-minute wall terminals.
“Amos,” he said, “we’ll be going to a less touristy level, so watch our backs. The flophouse we’re looking for is in a rough neighborhood.”
Amos nodded. “Gotcha, Cap.”
While Naomi, Alex, and Amos blocked him from view, Holden reached behind his back to adjust the pistol that pulled uncomfortably on his waistband. The cops on Eros were pretty uptight about people walking around with guns, but there was no way he was going to “Lionel Polanski” unarmed. Amos and Alex were both carrying too, though Amos kept his in the right pocket of his jacket and his hand never left it. Only Naomi flatly refused to carry a gun.
Holden led the group toward the nearest escalators, with Amos, casting the occasional glance behind, in the rear. The casinos of Eros stretched for three seemingly endless levels, and even though they moved as quickly as possible, it took half an hour to get away from the noise and crowds. The first level above was a residential neighborhood and disorientingly quiet and neat after the casino’s chaos and noise. Holden sat down on the edge of a planter with a nice array of ferns in it and caught his breath.
“I’m with you, Captain. Five minutes in that place gives me a headache,” Naomi said, and sat down next to him.
“You kidding me?” Amos said. “I wish we had more time. Alex and I took almost a grand off those fish at the Tycho card tables. We’d probably walk out of here f**king millionaires.”
“You know it,” Alex said, and punched the big mechanic on the shoulder.
“Well, if this Polanski thing turns out to be nothing, you have my permission to go make us a million dollars at the card tables. I’ll wait for you on the ship,” Holden said.
The tube system ended at the first casino level and didn’t start again until the level they were on. You could choose not to spend your money at the tables, but they made sure you were punished for doing so. Once the crew had climbed into a car and started the ride to Lionel’s hotel, Amos sat down next to Holden.
