Liam had had approaches before, from people looking for a pilot willing and able to run contraband for a cut of the proceeds.
"That's not what this is about."
"Then would you hurry up and tell me what this is about? I've got only a half hour to go before I have to run."
"That's not true," the woman said. "Your ship's in for repairs, on account of a meteoroid impact it sustained during the last leg of your flight. You're here for a good seventy-two hours standard, and more likely for ninety-six. All I ask is an hour of that time. One hour."
An hour in which he would give what her boss had to say a fair hearing.
Liam was wary, but he agreed. He finished his meal (she had just a cup of coffee) and then followed her to the Fresca Hotel, where her boss was waiting in a suite. Entering it Liam saw sitting in an overstuffed armchair a man whose most distinguishing characteristics a neatly trimmed mustache and a cane. He looked like he was in late middle age, but gave the impression of being older than that.
"Have a seat," the Old Man offered.
"I'll remain standing, thank you."
"Suit yourself. As you know, this is about something you may be able to do for us."
"Yes," Liam said.
"We're ready to pay you a fee of twenty thousand credits, half paid up front, half later. That's a good six months' pay for you. And the job will take no more than two weeks, the vast majority of it in transit time which you will spend under conditions much more comfortable than those aboard your freighter."
"Uh-huh," Liam said. "Transit to what, exactly?"
"A no-brainer. We need a file recovered. That's it."
"All right, what's the catch?"
"I suppose the 'catch' is that the file's to be recovered from Chermetevo."
"Chermetevo? Inside the Podradhatu Dominion? Forget it."
"Yes, yes, that planet has a reputation for being forbidding. But what do you really know about it?"
"I know enough to steer clear of it."
"I assure you this is quite doable. We've developed countermeasures that will let you get about the planet virtually unnoticed."
He scoffed.
"Seriously," the Old Man added.
"So why risk a secret like that by coming to me?" Liam asked. "Why not turn to someone you already know and trust?"
"You fit a profile for one of our people with the access we need who is, ah, unavailable. For completely unrelated reasons."
Liam snorted. "Convenient."
"Far from it," the Old Man told him. "Or we wouldn't be here. But don't get it into your head that you're indispensable. You're not. Now will you take the job or not?"
Liam could certainly use the money. And in spite of his initial, automatic refusal, there was something about the idea of going to Chermetevo . . . and these people knew it, Liam thought. Looking at the thin smile on the Old Man's face as he watched him make up his mind he was sure that he could smell the adrenaline pumping through Liam's arteries even now, though being transparent in front of him didn't reduce the hunger one iota. Sneaking around behind enemy lines wasn't the same kind of rush as flying a fighter, but the icy thrills of subterfuge sounded pretty damn good next to the banal anxieties of being a none-too-valued member of the civilian work force.
And these people did believe that this could be done, didn't they? Certainly there were people who got their kicks doing strange things, but they wouldn't pay a stranger twenty thousand credits to commit suicide, would they?
"I'm in," he said.
"Good," the Old Man said, glad to have what he regarded as a formality out of the way. "Now let's start talking details. It won't be like a common infiltration, pop-in, pop-out, or burrowing through like a mole. No, what you'll have to do is slip into its body like a virus, some stealthy virus able to circulate through that body's bloodstream without being picked up on by its immune system.
"You can scarcely conceive of the density of nano-scale sensors on that planet . . . they permeate the air, they cover every surface. They'll be on your skin, in your hair, like bacteria, or mites of the kind that you find on human eyelashes, or dust particles. You'll suck them in with each breath and excrete them in your stool. No amount of scrubbing you can possibly do while you'rethere, no internal cure, not even sicing an army of our own nanobots on them is going to clean you out.
"Besides, there's a real chance that that could give you away even more quickly. Frankly, we don't know how their system is wired, how closely and continually these sensors are monitored, what the protocols are. It may be that they gather data for storage in a library, for later reference in case something pricks their attention. It may be that they're there to be activated when they feel that something's up. Either of those would give you some wriggle room, but we frankly can't bet on it. The only good reason for doing either of those things is a finiteness of processing power, and we just can't bet on that, not when we're dealing with an intelligent planet."
"So what can we do?" Liam asked. "I mean, there's no way in hell I can do anything there if they have their eye on me the whole time, is there?"
"No, but that's precisely what they won't have," the Old Man said, "their eye on you. No human eyes, in all likelihood. Just the machines. We may not be able to attack their nanobots, but we do have something that can spoof them, make it like they're not there, at least for short periods. You just take an injection. But you don't do it until you absolutely must drop below their radar, right before you do the job. Say, in your hotel room before going out, then after it's done, come back in and wait for them to run down. It'll be like you've never left."
"That's all well and good," Liam said, "but won't the injections look suspect? I mean, customs officers ask questions."
"Not on Chermetevo they don't, not really. With the kind of setup they have, why bother? But should they ask, one feature of your cover is that you have Scoular's syndrome, and the injections keep you in something like normal health."
"Why Scoular's?"
"Non-contagious and treatable, yet requiring the eccentricity of a regular injection nonetheless. Besides, the medication's composition is also similar enough that should customs take a cursory look at it your story should still hold up. If they take more than a cursory look, they'll assume you're just an abuser."
"Might the appearance of narcotics be a problem?"
"Highly unlikely," he said. "They're not particularly interested in that sort of thing, since they don't look at narcotics the way that other cultures do. They don't see the body as something 'pure,' something which should not be altered or modified; modifying it, after all, is the basis of their whole belief system. Their only worry is for the efficiency of their infostructures, and they look to other ways than shaking down or jailing drug-runners to insure that. Though of course, even if they don't buy your story about Scoular's, they'll see that you won't have more than what you require for personal use."
Liam finished the haul and took his vacation, trading his freighter's dubious amenities for a luxury suite aboard a passenger ship bound for Chermetevo. He looked out the window at the planet he was approaching, which he'd actually never seen before. It was a cold world, approximately a hundred and seventy million kilometers from its sun, circled by a moon with a quarter of its mass, a big, heavy moon that made for equally big tides on this dark, blue planet.