Free How Dark the World Becomes by Frank Chadwick

have.
    After I brought two tall glasses of tea over to the table she told me the whole, lousy story. 
    She’d been on Peezgtaan on a consulting gig, but not for the e-Traak family; it was for the Bureau of Economic Culture—something about the spiraling cost of importing fine art from Earth, alternate sources of supply, that sort of stuff. The fact that there is a prevalent mindset which considers art a commodity—like bauxite ore—is interesting, but I won’t go there right now. She’d been done with the assignment when the assassinations took place. During her survey work, Arrie had met her, in his capacity as a gallery owner and importer, and now he’d contacted her to help get the survivors off planet. 
    What survivors?
    The driver and the father were down at the scene, as reported. The bodyguard took out both of the primary assassins—the two “bystanders”—but he took two bullets himself, and they were both Poisoned Pills—lead-lined composite hollow points with polonium kickers—which meant that the bad guys were very, very bad. That must have been the odd thing about their weapons Bernie had gotten wind of but hadn’t been able to nail down. No wonder.
    Huh! I knew something Bernie didn’t. Now, there was one for the record books.
    One of the bullets in Jones had first gone through the open palm of the little boy—fortunately without encountering enough resistance to dump its poison—which accounted for his blood being on Jones and at the scene. Figuring that the primaries were not the only things to worry about, Jones got the two kids to Arrie before he died. 
    Why go to Arrie? 
    Because the primaries had had Co-Gozhak provost credentials. There was no way for the bodyguard to tell if they were genuine or not, but even if they were stolen or forgeries, if they were good enough to get them into a secure facility, then that probably meant at least a contact on the inside. That made it hard telling who was really clean and who wasn’t, or from how high up the mountain the boulder had started rolling—and so that’s when the smart move was to go below the sensor horizon, to crooks. 
    This guy Bony Jones, the bodyguard, figured all that out, and made the right move, with two radioactive cocktails spreading through his system, eating his organs up from inside. Knowing they were in for a real painful, ugly death, most guys would have just started looking for a lifetime supply of happy-drugs. Jones didn’t. He did the job, right up to the end. I wished I’d known him when he was still breathing.
    “First thing,” I said, “this means the biometrics are wrong for the jump tickets.” 
    She nodded.
    “We figured two children would trigger any data mines they had running, but two adults wouldn’t. The gender change for the girl wouldn’t really matter. Since the children are lighter than the reservation, there’s no problem with the physics, and a last-minute bribe should fix the administrative difficulties.”
    Sure. Just like I was doing with the bodyguard biometrics—you can always ratchet them down.
    “Okay, but you should have trusted me on that one. I’m going to have to scramble to get the phony passports changed in time. Now, what about the thing with Kolya?”
    “Mr. Markov? After you and I talked—the evening after I gave you the money—Mr. Arrakatlak found out that Mr. Markov had discovered that I was helping the children. Mr. Arrakatlak already suspected that Markov was in the employ of the assassins. We—Mr. Arrakatlak and I—decided that the only thing to do was for me to go to Markov and ask him to arrange the escape.”
    “And this actually made sense to you?” I asked.
    “Yes, of course,” she answered impatiently, becoming more confident as the shock wore off, confident enough that some of her hostility was beginning to resurface. “Mr. Markov already knows I am part of the escape, but he doesn’t know that I know that he knows . . . You understand?”
    I