Between Home and Ruin (Fall of the Censor Book 2)

by Karl K Gallagher

  “Certainly.” Wynny’s cousins undoubtedly had connections with the ‘Sacrificed God’ secret societies. Finding a lecture hall was within Marcus’ capabilities—but he was still going to ask Wynny to help him. “How big a crowd are you expecting?”

  “I have no idea. I’ll be happy if I have an audience of one.”

  ***

  “We should find a spot in an ardal with an open bazaar, big enough for a church service,” said Wynny. “Everyone goes in them. A closed ardal will scare off people who don’t know anyone in there.”

  Marcus let her lead him to one of the shopping areas on the third level. The ardal was open on its bottom floor. The upper levels were still sealed against any flood which might reach this high.

  “We’ll check here and then work our way up,” she said. Arnvon had seven levels to Bundoran’s five, as well as being wider at the base.

  “Why not start at the bottom?”

  “Because middle and top people won’t come to a grungy first-level thing.”

  “Wait, people hate first level that much? Oh.”

  Wynny laughed. “Oh, he just found out his girl is first-level trash. It was fun while it lasted.”

  “Hey. I didn’t mean it like that. Besides, there’s nothing special about a merchant officer.”

  “I figured that out when I saw dirt on your hands.” She made notes on her tablet about an empty storefront, then moved on.

  Fourth level had what she wanted. An empty store with stacks of chairs.

  “It’s on an inner corridor. I’d rather it was on the outer edge so people could enter without fighting the crowd. But it’s big enough and we don’t have to carry chairs up.” She pulled up the ardal’s management office on the tablet.

  Marcus turned slowly to survey the room. “I’m good with it. I’d like a lectern, though.”

  “A what?”

  “Something for Father Murphy to stand behind as he talks. It gives him a place to put his Bible. About yay tall.” He gestured to indicate the size.

  “Never seen something like that. But if you give my cousin Heilyn a sketch I bet he can knock one out fast.”

  They wandered to a nearby diner for a meal. As they were waiting to be seated Wynny checked her messages. She looked up from her tablet. “The new Rag Duffy movie is out!”

  “Who?” replied Marcus.

  “You’ve never seen Rag Duffy? How did I let you go through your first visit without seeing Rag Duffy?”

  She reserved seats at the nearest theater. “Show’s in thirty-five minutes. Let’s go.”

  Marcus protested, “We haven’t had dinner.”

  “We can eat there.” She led him down the stairs toward the escalator.

  “Fried nori is tasty, but it’s not a meal.”

  “I’ll find something better.”

  On the escalator Marcus asked, “So who is Rag Duffy?”

  “He’s a hero. If a clan needs a murder solved, or a hostage rescued, or their reputation restored, they hire Rag Duffy.”

  “In Fieran movies, heroes usually work for free.”

  She cocked her head. “Then how do you get them to show up?”

  He took a moment to think. “Luck, usually.”

  “Doesn’t sound very dependable.”

  At the theater snack bar Wynny ordered drinks and a basket of small spheres, promising they were high protein.

  Once in their seats he ate one. “Okay, that’s good. What is it?”

  “Deep fried sea urchin. Oh, it’s starting.”

  The movie began with a close-up of Rag Duffy’s face backing out to view the whole man. He was tall, broad, and muscular. The face was lined with care and marred by scars emerging from the eye patch he’d worn for the last six movies. He wore a hat, the small brim all around it marking him as an investigator. The black coat was kraken skin, worn open and reaching past his knees.

  Then Duffy fell back as a burly thug punched him in the jaw. He bounced off a wall and struck the thug in the belly. The two staggered around a storeroom, breaking crates and smashing bottles. At last Rag Duffy pinned the thug to the floor.

  “Your negligence cost Jahna his leg.” Duffy pulled a foot long object from his thigh pocket. “Will you pay his clan the bloodprice? Or will I bring them your leg as payment?” He unfolded the saw blade from its handle.

  “I’ll pay,” said the thug.

  The screen filled with flaming letters:

  RAG DUFFY

  DEATH CREDITOR

  They faded out as smaller text appeared. ‘Chapter Seventeen: Drowned in a Fountain.’

  A scene of Duffy enjoying a vacation was interrupted by an accusation that he’d murdered a young woman found lying in a fountain.

  Wynny nodded. The last two movies Duffy had sought justice for a poor clan and foiled a conspiracy to incite a revolt. He was due to be framed again.

  Rag Duffy stood before the elders of the victim’s clan as the (of course) damning evidence of murder was presented. Then the proofs of her beauty and skills to justify a high bloodprice. The elders demanded Duffy pay the bloodprice or offer his own life in compensation.

  “I am innocent of this girl’s death,” said Duffy. “No blood of hers is on my hands. But you deserve justice. Sell me your bloodright for this death. I will pay you nine-tenths of the bloodprice in thirty days and tell you who the true criminal is.”

  After an unrealistically brief amount of bickering the elders agreed to sell their right to take vengeance for the murder to Duffy. The judge they’d invited to preside over the accusation certified the sale. Now Rag Duffy was the official seeker of justice for the murdered woman.

  Well, he was to Corwyntis. To the Censorate he was just another trouble-making civilian.

  Duffy plunged into the investigation, starting with what happened to the surveillance cameras that were supposed to be watching the fountain. Questioning witnesses alternated with being punched in alleys. Suspects appeared: a corrupt Censorial security agent (obvious red herring), a rejected suitor (how would he finagle the cameras?), and the respectable manager of the enterprise the victim was loaned out to by her clan (Wynny would bet money).

  The manager turned out to be manufacturing addictive pharmaceuticals to smuggle offworld to planets where they were banned. The ‘corrupt’ Censorial was revealed to be faking it to infiltrate the operation. She and Duffy teamed up for a climactic brawl/shootout ending with a confession from the murderer. The brawl was so violent Duffy picked up a gun, which the security agent arranged a pardon for.

  The manager’s clan was forced to mortgage their factory to raise the bloodprice of the murdered woman. Rag Duffy presented the cash to her clan. He kept back less than a tenth, only enough to cover his expenses and live on for a month. Then he walked away to leave them to their mourning.

  Marcus was quiet leaving the theater.

  “What did you think?” asked Wynny.

  “Is that how most murders get solved?”

  “If the Censies don’t intervene. They care about important taxpayers and their informers being killed. Real trials have more arguing over liability and less punching.”

  “Yeah. Our cop shows have extra punching, too. I liked it. Thank you for taking me.”

  They kissed on the sidewalk until someone grumbled at them for blocking the way.

  ***

  “This is perfect,” said Chaplain Murphy.

  The chairs were in neat rows, three wide aisles splitting them into cozy sections. The wright had tossed in a plain metal cross and pair of candlesticks with the lectern. The cross was centered on the back wall. The lectern was off-center by the door to the utility corridor behind the storefronts.

  Murphy looked through the windows at the passers-by outside and the stores on the other side of the passage. There was a single doorway, double-wide with the doors chocked open. The rest of the front was windows from knee-high to the ceiling.

  A store would put attractive merchandise in those windows. Wynny had made p
osters with all the Sacrificed God icons she’d heard of.

  Strangers drifted in. Wynny greeted them by the door and urged them to take seats up front. They sat in the back.

  “That’s a start,” said Murphy. “I’ve had smaller congregations. God willing they’ll have a new hymn for me.”

  “I’d better help her,” said Marcus.

  Even with two of them ushering the seats filled in a horseshoe—sides and back full, front and center empty.

  People kept coming. At the official start time a solid stream came through the door. Late-comers were forced into the front row.

  Marcus moved among the seats urging groups to slide over to fill in empty seats separating them. Some went to stand against the wall rather than be next to someone else they recognized. The gaps filled in quickly.

  The crowd was enough to make him worry about fire code regulations. The rental agent hadn’t mentioned any limit. When newcomers slowed to a trickle he waved to Wynny. The two of them closed the doors as three more Corwyntis slid through.

  They scooted down a side aisle to the back corner by Murphy.

  “Thank you all for coming,” said the chaplain. “I’ve come here from the world Fiera to talk about our savior Jesus Christ, who died to free us from sin and grant us eternal life.”

  He paused as the crowd responded with cries of, “Praise Jesus,” “Hail Jesus son of Harold,” and “Thanks be to the Lord.”

  Marcus studied the crowd as Murphy talked of his church and beliefs. They were all Corwynti. No Censorials or spacers. The clothes were all lower class, not that there were truly poor people in the arcologies, but at the bottom of the pecking order.

  He looked closer at faces and hands in the front row. Some of those might be higher class people dressing down. Which made sense if they were avoiding Censorial attention.

  Murphy shifted tones. “Let us now pray. Please join me if you know the words.”

  He took a deep breath and began, “Our Father—”

  The crowd as one continued, “Who art in Heaven, Harold be thy name,”

  Marcus stumbled to a stop as the words sank in. Harold? Did they really say Harold?

  He looked at Chaplain Murphy. He was looking down at the lectern with the stiff lips and twitching cheeks of a man suppressing a burst of laughter.

  Murphy regained control enough to join in the last line and “Amen.” He glanced at his notes for the talk, shoved them aside, and picked up his Bible. “I shall now read you the words of Jesus. The Gospel according to Matthew, Chapters Five and Six.”

  As he paged through to find his place the words, “The book!” came from the crowd, some whispering, some almost shouting. Men in the front row half-rose to their feet before being pulled down by their neighbors.

  The priest read out the Sermon on the Mount. The poetry of the verses held the crowd in its grip. They settled down, listening intently.

  Murphy recited the injunctions to perform charity not publicly for fame but secretly for its own sake. Then not to pray in public to impress others.

  Marcus had to wonder how the command to pray privately felt to a secret society which held its services among the sewer pipes.

  Then came the text of the Lord’s Prayer. Murphy enunciated clearly on “hallowed be thy name.”

  A skinny old man in a middle row popped to his feet. “Sir, you have said that wrongly.”

  “No, my friend, I have properly read the words of the Bible.” Murphy’s voice was calm.

  “That is not the true word of the prayer!” shouted the old man.

  Murphy pointed at a young woman in the front row. “You. Come here.”

  Flinching at being the center of attention, she obeyed.

  “Spell aloud for us the word in question.” Murphy’s finger pointed at the page.

  She leaned over the lectern. “H-A-L-L-O-W-E-D.” She licked her lips. “The rest of the text is as I learned the prayer.”

  “The book gives us the truth!” someone shouted.

  The old man shouted, “God’s name is Harold!”

  Murphy strove for a professorial tone. “God is called Father or Lord. In the Latin and Hebrew languages those are Jehovah, Yahweh, or Adonai. Those are the names of God.”

  A grandfatherly type stood up in the third row. “I learned the words from my father, who learned them from his father, who learned from his, into the unknown past. Who are you to call my fathers liars?”

  “Do you doubt the book?” demanded a fourth row man behind him.

  The grandfather turned and punched his questioner hard enough to make him disappear under the crowd.

  “My friends, we must turn the other cheek,” cried Murphy.

  A front row man reached over the lectern. “Lend me the book, I must read it to my people,” he begged.

  Murphy grabbed the Bible with both hands. The Censorial permission for the event had been explicit, emphatic, and repetitive that no text could be given to any native.

  Marcus body-checked the man away from the lectern. He looked around. Fist fights were breaking out all through the room. “Gather up your things, Father. We’re leaving.”

  He checked the door to the utility corridor. Locked, of course. He hadn’t even thought to ask the rental agent for a key. What use would he have for it?

  “Stay close,” he told Murphy and Wynny. He picked up a chair and held it legs pointing out, ready to jab anyone in his way.

  The crowd standing along the wall had melted away, joining the brawl among the seats or trying to force their way to the door.

  Marcus winced at the solid mass of people forcing themselves into the door. People would die in that, crushed or trampled.

  Cautious people avoiding the riot scampered out of Marcus’ way. It looked like he could reach the front corner without trouble. A man flew out of the riot and slammed head-first into the wall before Marcus with a crunch. It must have been breaking bones. There wasn’t a mark on the wall.

  God damn Corwyntis and their hurricane-proof architecture. On Fiera I could have kicked a hole in a wall and been gone.

  Halfway along the wall three men came out of the crowd and tackled Chaplain Murphy to the ground. Wynny beat one over the head with a chair she’d picked up. Marcus swung his down to hit another on the neck. He collapsed.

  The third crawled away on knees and one hand, the other hand clutching the Bible to his chest. Marcus ran up behind and put his work boot’s steel toe underneath the thief’s buttocks. He spasmed, sending the Bible sliding across the floor.

  Marcus ran, leapt, and stomped a foot on it before it went into the melee.

  A man startled by Marcus’s appearance turned and threw a punch. Marcus dodged it. His return punch hit the side of the man’s neck with his full weight behind it. The man fell.

  The Merchant Service Academy self-defense classes prepared officers for anything from drunk passengers to mutinous crewmen. “We want results, not sportsmanship,” said the instructors.

  Marcus had gone back for additional instruction while waiting for the embassy to form.

  A kick with his heel sent the Bible spinning back to the wall. Wynny scooped it up. Murphy and the third attacker were back on their feet and facing each other. The stranger’s scalp bled where Wynny had whacked him with her chair but he stood firm.

  Before Marcus could reach them Murphy punched the stranger in the nose, spraying blood. A powerful left split the man’s lips an instant later. He went down.

  Marcus cocked his head at the priest.

  “They’ve had both cheeks,” Murphy snapped.

  Marcus nodded and moved along the wall. More wall-flowers got out of their way. He kept looking around for new dangers.

  Danger came as four men emerging from the melee. “There’s the liar!” yelled the leader. They charged.

  Marcus pivoted away from the one aimed at him, tripped him, and grabbed his shoulder to accelerate him into the wall with greater force. The attacker slid down the wall and landed in a heap.<
br />
  The chaplain cried, “St. Nicholas give me strength.” He punched an attacker in the jaw, sending him straight to the floor.

  Marcus left the third attacker to him.

  The fourth had grabbed Wynny’s arms, forced her against the wall, and was kissing her. The weight of him against her hips kept her from kneeing him. She stomped on a foot without effect.

  Marcus grabbed the assailant’s shoulder, twisting him away from her and landing a punch hard on his mouth. The lips split bloodily, filling him with satisfaction.

  Two fingers on his fist stung. Marcus glanced at them and realized the teeth had cut his skin. That’s why they told me not to hit them in the mouth.

  He twisted to take a return punch on his cheek, stepping back to absorb the momentum. Then two firm throat punches put the man down.

  “You’ve gotten better at this,” gasped Wynny.

  “I’m just glad Jaaphisii aren’t Christians.”

  Murphy and the last attacker were in a clinch, staggering about. Marcus set his weight to put a full power punch into the back of the attacker’s neck. He fell instantly.

  The priest rubbed his forehead where it was the anvil for Marcus’ hammer blow. “Thank you, my son.”

  Marcus nodded. “Let’s go.”

  No one got in their way after that. The windows were a stronger obstacle. Marcus shoved at the one on the end without result.

  A glance at the doorway showed Marcus the panicked mob still jammed it. A piece of his training said he should restore order and conduct a safe evacuation but he ignored it. He was here for Wynny and Murphy. And if he had to pick between them, he’d already decided.

  Some people had gotten through the door. Men were brawling in the passageway. He couldn’t tell if it was over theology or being elbowed in the scrum or passers-by drawn in. A shop on the other side was being looted for sporting equipment by rioters wanting clubs.

  So the windows could be broken.

  Marcus swung his chair at the window. A chair leg bent back. The pane had flexed enough to briefly leave a gap from its neighbor.

  He shoved the chair into Murphy’s hands. “I’m going to make a crack. Jam this in to hold it open.”