"What'll happen, sir?"
Cazombi shrugged and finished his coffee. He held out the mug for a refill. "Oh, formal inquiry, for sure. Then possibly a court-martial. Well, two court-martials. The bitch named me as a corespondent, because I backed you up. We're going down together, Captain." He grimace-grinned again. "Oh, she named Nast too," he added, "but he just supported me on moral grounds. He had no decision-making authority, and besides, he was picked for his job by the Confederation President personally, so nobody like Hoxey'll ever cool his jets. But he'll make a good witness for our side, if it comes to that."
"Will the charges stick, sir?" Conorado asked, handing the general another cup of coffee.
"Well, as we say in the army, ‘Not only no, but hell no!’ You were right to do what you did. You see, Captain, there's more to being a good leader than risking your life under fire. There are other dimensions to leadership. Look at those smugglers, for instance. Some of them were very brave when you breached the hull of the Marquis. But you wouldn't let them command a fire team. They are neither leaders nor heroes. You are."
"All I've ever done is my duty, sir."
Cazombi nodded. "Sure." He sipped his coffee. "But you have the other dimension of true heroism, Captain, that which distinguishes a merely brave man from a heroic one, a manager of men from a leader of men. That's moral courage. Plenty of physically brave men lack that quality. When it comes to facing death, they do it without hesitation, but when it comes to risking everything on a matter of principle, they cave in. I think the morally courageous man is the superior man. You've got it both ways, Captain, and any board of inquiry, any court-martial, will see it as clearly as I do. And if they don't, I'll damned well tell them." He finished his coffee, stood up, shook Conorado's hand and left.
Conorado sat silently, thinking about what the general had said. He knew Cazombi was right, about principle being more important than physical bravery, although he'd never think of himself as any kind of hero. He was sure now that he knew what that Avionian had tried to tell him before he disappeared in the foliage: "Thank you." Charlie Bass was right. That simple expression of thanks from another intelligent being was all the justification he needed for what he had done. The future looked a whole lot brighter.
Madam Piggott Thigpen was desperately calling in favors, but nobody was responding.
As soon as it had been announced that Val Carney and Henri Morgan had both been "lost" in a suborbital flight over the Pacific Ocean, she called the Attorney General. She terminated the call as soon as she learned the AG had been relieved, replaced by a hard-nosed lawman who hated the representative from Carhart's World. The day before, when the media had been full of reports that Oncho Tweed, the prominent undersea developer, was killed in a shootout with the Philippine coast guard, Thigpen had suspected that the Ministry of Justice was on to them. The relief of the Attorney General and the "tragic disappearance" of her partners confirmed it. Both men had promised to meet with her that very evening, so she knew the report of their being "lost" on a transoceanic flight was false. The Special Investigations Bureau had snatched the men, she was certain of it.
She returned to her apartment immediately, to await the imminent arrival of the SIB goons. Evidently, that goddamned ridiculous little man, Nast, had broken the case. Well, there'd be plenty of time later on to figure out what had gone wrong.
Once home, she activated her security systems. The SIB would have to breach them in order to get to her, and that wouldn't be easy. She'd make her arrest as hard on them as she could. She sighed and slipped out of her sweat-soaked clothes. She commanded a servo to get her a cold glass of Katzenwasser '36 as she sank into the nearest orthosofa. She wondered what life would be like on Darkside. On the other hand, there was very little she didn't know about Confederation secrets. Maybe she could capitalize on that knowledge. If she went down, others would go with her. Send her to Darkside? Hah! She'd see about that!
The future was brightening slightly. She wondered what had happened to Patch. Dirty bastard had probably gotten away, she mused. He always got away.
"Uh!" she exclaimed, dropping her wineglass. It shattered wetly on the plush carpet. The orthosofa had just readjusted itself—to an uncomfortable position, squeezing her lower legs—most unusual. "Aiiiikkk!" she screamed shrilly as the pressure abruptly increased, snapping the bones in her legs and feet with a loud series of cracks. The pain was unbearable! She emitted a high-pitched, wailing scream for help. Where were the police when you really needed them? She pounded helplessly at the component squeezing her legs. Gasping in pain and terror, she struggled to pull herself loose from the chair's grip, but then it began to enfold her upper body, squeezing her into a ball. Chin buried deep in the flab of her midsection, she began to smother in her own fat as one by one her vertebrae cracked under the enormous pressure. One last thought flashed through her mind before blessed unconsciousness enveloped her. "Patch!"
Madam Piggott Thigpen's intestines burst with a sickening plop. Goo squirted through small gaps in the quickly closing mechanism, and several thin, high-powered streams of red spray reached as high as the ceiling and the farthest walls of the room.
Like a huge fist crushing an overripe tomato, the orthosofa continued squeezing her into a smaller and smaller glob of pulp. Eventually the room turned quiet except for the occasional popping of a bone here and there and the gentle drip of body fluids onto the floor.
In the relative silence following the shrieks and screams of their mistress, the automated mechanisms throughout the apartment whirred and clicked and hummed as they performed their assorted tasks. The servo sat mutely in its recess, patiently waiting for another command. In the early morning, the scrubbers and cleaners would emerge from their niches at the programmed hour and start to work on the mess surrounding the orthosofa, which stood like a huge volcanic island in the center of Lake Madam Piggott Thigpen. But that would not be for hours.
The mechanisms that had once obeyed her every command and kept Madam Thigpen's housekeeping affairs in order could not detect the horrible stench that now pervaded the apartment. The air scrubbers could only be activated by human action. There would be no one in the place to do that for some time yet.
At last the setting sun peeked in through the west windows, suffusing the luxurious apartment with a pleasant orange-red glow. Tiny motes of dust floated gently in the air, and the light reflected brightly, as if off a mirror, from the enormous pool of muck slowly coalescing about the tightly closed sofa.
Gunsel crouched expectantly beside the makeshift array of tubes, retorts, and a pressure cooker he'd devised from cast-off kitchen apparatus. "See, Spence, it's vaporized in here, cools off in these tubes, and the juice drips out here." He pointed to a beaker sitting on the floor of the tiny room that served as his living quarters in the prison complex reserved for nonviolent inmates. He'd explained the distillation process dozens of times before, but he felt he had to say something to break the tension of the moment.
Spencer Herbloc squatted silently nearby, anxiously rubbing his hands together. It had been a year since Special Agent Nast delivered the survivors of the Marquis de Rien to Darkside, and he hadn't had a drink since before then. He picked nervously at the scar on his right arm where the monitoring device had been implanted.
The penal colony known informally as Darkside existed to isolate a handful of incorrigibles, not to punish them. Total separation from humanity for the rest of each inmate's life was considered punishment enough—and a very good thing for society. The thousand or so inmates on Darkside were left almost entirely on their own, except they were segregated into different regions on the planet by psychological profile. All were provided with the materials for survival, but each was left to sink or swim on his own. The tiny monitor embedded under the skin of each inmate's left forearm was there strictly for accountability, not to ensure individual safety.
"Ahhhh," Herbloc sighed as the first drop of colorless fluid fell into the beaker.
> "Patience, patience," Gunsel advised. "Ninety percent grain alcohol, that's what we should get, Spence."
"You are a genius, boy-o, a pure genius!" Herbloc crowed
Gradually, slowly, the beaker filled. When it was full, Gunsel replaced it with an empty container. The still bubbled away happily.
"Now, Artie, boy-o, let us repair to the convivial couch," Herbloc cried. They sat at the table. Carefully, Gunsel poured each of them a generous dollop of the precious liquid. Cautiously they sipped the drink.
"Oh, my dear God," Herbloc whispered, his eyes filling with tears. "It is—" He coughed. "—pure nectar!" His voice rose several octaves as he spoke, but he drank again.
"Could use a mixer, don't you think?" Gunsel observed. In the past year some of Herbloc's habits had rubbed off on the engineer, especially a newfound interest in poetry. He held his glass to the light and inspected the fluid. "Well, as old Bobbie put it, ‘O Whiskey! Soul o' plays an' pranks! Accept a Bardie's gratefu' thanks!’" He sipped again, smacked his lips and shook himself as the fiery liquid scorched its way down into his stomach. He coughed appreciatively.
Herbloc too addressed his glass. "‘But oil'd by thee / The wheels o' life gae downhill, scrievin / Wi' rattlin glee!’" he recited with alcoholic gravity.
They clinked their glasses in a silent toast and drank again. Life on Darkside had just turned a little bit brighter.
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