“There are always exceptions.”
“Was this an exception?”
The silence gave the answer.
“Now, with the client gone, our professional reputation remains. We took a contract, and we did not fulfill it. What do you suggest, regional chief?”
“We have two choices—either a crash search, which would be prohibitive and pointless, or making Gerswin a designated target of opportunity with a triple bonus for the successful agent. I would recommend the latter.”
“I concur, but reluctantly. Given the commodore’s independent and erratic travel schedules, it is the only realistic approach.”
“What if he attempts to attack us?”
“You think that is a serious possibility? One man against the entire Guild?”
“A moment ago you were cautioning me against underestimating the man. He has turned the tables on two armed agents.”
“I do not doubt his considerable capabilities, as well as his resources, but in the end even the commodore will slow down as he ages. The Guild will not, and Gerswin is not the type to hibernate, not for long. Besides, no one has ever escaped the destination as a target of opportunity. Ever.”
“That is true enough.” The words expressed doubt rather than affirmation. “Is that all?”
“That is all.”
XLII
Cling.
The screen flickered twice, and the priority code appeared in the upper right-hand corner.
Lyr bit her lip, relegated the information on the screen to memory, and accepted the call from the commodore she thought of as a commander, and probably always would.
“Why a local beam?” she asked as his face appeared on the screen. “You usually prefer guaranteed privacy.”
“Prefer safety as well,” responded the golden-haired and hawk-eyed man.
“You care to explain?”
“My name has become too well-known to some for me to travel as freely and anonymously as I once did.”
She frowned at the unexpected verbosity, then realized that on a public link he would be somewhat less specific than normal. She studied the background, which she did not recognize, but which looked technical, almost like the bridge of an Imperial ship.
“Where are you?”
“In orbit station. That was so I could hook into the local Imperial comm network. Once this is done, I’ll be leaving.
“The lack of mobility could be troubling in the future, and so my far limited experience indicates it might pose problems for others as well.”
“How would it affect the foundation?”
She was surprised to find him grinning at her through the screen. “Always business, I see.” He frowned as quickly as he had grinned. “Limited degree. Would like some recommendations from you. Research. If they fall outside normal business, please bill my account….”
Lyr nodded.
“Remember the grant we reviewed about a standard year ago…one involving modified bodlerian algae? Looking for information specialists in that system, people who could accumulate and codify background information on most Imperial systems, as well as the ability to provide perfectly legal incognitos for business travelers.”
“Legal aliases?”
“Correct. As I understand Imperial law, one may use a name not his own if no illegal intent is involved. No illegal intent would be involved. For example, if a jewel merchant has to use a courier on a regular basis, unscrupulous interests could scan the passenger lists for that name…. But if accepted aliases were available, a merchant or dealer could use his own courier with greater security.
“If a commercial baron’s agent wanted to check out a new enterprise, he could do so without alerting the system he was out to check. Such an enterprise might be profitable. Combine that with the information background of the type that commercial types need and have to develop themselves…anyway. My local counsel suggests it is legal, but with your contacts in that system…”
New Avalon was the system, if Lyr remembered correctly, and with the university there, it was certainly a good location for such an information processing concern.
“Doesn’t anyone provide services like this?”
“Not to all comers on a cash or commercial basis.”
Lyr smiled faintly. The pattern to the commodore’s operations was becoming clearer.
She bit at her lower lip. Whether or not his ventures applied directly to the foundation, there was no question that somehow the foundation always seemed to benefit. With each of his activities, unsolicited contributions seemed to appear. Despite his prohibition on any form of solicitation, outside funds continually appeared to swell the capital and the income from investments of that capital.
Already she was receiving more than routine information requests from the Imperial government on the foundation’s finances and tax reports, the sort of attention that was reserved, in her experience, for the more important of the charitable and academic foundations.
She caught herself and cut off her reverie.
“What do you want me to do with the information?”
“Send it by torp to the information drop I use most often.”
“That would be—”
“NO!”
She shook her head ruefully. “I’m sorry. I forgot we could be on an open wave. How soon do you want it? Yesterday?”
The commodore nodded.
“I’ll get to work on it, and, commander, I think you’ll be billed for research services.”
“That’s fine. Understand.”
The screen blanked.
Lyr left her own screen blank, making no move to retrieve the material she had been studying before he had faxed. She had seen the man in action. For him to worry about his personal safety—even to mention it—meant that he was more than just casually worried. Much more.
If he had enemies that powerful, what did it mean for the foundation?
She began to pull what her banks had on security systems. After she finished with getting the commander’s—the commodore’s, she corrected herself mentally, knowing she would continue to slip—project under way, she would undertake a few improvements for the foundation headquarters. Just in case.
And she needed to reinforce some of her ties with Alord and his friends at the Imperial Humanities Foundation, as well as those with Dimitra at the I.A.F.
The commander hadn’t given her any instructions, but he hadn’t forbidden it, either, and it looked like they both might need the allies, information, and protection in the years ahead.
Her fingers moved across the console board, and her forehead cleared as she began to plan.
XLIII
The man smiled and swung his case up for inspection. His teeth were white and even, and stood out against the darkness of his skin, which was sun-darkened olive.
“Destination, ser?”
“Markhigh.”
“Your pass?”
The traveler profferred the folder, and the port official nodded, his clearance nothing more than an affirmation of the more detailed clearance already given by the security section of the orbit station.
The olive-skinned man stepped through the portal and walked toward the monorail station platform, toward the spot where he would wait for the train that would carry him back to his small art dealership.
As he waited on the platform a man with shoulder length silver hair with a matching handlebar mustache edged up to him.
The art dealer studied the other, comparing height, coloration, and build against a mental file he carried, finally discarding all of the comparisons and relaxing slightly.
The older man had the relaxed but alert bearing of a former officer or security agent, but not the harried look of a target or the indefinable tension of a hunter. Nonetheless, the art dealer’s elbow activated the slide sheath, just in case his spot assessment had been incorrect.
“Ser Giriello, I believe.”
“I do not believe we have met.”
“We have no
t. I recognized you because I have visited your low gallery in Markhigh. Your collection of Raiz’ his rather remarkable.”
“Thank you.”
The art dealer scanned the platform. No one else was anywhere near them, not that it made that much difference with directional pickups and focused lasers, although the coating of his cloaks and tunics were designed to give him the fractions of seconds necessary to escape that sort of attack.
“Particularly remarkable for someone whose real business is elsewhere.”
Giriello did not answer, but readied himself and stepped backward, as if affronted and puzzled.
“Ser…?”
The ploy failed because the silver-haired man moved with him, and Giriello found himself held in a grasp that was steellike in intensity.
“Giriello, this time—this time—nothing will happen. You are to deliver a message. The message is simple. Merhlin will destroy the Guild. That’s all.”
There was a sharpness at the back of his neck, and the art dealer could feel his knees buckling as the hard pavement came up to meet him, could hear the stranger yelling for medical help. He wanted to laugh at the hypocrisy of it all, except that the darkness washed over him.
XLIV
Lyr pulled at her chin as she slipped through the portals to the foundation office.
She knew the commander—the commodore, she corrected herself yet another time—would be waiting. His voice had been ice-cold.
Automatically she closed the portal behind her and touched the lock stud as she surveyed the reception area and found it lit, but vacant.
The faint sound that was a cross between a whine and a hum told her that the analyzers in the tech space were operating, and in a linked fashion.
“Come on back, Lyr.”
She sighed and stepped into the tech room.
His privacy cloak lay draped over one of the console chairs. He stood and pushed back the swivel where he had been working.
“I didn’t expect to see you so soon again,” she said.
“Didn’t expect to be back so quickly. Have a problem. Not strictly foundation, but it does impact us. Need to trust someone, and you’re elected.”
She opened her mouth, and he held up a hand. “I know. You have to account for everything. Perfectly legal for you to provide analytical services, provided you charge for them. Charge me the going rate, or MacGregor Corson. Charges aren’t the problem.”
“What is? Why did you insist on my being down here in the middle of the night?”
“Been a few other nights when you were,” he observed laconically. “Running on a tight schedule. Ship time doesn’t always agree with Imperial mean time.” He grinned, and the lack of warmth in the hawk-yellow eyes sent shivers down her spine and chills through her body. She was not certain she wanted to know anything more.
“What do you want analyzed?”
“Lists and destinations.”
“Lists and destinations? For that you got me up—” She broke off in midsentence as for the first time she saw a fire in his eyes that represented anger, or a view of hell.
“What do you want from the analysis?” she temporized.
“Patterns.” He sighed. “Let me explain. A group of individuals is engaged in a highly profitable and exceedingly illegal business. They use aliases, false destinations. Almost no possibility of determining which alias is a commercial traveler on honest business, which a philanderer, and which the deadly anonymity of this group.”
“That’s not merely impossible. It would require a miracle—”
“I’ve contracted for a travel research contract for a shipping firm, and will be obtaining the monthly listings of selected passenger destinations. Not the names, just the arrival and departure ports. I will be adding to that major commercial meetings, conferences, fairly reliable estimates of military personnel and dependents traveling on commercial ships, and other data.”
“But what do you want?” she asked tiredly.
“I told you. Patterns. Probably take years, but there should be continuing patterns. Clear ones. You develop the possibilities and send them to me. I’ll test them and let you know.”
“I still don’t understand what you want.”
His eyes flared. Then he looked away, almost as if he was afraid of hurting her, it seemed.
“Let me give you a hypothetical example. If on the second week of the second and tenth months of the Imperial year, there are always two passengers booked from New Augusta through New Glascow to Ydris, it means something—from whether that represents a regularly scheduled conference, a recurrent meeting, a regular fund transfer. It means something.”
His voice softened. “The organization I am trying to locate has roughly nine hundred members on twenty planets, but ten planets are considered the key. New Augusta is the only major system not included, but remains a widely used transfer point. Therefore, anyone booked from New Augusta who belongs to this group must have come from somewhere else.
“Now, that doesn’t mean I want you to exclude all others. If you can determine that the Brotherhood of Universal Peace has set patterns, let me know, and I can verify and modify. Eventually, by eliminating the obvious groups, by using the tourism stats, we should be able to eliminate everyone but the target.”
Lyr shook her head. “That’s at least a ten-to-fifteen-year project.”
“Could be less. Maybe able to get you more and better information. Your console has the specifics, along with the beginning data base, as well as the entity to bill for the services, and the travel service for whom you will prepare the monthly report. In turn, that service will send its payment to MacGregor Corson, care of OER Foundation, and you will bill me for the balance of time and costs owed.”
“What…that I think I finally understand, Commander. Why…that is another question.”
“One you’re probably better off not knowing.” He circled around behind the swivel and picked up his privacy cloak. As he donned it, with the full-fade uniform, he transformed into a shadow, despite the clear lighting in the tech section.
“Good night.”
Lyr did not shake her head. Instead she moved to the console he had vacated earlier.
“You know what he wants, don’t you?” she said quietly to no one. “You’d think that even he would know better than to take on the Guild. Unless they already have taken him on.”
She shivered, but her hands remained steady on the console controls.
XLV
“Whuff…whuff…whuff…”
The man’s breath came in jerky gasps, one dragged out after the next, as he struggled to put one foot in front of the other. His head wobbled from side to side in the darkness, although he did not look over his aching shoulders.
He could hear easily enough the pad, pad, pad of his pursuer’s even footsteps. He could hear, but not believe.
None of it was believable.
“Whuff…whuff…whufff…”
His feet and lungs labored as he staggered along the empty riding trail. He looked toward the heavier undergrowth beside the trail, but decided against that tactic. The searing pain that shot from his left arm every time he moved too suddenly reinforced that decision.
“Whuff…whuff…whuff…”
Whoever…whatever…chased him not only could see in the darkness of Haldane, but could move silently when it wanted. Whatever it was, it toyed with him.
His more rational side told him to stop, that attack had proven fruitless, and that flight was even less fruitful, but he kept putting one leg in front of the other.
“Whuff…whuff…whuff…”
How much longer he could move, let alone breathe, he did not know, only that each leg felt like lead, that flashes of hot light pricked behind his eyes, and that his mouth hung limply open.
Whhrrr!
Crack!
The sound of the unknown weapon jolted his momentarily still legs into a shamble onward down the slight incline before him.
His pursuer was
invisible, silent except for the sometime padding of feet, silent except for the occasional missile like the one that had shattered his left arm.
“Whuff…whuff…whuffff…”
Each breath was harder to draw, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other. In the back of his mind, the thought flared—you’re being hunted, like a fox, a garbou, like a dog.
But his unseen hunter refused to let him turn, driving him with the shadowy presence, with the silent whrrr of pain.
Right after he had seen the dark figure, he had charged the unknown, had actually touched the alien, if that was what it was, for the steel muscles of the shadow figure had paralyzed his remaining good arm and tossed him aside like a doll.
“Run…assassin…” Those had been the words hissed at him.
He had not run, not him. Not then. Instead he had turned and attacked with all the skill taught by the Guild. And had been tossed aside again. Like trying to catch a shadow at night. And it had been barely night then. Now dawn was approaching.
Each of those early rushes toward the alien blackness had found him sprawled into the dirt, into the grass of the park.
“Whuff…whuff…whuffff…”
When assault had failed, he had stood his ground. Until the terrible projectiles had whirred past his head, the second shattering his left arm.
“Run…assassin…” And the alien had hissed his terrible message again.
He had stood—until the shadow rose from nowhere next to him and had twisted his pain-wracked arm.
“Run…assassin…”
Whhrrr!
He had run—not wisely, but well, for who had ever outrun him? Who had ever outrun the Hound of the Guild?
“Whuff…whuff…whufff…”
His legs were shaking. The flares behind his eyes left him nearly blind to the path ahead. Staggering, he managed to catch his balance, lurching leftward, then right, until he came to the gentle slope upward, a slope that became more steep with each meter.
“Whuff…whuff…whuffff…whufffff…”
The Forever Hero Page 49