Legacy

by James H. Schmitz

  12

  "Well, we didn't just leave it up to them," Quillan said. "Ship'sEngineering spotted a radiation leak in their cabin. Slight butdefinite. They got bundled out in a squawking hurry." He added, "Theydid get a better cabin though."

  "Might have been less trouble to get me to move," Trigger remarked.

  "Might have been. I didn't know what mood you'd be in."

  Trigger decided to let that ride. This cocktail lounge was a verycurious place. By the looks of it, there were thirty or forty people intheir immediate vicinity; but if one looked again in a couple ofminutes, there might be an entirely different thirty or forty peoplearound. Sitting in easy chairs or at tables, standing about in smallgroups, talking, drinking, laughing, they drifted past slowly; overhead,below, sometimes tilted at odd angles--fading from sight and presentlyreturning.

  In actual fact she and Quillan were in a little room by themselves, andwith more than ordinary privacy via an audio block and a reconstructscrambler which Quillan had switched on at their entry. "I'll leave usout of the viewer circuit," he remarked, "until you've finished yourquestions."

  "Viewer circuit?" she repeated.

  Quillan waved a hand around. "That," he said. "There are more commercialand industrial spies, political agents, top-class confidence men andwhatnot on board this ship than you'd probably believe. A goodpercentage of them are pretty fair lip readers, and the things you wantto talk about are connected with the Federation's hottest currentsecret. So while it's a downright crime not to put you on immediatedisplay in a place like this, we won't take the chance."

  Trigger let that ride too. A group had materialized at an oblong tableeight feet away while Quillan was speaking. Everybody at the tableseemed fairly high, and two of the couples were embarrassingly amorous;but she couldn't quite picture any of them as somebody's spies oragents. She listened to the muted chatter. Some Hub dialect she didn'tknow.

  "None of those people can see or hear us then?" she asked.

  "Not until we want them to. Viewer gives you as much privacy as youlike. Most of the crowd here just doesn't see much point to privacy.Like those two."

  Trigger followed his glance. At a tilted angle above them, a matchedpair of black-haired, black-gowned young sirens sat at a small table,sipping their drinks, looking languidly around.

  "Twins," Trigger said.

  "No," said Quillan. "That's Blent and Company."

  "Oh?"

  "Blent's a lady of leisure and somewhat excessively narcissistictendencies," he explained. He gave the matched pair another brief study."Perhaps one can't really blame her. One of them's her facsimile.Blent--whichever it is--is never without her face."

  "Oh," Trigger said. She'd been studying the gowns. "That," she said, atrifle enviously, "is why I'm not at all eager to go on display here."

  "Eh?" said Quillan.

  Trigger turned to regard herself in the wall mirror on the right, which,she had noticed, remained carefully unobscured by drifting viewers andviewees. A thoughtful touch on the lounge management's part.

  "Until we walked in here," she explained, "I thought this was a prettysharp little outfit I'm wearing."

  "Hmmm," Quillan said judiciously. He made a detailed appraisal of themirror image of the slim, green, backless, half-thigh-length sheathwhich had looked so breath-taking and seductive in a Ceyce displaywindow. Trigger's eyes narrowed a little. The major had appraised thedress in detail before.

  "It's about as sharp a little outfit as you could get for around ahundred and fifty credits," he remarked. "Most of the items the girlsare sporting here are personality conceptions. That starts at around tento twenty times as high. I wasn't talking about displaying the dress.Now what were those questions?"

  Trigger took a small sip of her drink, considering. She hadn't made upher mind about Major Quillan, but until she could evaluate him moredefinitely, it might be best to go by appearances. The appearances sofar indicated small sips in his company.

  "How did you people find me so quickly?" she asked.

  "Next time you want to sneak off a civilized planet," Quillan advisedher, "pick something like a small freighter. Or hire a small-boat to getyou out of the system and flag down a freighter for you. Plenty of trampcaptains will make a space stop to pick up a paying passenger. Liners wecan check."

  "Sorry," Trigger said meekly. "I'm still new at this business."

  "And thank God for that!" said Quillan. "If you have the time and themoney, it's also a good idea, of course, to zig a few times before youzag towards where you're really heading. Actually, I suppose, the creditfor picking you up so fast should go to those collating computers."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes." Major Quillan looked broodingly at his drink for a moment. "Therethey sit," he remarked suddenly, "with their stupid plastic faceshanging out! Rows of them. You feed them something you don't understand.They don't understand it either. Nobody can tell me they can. But theykick it around and giggle a bit, and out comes some ungodly suggestion."

  "So they helped you find me?" she said cautiously. It was clear that themajor had strong feelings about computers.

  "Oh, sure," he said. "It usually turns out it was a good idea to do whatthose CCs say. Anything unusual that shows up in the area you're workingon gets chunked into the things as a matter of course. We were on theliners. Dawn City reports back a couple of murders. 'Dawn City to thehead of the list!' cry the computers. Nobody asks why. They just plowinto the ticket purchase records. And right there are the little Argeethumbprints!"

  He looked at Trigger. "My own bet," he said, somewhat accusingly, "wasthat you were one of those that had just taken off. We didn't know aboutthat ticket reservation."

  "What I don't see," Trigger said, changing the subject, "is why twomurders should seem so very unusual. There must be quite a few of them,after all."

  "True," said Quillan. "But not murders that look like catassinkillings."

  "Oh!" she said startled. "Is that what these were?"

  "That's what Ship Security thinks."

  Trigger frowned. "But what could be the connection--"

  Quillan reached across the table and patted her hand. "You've got it!"he said with approval. "Exactly! No connection. Some day I'm going towalk down those rows and give them each a blast where it will do themost good. It will be worth being broken for."

  Trigger said, "I thought that catassin planet was being guarded."

  "It is. It would be very hard to sneak one out nowadays. But somebody'sbreeding them in the Hub. Just a few. Keeps the price up."

  Trigger grimaced uncomfortably. She'd seen recordings of those swift,clever, constitutionally murderous creatures in action. "You say itlooked like catassin killings. They haven't found it?"

  "No. But they think they got rid of it. Emptied the air from most of theship after they surfaced and combed over the rest of it with lifedetectors. They've got a detector system set up now that would spot acatassin if it moved twenty feet in any direction."

  "Life detectors go haywire out of normal space, don't they?" she said."That's why they surfaced then."

  Quillan nodded. "You're a well-informed doll. They're pretty certainit's been sucked into space or disposed of by its owner, but they'll goon looking till we dive beyond Garth."

  "Who got killed?"

  "A Rest Warden and a Security officer. In the rest cubicle area. Itmight have been sent after somebody there. Apparently it ran into thetwo men and killed them on the spot. The officer got off one shot andthat set off the automatic alarms. So pussy cat couldn't finish the jobthat time."

  "It's all sort of gruesome, isn't it?" Trigger said.

  "Catassins are," Quillan agreed. "That's a fact."

  Trigger took another sip. She set down her glass. "There's somethingelse," she said reluctantly.

  "Yes?"

  "When you said you'd come on board to see I got to Manon, I was thinkingnone of the people who'd been after me on Maccadon could know I was onthe Dawn City. They might though. Quite ea
sily."

  "Oh?" said Quillan.

  "Yes. You see I made two calls to the ticket office. One from a streetComWeb and one from the bank. If they already had spotted me by thattracer material, they could have had an audio pick-up on me, I suppose."

  "I think we'd better suppose it," said Quillan. "You had a tail when youcame out of the bank anyway." His glance went past her. "We'll get backto that later. Right now, take a look at that entrance, will you?"

  Trigger turned in the direction he'd indicated.

  "They do look like they're somebody important," she said. "Do you knowthem?"

  "Some of them. That gentleman who looks like he almost has to be theDawn City's First Captain really is the Dawn City's First Captain. Thelady he's escorting into the lounge is Lyad Ermetyne. The Ermetyne.You've heard of the Ermetynes?"

  "The Ermetyne Wars? Tranest?" Trigger said doubtfully.

  "They're the ones. Lyad is the current head of the clan."

  The history of Hub systems other than one's own became so involved sorapidly that its detailed study was engaged in only by specialists.Trigger wasn't one. "Tranest is one of the restricted planets now, isn'tit?" she ventured.

  "It is. Restriction is supposed to be a handicap. But Tranest is alsoone of the wealthiest individual worlds in the Hub."

  Trigger watched the woman with some interest as the party moved along adim corridor, followed by the viewer circuit's invisible pick-up. LyadErmetyne didn't look more than a few years older than she was herself.Rather small, slender, with delicately pretty features. She woresomething ankle-length and long-sleeved in lusterless gray with an odd,smoky quality to it.

  "Isn't she the empress of Tranest or something of the sort?" Triggerasked.

  Quillan shook his head. "They've had no emperors there, technically,since they had to sign their treaty with the Federation. She just ownsthe planet, that's all."

  "What would she be doing, going to Manon?"

  "I'd like to know," Quillan said. "The Ermetyne's a lady of manyinterests. Now--see the plump elderly man just behind her?"

  "The ugly one with the big head who sort of keeps blinking?"

  "That one. He's Belchik Pluly and--"

  "Pluly?" Trigger interrupted. "The Pluly Lines?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  "Oh--nothing really. I heard--a friend of mine--Pluly's got a yacht outin the Manon System. And a daughter."

  Quillan nodded. "Nelauk."

  "How did you know?"

  "I've met her. Quite a girl, that Nelauk. Only child of Pluly's old age,and he dotes on her. Anyway, he's been on the verge of beingblack-listed by Grand Commerce off and on through the past threedecades. But nobody's ever been able to pin anything more culpable onhim than that he keeps skimming extremely close to the limits of a largenumber of laws."

  "He's very rich, I imagine?" Trigger said thoughtfully.

  "Very. He'd be much richer even if it weren't for his hobby."

  "What's that?"

  "Harems. The Pluly harems rate among the most intriguing and besteducated in the Hub."

  Trigger looked at Pluly again. "Ugh!" she said faintly.

  Quillan laughed. "The Pluly salaries are correspondingly high. Viewer'sdropping the group now, so there's just one more I'd like you to notice.The tall girl with black hair, in orange."

  Trigger nodded. "Yes. I see her. She's beautiful."

  "So she is. She's also Space Scout Intelligence. Gaya. Comes fromFarnhart where they use the single name system. A noted horsewoman, verywealthy, socially established. Which is why we like to use her insituations like this."

  Trigger was silent a moment. Then she said, "What kind of situation isit? I mean, what's she doing with Lyad Ermetyne and the others?"

  "She probably attached herself to the group as soon as she discoveredLyad had come on board. Which," Quillan said, "is exactly what I wouldhave told Gaya to do if I'd spotted Lyad first."

  Trigger was silent a little longer this time. "Were you thinking thisLyad could be...."

  "One of our suspects? Well," said Quillan judiciously, "let's say Lyadhas all the basic qualifications. Since she's come on board, we'd betterconsider her. When something's going on that looks more than usuallytricky, Lyad is always worth considering. And there's one point thatlooks even more interesting to me now than it did at first."

  "What's that?"

  "Those two little old ladies I eased out of their rightful cabin."

  Trigger looked at him. "What about them?"

  "This about them. The Askab of Elfkund is, you might way, one of thebranch managers of the Ermetyne interests in the Hub. He is also ahard-working heel in his own right. But he's not the right size to beone of the people we're thinking about. Lyad is. He might have beendoing a job for her."

  "Job?" she asked. She laughed. "Not with those odd little grannies?"

  "We know the odd little grannies. They're the Askab's poisoners andpretty slick at it. They were sizing you up while you were having thatlittle chat, doll. Probably not for a coffin this time. You were justgetting the equivalent of a pretty thorough medical check-up.Presumably, though, for some sinister ultimate purpose."

  "How do you know?" Trigger asked, very uncomfortably.

  "One of those little suitcases in their cabin was a diagnostic recorder.It would have been standing fairly close to the door while you werethere. If they didn't take your recordings out before I got there,they're still inside. They're being watched and they know it. It seemedlike a good idea to keep the Askab feeling fairly nervous until we foundout whether those sweethearts of his had been parked next door to you onpurpose."

  "Apparently they were," Trigger admitted. "Nice bunch of people!"

  "Oh, they're not all bad. Lyad has her points. And old Belchik, forexample, isn't really a heel. He just had no ethics. Or morals. Andrevolting habits. Anyway, all this brings up the matter of what weshould do with you now."

  Trigger set her glass down on the table.

  "Refill?" Quillan inquired. He reached for the iced crystal pitcherbetween them.

  "No," she said. "I just want to make a statement."

  "State away." He refilled his own glass.

  "For some reason," said Trigger, "I've been acting lately--the last twodays--in a remarkably stupid manner."

  Quillan choked. He set his glass down hastily, reached over and pattedher hand. "Doll," he said, touched, "it's come to you! At last."

  She scowled at him. "I don't usually act that way."

  "That," said Quillan, "was what had me so baffled. According to theCommissioner and others, you're as bright in the head as a diamond,usually. And frankly--"

  "I know it," Trigger said dangerously. "Don't rub it in!"

  "I apologize," said Quillan. He patted her other hand.

  "At any rate," Trigger said, drawing her hands back, "now that I'verealized it, I'm going to make up for it. From here on out, I'llcooperate."

  "To the hilt?"

  She nodded. "To the hilt! Whatever that is."

  "You can't imagine," said Quillan, "how much that relieves me." Hefilled her glass, giving her a relieved look. "I had definiteinstructions, of course, not to do anything like grabbing you by theback of the neck, flinging you into a rest cubicle and sitting on it,guns drawn, until we'd berthed in Precol Port. But I was tempted, I cantell you."

  He paused and thought. "You know," he began again, "that really would bethe best."

  "No!" Trigger said indignantly. "When I said cooperate, I meantactively. Mihul said I'm considered one of the gang in this project.From now on I'll behave like one. And I'll also expect to be treatedlike one."

  "Hm," said Quillan. "Well, there is something you can do, all right."

  "What's that?"

  "Go on display here, now."

  "What for?" she asked.

  "As bait, you sweet ninny! If the boss grabber is on this ship, weshould draw a new nibble from him." He appraised the green dress in themirror again. His expression grew absent. It might be best, Trigger
suspected, a trifle uneasily, to keep Major Quillan's thoughts turnedaway from things like nibbling.

  "All right," she said briskly. "Let's do that. But you'll have to briefme."