Eternity's End

by Jeffrey Carver

  "You're absolutely right, Peter," said Harriet. "But frankly, we're in some pretty deep manure here. Whatever is going on, I'm convinced that someone in the Spacing Authority is involved. And maybe Centrist Strength—who knows? We certainly can't trust the RiggerGuild, and the police are less and less likely to believe us, as all this circumstantial evidence piles up. I hate to say it—you can't imagine how much I hate to say it—but I'm afraid if we follow all the rules, we're going to wind up squashed. The same way I believe Mr. McGinnis has been squashed. Have you learned anything more about him?"

  Peter's eyes flared with light. "Nothing, really. We can't get near the house, and all the regional authorities will tell me is that the fire's still burning inside the forcefield, and they can't do a thing until the forcefield generator fails." He shrugged and tilted his large head. "With all the smoke, they can't even tell me if the rental flyer is still intact."

  "The rental flyer is the least of our worries," said Legroeder.

  "The rental company won't think so," Peter chided. "Anyway, the burn mark from the missile may be about the only evidence on your side in this entire business."

  Legroeder grunted.

  "So one or more of us should go to visit this El'ken," Harriet said.

  "And you would be taking Rigger Legroeder with you?" Peter asked.

  "Damn right she is," said Legroeder.

  "The reason being—?"

  Legroeder answered irritably, "I'm only going to beat this by finding out what the hell's going on. And what it all has to do with Impris." He paused a moment. "Someone wants it kept quiet pretty badly. Badly enough to frame me. Badly enough to kill and kidnap people. I can't help Maris directly, it seems. So where would I rather be—out in the asteroid belt looking for information, where at least it'll take them a while to catch up with me—or here, waiting to be arrested?" He looked at Harriet. "If anyone should stay here, it's you."

  "Why do you say that?" she asked quietly.

  "You'll become an accessory if you come with me. Aren't you a little old to become a criminal on the run?"

  "I could go with him," said Morgan.

  Harriet turned and squinted at her daughter.

  "That way, you could keep working here. And if he needs legal advice while he's there—"

  "Are you a lawyer, too?" Legroeder asked.

  "Most of a lawyer. I never took the planetary bar." Morgan stared at her mother.

  "You're both missing the point," said Harriet, "which is that we have an urgent need to gather this information, and I need to hear it for myself. And I'm probably better at digging for it than either of you. Now, the fact that I may well lose my legal license is neither of your concerns."

  Legroeder and Morgan exchanged glances. "Then I'm coming along to keep an eye on you, Mother," said Morgan. "You might be smart, but you think you're invincible, and you need someone to guard your back. And you'll probably need some legal advice of your own, before you're done." With that, Morgan turned away and busied herself with the last of her work.

  Harriet stood silent, frowning into space.

  "If that's settled, are you ready to gather up and head home?" Peter asked mildly.

  * * *

  By the time they reached Harriet's house, they all realized that they were dead tired, and probably the best thing to do was get some rest. Legroeder tossed and turned on his bed in the little guest house for what seemed hours. The last thing he remembered thinking was that, having snatched Maris, his enemies were not likely to wait long before trying to snatch him, as well.

  It was the middle of the night when he awoke from a dead sleep to a thumping on the door. He sat up with a start. "Who is it?" he demanded hoarsely.

  "Peter. We need to see you in the house. Hurry, please."

  Legroeder let out the breath he'd been holding and pulled on his clothes. He stumbled across the lawn to the dining room door, rubbing his eyes. Everyone was gathered around the table, including the Fabri housekeeper, Vegas, who apparently had been roused to make coffee and was clucking unhappily as she offered some to Legroeder. "What's going on?" he murmured, accepting a steaming cup.

  Harriet gestured to him to sit. "I think Peter had better tell you."

  The Clendornan's eyes were flickering like a thunderstorm. "I've just heard from a friend in the police department. They're drawing up a warrant to bring you in on suspicion of murder. And since that business at the hospital, they're moving even faster. They could be here within the hour."

  Legroeder's head was spinning. "Just which murder do they think I've committed?"

  "Two counts," Peter said. "One—Robert McGinnis. The house has burned to the ground. The forcefield is still holding, but scanners have identified a human body in the rubble."

  Legroeder said nothing, but felt a sudden, fresh weight of sadness and regret.

  "I'm sorry," said Peter. "By the way, they're considering arresting Harriet on that one, too."

  Legroeder looked up. "Why Harriet?" he asked Peter.

  "Because she was with you, obviously. And it was she who put in the call about the fire. And she who stored McGinnis's flyer. It didn't take them long to find it."

  "But she didn't identify herself when she called in the fire."

  "Which is a strike against her. The com had a transponder ID, and they've confirmed the voice recording. I might add that my friend indicated that the department is under some pressure from the outside to act against you."

  "The outside? Who on the outside?"

  "He wouldn't say."

  Legroeder sighed. "What else, then?"

  "Your old friend Jakus Bark."

  Jesus. "They found him? How was he killed?"

  Peter tipped his top-heavy Clendornan head. "They have not found him. But they did find a series of holo recordings, starting with the two of you arguing, then you skulking around in the back hallway of that hangar, and finally Jakus lying unconscious and bloody on the floor of the basement. Oh, and they found Jakus's bloody cap, which indeed has oil traces from your hands on it."

  Legroeder stared at the PI. "But they don't have a body?"

  "No."

  "Then it's all circumstantial, right?"

  Peter gestured to Harriet, who was lost in thought. "Harriet?"

  She looked up with a start. "What? Yes—but unfortunately, they probably have enough to bring you in. Under Fabri law, they don't need a body, or even proof of a murder, to arrest you under suspicion. They have the circumstantial evidence, plus one piece of material evidence. It wouldn't be enough for them to convict you—but they could hold you indefinitely."

  "Indefinitely?"

  Harriet nodded.

  Morgan, who had been sitting quietly at the end of the table, said, "Faber Eridani is not a signatory to the Danii Convention. So the laws are a little different here. It goes back to the days after the Thousand-Sun War."

  "But that was over a hundred years ago!"

  "Yes—and there was near-civil-war here, afterward," Harriet said. "The war took a big toll, you know—in money, personnel, ships. There was a nasty dissident backlash. Coups, attempted coups, martial law. By the time things settled down, civil liberties were in the toilet along with a lot of other things. A few revolutionaries have worked for change over the years, but..." Harriet shrugged.

  "Mom being one of those revolutionaries."

  "In my younger years, dear. Back when I had fire," Harriet said. Morgan rolled her eyes. "But the upshot is, they can arrest you. So let's concentrate on keeping us out of jail—and alive."

  "Which we will do how?"

  Harriet looked pained, and frightened. "As your attorney, I have a hard time saying this—but you're not going to be able to clear your name from inside a prison cell. And I don't think I can do it without you, even if I stay out of jail myself. And—" she glanced at Peter "—the fact that they're being pressured to arrest you on so little evidence, in spite of the attack on you, in spite of your having brought them a captured pirate ship, suggest
s to me that—" she hesitated, clenching her teeth "—that we'd better get the hell off the planet at once. Right now. Before that warrant is issued."

  Legroeder was stunned.

  "At the moment, you'll be breaking your bail agreement, but you won't be fleeing arrest. This is probably our last chance to get away. If Peter can get us a ship."

  "We'll know in a few minutes," said Peter.

  "Have you heard from El'ken yet?" asked Legroeder.

  Harriet shook her head.

  "So we head there anyway? Because we're good at dropping in unannounced?"

  "Something like that."

  Legroeder sat back, staring up at the ceiling. Fleeing from bail would virtually guarantee he'd be finished at the RiggerGuild. But his career would be at an end anyway, if he couldn't prove his innocence—not just in the deaths of Jakus and McGinnis, but in the loss of Ciudad de los Angeles. "All right," he whispered. "I'll go get my bag."

  Harriet glanced at her daughter. "Are you ready to go?"

  "Whenever you are."

  "I'll do what I can here, while you're gone," said Peter.

  Vegas, gathering up the empty coffee cups, made a soft chuckling sound. But she did not look happy.

  * * *

  "Let's go, let's go!" Legroeder heard, as he snapped his bag shut. He ran back into the house. Peter was at the living room window, peering out, a com-unit pressed to his ear. He turned to Legroeder. "Georgio says three patrol cars are on their way up the hill. We've got to go now."

  Legroeder piled into Peter's flyer with Harriet and Morgan. Peter took the controls, and they lifted straight from Harriet's drive pad, with running lights dark. At the same time, two of his men climbed into a ground-car and roared off down the hill, in the direction of the approaching police. With a little luck, they'd be able to distract any pursuit.

  Legroeder peered down from the flyer and saw flashing blue lights, just a few blocks from Harriet's house. The police had stopped the car with Peter's men. Legroeder flopped back in the passenger seat, breathing heavily.

  Peter flew them directly to the southeastern edge of the spaceport, farthest from the main building. Piling out onto the tarmac, they got their first look at the ship they'd be traveling in. It was a small corporate-size craft, pretty old from the look of it. Peter had hired it from a company on Faber Eridani's largest moon—a company whose officers were looking for ways to generate some revenue from their expensive equipment. They probably weren't paying too much attention to what was going on at the Elmira spaceport, or with the spacing authorities or the local police. Legroeder wondered if Peter had mentioned that their passengers-to-be had an unfortunate tendency to bring trouble along with them.

  A drizzling rain obscured the field. It was comforting to be surrounded by banks of mist in the midnight darkness, knowing that the police would be looking here soon. They hurried to the spacecraft and were greeted by the pilot, Conex, a dark-skinned Halcyon whose face, while humanoid, was extremely narrow, with an almost reptilian snout. Conex and Peter exchanged words and dataslips, before the Clendornan turned and said, "I'll be off, then. I'll learn what I can here. You be careful, yes?"

  The Clendornan's eyes sparkled with light as Harriet thanked him. Then he glanced across the field, where the flashes of police flyers were piercing the night. "You'd better get going," he murmured. He hurried to his flyer and disappeared into the mist.

  Conex escorted them through the entry portal and up to the passenger compartment. Once their bags were stowed, and everyone secured in their seats, Conex rejoined his copilot in the cockpit.

  Five minutes later—an eternity—a tow descended and coupled to the ship. Flanked by the soft glow of the tow's Circadie space inductors, they accelerated up through the rain clouds and out into the star-flecked blackness of space.

  Chapter 9

  To the Asteroids

  The trip out to the asteroid belt took three days from the time the tow released them on a fast outbound track. The sleeping compartments were scarcely larger than closets, so Legroeder, Harriet, and Morgan spent most of their time together in the cramped passenger compartment. Conex and his copilot Zan, also a Halcyon, kept to themselves most of the time, joining their passengers only at mealtime.

  As a passenger on a spacecraft, Legroeder felt like a third leg. He kept wanting to go forward and help pilot the ship, never mind that they were simply traveling through normal-space and there was no rigging involved. Instead, he and the others pored over the data from McGinnis, absorbing details about the Impris investigation, and pondering the questions that McGinnis had never had a chance to answer. From time to time, they would go to the lounge's observation port and peer intently back at Faber Eridani, as if they might glimpse pursuit by the police, or by their unknown enemy.

  After a time Legroeder, overwhelmed by the minutiae of the hundred-year-old investigation, simply sat and gazed out the port into the depths of space, his thoughts wandering among the stars. He found himself longing wistfully for a set of pearlgazers he had once owned, before they were stolen by his pirates captors: gems with psychogenerative powers that he had often used as a focus for meditation. Now, missing them, he began to lose himself in his memories... glimpses of lost friends, lost hopes and dreams...

  "Penny for your thoughts, Legroeder."

  He blinked and turned his head.

  Morgan Mahoney had settled into the seat beside him. "You haven't moved a muscle in the last hour. I was afraid we were losing you." She peered at him for a moment, frowning. "I didn't mean to intrude."

  "No—no, it's fine." It wasn't fine at all. But he would talk; he could do that.

  "You're worried about your friend?"

  He shrugged. "What am I not worried about?"

  "I know what you mean. I've been wondering whether we'll get there before the authorities turn us around and haul us all in. I have to admit, I've never been on the run like this before. It scares me."

  Legroeder rocked back and squinted up at the ceiling of the little lounge. It glittered. Now, who the hell would put glitter on their ceiling? "Yah," he murmured, thinking, When was I last not on the run?

  A chime sounded, and the younger Mahoney got up to retrieve a fresh pot of tea from the galley. Returning with cups, she said to Legroeder, "I hope you don't mind my asking, but you know, I haven't heard much of anything about your life before."

  "Before—?"

  "The pirates. Where did you come from, how did you start rigging... what was your family like?"

  Legroeder felt a sudden roaring in his ears. He closed his eyes, trying to shut it out. Before the pirates...

  "I'm sorry—did I—I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."

  "No... no..." he whispered. Life before the pirates... eons ago. Another world. Another universe. At this moment, he couldn't begin to recapture it. Any of it. He felt as if he'd had no life before the pirates. Just the effort of reaching back into the fog made him dizzy. Claire Marie, where he was a child; then New Tarkus a little later. He had never really had a home planet as an adult, though for a while, Chaening's World came as close as any. Finally he managed, "Why would you want to hear about that?"

  "Well... I guess to get to know you better," Morgan said, looking a little puzzled. She handed him a cup of tea. "Isn't that the usual reason?

  Legroeder accepted the cup. "I guess so. But I don't recall your telling me anything about you. You know, before you met me."

  "Oh." Morgan cleared her throat as she sat back down. "Well..."

  "What's wrong? Did I say something wrong?"

  Across the tiny lounge, Harriet looked faintly amused, as Morgan foundered for words. "Well, I don't know. There's not that much to say."

  "Why? Because your life is too dull, or too interesting?"

  Morgan blushed.

  "Oh, just go ahead and tell him," Harriet said.

  "About what?" Morgan snapped. "The failed marriage? Or the three different attempts at a career?"

  "Listen," Legroeder sa
id. "I didn't mean to start anything—"

  "It's perfectly all right, Legroeder," said Harriet. "Morgan is just being hard on herself. She's had career troubles for perfectly good reasons, and I haven't noticed her giving up. As for the marriage—well, it's not as if she had a great role model." As Morgan glared protectively at her mother, Harriet shrugged. "Her father divorced me when she was seven. And for good cause. I was too preoccupied with my career—and, I am ashamed to admit, somewhat neglectful of my two children."

  "Are we going to bring out all the dirty laundry now?"

  "I'm sorry, dear. I don't mean to embarrass you. But you did open the subject."

  "I did not. I just asked—"

  "Look," Legroeder interrupted. "Would it help if we cut out all this feel-good history crap, and I just told you what it was like to be with pirates? That ought to bring everyone down to earth."

  Harriet, startled, opened her mouth to answer. She was interrupted by a buzz from the intercom and Conex's voice: "Mrs. Mahoney, we've received a message from Mr. El'ken, addressed to you. Would you like to come forward to view it?"

  "Thank you, yes!" Harriet set her cup of tea on the sideboard. She rose and disappeared through the door to the bridge.

  Legroeder sighed, glancing at Morgan.

  "Don't mind my mom."

  "I like your mother," Legroeder said. He looked toward the bridge, wondering what El'ken's reply was.

  "Well, she has good taste in clients," Morgan said, busying herself with the pot of tea. "Sometimes, anyway. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I asked out of genuine curiosity. But if it's something you'd rather not talk about—"

  "Which—my life before? Or the seven years in a raider stronghold?" Legroeder shrugged, as if the distinction were inconsequential. But there was a tension rising between his shoulders, and he knew that it was going to be a long time before he could talk about either. Strangely, he felt more inclined to discuss the pirates now. It was no worse than sitting here wondering how soon he would wind up in prison. "It was—"