“I don’t understand.” It was beyond belief that his aunt would send something so horrible as a gift. “Is there an explanation that goes with this thing?”
Vogel folded his hands together in front of him, his fingers loosely interlaced. “Not much explanation, I’m afraid. Modice gave it to me to give to you, to be returned to someone named Kazmer Daigule, the next time you saw him. Does that mean anything to you?”
Ivers had been staring at the scarf in Hilton’s grasp with horrified fascination. When Vogel said Kazmer’s name she glanced up quickly at Vogel, though, as if she’d been taken by surprise.
Was this a setup, to see if they could get a guilty reaction out of him by surprising him with the name of a possible accomplice? It could be. But it wasn’t.
If Vogel and Ivers had set a trap, Ivers would have watched his face, not looked at Vogel. So there was something going on that they hadn’t worked out between themselves, yet.
“Kazmer Daigule is a friend of mine. He courts Modice to annoy me.” What Kazmer had been doing in Port Charid the morning of Hilton’s interview with Factor Madlev Hilton could only guess. He would rather Kazmer had not come into any conversation with Bench intelligence specialists, on principle; Kazmer had ferried the odd illegal cargo.
But Kazmer would never be party to murder.
Now that it was clear that the Bench specialists knew of Kazmer’s visit, the best thing to do was make full disclosure and trust in truth. Hilton didn’t like it, though.
“He was in port not long ago to move a cargo. I saw him, but we both had places to go. I guess he went out to the settlement. Aunt Walton doesn’t approve of his suit for Modice’s affections.” Hilton refolded the scarf as he spoke, putting it away in the side pocket of his warehouseman’s coveralls. “And with taste in scarves like this, I guess you can see why. Anything else?”
He was unhappy about the turn this talk had taken, and it showed — he could hear it in his own voice. Vogel shook his head.
“No, that about covers everything for now. Thank you for your time, Shires. Factor Madlev will know where to find us if you need to reach us about anything.”
Good.
He could go back to receiving reconciliation, with the single worst pattern in known Space radiating great waves of sheer unadulterated tastelessness from his pocket. He probably glowed in the dark with it. He hoped it wouldn’t alter his genetic structure; he would probably be lucky if it merely scarred him for life.
He wished more than ever that he hadn’t seen Kazmer in the street that day, but now it was more for Kazmer’s sake than that of his self-pride.
He knew Kazmer wasn’t a killer.
But he didn’t trust the Bench to display equivalent perceptiveness; and not even Aunt Walton could wish the Bench on Kazmer Daigule, whether or not she thought he had any business courting Hilton’s cousin Modice.
###
Walking in companionable silence out of the warehouse, Garol waited for Jils to make the first move. She had something on her mind; so much had been obvious by virtue of her presence at his interview with Factor Madlev. And he was interested in whatever it had been that caught her attention in his talk with Shires.
He found the speed machine where he had left it, parked outside of the warehouse’s administrative offices. Jils stopped short of the machine while Garol straddled it with a certain degree of self-conscious bravado. He only had one safety helmet; but Jils liked to live dangerously.
At least any woman who voluntarily surrendered her body to the ministrations of bone-benders — dubious professionals at best, outright charlatans at worst — had nothing to say to anybody about merely riding a speed machine without a helmet. That would be his line, anyway.
“Hey, pretty lady, wanna ride? For you, no charge.”
But she knew him too well to rise to the bait. She pulled a tab on one of the panniers behind the pillion seat, and there was a safety helmet. Damn. Perfectly good tease, shot to hell.
Fastening the helmet strap beneath her chin, Jils mounted the pillion seat behind him, passing him a piece of documentation as she settled herself. “Drive, you smooth-talking seducer of innocent young women,” Jils suggested — in part because of the line he’d started to run, yes, but it would serve just as well to cover them from casual observation. “We have much to do, and time flies like youth itself.”
What, had she been reading the Poetic Classics again?
The documentation was a receiving report from the Port Authority at Anglace, where the bulk cargo from the Tyrell raid had apparently turned up. Part of it, at least. There’d been an anonymous tip. Those were always interesting — anonymous tips almost never had anything to do with concern for law and order, and everything to do with personal malice of one sort or another.
But that wasn’t the really interesting part.
The pilot of the impounded freighter was a Combine national named Kazmer Daigule.
Garol passed the documentation back to Jils and started his motor. “Say,” he suggested, calling back to her over the sound of the speed machine’s engine. “There isn’t really a whole lot to do in Port Charid. Let’s go find some action, shall we?”
Port Anglace.
Public opinion blamed the Langsariks for recent predation at Okidan, Tyrell, and several earlier targets.
Hilton Shires had been a lieutenant in the Langsarik fleet, and it couldn’t be very easy for him — or any of his fellows — to adjust to their reduced expectations and meekly take direction from people who had been prey.
Kazmer Daigule had been in Port Charid recently, and was personally acquainted with both Hilton Shires and the lovely young Modice Agenis.
Walton Agenis said there was no Langsarik involvement that she knew of, but Modice had let Garol know that there was a connection between Daigule and Shires, so either the women were genuinely unaware of any deeper implications of Daigule’s visitor — or they were giving Garol the keys he’d need — or they just didn’t know, but felt that Shires and Garol should be equally warned.
It was enough to make a person think very hard about starting a melon patch and abandoning the whole Bench intelligence specialist thing for a quiet life of preserves, jams, jellies. Compost. Maybe a pond, with salamanders.
“Talked me into it,” Jils responded, only Jils used the communications link built in to the safety helmet, rather than trying to make herself heard over the noise of the engine. The sound of her voice reminded Garol that he was the one who was supposed to be driving, instead of just sitting there brooding.
Garol nodded.
Slipping the neutral on the speed machine, Garol pulled away from the parking apron, heading back to the docks, where their courier was waiting.
This news from Anglace gave him the perfect excuse to depart Port Charid immediately and leave Hilton Shires alone with his thoughts.
If Shires was guilty, he had all the time he needed to make a run for it. Somewhere. Anywhere. Gonebeyond space, maybe, across the Sillume vector.
If Shires was innocent, he’d stay right where he was, oblivious to implications or standing on his integrity as a matter of principle, maintaining his honor in the face of adverse situational elements.
And if Shires were guilty, but didn’t run, using his behavior to signal his innocence, intent on playing the game at its highest level — then Hilton Shires was Walton Agenis’s own blood kin.
No help there.
Maybe they’d know more once they could talk; with the Sarvaw pilot Kazmer Daigule, in Anglace.
Chapter Five
Three days of waiting after his interview with the Inquisitor had driven Kazmer almost to the point of distraction, torn between his relief in having found a way to protect Hilton, his sense of loss, and his shuddering horror of what he had done.
The Malcontent.
To elect the Malcontent meant to become one of them.
That meant doing anything they wanted him to do; and there were stories about what Malcontents wer
e like behind the impenetrable walls of their safe houses.
He knew what his motives had been, but any casual acquaintance could only assume the most obvious explanation: that Kazmer had failed to reconcile his sexuality with the ordinance of the Holy Mother and the expectations of decency and morally upright behavior; that he had been forced to elect the Malcontent at last or face ostracism even more profound and absolute than simple criminality could ever have meant for him.
They’d think he wanted boys.
Modice would think that, if she ever heard. Maybe she wouldn’t even hear. Maybe as far as Modice was concerned he would simply disappear and never be heard of or from again, ever. Aunt Agenis and Hilton himself would surely keep the truth of his fate to themselves, if they ever found out.
Boys.
It was almost more than Kazmer could bear, even knowing as he did what the Bench would do to Hilton — and Modice, and the rest of the Langsariks — if Kazmer had been referred to interrogation and implicated them all by virtue of simply knowing their names.
He’d visited Modice in Port Charid.
The Bench would be sure to see conspiracy there.
But boys?
To be a Malcontent could mean becoming the chartered agent of reconciliation for other Malcontents, people whose pain had forced them to take such drastic measures because they did like boys, or men; because their desire was not for the ocean within the sacred cradle of a woman’s womb but for the succulent and inviting waters of an atoll, or even the narrow constrained channel of a dry wash.
Three days.
After three days, two guards came to the door of the holding cell to which the Inquisitor had returned Kazmer, calling him out to go back to the room in which he had had his fateful interview. There was someone waiting for him there, now as before.
For one confused moment Kazmer thought that the Inquisitor had come back — but why in plain clothes?
No, Koscuisko had pale eyes, and this man had not. The man who sat waiting for Kazmer was about Koscuisko’s height, perhaps, and there were similarities in the face and in the expression. But this man had dark eyes, and hair that shaded several degrees further toward the tan side than Koscuisko’s had done; and, most tellingly of all, this man was wearing a necklace made of bright red ribbon that showed clearly beneath his collar before disappearing beneath his shirt.
This man was Malcontent.
One of the slaves of the Saint, set apart by the halter he wore around his neck, collared with a necklace that marked him as a slave without any legal identity of his own.
Kazmer had sought that bondage of his own free will, because questions that one wished to ask of the Malcontent had to be addressed to the legal person of the Malcontent rather than to any mere slave; and the legal person of the Malcontent had been dead for octave upon octave — ever since the Malcontent’s revolt against the autocrat’s court, for excess tax impositions — rendering the entire issue a little problematic.
There was a legal entity to serve as the proxy of the Saint, of course — empowered to enter into contracts and to transact business on the Saint’s behalf — but any particular question or demand could lawfully be referred to Saint Andrej Malcontent himself for a decision.
Some of the questions thus put before the Malcontent had been waiting for three or four lifetimes for a response, without notable success.
The Malcontent might or might not be actually and truly and traditionally dead, being a Saint. But it was certain that the Malcontent wasn’t talking, at least not to answer claims that the Saint felt to be impertinent.
Kazmer sat down, not because he meant to presume the privilege without being asked, but because with every added notice of the reality of his election, the enormity of what he had done weighed more heavily upon him, so that he could not find the strength to stand.
“How fragrant are the little blue-and-yellow flowers that line the pathway to the kitchen-midden,” the Malcontent said, his voice as deep as damnation for all the note of humor it might have contained.
He meant that Kazmer stank.
It had been more than a week, now, with no change of clothing or any chance to bathe —
The folkish homeliness of the old adage was too much for Kazmer. Sorrow and fear and grief overwhelmed him, and he was too deep in pain — even to care any longer when he began to cry.
Too much.
It was all too much.
The Malcontent let the storm pass without comment, waiting in compassionate silence for the moments it took for Kazmer to bring his emotions to heel once more.
Then the Malcontent pulled a white-square out of a pocket somewhere and passed it to Kazmer across the table. “Here. Wipe your face. The Bench expects you to suffer, Daigule, but you don’t have anything to prove to me.”
They were alone in the room. The Malcontent must have sent the guards away. Kazmer blew his nose, blotting his eyes with the residual clean portion of the white-square. His face was dirty; the white-square came away soiled. It was an offense against human dignity to deny a man the chance to wash. Kazmer supposed he was lucky enough that they’d fed him.
“Sorry.” He handed the dirty white-square back, and the Malcontent accepted it without comment. Or recoiling, which was charity on his part. “This has all been a challenge. Maybe more than I’m really up to.”
Yes, the Bench expected him to suffer. That was the only reason a Combine national was allowed to call for the Malcontent — to escape from the Judicial process — in the first place: because the Malcontent had successfully convinced the Bench that the life of a Malcontent was a comparable experience to whatever sanctions the Bench was likely to impose.
There were exceptions, of course; for certain classes of crimes — those against the Judicial order — not even the Malcontent could stay the hand of the Bench. That was what had happened to the Sarvaw bond-involuntary that Kazmer had seen with the Inquisitor, he supposed.
Kazmer was luckier.
The most his potential crime would have amounted to was an offense against private property and the lives of citizens under Jurisdiction, not a crime against the Judicial order itself.
There were so many gray areas, even so.
Kazmer knew he should count himself fortunate that the Inquisitor had not challenged the issue: or if the Inquisitor had, it had been after Kazmer had made the call, and if the Inquisitor had objected, the Inquisitor had obviously lost. Or the Malcontent would not be here.
“Well.” The Malcontent leaned back in his chair, hooking one arm over the chair back and crossing his legs. “You called for the Malcontent, and I’m here. But before I lead you out of this place we need to talk. My name is Stanoczk, feel free to call me ‘Cousin.’ ”
The Malcontent used a Dolgorukij word for the title that gave Kazmer a profound appreciation for the shakiness of the ground on which he stood. Religious professionals were all “Cousin,” but Malcontents were usually addressed as the kind of cousin that was the barely legitimate offspring of the unfilial daughter of a younger son of a collateral branch of the family who had made an inappropriate liaison with a social inferior — possibly Sarvaw.
The “Cousin” that the Malcontent offered to permit Kazmer to call him was the older son of the older son of the direct lineage of a family to which one belonged only as the younger son of a younger son of a cadet line. There was no hope of truly expressing the nuances of such a thing in Standard; but Kazmer and the Malcontent would know.
“Thank you, Cousin Stanoczk.” Kazmer used the Dolgorukij word back with humility in his voice and a determined submissiveness in his heart. “What do you need from me?”
Cousin Stanoczk nodded. “When a soul born of the Holy Mother’s creation calls the name of my Patron, may he wander in bliss forever, they must do so in full knowledge of the price to be paid. And my Patron, he also must know what is required of him — in exchange for what he will exact from you.”
The first part was easy. Kazmer knew the answer to the
first part. “ ‘Who calls the name of the Malcontent becomes no-soul with no name, no family, no feeling but the will of the Saint.’ Yes, Cousin Stanoczk. I understand what duty I owe.”
Straightening up in his chair, Cousin Stanoczk leaned forward over the table, so close that Kazmer could smell his breath. Stanoczk smoked lefrols. What was going on? “Then kiss me,” Stanoczk said. “Convincingly, if you please. Demonstrate to me the depth of your commitment to the irreversible step that you propose to take.”
Oh, Holy Mother.
Kazmer’s stomach pitched at the very thought.
But he had said it. He needed the protection that he could only get from the Malcontent, protection not for himself, but for Hilton and Modice. For the Langsariks.
He reached forward slowly to put a hand to the side of Cousin Stanoczk’s neck, sliding his fingers caressingly around to bend Stanoczk’s head toward him. Maybe if he pretended. Maybe if he thought about Modice. But Stanoczk was not Modice, and could never be Modice; Stanoczk smelled of lefrols and musk, the scent of a man’s sweat and a man’s skin. Kazmer tilted his head to Cousin Stanoczk’s mouth, shuddering in his heart, trembling like a man gripped deep in terror.
At the last possible moment Cousin Stanoczk spoke.
“Well, that’ll do. For now.” Kazmer opened his eyes, astonished, and found the Malcontent looking at him with a wry and moderately amused expression. “There is no need for you to turn your stomach inside out, it is a bad precedent for a first meeting.”
Kazmer sat back down.
Had he passed the test?
Or failed it?
“I can do this thing, Cousin Stanoczk.” He could take no chances with ambiguous signals. “I can do what I’m told. I will. No price is too great to pay for what only the Saint can grant me.”
Cousin Stanoczk had settled back sidewise in his chair, and quirked his dark eyebrows at Kazmer skeptically. “It remains to be seen. The spirit is willing, but the flesh rebels, and to elect the Malcontent is to surrender body and soul. Yet there will be time to negotiate on some issues later.”
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