It made no sense for the Malcontent to demand performance of a duty too strongly repugnant to him to be borne with a willing heart. The Malcontent was all about freedom from pain, even if it came at a high cost. Kazmer sat in his place, confused, feeling a little as though he was in shock.
“We move on. What is it that you of my Patron require?” Cousin Stanoczk asked. Did that mean that his failure to approach Stanoczk like a lover on demand was to be excused him, overlooked?
And exactly how was he to explain?
“Protect me from the Bench, Cousin Stanoczk. The Bench wants to ask me questions that I can’t afford to answer. And I know I won’t have any choice except to answer; I’ve heard the stories. Stand between me and the Inquisitor, and let me keep my answers to myself.”
How much could he say without giving up the information he sought to protect?
If he told Stanoczk that he didn’t want to give evidence, Stanoczk might guess that there was someone to be protected. From there it was a very short span to the obvious implication that the people Kazmer had to protect were Langsariks, so that electing the Malcontent was just another way of implicating Hilton, indirectly.
Implication was not evidence actionable under law.
Kazmer waited.
Langsarik predation was not an issue that could possibly interest the Malcontent — not unless and until Combine shipping became involved. By the time that happened Kazmer would not be in a position to implicate anybody, so maybe the Malcontent wouldn’t care.
“That which the Malcontent directs, you must unfailingly perform,” Stanoczk warned. “It may be that the information you wish to protect comes out through avenues other than a Bench claim against you. It may be that the mission upon which you will be sent will have as result exactly what you wish to avoid, revelation of information pertinent to whatever issue by another. Your duty to the Malcontent could require that you comply with your instructions, in such a case.”
This helped. This clarified things. This gave Kazmer his mission, his pledge, the prize he was willing to trade his hope and future for. “Let me not incriminate people who may be guiltless by my testimony, Cousin Stanoczk, because testimony can be interpreted so wrongly. If there are guilty, let me find them. Only if a friend of mine is to face the Bench on Charges, let it be on evidence independent of any confidences between us.”
Not as if there had been any.
Hilton had been very annoying about that, as Kazmer remembered.
Cousin Stanoczk stood up.
“Here’s what we’ll do, then.”
Did that mean Kazmer had won? Or lost? Because to win was to lose, but to lose — would be to lose more than Kazmer could bear to contemplate . . .
“You are no longer Kazmer Daigule, and therefore you no longer have any information potentially of interest to the Bench. And yet the problem of the Langsariks may not be ignored, and if our holy patron deprives the Bench of information, it may be that we owe the Bench a decent story in return.”
Kazmer hadn’t said anything about Langsariks.
But Cousin Stanoczk had probably been fully briefed, as his next words proved.
“So we will go to Port Charid, where the Holy Mother cherishes many mercantile interests which are deserving of our Patron’s protection accordingly. You will pledge your faith as one of the Saint’s children to do your utmost to find who has been responsible for the raid on Tyrell Yards; and if the trail leads back to people you love — we will negotiate.”
Kazmer thought about this.
The first and critically important thing was to ensure that Hilton Shires would not be named in evidence, that the Langsariks not face sanctions from the Bench for breach of amnesty on account of any testimony from Kazmer Daigule.
But the larger problem would not be solved thereby. Someone had raided Tyrell. Kazmer needed to know if the stories of torture and murder he’d heard were true. One way or the other the Langsariks had to be warned of the danger they were in.
If it had been Hilton Shires behind that raid, and people had been killed, then shielding Hilton further would no longer be the act of a friend, but that of an accomplice.
Slowly, Kazmer nodded his head. “Just give me the chance, Cousin Stanoczk, and I will find out what is at the bottom of all this. I know I can, if I have time, and the Saint’s blessing on the enterprise.”
It felt awkward using such language. “The Saint’s blessing,” indeed.
“Right. Put this on, then,” Stanoczk said, tossing a small packet to him. Kazmer caught it by pure reflex, startled. A packet of ribbon: red ribbon, a band of ribbed silk ribbon as broad as the tip of his index finger was wide, and with a slip-noose in it. The halter of the Malcontent, the symbol of his self-elected slavery. “Only be sure of what you do, Daigule, because once I have led you on tether out from this place and into the street, there is no going back for you. Do you wish to take a moment to consider?”
Kazmer slipped the noose over his head and pulled it snug around his throat. “Get me out of here, Cousin Stanoczk,” he said, holding the tag end of the ribbon-halter out in the open palm of his left hand. The hand for giving things away. “I will requite the Saint faithfully, in wholehearted fulfillment of my duty.”
Cousin Stanoczk stood silent for a moment, as if making a final evaluation of Kazmer’s sincerity.
Then he took the ribbon end from Kazmer’s waiting hand. “Right. Let’s go, then.” Raising his voice, Stanoczk called out for the guards. “Security. Open the door, we’re leaving.”
The door to the interview room opened, and an orderly came in with a packet of documentation that she opened across the table.
Stanoczk pulled the ident-code that hung at the end of his own halter out from underneath his blouse and set his mark to the paperwork.
Kazmer felt his hope diminish with every emphatic strike of seal to document.
This was real.
It was official.
Stanoczk kept his hand low to obscure his grasp of the ribbon end, and Kazmer kept close behind to keep the halter slack so that it would draw as little attention to itself as possible; but he was being led out of the building at the end of the leash of the Malcontent, and once they reached the street — once he stepped clear of the Port Authority — it would be final.
Well, he had gotten what he’d needed.
The conflict between what he’d wanted out of his life, and what he had to accept as his life going forward, was no longer other than an empty issue for idle hypothetical debate.
###
Scowling, Garol tossed a data cube into the jumble of cubes on the table that formed the focus of the courier’s small common room. “Okay. That’s it for the interrogatories we have.” They were good interrogatories, too, well developed, thorough, reasoned, and carrying the unmistakable stamp of a judicious mind. “But where is Kazmer Daigule in all this?”
Jils reached forward and tipped the data cube flat to the table’s surface, marshaling the several records into a tidy array. “Well, he’s the pilot,” Jils said, but she didn’t mean it. They both knew perfectly well that Daigule had been the pilot of the impounded freighter that Anglace had intercepted before the crew had had a chance to dump its incriminating cargo. She was just being provoking.
Garol suppressed a sigh. It wore on a man to be in transit, even when he could get information on transmit. The courier’s address systems were robust, they could receive even priority transmission; but all they had seen during the past two days’ time spent in vector transit were the files on other crew. All the other crew. Everybody who had been associated with that freighter, except Daigule.
“What in particular do you want from Daigule, anyway?” Jils asked, apparently by way of a conciliatory gesture. “These are all consistent. What can Daigule tell us that these people couldn’t?”
Of course their stories were internally consistent. They’d had days in vector transit to themselves, time enough to practice a cover story. The freighter’s c
rew had not apparently done so, however; the inquiring officer was on record with his assessment of that, and Koscuisko knew his stuff. So much was obvious from the interrogatories he was producing.
But if the crew of Daigule’s freighter had not coordinated a cover story amongst themselves, they were either stupid, arrogant, or truly unaware of the critical importance of a good explanation for their role in the murders at the Tyrell Yards. As though they had all been genuinely unaware of any such murders.
The inquiring officer was on record about that, too.
Koscuisko had logged a formal and judicial opinion that the crew members of the freighter that he had interrogated had been unaware of the carnage at Tyrell. That they were therefore liable to civil penalties for conspiracy to misappropriate private property, and for receiving stolen property with intent to intercept any proceeds for gain, but not liable for criminal penalties, as persons knowingly and willfully engaged in robbery by use of lethal force with intent to commit collateral murder — to the detriment of the rule of Law and the Judicial order.
“Daigule knows Shires. Shires is Flag Captain Agenis’s nephew, and former Lieutenant. Daigule knows things about Langsariks that other people probably don’t.”
The interrogatories had established the pattern of recruitment, anonymous transmission of direction, care taken at every step to maintain a safe separation between the crew and the people who had chartered it. Maybe the crew should have guessed that such prudent people would not risk leaving any living witnesses.
But if whatever steps the raiders had taken to disguise themselves were good enough to protect them from incriminating testimony on the part of the crew, why had the raiders felt it necessary to murder those people at Tyrell?
“Well, it’s got to be coming.” Jils keyed the receiver on the table console, checking for any new information. “We have everybody but. Queue’s still empty. Saving the best for last, maybe.”
Maybe the interrogating officer had simply saved Daigule for the last of the series, waiting until a full picture of the pilot’s exact role developed through the testimony of the other crew. Except that none of the other crew apparently believed that Daigule really knew any more about specific individuals than anybody else, even while reporting Daigule’s apparent conviction that they’d been hired by Langsariks. There was no reason for the interrogating officer to have known beforehand that Daigule was to be the key to the affair.
Koscuisko’s intuition was apparently well developed, but he wasn’t psychic, at least not from any evidence in the interrogatories Garol had reviewed.
Garol wanted Daigule’s interrogatory.
He wanted it now.
He was going to have to talk to Chilleau Judiciary when he got to Anglace. He wanted a head start on analyzing what Daigule had to say.
“Go ahead, why don’t you. Check.” She was on line with the courier’s link; she could just have a look. “At least find out how much longer we’re going to have to wait. We’re still a day out from Anglace. I’ve done all the word puzzles I can stand.”
Jils frowned.
It wasn’t an encouraging expression.
“There’s nothing in the process queue at Anglace, Garol,” Jils said. But she’d just said that. Hadn’t she?
Garol waited. Jils addressed the courier’s interface, and there was silence in the small cabin broken only by the shifting of a half-empty cup of bean tea atop a stack of pull-sheets. Garol caught it before it had a chance to tip. Jils was concentrating.
“Nothing in the queue. Nothing in holding.” Leaning back in her chair, Jils ran one small square hand up across her flat forehead and through the thick black strands of her hair fringe. “He’s not in the system, Garol; Anglace isn’t holding any Kazmer Daigule. But he was there.”
Garol had seen the receiving report she’d brought to Factor Madlev’s office two days ago now. He knew Daigule had been there. “Incomplete inquiry?” Garol suggested, but even as he spoke he doubted the possibility that Daigule had died under interrogation. These interrogations weren’t any more than drug-assist, not at this point; the Bench wanted information, not merely confession to a crime. They hadn’t determined exactly what crime it was to be, yet. And Koscuisko didn’t lose people in mid-inquiry, not from what Garol had seen of his work at Rudistal.
“There isn’t even any session initiate on record. Nothing. Am I going out of my mind, or what?”
Garol had an idea, and it was an unpleasant one. “What,” he agreed. “It would be too frustrating. Jils. Daigule’s the only one who might really be able to implicate the Langsariks, at least specifically enough to stand scrutiny on the Bench. And Kazmer sounds Dolgorukij to me, what do you think?”
She stared, but she caught on almost immediately, and her reaction was disgusted. “Damn. That’s not fair. Are you sure? This is contrary to the maintenance of the common weal, we can protest.”
Garol knew how she felt.
But there could be only one reason Garol could think of that would explain how a man who had been taken into custody could be suddenly no longer in custody, with no notation in the record about death or escape to cover the discrepancy.
Kazmer had got out somehow.
Dolgorukij could claim religious exception and go off to join the Dolgorukij church’s secret service, penitents — or operatives — who identified themselves with an obscure parochial saint who had been dissatisfied with his life. No. Not dissatisfied.
Malcontent.
They couldn’t afford to let Daigule escape so easily. Murder had been done at the Tyrell Yards, murder and torture. Langsariks were suspected. Daigule might be able to tell them, if not who had been the planning committee behind the raid, then perhaps at least for certain who had not.
Daigule’s friend Hilton Shires, for instance.
“See if you can raise the local Combine consulate.” There was nothing they could do until they reached Anglace, no physical action they could take. It was maddening, but there was no help for it. “Try to get an appointment. See if they’ll admit to having a Malcontent on the premises.”
Maybe it was just as well. They had a day to think about this, to decide what to do. How to approach the problem. What to say to gain cooperation from a government agency exempt by formal pact from many of the checks and balances otherwise imposed on organizations representing civil governments. How to get through to the Malcontent.
This unexpected setback only strengthened Garol’s growing conviction — irrational though it was — that somehow Kazmer Daigule held a crucial piece of information that would lead him to the truth about what was going on at Port Charid.
He would get access to Kazmer Daigule, no matter what he had to do to get it.
###
Fisner Feraltz stood with his floor manager in the basket of a construction crane, surveying progress on the new warehouse complex west of Port Charid.
There were Langsarik work crews busy across the entire span of the foundation clearing, from the dormitory buildings — still under construction, and meant to house the workers themselves now, the warehouse staff later — out to the old launch site that was being upgraded, hardened to withstand more frequent freighter-tender traffic than the six or seven a week that the port’s main facility could handle.
A warehouse to store their loot, a dormitory to concentrate them, plenty of overlooked corners in which to hide illicit equipment, freighter tenders to be borrowed for illegal use — it was a brilliant trap.
He only hoped he would see it fully baited, before it was sprung.
“Another raid, eldest and firstborn?” There was a note of reluctant uncertainty in Dalmoss’s voice. Dalmoss was frowning at the sun on the western horizon as it set. “It seems so soon. With humility I offer the words, eldest and firstborn — it seems precipitous.”
It was unusual for Dalmoss to question direction from his superior at all. Fisner expected better of him. “We have been unfortunate in our intelligence, next born. There was no warn
ing about the Bench-intelligence specialist, and he was the one who won the settlement from the Bench for the Langsariks. It will take more to move him, if in fact he can be moved.”
The evening breeze blew past the crane’s basket, eights and eights above the ground. Dalmoss tightened his hold on the guardrail with a convulsive movement; Fisner noted that the knuckles of Dalmoss’s hand had whitened, where Dalmoss gripped the rail. Maybe Dalmoss wasn’t questioning his orders, Fisner realized. Maybe Dalmoss was simply afraid of heights.
It would be kindest not to notice, if it was nerves. If it was defiance, there would be time enough to raise the issue as a formal criticism once the Angel’s work at Charid had been completed. One way or the other there was no profit to be gained from creating a confrontation now.
“So you force his hand, eldest and firstborn. As suits the agent of our divine Patron.”
It would be almost vainglorious, foolhardy to mount a raid with Bench intelligence specialists actually at Port Charid. The Bench expected to receive its due respect, even if it was only to keep up appearances.
That Chilleau Judiciary would control public access to the news of raids and atrocities at Port Charid had been an accepted fact of the Angel’s plan from its inception, but the personal involvement of one of the Bench’s agents-outside-of-Bench-administration had the effect of flattening public outcry further than originally anticipated.
Bench resources at that level were more valuable than battlewagons and carried more of the Bench’s prestige with them — there were three times as many cruiser-killer warships in Fleet than there were Bench intelligence specialists under Jurisdiction. So long as there were Bench intelligence specialists involved, no planetary government or mercantile interest could seriously accuse the Bench of failing to treat the problems at Port Charid with the appropriate degree of gravity.
Something needed to be done to increase the pressure on Chilleau Judiciary, so that the temper of the Second Judge could be reliably manipulated when the evidence that the Angel planned to reveal became public knowledge — or at least knowledge revealed to the Bench and related mercantile interests, which was as public as the disgraceful treachery of the Langsariks was likely ever to become.
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