“You have me precisely, second eldest and next born. What target would you guess I mean to take?” Fisner asked the question in a friendly tone. He had nearly decided that he was being oversensitive, in wondering if Dalmoss cherished defiance or resentment in his heart.
His own sense of cringing inadequacy could as easily be to blame. Just because he wondered if Dalmoss ever questioned the orders that had made Fisner his superior didn’t mean that Dalmoss ever had any such thoughts. Fisner had come to the Angel later in life, in his twenties. Dalmoss had been the Angel’s soldier in faith for longer than that.
Dalmoss didn’t answer immediately; it was both polite and prudent of him to pretend that he’d had no thoughts of second-guessing his superior. Or maybe he was just thinking. “I would very much like to take Finiury, we know that there are armaments there. But the body count wouldn’t make much of a splash. And the Bench couldn’t afford publicity; we wouldn’t get any noise out of it at all.”
The Angel knew something about Finiury that wasn’t in the public sphere: Finiury was managing illegal arms shipments for parties to civil unrest in Perk sector. Any publicity about a raid on the Finiury stores would have to gloss over the illegal armaments being stored there.
Nor could Maperna system — Finiury’s sponsor — put much real pressure on Chilleau Judiciary for justice and revenge, once Finiury’s illegal arms trade was uncovered: so all in all Finiury was as safe as though it had been truly warehousing no more than industrial ceramics in quarantine. Dalmoss’s reasoning was sound.
Fisner waited.
The sun was going down. They would have to return the crane’s basket to ground level soon, and they would not be able to talk as openly on the surface. It was getting cold as well. The medical bracing Fisner continued to wear took the chill with annoying keenness.
“I can’t pretend to have the same insight as you, eldest and firstborn.” Meaning, Fisner supposed, to excuse his analysis if it turned out to conflict with Fisner’s own. “But on the face of it. I would take Honan-gung. Some of its traffic is in cultural artifacts, which are therefore irreplaceable. And the casualty list will carry adequate weight.”
The Combine Yards in the Shawl were out of the question, of course — at least for the immediate future. But Fisner had not thought seriously about Honan-gung. Baltovane had a much more tempting inventory.
Still, Baltovane’s parent government would not make the noise that the planetary government of Yeshiwan system could be relied upon to make at the loss not only of innocent lives — that should be avenged by the Bench that had failed to protect them — but also of cultural artifacts. Historically priceless examples of Yeshivi art. Irreplaceable icons of the spirit of the Yeshivi people, destroyed with impunity by vandals the Bench itself had put in place and provided with opportunity.
Honan-gung was a much better choice, and there was an inside man there, as well as at Baltovane. Dalmoss need never know that he’d changed Fisner’s mind.
“I could hardly have said it better.” Fisner set the crane in motion to lower the basket. The floodlights were blooming to life on the field below; soon the second shift would come on. They were still months from bringing the new facility completely on line; but it could be ready well before then.
It only had to be far enough along to shelter the cargo pallets he had reserved for his purpose, and absorb three full shifts of Langsariks on-site. Once it was that far along it would be ready. They were already moving freighter tenders from its improved airfield.
Once they had reached that point, he would destroy the Langsariks.
###
Garol Vogel locked off the courier’s communications systems and opened the maintenance codes to the Port Authority’s computers. There were probably messages waiting for him, but he wasn’t interested in any of them.
“Jils, come on. Let’s go. There’s things we need to do.” He was in a hurry to leave the courier clear for maintenance and refueling, because he was heartily tired of it. It had been a long day span between finding out about Daigule and arriving at Anglace. Now he wanted to know whether it had done him any good to bother to come at all.
“No hurry.” Jils was forward, doing some final something or another before she was ready to leave. “You’re a Bench intelligence specialist, business will come to you. We have a visitor. Are you expecting anyone?”
What was she talking about? He didn’t want to go forward to see. He was sick of going forward. He’d been doing nothing but going forward, then going back, then going forward again, for hours.
He went forward.
Jils had the docking bay on the forward screens. There was someone out on the load-in apron under the bright lights of the Port Authority’s docks, someone in civilian dress who stood there with his hands clasped behind his back looking at the courier with what seemed to be genial curiosity. At least that was what it looked like from a distance.
Garol could guess who that was.
“Shut it down and let’s go,” he insisted, killing the display with an impatient gesture. “I’m telling you, the air in this courier is all used up. I’ve got to get out of here.”
Jils had one of her tolerant faces on. She let his ill-tempered ranting wash over her without generating a similar impatience in her. He didn’t know how she could be so calm.
Yes he did.
She didn’t care.
The Langsarik settlement had been one successful negotiation among many, to Jils. If the Langsariks fell foul of the Bench after all the work they’d done to make a positive solution of howsoever imperfect a sort, she would feel regret, but mostly for the waste of time and energy.
It wasn’t Jils that Walton Agenis had trusted to come to a fair agreement with the Bench.
“Coming, Garol. What are you waiting for? Let’s go.”
The man on the docks hadn’t moved between the time Jils had pointed him out and the time Garol finally got her clear of the courier; he was still standing there, watching. He had to know they’d seen him, wasn’t that the whole point of standing there out in the middle of a busy load-in apron doing nothing? Garol considered walking right past the man, just to be difficult. It would just put the progress of his investigation back if he did, though, so Garol made straight for the man, stopping when he was within speaking range.
Brown-eyed and blond, or maybe not quite blond; solid as a battering ram, and reminded Garol vaguely of Andrej Koscuisko. So he was Dolgorukij. It meant nothing. There were plenty of Dolgorukij.
From time to time Garol had found himself wondering whether there weren’t perhaps possibly just one or two or several hundred thousand too many.
The man inclined his head politely.
“Cousin Stanoczk,” he said in a voice as deep as an engine’s sub-harmonics. Garol already knew that he wasn’t anybody’s Cousin Stanoczk and would have been surprised if Jils turned out to be somebody’s Cousin Stanoczk. So he said nothing, and waited.
Cousin Stanoczk didn’t seem to notice. “You have queried the Combine’s administrative offices here at Anglace, looking for me — or for someone for whom I am responsible. I thought I would save you an unnecessary trip by meeting you, because I am certain there is not much to hold you in Anglace. You will wish to return to Port Charid immediately.”
People generally didn’t make assumptions about what Bench intelligence specialists did or didn’t want, were or weren’t going to do; or when they did they were usually wrong. Garol considered his options: What makes you say that; who asked you; do you know something I don’t know; who died and made you First Secretary?
“I’m looking for Kazmer Daigule.”
All of the other things that he could say would provide some emotional satisfaction, perhaps, but were unlikely to yield any real information. He could always fantasize about being gratuitously, flamboyantly, insanely rude at some other time. Personal feeling had no place where Bench business was concerned. “Am I correct in concluding that religious exception is to blame
for the loss of his testimony?”
“Religious exception” was the formal legal term for it, when the Bench released a person of interest or an accused to the tender mercies of the Dolgorukij church. The interplay of concession and adjustment the Bench’s relationships with all of its subject systems required in the interest of peace and good order created significant injustices, from time to time.
There was no telling whether Daigule’s escape from questioning and prosecution was one such injustice. There would be no telling for Daigule at all, without the cooperation of the Malcontent.
Cousin Stanoczk nodded once more. “Religious exception is certainly the cause of his departure from incarceration at the Port Authority. It need not go so far as loss of testimony, Bench specialists. Excuse me, but which of you is Vogel and which Ivers? If I may ask.”
Maybe Cousin Stanoczk didn’t know, and maybe he was just being polite. “I’m Vogel.” And Garol was frustrated. “What exactly do you want, Cousin Stanoczk. There are five thousand people at Port Charid whose lives may depend on my access to Kazmer Daigule. I need to talk to him.”
“I want to take him back to the Tyrell Yards.” Cousin Stanoczk’s answer was straightforward, if confusing. “I don’t care about five thousand Langsarik outlanders, Specialist Vogel, but I do care about one beloved son of the Holy Mother shot and left for dead at Okidan, and another as yet unidentified at the Tyrell Yards. I mean to go there with Daigule. You can grant access to the site.”
Twenty-seven people dead at Tyrell, and Cousin Stanoczk only cared whether one of them might be Dolgorukij. Garol let go of his feeling of reflexive disgust: That was Cousin Stanoczk’s job, he supposed. Look out for Combine interests, and only Combine interests, and never mind who else might suffer unjust death by violence. There was no sense in getting emotional about it. The Malcontent was a Combine operation, not a Bench resource.
“I clear you to Tyrell, you give me access to Daigule. Is that it?” Because it sounded too simple.
Sure enough, the Dolgorukij shook his head.
“Daigule kneels beneath the shield of my holy Patron, Specialist Vogel, I have no power to grant you access to him. But it may be that there is something he can tell us, about Tyrell. What he can tell us that I can share, I will share willingly. I am looking for one of the Holy Mother’s children, you are looking for evidence. Perhaps we can help each other out.”
Garol thought about it.
The forensics team was probably just getting started at Tyrell. The site had been secured, its atmosphere sealed to preserve evidence and inerted to avoid deterioration of the bodies prior to examination and autopsy. No identifications had been released, but any good intelligence agency would have been able to come up with the assignment list: so the Malcontent might have a valid interest in the site.
If Cousin Stanoczk wanted to take Daigule to Tyrell for whatever obscure purpose, it was possible that Daigule would say something under the stress of returning to the scene of his crime. Garol might be able to get somewhere with some incautiously blurted phrase or implication.
He had five thousand Langsariks to worry about, and no apparent chance of getting to talk to Daigule except through Cousin Stanoczk.
He was going to have to visit the Tyrell Yards sooner or later anyway. The only reason he’d not gone direct to Tyrell after checking in at Port Charid was that Jils had gotten news of the freighter impound here at Anglace. So now that Daigule was out of his official reach for purposes of formal interrogation, Tyrell was his next move anyway.
“I object in principle.” In a perfect world he could violate religious exception if he had reasons of state for doing so. He was a Bench intelligence specialist. He had reasons of state by definition.
The Bench would not be well served by such an arbitrary action on his part, though, no matter how well justified Garol himself might feel it to be. A mere five thousand Langsarik lives — disposable, dispossessed, stateless, and criminal lives — were not as important as keeping the peace between the Dolgorukij Combine and the Bench.
There were potentially many more lives at stake than just five thousand if he violated the Combine’s sense of entitlement. It had been luck and hard negotiating that had brought the Dolgorukij under Jurisdiction in the first place, one hundred and several years ago. The Combine was in a position to create major disruptions of the lawful conduct of trade to the detriment of the rule of Law if they were provoked to it.
So he would go along with Cousin Stanoczk’s proposal and keep his hands off Kazmer Daigule.
He would also try every trick he could think of to work around Cousin Stanoczk and shake the truth out of the Malcontent’s newest refugee, on the way from Anglace to Tyrell.
Garol inclined his head. “Still, you have me at a disadvantage. Very well, Cousin Stanoczk, I accept. Let’s go to the Tyrell Yards. Let’s go right now.”
What questions Garol had to refer back to the other members of the freighter crew he could transmit en route.
What questions he could ask Kazmer Daigule — if he only once found a chance — he could consider as they returned to Rikavie.
“If you would care to accept the use of my courier. I have a suitable vehicle placed on alert status.” Cousin Stanoczk neither paused to savor Garol’s concession or even note it as such, sensitivity that Garol could appreciate. So the man was a diplomat. Well, the Malcontent had not become the secret service of the Dolgorukij church — and of the Autocrat herself, by extension — by mismanaging its relationships.
Still, Cousin Stanoczk’s tact took much of the sting out of being on the wrong side of the balance of power for Garol as Stanoczk spoke on. “Secured transmission will be available, of course. So that you may report to the Bench, as you like. Or not.”
If they turned around and went back to Rikavie on Cousin Stanoczk’s offered transport, First Secretary Verlaine would not know where he was and could not query him for progress or status.
It was a tempting proposition.
He could always appropriate the vehicle on emergency loan if he had to. Knowing that was a portion of revenge in and of itself, but it was a real satisfaction for all its petty nature.
“Let’s go.”
He’d report back to Verlaine from Port Charid.
He wouldn’t have anything real to report until he’d seen what had happened at Tyrell for himself anyway.
Chapter Six
Without prior knowledge of what to listen for from which precise direction, with all of space to monitor the odds of any single short data-pulse being intercepted or observed was slim to the point of functional impossibility. It was the great distance between worlds that made transmission secure, not codes and ciphers per se. The Bench made use of every tool science had to offer to keep its sensitive information to itself; the Angel of Destruction put its faith in the Holy Mother and the huge background noise of random signals, and had never been betrayed in its trust.
The message was minute and modest.
Vogel leaves on arrival for Tyrell, with Malcontent. Daigule wears red.
Fisner Feraltz stared at the pulse on his screen, his gut gripped in the acid-sharp talons of a familiar anguish.
It would go wrong. He was worthless. He had failed in everything he had ever put his hand to; he had not even been raised by decent people, but was tainted beyond redemption by his life among the Langsariks.
Vogel leaves on arrival for Tyrell, with Malcontent. Daigule wears red.
It was a disaster.
After all that he had done, and all that he had planned, and all he had arranged so carefully and cleverly, Daigule had failed him. Daigule had not done as he was expected, intended, meant to do, had not told the Bench everything he knew about the Langsarik raid on the Tyrell Yards. Who would have guessed that a Sarvaw, of all people, would do so base a thing?
To protect his friend.
They had gone too far when they had made sure that Daigule would see Shires in the meal-room that morning. It had bee
n a mistake. It had been his mistake. He was responsible for this disaster. But who would have thought it, of a Sarvaw?
Fisner toggled his transmit. “Send to me Dalmoss, Ippolit, if you please.”
The Malcontent.
The greatest enemy that the Angel had, the bastard pervert among the Saints under canopy, not even a saint at all except by popular acclaim — he had no theological claim to the honorific. So what if there were healings, miraculous events, apparently divine interventions? It was all fraud and lies, like everything else about the Malcontent.
Perhaps the Saint himself had been Sarvaw, all along. There was a thought. No decent Dolgorukij could ever have tolerated such perversions as the Malcontent had during his life, and he had been near heretic as well — at least there were stories to that effect.
Health and happiness greater goods than loyalty and piety.
To feed the hungry more blessed than to rule them, schooling them to submission; alleviating suffering more pleasing in the eyes of the Holy Mother than teaching devout acceptance of all the lessons suffering had to offer — even that it was not blasphemy to think of the Holy Mother as a father, as well as mother, and that the Child of the Canopy might have an equal divinity with his Parent.
“You sent for me, Foreman?”
Dalmoss was at the door to the small office Fisner used while he was here at the new construction site. Fisner beckoned for Dalmoss to come in and close the door. It was tiresome to sit behind a desk, in bracing; but the illusion of bodily infirmity had to be maintained to minimize any chance that someone who might happen to see him late at night would make the connection between a dimly glimpsed, but able-bodied stranger going amongst the crates, and the still-disabled foreman Fisner Feraltz.
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