If he hadn’t called for Cousin Stanoczk, if the Inquisitor had taken his testimony, his evidence would have been used against Hilton and the Langsariks. He would not have seen what he had seen of the carnage at the Tyrell Yards. He would not have understood that he was guilty of a crime for which atonement was necessary and required; he might well have died in willful denial of any guilt for the murders done at Tyrell.
Then the reckoning that was to come would have taken place in some other form, in some other mode of existence, when he would no longer have any understanding of why it was appropriate for him to suffer punishment.
“Well, tell Hilton,” Modice said, and Kazmer remembered where he was. “He can bring the scarf back to me. If it’s the last I’m to see of you. If you were part of it, you did wrong, maybe, but not murder. Oh. I’ll miss you, Kazmer.”
She wasn’t angry at him, Kazmer realized.
She was fond of him. And grieved.
Clutching the front of Kazmer’s blouse to her, Modice wept. Kazmer put his arms around the priceless treasure of her body and rocked her gently, too confused by conflicting emotions to have anything to say.
She had it exactly right.
He had not done murder, but he had done wrong.
She was a genius. As well as beautiful.
It was a good thing he’d brought that night-courting gift after all, because as garish as it was, she would have to smile in rueful disgust every time she thought of it or him.
There were worse ways to be remembered.
Chapter Eight
“There are security monitors in place at the Honan-gung Yards, firstborn and eldest,” Dalmoss said respectfully. “The evidence of atrocity will be that much more persuasive. But we will have to be sure that our performance is flawless.”
It was very early in the morning. The administrative offices in the new warehouse facility were still deserted; that was the only reason that Fisner could afford to speak to Dalmoss in his office. Dalmoss would be safely hidden away again in the courier ship concealed within an off-lined freighter tender well before the shift change brought any incidental traffic into this part of the warehouse.
There wasn’t anyone on the day crews who was likely to recognize Dalmoss anyway — they were all of them new hires, by and large, Langsarik to a man — but vigilance demanded Dalmoss be gone before any chance meeting could betray his presence. The enforced inactivity was wearing on his second-in-command, Fisner knew; but the Angel tolerated no inefficiency and brooked no unwise gambles.
“Do we have a coverage map? With planning, the surveillance could be made to see only what we want on record.” Dalmoss had plenty of time in which to choreograph his raid. Not that there was so very much time before the raid would occur; but Dalmoss had nothing else to do, and nobody to keep him company but the Langsarik they’d brought with them from the Tyrell Yards. The Langsarik was safely drugged senseless, though, and sealed in a life-litter. He would probably have had little by way of interesting conversation to offer under the best of circumstances.
“We have the security schematic, yes.” So one of Fisner’s men had left it for Dalmoss to pick up at the agreed-upon drop during the infrequent intervals when they could afford for Dalmoss to be out and about. “With respect, though, eldest and firstborn. It could be too great a chance to try to use the record. The more evidence there is on record, the more evidence there is for analysis, and perhaps discovery of the secret. We should rather have Jevan disable the entire system prior to our arrival, to be prudent.”
Jevan was the Angel’s man at Honan-gung, their on-site saboteur.
Dalmoss was letting his nerves get the better of him. “If there is analysis in the future, second eldest and next born, what of it? It will be too late. The Langsariks will already have been dealt with, the raids will have ceased, and what better evidence of Langsarik guilt could there be than that once the Langsariks are gone the thieving stops?”
Nor would the Bench be able to tolerate the public scorn that would arise should they admit, even very quietly, that they had moved too quickly against the Langsariks, when they had evidence in hand to absolve them. So the Bench would not absolve them. There was nothing to worry about.
Dalmoss bowed his head in token of submission to Fisner’s reasoning. After a moment he spoke.
“Your instructions for Honan-gung, then, eldest and firstborn.”
Fisner had given it some thought. “How long has it been since Shires heard us talking, now? I have an idea for using our friend to put the play forward. You must stay well hidden, because he might recognize you, but I think the result will be well worth the effort.”
Whether Shires had said anything to Vogel or not was not something Fisner knew. But he’d thought the situation through carefully.
The whole plan from the beginning was to let Shires incriminate himself by drawing Vogel into an ambush at Honan-gung. So if Shires told Vogel, they were on course with that plan; but if Shires kept the information to himself, it could only be in order to take some dramatic action on his own part — action that could be used to implicate Shires either directly or indirectly in the raid when it occurred.
Either way the game was well worth the effort of setting it up.
“I have the documents prepared, eldest and firstborn,” Dalmoss said.
Good.
“Let’s do the transfer tonight, then, second eldest and next born. That will leave a few days yet before Jevan will be ready for us at Honan-gung.”
It would be good to be out of the bracing, even for just a little while. Dalmoss would be there to run interference in case Shires proved more fleet of foot than Fisner himself was, after spending so many hours of each day in self-imposed walking imprisonment.
It would not be long before the entire action would be completed. He could finally go back, then, back to his childhood home, and greet his surviving relatives, secure in the knowledge that the deaths of his family had been avenged.
Once he had accomplished the Angel’s purpose in Port Charid he could go home an honorable and honored man, and be at peace at last.
###
He’d meant to get out early. Aunt Walton needed his help. It was frustrating to have to maintain the polite appearance of a normal day-to-day existence while others were working on exciting tasks. Maybe analyzing and cross-analyzing traffic patterns within and around the Shawl of Rikavie was not intrinsically exciting on the face of it; still, Aunt Walton believed that there was a murderer to be caught in just such a way.
Even his old folks were mobilized for the task.
So what was he doing here after dinnertime, yet again?
Running a cross-foot on some cargo on for the Okidan Yards, that was what, in response to the foreman’s very distinctly expressed concern — a concern no less pressing for the fact that it had been transmitted to Hilton only third hand. Hilton had met Foreman Feraltz only the once; he knew what Feraltz looked like — bracing all over — but he hadn’t really seen a very great deal of Feraltz since their first meeting.
Perhaps it was because of his junior and brevet status: all the more important that he not let the foreman down on recent cargo deliveries being held on behalf of the Okidan Yards. Okidan hadn’t committed to rebuilding its warehouse facilities yet, but if trade was not to crash to a screeching halt for lack of a place to park the merchandise while it idled in search of a buyer, the inflated rates extorted by the Combine Yards had to be paid.
The least the Okidan Yards was entitled to in return for its payment of the premium on cargo handling in Port Charid these days was a careful and precise accounting for wastage and dwindling, as well as a reliable traffic report.
Hilton’s stomach growled at him. He thought with longing of the hot soup that was waiting for him in the dormitory kitchen, but that only seemed to encourage his grumbling belly, so he put his hunger firmly to one side of his consciousness. Traffic report now; soup later.
It wasn’t as though he was wasting his
time there, not exactly. He was part of the vital playacting of normalcy, the critical window dressing in Aunt Walton’s scheme to discover a raider while avoiding giving any advance warning before the troops arrived to make a spectacular raid. A legal raid. The raid that would provide evidence once and for all that the Langsariks were innocent of violating any part of the spirit of the amnesty settlement, and only very small and insignificant elements of the letter thereof.
Traffic report and reconciliation.
Yes.
But someone was singing outside the administrative offices. Hilton could hear the noise from his desk near the door — as far from the foreman’s office as it was possible to get and still be in the administrative offices. Someone was out there in the warehouse singing a Langsarik love song too loudly and passionately for it to be a sober endeavor.
This was a problem on a number of levels. One, there was to be no liquor in the warehouse, and no coming into the warehouse under the influence of liquor — that was simple common sense. Whoever the singer was would lose his job if he was discovered, at least by anyone other than Hilton — quite apart from the potential curfew issues his presence there after hours presented.
Two, whoever it was could not carry a tune, and it was almost physically painful to hear such notes wrenched out of a perfectly harmless, basically innocuous, and certainly almost completely innocent tune. For the honor of the cultural heritage of the Langsarik fleet Hilton had to shut the drunkard up.
Then finally, whoever was out there singing was not inside trying to complete a traffic report and reconciliation. Was probably already fed and finished with the day’s troubles. Had no business whatever being happy and relaxed and singing “Maid of the Forward Guns” while Hilton Shires was trying to get his work done so that he could get to bed.
Putting down his stylus and picking up a hand-beam, Hilton opened up the door between the administrative offices and the warehouse proper, careful to avoid making any unnecessary noise. The hand-beam was heavy and as long as his forearm and, apart from casting a bright focused beam of light, would serve as a satisfactory truncheon in case some drunk Langsarik wanted to fight. The longer Hilton had to listen to the murder of the song, the more he felt himself inclined to raise some welts on someone’s head.
Where was that awful racket coming from?
The acoustics of the warehouse were unique; sound would either carry much farther than one would expect or not carry at all. That was why he’d lost those two men he’d heard talking in the warehouse the other night. He still hadn’t quite made up his mind whether that incident had actually occurred, whether it meant what he’d thought at the time, and whether he should make an emergency trip to town to tell Garol Vogel all about it.
Setting off in a likely direction, Hilton stalked his prey, taking frequent stops to fix his direction in his mind. The topography of the warehouse changed on an almost daily basis as cargo moved in and out; that was why the traffic reconciliation was as complicated as it was, among other reasons. He didn’t have any baseline mental grid to guide him.
But he was getting closer.
He could begin to make out words, and the occasional near miss of a melody.
Lovely maid that I adore. High-explosive rifled bore.
He’d learned the song as a child, well before he’d had much of any grasp of what the words actually meant. He had been just twelve or thirteen years old when the Langsarik fleet had taken its stand, and transformed itself by virtue of simple — and initially civil — disobedience from a commerce-administration fleet to a commerce raider. Pirates. Being raised on a pirate ship had disadvantages, but Hilton had had few complaints until now — when nothing in his personal history seemed quite so interesting and seductive as the idea of simply getting to bed before it was time to get up again.
Slinking down rows of cargo crates Hilton tracked his quarry. Recoil knocks me off my feet, let me prime your mortar sweet.
He was getting closer.
Because he was beginning to hear words between music. Whoever it was, was talking to someone. Two of them? At least only one of them was singing.
Let me help your expert gunnery, promise I’ll max your trajectory. It was a very rude song really. And Hilton could see who was singing it.
There was someone sitting on the floor halfway down a long row of cargo crates, half in the cone of light from the shelf spot, half-concealed in the shadows. Langsarik leggings. Very worn boots. Waving a sheaf of papers clutched in one hand as though keeping time, but not keeping any sort of time at all. His companion was more centrally seated, well within the light cast by the shelf spot; but Hilton couldn’t see his face. Passed-out drunk, to judge by the body language.
How should he approach this?
He could rush them. They had no business being there if they weren’t part of a normal work shift, and if they were part of a normal work shift, he’d know. They had no business being there drunk, either, but since they were drunk he could rush the one unconscious man all he liked without any effect whatever, while the singer was so drunk that the effect of being startled would probably only leave them all with a mess to clear up off the flooring.
People frequently got confrontational when they were drunk.
No, it would be best to approach these people calmly and slowly, and get them out before anyone else noticed them. Recriminations and lectures could wait till they were sober. First things first. He was going to need the cooperation of the singer to move the unconscious companion; a friendly approach was clearly the more productive of his options.
Switching on his hand-beam, Hilton cleared his throat, sauntering slowly down the aisle as though he hadn’t seen the two drunks in his warehouse. He could be the night watchman; except, of course, that they hadn’t hired one yet. It didn’t make much sense to pay for a guard in a warehouse that couldn’t really be said to be secured anyway, especially as nobody really knew what was in which crate where.
“Haberdashery, convoy smashery, I’ll show you some fancy danshery — ”
Very drunk.
This called for more drastic measures. Hilton started to whistle as he walked, swinging his hand-beam from side to side to create as much visual noise as possible.
It finally seemed to work.
“Hsst.” The singer finally shut up — singing, at least. “Makile. We’ve got to shift. Come on, come on.”
No reaction from friend Makile. Too drunk, maybe.
Hilton closed the distance, swinging his hand-beam and whistling.
The singer continued to pound the inert body of his friend, his fistful of papers crumpling with every increasingly frantic blow. “Come on, Makile, let’s get moving, now, you know we have curfew, mustn’t violate the amnesty.”
Nope.
No luck.
Hilton was close enough now to call out a friendly greeting. After all, who could really blame someone for taking shelter in the warehouse when he found himself at a temporary disadvantage? The man was right; there was a curfew. It was a pretty flexible curfew, but drunk and disorderly would emphatically violate it.
“All right! Company! Say. How about a sip of whatever it is you’ve been drinking? A man can get thirsty, walking night shift.”
The singer pummeled his companion with one last desperate gesture, papers flying.
Then he took to his heels and fled, while Hilton watched him go with amused resignation.
Well, there was one down. One to go. It looked like he was going to handle the sleeper himself.
Hilton eased himself down to the ground next to the singer’s silent partner, wondering what to do now. “So. What’re you having.”
No.
Something was wrong.
It was cold on the floor of the warehouse; and no warmth came from the inert body beside him. Hilton felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle with dread and horror: and pushed himself away from the unbreathing body, hands to the floor.
Unbreathing?
He had
to check.
Setting the hand-beam down on the floor where it could illuminate some of the shadows, Hilton approached the still body that lay propped up against the crates.
No life.
No breathing.
Legs stiff, because he was dead; with the light shining on his face, the unnatural paleness of a countenance from which the normal blush of circulation had departed was too clear and too horribly unambiguous. Hilton had seen dead people before. There was no mistaking the chalk white putty of light-colored Langsarik skin when blood had ceased to color and warm it because the heart had stopped pumping.
Dead.
But there was no smell of liquor on him.
Perplexed as well as shocked, Hilton sat back on his heels to look at the dead man’s face. Did he know this person? Langsarik by the looks of him, but no one Hilton thought he recognized.
He cast about behind him with his hands, meaning to shift his rump from his heels to the floor so that he could contemplate this situation more in depth and needing to set his palms to the floor behind him for bracing as he moved his center of gravity.
He set his right hand flat on a piece of paper that slid under the pressure, destroying any chance Hilton might have had of keeping his balance. He fell over backwards and knocked his head against the hard warehouse floor with enough force to jar the curse he meant to speak on the slipping of his hand out of his mouth entirely, unspoken.
Lying on his back, staring up into the blackness of the warehouse’s rafters high above, Hilton caught his breath and composed himself. He was holding something in his right hand — he’d tightened his fist around the piece of paper, clutching for a handhold as he slipped. He brought his hand up in front of his face and turned the piece of paper front to back in his fingers.
Just a scrap of paper, really.
Poor quality, waxy finish, no wonder it had slid so easily. Marked in a fine bold hand. Trajectory calculations for a vector transit.
Hilton sat up slowly, his head spinning. What would any Langsarik be doing with a trajectory calculation?
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