Baldwin squinted in concentration. "The editors of the Hoyabusa," he said. "Let's get in touch with them. Maybe they can tell us who the Offended Patriot really is."
"They can't. I already inquired. What they can tell us is that the Offended Patriot not only knew in advance but knew a long time in advance. The text of this editorial was delivered to them by courier fifty-nine days ago. It came in a sealed envelope with instructions specifying that it was to remain sealed for fifty seven days. They opened it on schedule. They spent a day fact-checking."
"And they published it today."
"Yes—almost as if they were puppets whose strings are being pulled by the Offended Patriot."
12.
When the Izanugi docked, the ship was greeted by an angry mob.
The potential for civil unrest had been foreseen—no oracle had been needed to make that prediction—and the riot squad had been dispatched to keep the peace. That was what their name meant—"awoji" equaled "peacekeepers"—but nobody called them that. The slang expression for them was "nugakude"— an impolite term difficult to translate, but "asskickers" wouldn't be far from the mark. Rebels confronted by the nugakude had a simple choice. They could depart in peace or depart in pieces.
Interment of the dead wasn't a Dokharan tradition, but Dokharans knew what a coffin was, Tajok's body had been put in a coffin for transport, and when Tajok's coffin was offloaded, a spiteful susurrous like escaping steam rose from the crowd. If all of the protestors assembled on the waterfront had been miraculously transformed into hissing serpents, they would have made a noise like that. It was hatred made audible, and Baldwin shuddered at the sound of it.
Luhor had disembarked with the other passengers. No one had accosted him or attempted to molest him. That was because no one except Baldwin knew who he was. Tumanzu could have identif ied him, but Tumanzu hadn't met the ship. He had been summoned to give testimony before a special session of the Genjuko. Luhor strolled down the quay, calm and unhurried, flanked on both sides by demonstrators who would have torn him limb from limb if the purpose of his visit had been revealed to them.
Baldwin and Tumanzu had been breakfasting when Baldwin announced his intention to join the throng that was gathering on the wharf. "The Izanugi will get a lively reception," he said. "I'd like to see that for myself."
Tumanzu swallowed a mouthful of toasted akicki and wagged an admonitory finger at Baldwin. "I'll expect a full report." He sounded like a schoolteacher assigning homework. "That's what you do, isn't it? Reporting? How about doing a little of it for me?"
Baldwin was willing to accommodate him. He used Minerva to make a photographic record of the day's events. The comtote's built-in camera couldn't compete with Escoli's pix-shooter for high contrast, sharply defined images, but that degree of professionalism wasn't required for this task. The shots he got of the ship, the crowd, the nugakude, Luhor, and the coffin would be more than adequate to give Tumanzu a thorough briefing.
Foreigners entering Dokhara didn't have to go through customs—to the best of Baldwin's knowledge, customs inspections weren't a Bukkaran custom—but there were still formalities to be observed. Luhor had to take charge of Tajok's coffin. Arrangements to have it transported to the cemetery needed to be made.
When Luhor had attended to these details, he emerged from the offices of the shipping firm and found Baldwin waiting for him. Luhor's face remained emotionless, but his tone of voice betrayed surprise. "Mr. Baldwin! I didn't realize that you and I were fellow travelers. You should have sought me out aboard ship. We could have become better acquainted."
Luhor's assumption that Baldwin had made the crossing on the Izanugi was incorrect but understandable. How else could Baldwin have gotten here? Luhor's presumption that Baldwin wanted to become better acquainted was equally incorrect and less understandable. Their previous encounter hadn't exactly been cordial. Why would Baldwin want to become better acquainted?
"I see you decided to come," said Baldwin, stating the blatantly self-evident as though he were a soothsayer dispensing wisdom.
Luhor was unprepared for the abrupt change of subject. He blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"To Tajok's funeral. You weren't sure you'd come. I see that you have."
Shifting mental gears, Luhor replied: "Yes. I realized that trouble was brewing. It seemed to me that... well, that I owed it to my yuriki. He made his wishes very clear, but he can no longer speak for himself. I must speak for him, make sure that the obstructionists do not prevail."
"That might be easier said than done." Baldwin gestured, indicating the harbor and the swarm of irate protestors congregated there. "It's not only them and others like them. The Genjuko has been convened to consider this issue."
Luhor gave the office he'd just left a backward glance. "So I've been informed. It seems that my yuriki's coffin must remain here—in cold storage—until the Genjuko renders a verdict."
"The delay could be prolonged. Tumanzu tells me that the debates before the Genjuko have been heated."
"Tumanzu?"
"Yes. That's where he is now. He, too, is testifying."
Luhor's scowl could have soured milk. "No need to ask what recommendation he'll make. Is there?"
"He's only one of thousands of like-minded Dokharans. The preponderance of public opinion is not in doubt. It never was. But the popular choice may not be lawful."
"So the decision hangs on a legal technicality?"
"That is my understanding. Yes."
Luhor brisked his hands together. "Then I'd better hire myself a jikyu, hadn't I?"
13.
A Dokharan jikyu wasn't an attorney so much as a counselor. He didn't plead cases in court or before panels of magistrates. His clients were required to do that for themselves. His primary responsibility was teaching them how to do it. He gave them legal advice, helped them to strategize, coached them, guided them, told them what to say and what not to say, drafted documents and submitted them to the proper authorities, and attended to all of the opening gambits, preliminaries, and overtures that preceded the performances he was training his clients to deliver.
Nishizuki had a well-deserved reputation as a sly, serpent-tongued jikyu who could convince even the most stubborn skeptics that up was down, in was out, black was white, and night was day. What's more, his powers of persuasion were contagious. He could take an ordinary, comparatively inarticulate Dokharan and convert him into a compelling debator whose judges would not only rule in his favor but apologize to him for having the temerity to sit in judgment on him.
If anybody could devise a winning ploy for Luhor, it was Nishizuki, but his first act as Luhor's jikyu was to concede that he hadn't done so—at least not yet. He applied for and was granted an extension to confer with his client and consider his options. The Genjuko continued to conduct hearings, but they were mere formalities. Everyone understood that a final decision had been deferred until Luhor was ready to address the council.
Meanwhile...
Luhor had vanished. Three days had passed. He had made no public appearances, issued no public statements, did not seem to be lodged at any of the various establishments that were open to the public. He was registered at none of the hotels, inns, or rooming houses scattered throughout the city.
"That proves nothing, of course," Tumanzu grouched. "He could be using an alias." He shook his head, disagreeing with his own assessment. "I doubt it, though. I think Nishizuki's taken him to some hideaway and is desperately trying to bestow the gift of eloquence on him. I don't envy Nishizuki that task! Luhor's croak is by no means the voice of an orator."
Baldwin registered mild surprise. "His croak?"
"The shiroz mines will do that to you. If you'd spent three years breathing dust and coughing up your lungs, you, too, might speak with a rasp."
"But he doesn't." Baldwin's foref ingers were pointing in opposite directions—a gesture signifying on the contrary. "I've had two conversations with him. He doesn't sound hoarse to me."
Raising his voice, Tumanzu bellowed: "Something wrong with your hearing?" He and Baldwin were seated in the same room at the same table, but—judging by sheer volume—he might have been addressing someone in another time zone.
Baldwin flinched. He snarled: "I'm sitting next to an ogaku saruja who may have just shattered my eardrums!" He was genuinely annoyed, wasn't bothering to pretend otherwise. The expression "okaku saruja" wasn't ordinarily used in polite society. It wasn't ordinarily used in impolite society either—not unless the person using it was looking for a fight. "Apart from that, no—there's nothing wrong with my hearing."
Tumanzu's smile faded from his face like mist from a mirror. "The words coming out of Luhor's mouth sound like they've been through a grinder. How could you fail to notice?"
Baldwin—still vexed—snapped: "I failed to notice because there was nothing to be noticed. Luhor's voice isn't especially sonorous, but it isn't gruff either." He activated Minerva and meddled with her buttons. A voice emerged from the comtote's speakers: "Mr. Baldwin! I didn't realize that you and I were fellow travelers. You should have sought me out aboard ship. We could have become better acquainted." Baldwin patted Minerva's slick carapace. "See?"
Tumanzu was wearing an expression of dropjawed shock. "No—I don't see. But I hear—loud and clear. I just don't believe what I'm hearing."
With the air of a fisherman dangling bait in the water, Baldwin teased: "Would you like to see?"
Tumanzu's eyes widened. "Pictures? You have pictures of Luhor?"
"Of course I do. You gave me explicit instructions. Remember? A full report. You expected a full report from me."
"A verbal report. I wasn't thinking in terms of photographs." Tumanzu wagged a forefinger in a come-hither gesture. "Here. Let me see."
A quick review of the material stored in Minerva's memory revealed three images of Luhor. None were close-ups, but his features were clearly visible in the third. Baldwin enlarged it, and handed the comtote to Tumanzu. He took one look and barked an expletive that made "ogaku sauja" seem mild and inoffensive by comparison. He didn't rise to his feet so much as bounce out of his chair, was halfway across the room and headed for the front door before Baldwin could gather his wits. "Come on!"
"Where are we going?"
"I'll tell you on the way."
Tumanzu wrenched the door open and emerged from it like a cuckoo from a clock. He took four more steps, suddenly halted, slumped bonelessly to the ground, twitched, and went slack.
The kojuma dart was embedded in the hollow of his throat.
Baldwin got a fleeting glimpse of Usiga as he did a backflip off the guardrail on the seaward side of the terrace. Baldwin had no chance to interfere, was not tempted to try.
"Your willingness to grant me an audience is sincerely appreciated. If I were a Dokharan citizen, I'd be entitled to a hearing—it would be one of my birthrights—but I'm not and it isn't. I am a Zifran who subsequently became an Izmirite. As such, I have no legal status in this chamber. You could have rejected my request. But you didn't. You have extended remarkable courtesy and indulgence to a stranger. Permit me to express my gratitude."
A very pretty little speech, Baldwin was thinking. Well rehearsed and flawlessly recited. Smooth deliverery. No trace of a rasp or hoarseness.
The hall where the Genjuko met seemed more like a temple than a council chamber. It seemed that way because that's what it was. It did double-duty as a place of worship and as a seat of government. Directly behind the podium where the genjuki sat was a massive altar. When the Genjuko was not in session, religious rites were conducted here. Baldwin would have been willing to bet that the lawmakers of the council and the priests of the temple were one and the same. He frowned. One and the same? Make that twenty-two and the same. At the moment, all twenty-two of them were wearing stern expressions and listening to Luhor with unwavering attention. Their eyes were grave, and Baldwin suspected that no glance of compassion or look of pity had ever issued from them.
If Baldwin had been the object of their scrutiny, he would have been intimidated, but Luhor's composure remained unruffled. He said: "As Tajok's sole heir, I have an obligation to him. The solemnities marking his passing have become my responsibility. Tajok specified what he wanted done. What will be done is for you to decide."
Luhor's statement suggested that he was a supplicant thankful for any crumbs of consideration that the genjuki could spare, but he didn't really mean it and he wasn't a good enough actor to convince anyone that he did. These were polite insincerities that Nishizuki had put in his mouth. Luhor was obediently regurgitating them, but he spoke his lines without animation or conviction. His face was expressionless. His voice had the lifelessness of a mechanical recording.
Nishizuki must have warned his client that he would be addressing a unreceptive audience, unlikely to be swayed by honeyed words. Luhor wasted no more time of deferential preliminaries. Getting directly to the point, he said: "Tajok is hated by many—if not all—of his fellow Dokharans. I knew that, and I was prepared for it. I was not prepared for the intensity with which he is hated. The antagonism toward him should have died with him—or so I would have supposed—but no: his enemies are determined to deny him makeevasukku, his friends—with one exception—are nonexistent, and the issue wouldn't be in much doubt if you Dokharans weren't such law-abiding people. But you are. As such, you find yourselves constrained by an awkward point of law. Tajok was the legitimate owner of the makeeva reserved for him and of the ground in which it is planted. His right to makeevasukku and his property rights are inextricably intermixed."
Luhor steepled his hands, making a bridge over nothing. "Tajok had no offspring. He was the only surviving member of his family. Now he, too, is gone, and I have inherited all of his worldly goods. His property has become my property."
Luhor paused, allowing the implications of that to register. "Permit me to propose a compromise," he said. "With your permission, I will instruct the mizuni to uproot the makeeva with which Tajok intended to merge, prepare it for transport, and arrange to have it shipped to Izmir. I will accompany it, and I will take Tajok's mortal remains with me. The house that I shared with Tajok on Izmir has a garden. The makeeva will be transplanted there, Tajok's body will be consigned to it, and he will be united with soil that was, after all, more hospitable to him than the soil of his homeland."
Luhor scanned the faces of the genjuki, attempting to gauge their reactions, but their features remained unreadable. "This—I think—would be acceptable to Tajok himself and inoffensive to his detractors." He bowed with disingenuous obsequiousness. "Thank you for your attention. I await your judgment."
The senior genjuki bestirred himself. "Your suggestion seems very reasonable," he said, "and if you had made it yesterday, I suspect it would have been adopted—probably unanimously. But that was yesterday. Today we have received information that invalidates your argument and compels us to redefine our reason for being here. This was to have been a hearing to determine if makeevasukku would be extended to a war criminal. What it has become is a war criminal's last attempt to exploit the people he betrayed and victimized." He made an abrupt beckoning gesture. Five guards with drawn weapons converged on the witness box. "You are under arrest on a charge of high treason. Other charges will, of course, be forthcoming, but that one will do for the time being." He waved a hand in dismissal. "Take him away," he commanded.
And they did.
15.
"I wish I could say I suspected it all along." Baldwin's shoulders slumped, implying disclaimer. "I suppose I could say it," he amended, "but it wouldn't be true. I didn't have an inkling until Usiga killed Tumanzu. That got my attention—not only because murder had been done right before my eyes but because it made no sense!" Baldwin emphasized the senselessness of it by smacking his fist into his own palm and wincing at the pain he had senselessly inf licted on himself. "Six days. Only six days had passed since I'd proved to Usiga that his contract was void. What could have happened in
the meantime? What could have changed his mind?"
David Collins was seated in the same chair that Tumanzu had occupied on the night when Tumanzu and Baldwin first met. Collins was drumming on the armrest with fidgety fingers. "Usiga is a professional," Collins observed. "If there's no profit in it, he doesn't do it."
"Exactly," Baldwin concurred.
Collins raised his eyebrows in conjecture. "His contract must have been renewed."
"Yes—but who would have a motive for doing that? I asked myself that question and only one candidate occurred to me."
"And that's when you realized the truth?"
"That's when my suspicions were aroused." Baldwin interlocked his fingers, using them like building blocks to erect a more complicated structure. "That's when I started putting the pieces of the puzzle together. I had most of the pieces in my possession. If I'd only attempted to assemble them sooner..." His manner was that of a penitent seeking absolution. "But I didn't. I made no effort to solve the puzzle until I recognized that a puzzle existed to be solved."
"And when you did...?"
Baldwin's head rotated like a weathervane seeking the proper orientation. "The war. The Dokharan/Ambulan conflict of twenty years ago. If you take the trouble to unravel this snarl, that's what you find at the center of it. The war—and the role that Tajok played in it." Baldwin paused to marshal his thoughts. Then:
"Tajok's life-extension experiments yielded results that were undeniably beneficial. Tumanzu was proof of that. So was Tajok himself. Ten years of servitude in the shiroz mines failed to kill him. That was an unprecedented feat of endurance. It required augmented strength, extraordinary recuperative powers, and an ability to keep on keeping on that rivaled the rocks he was mining. Obviously, Tajok had been taking doses of his own medicine."
"Obviously?"
"Well, it's obvious to me now." Baldwin gave a snort of self-reproach. "Isn't that always the way? Life isn't a process of discovery. Not for me. My life has been the process of making all the discoveries that should have been obvious from the outset."
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