Grego paused for just a second. The shock of what he had just seen soaked in as his mind rapidly catalogued the information that could be useful. He lunged forward at the communications screen and punched out a combination—playing the call board with his whole hand, instead of his usual one-digit-at-a-time-with-the-index-finger method.
The screen cleared to reveal a Company police sergeant with his feet up on his desk—who was nothing if not astonished to see the purposeful-looking face of the Company Manager-in-Chief glaring out of his comm screen. He jerked his feet off the desk as though it were hot and cinched up his neckcloth’s knot. “Yes, sir, Mr. Grego,” he said.
“Who’s your watch captain?” Grego snapped.
“Uh—Captain Lansky, sir,” the sergeant said.
“Put me through to him—instantly,” Grego said.
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied briskly.
The screen image switched to that of Captain Lansky.
“Morgan,” Grego said, “where’s Chief Steefer? Right this minute?”
Lansky was almost as astonished as the sergeant. “Why, I imagine he’s at home, Mr. Grego. Why?”
“Look on your locator log, man,” Grego said. “This is important.” Lansky peered at something on his desk. “Yes, sir,” he said, “he’s at home. Checked in from there at 2100 hours.”
“Thank you, Morgan,” Grego said. “No time to explain now. We’ll be getting back to you.”
An equally bewildered Chief Steefer appeared to be in the middle of getting ready for bed when Grego screened him.
“Listen carefully, Harry,” Grego said. “I only have time to go over this once.” He launched the information he had about Gwen; her first name, her physical description.
As Grego talked, Steefer was thinking, Ghu; what’s all this fuss about some Junktown floozie? Mallorysport P.D. sweeps up a couple of them a week, drilled by person or persons unknown. Nifflheim, it’s not even my jurisdiction. But he continued to dutifully make notes on the yellow pad in front of him.
“Okay?” Grego said.
Steefer nodded.
“Two things make this important, Harry. She was desperate to get in touch with Christiana. And, the last thing she said, when whoever it was shot her was—now get this— ‘Ingermann. It’s Ingermann.’”
It took Steefer about two seconds to get it. “I—think I see what you mean, Mr. Grego. He may have really stepped in it this time.”
“Ghu, I hope so,” Grego said. “I fervently hope so.”
“I’ll make some calls from here and get the ball rolling right away,” Steefer said.
“Right,” Grego said. “Then, you pull your pants back on and get down to fifteenth level. I want you to run this personally. Have the entire detective bureau drop what they’re doing and stay on it till we find her—if it means looking behind every grimy door in Junktown. She may still be alive. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.”
“I’m on the way, Mr. Grego,” Steefer said. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” Grego said, “two things. I want you to have a detective go to Christiana’s apartment and determine if she’s there, and, if so, that she’s all right. If she’s not there; find her. They may be trying to get her, too. We won’t know until we can piece some more of this together. If she is there, have a man watch the place, but don’t let her know about it. Your man is to report directly to me from the public screen in that building as soon as he has anything.”
Steefer nodded and drew a line under something on his note pad.
“The other thing, Harry,” Grego said; “I know Gwen was calling from a public screen. I could see the esplanade in the background. I think it was Pequod Plaza, but I’m not sure. In any case, it’s a good place to start looking. Questions?”
“No, Mr. Grego,” Steefer said.
“Good,” Grego replied. “I’m going to call Gus Brannhard now and have him put the City Police on it, so you should be hearing from Al Earlie by the time you get to your office. Now, you guys squabble out who’s in charge of the operation any way you want to, but be prepared to set up a command post in Junktown if you don’t turn her up right away and start calling in off-duty detectives.”
“Yes, sir,” Steefer said.
Grego could see a perplexed-looking Mrs. Steefer in the background of the screen pickup. Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Steefer; you married a cop, not an accountant. “Remember, Harry…“Grego said.
“Yes, sir?” Steefer inquired.
“Find that girl!”
Grego was mildly stunned at the sight of Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard in his pajamas. Then he realized that he had always supposed Gus slept naked in the crotch of a tree, with a bottle of whiskey cradled in the crook of his arm.
“Oh. Victor.” Gus said and yawned. “It’s you. What’s up?”
“Sorry to wake you, Gus,” Grego said.
“That’s all right,” Gus said. “I had to get up to answer the screen anyway.” His shaggy chest hair was curling out of the pajama collar and wisps of it protruded from the spaces between the buttons.
“Look, Gus,” Grego said. “We’re onto something very important, here. Why don’t you have a jolt to get your heart started and I’ll tell you about it. You’ll be fascinated; guarantee it.”
“Good idea,” Gus said. “Be right back.”
“I’ll hang on,” Grego said.
When Gus Brannhard returned to the pickup area of his screen he had a half-glass of amber fluid in his hand and a sparkle in his eye. “Shoot,” he said.
Grego narrated the events of the past half hour. When he got to the “Ingermann. It’s Ingermann” part, Gus leaned forward attentively. Trying to find a charge he could make stick to Hugo Ingermann was Gus’s hobby. “Ohhhhhhh,” he said. “Ahhhhhhh. I think we have a tiny match here with which we can burn down Ingermann’s house.”
“I do, too,” Grego said, “but only if the girl is still alive and we can find her before someone realizes they’ve blundered and try to make sure she’s shut up for good.”
Gus set down the glass and rubbed his palms together gleefully. “I’ll get Al Earlie right on it,” he said, “and I’ll have Colonel Ferguson put the Colonial Constabulary on alert and seal off the city. Let’s see—I better wake up Max Fane. We’ll probably need some warrants before this is done with. Besides, he’d never forgive me if he wasn’t on it from the beginning.”
“Good,” Grego said. “Keep me posted. I’ll be right here and I’m staying up until we have something definite—one way or the other.”
Alex Napier turned off the lights in his cabin and climbed into his bunk. As he pulled the sheet up under his chin he was thinking that a lot more people knew what might be up, now, but he was pleased with the way the briefing had gone this evening. Sharp young lad, that Gilbert, too; sharpest he’d seen in some time. When the question was put to him while they were having a nightcap, he had already figured out what the rest of his mission was to be after all the scientific findings were in, the duplicate folio built up, and the “armed copy boy” phase of his assignment completed. Yes, have to keep an eye on young Gilbert. He might be going places in this man’s Navy. He slept.
Having done everything he could do, for the moment, Victor Grego opened the terrace doors, picked up his brandy snifter, and went outside. He liked to sit there, in the quiet of the night, and listen to the city. Sometimes Mallorysport would speak to him by the distant hum of human activity that drifted up to the top of Company House. Sounds from far away were all blended together at that altitude and the result was that the character of the city at that moment would effulgently come to his ears.
Tonight, there seemed to be a suspiring murmur of discontent bordering on misery. And small wonder, Mallorysport was still digesting an enormous helping of immigrants. The poor, the poor, why are the poor always with us? We have conquered the very stars, and with all our science and all our pluck and all our will to cross the endless gulfs of space, we have not been able to lif
t the human spirit high enough to erase poverty and its children—the broken, the pitiful, the helpless…
His ruminations were cut short by the soft chiming of his private screen. He rushed back inside and opened the key. It was Harry Steefer. “Yes, Harry,” Grego said matter-of-factly.
Steefer was obviously pleased with himself. It was now less than an hour since Grego had put him to work. “We’ve got her, Mr. Grego, “he said. “Her name’s Gwen Ramsey.”
“Is she… ?” Grego ventured.
“Yes,” Steefer said, “she’s still alive. She’s in Mallory Memorial with two slugs in her. They’re going to dig ‘em out as soon as they can get her stabilized. They won’t let anybody talk to her till after that. She’s out, anyway, so there’s no point to try until she comes out of post-op.”
“You have a forensics man there with an envelope—in the operating room—so he can positively testify that those are the bullets that came out of her. If we get lucky enough to bag Ingermann with a gun on him, I bet you a five-sol that they’ll match it.”
“Been taken care of,” Steefer said.
“What kind of odds are we looking at?” Grego asked.
“Not too bad,” Steefer said. “The next twelve hours are crucial. If she makes it through that, the doc says she has an excellent chance.”
“I want two cops on this around the clock, Harry,” Grego said. “One of ours and one from the city. I want them so close to that girl they can hear her breathing.”
“Been taken care of,” Steefer said.
“Nobody talks to her but you, Al Earlie, Gus, or myself until we get a veridicated statement from her. When they find out she’s still with us, somebody will try to get in and finish up the job they botched.”
“Wouldn’t do ‘em any good,” Steefer said smugly. “We have an eyewitness.”
“An eyewitness! That sounds too good to be true,” Grego exclaimed.
“Yes, sir,” Steefer said. “The first thing my people did was to check in with all their informants. Old J.B. was sitting on a bench and saw the whole thing. Of course, he dived behind the bench when the first round went off, but he has already picked Ingermann’s face out of the book. Old J.B. tells us interesting things from time to time and we give him a few sols from time to time. He was the one that called the ambulance.”
“Wonderful,” Grego said. “You guard him like he was the Company sunstone vault—and get a veridicated deposition.”
“It’s being done right now,” Steefer said.
“Anything else happen tonight that might bear on this?” Grego asked.
“Well—” Steefer hesitated. “I don’t know if it’s tied in or not. Al Earlie’s boys picked up a couple of drunk Marines tonight for disturbing the peace. They told the interrogator a fascinating yarn about a mountain of sunstones on North Beta. The hell of it is they had some sunstones on them and their story holds up under veridication. They might have told Ingermann the same thing. You know how sunstone-happy he is. Something like that could tip him over the edge and make him do something foolish—the something foolish that he did.”
Several things came together in Grego’s mind and a picture started to form. “Very interesting,” he said. “Have Al hold them for a day or so. I’d like to talk to them in the morning. We’ve got a leasehold—at very high royalties, I might add—on a rich deposit over there on the Fuzzy Reservation. Don’t let them bail out until I talk to them. If somebody shows up with a habeas corpus order, well have something to dig at. Anything else?”
Steefer’s face became serious—almost grave. “I don’t like to be the one to tell you this, and you may be mad at me, but I had a hunch about something, so I had Christiana Stone followed for a few days.”
“Yes?” Grego said frostily.
“I put Stubby Butler on it. Remember him?”
Grego paused. “Oh, yes. The guy who always works alone. Lorenzo Butler. Go on.”
“Well,” Steefer continued, “she’s been meeting some guy at the Rondo every Friday afternoon. Usually gives him a packet of papers. Could be our information leak.”
Grego was silent. Finally, he murmured, “Stay on it, Harry. We’ll see where it takes us.” Suddenly, Grego was tired—bone tired. He wanted to lay down and go to sleep and never get up again. “I’m going to bed now, Harry, “he said, “but you call me if there are any startling developments.”
“Yes, sir,” Steefer said. “Like I said, Mr. Grego, I hate it to Nifflheim to have to tell you that, but—”
“It’s all right, Harry, “Grego said. “I’ve never been mad at a man for doing a good job of what I told him to do.”
George Lunt pushed himself back from the table. “Why, you’re just a marvel of a cook, Sandra,” he said. “I would never have thought anyone as pretty as you would be a good cook, too.”
“Boy, George, “Sandra said, “are you full of it. And this after that crack you made about leaving the party snacks after the George Lunt Memorial Beer Bust, so Ahmed could ‘stay alive until I learned to cook.’”
Ahmed guffawed. “What’d you think, George—that I married her for her brains?”
Sandra said something indelicate and took the empty plates into the kitchen.
“Gentler sex, indeed,” George said.
Ahmed looked at his watch. “As soon as I’m sure our CZC man is asleep, I’ll go back over to detention and rattle him up a bit. We’ll have to let him go day after tomorrow, but I want him to think his employers are going to let him rot there.”
“Do we have anything new?” George asked.
“Yes,” Ahmed said. “I talked to Holderman before dinner and we have the stuff back from our friend at the bank. CZC has been depositing the guy’s pay into his account right on schedule.”
George turned serious. “Well, then, we’ve got the goods on him on that one. Get printouts of it. We will, of course, lodge the stiffest possible complaint with the Company.”
Christiana chewed her lip and squinted at the comm screen. “So that’s where it stands at the moment, Miss Stone,” the doctor was saying. “She’s been asking for you, so I thought I should let you know.”
“I’ll be right over,” Christiana said.
The doctor held up his hand. “No, there’s no use to that, Miss Stone. You couldn’t talk to her until after she comes out of the recovery room, and, in any case, the police have put a hold on all visitors.”
Christiana caught her voice and took a deep breath. “So what do you think?” she asked.
The doctor shrugged. “It looks pretty good. She’s stabilizing nicely, and neither bullet hit anything terribly irreplaceable. One went through her right lung, but it didn’t collapse and we’re holding pressure on it without too much leakage. You get a good night’s sleep, now, and I’ll screen you again after I make rounds in the morning.”
“Okay,” Christiana said softly. “Okay. Thank you very much.” She blanked the screen and slumped down in the chair, sobbing quietly.
After a few minutes, she got up, went into the tiny kitchen of her apartment, and started throwing dishes against the wall. When the cabinet was empty, she stood there in the middle of the room and clenched her fists. “That’s enough!” she shouted at the broken crockery. “Dammit! That’s enough! By God, that’s enough!”
She went back to the communications screen and punched a call-number for an air cab.
Victor Grego was awakened by the insistent chiming of his front door. Groggy, he got out of bed and tugged into his robe. “Now, what in blazes—” he said, rubbing his eyes as he entered the foyer. Probably some cop with the latest blast, hot off the relay. He opened the door, intending on a vigorous admonishment toward whoever it was—for not merely giving him a screen-call.
“Christiana!” he blurted out.
She looked small and frightened and vulnerable. There were tear-streaks on her face and a puffy redness around her eyes.
“Why didn’t you just use your key to the landing-stage door?” he aske
d.
“After what I’ve got to tell you,” she said, “you may want it back. Can I come in?”
“Of course,” Grego said. “Please.”
Her knees started to give way, but she threw out her hand and caught herself on the door-jamb.
“Here, let me help you,” Grego said.
She pulled away from him. “I’m all right, “she said. “I’m just—all right.” She threw her shoulders back and walked stiffly into the living room.
Grego shut the door and followed. “You look awfully shaky, my dear,” he said. “Can I get you a brandy?”
“I think it’s going to be a necessity,” she said. Her legs started to buckle again and she sat abruptly on the couch in an attempt to conceal the fact.
Grego disappeared behind the pullman bar, then reappeared—almost instantly—with a small snifter glass and his own unfinished drink. He handed her the small snifter and put a box of tissues on the coffee table. Then he sat down in his chair and waited.
Christiana took a healthy swallow of the brandy and a deep breath. She started to say something, but her voice quavered and stuck. She set down the snifter, jerked two tissues from the box and blew her nose. Then she picked up the snifter glass, got to her feet and began pacing nervously. “When I came to Zarathustra,” she began, “I was running—and I kept on running. After I knew I was falling in love with you, I still kept running—running and making a mess of everything I left my tracks on. Well, I’m sick of running, now, and sick of being scared all the time. I picked a peculiar way of taking revenge, though it made some weird kind of sense at the time.” She stopped and leaned against the open terrace door. She took two deep breaths and another swallow of brandy, then turned to pace back across the room in the opposite direction. “One would have thought it the easiest and most natural proposition imaginable to become a—” She drew her mouth into a line, making little parentheses dimples at either corner. “—a whore. After all, I had been compromising all my life, grabbing at crumbs, letting people use me as a—convenience. But I couldn’t even do that right. Though one would think it quite simple, I managed to muff it.”
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