The Far Side of The Stars

by David Drake

  "Stop right where you are!" said the maybe-Shore Policeman, pointing his left index finger at Daniel while his right hand hovered over his holster. "You've got no business here!"

  "I'm a resident," said Daniel, continuing to walk forward. "And besides, I'm Lieutenant Daniel Leary."

  "I don't care if you're—" said the cop; he was certainly a cop, whatever his precise affiliation. Daniel drove a straight left into the man's solar plexus, doubling him up as suddenly as a thrown brick.

  "When the man tells you he's a Leary, you'd better care, buddy," said Hogg said as he sauntered past at Daniel's heel, putting on a pair of mesh-covered gloves. He kicked the fellow's knees out from under him.

  A Militiamen laughed. Speaker Leary's official looked at him; she didn't frown or even raise an eyebrow, but he fell silent anyway.

  Daniel walked around the van. The other side was hinged down; four men in nondescript coveralls were loading sheet-covered bodies into it. There were several in the vehicle already, stacked on the floor like cordwood.

  "Who—?" Daniel said. He had no particular emotion at this moment, just a need to gather information.

  He snatched back the sheet from the face of the corpse being lifted into the van. It was a man with a sunburst tattoo on his right cheek: nobody Daniel knew, and anyway a man.

  "You there!" a man in the utility uniform of an on-duty RCN commander. "Lieutenant! Stop where you are. You have no business here."

  Four footmen from Chatsworth Minor stood in a tight circle, surrounded by SPs and Leary retainers. Another Mundy servant was on a stretcher by the front door, his head bandaged. Daniel wasn't sure, but the fellow looked like the day-shift doorman.

  "I have every business here," he said, his voice ringing from the facades to either side. "I was told that my shipmate Adele Mundy was in difficulty. Where is she, if you please?"

  Eyes peered out from the drawn blinds of the silent houses. None of the residents or servants showed themselves openly, but Daniel knew every soul in the court was watching unless they were in a sick bed or drunken stupor.

  There were half a dozen uniformed SPs and an equal number of folk in coveralls; workmen, Daniel supposed. Garbage collectors, one might say. Corder Leary's personnel amounted to six or seven besides the woman watching the Militia.

  The RCN commander—who was no more a part of the RCN Daniel served than he was a priest—held a phone. He looked hard at Daniel; Daniel stared back, giving him no change. The phone came up toward the commander's face, then lowered again.

  "Lieutenant," he said, "you may go into your dwelling if you like, but you're to stay there until the street is reopened in a few minutes."

  "Where is Adele?" Daniel demanded. He wasn't shouting, exactly, but he was speaking very distinctly in a voice that could've been heard on the bridge of a warship during action.

  Good God, how many bodies were there? A couple more lay behind the footmen and guards nearer the house, and the pavement Daniel crossed toward the commander looked like it'd been painted red.

  "Lieutenant, that's none of your concern!" said the commander. He looked toward the heavy-set man beside him. The latter wore a midshipman's hollow pips, but he was muscle pure and simple.

  "The Hell it's none of my—" Daniel said, and this time he was shouting.

  "Sir, she's all right!" cried one of the footmen. "She and that snake of hers—"

  A Shore Policeman grabbed the servant by the throat and raised his riot baton. He shouted, "You were warned, boyo!"

  "Hogg," Daniel said, but he didn't need to give the order. A four-ounce deep-sea sinker had already spun out of Hogg's hand, trailing a shimmer of monocrystal fishing line.

  The weight toonked into the SP's skull, just behind the right ear. Hogg recovered it neatly into the gloved hand which held the sinker on the other end of the line. A bullet couldn't have dropped the fellow more neatly.

  The "midshipman" reached for his belt holster. Daniel caught his right thumb. "Don't!" he said, and as the heavy's knee came up Daniel shifted his hip, took the jolt on bone, and felt the scrunch of cartilage tearing as he dislocated the fellow's thumb, he'd told him. . . .

  There were guns out, SPs or whoever they were but Speaker Leary's retainers were armed also. There'd been a bloodbath an hour ago in this quiet court and there was about to be another because some flunky had lashed out when Daniel Leary asked about a friend.

  "Stop!" shouted the leader of SPs "For God's sake, put your weapons away, now! Now!"

  Nobody moved for a moment, not even Hogg—though his two sinkers cotinued to spin in opposite directions. His long folding knife was out in his left hand.

  "This is Speaker Leary's son," said a well-groomed man in civilian clothes with a Leary flash. He might have been a lawyer or an accountant, one who was abnormally careful to stay fit. "Sir."

  The "sir" was perfunctory.

  Daniel stepped back. He was trembling with surges of the adrenaline he hadn't burned off in the past few seconds.

  "Yes, I take your point," the commander said, grimacing in disgust at the situation. "Look, we're all on the same side."

  His glance took in Daniel. Daniel was glad of it, but he could only manage a nod as he twisted his hands together to work out the incipient cramps.

  The burly midshipman was holding his right hand in his left. The shock wore off; he muttered in delayed pain.

  "Will you shut up, for God's sake?" the commander shouted, letting off his own stress. Calmly to Daniel and the head of the Speaker's detachment he continued, "Lieutenant Leary, your friend's safe. She was called off on business that had nothing to do with this. I give you my word on that."

  Daniel straightened and took a deep breath. "Very good, Commander," he said, his voice almost under control. "I'm glad to hear it."

  "And now . . . ," the commander said. "Just go inside and let us clean up the mess, all right? There'll be a firetruck along to wash the pavement as soon as we've got the debris out of the way. Just a few more minutes."

  Daniel took a deep breath. "Yes, all right," he said. "I need to change clothes."

  He saw the footmen standing silently terrified in the midst of strangers holding guns. Two of them were talking in low voices to Hogg, who ignored the SP on one side of him and the blocky civilian with a sub-machine gun on the other. Hogg's line and sinkers were in the palm of his right hand, and he'd folded the knife away wherever it was he kept it.

  "I'll take my people with me," Daniel said, keeping his tone mild. There'd be time enough to shout if the need arose. He nodded toward the footmen. "Of course."

  Since Adele wasn't present, the four were his responsibility. They straightened, looking expectant and desperately hopeful.

  "Yes, take them, then," said the commander. He turned to the footmen and said, his voice suddenly harsh, "I won't tell you lot not to talk. But I'll point out the obvious—getting too public is going to bring you to the attention of whoever sent these fellows the first time. Understand?"

  Three of the footmen nodded agreement. The fourth stood with his mouth open in abject fear.

  "Let's go," said Daniel, deliberately walking through the guards and carrying the footmen with him out the other side on the way toward the house. They had to step between the two sprawled corpses. Daniel managed to do that without looking down; he wasn't sure how the servants managed.

  "I've been talking to the boys, master," Hogg said when they were out of earshot of the security people. "Seems this was because of the former owners, the Rolfes, getting stroppy about the way they lost their freehold."

  "Ah?" said Daniel. "Yes, that would explain it."

  The injured doorman was sitting up, supported by one of Speaker Leary's people. He tried to stand as Daniel approached with the other servants.

  "You men," Daniel said, looking over his shoulder at the footmen. "Bring your colleague inside, if you will. I'll send for a doctor."

  "He's likely all right," said the civilian who'd been tending the doorman, h
anding his charge over to the footmen. "Keep checking him during the night for concussion, that's all."

  The major domo himself opened the door. The household staff was gathered in the lower hall, watching intently.

  "I was thinking, master . . . ," Hogg said. The court shook with the thrum of fans lifting a heavy aircar; the vanload of bodies was on its way off to somewhere suitable. Having waited for the vibration to subside, Hogg continued, "I was thinking that if you didn't need me yourself tonight, I'd go tend to some business of my own?"

  Daniel looked at his man. "Yes, I'll be all right, Hogg," he said. "Unless there's something I can do to help you?"

  "No need you getting involved, master," Hogg said, walking off down the hall through the gaggle of house servants. "I'll get some gear from my room."

  He looked back over his shoulder. Hogg was balding and a little overweight. His clothes, from heavy ankle boots to the kerchief around his neck, were scruffy and decidedly rural: a perfect Sam Bumpkin disguise for a man who was smart and just as ruthless as a weasel. "Tovera 'n me'll be plenty for this business, never fear."

  "I'm not afraid," Daniel said quietly to Hogg's back.

  He looked at the house servants. "Get on to your duties," he said in feigned exasperation. "And if you don't have duties, at least don't hang about in the hall here."

  Daniel started up the stairs. "Sir?" called the major domo. "Is there something, ah, in particular you'd like us to do?"

  Daniel looked back over his shoulder. "No, just keep things ready for Officer Mundy's return." He paused, then continued, "I'll be going out myself shortly. My former command's docked at Harbor One. I think I'd like to see her before she's sold."

  * * *

  The tram rattled off the main line onto a spur; trees with long, dangling branches framed the entrance to the route. Daniel would know what they were, Adele mused. She found the thought so comforting that she brought her data unit out of its thigh pocket and switched it on.

  "Mistress?" said Lieutenant Wilsing, raising an eyebrow.

  "I wondered what the trees were," Adele said. She slid her control wands from their pocket in the case. For a trained user, the wands gave much greater speed and precision than any other interface. "I decided it'd be a good test to look them up for myself, since Lieutenant Leary isn't here to identify them for me."

  "Here in the entrance corridor, you mean?" Wilsing said. "They're Maranham cypresses, brought back by Captain St. Regis when he opened Maranham three hundred and fifty years ago. This is quite a famous grove, as a matter of fact."

  "Thank you," said Adele, dryly. Well, that was another way of getting the information. . . .

  They entered a broad commons encircled by a ring of neat brick houses set well back from the tramway. It was late evening; the sky remained bright but the ground was in deep shadow.

  "The fourth house . . . ," Wilsing said. "There."

  The tram moaned to a halt; on this lightly used byway there was no need for sidings. Wilsing removed the special key he'd thrust into the control panel, sending the car directly to the destination he'd programmed instead of halting for additional passengers that the central transportation computer had determined it could carry efficiently.

  "The service has aircars, of course," Wilsing said as he snapped the key onto his belt pouch, then bowed Adele off the car ahead of him. "But Mistress Sand prefers that we remain as unobtrusive as possible."

  Adele smiled faintly. She agreed with the policy, but she rather suspected that Wilsing and the others of his type whom Mistress Sand used as flunkies would rather cut a wide, flashy swath through Cinnabar society. The need for quiet competence was at least one of the reasons that Sand came to people like Warrant Officer Adele Mundy when she needed real work done. . . .

  Wilsing paused on the brick pavement as the tramcar purred away, gesturing toward the open space within the monorail track. Pieces of naval paraphernalia were displayed there. Near at hand was a plasma cannon, its muzzle raggedly eroded. Farther around the circle was the lump of a High Drive motor, and in the center rose a starship's antenna.

  Wilsing pointed to the antenna. "Commander Stacey Bergen conned the Excellence to Alexandreios from the truck of that mast," he explained. "I've heard that described as the most amazing feat of astrogation since Cinnabar returned to the stars."

  "Lieutenant Leary believes his Uncle Stacey was a uniquely skilled astrogator," Adele said as she surveyed the small park. It was really an outdoor museum, the sort of exhibit that retired RCN officers would create for their own sort. The fact they'd given Commander Bergen pride of place would mean a great deal to Daniel . . . which was almost certainly why Wilsing mentioned it. Perhaps the young man had virtues beyond those of good breeding after all. "I don't know of anybody better qualified to judge than Daniel."

  Wilsing led Adele up the path to one of the houses nestled back among the trees. Bands of light marked the edges of the crazy-pavement ahead of them, advancing as they did; a porch light shone over the door in dim sufficiency.

  The servant who opened the door was too senior to wear livery. He bowed low and said, "Lieutenant Wilsing, I believe you know the way to the red drawing room. The Captain left a decanter and glass on the table for you. Mistress Mundy, you're awaited in the library. Will you please follow me?"

  The servant—the only person visible apart from Wilsing, who absented himself into a side chamber with a nod—led the way through a pair of rooms whose furnishings were as simple as they were exotic. All the furniture was hand-crafted from strikingly-patterned wood, though the pieces in the first room were as different from those of the second as either was from anything native to Cinnabar.

  The house had a hallway along the side; doors of a simpler pattern than the ones Adele passed through nested in the left-hand wall of each room. The hall was for servants, not the owner and his guests.

  The door of the third room was open; Adele saw glass-fronted bookcases within. "Please go through, mistress," the servant said, bowing again. As Adele entered the library, he closed the door behind her.

  Bernis Sand rose from a banquette in a corner and gestured Adele to the other end of its upholstered curve. "Good of you to come, Mundy," she said. "Here, sit down. Can I offer you refreshment? My friend Carnolets keeps an impressive cellar."

  "Nothing, thank you," Adele said. "Well—water, if that's possible? My throat's dry, I find. Very dry."

  "Yes, of course," Sand said, touching a call-plate set into the table in the center of the banquette. She was a stocky woman of indeterminate age, almost sexless in the library's muted light. She wore a pants suit of brown herringbone twill, nondescript from any distance but of natural fabric and the best workmanship. "I hear you had some trouble this evening. Is there anything I should know about it?"

  Adele shook her head curtly. She sat on the banquette, concentrating on her action so that she didn't have to meet the spymaster's eyes. "It was a private matter," she said. "It's been resolved, or it shortly will be."

  Her left hand, the hand she'd killed with again tonight, twitched with an incipient cramp. She massaged the palm with her right thumb and fingers, staring at the rich honey-on-bronze grain of the table and seeing instead the face of the gunman as her first pellet blew two teeth out through his left cheek.

  The servant set a carafe and glasses on the table and silently vanished again. "Mundy?" said Mistress Sand. "Are you sure you wouldn't like something stronger?"

  "Very sure indeed," Adele said in a steady voice. She poured herself a glass of water and drank, pleased to note that her hand barely trembled.

  Sand seated herself on the other end of the banquette; she and Adele weren't quite facing one another across the small table. She glanced at the tantalus in an alcove near the door, but instead of getting a drink she took a tortoiseshell snuffbox from her waistcoat and poured a dose into the cup of her left thumb.

  "Do you know anything about the Commonwealth of God, Mundy?" she asked conversationally, then lift
ed the snuff to her nose.

  "I know very little about any part of the Galactic North," Adele said. She'd brought out her data unit and its control wands without conscious consideration. "My family had no business interests in the region. I've sometimes considered—"

  She looked at Sand with a wry grin.

  "—that there might be interesting pre-Hiatus volumes in what passes for the libraries of various local rulers, but I'm not going to live long enough to catalog a fraction of what I could find in attics here in Xenos."

  In the center of the room stood a globe whose continents were set in seas of contrasting semi-precious stone. The planet wasn't Cinnabar or any other world Adele recognized.

  Sand blocked one nostril with her index finger, snorted, then sneezed violently into the handkerchief she'd taken from her right sleeve. She looked up, her expression shrewd.

  "The Commonwealth isn't very prepossessing for a fact," she said. "Half the local captains are pirates if you turn your back on them, and the central government makes up with brutality for what it lacks in competence. But it's big—loose as it is, the total trade out of the Commonwealth supports a good tenth of the merchant houses in Cinnabar and our allies. For generations the Commonwealth's been more or less friendly to us. If it should side openly with the Alliance, there'd be serious effects for our relations with the smaller states which depend on trade with the North."

  Adele found what she'd been searching for in the holographic display hanging above her data unit. She leaned back against the cushion and smiled coldly at Sand. The mere cite was enough to bring the episode of family history vividly to her mind.

  "In the aftermath of the Three Circles Conspiracy," she said, her tone dryly precise, "an RCN battleship under Admiral O'Quinn fled to the Commonwealth. I would have thought that the Commonwealth's refusal to return the vessel and its crew of mutineers would have seriously soured relations."

  "Yes, the Aristoxenos," Sand said, nodding. "Most of her officers turned out to have been members of the Popular Party. A cousin of yours was the first lieutenant, I believe?"