by Bill Baldwin
"Thank you, Westley," Brim said. "It is always a pleasure to visit the Palmerston." With Margot on his arm, he followed the man along a thickly carpeted passageway lined with huge portraits of antique landscapes. This led into a candle-lit chamber filled with the most compelling odors of food, perfumes, and smoke—both from a great fireplace and spiced cigarettes of a dozen exotic persuasions. The ceiling was low for its expanse, and supported by huge wooden beams that gave the impression of antiquity. Sinuous music from a string orchestra blended with the faint clatter of tableware and hushed conversations in a dozen languages as they made their way among tables occupied by all manner of patrons; human, Bearish, flighted, reptilian—even a threesome of the pellucid Spirit races from outside the Home Galaxy who had only recently deigned to trade with their more substantially propagated neighbors. Brim's table, not far from the glowing fireplace, was perfectly located for discreet privacy.
"I love this place, Wilf," Margot whispered as the steward decanted a fine old vintage of Logish Meem.
''I do too," Brim agreed softly. The warm, dimly lighted room was comfortable in a very intimate manner that he couldn't quite put his finger on.
"What does it remind you of?" she asked suddenly.
Brim frowned. "Well,," he began, sipping the superb old meem, "it does look a lot like those places off Courtland Plaza in Avalon, I suppose."
Margot smiled and nodded. "It's designed to look like one of those. But what else does it remind you of?"
Brim peered around the room. He'd dined here on a number of occasions, and indeed, there had been something familiar about it. But he'd seen so many similar establishments over the years... then it struck him. "The Mermaid Tavern on Gimmas Haefdon!" he exclaimed. "Of course."
"Isn't it wonderful?" Margot said dreamily. "It brings back so many good memories. Remember the first time we met there?" Her eyes focused somewhere in a different time and space. "You'd swallowed one of those locator transponders, and just as you were going to ask me upstairs, the Base called you up for duty."
"I never was certain," Brim said with a rueful smile. "Would you have gone upstairs with me?"
Margot smiled mysteriously. "That's my secret," she said. "But I will confess I was giving it some thorough preconsideration at the time—just in case you might ask."
Brim sighed theatrically. "Life is a lot too short to miss chances like that.''
"Over the years, we've more than made up for that one opportunity, wouldn't you say?" Margot asked with a suggestive little smile.
"Even once or twice at the Mermaid Tavern, if memory serves," Brim answered easily. "Yet I'm not sure we ever did make up for that particular night—or could. Some opportunities are so fundamentally unique they pretty much exist in their own Universe. Think about it," he said, looking Margot directly in the eye. "That was during the one special time in our lives when we weren't yet certain how the other would react, A time of... exploration, I suppose—special excitement." Instinctively, he took her hand. "By the time we did eventually fall in bed together, we were good friends, and I think both of us knew it was only a matter of time until it happened. Remember? You had most of your dress off just inside your suite at the Embassy. And we were rutting for all we were worth only a few cycles later."
"Yes," Margot whispered, her cheeks coloring. "I'd built up to it in my mind the whole evening." She smiled. "I couldn't wait to feel you inside me. I'd been drenching my scanties since our first dance."
"Even though I stepped all over your feet?" Brim asked.
"I wasn't really concentrating much on my feet at the time, Commander Brim," she laughed. "Or anybody I danced with, that night either—except you.'' She smiled. "But if I remember correctly, lover, you were exceedingly ready yourself that evening."
Brim nodded, his cheeks burning. "I'll admit that I'm beginning to feel that way right now," he said, experiencing a characteristic fullness in his loins. "If we keep talking like this, I'm not going to be interested at all in supper. At least until we... ah."
Margot smiled, considerable tinges of pink appearing high in her cheeks. "We shall, my lover," she said, raising her goblet. "But first, shall we fuel the fires of our passion?"
"Seems like a more sane idea to me," Brim admitted, raising his own goblet to hers. "That way, we won't have to interrupt anything later. Besides," he said with a smile, "the Palmerston Club is a wonderful place to dine."
"I chose it for a number of reasons," she said, staring with half-closed eyes as she sipped her meem. "The atmosphere and food go without saying—but the location: that serves our other needs as well."
Brim frowned. "They have rooms here?" he asked, instinctively staring toward the ceiling.
"Well," Margot giggled, "not quite upstairs, my impatient lover, but only a short distance away—through a little park—is a lovely country inn, converted from an ancient grist mill; the old millrace is even intact beside it. Part of the Palmerston, of course." She licked her lips sensually. "Since an evening begun in a place like this can only appropriately end in a bed..."
"...It seems natural that they provide the beds," Brim finished with a grin.
"But of course," Margot assured him. "Anything else would be a downright waste. That is why, Commander Brim, I reserved a suite there for us when I called for the table."
Even with that resolved, Brim found himself hurrying through an excellent supper. Some instincts were much stronger than others....
* * *
Brim felt just the slightest bit tipsy as he and Margot crossed the street arm in arm and entered the little park across from the Palmerston. Ahead in the dim glow of ancient street lamps, a picturesque inn beckoned from the far end of the path. "Tell me about your scanties tonight," he whispered in her ear, savoring the perfume of her hair.
"You'll have firsthand information shortly," she giggled, squeezing his waist. "How about yours?"
"Probably that's the reason they keep it so dark in there," he replied as a breeze cooled his face, "otherwise a number of us would have been embarrassed." They were approaching a copse of young trees and bushes planted around the periphery of what appeared to be a sizable boulder. Ahead, he could hear the millrace. He listened for a moment, relishing the sound. Then above the rushing water came a momentary scraping ahead in the dark copse. He tensed, hairs bristling on (be back of his neck. "Did you hear that?" he whispered.
Margot put her hand to her throat and took her arm from around his back. "N-no, Wilf," she replied in a voice suddenly tight with fear. "I heard nothing."
The sound came again. This time, there was no mistaking his imagination. Brim stopped in his tracks. "Something's wrong, Margot," he whispered instinctively, pushing her into a clump of bushes. "Stay here and don't move," he ordered, then drew his service blaster. At the same moment two dark figures burst silently at him from the left. Whirling while he fired a long, high-energy burst, he saw them jackknife in a froth of blood as the powerful weapon literally cut both in half.
An instant later he sensed scuffling in an archway behind him. Going to the ground again, he glimpsed three figures racing his way, each firing silenced blast pikes from the hip. As he rolled behind a bush, a blinding thunderbolt shredded his hiding place in a blizzard of branches and leaves. Reflexively, he snapped to a firing position and let off another long volley of shots, but these went wild as the trio scattered and dove for the flagstones.
At that moment the energy pack in his blaster bleeped empty.
"Voot, you miserable zukeed!" he swore under his breath, but it was his own fault. In spite of regulations, he habitually neglected his side arms. After all, it was peacetime, wasn't it? Before his assailants could properly aim, he desperately sprinted for the boulder and dove behind its mass through an eerily silent fusillade of wild shots, blinding flashes of light, and stinging stone chips. Struggling desperately to catch his breath, he snapped out the old energy pack and snapped in a new one, forcing himself to take a long, deep breath before tensing his legs
in a shallow crouch. A split click later, he came out from behind the boulder firing for all he was worth, but again the men had disappeared.
Or had they?
Spontaneously flinging himself to the ground again, he only just dodged a whole welter of silent discharges that rent the air precisely where he had been standing. Firing blindly, he jumped behind the boulder again, trembling like a leaf, in the instant he'd had to take stock of the situation, there appeared to be at least ten people running toward him from the center of the park, shooting silently as they came.
Brim pursed his lips and frowned. Surprise and audacity had saved him before—and they were his only hope now. That, and saving his one remaining energy pack. With no time to worry about Margot, he thumbed the blaster to its lowest conservation setting—any hit would disable at this distance—and started making his way carefully toward the other side of the boulder. Abruptly he froze in his tracks: someone was running toward him from that direction—and making a terrible racket as he trampled cocksuredly through the weeds. Clearly, whoever it was didn't consider Wilf Brim to be much of a combatant....
The first thing to appear around the side of the boulder was the barrel of a blast pike, extended almost an iral by the ribbed barrel of a silencer. Brim grabbed it and nearly screamed in pain; his fingers instantly froze to the supercooled metal, but he hung on grimly for all he was worth. From that point, things were quick and silent. He jerked the silencer fiercely and pulled with all his might. Clearly surprised by the onslaught, his assailant stumbled and nearly lost his footing, but recovered quickly and tried to bring the big weapon to bear anyway. With the detached calm of a long-time warrior, Brim stepped in close to block the swing, gripped his assailant by both biceps, and brought up his knee hard. With a look of utter agony, the man dropped his pike and sucked in breath for a howl of pain. But before a sound could escape his lips, Brim stiff-armed, crooked his hand into a right angle, then drove it under the man's jawbone like a pile driver. A stab of pain flashed along his arm and shoulder as he heard neck bones crack—his assailant went down like a sack.
Retrieving the blast pike, Brim ran a quick self-test while he peered at the body, already rank with the odor of feces. Masked. Powerfully built. Dressed in black with no obvious means of identification. A professional, he considered with a shudder—probably one of the Leaguer Agnords; they'd made an attempt on his life the previous year. Only Lady Fortune—and a large dose of Leaguer arrogance—had so far saved him from their second try.
The pike sounded quietly as its self-test ended—three-quarters charged. It would do a lot more damage than his blaster. As he replaced the latter in its holster, he heard skimmers brake to a halt out in the park. Turning, he quietly retraced his steps while doors slammed and a sudden fusillade of heavy weapons flashed and snorted to a quick crescendo that quickly evolved into quieter sounds of running feet and muffled grunts of pain. He had just rounded the boulder again when he froze—this time in horror, his heart thumping wildly in his chest.
Now he had been mortally careless—and was about to pay dearly for his own foolish imprudence....
On a patio not ten irals distant, the figure of a man was illuminated from the side by the lights of two van skimmers. He was pointing a blaster directly at Brim's face, but for some reason had not yet fired. As the Carescrian trembled in terrified fascination, the man slowly lowered his powerful weapon, almost as if he had changed his mind.
Still staring at Brim from a masked face, he slowly leaned forward and crumpled onto his knees, the blaster clattering heavily to the flagstones. After moments that passed like years, he noisily struggled for breath, then leaned forward again, this time going to his hands. Slowly—in utter silence—he bowed his head, no longer showing any interest in Brim at all. There came a sound of wet gagging, and finally the man's arms gave out. He slumped forward on his face and lay quite still, as if he had gone to sleep. A throwing knife protruded from between his shoulder blades, just to the right of center, buried nearly to its hilt. At least twenty irals beyond, the huge silhouette of Utrillo Barbousse stood motionless against the lamplight, arms folded, legs akimbo.
Out in the park, guarded by two of Barbousse's tough replacement Chiefs and Nadia Tissaurd, six more bodies sprawled on the grass in awkward attitudes of violent death. Miraculously, the furious little skirmish had taken place without disturbing anyone in the Palmerston, no more than four or five hundred irals distant. Brim found himself trembling as he looked at the bodies, mouths agape as if they were gasping for air. One of them could have easily been him! Then—abruptly—he blundered to his senses. "Great thraggling Universe!" he exclaimed. "Where's Margot?"
"Yes," Tissaurd said, peering around the park as she bolstered her blaster, "where is that LaKarn woman?"
Brim sprinted for the bushes where he had pushed her, but she was gone, only an indentation in the grass remained to prove that anyone had been there at all. "Have you seen her, Chief?" he demanded.
"No, Cap'm," Barbousse said. "When we arrived in the vans, all we could see was the crowd of Agnords—and a lot of quiet blastin'."
"Sweet mother of Voot," Brim swore, suddenly terrified for her life, "we've got to find her."
"You bet we've got to find her," Tissaurd growled again, her eyes hard with anger. Putting her fingertips to the bridge of her nose, she closed her eyes, and began to turn slowly this way and that. She continued in silence until, after some moments, she stopped abruptly. "There," she said, pointing her arm unequivocally toward a small maintenance building beside the far bridge approach wall. She took two steps forward. "Bring her to me," she said as if her eyes were open, "from the shed!"
Immediately, the two Chiefs set off at a trot, covering the distance in a matter of clicks. Together, they dove into the little building and emerged moments later, supporting a figure between them that could only be Margot LaKarn. She was stumbling along between them as if she were drunk.
Stunned—as much by Tissaurd's feat as by the sight of Margot in the hands of the Chiefs—Brim could only shake his head. "How did you manage that, Number One?" he whispered.
"I... ah... just happened to see her move in the doorway," the tiny officer said, clearly at pains to avoid his eyes.
"Gorksroar," Brim said quietly. "Your eyes were closed."
"Begging the Captain's pardon," she said, "but that's my explanation. Take it or leave it—sir, this is a bad time for a disagreement."
Brim frowned, then nodded. "For now, Number One," he said, "I'll take it." He had to.
While they waited for Margot and her captors to arrive, three more of Barbousse's Chiefs reappeared from the trees nearby. Two were half carrying a clearly wounded assassin; the third was dragging still another corpse by its feet. Without a word, Brim and Barbousse took charge of the wounded man, holding him erect by throwing his arms over their shoulders. "What do you think, Cap'm?" the big rating asked as he peeled the man's mask from his face. "Looks like an Agnord to me."
"That's the only thing I could think of," Brim said, struggling to steady his voice.
The man groaned when Barbousse lifted his chin to the light, and a thick bubble of blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. "I'll make sure," Barbousse said, then quietly mumbled a few unintelligible phrases into a blood-smeared ear.
These seemed to momentarily revive the prisoner, who croaked out a weak reply before his head fell limply to his chest again.
"Definitely an Agnord, Cap'm," Barbousse said in a matter-of-fact voice. "I ran into plenty of them during my tours on the Governor's ship. I slipped him the 'First Precept'—in his own language."
"The 'First Precept'?"
" 'Death before capture,' " Barbousse explained. "Assassination's sort of a religion with them. The worst humiliation they know is being taken prisoner. The ones I've run into so far really would rather die."
"So what did he say?" Brim demanded as the three Chiefs began to dump bodies off the bridge and into the millrace.
"He beg
ged me to kill him," Barbousse said matter-of-factly.
"Maybe he's trying to protect secret information," Tissaurd said, keeping a weather eye on the hesitant approach of Margot and her captors.
Barbousse shook his head. "I rather doubt if he has much information to protect. Lieutenant," he said deferentially. "From what I've been able to learn, Agnords mostly take other people's orders and carry them out."
"Then, y-you'd actually... kill him?" she asked with a look of horror.
"Aye, ma'am," Barbousse said calmly, "unless you or the Commander has objections. We'll have to do something with him, no matter what we decide about anything else. The Leaguers won't admit they've seen him before. And it'll be dicey getting him back to Varnholm the way he is right now. Somebody'll sure want to know how he got hurt—right before they demand the ID he doesn't have."
"Why can't we just leave him here?" Brim asked as the two Chiefs brought Margot to an unsteady halt directly in front of Tissaurd.
"Well," Barbousse answered with perfect logic, "if we leave him here and he does die, then there's another body that should have been thrown off the bridge. With the millrace spreadin' 'em around the neighborhood a bit, there'll be less cause for a big investigation...."
"... And if he doesn't die," Brim finished with a nod, "then he can cause a pile of trouble for us with assault charges. Even if we could manage to explain the whole thing away. Just getting involved would be bad for the IVG. They take stuff like this seriously here in Fluvanna."
"That's the way I see the situation, Cap'm," Barbousse seconded. "And since this Leaguer gentleman really does want to cash in, I can't see any reason to ignore his wishes."