The Year's Best Science Fiction 11 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “No,” said Ian. “You’re James Kenebuck, of course. You look like your brother.” Kenebuck stared at him.

  “Just a minute,” he said. He set down his glass, turned and went quickly through the crowd and into the foyer, shutting the door behind him. In the hush of the room, those there heard, first silence then a short, unintelligible burst of sharp voices, then silence again. Kenebuck came back into the room, two spots of angry color high on his cheekbones. He came back to face Ian.

  “Yes,” he said, halting before Ian. “They were supposed to . . . tell me when you came in.” He fell silent, evidently waiting for Ian to speak, but Ian merely stood, examining him, until the spots of color on Kenebuck’s cheekbones flared again.

  “Well?” he said, abruptly. “Well? You came here to see me about Brian, didn’t you? What about Brian?” He added, before Ian could answer, in a tone suddenly brutal. “I know he was shot, so you don’t have to break that news to me. I suppose you want to tell me he showed all sorts of noble guts—refused a blindfold and that sort of—”

  “No,” said Ian. “He didn’t die nobly.”

  Kenebuck’s tall, muscled body jerked a little at the words, almost as if the bullets of an invisible firing squad had poured into it.

  “Well . . . that’s fine!” he laughed angrily. “You come light-years to see me and then you tell me that! I thought you liked him—liked Brian.”

  “Liked him? No.” Ian shook his head. Kenebuck stiffened, his face for a moment caught in a gape of bewilderment. “As a matter of fact,” went on Ian, “he was a glory hunter. That made him a poor soldier and a worse officer. I’d have transferred him out of my command if I’d had time before the campaign on Frieland started. Because of him, we lost the lives of thirty-two men in his Force, that night.”

  “Oh.” Kenebuck pulled himself together, and looked sourly at Ian. “Those thirty-two men. You’ve got them on your conscience, is that it?”

  “No,” said Ian. There was no emphasis on the word as he said it, but somehow to Tyburn’s ears above, the brief short negative dismissed Kenebuck’s question with an abruptness like contempt. The spots of color on Kenebuck’s cheeks flamed.

  “You didn’t like Brian and your conscience doesn’t bother you—what’re you here for, then?” he snapped.

  “My duty brings me,” said Ian.

  “Duty?” Kenebuck’s face stilled, and went rigid.

  Ian reached slowly into his pocket as if he were surrendering a weapon under the guns of an enemy and did not want his move misinterpreted. He brought out the package from his pocket.

  “I brought you Brian’s personal effects,” he said. He turned and laid the package on a table beside Kenebuck. Kenebuck stared down at the package and the color over his cheekbones faded until his face was nearly as pale as his hair. Then slowly, hesitantly, as if he were approaching a booby-trap, he reached out and gingerly picked it up. He held it and turned to Ian, staring into Ian’s eyes, almost demandingly.

  “It’s in here?” said Kenebuck, in a voice barely above a whisper, and with a strange emphasis.

  “Brian’s effects,” said Ian, watching him.

  “Yes . . . sure. All right,” said Kenebuck. He was plainly trying to pull himself together, but his voice was still almost whispering. “I guess...that settles it.”

  “That settles it,” said Ian. Their eyes held together, “Good-by,” said Ian. He turned and walked back through the silent crowd and out of the living room. The three muscle men were no longer in the foyer. He took the elevator tube down and returned to his own hotel room.

  Tyburn, who, with a key to the service elevators, had not had to change tubes on the way down as Ian had, was waiting for him when Ian entered. Ian did not seem surprised to see Tyburn there, and only glanced casually at the policeman as he crossed to a decanter of Dorsai whiskey that had since been delivered up to the room.

  “That’s that, then!” burst out Tyburn, in relief. “You got in to see him and he ended up letting you out. You can pack up and go, now. It’s over.”

  “No,” said Ian. “Nothing’s over yet.” He poured a few inches of the pungent, dark whiskey into a glass, and moved the decanter over another glass. “Drink?”

  “I’m on duty,” said Tyburn, sharply.

  “There’ll be a little wait,” said Ian, calmly. He poured some whiskey into the other glass, took up both glasses, and stepped across the room to hand one to Tyburn. Tyburn found himself holding it. Ian had stepped on to stand before the wall-high window. Outside, night had fallen; but—faintly seen in the lights from the city levels below—the sleet here above the weather shield still beat like small, dark ghosts against the transparency.

  “Hang it, man, what more do you want?” burst out Tyburn. “Can’t you see it’s you I’m trying to protect—as well as Kenebuck? I don’t want anyone killed! If you stay around here now, you’re asking for it. I keep telling you, here in Manhattan Complex you’re the helpless one, not Kenebuck. Do you think he hasn’t made plans to take care of you?”

  “Not until he’s sure,” said Ian, turning from the ghost-sleet, beating like lost souls against the windowglass, trying to get in.

  “Sure about what? Look, Commandant,” said Tyburn, trying to speak calmly, “half an hour after we hear from the Freiland-North Police about you, Kenebuck called my office to ask for police protection.” He broke off, angrily. “Don’t look at me like that! How do I know how he found out you were coming? I tell you he’s rich, and he’s got connections! But the point is, the police protection he’s got is just a screen—an excuse—for whatever he’s got planned for you on his own. You saw those hoods in the foyer!”

  “Yes,” said Ian, unemotionally.

  “Well, think about it!” Tyburn glared at him. “Look, I don’t hold any grief for James Kenebuck! All right—let me tell you about him! We knew he’d been trying to get rid of his brother since Brian was ten—but blast it, Commandant, Brian was no angel, either—”

  “I know,” said Ian, seating himself in a chair opposite Tyburn.

  “All right, you know! I’ll tell you anyway!” said Tyburn. “Their grandfather was a local kingpin—he was in every racket on the eastern seaboard. He was one of the mob, with millions he didn’t dare count because of where they’d come from. In their father’s time, those millions started to be fed into legitimate businesses. The third generation, James and Brian, didn’t inherit anything that wasn’t legitimate. Hell, we couldn’t even make a jaywalking ticket stick against one of them, if we’d ever wanted to. James was twenty and Brian ten when their father died, and when he died the last bit of tattle-tale gray went out of the family linen. But they kept their hoodlum connections, Commandant!”

  Ian sat, glass in hand, watching Tyburn almost curiously.

  “Don’t you get it?” snapped Tyburn. “I tell you that, on paper, in law, Kenebuck’s twenty-four-carat gilt-edge. But his family was hoodlum, he was raised like a hoodlum, and he thinks like a hood! He didn’t want his young brother Brian around to share the crown-prince position with him— so he set out to get rid of him. He couldn’t just have him killed, so he set out to cut him down, show him up, break his spirit, until Brian took one chance too many trying to match up to his older brother, and killed himself off.”

  Ian slowly nodded.

  “All right!” said Tyburn. “So Kenebuck finally succeeded. He chased Brian until the kid ran off and became a professional soldier—something Kenebuck wouldn’t leave his wine, women and song long enough to shine at. And he can shine at most things he really wants to shine at, Commandant. Under that hood attitude and all those millions, he’s got a good mind and a good body that he’s made a hobby out of training. But, all right. So now it turns out Brian was still no good, and he took some soldiers along when he finally got around to doing what Kenebuck wanted, and getting himself killed. All right! But what can you do about it? What can anyone do about it, with all the connections, and all the money and all the law on Kenebuck’s
side of it? And, why should you think about doing something about it, anyway?”

  “It’s my duty,” said Ian. He had swallowed half the whiskey in his glass, absently, and now he turned the glass thoughtfully around, watching the brown liquor swirl under the forces of momentum and gravity. He looked up at Tyburn. “You know that, Lieutenant.”

  “Duty! Is duty that important?” demanded Tyburn. Ian gazed at him, then looked away, at the ghost-sleet beating vainly against the glass of the window that held it back in the outer dark.

  “Nothing’s more important than duty,” said Ian, half to himself, his voice thoughtful and remote. “Mercenary troops have the right to care and protection from their own officers. When they don’t get it, they’re entitled to justice, so that the same thing is discouraged from happening again. That justice is a duty.”

  Tyburn blinked, and unexpectedly a wall seemed to go down in his mind.

  “Justice for those thirty-two dead soldiers of Brian’s!” he said, suddenly understanding. “That’s what brought you here!”

  “Yes.” Ian nodded, and lifted his glass almost as if to the sleet-ghosts to drink the rest of his whiskey.

  “But,” said Tyburn, staring at him, “you’re trying to bring a civilian to justice. And Kenebuck has you out-gunned and out-maneuvered—”

  The chiming of the communicator screen in one corner of the hotel room interrupted him. Ian put down his empty glass, went over to the screen and depressed a stud. His wide shoulders and back hid the screen from Tyburn, but Tyburn heard his voice.

  “Yes?”

  The voice of James Kenebuck sounded in the hotel room.

  “Graeme—listen!”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m listening,” said Ian, calmly.

  “I’m alone now,” said the voice of Kenebuck. It was tight and harsh. “My guests have gone home. I was just looking through that package of Brian’s things . . .” He stopped speaking and the sentence seemed to Tyburn to dangle unfinished in the air of the hotel room. Ian let it dangle for a long moment.

  “Yes?” he said, finally.

  “Maybe I was a little hasty . . .” said Kenebuck. But the tone of his voice did not match the words. The tone was savage. “Why don’t you come up, now that I’m alone, and we’ll . . . talk about Brian, after all?”

  “I’ll be up,” said Ian.

  He snapped off the screen and turned around.

  “Wait!” said Tyburn, starting up out of his chair. “You can’t go up there!”

  “Can’t?” Ian looked at him. “I’ve been invited, Lieutenant.”

  The words were like a damp towel slapping Tyburn in the face, waking him up.

  “That’s right . . .” he stared at Ian. “Why? Why’d he invite you back?”

  “He’s had time,” said Ian, “to be alone. And to look at that package of Brian’s.”

  “But . . .” Tyburn scowled. “There was nothing important in that package. A watch, a wallet, a passport, some other papers . . . Customs gave us a list. There wasn’t anything unusual there.”

  “Yes,” said Ian. “And that’s why he wants to see me again.”

  “But what does he want?”

  “He wants me,” said Ian. He met the puzzlement of Tyburn’s gaze. “He was always jealous of Brian,” Ian explained, almost gently. “He was afraid Brian would grow up to outdo him in things. That’s why he tried to break Brian, even to kill him. But now Brian’s come back to face him.”

  “Brian . . . ?”

  “In me,” said Ian. He turned toward the hotel door.

  Tyburn watched him turn, then suddenly—like a man coming out of a daze, he took three hurried strides after him as Ian opened the door.

  “Wait!” snapped Tyburn. “He won’t be alone up there! He’ll have hoods covering you through the walls. He’ll definitely have traps set for you . . .”

  Easily, Ian lifted the policeman’s grip from his arm.

  “I know,” he said. And went.

  Tyburn was left in the open doorway, staring after him. As Ian stepped into the elevator tube, the policeman moved. He ran for the service elevator that would take him back to the police observation post above the sensors in the ceiling of Kenebuck’s living room.

  When Ian stepped into the foyer the second time, it was empty. He went to the door to the living room of Kenebuck’s suite, found it ajar, and stepped through it. Within the room was empty, with glasses and overflowing ashtrays still on the tables; the lights had been lowered. Kenebuck rose from a chair with its back to the far, large window at the end of the room. Ian walked toward him and stopped when they were little more than an arm’s length apart.

  Kenebuck stood for a second, staring at him, the skin of his face tight. Then he made a short almost angry gesture with his right hand. The gesture gave away the fact that he had been drinking.

  “Sit down!” he said. Ian took a comfortable chair and Kenebuck sat down in the one from which he had just risen. “Drink?” said Kenebuck. There were a decanter and glasses on the table beside and between them. Ian shook his head. Kenebuck poured part of a glass for himself.

  “The package of Brian’s things,” he said, abruptly, the whites of his eyes glinting as he glanced up under his lids at Ian, “there was just personal stuff. Nothing else in it!”

  “What else did you expect would be in it?” asked Ian, calmly.

  Kenebuck’s hands clenched suddenly on the glass. He stared at Ian, and then burst out into a laugh that rang a little wildly against the emptiness of the large room.

  “No, no . . .” said Kenebuck, loudly. “I’m asking the questions, Graeme. I’ll ask them! What made you come all the way here, to see me, anyway?”

  “My duty,” said Ian.

  “Duty? Duty to whom—Brian?” Kenebuck looked as if he would laugh again, then thought better of it. There was the white, wild flash of his eyes again. “What was something like Brian to you? You said you didn’t even like him.”

  “That was beside the point,” said Ian, quietly. “He was one of my officers.”

  “One of your officers! He was my brother! That’s more than being one of your officers!”

  “Not,” answered Ian in the same voice, “where justice is concerned.”

  “Justice?” Kenebuck laughed. “Justice for Brian? Is that it?”

  “And for thirty-two enlisted men.”

  “Oh—” Kenebuck snorted laughingly. “Thirty-two men . . . those thirty-two men!” He shook his head. “I never knew your thirty-two men, Graeme, so you can’t blame me for them. That was Brian’s fault; him and his idea— what was the charge they tried him on? Oh, yes, that he and his thirty-two or thirty-six men could raid enemy Headquarters and come back with the enemy Commandant. Come back . . . covered with glory.” Kenebuck laughed. “But it didn’t work. Not my fault.”

  “Brian did it,” said Ian, “to show you. You were what made him do it.”

  “Me? Could I help it if he never could match up to me?” Kenebuck stared down at his glass and took a quick swallow from it then went back to cuddling it in his hands. He smiled a little to himself. “Never could even catch up to me.” He looked whitely across at Ian. “I’m just a better man, Graeme. You better remember that.”

  Ian said nothing. Kenebuck continued to stare at him; and slowly Kenebuck’s face grew more savage.

  “Don’t believe me, do you?” said Kenebuck, softly. “You better believe me. I’m not Brian, and I’m not bothered by Dorsais. You’re here, and I’m facing you—alone.”

  “Alone?” said Ian. For the first time Tyburn, above the ceiling over the heads of the two men, listening and watching through hidden sensors, thought he heard a hint of emotion—contempt—in Ian’s voice. Or had he imagined it?

  “Alone—Well!” James Kenebuck laughed again, but a little cautiously. “I’m a civilized man, not a hick frontiersman. But I don’t have to be a fool. Yes, I’ve got men covering you from behind the walls of the room here. I’d be stupid not t
o. And I’ve got this . . .” He whistled, and something about the size of a small dog, but made of smooth, black metal, slipped out from behind a sofa nearby and slid on an aircushion over the carpeting to their feet.

  Ian looked down. It was a sort of satchel with an orifice in the top from which two metallic tentacles protruded slightly.

  Ian nodded slightly.

  “A medical mech,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Kenebuck, “cued to respond to the heartbeats of anyone in the room with it. So you see, it wouldn’t do you any good, even if you somehow knew where all my guards were and beat them to the draw. Even if you killed me, this could get to me in time to keep it from being permanent. So, I’m unkillable. Give up!” He laughed and kicked at the mech. “Get back,” he said to it. It slid back behind the sofa.