The Fifth Quadrant

by C. J. Ryan

  But what did it mean?

  The Savoy contract had been written—or rewritten—after the fact, and imperfectly altered to make it appear as if it had been written in August. Why?

  No answer occurred to her.

  Finally, she put the contracts aside and resumed her search for the bill of lading. When she found it, she gave it a once-over, without really registering any of the information it contained. She moved it to a corner of her screen and called up another random assortment of bills of lading from the relevant period. After another hour of study, it was clear to her that the same thing that had been done to the contracts had been done to the bill of lading. Again, why?

  She returned to the Savoy shipment bill of lading and examined the specific contents. As expected, it listed the 24,000 Mark IV plasma rifles, gross weight, 264 metric tons. A Mark IV, she calculated, weighed—with packing material—about eleven kilos. No wonder they phased them out.

  Along with the rifles, there had been 2.4 million plasma cylinders—extra ammo, in other words. Gross weight, 2400 tons.

  Ten thousand cases of plasma grenades. Gross weight, 1200 tons.

  What else? Three point six million Imperial Marine Corps Field Ration packets. Gross weight, 2160 tons.

  Two hundred and eighty-six orbital plasma mines. Another 5148 tons.

  And—holy shit!—eighteen 200-quadrijoule plasma bombs. Ninety-five lethal tons. PAIN had plasma bombs!

  Petra had to sit and think about that one for a while. So far, PAIN had been content to shoot up Dexta offices. They could have been blowing up entire cities!

  She was shocked and frightened by the discovery. But there was nothing she could do about it, so she returned to the bill of lading and continued adding up the monstrous inventory.

  Except that it didn’t add up.

  JILL CLYMER, WAITING OUTSIDE THE DOORS TO Wendover Freight and Storage in downtown Central, saw Eli Opatnu approaching and felt her heart skip a beat. Did his pheromones work at a distance, she wondered, or was she just reacting to the man himself? She had always thought of herself as a pretty cool customer when it came to the male of the species. She enjoyed sex and had never been shy about it, but until now she had always felt able to keep a rein on her emotions. Her ex-husband had even complained about it. She never let herself go, he said, never abandoned herself to the raw realities of sex. “You think you can wade across a raging river and never get your feet wet,” he had said.

  And yet, here she was today, doing her best Gloria VanDeen impression in a nearly transparent shirtdress, unbuttoned and flapping open to reveal her breasts and thighs, not a stitch on underneath, damn near as naked as Petra had been the other night. And all for Eli Opatnu, a man who collected women the way some people collected butterflies.

  And here he was, damn him, smiling to beat the band, eyes gleaming, supple hips and broad shoulders moving rhythmically as he walked toward her. So utterly sure of himself, so full of life, so insidious. Jill took a deep breath and returned his smile.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said as he clasped both of her hands in his. “Hard to get a cab this week.” His hands are warm; or maybe mine are just cold, she thought.

  They went inside and introduced themselves to the woman at the main desk. Jill flashed her Dexta ID, but the woman scarcely noticed; her attention was focused on Eli. He gave her his best smile, and within a minute, they were ushered into the office of Wendover’s regional manager, a Ms. Sophie Darceau. Swell, Jill thought.

  Ms. Darceau didn’t quite ignore Jill, but seemed to regard her as a distraction from the main business of the moment, which was making small talk with Eli Opatnu. Finally, Jill simply interrupted them and held up her pad. “Ms. Darceau,” she said, “I have here a list of nine freighters owned or operated by Wendover in this Sector. Some discrepancies concerning their records have turned up, and we would like to clear up the confusion. I’ll transmit the list to your console, and I would appreciate it if you could give us a full accounting of the whereabouts of those freighters for the last two years.”

  Ms. Darceau looked up, as if noticing Jill for the first time. “What? Oh, yes, I see. Now that I think about it, we did receive a memo concerning this from the home office on Staghorn.”

  “Then you know that Dexta is conducting a formal investigation.”

  “Yes, that’s what they said. But they also said that I was not to give out any proprietary information without first consulting Staghorn.”

  “That would take weeks,” Jill pointed out.

  “Yes,” said Ms. Darceau, “I suppose it would.”

  “Ms. Darceau,” Jill said with more patience than she felt, “if you make it necessary, I can go see an Imperial Judge and be back here this afternoon with a warrant.”

  “I’ll consult with our legal department, in that case. My understanding is that we can challenge the warrant.”

  “But why go to all that trouble?” Opatnu broke in, smiling ingratiatingly. “Look, Ms. Darceau, Jim Takahashi—your boss on Staghorn—is an old friend of mine. I know he’d want you to cooperate. In fact, as soon as I return to Staghorn, I’ll tell him exactly what happened here and that you made every effort to comply with the memo from the home office. I know he wouldn’t want a lot of unnecessary legal entanglements…warrants, suits, countersuits, that sort of thing. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?” He turned up the smile to maximum wattage.

  “Well…” said Ms. Darceau, “I’d still have to consult with Legal.”

  “Of course. We understand that. Why don’t you do that, then, and we’ll be back this afternoon to see where we stand. I’m sure we can work this out without dragging the courts into it.” He got to his feet and held out his hand to Ms. Darceau. “A very real pleasure meeting you, Sophie. Have a pleasant day, and I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  Jill followed him out of the office. On the sidewalk, Opatnu turned to her and grinned. “There! Now we have two or three hours for a leisurely lunch.”

  “But we don’t have the data on those freighters.”

  “We’ll have it this afternoon. If we get a warrant, we’ll just wind up in a legal hassle that might take weeks. Trust me, we’ll get what we need. Now, what about lunch? There are some lovely restaurants down on the waterfront overlooking the strait. Shall we?”

  They settled in at an outdoor table on a terrace two hundred feet above the choppy blue waters of the strait. Jill noted that Opatnu was careful to sit upwind from her. Was that so she would get a full dose of his pheromones, or merely to get a better view of the breeze flapping around her unbuttoned shirt and baring her breasts? Both, probably; Jill had already noticed that nearly everything Opatnu did or said was carefully calculated.

  The man annoyed her and fascinated her in equal measure. That, in itself, was annoying. Why couldn’t she get a handle on the situation? Why did he make her feel so unsure of herself, so helpless and foolish? Like some damned adolescent.

  Opatnu asked her about her past and her homeworld. She told him that she was from Minnetonka, an agricultural planet in Sector 2, five hundred light-years from Earth. It was something of a backwater, rural in its economy and attitudes, and Jill had grown up longing for bright lights and big cities. She had gotten a taste of that early on when she accompanied her father to sessions of Parliament on Luna. Jill found herself telling Opatnu about those trips, and about her father, a man she had loved and admired without limit.

  “Yes,” Opatnu said, “I vaguely remember the story. He caused a bit of a stir in Parliament ten or fifteen years back, didn’t he?”

  Jill smiled, then pointed to a swirling eddy just offshore in the strait. “See those waves?” she asked. “That was my father. A tiny ripple in a big, blue sea. In about a million years, that ripple will probably carve out a bit of the shoreline, just through sheer persistence. My father thought that if he persisted, he might get a few worthwhile things done, eventually. But they didn’t give him the time he needed.”

  “There was
some sort of scandal, wasn’t there?”

  Jill nodded. “He found some corruption and tried to expose it. Oh, it wasn’t anything major, just some illegal loans that a Parliament committee was dishing out to some cronies back in Sector 2. The kind of thing that goes on all the time, I suppose, but it offended my father. He thought that the money going to those big shots should have been going to people who actually needed it—his constituents, the people who voted for him and sent him to Parliament to represent them and protect their interests. Dean Clymer was a man who took his responsibilities seriously.”

  “And what happened?”

  “The big shots back home didn’t appreciate what he was doing. So they dug up something from his past and used it to smear him. Again, it was nothing major. But the thing was, it was true. My father made a mistake thirty years ago, but thought that he had made up for it by being an honest and dedicated public servant. When the mistake was dredged up, people began to wonder if Dean Clymer was really the honest man he seemed to be. And my father couldn’t bear the shame of it. So he killed himself.”

  Jill finished the story and turned to look out to sea, so she wouldn’t have to look at Opatnu. So he wouldn’t see the tears welling in her eyes.

  Opatnu reached across the table and clasped his hand around hers. “I’m glad you told me,” he said. “I wondered why a measly little double-flagging scam seemed to be so important to you. Now, I think I understand. It isn’t about Wendover, is it? It’s about your father.”

  Jill blinked back her tears and nodded. “I think of him all the time,” she said. “I imagine him looking over my shoulder, asking me if I’m sure I’m doing the right thing. That was one reason why I was glad when Gloria asked me to join OSI. It seemed like a way to make a career out of doing the right thing.” She smiled self-consciously. “Silly, huh?”

  “Not at all. It’s admirable. But I get the impression that you have some doubts.”

  “Not doubts, really. Gloria wants to do the right thing, too. Her style is a little overwhelming at times, but she gets the job done. But this whole business of turning OSI into the Fifth Quadrant…I don’t know. I’m afraid she’s getting too caught up in bureaucratic rivalries and internal Dexta politics.”

  “How could she avoid it?” Opatnu wondered.

  “I know, I know. That’s the game at Dexta, and she has to play it. But I can’t help worrying that she’s making the same kinds of mistakes that my father made, and that eventually she’ll have to pay for it. You start out making little compromises to serve some higher purpose, and you wind up making bigger and bigger compromises, because, hey, you’ve already compromised yourself, right?”

  Opatnu frowned. “It sounds like you’re saying that any compromise at all is fatal. That’s not a very realistic attitude.”

  Jill gave Opatnu a rueful smile. “That’s us Clymers,” she said. “Pure but stupid.”

  “I admire you for your purity, Jill, as well as for your stupidity. Maybe we could all benefit by a little more of that kind of stupidity.”

  “My father used to say, ‘When you sup with the Devil, you need a long spoon.’ ”

  Opatnu released his hold on Jill’s hand and picked up one of her spoons from the table setting. He examined it carefully and said, “Looks about the right size to me.”

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  WHEN PUG DIDN’T RETURN, PETRA WORKED straight through the lunch hour and into the afternoon. Finally, hunger and curiosity drove her out of the Old Annex and into the bustling streets of Central. It was only a mile or so to the Old City and the office of B & Q Shipping, so she decided to walk. She undid a couple more buttons on her shirt, figuring she would give lecherous old Jamie Quincannon a thrill. And herself, too. She couldn’t deny it—this Tiger business was getting to her. Whit Bartholemew had said she was the sexiest woman he’d ever met, and even if he had been lying, it was still nice to hear.

  She stopped in a small shop for a sandwich and coffee. Cream, but no sugar; she had noticed that her jeans seemed a little tight. Too much high living, not enough Qatsima lately. The walk would do her good and give her a chance to think.

  Contracts, bills of lading, and gross weights swirled through her mind as she walked. She wondered if she was making too much out of what she had seen. In her ignorance and suspicion, could she be tilting at a windmill of her own construction? If she hadn’t known that Whit Bartholemew’s father was a zamie, would she have made anything at all out of the minor anomalies she had uncovered? Did they even mean anything, or were they just the routine slips of harried bureaucrats and flawed human beings? She remembered a history professor in college who had said, “If you hear hoofbeats, don’t go looking for zebras.” He had also said, “Incompetence explains more of history than conspiracies.”

  And yet, this conspiracy was real. Weapons from the Savoy shipment had undeniably turned up in the hands of PAIN terrorists. But how far did the conspiracy go, and what did it all mean? The records she had downloaded were sterile, lifeless. They listed facts—or someone’s preferred version of the facts—but they didn’t tell her what had really been going on fifty-five years ago. Maybe Jamie Quincannon could tell her.

  Maybe he could tell her why 27,542 metric tons of cargo had been shipped to Savoy on a freighter that could hold 60,000 tons.

  It made no sense. Why send a valuable, half-empty freighter off on a risky errand to a place where war might erupt at any moment? Even if the freighter had never gone to Savoy, why send it anywhere half-empty? Petra knew that the economics of interstellar trade were exacting and unforgiving. The expense of traveling between the stars was simply too great to waste cargo space. She and Gloria usually traveled via a Flyer, which was nothing but a tiny tin can with an engine attached, yet even a Flyer trip was expensive. Sending a sixty-thousand-ton freighter on a seventy-five-light-year hop to Savoy without a full hold would be not only stupid, but unprofitable. Why not send the shipment in a smaller freighter? That would be cheaper and faster.

  Maybe no smaller freighter had been available. That was something she could check in the B & Q records. But then, why use B & Q? Why not let the contract to a big outfit, like Trans-Empire, that would certainly have an appropriate ship available? Or would Trans-Empire have been reluctant to send a ship into a potential war zone?

  And what was Bartholemew’s angle? An insurance scam? Possibly…Quincannon had said that his partner knew how to play both ends against the middle, so maybe that was it. B & Q had collected on the insurance a few years later; why collect for a small ship when you could collect for a big one?

  Meanwhile…what had happened to the shipment itself? However it was shipped, and whatever angles people were playing, it had gone somewhere. And wherever that place was, PAIN had found it.

  If anyone knew the answers, it would be Jamie Quincannon. And Petra had a feeling that, with the proper inducement, he just might tell her what she needed to know. She undid one more button, then entered the building, and, with a game smile fixed on her face, assaulted the five flights of stairs.

  It was dark at the top of the stairs, no light at all except for what filtered in through a couple of grimy windows. Petra walked slowly over the creaking wooden floor and waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Her left foot suddenly skidded ahead, and she nearly fell. Gathering herself, she stooped down to see what had caused the skid and noticed a dark liquid staining the floor.

  Rising, she looked into an open room on her left and saw the source of the dark liquid. It was the body of Jamie Quincannon.

  GLORIA GATHERED HER TROOPS IN THE SUITE at her hotel the next morning. “I thought it would be a good idea to bring everyone up to date on recent developments,” she said. “First off, I want to thank you again for the great job you’ve been doing. From the feedback I’ve been getting, I think we’ve done ourselves a lot of good here this week. Everyone’s talking about OSI, and most of the comments I’ve heard have been very positive.”

  “I should hop
e so,” Althea Dante cackled. “I’ve devoted body and soul to the cause.”

  “I won’t ask in what proportion,” Gloria said. “Now, I’d like to announce that our very own Elaine Murakami will be promoted to Thirteen when we return to Manhattan. In the meantime, she will be spying on us for Cornell DuBray, so if there’s anything you don’t want the Quad Admin to know, don’t say it around Elaine.”

  Elaine grinned happily. “He asked me just the way you said he would,” she said. “How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess,” Gloria replied. She didn’t add that it was what she would have done in DuBray’s place. “We’ll feed him just enough information to keep him happy and make him think he knows what we’re doing. Now, Jill, I understand that we’ve run into a snag on the double-flagging investigation.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Jill said, frowning. “Eli Opatnu and I went to the local Wendover office yesterday morning. I thought we were going to get what we needed from them without any hassles. But when we returned in the afternoon, we found that while we were at lunch, Wendover had gone to court and gotten a restraining order against us. We can’t file any subpoenas or get any warrants until a lawyer from their home office arrives here to file a brief. That will be at least a month.” Jill looked disgusted.

  “Is there any chance that we can overturn that ruling?”

  “Possibly,” Jill said. “But that would mean bringing in the local Dexta office for Sector 21, and since one of the things we’re investigating is whether there is any Dexta involvement, that could defeat our purpose. Of course, by now, they’ve heard about the restraining order, so if anyone here is involved in the double-flagging, they’ve already been alerted.”