by Patty Jansen
We left the hotel. As soon as I was out the door, I remembered why I was so glad to have arrived back at the hotel. A biting wind threw ice-cold drops of water into my face. Veyada hid deep within the collar of his coat. Evi was doing up the buttons, with his gun on the outside of his jacket. I hoped that wasn’t going to cause any problems.
Chapter 12
* * *
THE STREET OUTSIDE was empty. A row of bikes and scooters stood parked on the side of the street, as well as a van. The tram station was deserted, silvered in pale light from a single fluorescent lamp under the shelter.
We crossed the street, stepped over the low fence that separated the street and the tramline—apparently it was to keep ducks off the rails—and crossed the tracks.
The water in the canal on the other side was very dark and very empty. There was a tourist boat company a short distance to the right, and their low boats with glass cabins lay alongside the canal wall. The wind was quite fierce here and even the water in the canal was whipped into little waves that slapped against the concrete sides.
“I can’t see how they could have gotten down there,” Veyada said.
Evi took off in the direction of the boats, and we followed. There was no light anywhere along the quay. I wondered again if Pengali could swim. Then came the sound of a splash.
“There,” Evi said.
Veyada pointed his scanner, because with his poor Coldi night vision, he could not see much in the dark.
A couple of tourist boats with glass canopies lay a bit further down the quay. There was a jetty and on the screen of the scanner, I saw a couple of small figures moving around.
We quickly walked in that direction. The rain lashed in our faces.
We couldn’t get to the tourist boats because a fence blocked the way onto the jetty. Fences were not as much of a hindrance to Pengali as they were to us. I guess I could ask Veyada to kick it open, but that probably wasn’t necessary. A small motion-sensored light came on when we got to the fence. It cast a small pool of light on both sides of the fence, showing the wooden planks of the walkway, wet with rain.
“Abri, Ynggi, come back inside!”
“We have to go fishing,” Ynggi’s voice came back through the drip-drop of the rain on the surface of the water.
“There are no fish at night.”
“There are.”
“In Barresh maybe, but not here.”
He didn’t reply immediately. He spoke to Abri and Kita in Pengali.
A moment later, he came to the gate. He carried a broken umbrella with a piece of string tied to the end. At the very end of the string he had tied a piece of ham that he might have saved from lunch.
“This is how people catch fish here, no?”
“Yes, but fish sleep at night.” I was pretty sure they did. My grandfather in New Zealand had often enough taken me fishing.
Abri also came to the gate, carrying a net over her arm. Kita carried a bucket. Where had they gotten that? It looked suspiciously like it came from the hotel’s cleaning cupboard.
Idda was jumping inside the bucket, a ball of bright orange, trying to look over the side.
“Believe me, there are no fish that you can catch at night,” I said. “Come inside where it’s dry.”
Ynggi scaled the fence in two leaps, put his improvised rod down and took the bucket with Idda inside that Abri handed him over the fence. Abri and Kita climbed over as well.
We walked along the quay.
“It is a shame to us not knowing how to fish,” Abri said into the silence.
The hotel management had an artificial open fire going in the foyer, probably fuelled with gas. The flames spread an orange light through the room. In the corner, the goldfish still swam around in the pond.
I should suggest to reception that they move the animals somewhere safe.
Abri said, “If we have no fish, we can’t meet tomorrow.”
“Look, I already told you that these people don’t have that custom and don’t expect you to bring a fish.”
“But I have to—”
“You have to bring something so that you don’t lose karrit points, I know. But no one says what you have to bring. You can bring something else.”
Her expression brightened briefly, before darkening again. “We did not bring any gifts from home.”
Yes. Had I realised how important this custom was going to be for the Pengali, I might have asked them to bring some Pengali-made artefacts. Glass-stone bowls would definitely have made an impact—although they were mostly made by the Washing Stones tribe.
Maybe a headdress made from fish scales—except people would view that as a trinket, while it was an important tribal item. Trouble was, Pengali cared little for personal possessions. Except their drums.
“Why don’t you give them music? These people like music very much.”
Abri shrugged. She let her shoulders slump, and her tail almost dragged over the ground. “We must have a meeting about this,” she said.
Ynggi and Kita agreed.
They went straight up to their room. Wet, dejected.
I went back to my room, worry eating away at me.
On my reader I drew a diagram of how I understood the parties to be aligned. I put a circle with “Robert” in the middle.
I put another circle with “Gusamo” on the side. In truth I didn’t know where Gusamo stood. I guessed that much of Abri’s appearance would be trying to uncover a motive for Robert to kill Gusamo, because Melissa had told me that the two men hadn’t known each other before coming to Barresh.
There were several possibilities:
It was an accident and Robert had not killed Gusamo deliberately at all.
Or there had been a disagreement on a personal scale, which had gotten out of hand. Robert Davidson had been unpleasant to me, so I could imagine that.
Or it could be because Gusamo aligned with the Pengali who didn’t want Robert and his business to be on the island in their territory.
Or it was because of something on Earth, either something to do with Robert’s diamond trade or something else.
Gamra’s involvement was . . . I guess they were the least-involved party, as long as Robert didn’t harm any of their citizens. They didn’t care about the diamonds, because they couldn’t see the value of diamonds and didn’t care that they had a value on Earth, because Earth was not a member.
I drew the gamra circle on the edge of the screen.
Nations of Earth cared, because of the smuggling. The illegal trade in items from gamra worlds was one of the strongest arguments for Earth’s closer involvement with gamra, and one that had both been systematically ignored by some and passionately argued by others.
I drew the circle representing Nations of Earth closer to Robert, but not close enough that I couldn’t fit anything in between.
The Pretoria Cartel cared a lot about the trial, because this case could unmask activities that they preferred to keep out of the spotlight. Robert might have fallen out with some of the Cartel’s members, so I drew the circle representing the Cartel half through Robert’s circle.
Then the protesters outside the courthouse . . . they fitted in somewhere. They were there because of Robert, to protest against the conduct by Robert’s mining operations or development projects.
I felt that those people might be more closely affiliated with Gusamo who had, strangely, not been much of a factor in the hustle so far, besides being the victim of the crime. I knew that he came from the self-made hip rich community of the educated and world-wise part of Jakarta. His business was graphic design and marketing and he counted many very large businesses as clients.
I also knew, from reading about him while I was still in Barresh, that he was passionate about nature and about justice for poorer communities with no voice.
Hmmm, there might be something in that.
I had not yet entered him on the page.
I drew a circle for Gusamo next to Robert’s and a circle
for the protesters next to it. The protesters had no relation to Nations of Earth, none to the Pretoria Cartel other than attempting to get justice out of one of the cartel’s members, and had no relationships to gamra, at least I didn’t think so. They appeared to be sort of isolated from the big stage, on their own in a corner, which was the point that Conrad Martens was trying to make, also illustrated by what we’d seen today: people were trying to keep us from talking to these protesters.
And then we had Tamerians, of all things. I drew a circle close to the edge of the screen.
Tamerians did not have opinions. They belonged to someone. Because they were not affiliated with the Nations of Earth guards, I judged it most likely that the Pretoria Cartel, or individuals within the cartel, owned them.
I dragged the circle over to the circle representing the cartel.
I now had Robert in the middle, with the cartel on one side, and the protesters on the other side. Both gamra and Nations of Earth were sort of on the sidelines, except where court judges had been bought by the cartel. I drew a dotted line between those two circles.
This was the central problem we were dealing with. The question of whether Robert killed Gusamo was secondary to that. Whatever the outcome, the case represented a conflict that was bigger than Robert and Gusamo.
So what was Robert’s business doing that Gusamo might object to?
What did Execo mine?
Rare Earths. Strange metals like dysprosium and other elements needed for advanced technology, that the mines in southern Africa were producing ever less of.
Robert also dealt in city rejuvenation projects.
So maybe Robert was involved in a project in Jakarta, and Gusamo objected to this project, and maybe they accidentally crossed paths on the surfing trip in Barresh.
Maybe.
And now people supporting the cartel were trying to control the court.
Melissa had been called to the court. Clovis, Robert’s guide and tour operator, had given evidence. He had probably pleaded ill health as an excuse not to appear in court. The fact that he actually was of ill health probably suited him fine. Clovis had many illegal projects, although none of them were large enough for Nations of Earth to worry about.
I hadn’t been invited to give evidence, because I’d been considered as having too many strings attached.
Instead, Abri was considered to be a softer target.
All in order to prove something unprovable? No one had witnessed Robert killing Gusamo, not even Abri.
So, the court, influenced by people aligned with the Pretoria Cartel, wanted Robert convicted because he was a maverick, but they also wanted to shut down questions about their treatment of workers in the southern African mines and other bad practices?
Then Conrad Martens had been killed because he had been going to reveal something to me about those protesters, and had been trying to penetrate the shield placed around us by our minders who were employed by the court and were aligned with the cartel by extrapolation. And they used Tamerians to do it.
And Margarethe . . . had she been going to warn me about the very same things? And had her request to me been scuttled by overzealous guards and—damn, by my own actions for not realising how urgently she wanted to speak with me, or not realising that we were already in the hands of the people she wanted to warn us about?
Damn, damn and damn.
I checked the news.
Was there anything known yet about the motive to kill Conrad Martens?
A police statement, not terribly enlightening, had said that the police were investigating several leads which most of the news services interpreted as, “They have no idea.” One news service said that he might have been mistaken for someone else, but didn’t give a source.
According to the reports, the police had combed his apartment without much of a clue. There had been no threats made against him recently, although they acknowledged there had been previous threats. I wondered if I should tell them about the letter I had received, but letting the police know about this might hamper my team’s investigations. Tamerians were very good at disappearing. It was not a good idea to make too much noise before Thayu had finished, and if Tamerians were involved, then I didn’t want another bout of panic of the “Aaaaaahhh! Aliens!!” type.
Talking about noise, a couple of ominous thunks echoed through the hallway. I went to look for their source, and found that the Pengali had put together the irrka drum in the middle of their room. With all the pipes inserted in the slots in the main drum, it looked like a giant, many-legged spider and it took up most of the space in the room.
Ynggi sat on top of it, testing the sound of the bottom pipes with a stick that had a knob at the end. And impressive sound it was, too, hollow and sonorous.
“Er, I don’t think that is such a good idea,” I said, in the doorway.
All of the Pengali turned to the door, four sets of huge brown eyes with almost no whites. Idda sat on the bed, next to Abri, who gave me a “why ever not?” look.
“People will be going to sleep soon.”
“We need to have a meeting of minds,” Ynggi said, tapping one of the pipes at the top. It made a higher-pitched, hollow sound.
“Yes,” Abri said. “We are much worried that these people don’t believe us and cannot be appeased in ways we understand.”
And of course, the traditional use for the betanka was a structured format to have discussions within the tribe.
What could I say to that? They were already stressed out about the lack of fish. “Just for a little while then.”
Ynggi started tapping out the typical betanka five-beat rhythm, hitting the bottom pipes for two of those beats and the top ones for three.
Idda climbed on top of the drum and jumped around. She got so close to the edge that I was afraid she might fall off, but no one shared my concern.
Ynggi started chanting in Pengali, occasionally interrupted by Abri.
I let them be, much as the floor vibrated with the thunks and the sound annoyed me. They had looked stressed, and they probably needed to do this. I’d tell them to be quiet later.
Veyada had gone to join the lawyers upstairs and in the stairwell I met one of the hotel staff who came up the stairs looking alarmed about the source of the heavy thumps.
“It’s just music,” I said. “They’ll be quiet later.” Or so I hoped.
In Reya and Mereeni’s room, the two of them and Veyada were involved in a very dry discussion that was far too detailed and legal for me to understand. I observed Veyada and Mereeni instead. He made an obvious effort to ignore his irritation about whatever irritated him about her. She interrupted and irritated him further. There would probably be some bust-up between them at some point, but I couldn’t babysit Veyada all the time. He was old enough to handle his own issues. All I could hope for was that when the bust-up happened, there wouldn’t be any blood; but even that was out of my hands. I had to let Pengali do Pengali things and Coldi do Coldi things. I couldn’t lead their lives for them.
I was about to leave the room when Veyada called me.
“We’ve established that by the exact letter of the law, the court should allow us to bring recording equipment and allow someone dedicated to this task into the courtroom. Amarru signed an agreement with Nations of Earth. It covers all citizens of gamra worlds, and all courts under all jurisdictions that fall under Nations of Earth, and that includes the Nations of Earth court itself.”
“Do you think these people know about that agreement?”
“If they don’t, it might be prudent to remind them.”
Indeed. I could have sworn I heard point out to them that they are breaking their own agreements in his words.
“Thank you for establishing that.” I was already dreading tomorrow’s events. There would be conflict from this and other issues. The Pengali were stressed and nervous. The trial was just window dressing, and a man had been murdered.
I was about to leave the room when someone down
stairs shouted. I didn’t recognise the male voice, but it sounded like a shout of distress. Had the Pengali gotten hold the hotel’s staff? Had a cleaner unwittingly wandered into the security room?
I ran down, with Veyada on my heels.
Jemiro stood in the corridor, his back against the wall, facing Kita with her glass-stone knife pointed at him. Her tail swayed behind her, like a snake about to strike.
“Help, Delegate, help,” he squealed as soon as he noticed us. His eyes were wide. He spoke keihu. Why? Coldi was the language spoken in the group and had been since we left.
I asked, “What’s going on? Kita?”
“He interrupt our meet,” Abri said from the door.
Jemiro squealed, “I didn’t do anything!”
“You stop the betanka.”
“You were making so much noise, I only asked you to stop. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Sleep!” Abri snorted. “Who sleeps in this time of the day?”
I said, “Some people do, and I also agree that it’s a bit early, but that the drum is very noisy.”
“We have to have a meeting.”
“I understand. I told you to keep it short.”
“We have not finished.”
“No, I understand.” And then to Kita, “Please put away the knife.”
“He has to stop interrupting us. Yelling at us. Distracting us with other noise.”
Yelling? I doubted Jemiro could yell.
“I only banged on the door to make you be quiet.”
“You banged wrong rhythm. You disturb betanka.”
“Look, sorry. I didn’t know not banging the same rhythm was an offence. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Whoa, there was a bit of spunk coming from him, finally.
I said, “Abri, Kita, there is no need to worry about this. He won’t bother you again. Come on, let him go.”
Kita lowered the knife.
Jemiro let out a relieved breath, tucking his shirt back into his trousers. He came with me into the corridor, wiping the sweat off his face.