The dirty bastard! Hedrigs’ comfortable shell of illusion burst. Kats had actually let the human race fall before the invaders! Hedrigs suppressed a desire to rip the magazine up into small pieces. The shock was like finding a snake in a schnafel pastry. Wasn’t there enough hell in the real world? He had seen far too many stories of this type lately. Feeling quite betrayed to reality by Kats, the young astronomer stood up and stomped out of the library.
Hedrigs halted on the terrace-deck near his cabin. It was past midday. Far above him, the wind whistled through the empty rigging and mastwork. Just two miles away, the brown and gray cliffs of Sornnai rose abruptly from the ocean, hiding Bayfast from view. Where the surf smashed into the base of Somnai the concentrated coastal plankton formed a glistening green band. In this longitude, Seraph hung almost thirty degrees above the horizon, its bluish-green crescent wraithlike against the bright blue sky.
The scene didn’t appeal. Svir cupped his chin in palm and morosely inspected the pitted guard-railing he leaned against. For all practical purposes they had reached Bayfast. Right now Kederichi Maccioso was treating with the Port Commander for landing clearance. Apparently there was some problem about getting pier space at this time, but this would be cleared up, and this afternoon they would be sailing right past the Regent’s Keep into the Hidden Harbor. And tonight he, Svir Hedrigs, would be risking his life to save the Fantasie collection. Could he go through with it?
He didn’t notice her until she was at the railing beside him.
“Hi, Cor.”
“Hi.” She smiled. They stood for a moment silently, watching the sparkling sea. Then she said hesitantly, “It’s tonight, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Svir . . . don’t go through with it.”
“Huh?” Hedrigs looked at her in some confusion. “Why not?”
“Those magazines aren’t worth dying for. And I think you would die. Crownesse is the most powerful country in the world. When we move into the port, we’ll pass Hangman’s Row. They play awfully rough here.”
She was voicing the fears that had transformed these last few days into hell. Now if only she could convince him that it was honorable to back out. “I agreed to do it, Cor. And I owe it to Tatja.”
Ascuasenya mumbled something.
“What’s that?”
She took a deep breath and started over. “That second is no reason at all. Tatja Grimm is . . . not a very nice person. She came aboard Tarulle only five years ago, as the Barge was passing through the Eastern Crownesse ports. She was an apprentice proofreader like me. Now she is probably the most powerful person in the entire Tarulle Company—Jespen Tarulle included. She has some sort of leverage with every important person on the Barge. Some guys love her, I think. With others it’s blackmail. Many people are just afraid of her. And no one knows what she’s really after.”
Hedrigs scowled. “You can’t expect me to believe that. I’ve watched the crew working with her. She gets more wholehearted cooperation and respect from them than most officers.” Svir felt the same hostility toward Ascuasenya that he would feel toward an outsider who slandered a member of his personal family.
Cor looked tired. “That just proves she’s a brilliant leader. I don’t deny that. And she’s at least as talented when it comes to mechanical matters, smarter than anyone I’ve ever seen. She designed the power trains they use in printing. She also developed some of the special sailing rigs we have on our hydrofoils.”
Hedrigs grunted, remembering a certain conversation several days earlier. But this thought was not reflected in the manner of his next question. “Just what brings you to spread this outrageous libel?”
Ascuasenya paled slightly. “I ... I don’t want you hurt, Svir. And I know that if it would further her ends, she’d put your life in jeopardy. Besides, I . . . want you myself.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper.
Hedrigs felt himself soften. The things Cor had said became more understandable and more excusable. “I’m sorry, Cor. I didn’t know you felt that way. But you’re wrong. Tatja is wonderful. And I love her.”
“No!” The response was violent. “Just let me show you. Can Ancho still broadcast that I’m-not-here signal?”
“Yeah.” Hedrigs petted the animal sitting on his shoulder. Ancho had seemed almost to enjoy the voyage during the last couple of days. “If he knows that something is expected of him and yet I don’t pull that confidence act, he’ll generally broadcast the I’m-not-here.”
“Fine. Let’s use him to do a little eavesdropping. I’ll give you odds of five-to-one Grimm will be doing something you’d find out of character.”
Svir was shocked by the vehemence of her assertion. Spying on others was an activity he had never condoned. He temporized. “It’s kind of late, you know. She’s probably asleep.”
“Sleep? Sometimes I wonder if she ever does that.” She caught his arm. “C’mon.”
With an ugly sense of betrayal, Hedrigs followed the apprentice proofreader. Cor led him fifty yards aft and down a couple of flights. They were well into the day sleep period, and hardly anyone was about. The mast watch could detect any hostiles approaching the vessel, but they were not well-placed for observing the deck itself.
Finally Hedrigs and Ascuasenya stood below the balcony of Grimm’s office. Hedrigs cuddled Ancho. “Stay close to me up there, Cor, and you’ll be inside the illusion, too.” He boosted her up to the balcony, then hauled himself up. They had overextended themselves: it was just conceivable that people outside the illusion might be aware of them. But he was committed now.
They crawled to the office window and peeked over the sill. Svir was unprepared for the luxury of that room. It was almost as large as the library. The floor was carpeted with Lockspur jaguar pelts and the furniture inlaid with designs of worked silver—or that rarest of metals, aluminum.
Tatja sat at her desk, her face in profile. She was slumped over, studying a large sheet of paper on her desk. Svir had never seen her look quite so unhappy. Her eyes were wide and staring, and a tear glistened on her cheek. Hedrigs leaned closer against the window. What was she reading that could be so depressing? The paper on her desk was a detailed engineering diagram of— what? Then he recognized it as one of the Osterlei plans for a steam-driven turbine. The engine was ingenious and quite workable—but several thousand ounces of iron were necessary for its construction. Attempts to make boilers of nonmetallic materials had been comical, and occasionally disastrous, failures. How could an engineering diagram cause someone to cry?
Grimm looked up suddenly, not at the window, but at the door to her office. Apparently someone was asking admittance, though it was virtually impossible to hear anything through the thick glass. Tatja moved with amazing speed to cover the diagram and compose her features. In a matter of seconds, she appeared completely self-possessed.
The visitor was Brailly Tounse. Hedrigs pressed his ear against the glass, forgetting any scruples he had had about eavesdropping. What was said within was barely audible.
Tounse was saying, “Your people took fifteen ounces...steel. My steel! Why?”
“I needed it.” Her expression was almost haughty.
But Tounse was not put off. “So? I . . . too. We can’t run the presses without some metals, you . . .”
“Tough. We’re ... lee of the Somnai now, so it doesn’t matter . . . return it after we leave Bayfast . . . need it to rescue . . . Fantasie collection.”
This last promise seemed to mollify Tounse somewhat, but he still asked, “. . . really think . . . will go through with it?”
Tatja laughed. “I can persuade that fatuous idiot to . . . anything—you should know that.” Tounse’s face went red.
Hedrigs drew back from the window, shocked. Were they talking about him? He looked at Cor and she returned his gaze levelly.
“Let’s go,” Svir muttered. He moved to the edge of the balcony and jumped to the deck below—almost on top of a crewman wearing editorial insignia. The fel
low stared at him for a long moment and then continued his walk—apparently Ancho had stopped broadcasting. What if Tatja heard about this? The idea was chilling.
This line of thought was cut short as Cor came over the railing. They walked back toward the crew quarters. He stopped a few feet from the entrance to his own cabin.
Cor looked at him. “Well?”
“I don’t know, Cor. Perhaps if I knew more, what we saw wouldn’t be incriminating. I’m all confused.”
“When do you have to make up your mind?”
“Sometime this evening. I’m going to have a final briefing before lunch in the night wake period. I don’t know how long after that I’d be leaving.”
“Don’t go—at least think about what I said and what we saw.” She looked at him. “Please.”
Svir laughed harshly, “Girl, that’s one thing you can be absolutely sure of!”
Ascuasenya touched his hand briefly, then turned and walked away.
* * * *
Svir didn’t get much sleep that afternoon. He lay on his bunk in the shuttered cabin, and stared into the darkness. What was Tatja Grimm? To him she had been a miraculous discovery, an escape from loneliness. And until now he had never doubted her sincerity. To the crew she was an immensely popular leader, one who could solve any problem. To the top officers on the Barge she was a harsh and arbitrary tyrant, a seductive genius, a bitch-goddess. Where did that leave the Tatja Grimm who sat silently, crying over an engineer’s diagram?
In any case, Tatja was not what he had imagined. And that revelation put the present situation in a new light.
Though it was past sunset, he didn’t go down for breakfast, but paced tensely back and forth in the little cabin. On the bed Ancho chirped and croaked miserably.
Svir had agreed to do a job. Only now did he realize just how much he had been influenced by Tatja. He saw that the rescue of the Fantasie collection was an extremely important project—but without the spell Tatja’s personality had cast upon him, he felt no interest in committing his own skin to the undertaking. Art was art, but life was sacred—especially his life. If he went through with the plan, Svir Hedrigs would probably die tonight. And that death would not be the adventurous, romantic death of a hero, but a sick, empty, final thing. Just thinking about it gave him the chills. How close he had come to sacrificing himself for—nothing. If it hadn’t been for Cor he would have, too. Ascuasenya was as true as Grimm was false. He had found out just in time.
He would turn Tatja down—the most she could get him for was his passage. Grimm would have to find another sucker and another dorfox. Hedrigs would see the Doomsday astronomer and get that situation cleared up. And perhaps—no, certainly—he would see Cor again, and ask her to leave Tarulle and come back to the Chain-pearls with him.
Svir fed the dorfox a luscious meal, then went down to the main chow hall. He didn’t see Cor. That was unusual, but not surprising. They were still working extra shifts, processing material. He would see her later in the evening, after he confronted Tatja. Svir whistled as he bounded up the steps, thinking of the look on Grimm’s face when he told her he wasn’t going to help her.
The Barge was entering Bayfast Harbor now. That entrance was a narrow gorge cutting through the Somnai cliffs. Seraph was nearly full and its brilliant blue light transformed the normally brown cliffs into shimmery curtains of stone. Svir had to crane his neck to see the top, where the Bayfast naval guns were mounted, pointing down at him. The Tarulle Barge was almost half as wide as the entrance.
Hedrigs’ stride broke as he noticed a small lighter pulling away from the Barge. That girl, with the helmet of short black hair—she looked like Coronadas Ascuasenya: Svir rushed to the terrace rail. She was more than fifty yards away and not facing him—but he was almost sure it was Cor. On her lap she carried a small suitcase. What was going on? He ran along the rail, shouting her name. But the wind, channeled by the gorge, was loud, and she was already far away. The boat rounded the curve of the gorge, disappeared.
Perhaps it wasn’t Cor after all; but the old Fantasie motto came to mind—”Things are not as they seem.”
His mood was considerably subdued by the time he reached the executive decks. He confronted one of Tatja’s secretaries and was ushered into the Science Editor’s office.
Grimm smiled faintly as Svir advanced to her desk. “Have a seat, Svir. Ready to begin the briefing?”
Hedrigs didn’t accept the proffered chair. He stood awkwardly before the desk. Tatja’s physical presence almost made him disregard what he had seen that afternoon, and suddenly it was difficult to say the speech he had been planning. “Tatja—Miss Grimm, I’ve been thinking, uh, about this . . . project. I know it’s important to you—to everyone here. But I, uh, I don’t think that I’m the right, uh . . .”
Tatja picked a crystal letter-cutter from her desk. She Hashed him a broad smile. “To make a long story short, you’ve decided you would rather not go through with it. You’re willing to pay for your passage, but you feel no obligation to risk your neck on this scheme. Is that what you are trying to say?”
“Why, yes,” Svir said, relieved. “I’m glad you see my point of view.”
Tatja didn’t say anything. She inspected the letter-cutter, tossed it into the air in a glittering whirl, and caught it just before it would have slammed into the hardwood desk. A strange gurgly sound came from her lips. Svir realized she was laughing.
“You know, Hedrigs, you are the most gullible person I ever met. Correction: the second most gullible. You’re a provincial, overgrown adolescent, and how you thought you could fool anyone into thinking you had ever been off the Islands is beyond me. I need that dorfox. Did you honestly believe that our encounter on Krirsarque was an accident? I’ve been studying those animals a long time. If I had you killed, I’m certain I could become Ancho’s new master. Only my high moral character prevents me from taking that course.”
She smiled again. It was almost a sneer, revealing a hostility that seemed to transcend the subject at hand. “If I had known Ascuasenya could be such a nuisance, I would have kept her out of your way. Yes, I heard about your activities this afternoon. No matter. For my plans to succeed I now need some new form of leverage. Poor little Ascuasenya is perfect for my purposes.”
Grimm sat back and relaxed. “I said you were the second most gullible person in my experience. Coronadas Ascuasenya is the first. She believed me when I told her that you had already left the Barge for Bayfast. She believed me when I told her that our spies had discovered new information which you had to have to avoid disaster. She believed me when I said that with the proper credentials she could get into the Keep and warn you. And she will get rather far into the castle—those credentials are very good counterfeits. When she is finally discovered, the Regent’s men will believe they have foiled a serious espionage attempt.”
Hedrigs stepped back from the desk, as shocked by her hostility as by what she was saying. For an instant she didn’t seem human. Everything Cor had said was true. Grimm was a creature sitting at the center of an infinite complex of scheme and counter-scheme, plot and counter-plot—her ultimate goal beyond human understanding. Every detail of the last ten days had pushed him according to her whim. Even as she spoke now, she was trying to maneuver him into some new trap.
“Do you know what Tar Benesh does with spies, Svir Hedrigs?”
The astronomer shook his head dumbly. Grimm told him.
“And when they get done, the spy is generally burned alive,” she added. “So, Svir my love, run back to your cabin, get Ancho, and come back here. The briefing’s going to take a while, and I want you off the Barge well before midnight.”
Hedrigs had never before wanted to kill anybody. He wanted to now—very much. This creature had imperiled the two lives he valued most. Svir told her so in words he had never used with a woman.
Tatja just laughed. “You may be a good astronomer, dear, but you’re weak on biology. Do as I say. And don’t get any ideas
of taking off on your own to save Cor. You will find when I brief you that the only way you can help her is to save the Fantasie collection in the process.”
* * * *
Six hours later, Svir Hedrigs emerged from the offices of the Tarulle executive deck, and descended to the debarkation levels. He wore an old, baggy suit and carried a light balsir cage disguised as a suitcase. Ancho sat comfortably within the cage. He wore the mysterious clicker on his back.
The Barge had reached its pier space and was already so firmly tied in that it was difficult to tell where Barge ended and pier began. Gibbous Seraph cast a bright, cheerful twilight across Bayfast. The clashing, bright colors of the city were transformed into pastels. Here and there those pastels were highlighted by yellow and green sparkles where people uncovered their evening lamps. This shimmery, glowing pattern stretched up toward the edge of the seaward cliffs and around the bay to the inland cliffs, which cut off the Monsoonal Drag and made Bayfast one of the few placid spots on The Continent at this time of year.
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