"Murder."
No one answered that word. "A constabulary is needed," I said.
Reverend Castell stood and turned to face me. He no longer towered over me, as I was taller, but his personal force caused me to step back a pace as he said, voice low and overly controlled, "I'll have no shattering of the peace by secular vermin open to the temptations of profit and pleasure."
The heat that came from him took away my breath. I nodded and bowed my head. Ever since he'd been in the fire-pit, Reverend Castell possessed an intensity beyond any human understanding. Although his actions and words that day remained unexplained and baffling, the fact that he'd withstood the coals pulsed around him like an aura of hellish divinity.
One of the young acolytes whimpered, and the sound caused Castell to break concentration. He returned to normal, although still he scowled.
He stepped over the low wall, into a tiny courtyard mostly filled by a dewpond, which was all but dry. Perhaps he'd thirsted," Reverend Castell said, gesturing toward the small lens of water at the bottom of the dewpond.
"Reverend, this place is a brothel." I pointed up at the back of one of the buildings. "And I smelled distilled spirits on the body."
"You're accusing a brother acolyte of-"
"I'm reporting facts, Reverend, nothing more. Brigands might well have killed him here and poured whisker, on his body to scoff at our faith in Universal Harmony.
Reverend Castell's face relaxed. "Yes, that makes sense. Yes." He rubbed his hands together, neither for heat nor for eagerness but in a gesture of nervous indecision.
"Forgive my inept phrasing, Reverend."
He glanced up at me, then registered what I'd said and nodded, his hand coming up to touch my head. I felt his thumb making the sign of the octave staff upon me, but there was no thrill this time. Perhaps it was a sign of immediate doom.
As Reverend Castell led the way out of the alley, we found ourselves surrounded by a crowd of drunken newcomers. The reverend began a simple harmony, and we Deacons and acolytes joined.
When a group barred Castell's way, he changed direction. When he found all ways blocked by scowling miners, he stopped. I saw Reverend Castell's shoulders straighten, and he radiated warmth again, although not heat. He smiled benignly. "You have an interest in us, I see," he told the men, his tone light and friendly.
One stepped forward and shoved Reverend Castell on the chest.
Castell laughed. "You have touched us all," he said.
The acolytes cowered together in a knot behind me, probably because I'm the biggest, even among the Deaks. I stood just behind the Reverend Castell, trying to glare like him at the people hemming us in, hoping that I might intimidate them into leaving us to our peace.
Insults flew then. They called us Holy Joes and made jest of the harm part of harmony. They denounced our pacifism, mislabeling it apathy and inertia. "You've done nothing to help us, and you've given us nothing but a hard time when we try to enjoy ourselves," they said, in effect. "You Harmonies control things and get first pick of provisions, and then you put us down for taking the little we need to live on, calling it theft instead of simple."
"Peace is ours to offer," Castell answered. "Those activities you label enjoyments are but forms of disharmony. Can you not see the harm you do each other when you intoxicate yourselves and wrestle in lust without regard to increasing humanity? And as for-"
In the back of my mind I knew it was the wrong tack. This crowd needed no sermons on moderation. "Reverend, I see a group of CD Marines across the street, watching. Perhaps if we appealed-"
He interrupted me and commanded the acolytes to begin a song, and so we sang. The crowd, laughing and jostling us, tried to shout us down, but our combined voices cut through the hubbub with chromatic purity.
Even as I sang my gaze sought routes of escape. My heart thudded, and my palms were slick with sweat. And yet, as we sang, the mob began quieting, to listen. Reverend Castell's old magic almost appeared again. For a few seconds we serenaded our tormentors, and that's when Castell, giving us a sign to proceed, shouted, "Acknowledge, then, how the harmony of organized singing defeats the scattered cacophony of lone voices crying in this wilderness of pain."
I doubt if a third of the crowd understood more than half his words, although they rode the crest of our harmonics to echo throughout that section of Castell City.
"You like peace?" someone yelled. "Then maybe you'll like being in pieces." Guffaws erupted at the pitiable jest, like stubborn donkeys braying in self-defeating frustration. It was like being back on the freighter, in transport to Haven, except far worse without the need to hide violence done upon us from the eyes of ship's officers.
A man almost as tall as I, belly flopping, dashed toward Reverend Castell and swung a fist.
The reverend collapsed, clutching his throat.
Stepping over and in, I raised my hands, but the man kicked the fallen man. The kick struck with such force that I felt the impact through the air.
Glancing down, I noticed that the attacker wore miner's boots, which are heavy and often steel-toed. Reverend Castell moaned.
Around us, the crowd laughed and waited.
Kneeling, I helped Reverend Castell to his feet. He stood bent over, clutching his kicked ribs.
That's when the attacker leaned in to deliver a head-butt to Castell's face, which spurted blood and snapped nasal cartilage.
Red tinted my vision, but from within.
Reaching out, I grasped the man's throat and squeezed, trying to crush his larynx even as I twisted my left arm around to snag his rig it ear.
Part of the ear tore off.
As he croaked and coughed I let him bend over, then slammed the heel of my right hand up into his lower jaw.
Teeth shattered. White shards flecked with red spewed from him as he toppled.
Another man came at me, and I whirled away from him, timing it so my elbow would take him in the throat. I missed, but connected with his temple as he tried to duck under.
He fell as if poleaxed.
I panted now as hard as any human can, sucking in air by the hectare as I sought to control my rage. I kept seeing glimpses of the Rockies, and fragments of my fights at the orphanage. Harmony eluded me. My vision remained tainted by my own unspilled blood.
The crowd of bullies backed away from us now. Some laughed nervously, while others kept up their verbal abuse even as they retreated to their bars and brothels. A few Beads, dressed in rags, kicked and thumped, but their efforts were drowned out by sheer numbers.
When a hand came down upon my left shoulder from behind, I turned to meet that attack as well. My fist flashed upwards.
It stopped millimeters from Reverend Castell's face.
He glared at me as I dropped my arm, but the stare held no terrors for me just then. "How dare you?" he said, voice cracked and whispery from the punch he'd taken. A bruise darkened his throat where his robe hung torn.
"They hurt you," I said.
His face contorted. "You'd so easily discard our precepts. For what? My corporeal safety? It means nothing if my spirit's in discord."
Hanging my head, I begged forgiveness.
Reverend Castell's voice dropped an octave, from baritone to basso profound. "You are no longer attuned to Universal Harmony. Your warlike talk belies cacophonous thinking."
"I strayed," I said, crying. "I lost the melody and wandered, but I'm-"
"Silence. Our hands carry peace, which is ours to offer. Your hands dropped that fragile vessel. You shattered peace, and for what? So your hands could be raised to harm another? Your song has ended."
Nausea swept me to my knees, and after gagging I said, through tears, "Please Reverend." My forehead came down to rest atop his feet, which were bare and cold. Mud smeared my face.
His feet pulled back, and I glanced up. He cried, "This lone voice knows our song, and asks to rejoin our chorus of Harmony. His shouts, although disruptive of our melodies, flew from a good heart and
noble intentions. His sour notes are absolved." And, after tossing back his head and laughing loudly, he clapped thrice, then reached down to help me to my feet.
Even as I stood and looked into his eyes I wondered if Reverend Castell had planned such theater all along, but the unworthy thought mattered little as I realized what we had accomplished.
From then on, goading violence from a pacifist would be like poking an overinflated balloon. And the crowd had seen me forgiven, absolved. That meant even lapses of pacifism might be condoned. We'd become unpredictable. Along with the buffer provided by the Beadles, such a reputation went far toward ensuring that we Harmonies would at least have a chance.
I followed Reverend Castell to Havenhold Lake, where we greeted uninvited guests who had come bearing gifts.
Maxwell Cole waited patiently while Marshall Wainright, Assistant to the Director of the CoDominium Bureau of Intelligence, studied his viewscreen. The holo-wall mural displayed a forest scene out of the Pacific Northwest instead of the stark lunar landscape outside. As Cole watched a squirrel run up a large conifer, he mused that he and the squirrel had a lot in common; they were both trying to set something aside for the coming winter.
Cole was a short timer, only three more years and he could put in for retirement. After twenty-seven years in the intelligence service, ten of them with the Navy, he was used up, tired of sticking his fingers in numerous holes in the CDs ever-leaking dyke. Let the younger operatives save the peace; his time was just about up.
Or was it? he wondered, as Assistant Secretary Wainright discreetly coughed.
"Agent Cole, we have a situation developing on an outer world called Haven-a misnomer if there ever was one. It's a newly colonized world by some sect that calls itself the Universal Church of New Harmony. You've read the files."
Cole nodded. The anxiety that had begun to gnaw at his lower stomach, ever since he'd been sent that file, began to grow. Haven, an almost lifeless iceball of a moon, was all the way at the outer edge of the envelope of CD explored space-four Alderson Jumps away from the nearest habitable world. Haven was certainly, this close to retirement, no place he ever wanted to visit.
The Harmonies, one of the Neo-Millenniumite Sects, had bought the settlement license, so officially Haven was not part of the Condominium. In reality, however, all human occupied worlds belonged to the CoDominium; the only question was whether they were or were not valuable enough for an "official" CD presence. Cole had a nagging suspicion that this iceball was about to change ownership.
"The Bureau of Colonial Government was not displeased to see the Harmonies settle Haven as long as it remained the worthless piece of real estate it first appeared. However, the situation has changed now that a large deposit of hafnium ore has been discovered."
Right, thought Cole, and now somebody doesn't want to pay the Harmonies a licensing fee for mineral rights they can get for a much smaller fee from the CD Bureau of Colonial Government.
The Assistant to the Director stroked the length of his long, thin nose. "It appears that we have one of those situations developing that requires a senior agent with great skill and discretion. Since, obviously, our part in the events that are about to occur on Haven must never become public knowledge."
Cole shook his head in agreement, wondering if somehow his superiors had agreed to blame the mess now developing on Comstock on him, the last agent assigned to that hellhole. If he'd learned nothing else in his lengthy career it was that in intelligence often what appeared to be a nod up was in actuality a shove down.
"Serendipitously, for all involved, it appears that the Bureau of Relocation also has a rather strong interest in the Haven question. It appears to be the ideal location for subversive elements within the confines of the terrestrial CD to be permanently isolated without invoking the offices of the Bureau of Correction or the Navy."
Good conundrum: When is a prison planet not a jail? Answer: When its called Haven and is over a year's travel from Earth with little or no possibility of return.
"Your job, Agent Cole, will be to find legal justification for CoDominium intervention."
It sounded so easy rolling off the Assistant to the Director's tongue, Cole thought. What it really meant was he had to organize or foment a revolution; or what could pass for such on a forgotten planet like Haven. Thus providing, for the Grand Senate, an excuse to appoint a Consul General and send a contingent of CD Marines to restore the benefits of Condominium order and civilization.
"You will be provided with a list of contacts and a review of certain 'unstable' elements there by someone who has just returned. Im afraid that budgetary demands make it impossible to give you all the resources you might need; however, you will be given a rather free hand in carrying out this operation. The Kennicott Mining Company has graciously offered their services in the way of funds and operatives when you arrive at Haven. I suggest you take them up on their offer."
Cole nodded. The Assistant to the Director of CD Intelligence turned his attentions back to his viewscreen. Knowing full well that no objection by him would be tolerated, Cole cursed under his breath and left the office.
Janesfort war
Leslie Fishamp
Frank Gasperik
The zodiac raft with the name Black Bitch painted on her side growled away from the off-planet shuttle floating in the lake, laden with crates marked Mining Equipment. If one inspected the invoices attached, as the Bitch's captain had bothered to do, one would find they were destined for one Max Cole, delivery at Castell City, or the port thereof, to be placed in bond until called for. This could have presented a problem, Castell City Port being nothing but a rough pontoon dock, except that Max Cole stood wrapped in off-planet cold weather gear, in the full light of Cat's Eye, waiting for his cargo.
He wasn't alone.
The man accompanying him was as recognizable to the locals as Cole was a stranger. His name was Jomo and he was a thug. He inspired fear and the kind of respect born of it. He was tall and broad and scarred and of mixed parentage, the result of the usual problems one found in the Transvaal. He watched the boat as it moved towards shore and, like Cole, was dressed warmly. They didn't speak but stood patiently as the cargo was unloaded.
Cole identified himself and signed the receipt, and the Black Bitch, reeking of the alcohol she used for fuel, turned back to the shuttle for another load. A motion from Jomo, and his crew-not dockworkers-began hauling the crates onto handcarts and trundling them towards the rough jumble of buildings known as Docktown. Somehow it already had the undefinable aura of "slum" that most port communities seemed to acquire.
Jomo and Cole slowly followed the handcarts toward a largish, for Haven, building dug into a low bank with a freshly painted sign proclaiming it to be the SIMBA BAR. They trailed the crates inside after the unloading. Another motion from Jomo, and the pair were left alone in the main room of the establishment.
"I hope the shipment is as I require," said Jomo, with carefully elaborate politeness.
"Better than you could imagine," Cole replied, just as carefully. "You asked for arms to enhance your-ah. . 'business' and I have done better than you asked. Look." He produced an odd tool from under his coat and pried open the nearest crate. "The latest CoDominium combat weapon: the Sonic Stunner. Forty of them."
"A weapon that stuns? It does not kill?"
"You should find it most effective for your purposes, Mister Jomo. No damage to the subjects, and they awake in an hour or so with nothing but a headache."
Jomo lifted the bell-mouthed weapon.
"Yes, these will do well. . After all, a live captive can always be made dead at a later date, but the reverse of that cannot be accomplished."
Cole smiled, and shrugged. "This is the method of loading and the manual for maintenance. Simple enough, as you see."
Jomo smiled in turn, not prettily.
His purring whistle brought a man from the back room, carrying a small box that had once contained boots. At Jomo's gesture, the
man put the box on the table and stood attentively to the side.
In a single quick motion, Jomo lifted the weapon and fired.
The sound of the stunner was only moderately loud. The target crumpled in his tracks.
Jomo went to him, bent over and cruelly pinched the right earlobe. There was no reaction.
"Yes." Jomo grinned widely. "These will do well indeed."
"Ahhh, Mister Jomo, my remuneration?"
Jomo handed him the boot box. A brief inspection proved that it was full of CoDominium and Trade credits, a small fortune.
"Would you enlighten me as to how you acquire such tools?" Jomo nudged, studying the stunners.
"Such things are possible, if one knows just whom to blackmail or bribe. . " Cole shrugged again. "And as long as they're not found on Earth, or a planet under CoDominium control, they're quite safe to own."
Jomo nodded, put down the stunner and opened the manual.
"I must go now," Cole reminded him, "as I wish to ride the shuttle back to the ship. The sooner I'm out of this icebox, the better. I'll send down the rest of the ammunition with the next load. As it stands, you only have twenty rounds."
"I have no choice but to trust you in this matter," Jomo admitted. "But without the weapons the ammunition is useless. Also the converse. It is nice to do business with a professional."
They turned to the door and together walked back to the dock. Before boarding the zodiac, Cole stopped and turned to Jomo.
"You'll need this," he said, handing Jomo the very special tool. "You can't open the other crates without it. The security devices would ruin the control chips if you tried any other method."
Neither of them noticed that the zodiac captain, although turned away and occupied with unloading cargo, was close enough to hear.
They did not shake hands on parting.
Jomo mused on how much easier this would make the takeover of Docktown, the outlying farms, eventually Castell City and the rest of the planet. Jomo considered himself a man of great plans.
Owen Van Damm was watching quietly while his immediate boss Maxwell Cole hung up his off-ship over-clothes and readied himself for the briefing. He felt that he was like that, layer on layer, persona under persona, and at the center? I don't know anymore. I know that I am unhappy with Earth, and the government. The Fleet is a home, but I know too much to go back to being a Fleet Officer.
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