The Complete LaNague

by F. Paul Wilson

  Heber listened with interest. He was suddenly seeing a different side of Junior Finch and it answered a few lingering questions.

  Tayes was framing a reply when Bill Jeffers burst into the office. He held a pair of ledgers high over his head, then slammed them down on Heber’s desk.

  “Dammit, Finch!” he roared. “I’m licked. I’ve just been going over my books and I can’t last another day! I give! Bring back my Vaneks!”

  “What about eating lunch inside with everybody else?” Junior asked, trying desperately to mute his elation.

  “I don’t care if they hang from the rafters by their toes and eat lunch! Just bring ‘em back!”

  “Then they’ll be there tomorrow.” He stuck out his hand. “No hard feelings, I hope.”

  Jeffers grasped the hand firmly. “No, and I can’t figure out why. If you’d been a different sort of guy, I’d’ve closed up before I gave in. But you, Finch… I don’t know what it is, but somehow I don’t mind losing to you.”

  “Lose? What did you lose?”

  Jeffers brow furrowed, then he smiled. “You know, you’re right!” He started to laugh and Junior joined him. There was mirth to the sound, but also the tone of immense tension released and dissipating.

  Heber leaned over his desk and clapped both men on the shoulder. “This is wonderful!” he kept saying. “This is wonderful!” Then he, too, joined in the laughter.

  “Let’s go down to my place for something to drink,” Jeffers said finally. “I think I need a good drunk!”

  “Good idea,” Junior said. “Only I’m buying.”

  “Coming, Marv?” Jeffers asked.

  “Right behind you.” Heber glanced at the government man, who had been noticeably silent. “Care to join us?”

  Tayes shook his head abruptly and snapped his attaché case shut. “No, thank you. I’ve got to get back to the capital immediately.” He rose and hurried off into the dusk.

  The other three headed for the store. Walking between the lanky Heber and the mountainous Jeffers, Junior Finch felt like a man reborn. For perhaps the first time in his adult life, he truly felt like a Finch.

  “AH! SO IT’S YOU. I’ve been expecting your call. I knew you’d need me.”

  “Never mind that! Can you… remedy the situation as you said in my office? With no evidence of… anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you do it tonight?”

  “Where?”

  “Danzer, of course!”

  “Yes, that can be arranged. But first there’s the matter of compensation for my efforts.”

  “That’s no problem. If you can remedy the situation in the proper way, you will be amply compensated.”

  “Very well. I’ll leave immediately. One thing first, however – I must be absolutely sure of this: we are talking about this Junior Finch character, are we not?”

  “I thought that would be obvious. Tell me… just what is it you’re going to do?”

  “You’ll know by tomorrow morning.”

  MANY HOURS AND MANY QUARTS of local squeezings later, the party was interrupted by the opening of the front door to the store. A small, sallow man with a receding hairline stepped inside and looked at the three celebrants.

  “Private party!” Jeffers roared. “Store’s closed. Come back tomorrow.”

  “Very well,” the little man said with a faint smile.

  Junior noted that the stranger’s gaze seemed to rest on him for a moment and he shuddered. He couldn’t identify what it was exactly, considering his near-stuporous condition, but there was something cold and very unpleasant in that man’s dark eyes. He left without another word, however, and Junior went back to drinking.

  “Gentlemen,” Junior said, struggling to his feet an hour later, “I’m calling it a night.”

  “Siddown!” Jeffers said. “There’s plenny left.”

  Junior regarded him with genuine fondness. Throughout the entire episode he had been unable to work up any real dislike for Jeffers. The big man was naturally straightforward and honest… just that one blind spot in his character.

  “No, Bill. I’m going back to the office to sleep this off. I’m really tight and I’m not used to it. See you both tomorrow.”

  Heber and Jeffers waved good-by and continued drinking.

  AT DAWN THE NEXT MORNING, a farmer pulled up outside Jeffers’ store and was heading for the door when he noticed something in the shadows of the alley next to the building. He walked over to investigate. Junior Finch lay in the dust, a Vanek ceremonial dagger neatly inserted in his heart.

  By late afternoon most of the planet had been informed of the incident and Heber found himself besieged by an army of reporters in his office. Hot, muggy, with no air to be had in that little room, he felt sick and wished everyone would lust go away. He’d grown very fond of that young man in the few weeks he’d known him, and now he was dead.

  “The medical report has just come in,” he said in a trembling voice that suddenly quieted the babble-filled office, “and it clears the man you were all very quick to suspect.” He paused and spoke with studied deliberateness: “The time of death has been fixed and I can vouch for Mr. Jeffers at that time. Is that quite clear?” There was a murmured response, a reluctant acceptance of the fact.

  “Now, about the knife. It’s utterly ridiculous, of course, to suspect the Vanek. Disregard the fact that there were no human fingerprints or skin cells on the weapon… that can be easily managed with a lightweight glove. For even if the Vanek were capable of such an act, Junior Finch would have been the last person on Jebinose they would have harmed. So, we must look for a Terran murderer. It seems to me–”

  The crowd of reporters parted as a young Vanek pushed his way through. Heber recognized Rmrl.

  “We have come for the knife, bendreth.”

  “I’m sorry, my friend, but I must keep it for a while… evidence, you know.”

  Rmrl paused, then: “We have come for the body, too. It is to be buried with our ancestors.”

  “I suppose that can be arranged when the remains are returned from the capital. There’s no one else on the planet to claim it and nobody knows where he came from.” As the Vanek turned to go, Heber asked, “Do you have any idea who stole the knife, Rmrl?”

  “Stole? It was not stolen.”

  “Then how was it used against him?”

  The Vanek’s face twisted into a grimace that could only be interpreted as grief. “We killed him, bendreth!”

  “I refuse to believe that!” Heber gasped as pandemonium broke loose in the little room.

  “It is true.”

  “But what possible reason could you give for such an act?”

  “It is written on the Great Wheel,” Rmrl blurted, and pushed his way out.

  It took Heber a while to restore order to the office, but when it was finally quiet enough for him to speak: “I refuse for a moment to believe that a Vanek plunged a dagger into Junior Finch’s heart! They loved that man. No, there’s a Terran at work here and he’s holding something over the Vanek to make them take the blame.” He came out from behind his desk, suddenly looking very old and tired. “Now all of you please get out of here. I’ve had enough of this for one day.”

  The reporters filed out slowly, wondering where to go next. One hung back until only he and Heber were in the doorway. He was young and had said little during the afternoon.

  “But I thought Vanek never lie,” he whispered.

  Heber’s expression was a mixture of emotional pain and bafflement, with a touch of fear on the edges.

  “They don’t,” he said, and closed the door.

  JUNIOR WAS BURIED by the Vanek the next day with full rites and honors, a ceremony previously accorded to only the wisest and most beloved of their own race.

  Marvin Heber and a number of operatives from the capital made a thorough investigation of the incident but could find no evidence that would lead them to the killer.

  And as is so often the case, Junio
r Finch was mourned and praised by many, understood by only a few. His ghost was tearfully, skillfully, and ruthlessly invoked to obtain enough votes to pass the Vanek Equality Act, the very piece of legislation his efforts had proved unnecessary.

  Jo

  THE TRIP TO DIL took two jumps and six standard days, and really wasn’t too bad physically. Emotionally, however, it was wearing. Old Pete was her only company and Jo found it impossible to generate any warmth for the man. She had done her best to get out of the trip – had even hoped that Haas would refuse to see them. No such luck. He was delighted to give them an appointment.

  The shipboard time did, however, give her a chance to study her old nemesis, and she found him more puzzling than ever. He was maneuvering her toward something. Pretending to allow her to take the lead, he was actually calling all the plays. But what was the final destination?

  And what was his stake in all this? He was out of the company and probably running out of years. Why was he out between the stars with her now?

  The pieces didn’t fit into a picture that made any sense to her. Everything Old Pete had done had been for her benefit. Why then did she feel she couldn’t trust him? Why did she always feel he was hiding something? And he was. Despite countless protestations to the contrary, she knew he was guarding something from her.

  Her father’s autopsy report was another thing that bothered her. It was incomplete: a whole section was blank. Nothing of any pertinence was missing – the cause of death, a myocardial laceration by a Vanek ceremonial knife, was incontestable – but the blank area gnawed at her. Old Pete had obtained the report but couldn’t explain the lapse. Jo would find out sooner or later, though. It wasn’t her way to let things ride. Just as it hadn’t been her way to sit back and passively collect the annuity from her father’s IBA stock.

  Jo couldn’t remember exactly when she decided to put a Finch back into IBA – somewhere in her mid-teens, she guessed – but it soon grew to be an obsession with her. She studied the history of the company, its solid successes, its more notorious gambles. She grew to be an authority on its workings, maneuverings, and strategies.

  After tracking down all the printed and unprinted stories of Joe Finch’s Earthside and outworld exploits, Jo became infatuated with her grandfather. She was only seven when his flitter crashed, and had vague memories of a very tall man who always had a present or two concealed on his person. And the more she learned about him, the more he grew in stature. By the time she was ready to make her move on IBA, Joe Finch was a giant in her mind.

  Old Pete was another matter, however. She knew that IBA had used his theories as a base and probably would not have existed at all without him. He was an integral part of the company’s history. She admired him for that, but no amount of admiration could offset the deep conviction that he was responsible for her father’s absence. She would need his help, however, if IBA was to have a Finch in charge again.

  Surprisingly, Old Pete had gone along with her. After a long conversation during which he quizzed her on the theoretical and practical aspects of IBA’s operations, and was suitably impressed, he not only returned her father’s stock to her, but gave her proxy power over his own to use as she saw fit when she faced the board of directors. The gesture seemed as out of character then as it did now, but Jo hadn’t argued.

  The board of directors: seven hard-nosed, tough-minded business professionals; over two centuries of experience in the constant give-and-take of the interstellar markets seated around a conference table, smiling politely and condescendingly as she rose to address them.

  The mood around the table was tinged with amusement when she began, but had undergone a startling metamorphosis by the time she finished. The smiles were gone, replaced by expressions of anger, shock, and resentment.

  Never would she forget that day. She had been frightened and shaking before beginning her speech, and bathed in perspiration at its finish. Five of the directors tendered their resignations on the spot in an obvious attempt to frighten her into backing down. She called their bluff, and within three weeks the two remaining directors had joined the others. The official reason for the resignations of all seven directors was that the handwriting was on the wall:

  IBA was on its way to becoming a family company again and this would mean the institution of despotic control over the board. This, being contrary to their concept of the position of the board of directors in the company hierarchy, left them no alternative but to resign.

  Privately, they told their friends that they had no intentions of taking orders from a green kid. Especially a green female kid.

  That had been the deciding factor, Jo knew: her sex. Those men would not work for a woman. It was a matter of pride for them, but the problem went deeper. They had no confidence in a woman’s ability to run a company of IBA’s complexity.

  Strangely enough, Old Pete did not seem to share that view, probably because he was an Earthie. And Earthies, despite all their crowding, their decadence, their bureaucracy-strangled lives, considered males and females equal. In the colonial days, outworlders had held that view, too. Men and women had made the trip out to the stars as equals, had made landfall as equals, and had started the colonies as equals. After a while, however, things changed… especially on the splinter worlds. With little or no contact with the mother planet, the level of technology slipped and the embryo initiators and fetal maintenance units were often among the first pieces of hardware to fall into disrepair.

  Children – lots of them – were a vital necessity to the settlements if they were going to survive past the second or third generation, so the colonists returned to the old-fashioned kind of fetal maintenance unit, and the technicians, navigators, and engineers who happened to be female were soon relegated to the roles of baby-bearers and nest-keepers.

  Now, centuries later, after the colonies had come into their own as the outworlds, banding together under the Metep Imperium at first, and now under the Federation banner, the attitude remained: a woman’s place was in the home.

  Jo couldn’t – wouldn’t – accept that. But her rejection of the prevailing attitudes toward women was not a conscious struggle, nor a crusade. She carried no banners and nailed no theses to the door. After taking over IBA, she was approached by numerous groups pushing for male-female parity but she eschewed them all – partly because she didn’t have time and partly because she couldn’t really grasp the problem. As far as she could see, women wound up in secondary roles because they accepted them. It would have been easy for her to live off the proceeds of her stock in IBA, but she hadn’t been able to accept that. She felt she had a right to lead the company and lead it she would. If anyone objected, he’d better have a good reason or get out of the way.

  Jo had often been called shortsighted and selfish for this, but her invariable reply was, Excuse me, I’ve got work to do.

  In interstellar trade circles, it was almost unthinkable that a woman should head a major corporation. It had never really occurred to Jo that a woman should not do so. And that was the major difference between Josephine Finch and her contemporaries: others spent their time shouting about woman’s equality to man; Jo spent hers proving it.

  Word came back that the ship was about to enter orbit, so Jo and Old Pete got their things together and prepared to make the transfer to the shuttle. Dil’s name was not well known among the inhabited worlds; it was an industrious little planet but had little in the way of natural beauty and no political notoriety.

  Not too far from Dil’s main spaceport was the warehouse Denver Haas called home, a large ramshackle affair with a high fence around the perimeter. The most vital and innovative aspects of his warp gate were now protected by Federation patents, but Haas was involved in further refinements and so security remained tight. Jo and Old Pete had to be cleared twice before they were allowed to enter the building.

  Haas was obviously not out to impress anyone. The inside of the building was as dingy as the outside, and a lone, harried rece
ptionist-secretary occupied the single desk within the cluttered foyer.

  Jo handed the girl a clearance pass. “Josephine Finch and Peter Paxton to see Mr. Haas.”

  The girl took the pass without looking up, checked the appointments and nodded. Pressing a button, she said, “Finch and Paxton are here.”

  “Send them in!” replied a gruff voice.

  The girl pointed to a nondescript door with a simple “Haas” printed on it. Jo knocked and entered with Old Pete trailing a few steps behind.

  The office was an incredible clutter of filing cabinets, diagrams, blueprints, microstats, and miscellaneous notes and drawings on scraps of paper. Denver Haas, a stubby, feverish little man, was bent over his desk, reading and making notes, looking like a gnome king ensconced among his treasures. He glanced up as he heard the door close.

  “Ah, Miss Finch and Mr. Paxton,” he said, smiling tightly. “You’ve come. This is quite an honor, even if it is a waste of time for the three of us.”

  Only one empty chair sat before the desk. Haas rose, gathered some papers off another chair in a corner and threw them on the floor. Pushing the chair around to the front of the desk, he said to Jo, “Sit here,” and indicated the other seat for Old Pete.

  They did as they were bid and waited for the little man to regain his own seat. He was older than Jo had imagined, with gnarled hands, an unruly shock of graying hair, and, of all things, a beard. With all the permanent depilation techniques available, facial hair was an unusual sight.

  “Well, just what is it you wanted to see me about?” he demanded abruptly. “As if I didn’t know.”

  “Your warp gate,” Jo stated with her customary directness.

  “I thought that was it,” Haas muttered, and shook his head. “I’ve paid a small fortune for what I was assured was the best available security, and here you walk in and talk about my warp gate like you just had it for lunch!”