Silence is Deadly (13 page)

It seemed to Darzek that very little was known about any of the dukes. He read through the list of their names: Merzkion, Fermarz, Lonorlk, Kiledj, Rilornz, Suklozk, Borkioz, Pabinzk, Tonorj, Dunjinz, OO. None of them meant anything to him except the Duke Lonorlk, whose employee he had been.

He turned off the file and sat gazing at the blank screen. He’d found no clue whatsoever as to where the missing agents had gone or what they were trying to do.

He still did not have a starting point.

He returned to Northpor, and for a time he sat in the basement, working the lever that kept his stolen generator operating. This, too, should have provided a clue, but it continued to elude him.

He climbed the stairs and joined Wesru in the kitchen, and she smilingly placed a bowl of spiced vegetables before him with an enormous chunk of boiled meat floating in it. The baby Badje was happily playing in his nursery with toys Sajjo had brought from the mart. Sajjo came in herself a moment later, with excited tales of the day’s business, and Wesru filled a bowl for her.

Darzek suddenly realized that both of them were watching him anxiously.

His preoccupation had seemed alarming to them. He smiled, and they smiled back at him and began to eat.

Suddenly a voice exploded in the hallway behind him. “What in the name of the seven gods of Perquali is this?”

Darzek turned. A female of Kamm, with a monstrously piled hairdo, and a male, ostensibly a peddler, stood staring at them from the hallway.

Darzek asked conversationally, “How about the nine bastard gods of Wikwipolu?”

The two continued to stare. Then they burst into laughter.

CHAPTER 9

They were Riklo and Wenz, novice agents who had been on Kamm only a couple of months longer than Darzek. They had arrived at a moment of crisis over the missing agents, when the team leaders had other things to worry about, so they were plunked down in the safest corner of Storoz—the Free City of Southpor, which was surrounded by the province of the senile Duke Borkioz—and told to behave themselves and learn what they could, and eventually someone would get around to training them properly.

They’d been working as a team, peddler and keeper of secrets, in the Southpor mart and on the circuit of wayside forums through the Duke Borkioz’s province. But eventually they’d become curious about what the other agents were doing, so they visited the moon base and the headquarters on Storoz and on the two continents, and all of them were deserted except one. Someone had eaten food recently in the Northpor headquarters. That night they’d shouted in the streets, without any response, so they’d gone back to Southpor, resumed their traveling, and tried to think of what they should do next. It was after another circuit of the province that they’d found Darzek’s note.

Darzek’s Kammian family had gone to bed. The three agents were conferring in the sitting room, and Wenz was keeping the place lighted by operating the electrical generator, which fascinated him. It was Riklo who tersely recounted their history, and now she had a complaint.

She and Wenz were graduates of the Department of Uncertified Worlds Academy—which Darzek hadn’t known existed—and they’d thoroughly mastered the principles of sound operation on Uncertified Worlds, and Darzek was flagrantly violating all of them.

“Close contacts with natives,” Riklo announced, “are strictly forbidden.”

Darzek, who had based a career on his talent for ignoring stupid regulations, regarded her with interest. He already had begun to wonder what sort of alien life form that attractive Kammian female cocoon concealed. “Nonsense,” he said. “Who looks after the flower garden, and cleans the house, and takes care of the nabrula for you in Southpor?”

“Nobody,” Riklo said indignantly. “We do those things ourselves.”

“And look at the time you waste acting as your own servants. No wonder the agents on Kamm have accomplished so little! And here’s another point. Houses empty for long periods of time arouse curiosity. If there were servants in residence, or a native family with children to run errands and make friends with neighbor children, the place would look normal. Agents who keep strictly to themselves are going to attract suspicion a lot more quickly than those who share their residence with natives.”

“There’s no possible way to tell which natives can be trusted,” Riklo said stubbornly. “The risk is too great.”

“There’s another point,” Darzek said. “Look at that electric generator. No one knows how long the Duke Lonorlk has been using electric lights in his forests to avoid the danger of fire, and the Synthesis would never have known it if my adopted daughter hadn’t taken me to apply for a job. The more close contacts we have with natives, the more effective our work will be. A few agents simply can’t keep track of what happens on an entire world.”

“You keep changing the subject,” Riklo announced indignantly. “What about the danger from those close native contacts?”

“There isn’t any. I took some hungry people, and gave them jobs they can take pride in, and an excellent place to live, and all the food they want. There isn’t much they wouldn’t do for me in return. Let’s talk about the missing agents.”

They knew Rok Wllon—he had visited the academy while they were there. But they had no inkling that he was on Kamm. None of the agents they’d talked with had mentioned it.

“He came here to look for the missing agents,” Darzek said. “Did you happen to hear anyone mention where they disappeared?”

“In the provinces,” Riklo said. “Three in Merzkion, four in OO, and two in Fermarz.”

“Then he went to OO, since more of them vanished there. So I’m going to OO.”

“That would be suicidal,” Riklo said. “OO is such a dangerous place that the Storoz team closed its headquarters there.”

“Nonsense. Why?”

Riklo said scornfully, “Don’t you know
anything
about Storoz and its history?”

“Just what I found in the moon base file,” Darzek said cheerfully. “I may not have been looking in the right place. Tell me about Storoz and its history.”

At some point in the island’s remote antiquity, the kingship had rotated among the dukes. Then one duke made himself king permanently, with the great port of OO as his capital city. The other dukes were reduced to the status of provincial administrators.

The king occupied a dual position: political leader and head of the island’s religion, with the title, Protector-King; he was ruler of the land and protector of the faith. But the kings became increasingly oppressive, and finally one took the ridiculous step of forbidding the dukes the right to make their own cider, and they revolted, deposed and murdered the king, and established their independence.

The king’s son survived, but he was reduced to the status of a mere duke, ruling the lands that the former king had held personally. As a result, the dukedom at OO was the smallest on Storoz, but it also was one of the wealthiest, containing the island’s largest and most prosperous city as well as its best agricultural land.

“Then the present Duke of OO is a direct descendant of the last King of Storoz,” Darzek mused.

“True,” Riklo said. “But so are all the other dukes, because of complicated intermarriages among the nobility. In fact, so is the Protector. He’s the brother of the present Duke of OO.”

Darzek leaned forward alertly. “That’s suggestive. Which of the present dukes have dreams of restoring the monarchy with themselves as Protector-King?”

“Probably all of them do. And the Protector, too.”

“Of course they do. Aristocracy and priests are the same all over the galaxy. Which brings us to religion. The Mound of the Sun and the Winged Beast. They’re in direct contention. Who’s winning?”

Before the revolution, the Winged Beast had been the symbol of the official Storozian religion. Afterward, the dukes had resented the control exercised over their subjects by the priestly knights of the Winged Beast, so they threw out the knights and fostered a rival, informal religion. It caught on, and the Winged Beast was worshiped in secret if at all. But within the past few years, the present Protector had gained some concessions: the return of the Winged Beast symbol to market places and forums and the freedom of the citizens to worship it if they chose. In addition, a few knights and lackeys of the Winged Beast had been admitted into each province and into the Free Cities as religious guides. The old religion was making a comeback.

“But they have to behave themselves,” Riklo said.

“I know,” Darzek answered. He had just learned that morning, from Sajjo, that the knights and lackeys of the Winged Beast had been expelled from Northpor for forty days by the Sailor’s League for attacking an unidentified free citizen, a perfumer, who had absently walked through their holy circle.

“The exception is OO,” Riklo said. “The Protector’s brother has re-established the old faith as the province’s official religion. There are enormous numbers of knights and lackeys of the Winged Beast in OO. They combine their role of religious leadership with that of an official police force. That’s what made the place so dangerous. It was the first province where we began to lose agents. After the fourth vanished there, the headquarters was closed. There hasn’t been an agent there since. It’d be suicidal to go to OO. It’d also be silly. Why would Rok Wllon be looking for agents who vanished months ago? Why wouldn’t he look for the ones who vanished most recently?”

Darzek was studying a map. “You have a point. Where did they vanish most recently? Merzkion or Fermarz?”

“I don’t know. Visiting either place would be suicidal. Both dukes have pazuls.”

Darzek smiled. “Did your Primores headquarters tell you so?”

“At least one of the missing agents was seen dead as his body was carried away,” Riklo said. “I talked with the agent who saw him. There’s no mistaking a death caused by a pazul. Anyway—your training was miserably inadequate compared to ours, and we’re novices. If we three start looking for twenty missing agents, there’ll soon be twenty-three missing agents.”

“In other words,” Darzek said, “it isn’t safe.”

She glared at him.

“And in the meantime, those missing agents may be tortured—or worse.” He was looking at the map again. “The best route would be Merzkion, Fermarz, and then OO. Merzkion first, since it’s closest.”

“I’ll come with you,” Wenz said. “I’d like to have a look inside the Duke Merzkion’s castle. If he has a pazul, I want to see it.”

Darzek regarded him with interest. “Do you know how to get in?”

“Of course.”

“How?”

“Come outside, and I’ll show you.”

They went outside to the most shadowed corner at the rear of the house. While Darzek watched openmouthed, Wenz walked up the side of the building. No cat burglar on Earth could have approached such finesse. He deftly climbed a sheer wall and then climbed down again.

“I’ll climb up to the highest turret and pry open a window,” Wenz said. “That ought to be the last place they’d expect anyone to break in. I’ll dress like a lackey—that’s the lowest order of the duke’s servants. If I get into trouble, I’ll go out the nearest window and hide on the roof. I can spend a week there, if necessary, and search the place from top to bottom.”

“And if he gets into trouble, there’ll be no one to support him,” Riklo said bitterly.

“I wouldn’t want any support,” Wenz said. “Going alone, I’ll have no one to worry about but myself. But I won’t get into trouble. Who’d suspect a lackey on the top floor of the castle? If the Duke Merzkion has a pazul, I’ll find it.”

“I’m less concerned about the pazul than about who’s locked in the duke’s dungeon,” Darzek said.

“I’ll find that out, too,” Wenz promised.

“Very well. We’ll go together. Riklo can stay here or go back to Southpor.”

She said, still sounding bitter, “As long as the two of you are going—”

“I wouldn’t order any agent to do this,” Darzek said. “When twenty disappear out of twenty, it isn’t difficult to calculate the risk. We don’t even have a simple weapon for self-defense. The Department of Uncertified Worlds is run by nincompoops.”

Riklo held up an amulet she was wearing on a thong about her neck—a carving of the hideous Winged Beast. “These were in the last supply shipment,” she said. “There’s also a carton of stun rifles up there. Primores is finally conceding that we have a problem.”

* * * *

Darzek rushed the preparations. Riklo and Wenz had to return to Southpor to dispose of their nabrula, and he had to acquire another cart and a tandem of nabrula equal to rough rural travel. Certain work had to be performed—in the way of devising hiding places in the cart for their alien equipment—that the agents had to do themselves.

Finally the cart was packed and they were ready to set out—and then Darzek had to suffer a tempestuous and tearful parting from Sajjo, who seemed fiercely jealous of Riklo. They moved south through the province of the Duke Lonorlk, traveling slowly in the manner of itinerant tradesmen, pausing occasionally in a tiny peasant village in the hope of attracting a customer or two, and stopping each night at a wayside forum.

These foul little parks were the rural marts. The peasants came each evening to see what the day’s travel had tossed up there and to shop a little and gossip with neighbors—and to perform religious rites if they chose, for each forum featured a shabby Winged Beast on a pole and a diminutive hump that served as a Mound of the Sun.