The D’neeran Factor (57 page)

“The Master of Chaos disappeared, and Piore builded again. He chose a place by a beautiful river, but consulted Authority first. He made a fine foundation and the beauty of his home was remarkable, and it endured through quake and windstorm, and all came there and were happy.

“Yet finally Piore died; and the Master of Chaos came, and signified amusement. So it is until this minute!”

Rubee made a quick motion of the feet that meant he was finished. Hanna mentally assigned the tale to the category she had begun to think of as “the dark stories” and did not ask for interpretation. She was not in a mood to hear how Chaos always got the last word. She only said politely, “Thank you for your fine telling.”

“It is now ours,” Rubee said graciously.

“Yes. Well.” Hanna pulled herself to her feet. “Now there are friends I promised to call. Later we will feed, and later sleep. We have a busy morrow.”

“I wish,” Awnlee said wistfully, “we had not to address your colleagues. I am weary of speeches.”

“Me too…” Hanna reached for a light and was shocked when her fingers did not at once remember where the control was. Then they did, and the room was bright. For a second the outer wall reflected all of them, before the house damped the image to transparency: the aliens with their changing hands, bundled against the cool air, so like in appearance that one might have been a reflection of the other, except that age had altered one; and the slight human being, dark and blue-eyed, looking about as if she were the stranger here.

“I would like to see the waterfall you love so much, and the sea you love to walk beside. And your sib-selfings, no, your ‘family,'” Awnlee said with increasing enthusiasm. “And, oh, the beasts on whose backs you learned to ride nearby, which are beautiful through your eyes. Must we have speeches?”

Hanna was very fond of Awnlee. She looked at him with affection and said, “My dear friend, I'm afraid we must. The university program here is me, or I am it, at least sometimes I think so. Anyway it's here and important because of me. They would never forgive me if we didn't go.”

“But I will show you all of my world when we go there!”

“Well, I will show you as much of this one as I can. But I think it cannot be as beautiful to you as your own.”

“Perhaps,” Rubee said. “But remember the Journey of Nlatee,” he added, and looked at her sharply.

Hanna knew that one, and signified amusement properly.

*   *   *

The order had all the frills and flourishes at the beginning that the administrators of the Interworld Polity could wish. Underneath the frills there was a line specifying that the order had been issued by the Director of the Department of Alien Relations and Contact. The document looked official, but it was only a draft. It said: “The following personnel will report on the schedule shown to Level 14,
Conference Room A.” That was innocuous; it gave nothing away. The schedule that followed was a long one. It stretched over three weeks, and assigned dates and times for one hundred and fifty names.

Commissioner Edward Vickery scrolled through the list. His mouth was screwed up with distaste. He said, “You can't do this, Starr.”

“Why not?” said the Contact director, who had written the order.

“Probes of this many people? With no legitimate reason? They've all got clearance for the Uskosian project, they've all been investigated—you have to have evidence to justify a probe, Starr.
Each
probe, on an individual basis. And what have you got for justification?—one unconfirmed rumor. No. I don't know why you even brought me this.”

The Contact director said, “Your authority might carry sufficient weight. And think of the consequences if the rumor, as you call it, is true.”

“It isn't. It can't be.”

“What if it is?”

Vickery looked up from the moving script, exasperated. He preferred to be tactful with Starr Jameson, but it was not easy. Vickery was Heartworld's representative to the Coordinating Commission of the Interworld Polity. Seven years ago the man on the other side of his desk had held that high positon, and left it, if not quite in disgrace, at least under duress, to accept the directorship of the then-new Contact department. The Commissioner from Heartworld also was chairman of the Commission's Committee on Alien Relations, so Vickery had inherited that from Jameson, too, and with it hegemony over Contact and Jameson himself. Jameson had never said to Vickery:
I ought to be still in your place.
But maybe he thought it.

Vickery said, “When I say you can't do this, I mean literally that you can't get away with it. Mass probes are a rights violation on the face of it, not to mention a gross breach of protocol. There would be an appeal to the Commission and you wouldn't have a hope. Don't try it.”

Jameson did not answer at once. He was a master of the uses of silence; Vickery knew that, and resolved not to speak first. The list of times and names finished its passage and went dark. It was summer in southeastern Namerica on
Earth, and the morning sun shone placidly on the river that ran by Vickery's office; this room also had once been Jameson's. The water came to the very edge of the room, its whisper the only sound.

Jameson said finally, “There is something you should see. Tap into my office files.”

“I don't have much time, Starr.”

“It isn't long.” Jameson began to recite a string of codes.
Humor him,
Vickery thought, and entered the sequence in his desktop. “Holo,” Jameson added. Vickery made an adjustment and there were flickers of darkness in the center of the room: moving shadows of roughly human shape. Jameson swiveled to watch them.

Vickery said, “What's wrong? I can't make it out.”

“The figure on the left is an Intelligence and Security undercover operative on Valentine. The one on the right is an informant. The visual and vocal patterns have been scrambled to protect their identities. Listen.”

“—satisfactory?” the shadow on the left said. The voice was metallic.

“All right. I guess. Not exactly getting rich.”

“Come up with something good.”

“That was good, wasn't it? The…connection?”

Vickery said, “What?”

“A name,” Jameson said. “Censored.”

The agent said, “We had it from another source. Give me something new.”

“All right, here's something, you'll like this. Somebody knows where the bird will fly.”

The agent said after a minute, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“What's that mean?”

“The
Bird. Far-Flying Bird,
the aliens' ship. Somebody's interested in how it gets home. It's carrying value, isn't it? I think: hijack.”

“You're spaced.”

“All I know is what I hear.”

“You must've heard wrong. Can't intercept a ship in Inspace flight, not even in the realspace interludes. Too many variables. Ship's computers can't predict on the mark where a Jump brings it out. Much less an outsider. Takes time to home in, gives a target time to get away.”

“What I hear. Anyway it's been done. Man right here on Valentine did it.”

“That was different,” said the agent. “That was a trick. Nobody's going to fall for that again.”

“So you won't pay me?”

“No bonus. Not for that. Get me more.”

Jameson's deep voice cut into the conversation. “The rest is just haggling. Turn it off.”

Vickery touched a switch and the figures were gone. Jameson said, “Suppose it is true. Suppose the Uskosian vessel's course program for the return flight has been, or can be, tapped in detail, so that interception is possible. Would you care to explain to the Uskosians how their envoys died on the way home?”

Vickery said, “What if somebody just wants to get to Uskos before a diplomatic party does? One of the non-Polity worlds. An alien alliance is the kind of thing they'd think of on Nestor.”

Jameson said, “The risk is negligible. Uskos is a sophisticated society. The difficulties for Nestor would be insurmountable, with or without the presence of the envoys and Hanna ril-Koroth. I am concerned with the cargo, the gift, the treasure the
Bird
will carry. It is enormously valuable. The rumor that has come to the attention of I&S came from criminal circles. I think the issue is the material value of the
Bird's
cargo. I&S even has a likely name—the name of the man the informant referred to. Do you want to know what it is?”

A red light began to blink on Vickery's desk. He was overdue for an appointment. “Later, Starr.”

“Do you remember the piracy of the
Pavonis Queen
twenty Standard years ago?”

Vickery shook his head impatiently. Jameson said, “It carried a fortune in negotiable currencies of all sorts under the terms of the Colonial Credit Standardization Agreement of ST 2822. Its course was known, or was supposed to have been known, only to a few of the highest-ranking officials of the Polity. Nonetheless the
Queen
was intercepted, and all the monies stolen. The perpetrators were never formally identified. The man believed to be responsible was never charged. I&S has mentioned him in connection with the supposed accessibility of the
Bird
's course.”

“I have to go.”

“His name is Michael Kristofik. He lives on Valentine, and he has been a very rich man since the
Pavonis Queen
incident. The
Bird
's cargo would appeal to him.”

“Is I&S in favor of this mass probe?”

“Of course.”

“They would be. But I tell you anyway—you can't do it. Think of something else. Alter the program.”

“The Uskosians will not alter it.”

“Have you asked them?”

“I have not. But I have read all Hanna's reports. I do not think they will alter it.”

“Ask them!”

“Naturally,” Jameson said. He got up without warning and went to the door. When he got to it he turned around and said, “All the same, they won't.”

Vickery supposed Jameson was right. Usually, infuriatingly, he was.

*   *   *

Coming down through the great sky the planet looked like any other world where humans could breathe the air. It might have been Valentine, it might have been Earth—but Michael Kristofik, looking out the nose of the sporting yacht
Golden Girl,
automatically corrected the thought. He didn't go to Earth any more. He could never go there again.

The name of this world was Carrollis, and it was not safe for offworlders. That was not because of natural hazards, but because of the colonists. The name of the planet's only town was Town. Carrollis produced furs, brilliant blue, poisonous green, flaming gold; the fauna were colorful there. The skins of hard-hunted amphibians, splotched with color, dazzling, decorated the richest women in human space.

There was no government. Governments meant taxes, and the colonists did not tolerate taxes.

If you went to Town on the night of Market Day you went armed, and everybody went; tonight Michael Kristofik did, too. He did not worry about danger. He was tall and broad-shouldered and visibly armed, and he was not alone. He went through Town asking questions with two people at his back. The fair young man with the uncertain face might not be much protection, but the woman was something else. Like Michael she carried a stunner, but her hand kept going
to the butt and she caressed it sensuously. There was a glitter in her eyes that made men look away.

Michael was looking for a man called Prissy. He wasn't hard to find.

Prissy ran the only sensory all-around in Town. On Market Day the shows were continuous and Prissy packed them in, the hunters and the trappers and the offworld buyers, so the whole-sense bubble a man occupied might overlap his neighbor's and the edges of the scene and the sound were blurred, the smells and the tastes and the pressures on the skin got mixed up. The shows in the morning were not so bad, sex and skin in tired old patterns, old as video. They got rougher as the day went on. By nightfall on Market Day every trader and trapper in Town was spaced and flying, there were no more restraints, and some of them liked to watch recorded death.

Prissy took hard money or barter for payment, either way. He kept the skins locked away in the most sophisticated vault Polity technology could provide. He liked to count the cash, though, especially on Market Day, when it poured in. He counted it in a locked room behind the all-around, where a window that from the other side looked like a wall let him monitor the sensory generators running the show.

On the night of this Market Day he counted his money while the show went on. He did not look at the video monitor, but he heard the sounds: screeches and moans and sometimes a shout, rattles, screams. It was a new show. Not all the performers in it had survived it, neither the women nor the men, and they had died in peculiar ways. While the taped agonies played out, Prissy counted his money and a girl sat at his side and watched. She was a child on the edge of adolescence, very fair and pretty. Her face was bruised and she was sulking. Her name was Lise.

Something hit the door from outside and then it fell in without much noise, not enough for the crowd behind the other wall to notice. Prissy had a disruptor in his hand before it finished falling, but there were three of them running in, two men and a woman, and he didn't decide fast enough who to aim for first. He fell over his money, stunned. The girl was out a second later.

They laid Prissy out like a dead man. The fair man unstrapped
a case from his waist and took out instruments. He began to feed a yellow liquid through a tube into Prissy's right arm. The woman glanced at a monitor, where numbers were superimposed on the action. She looked at the convulsed bodies without expression and focused on the numbers. “Twenty minutes,” she said, and set herself to face the broken doorway, stunner at full power. Dark hair licked with bronze, taut body cased in black: her face might have been carved in stone.