Karol hadn’t set any fires in Burkhayden that night. So Karol hadn’t set any fires to cover up his murder of Lowden, so Karol hadn’t murdered Lowden, whether or not it had been Lowden’s name on the Warrant that Karol had been carrying and suddenly Jils was irrationally convinced that it had not been.
Karol had been in a sour mood from the beginning, at Burkhayden, and particularly sour about Lowden — and Koscuisko. It wouldn’t have perturbed Karol out of the ordinary to have an assassination order on Lowden; Jils wouldn’t have minded if the task had been hers to do, not apart from the basic unpleasantness involved.
Karol had been annoyed about Koscuisko. Not at Koscuisko; about Koscuisko. The warrant had been out for Koscuisko. Koscuisko had killed his captain. Karol knew it. Did Koscuisko? Had Koscuisko been so drunk that night that he didn’t remember?
Because if he did — why hadn’t Koscuisko called on the Malcontent to get him out of Jurisdiction altogether, knowing as Koscuisko did the penalty for such a crime? Had that been why Koscuisko had sent the bond-involuntaries ahead —
The room shook again, but only gently this time. It was enough to sharpen Jils’ focus. She’d let herself get distracted, fantasizing.
“Voices,” Koscuisko said.
Jils closed her eyes, her heart full of gratitude; it was a warm feeling, but it hurt. They had been found. They were rescued. They were going to be safe. She could hear the voices too; the impacts that they felt were the containment walls coming away, lifted out of the courier if they couldn’t be re-stowed.
They’d cleared the vector. One of vector traffic control’s emergency response ships had them in its maintenance atmosphere, and was coming through to see what might be left of them.
The voices were coming clearer, closer. From the direction of the wheelhouse, now, and Jils could hear Ise-I’let in the lead. “Through here. Look at this mess. We don’t know — we lost our intership in the explosion, they’d be here, I think — ”
“In here,” Koscuisko called, then coughed. Jils could almost hear him swearing at himself for raising his voice, but it did the trick. In an instant the ruins of the little room were full of rescue workers, lights, Shona Ise-I’let, stumbling across the debris that lay knee-deep on the floor toward where Koscuisko sat with his back up against what was left of the bed.
“Alive,” Ise-I’let gasped, almost sobbed. “Dame Ivers, sir, is she — did she — ”
“Just here,” Koscuisko assured the pilot, gesturing very carefully with his right hand. His right hand had swollen to twice its normal size, his wrist as thick as she imagined his knee might be; not a good thing, for a surgeon, but at least he had been in rest dress when it had happened. Loose cuffs. “Keeping me company. Get the litter. She’s been injured.”
As if he hadn’t been. Koscuisko was a doctor, though, and apparently the rescue team responded to his authority as well; they carried the emergency patient transport over to where she was, and began to stabilize her body to be moved. It wasn’t pleasant. She was still certain that she wasn’t badly hurt, or not badly injured, but that didn’t have a particular relation to the amount of pain it caused to move a muscle.
“Him next,” she told the senior man. “Don’t let him fool you. In worse shape than I am.” But Koscuisko was talking to Ise-I’let, and not listening to her.
“I’m sorry,” Ise-I’let was saying. “Sir. About the knife. She’s gone. No trace of her.”
“What’s that?” Koscuisko asked. His words were a little indistinct because he had his face turned away from her, talking to the pilot. “Knife, what knife?”
Oh. Yes. She remembered. Koscuisko had thrown a knife, and brought the blast walls down to seal the ship. It had saved their lives. It had all happened very, very fast.
“We’ll get Dame Ivers another one.” Koscuisko was sounding increasingly groggy. They were rescued now; they were safe. He could let go. It was a common shock stress reaction, she’d done it many times herself. “Have it inscribed, perhaps.”
The pilot shook his head. “No, sir, your knife. Her. Behind your back. I saw her. You threw the knife, your Excellency, don’t you remember?”
Apparently not. Jils lay very still as the rescue team prepared to move her, listening to what was going on in order to distract her as much as possible from what was about to happen to her.
“She threw the knife,” Koscuisko insisted. “I haven’t thrown any knives. I’d know. I’ve been lying against it for however long it’s been, Shona, I know the feel of an empty sheath and it is not. See for yourself. Go ahead, I have to — sit up — anyway — ”
“Don’t move,” one of the rescue team said, suddenly and firmly. “Your Excellency. You know better than that, sir. Not a twitch. Unless you don’t think we know what we’re doing?”
It was a well-chosen challenge, one medical professional to another, and both accustomed to absolute and immediate obedience in their own areas. Koscuisko apparently surrendered.
“It’s there,” Koscuisko assured Ise-I’let. “It was Ivers who threw the knife. Trust me on this. You’ll see.” Koscuisko was doomed to embarrassment, because Koscuisko was wrong. He’d thrown the knife. She’d seen him. She remembered. She was wearing three knives, not five, though one was at her back.
She had much bigger problems to worry about, and if she was going to live she had to start in on them immediately. “Keep this quiet,” she said to the closest rescuer, a woman who wore rank. “No report to Brisinje. Must reach Brisinje as soon as possible, secured mission. See to it. No word.”
The officer nodded. “Very good, Bench specialist,” the officer said. “You’ll be on your way as soon as we can bring up a new courier. Medical team on stand-by.”
There was nothing more that she could do for now. What had she been thinking, about Koscuisko? That all of the stress unwound on one at once when the pressure was taken off the line? It overwhelmed her in a wave. She was just tired and hurt enough to let it.
###
There was one tile on the table between Rafenkel and Vogel, and Rafenkel stared at it morosely. “Isn’t there any way around this?” she asked. “Any way at all?”
Four days and then some since Vogel had arrived, since their focus had shifted from “anything but confederation” to “is there any way around confederation?” Not long enough. Rafenkel had observed the tiling debates; she had participated in the tiling debates. She could see what the future held in store as well as the next man — or better, from the point of view of her birth-culture, since she wasn’t a man at all but a woman with inherently greater powers of foresight and reasoning.
“Setting aside the issue of crimes that may have been committed,” Vogel said gently. “Even if we placed a team of Bench specialists at Chilleau to help. We’re damned good but we’re not perfect, at least I’m not. How long would it take for partisanship to come between us and the rule of Law? Inequities between Bench specialists at Chilleau running the Bench administration and other Bench specialists, tying Bench specialists to administrative tasks rather than what the Bench chartered us to do — we’re better off with confederated Judiciaries than with Bench specialists trying to do a First Secretary’s job.”
He pushed the tile toward her. His role was to represent Chilleau; he was doing so a little oddly — arguing why they didn’t dare — but the situation was even more odd than it had been. What Brisinje’s First Secretary was going to make of it was anybody’s guess.
She already had most of the other tiles; in terms of the short-term stability of the Bench, of crucial measures of quality of life for average citizens, confederation was better than chaos. And chaos was promised under any other circumstances that she could think of. First Secretary Verlaine could rise from the dead — but that would cause as many problems as it solved, surely.
“No, not quite yet,” she said with an upraised hand, declining to accept the offered tile. She spoke for Sant-Dasidar, or at least she had come here in order to speak for Sant-Dasidar. Vo
gel had introduced Gonebeyond as an element into their joint deliberations. “I’ve got one last thing for you. The Combine. One of the single most aggressive economic forces under Jurisdiction, Vogel, and that’s just because the Bench took their guns away.”
In a manner of speaking. The Dolgorukij Combine had been its own thriving little empire when the Bench had made first contact, and had shown a brisk and blood-thirsty eagerness to absorb the Bench rather than the other way around. That was history. The Bench had demonstrated its overwhelmingly superior firepower and suggested that conquest was simply an inefficient form of trade, which the Bench’s overlordship would enable the Combine to do better.
The Combine had cut its military forces back to its home defense fleet, the Bench had created Sant-Dasidar Judiciary to contain the Combine and the miscellaneous planetary systems that had been next on the shopping list of the Dolgorukij dire-wolf, and they’d sorted well enough together over the years. Until now.
Vogel was waiting for her to continue. “If we confederate, there is no curb on Sant-Dasidar’s ambitions. The Judge is an honorable woman, but the Combine will be moving into Gonebeyond space, Vogel, you know it will. The last time the Dolgorukij landed to develop a market it was on Sarvaw.”
Vogel gestured with the thumbs of his folded hands, as though they were nodding their heads — his thumbtips — in approval. “True enough,” Vogel said. “But that’s not to say good didn’t come of it. Sarvaw forensics are among the best in known Space. All of those mass graves to practice on, and not all of that very old, as collective memories go. Ugh. Never liked those people. Present company excepted, no offense meant, Rafe.”
She had to smile. “None taken. But if we lose a single prevailing voice we lose control of the Combine, at least the Combine in Gonebeyond. These are my people, Vogel. I’m telling you this as a native daughter. It is probably not a good idea to unleash the dogs. It’s almost certainly a bad idea for Gonebeyond itself.”
What he might have said in reply was interrupted, before he could get it out. The talk-alert. Zeman, in the theater, at the master communications console. With seven people they could run two sets of tile-debates, but that meant one person left over with nothing to do and everybody had gotten to feeling that they wanted to know where everybody was at all times.
“Station alert. Incoming from the surface, Specialist Delleroy, alone, confirmed. Arrival in five eighths.”
Delleroy was back. Not a moment too soon. They had to announce a solution; they had to do it publicly and quickly. Any idle speculations about Delleroy’s potential involvement in murder were just that, speculations. First things first.
They had to proceed carefully. If Delleroy was guilty of conspiracy to commit murder it would be a tenth level command termination, and she’d seen the tapes. Koscuisko could hold a man for eight days at the tenth level. The Bench would demand no less.
She hadn’t shared the discussion she’d had with Vogel and the others with anybody who hadn’t been there, three days ago; because it was just speculation and because she had no way of knowing who his accomplices might be, if any.
“We’ll collect in the theater,” Capercoy — who was observing — suggested. “The discussion is tabled on Gonebeyond versus Dolgorukij economic development. Ah, involuntary market development in Gonebeyond. Something like that.”
Their procedure had gotten less formal over time as they’d learnt each others’ strengths and weaknesses. It wasn’t for any lack of sensitivity to the importance of the subject matter, no — quite the contrary.
“Be with you shortly,” Balkney said over the all-station. “Going through the kitchen on the way there.”
Good idea. “And Capercoy away here,” Capercoy said.
Delleroy would have news from the outside. He could tell them what was going on. They could see how he reacted to the news that it was his position that seemed to have the most strength.
Maybe those reactions would tell them everything they needed to know about the suspicions that had arisen as to his role in the murder.
###
Chapter Nineteen
Warring States
“Is that the lot?” Vogel asked Rafenkel as she carried the ninth tile-box into the theater. “Right.” He shut the door. There was no particular reason to shut the door, but it was habit common to them all — Bench specialists closed doors. “I don’t know where you’re going to find room on that table, though.”
It was seven shallow steps down from the upper level to the floor of the theater, seven wide and spacious, carpeted steps. They’d carried Ivers out of here after the incident with the chair perhaps as long as eight days ago and had had no difficulty getting the litter up and out into the corridor.
The table in the middle of the theater, on the lowest level of the floor, was stacked with tile-boxes already — some of them sealed and others not. The lab chairs that had been Ivers’ downfall had been removed; there was no sense in taking any chances. The communications console depended from the far wall, opposite the double doors into the theater, and between it and the table stacked with boxes stood Padrake Delleroy.
He looked a little stressed to Rafenkel, and that was unusual. She didn’t think she’d seen him so grimly determined ever before, and that was unusual too, because Jils Ivers was his friend and had been his lover, but Rafenkel didn’t think that he’d been so visibly harried even after Ivers had fought with Nion and been forced to kill Nion to save her life.
“I spoke to the First Secretary before I came,” Delleroy was saying to Balkney. “I was in a hurry, but he is the First Secretary, and he expected to be heard. We’re asked to announce a decision within the day. He’ll be coming down.”
Rafenkel saw Delleroy’s glance over his shoulder at the console board behind him. One of the schematics there would tell them when someone was coming, so that they could meet the party at the airlock. It was all part of station monitoring.
“How long have we got?” Balkney asked. “You got in what, six hours ago?”
“Yesterday,” Delleroy replied, with a grimace. “It’s taken me this long to brief and clear Chambers. There’s so much going on. We have our work cut out for us.”
She could understand that, Rafenkel thought. They all needed to get out of here and back to work. They were going to, too; maybe not as Delleroy had planned it — if he had planned anything — but they had to get back to the rule of Law and the Judicial order, while there was any of either left.
“Then Tirom’s due any minute now,” Vogel said. “Let’s get started. Who goes first?”
Delleroy closed his eyes and spun around three times, stopping himself with one hand slapped decisively down atop a tile-box. “Here,” Delleroy said. “Who’s this one? Oh. Rafenkel.”
Rafenkel shrugged. It really didn’t matter. Sitting down at the table she opened up the box; there were the tiles she had taken, and the ones that had not been played. Plucking one out of its slot in the box she placed it, face down, into the scanner, and rested the middle finger of her right hand atop its surface while the scanner did its work, comparing her biometric profiles against the information encoded in the chip she’d used to seal it once it had been played.
“Rafenkel,” the scanner announced. “Element four, the cost of infrastructure. Chilleau four. Confederacy three.”
The scanner read to the communications console and the communications console was talking to a secured receiver under Arik Tirom’s personal seal. Capercoy had brought flat-form and stylus, Rafenkel noted, and was marking a grid. She had to smile. Yes. A cross-check was always a good thing to have. She picked up the next tile.
“Rafenkel. Element two, the availability of goods and services for sale. Chilleau five. Cintaro two.”
Not all of her tiles had been played; but there were still a number of them to get through. At least they wouldn’t have to go through Nion’s; Nion was dead, her voice stilled, her tiles inaccessible, and she hadn’t been getting very far anyway.
Cintaro, Fontailloe, Chilleau, confederacy. It went on and on and on. “Tanifer. Element sixteen, productivity in manufacturing. Fontailloe six. Cintaro one.”
When it was Capercoy’s turn Vogel took over Capercoy’s record-keeping, making little sums of tidy figures, setting running totals in tiny script off to one side. Rafenkel watched over his shoulder for a little while: Cintaro dropping rapidly in relation to everybody else, Fontailloe’s position as a losing proposition more and more obvious by the tile, but Chilleau and Confederacy — too close to call, and alternating back and forth on almost every tile.
“Capercoy. Element fifteen, equitable tax burdens. Cintaro four. Chilleau three.”
When Capercoy was finished and Rinpen was done Delleroy reached out for his own tile-box and pulled it toward himself, sitting down at the table with an air of confronting an anxiety-provoking task. He pulled out a tile. “Delleroy. Element twelve, effective population policing and management. Confederacy five, Chilleau two.”
She thought she remembered that one. On the board behind Delleroy’s back the telltales engaged to give notice; somebody was in the lift-car, coming down. She decided against disturbing anybody. It would only be an interruption. They were all tired. They needed to get this over and done with.
“Delleroy. Element eleven, the common weal. Confederacy six. Fontailloe one.”
That sounded a little extreme; was it her imagination — Rafenkel wondered — or did Tanifer frown? Tanifer would remember, though, surely. Tanifer had been there when the tile had been judged and awarded. Who had proctored that discussion? Had it been Nion?
Balkney had noticed the comm console’s message; he caught Zeman’s eye, and nodded toward the doors. Someone was going to have to leave to meet the lift-car and open the airlock, or risk a breach of atmosphere. Delleroy looked up sharply as Balkney and Zeman left the room and closed the door behind them, but he didn’t seem to think about the First Secretary’s impending arrival. He put another tile in the reader, and held it in its place with the tip of his middle finger.
Warring States Page 45
