by neetha Napew
‘My dear Captain, I implied nothing. Your dealings, I believe, were with Captain Fiske. Any disparity in what you were promised and what you eventually obtain should be discussed with him.’
‘You will not attempt to confuse the issue, Luzon. I have spoken to Fiske. He says you encouraged him to employ me to… entertain Colonel Maddock and Madame Algemeine, misleading both him and myself as to their actual value in order to indulge a personal grudge.’
‘I deny that. There was never any personal feeling of animosity towards either lady on my part, despite the physical and professional injuries they caused me.
I have simply been using rather unorthodox contacts to force an issue on which I feel the Company has prematurely relinquished their rights. You understand, dear Captain, that the harvesters from the Asian Esoteric and Exotic Company, the shuttle service and other fruits of the publicity I have arranged for Terraform B have simply been in the nature of covering my bets, you might say, in case you failed, as you obviously have.’
‘That’s a double-cross in my book, Luzon. I’m going to have to dispose of my passengers.’
No more interfering Algemeine? No more self-righteous Yanaba Maddock? Matthew couldn’t conceal his smile as he said, ‘You must do as you see fit, Captain.’
Ending the transmission, Yana switched off the shuttle’s comunit and the holo-image of Louchard. Sean had stationed himself with the other witnesses beyond the viewfield of the screen and now stepped forward. He put his hand on her shoulder, then leaned down to gently kiss her cheek. Marmion Algemeine and Farringer Ball, only just graduated from the hover-chair, looked extremely grim. Even Dr von Clough appeared vastly upset.
Whittaker Fiske, whom Johnny Greene had summoned from Intergal Station to witness the transmission, was terribly shaken. Clodagh, uncomfortable in the shuttle’s space-conserving seat, sat between Whit and Farringer Ball. She handed Whit a square of cloth and he mopped his eyes and blew his nose before speaking in a choked voice.
‘I knew Torkel was wrong-headed about Petaybee and had a grudge against Yana, but I would never have believed this of him if I hadn’t heard it for myself.’ He turned tormented eyes to Clodagh. ‘I wish the planet had done to him what it did to those pirates and Metaxos before he debased himself in this fashion. Deliberately contacting a pirate to abduct all of you!’ Whittaker shook his head, unable to look the victims in the eye as he waved at the empty comscreen.
Clodagh patted his hand. ‘Your son’s been a grown man for years, Whit. You can only raise ‘em, not straitjacket them. As far as his initiation to Petaybee, Sean and I shielded you both then because we didn’t want you to be blasted like those others. We were wrong, I guess, but we knew you were off-worlders and you didn’t understand. We wanted you to have as gentle a conversion as possible so you’d understand how it could be. We didn’t want you, or him, to get culled. We should have just let Petaybee sort him out.’
‘I guess so,’ Whit said. ‘Though that should have been my responsibility. I should have pulled Torkel up about some of his earlier escapades. If he hadn’t got away with them he’d never have tried something of this magnitude. But I felt there was good stuff in the boy. I never thought…’ He sighed, resigned, his normal ebullience dead.
The others were quiet for a moment, then there was a knock at the open hatch and Adak stood there with Faber Nike.
‘Here’s the gent you was expectin’, Ms Marmion, come to take you home.’ Adak looked up Nike’s large frame, apparently satisfied that this man was appropriate for that task.
‘If you will excuse us?’ Marmion said to the others. Yana willingly relinquished her pilot’s seat to Faber. ‘I have arrangements to make for the CIS court to be moved to Petaybee and an incriminating recording to deliver. Faber, the Louchard holo and certain representatives of law and order have a rendezvous to keep with a pirate ship. Oh, and would you all have any use for a spare space-worthy vessel?’ Her smile was definitely mischievous as she glanced round.
‘What do you mean?’ Yana asked, not certain if Marmion could pull off that sort of stunt.
‘Well, the ship will be forfeit, but I think the authorities might just consider it a just compensation for the inconvenience, harassment, outrage, and indignities of a false incarceration of Petaybean citizens?’
‘You were kidnapped, too,’ Yana said while Sean chuckled.
‘Ah, yes, but I have my own ship and Petaybee could certainly profit by having its own navy.’
‘A shuttle and a spacer?’ Sean said, grinning. ‘I think we might even go into the transport business…” When he heard Clodagh’s exasperated snort, he held up his hand and added, ‘Of course, there will be a strict enforcement of immigration - to keep the undesirable element from landing on our native soil.’
‘An eminently sensible and honourable career for a piratical vessel,’ said Namid, who had been sitting quietly behind Marmion. He rose now and took her hand. ‘Return soon.’
She gave him a lingering glance and a saucy smile. ‘Oh, I will. I certainly will.’ Then she dimpled at Yana and Sean. ‘But I’ll send the ship back as soon as I can talk the authorities into it.’
‘What do you mean?’ Dr Matthew Luzon demanded imperiously of the three officials who had presented themselves at his main office on Potala. ‘I’m under arrest? For what crime, might I ask?’
‘Fraudulent misrepresentation, illegal transport licensing, accessory after the fact in an instance of kidnapping’
‘Oh, now come off it,’ Matthew said, cutting off the charges with an irate wave of his hand. ‘That is utterly outrageous…” He caught sight of his new chief assistant trying to get his attention. ‘Well, what is it, Dawtrey?’
‘Sir, they’ve been through the legal department and the arrest is legal and not a single loophole that can be challenged…’
‘Preposterous.’
‘Dr Matthew Luzon, you will accompany us to the court which has issued this warrant to answer the charges, forthwith and immediately,’ the officer in charge of the deputation said in such a pompous tone that Luzon laughed.
‘We’ll see about this,’ he threatened and depressed a toggle to summon his security staff.
‘Sir, sir, Dr Luzon,’ his chief assistant said, pumping his hand in the air with the urgency of a schoolchild in desperate need of relieving himself,’ the matter has been seen to, before we’d even permit them to interrupt you.’
‘And?’ Luzon stood up, to give the three-man deputation the full force of his imposing stature and personality.
‘They are acting quite within the scope of their duties and you really will have to go with them.’
‘I, Dr Matthew Luzon, interrupt a busy schedule to appear in a minor court?’
‘It’s a major court, sir,’ the assistant said, ‘and Legal says you have no option but to accompany them without protest or…’
‘… A charge of resisting arrest will also be levied against you, Dr Luzon.’
The senior official, expressionless though his face was, did seem, in Luzon’s estimation, to be enjoying his duties far more than he had any right to. The very idea that officials could barge into his office, interrupt his work day when he had an entire planet to set to rights, was preposterous. And yet, the atmosphere was rife with barely concealed emotions, almost ‘menacing’ in the tension.
A discreet tap on his door, which his senior secretary hastened to open, resulted in the view of his entire legal staff, assembled in the outer room. Peltz, the senior adviser, caught Luzon’s eye and gave him a quick nod of the head. Luzon took that to mean that they had everything under control and this risible situation would soon be a rather bad taste in his mouth.
‘Very well, gentlemen, if that is the order of the court, as a law-abiding citizen of this galaxy, I submit.’ There was nothing at all submissive about Dr Matthew Luzon as he smartly passed his would-be captors on his way to the corridor and to the personal vehicle which should be waiting at his level to transport him.
Nor was he at all reassured to discover that the plaintiff who had levelled these charges against him was none other than the Secretary General of Intergal, Farringer Ball, and that the warrant had originated from Intergal’s Petaybean installation.
‘The planet’s corrupting everyone,’ he shouted as he was led off to a holding cell. The last glimpse he had of his well-paid, highly trained and motivated legal department were their slightly bemused expressions. Bemused at his expense.
Nor was his incarceration in any way mitigated by the fact that he was led past a cell containing Captain Torkel Fiske who was sitting in abject dejection on the spartan bed of the accommodation.
‘Fiske? What’s the meaning of this?’
‘Now, now, sor,’ said the senior officer hurrying him to the next section of the prison and his own quarters, ‘no talking. That’s not allowed to prisoners on remand.’
What Torkel Fiske could not figure out was how he had been implicated in the Algemeine-Maddock-Rourke-Metaxos kidnappings. Unless, of course, Captain Louchard had been captured and had taken revenge on what he considered to be Torkel’s perfidy by deciding to turn Galactic-evidence to gain a reduced sentence. Kidnapping demanded a fate far worse than death - imprisonment in a space capsule which was then released beyond the heliopause of the local star system with sufficient oxygen to keep the criminal alive long enough to regret both crime and life.
Some took as long as weeks to suffocate, depending on the amount of oxygen supplied, and there was no legal amount specified so there was no way of knowing how long you would keep on breathing. If you were claustrophobic, maybe you went mad first. If you had agoraphobia, the torture would be equally severe. No-one had ever been rescued.
Torkel had managed to get a message off to his father although he wasn’t sure if that would do any good. Why, his father might even have told the officials where to find him: Whittaker was scrupulous about obeying the law and Marmion was an old and valued associate.
What Torkel had counted on was Captain Louchard’s piratical expertise as well as an ignorance of the Gentlepersons’ Agreement regarding being kidnapped. There hadn’t been an abduction of someone of Marmion de Revers Algemeine’s social prominence in so many years that the Pact was no longer common knowledge. Besides, Torkel would have been happy enough with the abduction of the minor personalities, to pay back Yana, and indirectly Sean, as well as those obnoxious kids. Caveat emptor! Even a pirate should know where to draw the line in dastardly deeds.
Odd, if Louchard was responsible for Torkel’s arrest, that there had been nothing on the net reports about the capture of pirate and crew. That would have given Torkel sufficient warning to make for parts unknown and to undergo a complete identity change. He’d some tentative plans made in that direction but he’d been taken so by surprise that he hadn’t had a chance to put them into use. He’d opened his door and there they were!
And the complaint had originated not from Dama Marmion de Revers Algemeine but Farringer Ball. That didn’t make much sense to Torkel Fiske who had last seen Farringer Ball on a screen at SpaceBase in Petaybee. And the man was physically on that wretched iceberg now. How under the suns had he managed to end up there? Of all places in the civilized galaxy!
The sight of Matthew Luzon also in custody did nothing to relieve Torkel’s sense of impending doom and, as if expecting his movements to be shortly confined in a space coffin, he began to pace the cell. Small as it was, he could still walk about it. Three paces up and three paces back and two back and forth… and if he went too fast, he cracked his shins on the hard plastic edge of the built-in bed or slammed his toes against the slab wall.
The Jenny-, now registered as the Curlycom, with new papers and no history before its recommissioning and complete overhaul, made her ‘maiden’ landing at SpaceBase with a shipment of plumbing units, temporary housing units (though none as fancy as the Nabatira Cubes although adequate for the Petaybean climate), and other ‘mod cons’ which most inhabitants of the Galaxy took for granted but which sent the happy recipients on Petaybee into raptures. An accompanying note delivered by the captain, Petaybean-born Declan Doyle, newly commissioned and still stunned by his promotion and good fortune, indicated that the shipments had been purchased with the rewards for the return of many valuable and priceless items found on board the ship when she had been stopped, boarded and her crew placed in custody.
One arrival among the others particularly pleased Sister Igneous Rock. It was a collection of texts on the theories and principles behind the application and installation of geo-thermal and hydro-electric power, the English translation from the original Icelandic, dating from several centuries before. Sister Igneous Rock discussed the windfall with Brother Shale, then on every subsequent day, she could be found at the communion cave reading bits aloud and afterwards asking pertinent questions.
‘What do you think? Would that work well here? Could you do a channel here and here, and still meet your other commitments? This wouldn’t hurt, would it?’
She kept a log of her research, enquiries and the planet’s responses and was compiling a list for Sean, Yana and ultimately Madame Algemeine of equipment that would eventually be needed to assist the planet in its first venture into co-operative technology. Her intense contact with the planet considerably reduced her awe of it, but although it lost its godlike stature as a result, the planet, considering and collaborating with her for the welfare of its inhabitants, never stopped being ‘beneficent’ in her mind.
The first out-bound voyage was to deliver to the Intergal Station the sixty survivors of the Asian Esoteric and Exotic Company whose unauthorized presence on Petaybee was adversely regarded by Intergal and CIS. Intergal tried to evade the responsibility but Petaybean officials were perfectly within their rights to return the illegal aliens to their previous port of call. Their employers had been notified to collect the stranded men and women.
The in-bound voyage was a joyous occasion, for Petaybean citizens had invited specialists in many fields to return home to provide the skills needed to develop its potential. They came willingly and with songs about how they would help Petaybee, how and where they would live, how well their children would live where the air was clear and clean, if cold, and where they could walk again with pride that they had been born on a world that knew exactly what it wanted.
The official CIS meeting was convened in the architecturally astonishing Arrivals Hall of Petaybee Space Facility - designed by Oscar O’Neill from the bits and pieces which Intergal had not thought salvageable and some remarkable local materials donated by the planet itself. O. O. had terminated his employment with Nabatira Cubes in order to devote the rest of his life to learning about the O’Neill clan and adapting many long-held construction notions to Petaybean needs and materials.
Farringer Ball, looking fit with a winter-tanned skin and now walking without aids, was the Chairperson.
Although he still tired easily, he had obviously recovered his zest for living and banged the opening gavel with a firm hand.
Phon Tho Anaciliact, thoroughly enchanted by what had been accomplished so speedily, was there as the senior representative of his organization.
Admiral General Touche Segilla-Dove had arrived in his impressive gig with his aides and other service personnel since that arm of Galactic Management always had to have a say in such matters. Though, one orbit of his gig, with all its sophisticated sensors and investigative devices, had proved that Petaybee was in fact totally unprotected. One had to discount its navy of one ship and one medium-sized shuttle sporting the Petaybean arms of an orange cat couchant and a curlycorn rampant, both on an ice floe in the middle of what appeared to be a cave. One spacer and one shuttle could not constitute any threat to galactic peace and stability. The planet had only the one space facility if you could find it in the blizzards
.
Admiral General Segilla-Dove might not quite believe that the planet was itself a sentient being but its spokespersons certainly were. And if they claimed to be speaking on its behalf after serious and deep consultations, that was fine by him. A planet held to an orbit around its primary - that was a scientific fact - and was therefore unlikely to go about the Galaxy fomenting rebellion and upsetting the status quo.
What he did find exceedingly odd was the bald statement that the planet was listening to every word said in these proceedings and that that was why the walls of the Arrivals Hall appeared to alter in pattern and colour, and why the floor occasionally sent wisps of mist to curl about one’s uniformed trouser legs.
The two alien members of the Commission a Hepatode in its globe with the transcorder bobbing up and down the circumference and a Deglatite, shielded from the eyes of the Imperfect by its carapace - were acknowledged by Farringer Ball.
He began by expressing regret that the members of the CIS had been delayed in the performance of this duty by his own physical illness but he hoped they would appreciate the visit to this newest Sentient.
The witnesses were then called, one after another, to give evidence to the sentience of the entity on which they all stood. Clodagh Senungatuck was first and spoke quietly and authoritatively.
Doctor von Clough, who had assisted her throughout the treatment of Farringer Ball and that of the casualties from the South as well as Dinah O’Neill, testified to the tremendous healing potential of Petay-bee. He said, however, that much study would need to be done before it could be determined which elements of Petaybean therapy could be isolated from the milieu and used off-planet. Meanwhile, he would seek permission to transport certain of his patients to Petaybee for therapy similar to that which had been used to rehabilitate Farringer Ball.
