FORTUNE'S LIGHT

by Michael Jan Friedman

  Wes filled them in as best he could. And, no surprise to Geordi, he’d done a pretty thorough job of researching the matter.

  “Interesting,” observed the chief engineer.

  “That’s what Data said.”

  “Data?” echoed Geordi.

  “So much for Priority One secrecy,” said Guinan. Wesley shook his head ruefully. “No need for concern. The mission’s still a secret.” He sighed. “I still can’t figure out what Commander Riker’s doing down there. I mean, I was doing pretty good until I spoke with Data, but since then I haven’t made any headway at all.”

  “Is that the reason for the long face?” Guinan asked.

  The boy looked at her. “Not exactly.” He paused, then turned to Geordi again. “I guess I’m a little worried.”

  “Worried?” said the chief engineer. “About Commander Riker?” He dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. “Listen, Wes, if there’s one thing I’ve learned since shipping out on the Enterprise, it’s that Will Riker can take care of himself.”

  Wesley frowned. “Normally, I’d agree with you. But studying their history . . . under that veneer of civilization, the Imprimans can be a pretty tough bunch. Especially during carnival time.”

  Guinan leaned forward across the bar. Her bar, Geordi couldn’t help but think. “Is there something in particular that’s got you worried, Wes?”

  The boy’s expression suggested he was reciting from something he’d memorized. “During the carnival,” he said, “the influx of foreign elements into normally placid Besidia drives the mortality rate up more than two hundred percent. Street violence—including certain forms of dueling permitted by law—is the most common cause of death.”

  “Statistics,” said Geordi. “Never yet met one I liked.”

  Wesley looked at him and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I am taking it too seriously. It’s just that I’ve got this feeling . . .”

  Geordi clasped his shoulder and gave it a reassuring shake. “Take it from me, Ensign. Whatever’s going on down there, it’s nothing Commander Riker can’t handle.”

  Wesley regarded him and nodded. “You’re probably right,” he conceded.

  “I’m definitely right,” said the chief engineer. “Trust me on this one.”

  Chapter Seven

  RIKER HAD HEARD ABOUT the Maze of Zondrolla on his first visit to Imprima—as in “You really should see the maze while you’re here. Just make sure to go in with a guide; otherwise, we may never see you again.”

  The maze had been built on the heights overlooking Besidia by the first official of Madraga Porfathas, to please a wife some twenty years his junior. The young woman, whose name was Zondrolla, was inordinately fond of puzzles—especially children’s puzzles—and it was her husband’s greatest delight to present her with one she had never seen before. Toward this end, he sent his retainers ranging across the face of Imprima, searching every last pawnshop and gallery, every warehouse and museum.

  As time passed, of course, it became harder and harder to find a gimcrack or doodad that would make Zondrolla’s eyes light up. After all, how many puzzles could there be in the world? So the first official got smart—or so he thought. He stopped looking and started building. And by the time the dust cleared, he had built Zondrolla a prodigious maze—a puzzle she could actually set foot in herself, and one it would take her a lifetime to tire of.

  Zondrolla, the story goes, was delighted. As a result, so was her husband—until the bills for the maze started coming in. Not too much later, Porfathas—hardly one of the more stable madraggi to begin with—went belly up bankrupt, and its holdings were eagerly divided among its rivals.

  Worse—for the first official—Zondrolla wasn’t cut out for poverty. When the madraga lost its wealth, she ran away with one of the builders who’d grown wealthy constructing the maze.

  The structure itself was allowed to stand, as a reminder of what might happen when one put one’s personal interests before those of the madraga. Some four hundred years later, it remained a monument to their foolishness.

  And the warnings about getting lost in it? Actually, Riker had found them a bit exaggerated. The walls were marked at intervals with indelible color coding so that one could find one’s way in and out. Patterns in red and yellow took one closer to the heart of the maze; green and purple guided one to an exit. Quite a dependable system, once one got used to it.

  The lower level was a little trickier. One needed a portable light source to see the colors on the walls. What was more, the corridors—tunnels, really—were narrower and more confusing than those above. The air was cold and dank, and there seemed to be too little of it, and every now and then something not entirely wholesome skittered by. So if one was prone to fits of nervousness, one was better off staying on the upper level and not venturing below ground at all.

  In any case, the worst parts of both levels were inaccessible—blocked off by stone-support collapses during an earthquake a century or so ago. When Riker’s acquaintances suggested he visit the maze, those weren’t the sections they’d had in mind.

  “Damn,” said Lyneea, her eyes hard and glittery in the bright sunlight. “This place is even bigger than I remembered.”

  They stood before the maze’s south entrance—or exit, depending on how one looked at it—the closest one to the slope they’d ascended to get here.

  Actually, there were two entrances in front of them, as there would have been wherever they tried to get in. That was just the way the maze had been designed.

  “Are you sure about this, Riker?” Lyneea’s breath froze and billowed on the air. “Are you certain you want to spend the time required to search this thing—on the word of some nameless, faceless ascetic?”

  He nodded. “I’m sure.”

  Lyneea didn’t think much of the idea of searching the maze. If she’d had another lead, even a tenuous one, she would have refused to trudge up here. Riker was certain of that.

  But of course, she didn’t have another lead, so she came along, grumbling at each and every opportunity. Apparently she saw this moment as her last chance to make her feelings known, and she wasn’t about to pass it up.

  “You’re not going to listen to reason, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  Lyneea sighed. She considered the dual-entrance setup. “All right. Which one?”

  “This one,” said Riker. He indicated the one on the right.

  They entered. Immediately the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. With the gray walls of the maze rising five to six meters from the ground, the sun’s rays couldn’t quite reach them, and Riker shivered. He could feel his mustache crusting up with ice.

  And this was only the upper level.

  He looked around. Ahead, on the right, he spotted a dash of color. Approaching it, he saw how little of the horizontal bar was purple and how much of it was green. It was just as it should have been—exactly the kind of symbol he’d expected to see near an entrance.

  It was reassuring to know his memory was working so well. Wrapping his cloak more tightly about him, Riker followed the curve of the stone passageway.

  There wasn’t room for them to walk side by side, but Lyneea was only a step or two behind him. He noted that she’d stopped grumbling, at least.

  It was unlikely that Teller Conlon would have hidden the seal—or himself, for that matter—in one of the unobstructed passages. Hardly anyone ever visited the maze during carnival time, but why would he take a chance of being found by a casual stroller, especially when the collapsed sections offered so much more in the way of seclusion?

  So they concentrated their efforts on the areas ruined by the earthquake. They scraped and clawed their way past fallen rocks and rubble, lowered themselves into wells of darkness with only their beamlights for illumination, dug like moles into hard ground that looked as if it might have been disturbed with a shovel or something similar.

  And came up empty.

  It was frustrating as hell, and
Lyneea finally said so. “This is ridiculous, Riker. We would need every retainer in Madraga Criathis to comb this place effectively.”

  Her words echoed slightly. Or was that some crawling thing making its exit, disturbed by the sound?

  He thought about Norayan and shook his head. “We’ve got to keep this under wraps.” The sunlight was receding steadily up the stones. Outside, it had to be approaching sunset. “Look, let’s get as far as we can. If we don’t find anything, we can come back tomorrow and search again.”

  “You come back,” said Lyneea. “I’ve had it with this burrowing. Somewhere in Besidia, there’s a real lead, and we’re not getting any closer to it by playing with rocks.”

  Riker felt a gobbet of anger rise into his throat. “All right,” he said, surprising himself with the calm in his voice. “I’ll pursue this by myself.” And he walked on ahead.

  “You’ve been duped,” called his partner, standing her ground. “We’ve been duped. The robed one deceived us, Riker—can’t you see that? She sent us up here to throw us off. Who knows? Maybe Conlon hired her.”

  He kept walking. The passage turned abruptly to the left, and he followed it. Lyneea’s voice followed him.

  “Damn it, Riker! What makes you so sure that beggar knew anything? Just tell me that, will you?”

  He couldn’t—he’d already said so. Up ahead there was some debris. Evidence of another collapse—a small one?

  The sound of Lyneea’s boots scraping on the floor. “Don’t walk away while I’m talking to you, Riker. Who in the name of ten thousand credits do you think you are?”

  Arriving at the brink of the cave-in, he knelt and peered into the blackness, then took out his beamlight and activated it.

  “I thought we were partners,” rasped Lyneea. She was coming up behind him—and fast. “That implies some kind of trust, don’t you think? Some duty to let the other partner know what in blazes is going on?”

  The beam sliced open the hole’s black belly. At first glance, there was nothing—the same nothing they’d found in all the other holes they’d slithered through. He moved the light around.

  “Chits and whispers, Riker. At least have the decency to look at me. I mean, I—”

  He must have gasped then. Or shouted. That’s what he told himself later. At the time, however, he wasn’t aware of having done either. The blood was pounding too hard in his ears, like a heavy surf thundering on a rocky beach.

  Ice blue eyes, staring unflinchingly at the light. High cheekbones, a cleft chin. The reddish blond hair that had become its owner’s trademark.

  Teller. No . . .

  He played the beam over his friend’s features again and again. Hoping that what he saw was only an illusion, a trick of the way the rocks had come to rest on one another, and if he looked at them long enough, he’d find a way out of the nightmare. . . .

  Finally it was Lyneea’s voice, coming from over his shoulder, that made the reality of it congeal and hold fast: “Damn it, Riker, it’s him.”

  Even then his impulse was to deny it—if not Teller’s presence here, then the fact that he was dead. Clamping the beamlight between his teeth, he began to descend into the pit.

  “Careful, Riker. Careful, I said. Blazes, there’s no need to hurry like that. He’s beyond your help.”

  But Riker wasn’t buying it. He lowered himself by hanging on to a flat rock that had fallen across the opening until he was suspended directly above a short slope of gravel and detritus. Then he dropped, landed on all fours, and slid and crab-walked his way down to the bottom to where Teller lay—open-mouthed as if in surprise, eyes like jewels in the flickering, unsteady light. Unsteady, Riker realized, because he was trembling, and the beamlight was trembling along with him.

  Teller was pale, terribly pale. There should have been at least a wisp of breath twisting up from between his lips; there wasn’t. Riker took off a glove and felt his friend’s neck: there was no pulse.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, where he could still think clearly, where the thing he confronted had not spread its pollution, Riker heard the stones grind on the debris-covered escarpment. Lyneea had followed him into the pit.

  “Are you all right?” she asked him.

  “Fine,” he told her. The word came out of him, anyway. He wasn’t sure how or from where, but it came out.

  He touched the pallid brow, cold as the stones. Shut the obscenely gawking eyes.

  Teller, Teller, Teller.

  He had to accept it now; the evidence was only inches from his face. He had to embrace the truth.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  He forced himself to turn around, to look at her. He saw her eyes screw up a little as she looked back.

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  And he was. He could feel the horror leaching out of him into the clammy cold of the pit. He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his bare hand.

  Lyneea’s expression changed, mirroring his recovery. “Yes, I guess you are.”

  Reluctantly he relinquished his friend to the darkness for a moment and beam-searched the rest of the hole. After all, their work wasn’t finished. They had found Teller, but not the seal.

  Never mind what you’re feeling, he told himself. You’ve got a job to do.

  Meanwhile, Lyneea crept past him. She knelt down next to the body to get a better look—to determine, as best she could, a cause of death. They needed clues; she would do whatever was necessary to find them.

  The pit wasn’t big, but it was the most confusing space he’d seen yet. There were lots of little niches where something the size of Fortune’s Light could have been tucked away. Lots of places that might be the beginnings of tunnels leading, perhaps, to other pits—places that would have to be scoured out with light before they could be dismissed as dead ends.

  It took a while before he could be certain that the seal wasn’t there. By that time Lyneea had completed her search as well.

  He looked at her. “Well?”

  “A knife,” she told him. “Once—in the heart. Clean and quick.”

  It was small consolation, but it was something. He clung to it.

  “Unfortunately,” Lyneea went on, “his pockets are empty. Not even so much as a chit.” She shook her head. “Your luck was no better, I take it.”

  “No sign of the seal,” he confirmed. “Either the killer took it out with him or it wasn’t here in the first place.”

  “Probably the latter,” she said. “My guess is that Conlon never saw this hole. He was probably murdered up above somewhere and then dumped here to conceal the fact.”

  Riker grunted. “But the murderer didn’t just stumble on him here in the maze, recognize the seal, and decide to kill him for it.”

  Lyneea agreed. “The murderer had to know Conlon’s whereabouts in advance. Odds are, they were partners in this, one way or the other.”

  “Maybe the bastard planned it this way from the start. To let Teller steal Fortune’s Light and then to lift it from him afterward. Less risk that way.”

  “And no one to split the profits with,” Lyneea concluded.

  Riker no longer argued the question of his friend’s guilt, not even within himself. Innocent people didn’t get stabbed and left in places like this one.

  “So we’re back where we started,” he said. “No—even farther back than that. Before, we at least knew whom we were looking for. Now it could be anyone.”

  His partner’s face twisted in a scowl. “And the seal could be anywhere. Still in the maze—assuming it ever was in the maze—or wherever Conlon’s killer decided to stash it.” She glanced meaningfully at the opening above them. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  He looked at her. “What about Teller?”

  Lyneea didn’t look entirely unsympathetic. “We leave him here,” she said, in a softer tone than the one she usually used. “It’s not as if we have much of a choice. Even if we could get him out without attracting attention, where
would we take him?” She got up, stretched. “And there’s the killer to think about as well. If he comes back and the body’s gone, he’ll know there’s someone on his trail—and he’ll be twice as careful to hide his tracks.”

  It made sense. Riker had to admit that. And yet, the thought of leaving Teller here in this godforsaken hole. . . .

  “Just give me a minute,” he told Lyneea. “Alone—all right?”

  She regarded him. “Sure.” And with an effort, she scrambled up the little slope. Riker didn’t see her leave; he just heard the scrape of her boots on some rocks as she kicked herself up through the opening.

  He sighed, played the light on Teller’s face again, and forced himself to study each feature individually, as if that might make the totality somehow more palatable. Memories came, lots of them—all maudlin, all the stuff of melodrama. He pushed them aside, did his best to dredge up clear thoughts.

  Had he failed Teller Conlon? And if he had, did it really matter any longer?

  What was the proper course of action now? What did a man do when a friend died, anyway? See this investigation through, as a sort of memorial to the man Teller used to be, as opposed to the man he’d become? See his killer brought to justice?

  Of course. All of that.

  Would it be enough? When it was over, would he feel that he had set Teller’s soul to rest?

  There was only one way to find out. Getting up, he took one last look at the dead man. Then, slipping his glove back on, he turned and started back up the escarpment.

  He was peering at the rocks above him, trying to determine how Lyneea had hauled herself out, when he heard a sharp, distinct yelp.

  Damn. He scampered up the rest of the slope, saw a rocky projection that might give him the access he needed, and used it to boost himself toward the exit. His fingers caught the cross piece; he swung a leg up, lodged his heel against the lip of the pit, then pulled and twisted his body up after it.

  Riker was sprawled on the ground above the hole, one leg still dangling within, when he caught sight of Lyneea.

  Contrary to his expectations, she didn’t seem to be in any trouble. True, she was kneeling as if doubled over, but there was no sign of pain on her face. In fact, she looked as if she’d just remembered something funny.