by Renee Duke
“The prisoners of Prexath do not fall into either category,” Ezrias added. “The majority are self-centred individuals whose desire for personal gain or glory caused them to engage in activities detrimental to the common good. Fraudulent stock traders, purported miracle workers and other mountebanks, cult leaders, political conspirators, drug traffickers, and the like. All of them people who demonstrated a complete lack of remorse for their actions and were unlikely to respond to conventional rehabilitation techniques. Instead, they have been removed from society and forced to form a society of their own. In an environment so harsh that sharing resources and working co-operatively are the only means by which they can expect to survive. And they are sufficiently skilled in attending to their own best interests to realize this. Those not committed to Prexath for life endure what they must while they must and rarely risk incurring another stay by taking up their old ways upon their return to Cholar.”
“I would imagine not,” said Mr. Skoko, impressed.
I didn’t think it too likely either. Prexath sounded like a thoroughly disagreeable place. Even so, I couldn’t conjure up any sympathy for Drazok. However uncomfortable his life had become, he’d been prepared to sacrifice the well-being of everyone on Cholar to fulfill his own ambitions. It seemed only fitting for him to be the one suffering deprivations instead.
A good hour passed before the Royal Guardsman brought Brizerom in and forced him into a chair at the end of the table, where he could be scrutinized by all. Going by a couple of bruises on his face, he had not chosen to come quietly. Jorthoans aren’t, by Earth standards very tall, but neither are Cholarians, though both stand taller than Mr. Skoko and other Ralgonian males. Pitted against an ordinary Cholarian he might even have got away, but Royal Guardsmen are the crème de la crème of Cholar’s military and highly skilled in methods of apprehension and restraint.
“He was at the starport, Your Majesty, attempting to take ship for his home world.”
“Why should I not?” Brizerom quavered. “I applied for and was granted some holiday time. I was going home to visit my parents.”
Verim regarded him with disdain. “They will be told you have been delayed. Possibly, depending on how deeply you are involved in the disappearance of the royal children, for years. Many years.”
Brizerom paled. “I had nothing to do with that. I was as appalled as anyone to hear they had been taken.”
Palming something he’d slipped out of a chamber in his belt, Chief Rupin stood up and went over to Brizerom.
“And just where were you when you learned about that?” he inquired.
“At the starport. I saw it on a news viewer.”
“Really? I was not aware it had become public knowledge. The palace has issued no statements. Only those within the palace’s walls are aware of what transpired here last night. They were ordered not to reveal it to anyone. As you must have been yourself.”
“No,” said the Royal Guardsman. “He left the palace long before dawn and was at the starport when the children’s disappearance was discovered. I checked.”
Brizerom licked his lips. “I…well, someone must have leaked the information.”
“I think not,” said Chief Rupin. “If they had, reporters of every ilk would be at the palace gates clamouring for news. They are not.”
He held up the thing he’d been hiding. “This is a lie detector. A very efficient one. The kind accepted as evidence in court. It can be attuned to the physiology of any sentient race and flashes when people lie. Thus far, it has produced four flashes, so it would be foolish of you to try to deceive us further. Being an accessory to kidnapping is a very, very, serious offence on this world. And believe me, it will not serve you well at your trial if it becomes known you gave untruthful answers to questions involving the welfare of small children. If, however, you were to be co-operative from here on in, the court might be moved towards leniency.”
Brizerom buried his face in his hands.
“I dare not. The person I was working for said the people he was working for would kill me if I said anything.”
The detector must not have flashed at this statement, because Chief Rupin promised him protection.
“For how long? Forever? He said there would be no escape for me if I betrayed them.”
Chief Rupin slammed a fist down onto the table. “What of those you have already betrayed? Tell us what you know, Brizerom. Your conscience can surely not allow you to imperil little children in this way.”
“He said they would not be harmed.”
“Vedetian youngsters tend to be high-strung, and the prince and princess are mere babies, torn from all that is familiar to them. The trauma alone will harm them. And how certain can you be these people will not harm them physically as well? If they are Cholarians, no, I do not think they would. But if they are not? How certain can you be if they are not?”
Brizerom gave a low moan. “No names. I will give you no names. Or disclose my contact’s origins.”
“From which we can assume he was not Cholarian,” said Mr. Skoko.
“No. But…but that is all I will tell you.”
At that point, Tolith touched Taz’s arm.
“It is time to make the ransom payment, Your Majesty.”
Taz nodded and stood. “Please go on with the interrogation, Rupin. Tolith and I will return as soon as possible.”
“There is something I must attend to as well,” said Mr. Skoko, following them out.
Brizerom’s steady refusal to name names was exasperating, but he did eventually break down and reveal how the kidnappers got into the palace. As supposed, he had been the one who drugged Lyetta and Keza and tampered with the security monitors during the power outage, setting them up to show certain areas as being devoid of activity whenever they were scanned. Having spent some time familiarizing himself with the palace and studying the patrol patterns of both the inner and outer guards he’d then let the kidnappers into — and later, out of — the building through an ancient side door most people had forgotten about. Its existence innocently revealed to him by an old palace servant.
Once inside the palace, the intruders kept to a storeroom, not venturing out until the storm subsided and restive people went to bed. When all was quiet, they made their way to the nursery floor and waited until Brizerom projected Challa’s voice and image (surreptitiously recorded earlier) into the corridor to attract the attention of the Royal Guardsman.
“I tried to stop them taking all of the children — they weren’t supposed to — but they wouldn’t listen.”
“Irrelevant,” said Verim. “You would be in just as much trouble if it were only the two royal children who were missing.”
A few minutes later, Chief Rupin’s communicator beeped and we learned it was only the two royal children who were missing. Keza’s had been found in a factory on the edge of the city, locked in a back room. Workers arriving for their shift had heard their cries for help and contacted a law officer. The kids had been too worked up to tell her much, but she did eventually get their names out of them. After making some inquiries, she learned their mother worked at the palace, and they were now back in the nursery being examined by the royal pediatrician.
Everyone headed there immediately — followed, discreetly, by us — and were joined en route by Taz and Tolith, who had just finished paying out the ransom money.
In the nursery, all three kids were clustered around Keza, sobbing. Keza was crying too. With relief.
“Aside from exhibiting considerable, though of course, understandable, emotional distress, they are quite all right, Your Majesty,” the physician told Taz. “They do show signs of having been drugged, but I believe this occurred after they had been taken.”
“After? Not before, as Lyetta and Keza were?”
“They have been somewhat incoherent, but the boy did say they woke up when the intruders entered the nursery. They were kept from calling out, and it was not until they were outside the palace they, as he
put it, ‘went back to sleep’. When they next awoke, they were locked in the factory and the little prince and princess were no longer with them.”
At the rekindling of this memory, the kids left off sobbing and started to downright howl.
I’m sure everyone sympathized with them, and Cholarians, being Cholarians, would have been loath to badger distressed children, but this couldn’t be allowed to go on for long. Not with Challa and Kadi still missing.
Moving across to them, Verim bent down to their level.
“Stop that infernal noise,” he said sharply, his old disciplinarian mien having evidently not declined as much as Vostia had thought.
Startled, they did so pretty much immediately.
“That’s better,” said Verim, his tone somewhat gentler. “I realize you have had a very disagreeable experience, but Challa and Kadi are still missing and you cannot help us find them if you give way to hysteria. And you do want to help, don’t you?”
All three gulped, but nodded.
“Jagri. You told the doctor you woke up when the people who took you came into the room. You must, therefore, have got quite a good look at them before you went to sleep again. What did they look like?”
“T-They were…they were big,” Jagri managed to say. “With bald heads…and scrunched up faces, lots of arms, and…and lots of hands.”
‘B-Big, hairy hands,” said Sabra. “They put them over our mouths.”
“And they smelled,” Tiffa put in.
“Quorlians,” said Chief Rupin.
I’d never personally come across a denizen of Quorl, but I’d seen pictures and could understand why the kids were so shaken up. The lots of arms Jagri described would only have been four — two short and two long — but even so, Quorlians are scary looking, and if any had turned up in my room in the middle of the night when I was small, I’d have screamed the place down.
Chapter Seven
The physician allowed only a few more questions, and the answers didn’t amount to much. The kids seemed to have been drugged just outside the palace walls and didn’t know where their abductors might have gone from there.
“They must rest,” the physician said. “In their own home, if possible. The benefits of familiarity —”
“— must be withheld for the moment,” said Tolith. “We can’t run the risk of them inadvertently saying something and alerting outsiders to what has happened. The public will find out soon enough. Secrets concerning the royal family are hard to keep.”
By then we’d been noticed, and the girls told we would have to stay at the palace too. Not, I think, because our guardians thought we’d say something we shouldn’t, but because they were close friends of the royal family and wanted to stay there themselves.
To make it easier for Keza to settle her children, Taz and the others returned to the command centre. Having again followed discreetly, we moved to the far side of the room, behind a conveniently large-sized display board that was not being used in the search. Occasionally, we even dared to peek out.
“I am afraid we have found nothing of consequence,” Chief Rupin’s second-in-command reported. “Making the kidnapping public knowledge would increase the chances of finding someone who knows something but could also endanger the children if the kidnappers were to panic. Every Cholarian knows the penalties for crimes involving children are severe.”
“The kidnappers are not Cholarian. We have learned they are Quorlians. Quorlians are not inclined to panic. They’re not quick-witted enough.” Chief Rupin turned to Taz and Vostia. “That being so, I think we should make more people outside the palace aware of the kidnapping. Not an actual public announcement, because I know you would not want people to become so incensed over the seizure of their beloved little prince and princess that they might subject innocent Quorlians to harassment, but it could be of great help to my men to have our regular military forces, the planet’s constabulary, and security personnel at various transport facilities on the look-out for them.”
Taz looked at Vostia. Her lips trembled for a moment, but then she took her husband’s hand and nodded.
“See to it,” Taz said.
As Chief Rupin’s second-in-command hurried off, the chief himself shook his head wearily. “Quorlians are truly not the most intelligent of beings. If the boy’s description had not so clearly pointed to them, I would not have thought them capable of carrying out something like this. Not even with the assistance of that wretched Jorthoan. Someone else must be involved.”
“I agree,” said Verim.
“Possibly the Blag Dalgo Mr. Skoko spoke of,” said Tolith.
“The Blag Dalgo he now has,” Mr. Skoko said as he came through the door dragging another Ralgonian behind him.
The newcomer’s arms were strapped to his sides with restraining bands attached to a holding beam held by Mr. Skoko, who told the startled assembly he had monitored the ransom transaction, traced it to a hotel on the outskirts of the city, and apprehended Blag Dalgo before he could get away.
Verim immediately lashed out. “The kidnappers warned us against tracing that transaction, Skoko. By doing so, you could have imperilled the captives!”
“It would not have been in Dalgo’s interests to harm them. And he always looks after his own interests.”
“You could not be sure it was this Dalgo.”
“I was reasonably sure. Just as I was reasonably sure he would only be looking for signs of a trace from a Cholarian tracking device, not a Ralgonian one, which operates quite differently. The Vedetian children were not at the hotel, so he must have secreted them somewhere.”
“They were found, quite by chance, in a factory, and have been safely returned,” said Verim.
“Ah, something else Dalgo did not take into consideration, did you, Dalgo?”
Dalgo merely glared. Until he beheld Taz looming over him. Then he started to look a little nervous.
As well he might.
“Where are my children?” Taz demanded, seizing him by the shoulders and shaking him.
“I do not know,” Dalgo replied sullenly.
“That appears to be true, Your Majesty,” Chief Rupin said before Taz could subject Dalgo to another, probably more violent, shake. He had turned the lie detector on as soon as Dalgo got there and held it up to show it had not reacted in any way. I would imagine Dalgo was far more used to being interrogated than Brizerom was and, having observed the detector, thought he might as well answer honestly.
“How is it you don’t know?” Chief Rupin queried.
“Because, after a somewhat acrimonious exchange over their bungling, the grunt workers I’d hired quit on me, and set off for parts unknown. Taking the prince and princess with them.”
“Why would they do that?” Verim asked.
“Apparently, I hurt their feelings. I was, you see, a little annoyed with them. I thought I’d made it clear they were not to take all the children my palace contact said were sleeping in the royal nursery last night. Just the two royal ones. But no, they had to come out with five. Five!” He gave a snort. “I doubt the morons knew the difference between two and five. Or between Cholarian children and Vedetian children. And, when I told them they had three too many, they were going to take the surplus ones back. Wide-awake witnesses who would have raised the alarm in seconds. I drugged the little nuisances as quickly as I could and stuck them behind some bushes.
“I then tried to get in my ground car and leave with the royal children, but it seems the dim duo had been brooding about some of the less than complimentary things I had said and wanted an apology. When they did not get one, they decided to cut me out of the proceedings. One of them said — and this is word for word because, believe me, their vocabularies are not extensive — ‘These ones valuable, these ones not?’, and upon receiving an affirmative answer said, ‘You call us bad names. We not like that. We not help you anymore. We keep valuable, you keep not valuable.’”
“But after giving it a little thought, you reali
zed they might be valuable after all,” said Mr. Skoko. “Hence the recent ransom demand.”
“Why not? Having lost possession of the royal children, I was obviously not going to get anything for them. But I know how soft-hearted Cholarians are about children, so it seemed likely the Supreme Ruler would pay something to get them back. Not as much as I could have asked for his, of course, but more than their mother would have been able to afford. I put too much time and effort into this scheme to come out of it with nothing.”
“Was it your own scheme, or someone else’s?” Chief Rupin inquired. “Your palace confederate indicated you were working for other people. Dangerous people.”
“I have, in the past, had numerous employers, some dangerous, some not. Lately, however, contracted work has been a little scarce. I’ve been forced to go into business for myself and have learned it is best to let those whose help I enlist think I am part of a larger, more sinister, organization. I embark upon private ventures as opportunities for them arise and, having just wrapped up one on a nearby world, thought I would stop off on Cholar to see some old acquaintances.”
“I found no record of you being back on Cholar when I ran a check,” Verim said.
“Probably because I followed my usual practice and slipped onto the planet unnoticed. I was only on file here before because I came in posing as an immigrant. Someone I met at that time told me he was working in the palace and having him on the inside was too good a chance to pass up. I planned the abduction down to the last detail and only had to wait for a suitably stormy night in which a malfunction in the security monitors would be dismissed as storm-related. When it finally came, I let my palace contact — who was decidedly reluctant to do my bidding, but pathetically easy to intimidate — know the job was on so he could drug the children’s attendants, cut off the power, and adjust the security monitors. All he had to do after that was let the others in and lure the guard over to them so they could put him out of action and make the snatch. That part should have gone smoothly too. And would have if I had not made the mistake of hiring Quorlians.”
