Conn was thrown against the unpadded walls, battered and tossed like a pea in a rattle as the vehicle tumbled through the air for long seconds before its stabilizers could restore equilibrium. When it finally settled, he was sprawled on the hard floor. He checked himself, found no broken bones, but the shoulder of the arm that had been curled around the stanchion had been wrenched almost out of its socket and a cut on his scalp was pouring blood down his face.
Then he looked toward the Emporium. The third garden was surrounded by charred and blasted trees, stripped of their leaves and blossoms, many of them tilted outwards and leaning against each other. And where the grass had been, where Ovam Horder had been, was a roil of flame and black smoke.
The fire was soon out. Ovam Horder had paid for Platinum Plus service, so within minutes of the event a flying platform had positioned itself above Emporium, its precipitators wringing the surrounding air of its water, which was mixed with suppressants and directed onto the inferno.
Damage was confined to the roof and the executive offices below the third garden, where the Emporium’s second in command and its owner’s sole heir, Saffraine Horder, had been tallying quarterly returns. She had been as thoroughly incinerated as her father, leaving the proprietorship a problematical affair. There were apparently relatives on New Ark, a planet farther down The Spray, and the Arbitration – the facsimile of central government on Thrais – was making efforts to contact them.
Horder had paid even more for security services – Platinum Doubleplus – and his death did not cancel the contract, so Conn Labro was soon brought to a small room in the basement of the First Response Protection Corporation where he was subjected to a full-spectrum interrogation. FRP’s senior discriminator, Hilfdan Klepht, a lean, long nosed man with eyes that drooped but missed nothing, handled the session personally.
Conn told him all that he knew; the drugs and induced hypnosis of a maximum-depth inquisition left him no option. Klepht questioned him intently not only about the challenge from Hasbrick Gleffen but about his finding of Hallis Tharp’s corpse and his interview with Jenore Mordene. She too was brought in for questioning, Conn gathered from questions he was asked in his second session with Klepht. Tharp’s body was also recovered from the recycling center and examined minutely.
Klepht turned out to be a follower of Conn’s career, having watched many of his more celebrated bouts. The discriminator soon eliminated the player from suspicion and even satisfied some of Conn’s curiosity about the investigation. The weapon that had destroyed Ovam Horder had been an impedance pulse generated by a private spacecraft in orbit above Thrais. The ship had immediately departed at top speed, making for the nearest whimsy, through which it had leaped to who knew where. Its drive signal had been captured and recorded, so if it ever appeared above Thrais again without having retuned its engines, it could be recognized and apprehended, but Klepht agreed with Conn that such an eventuality was unlikely.
They speculated together about motive. Conn suggested that the villain might have been one of Horder’s competitors who wished to acquire some of the murdered impresario’s assets, perhaps even Conn’s own indenture contract. “He was, after all, careful to make sure I was not in the target area.”
Klepht discounted the theory as amateur. “There is a longstanding mutual agreement among the gaming tycoons, backed by serious sanctions authorized by the Arbitration, to forbid such an action. If one them ever tried it and was found out, he would lose everything, including his own freedom. You know as well as I do that the professional gambler never risks what he cannot afford to lose.”
The discriminator steepled his fingers. “My experience of these affairs, which is long and varied, teaches that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one,” he said. “Ovam Horder was a taker and collector of wagers. Most were of a small to moderate size but some were large and a few were gargantuan. Someone may have reasoned that, rather than pay Horder, it was more economical to absorb the costs of hiring a person who had the required ship and weapon and was unencumbered by qualms about using them.”
Klepht said he would delve into the Emporium’s official books, but he believed that Horder had kept some transactions in a private ledger that never left his person. “It was, of course, consumed with him. So we may never know, unless someone someday publishes a last laugh.”
The posthumous confession was an institution on Thrais. One who had gotten away with taking secret revenge on an enemy would arrange for the details of the operation to be made public once the perpetrator was safely dead. The stories were published in a special section of the newsfeed and were popularly believed to be truth, although sometimes several dead revanchists claimed responsibility for the same outrage. Their competing claims could lead to furious exchanges of opinion in the letters section, occasionally resulting in duels. Sometimes, if there was a paying client, a police service like FRP would reopen a case in light of the details contained in a last laugh and make an official determination.
“So you do not believe that I was any part of the scenario?” Conn said.
“I do not,” said Chief Discriminator Klepht. “Still, if you encounter any unusual circumstances, you could keep us informed.”
Repairs were made to the roof and operations at the Emporium continued much as before, the staff processing clients and accounts under the supervision of a trustee from the Arbitration. Weeks went by before news came that Ovam Horder’s relatives, a pair of elderly aunts who lived on the southern continent of New Ark and grew meatflowers for export to connoisseurs, had been located and apprised of their inheritance.
The two spinster sisters declined to travel to Thrais and take up the reins that had been blasted from their nephew’s smoldering hands. They contracted with an auction service to sell Horder’s assets and send them the proceeds so that they could build new beds in which to grow the heavy lobed blossoms which were their passion.
As one of the Emporium’s prime assets, Conn Labro’s indenture contract was listed by an individual lot number. Many of the lesser ranked players were sold as pairs and trios, and the foot soldiers went in batches.
The sale was conducted in the first basement of the Emporium, a vast, brightly lit space in which team sports like hack and hussade were usually played. The open center was ringed by bleachers from which aficionados could cry encouragement or hurl abuse. Today they were filled with an assortment of bidders: Horder’s competitors, come to acquire prime stock; job-lotters who would sell their purchases to downstream buyers; and sentimentalists who craved a keepsake of time spent on the premises. Some of the bidders had not come in person – their representatives sat in the front row, communicators at ears and lips, ready to bid on command – but every first-ranked sporting house owner was present. Conn noticed Discriminator Klepht, unremarkable in a nondescript daysuit, seated among the ordinaries, his calm eyes winnowing the crowd.
Horder’s goods were auctioned in inverse order of value, the minor items going first. The auctioneer, a stocky man dressed in clashing colors, with a perpetually roseate face and tufts of ginger hair that sprang from his bald skull like islands in a pond of skin, was expert in his profession: he would build drama and tension to the ultimate, knowing that raising the bidders’ passions would raise their bids.
Conn’s contract was third to last on the sale docket, making his services the most valuable asset of the Emporium after its custom-grown integrator and the building itself. He sat in the showing area, watching as former colleagues were ordered dispersed across the face of Thrais, a few even bound off-world.
As always, his mind was a calm, cool place, and he found interest in re-assessing other sporting house’s strengths and lacks now that they were acquiring Horder’s well balanced stable of talents. After today, the relative statures of the various game emporia would change, but the crucial decider would come near the end of the auction when he and Horder’s integrator – rich in strategies and hard-won experience – went to new owners. If the tw
o of them were bought together by a house that already possessed a strong cadre of players, it would alter the dynamics of a number of professional leagues and excite legions of enthusiasts and bettors.
The auction had proceeded to where the cream of Horder’s stable were on the block. Conn was watching a tense bidding competition for Abel Caspriano’s contract between Gedreon’s Myrmidons and The Red House when a boy approached him with a communicator. He took the device and activated it.
“It is Jenore Mordene,” said the voice. There was no image, but his memory immediately offered him the sight of her as she had been in her small room, holding Hallis Tharp’s paduay set in her delicate hands, her green eyes filled with unshed tears.
“What do you wish of me?” he said. He had divided his attention to speak with her while continuing to follow the struggle for Caspriano. Now he became uncomfortably aware of a third stream coursing through his mind, but this was not a stream of thought; instead, it was a surge of emotions, mixed and inchoate – sorrow, anger, abandonment, hate, loss – all tumbling and tangling against each other in a maelstrom of feelings such as he could never remember having experienced before. He was required to calm his inner sea, exercising techniques that he had employed since boyhood.
“I’m sorry,” he said into the communicator when he had re-established his characteristic stillness. “Please repeat that.”
The woman told him that she had lost a day’s pay while being held for questioning by Hilfdan Klepht, then had been fined another day’s wages for not giving notice to her employer that she would be arrested and unable to report her impending absence. The loss of income meant that she had faced eviction and a subsequent likelihood of either being seized by the local bubblers and forced into prostitution or convicted for vagrancy and sold.
“The only thing of value I had was Hallis’s game. I took it to the pledgeman. While he was examining it I found something with your name on it.”
“What was it?”
She described a thin wafer of anodized metal the size of her thumb. On one side was the logo of a security house; on the other was a strip of adhesive with the name Conn printed in Hallis Tharp’s spiky hand.
“It is a key,” Conn said. “I will come for it as soon as I am able.”
“I’m at home,” she said. “I’m sorry about the game.”
“It does not matter,” he said, but even as he spoke he had to put down another welling of emotion that denied the meaning of the words. He broke the connection and applied the exercises again, but the necessity of doing so caused him to wonder at the complexity of his own being.
Caspriano went to Gedreon, representing a significant strengthening of the Myrmidons’ capabilities in both squad-level combats and abstract strategic planning. Conn speculated on what it would be like to face his old colleague; it seemed likely he would, since the price Caspriano had brought surely left not enough in Gedreon’s coffers to bid for Conn Labro.
The auctioneer called Conn’s lot number and a murmur went through the crowd. Conn rose and made his way to the platform in front of the podium and stood while the glib voice above and behind him recounted his accomplishments and suggested pointedly that further remarkable achievements could be expected. The figure at which he opened the bidding was substantial enough to bring audible gasps from the crowd, but it was soon surpassed as the cream of Thrais’s sporting impresarios weighed in.
The bids came quickly at first then slowed as lesser luminaries reached their limits and dropped out. Now there were four buyers still in play: Gombar Palray of the New Colosseum, tugging with plump fingers at his pendulous lower lip as he gauged the competition; Tadeuz Kopt of Big Circle Engagement, cool as the ice his eyes resembled; Wagram Eig of The Red House, looking as if he had scored a point – Conn hypothesized that Eig had bid up Teck Gedreon over Caspriano to eliminate a competitor for the prize he truly sought; and a compact, competent-looking man in gray and umber who sat in the front row. He had not bid before.
As the bidding continued Conn assessed the different situations that would ensue if each of the three known contenders for his services was successful. On the whole, he would prefer to go to Big Circle: the house’s existing complement, including two of Horder’s better players acquired today, would mesh with Conn’s own abilities to offer opponents a varied and flexible field with significant depth in every genre of conflict.
But scarcely had he formed the opinion than it was rendered nuncupative. Tadeuz Kopt waved away the auctioneer’s inquiry and left the bidding to the other three. Two rounds later, Gombar Palray also went to the sidelines, leaving only Wagram Eig of The Red House and the anonymous bidder still in play.
Now Conn focused on the person in gray and umber, whose turn it was to bid. The man was lean of feature with slitted eyes that focused on the air before him as if there was no one else in the room. His hands barely moved as he made the bid.
The auctioneer went to Eig and in a dozen tiny tells and cues Conn could read the thoughts behind the fat man’s supposedly impassive face. Eig had already achieved part of what he had come for: Conn Labro had not gone to any of his top league competitors. The man in gray and umber must be bidding for an off-world client; if he took Thrais’s best professional player out of competition it would be a loss for the world’s gaming industry, but it could be a meaningful improvement in The Red House’s competitive position.
The bids had been rising by five per cent increments. Eig held up his hand, fingers spread, to signal that it should do so once more. The man in gray and umber looked at his timepiece and the scalp beneath his close-cropped blond hair rippled as his brows drew down. He looked at the auctioneer and displayed all ten fingers, indicating a bid ten per cent over Eig’s last. There was a gasp from the crowd, even from some of the major luminaries, that was followed by a rhubarb of comment when the man flashed both hands again; the bid was not ten but twenty per cent above Eig’s.
Conn saw the Red House proprietor’s eyes widen slightly, then the fleshy lips made a moue of acceptance. Eig spread his hands, palms down, and the matter was settled. The auctioneer closed the sale and waved Conn toward the recorder’s stall behind the podium. The man in gray and umber came to join them. As Conn crossed the floor he glanced toward Hilfdan Klepht and saw the discriminator watching the man’s progress with a thoughtful mien.
The formalities were brief: the purchaser produced a draft on the Thrais branch of an interworld transaction exchange. The recorder transferred the purchase price and added the auction service’s fee then annotated Conn’s indenture contract so that it declared his services to be the property of Flagit Holdings, a company registered in the canton of Trintrinobolis on Bashaw, a world renowned throughout The Spray for the discretion of its business law.
The recorder passed the revised indenture under a scanner which advised the Arbitration’s integrators of the transaction, and the deal was done. The man in gray and umber, whose name appeared on the contract as Chask Daitoo, folded the document then turned to Conn and said, “A vehicle waits outside. You will come.”
“Where are we going?”
“I have some business at the arbitration then we will go off-world.”
“Where off-world?”
“The matter does not concern you.”
“I wish to collect a personal effect,” Conn said.
Daitoo’s face maintained its outward composure, but Conn read other emotions beneath the seeming calm: annoyance, offended pride, well curtailed fear. “We have no time for self-indulgence.”
“It is my right.”
Conn saw irritation and arrogance move closer to the surface then noticed that a portion of Daitoo’s anxiety leaked from its containment when Klepht’s voice said from behind him, “He is correct. He has the right to collect personal property.”
Daitoo turned to the discriminator who had come down from the stands and now seemed intent on inspecting the purchaser’s agent closely. The officer also gently took the indenture from
the man’s hand and gave it an unhurried perusal. “Bashaw,” he said in a neutral tone before handing it back.
“Yes,” Daitoo confirmed.
“First Response has had dealings with the Bashaw federal police,” Klepht said.
“I have not,” said the agent. He turned to Conn. “Where is this personal property?”
“The key to it is in Skrey. The property itself is in a security box at Allguard Trust.”
Now Conn saw a tinge of something else – avarice, perhaps? – creep into the gestalt of the agent’s expression, along with a brief overlay of alarm quickly suppressed. “This was not mentioned in the inventory.”
“I did not become aware of the property until moments ago,” Conn said.
Hilfdan Klepht was attending to the conversation with interest. Daitoo showed an inclination to be away from the discriminator’s presence. “Very well,” he said. “We will go to collect your effects then proceed as planned.”
As the aircar lifted off from the ground floor landing stage, Conn turned to look back at Horder’s Unparalleled Gaming Emporium. He had spent almost every moment of his life since early infancy within its confines. Now, as he watched its bulk dwindle behind him, he felt an unaccustomed sentiment. Curious, he probed at the feeling and a succession of images was presented to his inward vision: his first victory as a junior singleton; his first championship in a worldwide league; his personal training room where he had often worked for hours at a stretch to amplify his skills; the intimate chamber where he had sat with Hallis Tharp, fingers clicking over the paduay pieces while the old man sought to distract him with aimless chatter about worlds he would never see and situations he would never face.
Regret, he told himself, and a desire to recover what cannot be brought back. He had experienced the former emotion before, in his youth when he had failed to master an opponent, in his maturity when an able adversary made a gross error and allowed an engaging contest to come too early to a conclusion. The latter emotion had never visited him before. He allowed it to lie upon his consciousness for a few moments but, finding that the experience brought no reward, he employed the techniques that dismissed it back to wherever it had come from.
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