by Allen Wold
"What's that?" he said, stepping closer to take a look.
"Hah?" Arshaud looked down at the battered flamer in his desk drawer. "Just an old gun," he said, fumbling the pack back into his own pistol.
Rikard felt time slow and was almost startled to see his hand come up with the megatron in it, sighting on the bridge of Arshaud's nose. He watched the surprise slowly register on Arshaud's face, his hands slip on the pistol, the power pack drop to the floor.
"Let's take a look at it," Rikard said. His voice sounded like a greatly slowed recording.
"Now, Rikard, wait," Arshaud protested. But his hands went up. Rikard stepped forward and hooked the flamer out of the drawer with his left hand. He couldn't tell without taking his eyes off Arshaud's face, but in his peripheral vision the gun looked an awful lot like the one Sed Blakely had had in his hovel. He backed away from Arshaud until he came up against the shelves beside the desk.
"Why?" was all he said.
Arshaud licked his lips, glanced down at the flamer, back up at Rikard's eyes.
"Because your father could connect me with the barodin," he said. "As long as he was hiding out down south—or trapped under the Tower of Fives—it didn't matter. But if you brought him out alive, there'd have been more trouble than I cared to face. I didn't want to do it. You've got to believe me."
"I think I do, but that doesn't help much. Especially after what you did to Blakely." Only his speeded-up senses let him see the tiny twitch in Arshaud's cheek when he said that. "What about Dorong? Another handy lie?"
Jewels qfthe Dragon
"No, it's true, he did come here, told me the whole story. I would have killed him before you had a chance to talk to him, though, because he's of no account and would have given the lie away."
"You tried to kill me too down there under the tower. Why didn't you use your laser instead of this thing?"
"To cover up every chance I could get. You've gotten a lot of people stirred up since you came here, Rikard." He sat down slowly at his desk, still keeping his hands high. "People like Boss Bedik, Dzhergriem, Mareth Davinis. Other people were asking questions too."
"I think I want you to stand up against that far wall," Rikard said, suddenly uncomfortable at Arshaud's calmness.
"Sure thing, Rikard," Arshaud said, starting to rise. Voices spoke just beyond the office door. Rikard tried to hear what they were saying, prepared to move if they were Arshaud's clerks coming in. Arshaud seemed to slip ever so slightly, his foot sliding out from under him. Then the rack of hardware behind Rikard came down, his gun went off, and he was buried under the falling shelves of tools.
4
He never quite lost consciousness. He was aware mat he had dropped his gun. He could hear voices shouting. But he didn't know whether it was several minutes or just a few seconds before he recognized Polski's voice ordering other people to lift the heavy steel shelving off him. He returned to full awareness as the crushing weight was removed. Then wrenches and sockets and hammers were scooped from his body. He could recognize Darcy's boots near his face.
"Are you all right?" he heard her ask.
"I think so," he said, and then he was free to move. He pushed himself to his knees, feeling bruised. His left elbow was wrenched, there was a throb over his right ear, and his back and the backs of his legs felt as if they had been pounded on. Polski, with blaster drawn, was directing the clerks, who had freed Rikard from the shelving and hardware.
"What happened?" Polski asked as Rikard staggered to his feet.
"That shelf was booby-trapped. Arshaud sprang it on me. Where is he?"
"He didn't come out past us. We were just outside the door when we heard the crash."
"Then he's got some secret exit. He's the one who killed my father." He retrieved the megatron, then started kicking through the hardware jumbled on the floor until he found the flamer.
"Are you sure?" Darcy asked.
"Yes. He had this in his desk." He showed Darcy the flamer. "It's Blakely's gun. See the way the grip is burned? I got the drop on him, and he admitted it."
"But why?" Darcy asked.
"I don't know, except he said that my father knew about the barodin, whatever that means."
"What about barodin?" Polski's tone was one that made both Rikard and Darcy look at him sharply and made the three clerks by the door stop their murmuring.
"I can't quote him," Rikard said carefully, trying to remember where he'd heard the word before. "It was something like, my father could connect him with it. As long as Father was trapped or hiding, that didn't matter, but if he came back alive, Arshaud would have more trouble than he wanted to face. Something like that. Why?"
"The bomb that destroyed Banatree had a barodin catalyst, remember? It's rare and expensive and a controlled substance, and every gram is accounted for, except for what was in the battery factory on Pieshark when it was blown up the year before Banatree. If Aben Arshaud had barodin, or could be connected to it in some way, that's a strong indication that either he knew the Man Who Killed Banatree or is the Man himself."
"I understood he'd been here twenty years," Darcy said.
"Just a minute." Polski's eyes turned aside as if he were listening to something. "I've just been in communication with my liaison on the station," he said after a long moment. "Arshaud is not on my list of suspects, because, as you said, he'd demonstrably arrived here long before the Banatree incident, so he couldn't be the Man himself."
"Are you sure?" Rikard asked. "Couldn't he have come, gone away again, and then come back on one of those escape pods from the hijacked freighter?"
"I've checked the records up on the station myself. He couldn't get off Kohltri except through the station, though the pod could have brought him in undetected—just a moment." His eyes turned inward again. "No, no record of his ever having departed. But he knows something, and I mean to find it out."
"Your people up there must be awfully fast," Rikard said.
"What do you mean?"
"You were in contact with them for only a moment. There are at least three sets of records, and it would take longer than we've been talking to check them all."
"What do you mean?" he repeated.
"You know, the plain text, the coded sets, the alternate records."
"No, I don't know anything about mat." Polski was obviously upset.
Rikard told him how he'd uncovered the secret records of transport, shipping, and passenger movements while looking for information on his father. Polski stared at him in disbelief, but occasionally his eyes would flicker, as if he were getting information from his station liaison.
"All right," Polski said when Rikard had finished, "I've got confirmation that those records exist, but the ones in code will take a while to break. How the hell did you find them?"
"I'm a Local Historian. As such, I never assume that the visible record is the only record. How did you miss them?"
"I'm a Federal Police Officer. As such, I assumed that any Federal office keeps, its records according to protocol. Damn stupid thing to do. It may give you some satisfaction to know that this will warrant a full investigation of Director Solvay's activities during his term of office. I think we'll find some very interesting things. He—wait—got it. Aben Arshaud arrived twenty years, one hundred forty-three days ago, according to the open record. One of those secret records has him departing for Pieshark just fifty days before the battery factory was destroyed. No record of his having ever returned. Yet here he is. Interesting."
"You've got your man," Rikard said, "except he's also the man who killed my father."
"Are you going to give me any trouble? Arshaud owes more to the Federation than he does to you."
"I know that, but I'm coming along."
"Good enough. Now all we have to do is find out where he got to."
"Well," Darcy said, "while you two have been chatting, I've been finding his escape hatch." She pointed to a low panel on the other side of the desk.
"We've lost too much time as it is," Polski said. He went to the open panel and went through. Rikard glanced once at the three clerks, then followed Darcy through the hatch.
A narrow corridor ran parallel to the wall for a way, then turned to the left. Stairs spiraled up, and they mounted them quickly but not hurriedly. They came out on the roof of the building, four floors above the street. To one side was an Atreef enclave. Polski stared at it for a moment.
"I'll tell you about that later," Darcy said. 'This is what we're looking for." She pointed to a power box set near the stair door. It was the kind used to recharge a ground-fan flier.
"Damn," Polski said. "This is a big city. If we're going to comb it, I'll have to call in people from Kylesplanet. That will take a couple of days at best." He looked back at the white Atreef street nestled within the human block. "And as if trying to deal with Kohltri wasn't bad enough, it looks like I've got another whole population to deal with."
"I'm afraid so," Darcy said. "You want to hear about it now?"
"If you know what all that means, you can brief me when my crew comes in."
"I don't think you can afford to wait that long," Rikard said. "It's funny but Arshaud never believed in the treasure my father was looking for, but he sure reacted when I told him what it was and that he'd found it."
"What was it?"
"Dialithite, all a man could carry."
Polski stared at him in sudden dismay. "But... but, are you sure?"
Rikard took the stones he'd used to get past the Tathas from his pocket and held them out to the policeman. Polski didn't touch them.
"That means," Polski said, "he can buy his way off here, even going through the station."
"Not if we get to him first. I know where the dialithite is. That's where he's gone, I'm sure."
"Okay, kid, we'll have to take the chance. Just a moment." He communicated with his people again, taking several moments this time.
"I've done what I can about securing the station," he said at last. "Without having all the proper warrants, that isn't much. A copter will be here shortly. I suppose you'd like to come along," he said to Darcy.
"You couldn't keep me away, Leo," she said without humor.
"I wouldn't try." He walked over to the interface between the human and Atreef worlds. "Why don't you tell me about all this," he said, gesturing at the rounded white buildings below him. "We might have to comb the city after all."
The copter, with six Federal officers, arrived before she finished. Polski had one man go below to search and hold Arshaud's office. Then he, Rikard, Darcy, and the other five took off, heading east toward the Tower of Fives.
With a police copter flying well above the ground, it took them only four hours to make the trip. But the ground-fan flier was already in the plaza by the Tower when they got there.
"At least I guessed right," Rikard said as they all got out.
Polski left another officer at the copter to guard the flier and told the woman to take Arshaud alive if at all possible, if he should come back before they did, but to take him at all costs. As Rikard led the rest of them to the Tower's entrance, the officer moved the copter so it would be out of sight from the ground.
Rikard led the way through the Tower to the stairs going down. This time, as they passed through the first cellar to the second, he was aware of the complexity of the architecture; the rooms, branching corridors, odd passages. He'd ignored it all on his first trip, being concerned only with following the trail down, not exploring.
They paused at the stairs to the third level, and Polski left one of the four remaining officers to set up a guard post in case Arshaud came back by a route other man the one by which he descended.
"If Arshaud gets the dialithite," he said, "and manages to lose us down here, we'll never find him before he gets back to the surface. There's too much of a maze to cover completely, but mere's no sense all of us being in one bunch."
Polski left another officer at the seventh level, at the mouth of the Tathas tunnel, with instructions to check for other similar tunnels but not to go too far.
The psychic effects of the Tathas tunnel were a surprise to everyone but Rikard. He explained them quickly and hurried the others on, past the hallucinatory monoliths and pseudo-plants. There were more side passages than Polski liked. When they came to the lower Belshpaer chambers, with their bonelike white walls, Polski left another officer. The four went on down.
5
They reached the lowest level, crossed the room, and entered the short hall just before the major Tathas chamber. The floor of the hall was strewn with charred and shattered bones.
"Goddamn," Rikard said in a choked voice, looking at the desecrated remains. "He didn't have to do that." '
"Your father?" Darcy asked gently.
"Yes. I left him here just as he'd died. Arshaud's taken all the dialithite too." His eyes stung. His chest felt as if someone were sitting on it.
"You left the dialithite down here with your father?" Polski was unbelieving. "Why didn't you bring it out?"
"Dammit, Leonid, I don't care about the goddamn treasure. I care about my father. I didn't need what he was carrying so I let him keep it."
"Sorry, kid. Let me have your gun."
"What? Why?"
"I want to take Arshaud alive if he's still here. I don't want to take any chances that you'll shoot him first."
Rikard stared at him a moment, than handed him his mega-tron and the flamer, which he'd carried stuck in his belt.
"I understand," Polski said, "how much this means to you, but you have to understand my position too."
Rikard didn't say anything. He just turned up the passage toward the Tathas chamber.
The sound of a curse came from up ahead. Rikard ran to the edge of the chamber, feeling the Tathas psyche, and stopped, shining his torch in among the dead machines, slickly coated with the dark metallic residue of the fungus.
The other three came up just as his light picked out movement across the chamber, not far from the door to where his father had lived for eleven years. As the light struck, a moaning cry came from the writhing shape, then sobbing screams. It was Aben Arshaud, legs widespread, arms flailing, covered with a sickly white basket weave of coarse Tathas fibers.
"Oh, my God!" Darcy said. Arshaud cried out as the Tathas slowly dissolved his flesh. Rikard remembered the single touch he'd suffered, and felt sick.
"Put him out of his misery," the last officer said in a choking voice, raising his blaster.
"No!" Polski snapped. The officer hesitated. Arshaud screamed, staggered, spilling dialithite gems all over the floor.
"But Leo," Darcy protested as the officer turned away to vomit in a corner. "You can't just let him suffer."
"He killed three and a half million people." Polski's voice was tight and harsh.
"You don't know that."
"All right, then," Polski snarled, turning on her, "he killed Rikard's father. So what should we do, walk in there"—he indicated the chamber, where other Tathas were congregating—"and get eaten too?"
"Just put him out of his misery," Rikard said. He could no longer see Arshaud, just a towering mass of fibers which moved blindly this way and that. The screaming rose in pitch.
"Here, then," Polski said, and handed him back his gun.
Rikard fired into the center of the mass of writhing Tathas. The screaming went on. He fired until his gun was empty.
He could feel the Tathas' pain, but he was unable to see or hit Aben Arshaud.
Even Polski couldn't stand it any more. He took Sed Blake-ly's flamer and shot it across the chamber at the nightmare, but the gun was defective; the flame went only five or six meters. He pulled his blaster.
And then, from the doorway across the chamber, from the place where Rikard's father had lived, came a golden glow and the nebulous form of a dragon. Polski's hand froze, the dragon floated over to the huge bundle of Tathas, and touched it briefly. There was a flash and a
flare and acrid smoke— and blessed silence as the whole mass charred to instant ash.
Then the dragon went back the way it had come.
"Let's get out of here," Polski said, his voice choked.
"What about the dialithite?" the white-faced officer asked.
"You want it? You go get it."
"Ah—no thanks," the man said. He looked at the dozens of other still-living though stunned and shocked Tathas squirming across the floor of the chamber. "I guess I can live without it."
They returned to the surface, retrieving the other officers as they went. None of them had to be told what had happened. Their implanted communicators had informed them of the events.
The copter settled down into the plaza by the Tower of Fives as they emerged.
"I'm going to assume," Polski said as they entered the copter, "unless instructed otherwise that Aben Arshaud was in fact the Man Who Killed Banatree. And if the public wants justice, the monitor has what we saw recorded. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm through here."
"Me too," Rikard said. "That was a bit more revenge than I had in mind."
"So what will you do now?" Polski asked.
Rikard looked around at the other police officers, not sure of just how much he should say in front of them.
"I did bring out a few stones," he said quietly. "They'll keep me going for quite a while. And I made some promises that I'm going to have to keep."
He looked out the window of the copter at the ruins, then at the wilderness passing below. In his mind he had a brief image of his father enveloped in flames in the dark tunnel under the Tower of Fives. Then he felt someone touch his hand. It was Darcy.
"You owe me a couple of those stones," she said softly.
"I sure do," he told her. Polski was studiously looking somewhere else. "You want to help me find a good market for them?"
"Nothing I'd like better."
