McClendon's Syndrome (v1.1)

by Robert Frezza

  Hiro resumed twiddling. “Motion denied. Anything else?”

  “In the alternative, we request a continuance to permit the true parties in interest to appear before this court,” Piper threw out gamely.

  “These true parties are just lienholders, right? Mister Ironsides there is the registered owner of the ship?”

  Piper nodded.

  “What else you got?”

  “In the alternative, we request a continuance out of consideration for general principles of equity.”

  “You’ve had a chance to see Lieutenant Lindquist’s report, right? Motion denied. We don’t grant the defence continuances in the hope that the witnesses die of old age. Any other motions?”

  “Motion for a general dismissal based on striking irregularities in the investigation of this case.”

  “You going to make an offer of proof?”

  “Are you going to enter Lieutenant Lindquist’s report into evidence?”

  “So noted. Lieutenant Lindquist’s report is entered into evidence.”

  Piper shrugged. “In that case, we have no offer of proof, Your Honour.”

  “Motion denied. Anything else?”

  “Motion for a dismissal based on failure to state a lawful charge.”

  Hiro turned to Yeoman Bunker. “What about it, Bunkie?”

  “Sir, I got the stuff tested as soon as I let Lieutenant Lindquist and Ensign MacKay off. The substance in question is identified by the lab report appended to Lieutenant Lindquist’s report. It is a prohibited substance clearly proscribed by clause nineteen of the !Plixxi*an treaty, incorporated by reference. Those are my initials on the chain-of-custody document showing I received the substance directly from Lieutenant Lindquist and handed it directly to the lab technician who administered the test.”

  I blinked in absolute amazement that she already had it done.

  Hiro looked at Piper. “Is that the basis for your motion?”

  “Yes, Your Honour.”

  “Denied. Do we need another lab test, recognising there’s only one lab technician on this planet?”

  “No, Your Honour.”

  “Well, is that it?”

  “Yes, Your Honour.”

  “All right. Does the owner of said vessel wish to make a plea?”

  Ironsides looked at Piper, who shook her head from side to side. Ironsides shook his head rapidly from side to side.

  “Excellent.” Commander Hiro believed in short trials. “Any arguments, Lieutenant Piper?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hiro looked at his watch. “We’re running late. Bunkie, when’s the last time we had a court?”

  “A year ago last February, sir.”

  “Beam, were you planning on giving your widows and orphans argument again?”

  Piper nodded.

  “Okay, argument by counsel is duly noted. Bailiff, please enter it in the record. This court is ready to render a judgement and declares said vessel to be guilty as charged and decrees said vessel to be confiscated and sold at auction to satisfy any liens or judgements against said vessel, the residue to be applied to the public treasury. The court is now adjourned. Bunkie, clear my courtroom. Lieutenant Lindquist, you and Ensign Mickey please remain. Good job, Beam. Come over and meet our guests.”

  While Bunkie cleared the courtroom with unseemly haste, Commander Hiro introduced Piper to us. “Beam, this is Lieutenant Lindquist from CIB.”

  “Catarina, I know,” Piper said taking her by the hand.

  “And Ensign Mickey.” Hiro made a motion with his hand in my direction. “He’s a reservist, but go ahead and shake his hand anyway.”

  “L. J. Piper, call me, Beam, like the writer,” Piper said extending a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Ensign.” She had a firm grip.

  “It’s MacKay. Call me Ken.” I rubbed my nose. “I don’t mean to pry, but how do you get ‘Beam’ out of L. J.? “

  Piper grinned. “Family secret. The day I was born, my father thought he was going to get a boy, and my mother was reading Tarzan. L. J. stands for Liana Jane.”

  “Leigh-Anna?” I asked.

  “No, ‘Liana,’ as in the vine. I was ‘Jungle Jane’ all through high school. Call me Beam, or I’ll break your kneecaps.”

  “It’s a deal. Pleased to meet you, Beam.”

  Hiro glanced at his watch. “Well, we wouldn’t want to be late. Lindquist, why don’t you sign yourself into our Visiting Officers’ Quarters. I’ll have my chauffeur take you there, and then we’ll head on over to the club. Oh, you come, too, Ensign Mickey.”

  “Visiting Officers’ Quarters? Club?” I whispered.

  Piper winked. “I have a back bedroom we use as a VOQ, and the Atlantic Hotel has a room they’ve contracted out as a club in return for social cachet and the chance to keep two sets of books. A lot of the smaller bases do the same. I’m about five minutes from here, and the Atlantic is about a block down the street. Come on, Bunkie should have the car out front waiting for us.”

  As we walked out to the car, Yeoman Bunker handed me a check for five thousand and a receipt to sign.

  You can say whatever you like about the regular navy, they have a certain style.

  Bunkie dropped me off at the Atlantic to check in. I really couldn’t afford the place, since it didn’t look like any of us would be seeing crew shares any time soon, but I figured that with a check for five thousand in my pocket, it would be nice for a few days until I could find something more permanent.

  The room wasn’t bad. It had interactive TV, one of those beds that try to massage you, and a biofeedback link—about what you’d expect, respectable but nothing spectacular. The bed was a waterbed, of course; solid-construction mattresses are one of those things that really aren’t worth trying to ship, although I know a few places off-Earth that buy them just to be fancy. Schuyler’s World was apparently not a garden spot for hoteliers—the Atlantic was a nice enough place, but you know they’re shaving edges when the Bible and the Koran in your room are on computer.

  I found a suit somewhere in my kit, got dressed, and went downstairs. The night clerk at the desk told me he couldn’t cash my check, but he gave me credit on the strength of it. Then he rang a bell, and a waitress wearing nothing much steered me in the direction of the Officers’ Club.

  The O Club turned out to be a nice little room with three tables, one of which had a RESERVED sign on it. Catarina, Hiro, and Piper were waiting when I got there. Hiro raised his glass. “Ensign Mickey, glad you could make it! Oh, waitress! Another round here!” he said jauntily. “Mickey, the !Plixxi* ambassador called, and I invited him to join us. Lindquist tells me you’ve met.”

  “Briefly,” I said. “Sir, this must be my day for asking stupid questions, but I’ve been wondering how a backwater world like this rates an ambassador.”

  “Ah, simple, Mickey! Politics! Politics! The !Plixxi* have an ambassador on Terra, but their representative here, Dr. Beaver, is well connected. As I understand it, it wouldn’t do for him to have an inferior rank.”

  “He’s part of the royal family of the major confederation there, and I don’t think his father wants him too far away from home,” Piper explained. “It makes sense, since most of their trade goes through here. He’s very interesting to talk to. I understand he’s an idealist of sorts.”

  “Yeah, I think you could say that,” I said.

  “What are your plans, Mickey?” Hiro asked, grabbing his drink as it came by and gulping it down.

  Catarina smiled before I could answer. “I’m not sure he has any. Ken is on the beach, so to speak. A lot will depend on what happens to his ship—”

  “She’s even more of a wreck than usual, and for the time being she belongs to the Navy,” I interjected.

  Hiro frowned, trying to remember if a civilian was allowed to interrupt a lieutenant.

  “If Rustam’s Slipper is tied up here any length of time, Ensign MacKay and his shipmates will have to find other berths, which will be difficult,” Catarina explai
ned tactfully.

  Hiro frowned again, then nodded at the logic of it.

  “What is it we’re drinking?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Martini, Mickey. Martini. Properly chilled, of course. The only civilised drink,” Hiro said, snapping his fingers. “Oh, waitress! Another round of four here, please. I keep forgetting you’re not academy, Mickey. Well, no harm in that. Some of my best friends never went to the academy. In fact, I married a woman who never went to the academy!” He looked down at his watch. “Beaver should be here any minute. I told him six-fifteen. Why don’t you three youngsters chat while I hit the head. Give my regards to Dr. Beaver if he shows up before I return.” Hiro marched off.

  “Is he like this all the time?” I asked.

  “As long as he doesn’t get excited,” Piper explained. “I expect you will have trouble finding a berth. There isn’t a lot of ship traffic through here. Have you been here before?”

  “This is my third trip, so I’m practically a native,” I told her.

  She nodded. “Schuyler’s World just isn’t an ideal place for distressed spacemen. Catarina mentioned that you’re staying here at the Atlantic. Where are the rest of your shipmates?”

  “Well, Annalee McHugh and Rosalee Dykstra are taking rooms down at the Prancing Pony, and they may take up bartending. Wyma Jean Spooner has the port watch. She’s somewhere overhead reading romance fiction. Petty Officer Witherspoon is staying here, although he’s not part of our crew, strictly speaking.” Clyde was upstairs mooning into his beer.

  “Last, but not least, Commander Hiro just packed your clients off to jail,” Catarina added.

  Piper smiled, then rubbed her chin. “Ken, I’m trying to remember, wasn’t there another member of your crew?”

  “Elaine O’Day, but one of the local magistrates sent her up when we were here a few weeks ago.”

  “Elaine broke out of jail,” Catarina said seriously. “Yeoman Bunker told me while I was transmitting my report.”

  “I was wondering whether Bobo and Ironsides would end up in her cell. I figured it would either be poetic justice or cruel and unusual punishment. How did she get loose?”

  “The usual. They let her out on work release. Like everybody else on work release, she disappeared. The locals probably figure it’s cheaper than keeping her in jail and having to feed her. I’m not sure they’re looking for her very hard.”

  “The wicked flee where no man pursueth. I’d have to agree with the part about feeding her. What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Oh. Now I remember,” Piper said. “She’s sworn to get even with you and the rest of your ship’s crew for cutting her adrift.”

  “It’s not as if she left us a great deal of choice. How serious is she?” I asked.

  “I read that she cut her wrist and wrote the message on the wall of her cell in blood,” Piper said.

  “That sounds sufficiently serious. Just a nasty suspicion, but you wouldn’t happen to have exerted an influence on the judge who sentenced her, would you, Catarina?”

  Catarina smiled a wicked smile. “Merely hypothetically, does five hundred in small bills qualify as influence?”

  “God, were we outbid. Pretend I didn’t ask. Merely hypothetically, I didn’t think that the Criminal Investigation Branch did that sort of thing.”

  “Merely hypothetically, I would mention that I’m Naval Intelligence, seconded to CIB. In NI, we’re accustomed to accomplishing the mission and worrying about the details later.”

  “Oh. Would Elaine be in a hypothetical position to find out?”

  “I asked the docket clerk to mention the courtroom betting line, which might have influenced some of her remarks to Judge Osman. I would say that she has a strong suspicion,” Catarina admitted. “We were improvising.”

  Piper rolled her eyes.

  As Commander Hiro came over to rejoin us, the waitress escorted two stumpy beings in pinstripes over to our table. Dr. Beaver was in the lead. “Cheeves, how fortunate we are! Commander Hiro and Lieutenant Piper, how good to see you! And friend Ken and friend Catarina, what a joyous occasion this truly is!” he exclaimed, squinting in the bright candlelight.

  They bowed low and then sat down across the table from Catarina and me. Hiro stood up and shouted, “Oh, waitress! Two honey-on-the-rocks, please!”

  “I hadn’t realised it when I spoke to you last,” Beaver continued, “but I understand that friend Catarina has been cooperating with our government in a very delicate investigatory matter.”

  Cheeves whispered in his ear.

  “It seems that there has been a problem with the smuggling of pernicious drugs,” Beaver said. “As Bucky says, ‘It is a matter requiring our utmost vigilance to prevent great harm.”

  Catarina caught my eye and nodded. “I’m not sure if Commander Hiro mentioned this, but the !Plixxi* ship that was in port at the same time we were was implicated. They fired upon us without warning arid succeeded in damaging our ship quite severely. Thanks to Ken’s able ship handling, we were able to thwart their efforts until they destroyed themselves with an errant missile. I deeply regret that there were no survivors.”

  “Oh, dear! How dreadful,” Beaver exclaimed. “I did not realise. Cheeves had the afternoon off, and perhaps I should have dealt with the mail. Well, as Bucky says, ‘a clean mind and a strong heart weather every storm.’ “

  Cheeves whispered in his ear. Beaver stood up. “If you will excuse us for one short moment.” The two of them went off to another table and began an animated discussion that sounded like a tape being played too fast.

  Piper said something that occupied Hiro’s attention, so I leaned over to whisper to Catarina. “That’s just what I need. Homespun philosophy from something that looks like a melon with hair.”

  “Ken,” she purred, “he does not! Look at those eyes, he looks just like a little collie!”

  “He looks like a rat with a glandular problem,” I whispered, scenting danger.

  Catarina’s eyes lit up. “Let’s say we’ll split the difference. We’ll call him a cross between the two, sort of a Melancholy Baby.”

  I lowered my voice even further. “All right. I surrender. I’ll behave, but I want you to know that was twice as low as a snake can go.”

  “Why, Ken,” she said mildly, “that was very good.”

  Beaver and Cheeves returned, and Hiro broke off his discussion with Piper to listen. “It appears that the matter is even more serious than I could possibly have imagined,” Beaver stated. He reached into his waistcoat and pulled out a hologram of a Rodent with a funny-looking moustache. “I regret that the captain of the vessel you engaged was my demi-brother Adolf. He always was a very peculiar child.”

  “Adolf?”

  “He always wanted to go off and be a soldier and conquer something, in a small way. I’m surprised to see him commanding a ship—Genghis was always more the naval type—but Adolf and Genghis were always close, so I suppose that it’s the personal element.”

  “Do you have other brothers?” Hiro asked.

  “Two. Demi-brothers, actually. Surviving ones, that is. Cain and Mordred. Cain is the eldest behind Genghis, although he is not in the line of succession. He and Father had a falling-out some time ago. Mordred is the baby of the family.”

  “Did Cain’s falling-out with your father involve any bloodshed?” Catarina asked.

  “Well, something of the sort,” Bucky admitted airily. “That was when Father decided it might be good to have me go off-planet and get in some diplomatic experience.”

  “Great family you got there,” Piper said under her breath.

  “I admit we all have our little differences, but what family doesn’t?” Beaver said. “I shall have to acquaint Father with this news, and I suppose I shall have to go into formal mourning.”

  Cheeves whispered in his ear. Beaver nodded slowly, looking thoughtful, as well as shaggy. “Cheeves tells me that it would be prudent to consult with my government before discussing the
matter further, but I look forward to meeting you again very soon, and as Bucky says, an anticipated meeting with friends is a reward for a day diligently spent.” He and Cheeves got up, bowed, and left.

  I looked over at Hiro, who was obviously in shock, and asked Catarina, “Did he just say we blew away Rodent royalty?”

  Catarina nodded. “This could be a problem.”

  “We’ve got a wrecked ship, half of our crew is in jail or should be, most of us are broke, and now we have diplomatic problems,” I said, “not to mention Elaine.”

  “Well, look at the bright side,” Piper rationalised. “Things could be worse. Think of the alternatives.”

  “What alternatives?” I asked.

  “We could be dead,” Catarina explained.

  “Commander Hiro and I really should be getting back, but I’d like to thank you for joining us, and I hope that we can all get together again, sometime,” Piper said gracefully, helping a somewhat stricken Hiro to his feet.

  “Beam, I have a key, and some things to do, so don’t wait up for me. Have a good night!” Catarina said.

  “Good night,” I said mechanically. As soon as they were gone, I looked at Catarina. “I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself mixed up in, but the last time I had fun, it was different somehow. What are your plans?”

  “I’m going over to the jail now and see if I can persuade Davie Lloyd and Bernie to sing for their supper.”

  “So late?”

  “Too much sun bothers me, or have you forgotten? I’m going to try to get as much done at night as I can. Beam said she’d check into finding some spare lattices for you tomorrow.”

  “That’s good, but I’m not sure how it’s going to help. It just hit me that my ship belongs to the Navy.”

  “Don’t worry, Ken. Everything will work out.”

  “Yeah, I know. ‘Trust me,’ you said.”

  She patted my cheek and gave me a kiss. “You got it. Get some sleep and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. You have Piper’s phone number?”

  “It should be listed.”

  “Okay. Goodnight.”

  I went up to my room. Before I went to sleep, on impulse I called room service and had a dozen roses sent to Miss Catarina Lindquist at 147 McKnew Street. While I was at it, I had them send a dozen dead ones over to Harry at the Prancing Pony.