by Bob Shaw
"And I want a camper all to myself." Nicklin made a show of delicately inhaling the aromatic vapour from his tea. "When I say I want it all to myself, I'm referring to the living space. There would, of course, be drivers provided for my exclusive use. And when we get to our permanent headquarters I want really good hotel accommodation."
"I'm beginning to enjoy myself too – just taking in your performance," Montane said. "You still haven't told me where this mythical spaceship is."
"I'm coming to that," Nicklin replied, his pulse increasing in speed and power. "There's just one more thing."
"And that is…?
"Danea Farthing," Nicklin said casually. "I want Danea Farthing."
Montane's smile vanished and he abruptly set his cup down, slopping tea into the saucer. "Get out of here, Jim – and never come back. Go on! Get out right now!"
Nicklin settled himself more comfortably on the bench. "A spaceship, Corey. A guaranteed way of getting out of Orbitsville before the trap closes. An open ticket to New Eden. God has entrusted you with the task of leading His children to safety, and He has given you licence to employ any means within your power. You explained all that stuff to me not so long ago, sitting right here on this bench, the day you were telling me how I had been well and truly shafted. Surely you can't have forgotten so soon?"
"You are the filthiest…" Montane closed his eyes, his face the colour of tallow. "Danea Farthing is a human being."
"I should hope so," Nicklin said with a grin. "There's nothing kinky about me."
"Spare me your diseased humour. I repeat, Danea is a human being."
"She was for sale then," Nicklin said in a voice from which all traces of humour had fled. "So she ought to be for sale now. Have a quiet word with her, there's a good chap."
Still with his eyes shut, Montane clenched his hands and sat without speaking for ten or more seconds, then – unexpectedly – he relaxed and raised his eyelids. His gaze was mild and unperturbed once more.
"I was praying," he explained. "I was communing with the Lord."
"Did He commune back at you?"
"He reminded me that I have only your word for it about this ship. It may no longer exist, for all I know, or it may never have existed. He counselled me to stay my anger."
Nicklin nodded thoughtfully. "Verily, He hath counselled you well. Hey, that sort of lingo must be catching!"
"So how about it, Jim?" Montane replied, no longer allowing himself to be baited.
"How about my fee?"
"I think I have ceased to believe that you can deliver a ship, but I confess to being curious about whatever kind of story you have dreamed up." Montane was now speaking in his customary rectorial manner, apparently satisfied that he had gained the advantage in what had become a verbal duel. "Therefore, I have few misgivings in agreeing to your terms."
"Wise man," Nicklin said.
"I'm expecting this to be good, Jim." Montane's expression was calm as he retrieved his cup and removed some drips from the bottom of it with his fingers. "So go ahead and astonish me – where is this spaceship that can be obtained for next to nothing?"
Nettled by Montane's change of attitude, Nicklin ignored an inner voice which warned him that he might be rushing ahead too fast. "It's buried near a small town within a few thousand kilometres of Beachhead."
"Buried!" Montane guffawed in disbelief. "Are you trying to tell me that somebody hauled an interstellar ship thousands of kilometres into the hinterland … and then buried it?"
"Well, he didn't dig a hole in the ground and drop it in there. He covered it with tonnes of earth and rocks."
"Why?"
"It was intended to be a memorial," Nicklin said, wondering how he had got into a defensive posture. "Something like a mausoleum. As I remember it, there was a rich man with a young wife who wanted to be a space flier. He bought her a ship of her very own and she promptly got herself killed in it in some kind of freak accident. So he paid to have the ship transported to his home estate and he made it into a tomb for her. He decided that it didn't look right, however, and I can't say I blame him – a space-going ship would look a bit odd sitting in anybody's back yard. Luckily, his hobby was gardening, so he had the ship landscaped – I suppose that's the best way to put it – and, as far as I know, he pottered around it quite happily for the rest of his natural.
"A touching little story, don't you think?"
"Obviously you think it's very funny."
Montane's gaze flickered towards his wife's coffin as he spoke, and Nicklin experienced a pang of happiness as the significance of the involuntary glance dawned on him. He had been slightly worried about how Montane might react to the bizarre tale of a millionaire's folly, but he had completely overlooked the parallel in the two men's lives. Blind chance, otherwise known as the Gaseous Vertebrate, had rendered Montane soft, receptive and vulnerable. Bless you, Corey, he thought, I had forgotten that anybody who lugs his old lady around in a tin box would be inclined to sympathise with the notion of a metal Taj Mahal.
"I don't think it's the slightest bit funny," he said in overly solemn tones. "It's just that I tend to hide my emotions under a veneer of flippancy." He was rewarded by a momentary flash of loathing in Montane's eyes, a signal that the preacher's defences had again been penetrated.
"What is this man's name?" Montane said.
"I can't remember."
"Where is the spaceship?"
"I can't quite remember that, either," Nicklin replied. "All I can say right now is that it's near a town in the PI region."
Montane sniffed. "You can't remember much, can you? How did you get this story into your head in the first place?"
"When I was a kid I had a great-uncle, name of Reynard Nicklin, who travelled a lot because he was a surveyor or a cartographer or something like that. He sent me a holocard of the tomb once, and promised to take me there some day. Very pretty and colourful it was – an ornamental garden completely covering this little hill – but I guess I would have forgotten all about it if it hadn't been for the weird background note. That must have made quite an impression on me, because I've had spooky subterranean rumblings about it all day. And tonight at the meeting … suddenly … there it was!"
"Just a minute," Montane said, frowning, "you got the holocard when you were a child? This story about creating a mausoleum … How long ago did it all happen?"
Nicklin shrugged. "Fifty, sixty years ago … perhaps even a hundred … Who knows?"
"You've been wasting my time!" Montane exhaled forcibly, showing exasperation, and his voice hardened. "I sat here and endured your blasphemies and obscenities, and your sheer–"
"Take it easy," Nicklin cut in. "What's the matter?"
"Rust! That's what's the matter – there'll be nothing left of your damned ship by this time."
Nicklin smiled his happy hayseed smile, keeping his mouth in its cheerful U-shape until Montane took heed of his expression and gave him a questioning look.
"They were still constructing spaceships out of the old electronsated alloys in those days," Nicklin said soothingly. "That was before the Earth-Orbitsville trade petered out and the shipyards had to cut back on costs. No, Corey, there won't be much rust or any other kind of corrosion for you to worry your head about. At least, not in the pressure hull, the internal structure and the major components. There might be some problems with all the minor bits and pieces, but even there…
"I mean, if you decided to use a spaceship as a ready-made casket you'd make certain the whole thing was properly sealed up, wouldn't you? You'd hardly want your nearest and dearest to get mildew. And you definitely wouldn't want bugs crawling up her."
Montane set his cup back in the saucer again, this time with exaggerated care, and when he spoke each word was the splintering of a human bone. "I never thought I'd hear myself say this to any man, but if you speak like that about my wife – ever again – I'll kill you, Jim. I swear I'll kill you."
"I'm shocked at you," Nicklin sa
id comfortably. "That was a terrible thing to say to a fellow human being."
"I wouldn't have said it to a human being."
"I'm immune to insults now, Corey. I'm immune to everything."
"Then you must be very unhappy."
"On the contrary," Nicklin said, maintaining his smile. "I've found the secret of complete happiness. Do you want to know what it is? I'll tell you anyway. At all times you keep just one thought uppermost in your mind – that everybody is a piece of shit."
"Does that include yourself?"
"Especially yourself, old son – that's the whole point! It would ruin the Big Joke if you didn't include yourself."
Montane shook his head, the movements slow, tired, barely perceptible. "Let's get back to the buried spaceship – where is it?"
"That's something else I can't remember, but I've an idea the letter A crops up two or three times in the name of the town," Nicklin said, wondering if he should compel the preacher to put details of their new arrangement on to tape or paper. "I might be able to find it by going through a PI gazetteer, but even without the name we have enough information."
"That's what I was thinking," Montane said, giving him a sly glance. "I could find it by myself now."
"Yes, but Renard's people could get there faster – if I tipped them off."
"The ship may not even be available," Montane countered. "There may be descendants who treat it like a shrine."
"The facts we have suggest that the lady died, as they used to say, without issue."
"There could be other relatives. Perhaps they unearthed the ship years ago and sold it for scrap."
"I've already thought of that." Nicklin concealed the lie as expertly as he could. Christ, he thought, the old boy has a point there – I should have kept my mouth shut until I'd done some detective work on my own. "But the scrap value would hardly cover the excavation and haulage costs."
"And there's always the possibility that your memory has tricked you over the location," Montane said, now apparently enjoying himself. "It's going to be ages before interportal flights are commercially available again – so if it turns out that the town isn't in the PI region I don't see how we can get to it."
"This conversation is starting to lose all its sparkle – and I'm starving." In spite of himself, Nicklin was impressed by the other man's mental resilience, and he was fast becoming angry with himself for having played all his trump cards so early on in the game. The really smart thing to do would have been to take his time, to consolidate his ground step by step. He should have verified the existence and availability of the ship, then he should have found a way to acquire ownership, by bringing in a third party if necessary. Then, and only then – when he was in a safe position to dictate all the terms – would it have been safe to talk business with Montane.
So what had gone wrong with his sense of judgement? Nicklin writhed inwardly as he answered his own question. It had been the Danea effect again. The fevered visions of inflicting revenge on her, the lurid and penis-stirring images of debauching the Bitch in Black, had robbed him of all caution and common sense. In short, he had behaved like a mindless creature with a whiff of pheromones in its nostrils, and the full price of his stupidity remained to be discovered.
"If you're really hungry I could have Carlos bring a tray in here," Montane said.
A pleasingly tasteless line sprang into Nicklin's mind at the idea of eating off Milly Montane's coffin … My wife says the dinner's on her … but Montane was touchy about dead wife jokes and had sounded genuinely dangerous over the last one. The objective was to earn his undying hatred, not to be killed by him.
"No need to put old Carlos to all that trouble," Nicklin said. "I daresay I can wait a while longer."
"Very well, but if all this works out – and you do take up your 'executive' position – you may have to get used to grabbing food while you have the chance."
"So you're not going to renege on our deal."
"I'm a man of my word, Jim, and the truth is that you're likely to be of more value to the cause now than you were when you joined us. That's what I call irony," Montane stood up and went forward to the shelf which supported his video set. "I'm going to see if I can call up a good PI gazetteer on this thing and then we'll find out if it jogs your memory. There's no point in wasting any more time."
"I agree," Nicklin said, then became concerned about giving the impression of turning soft and compliant again. "But the job was only part of my professional fee. Remember?"
Montane spoke abstractedly, concentrating his attention on the video's command panel. "If you're talking about Danea, you have to remember something. I told you the first day we met that Danea Farthing is a private individual – any personal relationship she may have had with you has nothing to do with me or this mission."
He's sticking it to me, Nicklin thought in dismay. He is really sticking it to me! This is what I get for letting my dick rule my head. A crazy old coot, who thinks he's Moses MkII and has conversations with his wife's corpse, is running rings around me!
"Correct me if I misheard you," he said bitterly, "but I thought you said something about being a man of your word."
"My vows to God take precedence over everything else."
"How convenient!"
"You must try to be consistent, Jim." Montane was still stooped over the video set, apparently finding complexity in its simplified controls, but his words were very much to the point. "A few minutes ago you were happy with the idea that God had given me licence to procure women. If that were the case, He would positively encourage me to commit a minor sin like lying now and again – as long as it served His cause."
Thing's can't go on like this, Nicklin told himself, his fingernails biting deeply into the heels of his hands. There are going to be big changes around here.
He had no idea of how accurate his prediction would prove to be…
PART TWO:
THE HAMMER FALLS
CHAPTER 12
The rifle had roughly the same lines as an old-fashioned sporting weapon, but for the most part its appearance was an exercise in cosmetics and nostalgia. Its stock looked like polished wood and was designed to fit snugly into the user's shoulder, although firing produced no recoil; it was operated by a conventionally styled trigger, although a simple button might have been more appropriate for the unleashing of bolts of ultralaser energy. It had an effective range of three kilometres in dry, clear weather; and a computerised smartscope guaranteed impressive accuracy, even in the hands of a total novice.
A perfect killing machine, beautiful in its own way, the rifle looked incongruous among the frayed umbrellas in the antique hall-stand. Nicklin gazed thoughtfully at it for a few seconds, knowing he was supposed to take it outside with him, then he shook his head. On several previous occasions he had slung the weapon on his shoulder when going out to the hill, and each time had felt like an overgrown child playing frontiersmen or soldiers. He took his old sun-hat from a peg on the hall-stand, squared it on his head and – leaving the double doors wide open – went out of the huge house.
The Fugaccia mansion had become a ready-made headquarters for the mission, though not through Montane's free choice. Ves Fugaccia's heirs lived a hundred kilometres to the east, in a well-developed part of the region, and had never taken any interest in the unmanageable property perched right on the edge of civilisation. They had, however, a good nose for business, and on sensing the obsessive nature of Montane's interest they had flatly refused his offer to buy the buried ship and take it off their hands. That would have been a betrayal of their grandfather's trust, they had said. Good Roman Catholics could never acquiesce in the desecration of a loved one's tomb, they had said. But, somehow, their group conscience had allowed them to contemplate selling the Altamura estate in its entirety; and – when their lawyers had thrice succeeded in jacking up the price – their religious and family scruples had vanished altogether.
Directly above Nicklin the sun had just eme
rged from a nightband, and the day was still cool in spite of being intensely bright. Before him was what had once been the garden fronting the Fugaccia mansion. Now it was a daunting tangle of overgrown shrubs, many of which had been smothered by riotous wild plants, vines and native grasses. In some places the vegetation rose into mounds whose general shape only hinted at what lay beneath – here a summerhouse or an arch, there a fountain or a belvedere. At one point the head of a classical marble statue of a woman raised itself above the leafy ferment, the blank orbs of the eyes contemplating the chaos of greenery in apparent sorrow.
Beyond the ruins of the garden was a small, rounded, man-made hill. It was vividly outlined against a scenic backdrop in which grasslands, lakes and enigmatic forests sifted and tapered through each other, creating horizontal designs which grew slimmer and slimmer until, misted by distance, they merged into ranges of remote grey-blue mountains. Striking though the general panorama was, Nicklin had eyes only for the small hill in the foreground – because the ship was cocooned inside it.
He had just finished breakfast, but he knew, despite the earliness of the hour, that Montane and big Gerl Kingsley were somewhere on the hill, already hard at work with picks and spades. Power tools had been purchased, and at that very moment were on their way from Beachhead with the main body of the caravan, but Montane was unable to hold himself in check. Ownership of the Fugaccia estate had passed into his hands four days earlier, and since then the monkey had been on his back. He had to see the ship for himself. Not until he had actually touched its metal skin would he be able to relax in the knowledge that the greatest hurdle of all was safely behind him.
Picking his way along the path that had been hewn through the wilderness, Nicklin smiled as he recalled Montane's antics of the recent past. The preacher had actually broken down and wept on hearing that the ship was an unmodified Type 83.
"Why!" he had said to Nicklin, blinking at him through lenses of tears. "You want to know why! Because, you smirking great idiot, it's one of the Explorer class!"
