L Neil Smith - [North American Confederacy 03]

by Their Majesties' Bucketeers (epub)

  I set my bag upon the carpet. “Good morning, Mav. I see that you have done well by yourself, as usual. A word about that pipe of yours, however, which will slow your healing by at least—”

  He crinkled and looked up at me. “Ah, Mymy, good morning to you, also. If I am not to be allowed my pipe, dear paracauterist, I shall perforce have to turn instead to juicing.” Here, he mimicked quite accurately that sudden rigor which current induces in the body. “What effect might that have on my health? I am given to understand that you may now deliver an informed opinion on the subject.” “Why, of all the ... oh, very well, then, make a finish of what Ensda has begun! But before you do, kindly inform me why that strange unpalatable creature Fatpa telephoned my rooms this morning, asking for assistance on your behalf. Have you some idea, after all, of continuing these efforts?” With this unthoughtful utterance, I felt instantly ashamed, for I could understand and sympathize with Mav’s vain labors, if anybody could, and with the final resignation of his words last evening.

  Mav, however, remained quite cheerful. “Quite so, my dear, quite so, although you have been summoned here somewhat less to render assistance to me than for your own continued well-being. Tell me, Mymy, have you still that little equalizer we took from Law?”

  “Why, yes, I believe that I have. It is to be hoped that Law will have little use for it in future. Why ever do you ask—would you like me to return it to him?”

  “On the contrary.” He laughed. “Do you believe that you can make proficient use of it after just one brief lesson?” He extended a hand, which I took as a request on his part to examine the weapon in question. I rummaged about in my bag, found the gun, and gave it to him, though I hesitated to answer immediately. Much like my earlier exchange with Fatpa, this conversation was making less and less sense to me the longer it lasted.

  “I am unsure how to judge proficiency at such things,

  Mav. I think that I can do as well or better than I did upon the morning of our picnic.”

  He slammed the little pistol shut. “Splendid. You must have a care, now, and keep this where you can reach it with celerity, for over the next few days I shall have to place your life—and my own, I hasten to add—upon the gambling table, risking all against nothing to ensnare an evil-doer.” He gave me back the gun and fell silent for a moment. Then: “Had I not anticipated the self-righteous vigor of your reaction, I would tender the suggestion that you take a room here in this place, where I could be more assured of your safety.”

  “My dear fellow,” I intoned icily, “I trust your anticipations will be satisfied, for the suggestion fills me with that full measure of revulsion you expectedl As to my safety, sir, I have been taking care of myself for nearly—”

  “Now, Mymy,” he said with a sudden gentleness, “there is a genuine concern here. You had no way of knowing, when you arrived, that I am about to publicly announce that I have the identity of our killer. I fear—indeed, I trust—that this announcement will compel him to attempt to strike again before—”

  “What are you saying? Why did you not tell me of this immediately instead of—” I sat down heavily upon the cushion beside him, perplexed and in no small degree annoyed that I had wasted so much sympathy.

  “I did not say that I know who murdered Srafen, Mymy, merely that I intend announcing that I do. It is to be hoped, by means of this deception and the killer’s subsequent actions, that I will discover his identity and be enabled thus to fulfill my public pledge. Do you follow me?” My mind was in a whirl. “That is what you spoke of yesternight! I took it for a sort of suicidal resignation!”

  He laughed, his fur acrinkle to the very roots. “No, not all all, my very dear, not at all! I’m sorry indeed to have alarmed you so. Perhaps the tone I used was affected by my wounds and fatigue. This sally had occurred to me—in fact, I have some notes upon it, made last year sometime— but, when it seemed that Ensda was our lam, I set it aside. Now it is the only recourse I have left, an act of calculated desperation, for all my other traces seem to have evaporated along with the dampness from -yesterday’s rain.”

  I inhaled the koodsmoke drifting through the room and braced myself up again. “I see. And how is it that you intend to make this announcement of yours?”

  He, reached out to pat one of my hands. “I have already done so, to Niitood, his colleagues and competitors, through a written deposition, copies of which good Fatpa is distributing in newspaper offices throughout the city at this very moment. Would you care to see the original?”

  He handed me a scrap of paper that bore, not the Department’s sigil, but, in neatly handwritten lines, his own name and the address of this place in which we sat conversing:.

  To Parties Interested in the Matter of the Late Professor Srafen Rotdu Rizmou: Following extensive inquiries into the circumstances surrounding the recent brutal murder of the Curator of the Imperial Museum of Natural Philosophy, I have determined to name the responsible party at a gathering to be conducted in the offices of Battalion Chief Waad Hifk Tis three days hence. Those persons whose involvement in the matter is legitimate—and otherwise—may assure themselves that Their Majesties’ justice shall be vindicated to the utter limit which Their law provides.

  Agot Edmoot Mav, Extraordinary Inquirer Their Majesties’ Bucketeers Fadyedsu Street, The Kiiden

  It had certainly by no means escaped my notice that Mav, for the first time in our acquaintance, had placed a hand upon my person in some manner other than is necessary, for example, in assisting one of the weaker sexes into a carriage or in escorting someone across a dangerous thoroughfare. Indeed, the difficulty I encountered finishing that conversation with him comprehensibly was but the first of many equally dizzying events that seemed to tread over our carapaces during the next several dozen hours with such ferociousness and rapidity it now feels quite ludicrous to me that, for most of that period of time, I remember being rather bored.

  Mav continued calling into doubt the security of my person were I to stay within my own doors in Gamlo Road. For my part, naturally, I adamantly refused lodging, however temporarily, at a place so notorious as Vyssu’s. It was settled upon, finally, and not without considerable and heated debate, that the Department would supply a room for me, incognito, in a boardinghouse across the street.

  What upward increment in propriety I thereby gained I am not certain, but I had ultimately made the point with Mav that if anyone were responsible for the conduct and safety of my life, it was I myself alone. He had stated many times in the past that any wholly ethical civilization would leave each individual the sole exclusive arbiter of his, her, or rher own being; in his view this was the irreducible premise upon which societal decency must be founded. He had, on that account, no consistent alternative but to cease arguing with me upon the matter of where I was to live for the remainder of this situation. I did not happily anticipate applying the same line of reasoning upon my mother, but determined to address that particular problem as well after the fact as could be managed.

  To Zoobon, my duplicitous maidservant, I said simply that I was traveling for the Department under suitable chaperonage—which, in a manner, was true. The boardinghouse across from Vyssu’s was owned and operated by a sweet little old lurrie of extreme fragility and advanced years who would tolerate not the slightest apparent deviation from respectable behavior upon my part or that of any other resident or visitor. Mav or Fatpa must call upon me in the tiny lobby under rher surparental eye and within a narrow set of hours appointed for the purpose, entering never further into the establishment. I must also, when I stepped out, return well before dusk each evening or face immediate eviction.

  All in all, it can be said that I—as well as that sense of nicety my parents had gone to some pains to instill in me— was highly satisfied with these arrangements. It was not until some long time afterward that Mav informed me, with the blandest humor rippling through his fur, that the strictures in that house were intended (vainly, it would seem) to allay certain suspici
ons among the local populace and authorities: a “secret” ring of Unarchists habitually gathered deep down in the basement there, under the enthusiastic leadership of my sweet little old lurrie, every second, fifth, and eighth day of the week, around a guttering candle.

  This was, I thought, a conspiracy not apparently destined to electrify the world.

  At the time, however, I sat complacently ensconced within my hired rooms up on the first floor, staring down across the street to Vyssu’s, relatively well satisfied with things, as I have said. Pah in his wisdom knows there was little enough else to do with myself. Mav’s provocative notice had appeared in all the papers, copies of which were scattered about the floor of my own self-inflicted hermitage, every line of every single page read over and over and over again for want of some alternative activity. It was a waiting game that we were playing, I reminded myself every hour with less and less conviction, a game of agonizing ennui with only the vague uncertain promise of some stark and violent terroT toward its conclusion as a point of relief. I have come since to understand this as a principle characteristic of all law-enforcement work. Mav compared it to the baiting of a trap for predators with a bit of meat and began referring to it as a “steak-out” until I convinced him that the turn of phrase lacked elegance.

  I am glad I am a paracauterist where emergencies are dealt with, for the most part, by appointment.

  Having, as I say, then, little or nothing else upon my plate, I decided to increase what little expertise I possessed concerning the pistol with which Mav and I had practiced. Gathering that the landlurry would most likely look askance at my peppering rher walls and ceiling with bullet pocks, and that the other inhabitants of this place might be inclined to complain over the noise of it, I reasoned finally that many of the prerequisite skills might be enhanced with the firing of no actual shots at all: the steady hand, the lining up of sights, the careful and deliberate pull upon the trigger—all of these might well be practiced without benefit of ammunition, sound, or fury (that latter, most likely, from my neighbors). In addition, I thought, the absence of dreadful recoil might indeed prevent any further engender-ment upon my part of what Mav had called a flinch—yet another inelegance of his.

  Thus I aimed the little gun at lamp brackets upon the walls, decorative cornices of buildings I could see past my curtains, at insects or little accidental whorls in the sand upon the floor; I squeezed the handle, trying to keep the sights aligned until the striker fell. I suppose I must have repeated these exercises, along with practicing the loading and unloading of the thing, nine thousand times or more in the many weary hours I sat alone in that room. Should ever

  I be set upon by angry lamp brackets, wild cornices, aggressive bugs, or vicious sandy lumps, I would now be well protected.

  Mav’s recovery was swifter than I might have predicted,

  I suspect due to the prospect that he might, at last, be nearing some agreeable conclusion to this soggy and infernal mystery. Several times each day he came across the street, met me belowstairs, and accompanied me back to where he himself had grown accustomed to fidgeting against the possibility of action. How he occupied his time when I was not beside him I would not have cared to speculate; there also was Vyssu, who seemed almost to have given over whatever ordinary enterprises she pursued to this strangely static pursuit of Mav’s. Whenever I was there, we sat discussing art and politics, sports and drama, the weather, and every other incidental topic except that matter most at hand. With the failing light, my detective friend would escort me home, his pace visibly much livelier and healthier each occasion. I would then wait by myself until the next time he appeared.

  Each such afternoon I protested that I might go shopping, visiting, or simply for a walk. This Mav surprised me by graciously agreeing to—provided I took Fatpa with me everywhere I went! It took me not more than a few seconds imagining that apparition occupying a cushion in my mother’s parlor or assisting me with packages through the gilt doors of some respected and fashionable place of retail business, to dismiss the notion and return to those same three walls I had come to know—and to dislike—so well.

  I did derive some small amusement at the time contemplating how Tis might react to Fatpa’s imposing presence at the Precinct.

  The evening of the third day, following yet another of my sociables with Mav and Vyssu, I felt the state of hann beginning to steal over me. This, as one might expect, was far from unwelcome as it would neatly dispose of a weary hour that would otherwise be occupied adding to the callosity on my trigger fingers. I secured the bolt upon the door, sifted the uppermost layer of sand in the hannbox, then settled into it, digging all nine arms as comfortably deep as possible. Drifting, I closed my eyes and—

  Suddenly, a great commotion sounded in the street below! With painful effort I wrenched consciousness back into focus, surging upward in a shower of fine, clean sand that spattered on the floor, mixing with the coarser grade that served as carpet in this place. Through the window, I could see a pair of waggons in the lamplight, their trees arid traces tangled inextricably, the axle of one of them broken, a watun lying on the pavement, to all appearances sorely injured. The drivers, working-class fellows in crude and dirty habiliment, stood at the conjunction of the vehicles, waving all their arms and shouting loudly enough to rattle the pane through which I watched them. At any moment, it was clear, they would begin to strike each other savagely; despite the hour, a crowd was gathering in cheerful anticipation of such an unscheduled sporting event. All the neighborhood around about seemed compelled to offer, at the tops of their voices, suggestions and encouragement. Somewhere, faint in the background, a Bucketeer’s trumpet sounded, promising that there might even be a referee.

  From my vantage, a full story above the potential melee, I suddenly espied something no other could have been aware of, and understood the true nature of the scene below: it was a sham. On the roof of Vyssu’s, a dark and silent form prised at a trap that would admit him to an upper floor. For some queer reason, the character of his stealthy movements caused me to glance down once more at the waggons—now I recognized one of the vehicles as well as the beast that had drawn it hither. I knew that figure among the chimney pots as well as I knew any other, despite the fact that he was clad now altogether differently than the occasion when I had seen him last.

  Finally, finally I say, something was about to happen, and I would not be left out of it.

  I seized my little pistol, remembering also to snatch up the billfold with my official insignia, and dashed down the stairs. There the doors were bolted shut already. As I made to unfasten them, the owner emerged from her room.

  “Here, now, missur, what’s goin’ on? You know there ain’t no cornin’ nor goin’ after dark—house rules.”

  I waved my Bucketeer credentials at rher suddenly widened eyes. “Be damned to your rules! Keep still and help me with this accursed night chain, for I am about Their Majesties’ business!”

  My host complied with alacrity, giving the lie to rher Unarchist tendencies. Even as I charged out into the street, I thrilled at having uttered those stirring words as I had heard Mav do before me many times. I ran around the edge of the crowd toward Vyssu’s and pounded upon the door. Fatpa greeted me, flared a nostril as if to speak, took in the weapon in my hand, and moved out of the way. As he did so, I noticed him produce an intimidating knife from somewhere on his person; he followed me upstairs without a word.

  There, upon the landing, stood the figure I had seen upon the roof. We very nearly collided, but he drew back in alarm and snatched desperately among the black robes that he now wore. I pointed my pistol at him. “Stand where you are, in Their Majesties’ names, or I shall—”

  A metallic gleam shone from his hand, sweeping upward nearly faster than the eye could follow. I pulled the trigger. There was a roar and a sharply stinging slap at my palm, both of which I scarcely noticed at the moment. The figure staggered backward, fetched against a wall, raised his weapon again. I fired once
more. His arm dropped and his gun discharged into the floor. When the smoke cleared from the air between us, the Reverend Mr. Adem lay in a heap of tangled limbs upon the carpet, breathing his last.

  XV: A Criminal Convergence

  Scarcely aware of the smoking pistol still gripped in my hand, I crouched beside the fallen lam. He stirred a little, and in great apparent pain uttered a single word, incomprehensible to me: “Danokih . . .” Then, shutting out forever the light of the world, he closed his eyes and expired.

  All round me on the landing, doors popped open, eyes peered timidly about the corridor. Dimly it occurred to me that, in each instance, in each doorway, actually, their owners were uniformly three in number, a male, a surmale, and a female. The reason for this even distribution of the genders, when it finally dawned upon my much-rattled sensibilities, swept a shiver of embarrassment through my fur. After all, I remembered, this was Vyssu’s.

  I rose and turned toward the stairs, only to confront an individual known to me, a . . . well ... a customer of Vyssu’s, caught, by me and by the violence of circumstances, unprepared. He withdrew in guilty haste into the room from which he’d just emerged.

  “Your Eminence!” I cried in astonished outrage. “Whatever are you doing in a place like ...” I stopped, then, and spoke no further, for I knew all too well the answer to my foolish question—and that, as well, the Archsacerdot of Mathas, my parents’ good and respectable friend, was unlikely ever to provide it to me in any case.

  Precisely at that awkward moment, there erupted a commotion on the ground floor. As I could be of no further use to my patient, I rushed to the edge of the landing. Below-stairs, Mav and Vyssu, among others of the house, having by all appearances just recently hurried to see what the shooting was about, now were being distracted by an angry confrontation at the entrance. Fatpa, a fellow ordinarily quite capable of handling any threat of this kind, unaccountably was finding himself overwhelmed by a frail and familiar sweet little old Unarchist.