by Timothy Zahn
“What, our report on the meeting?” I shrugged. “He wasn’t as attentive as Lord Kelsey-Ramos would have been, but then he’s new to this. He seemed impressed enough.”
“I’d say so, yes,” was his dry rejoinder. “Considering the order just came through that she’d be coming to the reception tonight.” He grinned with a mock-evil-tinged dreaminess. “Can you imagine what the assembled dignitaries would say if they knew they were hosting a zombi?”
I could, and it made me wince. “Mikha, I need a favor.”
“Sure. What?”
I hesitated. “I need a complete listing of capital crimes under Solitaire law.”
His eyebrows raised a couple of millimeters. “You looking to start a new hobby?”
“It’s for a friend,” I told him, matching his dry tone. “I also need to know if there are any places in the system—the ring mines for instance—where Patri law might possibly take precedence.”
“Solitaire law covers the entire system.” He shook his head, eyes boring into mine. “This unnamed friend wouldn’t by any chance be our outzombi, would it?”
I hadn’t really expected to fool him. “It would, yes,” I admitted. “I’m trying to get her a new hearing back on Outbound.”
Understanding came into his face. “And having the hearing take place after she’s dead kind of defeats the purpose?”
I nodded. “Unfortunately, in order to keep her alive I have to find a replacement for her.”
Kutzko’s eyes defocused a bit. “So you want a list of capital crimes to see who we could stick with that honor. And you want the ring mines because that’s where we’ll be leaving the system from?”
“More or less.” For the moment, there seemed no reason to mention how limited the pool of potential zombi candidates actually was. “Can you do that?”
“No problem,” he assured me. “Now: what’s the other favor you want?”
“What makes you think there is one?” I countered.
He smiled slyly. “Oh, come on, Gilead. The blazing Solitaran penal code you could find on your own.”
I sighed. “Sometimes I wish you’d been born stupid,” I told him. “Okay. At the moment we’re scheduled to leave tomorrow, which means the reception tonight will probably be my only chance to talk directly to Governor Rybakov. And I have to talk to her—privately or reasonably so.”
Again, that knowing look. “And you want me ready to run interference?”
“Basically, yes.”
He paused, considering, and I could see that he was weighing the risks of possibly winding up square in the middle of this whole mess. “You really think she’s innocent?” he asked at last.
I nodded. “I do. The more I see of her, the less I think she could be a murderer.”
He pursed his lips, then shrugged. “Okay, sure, I’ll do it. Give me a sign when you’re ready and I’ll try to make you a bubble to talk in.”
I exhaled silently. “Thanks, Mikha. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem.” He studied my face. “Just one question: is Mr. Kelsey-Ramos one of the people I’m supposed to keep out of this bubble?”
It was a question that had also been nagging at me. At the moment I had at least his tacit approval for what I was doing … but making an embarrassing nuisance of myself at a formal reception would evaporate that support in double-quick time. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing in advance where the crucial dividing line lay. “There shouldn’t be a problem as long as I’m discreet,” I said as reassuringly as possible. There was no point in him worrying about it, too.
“And if you’re not, I pretend I don’t know you?”
“Fair enough. Try to be gentle when you throw me out of the building.”
He grinned lopsidedly. “I’ll bring Brad along and let him do it.”
“Oh, thanks a lot,” I snorted. “I’ll either wind up in orbit or in a burn-out trajectory.”
His grin faded into seriousness, a seriousness that somehow made me brace myself. “You know, there is one other way to get the Bellwether a new zombi.”
I gazed at him, feeling the cold-steel edge there. “Pick one up ourselves?” I asked carefully.
He nodded in Cameo’s direction. “Even Solitaire’s got its quota of drifters and generally unwanted people. Some of them might be criminals from the rest of the Patri and colonies who finagled passage here and are hiding out.”
“You know I could never be party to something like that,” I said, my lips suddenly dry. “It would be murder.”
“Which the Deadman Switch isn’t?”
I gritted my teeth. “Two wrongs have never yet made a right. Besides, you’d never get Mr. Kelsey-Ramos to go along with something like that.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll bet there would be a way to rig it to look like someone had stowed away and tried to seize control of the ship.” He paused. “You may not know it,” he added obliquely, “but Lord Kelsey-Ramos has been trying to find a second Watcher for his staff for a couple of years now.”
An odd haze of unreality settled over me, a disbelief that I was even talking about this … “No,” I said firmly. “Absolutely not. If I can save Calandra legally, I’ll do it. Not otherwise.”
“Even if the illegal zombi deserved death anyway?” he countered.
All have sinned and lack God’s glory … “Even then,” I told him.
For a moment we looked at each other. Then Kutzko shrugged acceptance. “If that’s how you want it,” he said. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, I think your sense of ethics is on the overdone side.”
“Possibly,” I said evenly. “But any ethics you can throw out when they’re inconvenient wouldn’t be worth much as ethics, would they?”
“I suppose not,” he said, and I could sense him backing away from the topic. “I suppose I should start getting my people ready for tonight.”
“And I have to get Calandra some formal wear ordered, anyway,” I reminded myself aloud.
“There’s a catalog listed on the main Rainbow’s End phone list,” he offered. “I scanned through it some last night, and it seems pretty complete.”
“Thanks, I’ll take a look.”
It was only minutes later, in the privacy of my stateroom, that the enormity of what had just happened hit me with delayed force. Not just that Kutzko, a man I thought a great deal of, had been willing to consider kidnap and murder … but that I had actually been on the verge of considering it myself.
And my knees began to shake.
Chapter 8
THE BRIGHTER OF THE stars in Solitaire’s sky were beginning to appear through the dusk overhead as we pulled up to Governor Rybakov’s mansion, an imposing edifice that gave out a sense of dignified power that reminded me of the HTI conference room. From the mansion’s double-wing design, I guessed it followed the typical Patri pattern for such places, including both office and entertainment facilities as well as living space for the governor. The windows of the ground floor to our left were ablaze with light, and through the half-tinting I could see the shadows of milling people.
“Nice place,” Randon grunted as the five of us filed out of the car. “Be interesting to have Schock run the budget sometime and find out just what percentage of Solitaire’s income goes to their officials.”
“They’ve got money to spare,” I murmured.
He glanced at me. “I suppose they do,” he conceded.
Randon and Kutzko in the lead, we climbed the flaystone steps to the main portico. “Mr. Randon Kelsey-Ramos and party,” Kutzko told the liveried guards flanking the door. Stepping smoothly in front of Randon, he started to enter—
“Just a moment, sir,” one of the guards spoke up. “Is the lady in your party Ms. Calandra Mara Paquin?”
Beside me, Calandra tensed. Randon turned his head leisurely to look at us, turned just as leisurely back again. “Yes, I believe it is,” he acknowledged coolly. “Why?”
“I regret to say, sir, that I can�
�t allow her to enter.” There was no regret anywhere in the guard’s sense that I could detect. “Governor Rybakov’s orders.”
“On what grounds?” Randon asked.
“On the grounds that she is a convicted felon, sentenced to death, sir,” he said stiffly, distaste at both her legal status and her Watcher background coming through his official decorum. “The governor does not wish to have such a potential danger within her house.”
There really wasn’t any hope of appeal, and Randon knew it as well as the rest of us. But he was too pridefully stubborn to give up quite that easily. “She was assigned to my ship,” he told the guard. “Placed therefore under both my care and my legal jurisdiction. I’ll take full responsibility for her actions and behavior here.”
“I understand, sir. I still can’t allow her to enter.”
Randon locked eyes with the man for a long moment, then turned slowly back to us and nodded to Duge Ifversn, behind me in rearguard position. “Ifversn, escort her back to the ship,” he instructed the other. For a moment his eyes met mine, and I could sense him bracing for an argument. But there was no point to it, and I remained silent. “Turn her over to Seqoya and then come back.”
Ifversn nodded. “Ms. Paquin … ?”
Calandra turned away, not looking at me, and went with him. I watched them get back into the car, then looked back to find Randon’s eyes still on me … his eyes, and an almost grudging touch of sympathy. I took a deep breath and nodded to him. Turning, he strode without a word between the guards and into the mansion.
Inside, we found ourselves in a high-arched hallway stretching probably half the length of the building itself. A greeter waiting just inside welcomed us to the governor’s home and directed us to an open pair of double doors down the hall, while a second pair of guards relieved Kutzko of his puff adder needler clips and gave him a single clip of slapshots in return. It was standard security practice—guards usually preferred visiting shields to carry only nonlethal ammunition—and Kutzko surrendered to it with professional good grace.
The buzz of conversation was audible well into the hall … and as we reached the double doors it became instantly clear that Governor Rybakov wasn’t merely going through the motions on this one. There were at east two hundred people milling around the ballroom-sized space, two hundred rich and influential people, judging by their clothing and deportment and the watchfulness of the unobtrusive shields shadowing many of them. Out of a total planetary population of perhaps four hundred eighty thousand—only half of whom lived in the Cameo/Rainbow’s End corridor—getting two hundred of the upper class together in one place was a rather impressive accomplishment.
Randon realized that, too. For a moment he just stood at the doorway, looking around as if committing the room and its occupants to memory. Then, straightening slightly, he led the way into the room.
And all two hundred people turned to look at us.
It was the sort of almost surrealistic scene you sometimes hear about but seldom actually see. The loose knots of people standing nearest to the door spotted us first, their conversations dropping off into silence and then tautly whispered comments as they realized who it was who had just arrived. The sudden quiet made those beyond them turn, many of them repeating the first groups’ reactions; until, within the space of a dozen seconds, the wave of notice had rippled across the entire room.
Leaving a blanket of quiet tension behind it.
I’d expected it, of course. After Aikman’s obvious anti-Watcher prejudices and HTI’s more subtle version of the same antagonism, I hadn’t expected open-armed greetings from anyone on Solitaire … which was perhaps why it took me several heartbeats more to realize that the cautious attention wasn’t directed at me at all.
It was directed at Randon.
There was no doubt, once I finally picked up on the signs. For every subtle movement of a person’s face or body there’s an equally subtle reaction from those looking at him; and in this case all the reactions I could see were keyed to Randon’s movements, not mine.
Vaguely, I wondered why Randon Kelsey-Ramos should make all these people nervous.
The awkward gap lasted no more than a few seconds before an elegantly dressed woman glided toward us from the side. “Mr. Kelsey-Ramos,” she nodded, her voice rich with the overtones of a Portslavan native. “I am Governor Lyda Rybakov, the Patri’s representative on Solitaire; I bid you welcome.”
Randon nodded back. “Thank you, Governor Rybakov. May I present to you my aide, Mr. Gilead Raca Benedar.”
Rybakov was definitely an experienced politician. Her nod to me was almost as polite as the one she’d given Randon. At least outwardly. “Welcome,” she told me.
“Thank you,” I murmured, nodding back.
Her eyes shifted back to Randon. “We’re honored to have you here, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos,” she continued. “The Carillon Group is well known throughout the Patri and colonies, and we of Solitaire system are looking forward to working with you.”
“I’m equally honored to be working with you,” Randon said smoothly, throwing a glance around the room to include all the others in that statement. “If you’re as diligent at commerce as you are in throwing receptions, Carillon will be hard pressed to keep up with all of you.”
A loose, slightly strained chuckle swept the room. Rybakov smiled, the same faint strain evident there, too, and reached out to touch Randon’s arm. “Come; let me introduce you to some of the other important people of our world. People much more important than I.”
With Kutzko and me trailing a step behind, she led him farther into the room; and as if that was a signal, the buzz of conversation began again. But not quite the same buzz as had been there before. The aura of tension that had taken over at our entrance still lay like bedrock beneath it.
The first group Rybakov led us to consisted of five people—three men and two women—waiting in a loose semicircle and trying hard to look relaxed. “Mr. Randon Kelsey-Ramos, Mr. Gilead Benedar,” the governor said, “may I present Danel and Debra Comarow; Dr. Sergei Landau; and Nady and Lize Arritt.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Randon said as they all exchanged nods. “Let me see: NorTrans of Starlit, I believe?”
A ripple of quiet surprise ran through them … as it did through me. I hadn’t placed the names, but I’d certainly heard of NorTrans: one of the biggest corporations in the Patri and colonies, almost certainly the biggest with a license to operate in and out of Solitaire.
In other words, we’d found the leaders of the system’s business community first crack out of the box. Glancing at Governor Rybakov, I saw it hadn’t been mere chance.
“I’m impressed, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos,” Landau said, and I could see the comment went for all of them. “I’ve always thought that I, at least, was too deeply buried in the NorTrans structure for even those inside the company to recognize my name.”
Randon smiled. “Hardly, sir,” he said. “Besides, my father has made something of a hobby of knowing exactly who the major business interests and people are on Solitaire. Some of that was bound to leak down to me.”
It was the wrong thing to say. I couldn’t tell why, but that much was instantly clear. Almost in unison the tension among the five of them shot up, and the groups nearest us again paused in their own conversations to listen in. “Well, we’re certainly honored by your father’s interest in us,” Comarow said, his voice controlled but with a predator’s caution beneath it. “Though speaking for myself, I’m always a bit nervous when someone knows more about me than I do about him.”
“Especially as regards his business dealings,” his wife Debra put in, her easy laugh breaking some of the hidden tension. I sensed Comarow’s approval, realized she’d picked up on whatever he was going for and was carrying on with it. “Danel always gets so paranoid when he has to start doing business with someone new.”
“Not paranoid, really, Debra,” he chided her gently. All an act; they were clearly two minds headed the same direction.
Whatever that direction was. “Just cautious. As I’m sure you understand, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos.”
“Perfectly,” Randon nodded. “However, I really don’t think you have anything to worry about. As I explained to HTI’s managers this morning, the Carillon Group tries whenever possible to maintain continuity in the activities of acquired companies.”
“So we’d heard,” Arritt put in. I sensed Randon’s quiet reaction: that the comment implied that Arritt, and possibly all of NorTrans, had a commline into HTI’s top management. Not surprising, but worth noting regardless. “And you’re right; continuity is what’s on most of our minds.”
“Most referring to just NorTrans, or to all of Solitaire?” Randon asked, glancing pointedly at a few of the eavesdroppers around us. A couple of them had the grace to blush.
“Oh, pretty much all of Solitaire,” Comarow acknowledged without embarrassment. “You’ll find that people who do business here are a fairly close-knit community, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos. We have our methods … and we’re always a little nervous of newcomers.”
“I’m sure you’ll find that the Carillon Group business philosophy doesn’t change just because we’re now on Solitaire,” Randon said.
If they found that reassuring, they didn’t show it. If anything, in fact, it actually made them a shade more uncomfortable.
“Well, that’s nice to know,” Comarow said, the easy friendliness of his voice in sharp contrast to the sense beneath it. “I trust you’ll find your visit profitable. I understand you’ll be leaving for Collet tomorrow?”
“That’s right,” Randon nodded. “I’m looking forward to actually seeing one of those Rockhound 606’s I’ve read so much about.”
Comarow chuckled. “You won’t believe it even then. Let me tell you about the first time I saw one of the monsters. …”
The conversation turned to descriptions of Rockhound mining platforms, drifted to possibly apocryphal stories of life aboard them. It was heading toward social life on Solitaire proper when Governor Rybakov gracefully pulled us away and steered us across the room to another group.
