He and Chives were on the dais. She hadn’t flattened herself under the lectern. She had gone to one knee behind it, sidearm in hand, ready to snipe. The attackers were deploying around the room. Two dashed by either side of the clustered, bewildered fishers.
Their blaster beams leaped, convergent on the stand. Its wood exploded in flame, its horns toppled. Kossara dropped her pistol and fell back.
Chives pounced zigzag. A bolt seared and crashed within centimeters of him. He ignored it; he was taking aim. The first assassin’s head became a fireball. The second crumpled, grabbed at the stump of a leg, writhed and shrieked a short while. Chives reached the next nearest, wrapped his tail around that man’s neck and squeezed, got an elbow-beaking single-arm lock on another, hauled him around for a shield and commenced systematic shooting.
“I say,” he called through the din to Ywodh, “you chaps might pitch in a bit, don’t you know.”
The steadcaptain bellowed. His slugthrower hissed. A male beside him harpooned a foeman’s belly. Then heedless of guns, four hundred big seafarers joined battle.
Flandry knelt by Kossara. From bosom to waist was seared bloody wreckage. He half raised her. She groped after him with hands and eyes. “Dominic, darling,” he barely heard, “I wish—” He heard no more.
For an instant he imagined revival, life-support machinery, cloning … No. He’d never get her to a hospital before the brain was gone beyond any calling back of the spirit. Never.
He lowered her. I won’t think yet. No time. I’d better get into that fight. The ychans don’t realize we need a few prisoners.
Dusk fell early in fall. Above the lake smoldered a sunset remnant. Otherwise blue-black dimness drowned the land. Overhead trembled a few stars; and had he looked from his office window aloft in the Zamok, Flandry could have seen city lights, spiderwebs along streets and single glows from homes. Wind mumbled at the panes.
Finally granted a rest, he sat back from desk and control board, feeling his chair shape its embrace to his contours. Despite the drugs which suppressed grief, stimulated metabolism, and thus kept him going, weariness weighted every cell. He had turned off the fluoros. His cigarette end shone red. He couldn’t taste the smoke, maybe because the dark had that effect, maybe because tongue and palate were scorched.
Well, went his clockwork thought, that takes care of the main business. He had just been in direct conversation with Admiral da Costa. The Terran commander appeared reasonably well convinced of the good faith of the provisional government whose master, for all practical purposes, Flandry had been throughout this afternoon. Tomorrow be would discuss the Gospodar’s release. And as far as could be gauged, the Dennitzan people were accepting the fact they had been betrayed. They’d want a full account, of course, buttressed by evidence; and they wouldn’t exactly become enthusiastic Imperialists; but the danger of revolution followed by civil war seemed past.
So maybe tomorrow I can let these chemicals drain out of me, let go my grip and let in my dead. Tonight the knowledge that there was no more Kossara reached him only like the wind, an endless voice beyond the windows. She had been spared that, he believed, had put mourning quite from her for the last span, being upheld by urgency rather than a need to go through motions, by youth and hope, by his presence beside her. Whereas I—ah, well, I can carry on. She’d’ve wanted me to.
The door chimed. What the deuce? His guards had kept him alone among electronic ghosts. Whoever got past them at last in person must be authoritative and persuasive. He waved at an admit plate and to turn the lights back on. Their brightness hurt his eyes.
A slim green form in a white kilt entered, bearing a tray where stood teapot, cup, plates and bowls of food. “Your dinner, sir,” Chives announced.
“I’m not hungry,” said the clockwork. “I didn’t ask for—”
“No, sir. I took the liberty.” Chives set his burden down on the desk. “Allow me to remind you, we require your physical fitness.”
Her planet did. “Very good, Chives.” Flandry got down some soup and black bread. The Shalmuan waited unobtrusively.
“That did help,” the man agreed. “You know, give me the proper pill and I might sleep.”
“You—you may not wish it for the nonce, sir.”
“What?” Flandry sharpened his regard. Chives had lost composure. He stood head lowered, tail a-droop, hands hard clasped: miserable.
“Go on,” Flandry said. “You’ve gotten me nourished. Tell me.”
The voice scissored off words: “It concerns those personnel, sir, whom you recall the townsmen took into custody.”
“Yes. I ordered them detained, well treated, till we can check them out individually. What of them?”
“I have discovered they include one whom I, while a fugitive, ascertained had come to Zorkagrad several days earlier. To be frank, sir, this merely confirmed my suspicion that such had been the case. I must have been denounced by a party who recognized your speedster at the port and obtained the inspectors’ record of me. This knowledge must then have made him draw conclusions and recommend actions with respect to Voivode Vymezal.”
“Well?”
“Needless to say, sir, I make no specific accusations. The guilt could lie elsewhere than in the party I am thinking of.”
“Not measurably likely, among populations the size we’ve got.” Beneath the drumhead of imposed emotionlessness, Flandry felt his body stiffen. “Who?”
Seldom did he see Chives’ face distorted. “Lieutenant Commander Dominic Hazeltine, sir. Your son.”
XVIII
Two militiamen escorted the prisoner into the office. “You may go,” Flandry told them.
They stared unsurely from him, standing slumped against night in a window, to the strong young man they guarded. “Go,” Flandry repeated. “Wait outside with my servant. I’ll call on the intercom when I want you.”
They saluted and obeyed. Flandry and Hazeltine regarded each other, mute, until the door had closed. The older saw an Imperial undress uniform, still neat upon an erect frame, and a countenance half Persis’ where pride overmastered fear. The younger saw haggardness clad in a soiled coverall.
“Well,” Flandry said at last. Hazeltine extended a hand. Flandry looked past it. “Have a seat,” he invited. “Care for a drink?” He indicated bottle and glasses on his desk. “I remember you like Scotch.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Hazeltine spoke as low, free of the croak in the opposite throat. He smiled, and smiled again after they had both sat down holding their tumblers. Raising his, he proposed, “Here’s to us. Damn few like us, and they’re all dead.”
They had used the ancient toast often before. This time Flandry did not respond. Hazeltine watched him a moment, grimaced, and tossed off a swallow. Then Flandry drank.
Hazeltine leaned forward. His words shook. “Father, you don’t believe that vapor about me. Do you?”
Flandry took out his cigarette case. “I don’t know what else to believe.” He flipped back the lid. “Somebody who knew Chives and the Hooligan fingered him. The date of your arrival fits in.” He chose a cigarette. “And thinking back, I find the coincidence a trifle much that you called my attention to Kossara Vymezal precisely when she’d reached Terra. I was a pretty safe bet to skyhoot her off to Diomedes, where she as an inconvenient witness and I as an inconvenient investigator could be burked in a way that’d maximize trouble.” He puffed the tobacco into lighting, inhaled, streamed smoke till it veiled him, and sighed: “You were overeager. You should have waited till she’d been used at least a few days, and a reputable Dennitzan arranged for to learn about this.”