Perhaps it was the last time they would be together.
Hans came into the schoolroom with face ashen, hair unkempt, eyes large and hungry. He seemed to look in every face, ask everyone a question: Are you happy now? Is this enough, or do you want more?
Without using his wand, Hans recited the names of the dead. Some of the crew wept. Martin closed his eyes and tried to remember Hakim’s face, the calmness and deliberation, his precise way with words. Erin Eire… intense green eyes and noble balance of defiance and sense. He wished they were here now to help him.
Jeanette Snap Dragon lifted her arm in a clenched fist, and the defectors followed her example.
Hans did not look at Martin after, though he passed close on his way out. Patrick glanced in his direction, face troubled.
The delegation came to Martin’s quarters in the middle of his sleep. His wand woke him, chiming insistently. He opened the door and Patrick stepped in, Thorkild Lax behind him, then David Aurora, Carl Phoenix, and last—making Martin’s heart ache, for he knew what was happening—Harpal Timechaser. None of them met his eyes but Patrick, who said, “It’s time to put everything behind us.”
Patrick in front, Carl on one side, David on another, Harpal slightly above him, Thorkild below; a cage of men. Martin smelled their tension.
“Everything?” he said.
“It’s history,” Patrick said. “Besides, you’ll get no support. Nobody wants to dig any more. We need to forget and get on with our lives.”
“Forget what?” Martin asked mildly, but his heart pumped strong and fast. His body was very frightened, but the fear hadn’t yet reached his head.
“Your investigation.”
“We know who killed Rosa, and he’s dead, and Hans had nothing to do with it, at least no more than the rest of us,” Carl said.
“She would have stopped us,” Thorkild said.
“We did the slicking Job,” Patrick hissed, and Martin knew the quincunx of his danger. Patrick was the center who would radiate to the other four. “We did what we came here to do.”
“Let’s just give it up, huh?” Harpal asked. “We’re tired.”
Martin rotated in mid-air to face Harpal. Nobody would look straight into his eyes. Harpal managed to focus on Martin’s cheek. “Why are you here? Power?” he asked.
“Beg pardon?” Harpal seemed to sleepwalk, only half-listening.
“I’m asking you why you’re here.”
“I thought we could talk some sense into you. You know as well as I what Hans did. He drew us together.”
“That doesn’t absolve him…”
“After what we’ve just done,” Harpal said, pain and dismay passing over his face but not disturbing the simple, stolid exhaustion behind any expression, “you want to investigate a… what? A murder, you think? It’s insane, Martin. Let it lie.”
“You’ve got the finger of God working for you,” Martin said, not too rationally. “That’s all you need?”
“We couldn’t have done it without Hans,” Patrick said, “and now you want him punished for something he didn’t do.”
“I just want to know,” Martin said.
“We know already,” Patrick said.
“It takes five of you to tell me this?”
“We’re your friends,” Harpal said. “We don’t want anything bad for you.”
“Hans asked you to watch out for me?”
“You be careful,” Carl said, but Patrick reined him in with a sharp look. Who is more stupid, Carl, Patrick—or David? I know Harpal and Thorkild… I don’t know the others nearly as well. Odd some of us are still strangers. Then maybe I don’t know any of them. Why are they here? They were my friends. We worked together.
“We worked together,” Harpal said. “We don’t want you to be the center of trouble.”
“You were a Pan,” Martin said.
Harpal tightened his lips, jaw working, relaxing. “I know the responsibilities, the decisions. So do you. I know what Hans is capable of. So do you. Rex was the one who went rogue, not Hans.”
“Besides,” Patrick said, “Rex is dead, everybody who could know is dead.”
“Rex said Hans put him up to it,” Martin reminded them.
“He was crazy. He fell in with Rosa’s group, they twisted him…”
“All the defectors are crazy, too?”
“They’re ineffective,” Harpal said.
“They don’t understand. They’re weak links,” David said.
Martin still could not tell how far they would go. Surely not all five would attack him. One or two, the others standing back, ashamed, but caught.
“We’re ready to go on,” Thorkild said, glancing at the others. “Get out of here and marry a planet.”
Patrick’s eyes were dead. He seemed half asleep.
“We don’t want to dig it all up. It’s the past. It’s dead.”
“It smells,” Martin said. “It will not stop smelling. We can’t cut clean from the past.”
“We still have mopping up to do,” Harpal said, trying to sound persuasive, reasonable. “The defectors aren’t helping, and the Brothers turned out to be real liabilities.”
“The Brothers helped us.”
“Forget that,” Patrick said. “Let’s just keep it simple.”
Rage colored fear, and the mix made his whole body burn. He wanted them all gone, if not gone then dead, and he could smell the same wish in their breath, their sweat.
David’s eyes had become still, lifeless.
Thorkild and Harpal looked like the ones most likely to back off. He moved closer to Harpal. “I’m not out to cause trouble,” Martin said. “That’s Hans’ doing. Some of us want him to stand down. That’s all. That’s our privilege as crew.”
My, you sound rational, clever. That will increase their deadness, their anger. It decreases your anger, to talk so, to try to reason with friends so. You don’t really hate or fear them. That makes you weaker. They’ll kill you for that, for acting like a victim.
“Not if it puts all of us in danger,” Harpal said, reacting to the reasonable tone with his own reason. Harpal will not act with them. “What if the Killers have a surprise waiting for us? If we drop our discipline, lose our edge, they’ll have us. We’re not ready to check out now.”
“Not after all we’ve been through,” Thorkild said. “Come on, Martin.” Thorkild won’t attack.
Patrick drifted closer, hand gripping a thin ladder field. Martin raised his wand.
“Get me Hans and Ariel, triple link,” he said.
Patrick made a grab for the wand.
“Hans does not reply,” the wand said as Martin swung it out of Patrick’s reach. Patrick lunged again, and again Martin swung it away. Anything can happen now.
Ariel’s voice came on, sleepy.
“Witness!” Martin said. “Tie us in to everybody.”
“What?”
Patrick and David grabbed for the wand.
“Martin?”
Patrick got the wand and wrenched it from Martin’s grasp. David and Thorkild held him, Carl made a grab for a leg but missed and then backed away. Carl’s out.
Patrick tried to smash the wand against the floor, but it would not break. Stupid stupid
“Martin!” Ariel’s voice called out. “I’m tying you in.”
Harpal moved in before Martin could back away and struck him in the kidneys. It might have been a deadly blow, but Harpal’s ladder field was just far enough away that the peak of his blow came before his fist actually struck.
Martin kicked with both legs backward, hands on the floor, and one bare foot caught Harpal in the teeth, cutting Martin’s heel and spinning Harpal away to the ceiling. It was a mess, fighting weightless, grabbing fields, all instincts useless. They had done enough sports to know the right moves for most activities, but fighting engaged an older brain with less savvy, and the result was sloppy.