"Next door?"
Gauda moved. "Thank you, Falia. Go back to your office now. I want you to call the patrol office once you get back. Make sure no one hears you. Tell Officer Versha that I request her attendance as soon as possible. Say it's code black." She waited until Falia left, shutting the storeroom door behind her. Then she stared down at the sprawled figures. "You were right. The record room next door is from the old administration when security was more casual. It opens to both Falia's office and my own. Blandaay had only to ease the door ajar and listen." Tani started to speak and was waved silent. "No, you didn't see that. You wouldn't. The door into my office isn't used much. With the renovations going on in the building there's a stack of interior lining sheets leaning across it on my side. But the door opens inward to the record office."
Storm saw. "So he could open the door a fraction, hear everything, and then make sure Hasset couldn't talk." Remembering events during his war years he sighed. "He may have told Hasset that he'd give him a pill. One which would help Hasset resist deep probe."
Gauda looked disgusted. "Hasset would certainly have been dumb enough to believe it. We were supposed to stay up there talking a while longer. Then we'd have come down, found Hasset dead, and had no idea that it was more than the suicide of a guilty man. This is a storeroom. Not a cell. There's no record of who enters or leaves."
She looked at Storm. "If you hadn't suddenly wondered why Hasset was sweating so hard we'd have missed it all. Blandaay must have stayed just long enough to hear me say that with the times you two could give us and the amnesty I'd offer, I was sure we could break Hasset."
Storm's answering smile was ferocious. "So we can't break Hasset now. But what odds would you give me that our healer here doesn't know even more?"
"No odds," Gauda said cheerfully. "I never bet against sure things. Storm, make sure he doesn't come to again yet. Then watch him a moment. I know where there is a spare roller pallet. We'll take him up to my office. First we search him down to the skin. If he had farakill on him there should be traces somewhere. I suspect Versha will be on her way. Once we tell her all of this she'll act. Versha is something of a hothead. That's why she's on a backwater outer planet. She acted fast once before. She was right but she annoyed some powerful man who was embarrassed by her actions. She'll enjoy this."
Versha swept in with a uniformed probe operator in tow minutes after they wheeled Blandaay to Gauda's office. The patrols officer on Arzor was a round, plumply innocent-looking woman. But her black eyes in the dark-skinned face were sharply penetrating and intelligent. She listened to the saga, nodded to her operator, and herself helped them dump Blandaay into Gauda's chair, fastening his hands and feet firmly. Then she hitched a buttock onto the desk edge.
"Get on, boy. If we start before he's come properly awake he'll be under before he can start fighting it."
Storm and Tani said nothing. Doing it that way was illegal but neither planned to protest. Blandaay wouldn't remember, and if he was guilty as they believed then it was better he had no chance to fight his way to mindlessness. The probe lattice was slipped on, patches and sensors connected, and the questioning began. Kelson arrived halfway through. Falia ushered him in and left again. Her eyes averted from the thing which babbled in the chair.
Kelson opened his mouth, listened to what Blandaay was saying, and shut his mouth again. Blandaay was confessing that he'd been corrupted long ago, that he'd come to Arzor from his home world of Lereyne to escape a charge of negligence. That he'd been helped, had that complaint wiped back home, that the whole of his almost twenty years on Arzor he'd been in the pay of someone. First renegades, men who took quiet profit from the Xik. They'd fled after Storm had exposed the surgically altered Xik aper who led them. After that another had come who knew the secret. Blandaay had been offered a choice: The whip, or the carrot. A fat, very juicy and profitable carrot.
If aiding the enemies of humanity hadn't bothered him, then working for a mere Thieves Guild member had worried him still less. Blandaay had snatched at the carrot. It hadn't entailed much in the time he'd been on the payroll. Just allowing the occasional crew member in on the quiet, ignoring any irregularity his master didn't want noticed. A doctor is in a good position to notice things about others though. Blandaay had his standing orders for a profile on any permanent member of the port staff.
Then finally a more specific order. He was to approach a cargo handler and suborn him. Have the man sneak three people through the sealed port. Blandaay had protested. It was dangerous. What if the man was seen, what if he was taken and talked? That was discounted. He was a doctor wasn't he? Let him dispose of the man once his usefulness was done. Let Blandaay remember what could be told to the authorities if he failed. The doctor had shivered—and obeyed.
Versha nodded slowly. "All right. Let him rest a few minutes. Search him now. If we find traces of farakill on him we can fully justify this interrogation. If not—" She grinned. "Well, I've been in trouble before." A short time later she was eyeing the result. Gingerly she picked it up, crushing the capsule. "Looks as if I've been declared right. That's farakill." The silvery crystals glistened. "Gauda, have your lab check if it matches the spectrum in Hasset's bloodstream. If so we're in the clear and this interrogation tape is legal as well."
She reached for the office intercom. "Falia, call the port lawyer. Tell him we are asking for a probe permit for a Dr. Blandaay. And check if he has a lawyer of his own. If he does, call him here too." She reset the switch, cutting off the girl's surprised agreement.
"I'm gambling it will match, and that call will leak as well. It'll take the lawyers half an hour to get into action. But the leak will probably be with this filth's boss in a few minutes." She grinned cheerfully. "Let's just get that question answered and start making him look presentable again." She signaled the probe operator.
"Blandaay. The Thieves Guild man, who is he? Tell us about him. Everything you know."
"M-m-m. Marrice."
"Yes, good. Marrice who?"
A silly smile spread over Blandaay's face as his voice shifted into the harsher accents of Lereyne. "There was a little fishy who lived in a net," he chanted. "Net, debt. Debt paid." He choked. His face congested, and he slumped down in his seat.
Versha uttered several words. "Too late. He was sealed against betrayal. A very nice piece of conditioning—if it really worked. That last bit sounded as if it came right out of his subconscious. If we'd started the probe when he was completely conscious he'd have died the moment he tried to reply. He was only half conscious so he took longer for the conditioning to work. We just may have got something." She pounced on the switch. "Population lists? See if Falia can do a scan for anyone at all with the first name of Marrice."
Gauda shook her head, her hand stopping Versha from touching the switch. "No need. I think I can guess. There's a man named Marrice Plarron. One of my patrol friends from Lereyne was talking to me a while ago. Jared wondered where Plarron's money comes from."
Versha looked puzzled. "Plarron, what does that have to do with debts or fish?"
"Blandaay came from Lereyne." She saw light leap in Storm's eyes. "Yes, you've remembered." She looked at them. "On Lereyne there's a major port on the inland sea. I know the man who's port manager there. It's a fishing port. Specializes in canning, drying, producing dehydrated flakes. Just about anything you can do with fish for export. A lot of ships land there direct for cargoes." She took in a deep breath. "It's called Port Plarronet."
Versha moved purposefully to the intercom. "I'll have a word with the peacekeepers. I think with my authority that's enough to have him picked up. Probing may be a different matter."