scanned around them. As might be expected, the pods were all full of a variety of spacers all determined to get some kind of business done before the last of the diurnal emporia closed—either that or were about to embark on what passed for an evening’s conviviality in a habitat.
Unfortunately it also precluded any kind of private talk. Tau wanted to find out more about what the captain wanted him looking for—though he decided as they sped along that maybe observation without any previous expectation coloring his views might be the most valuable.
There was no one in the Way of the Rain-dappled Lilies; this was where the highest Kanddoyd officials lived. Tau looked forward to the spectacular view of the inside of the habitat that this particular area was said to offer.
Ross was present. Tau had heard about the Rose Garden, but at least by the time the Kanddoyd who greeted them had ushered them inside the legate’s domicile, he was not to be found studying his holographic plants.
The office was recognizable as a standard Patrol captain’s office, right down to the regulation desk. Nothing was out of place, nothing looked amiss. Even the windows were blocked, giving the room an atmosphere of focus and efficiency. Ross himself was seated behind his desk, neat in the black and silver uniform of a Patrol officer, his long face alert.
"Captain Jellico," he said as the three Solar Queen's men walked in.
"I’m glad you’re here—it saved me having to request an interview." He looked down at a flimsy. "I’ve received a surprising number of complaints, mostly rowdyism and illegal trespassing, about your crew. Can you explain that?"
"It’s why we’re here," Jellico said, handing Ross the printouts that Tang Ya had prepared, plus a tape spool.
Ross set the spool in a slot, where it could be automatically downloaded, as he perused the printout in silence. When he looked up, he frowned slightly, but otherwise there was no expression at all on his face. "How did you get this information?" he asked.
"Illegally," Jellico said.
Ross dropped the papers, which took a long time to settle to the desk.
Tau watched them in fascination as the legate stared at a point in space midway between his visitors, then looked up again. "I can stop the transmissions—in fact, I will send a coded ’gram to HQ." He halted.
Van Ryke said, "I am assuming that if what we’ve found out is true, even your secure line has probably been compromised."
"And the message will never get there, yet I’ll receive an acknowledgment," Ross said. For the first time there was some animation in his lean countenance. "If that is so, it would explain a number of anomalies that are side issues to what you have here. But that can wait. What I’ll do, then, is send a spool up with the next guard rotation, and it can be radioed not to HQ but to the legate at. Sheng Li." He named a system on the space lanes between Mykos and Terra. "They’ll send it from the Patrol ship. I’ll have them jump out to some random coordinate outside Mykosian space before they send, to be safe."
"We’ve probably been seen coming here," Van Ryke said with his easy smile.
Jellico said, "You might send one from here as well, just in case."
Ross blinked, then said, "Yes. Just an order to stop the transmissions of the lost and abandoned lists. I’ll send a message to Trade HQ about the insured ships as well." He gave a slight, wintry smile. "As there’s been nothing to do here for the past number of years, my appearing to perform the minimum required of my post will seem in character."
"How long have you been stationed here, Captain, if I may be permitted to ask?" Tau spoke up. "I thought regulations were specific about rotating people in and out of hostile environments. A habitat would be listed as hostile, wouldn’t it, as it is so alien to our kind?"
"Four years," Ross said. "That’s reg. But I’ve been here almost sixteen. They apparently don’t get to us this far out as often as they ought to."
Tau nodded, but he made a mental note to do some checking in the public records.
"Back to us," Jellico said. "What are our chances of demanding an investigation?"
"You can," Ross said, "but I can’t, acting alone. A court of inquiry at this level must involve all three races, according to the Compact of Harmony."
"So," Jellico said, "we do it."
"You can," Ross said, "but it’ll break you. In fact, I strongly suspect that if all this is true, it is the single reason why you have not been dealt with more summarily until now.
If Flindyk really is the. mastermind of this conspiracy, then he would like nothing better than to fight you in court. You don’t have proof of his culpability, which means investigation."
"What’s wrong with that?"
Van Ryke raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I should have thought of the obvious."
Ross gave that slight, pained smile again. "I think you see it. Shver justice is summary. Kanddoyds, who oversee most of the civilian cases, can take years to solve the simplest case."
"Wouldn’t the investigative committee be made up of all three races?" Tau asked.
Ross turned to him. "Yes, but you have to understand that anything to do with the Kanddoyds is going to take ages to resolve, by the most complimentary, indirect methods possible. Everything is done to save face—I expect the decision is probably arrived at and accepted before it’s actually heard."
"Of course," Tau said. And suddenly from his studies a chilling analogy emerged from memory: that both Kanddoyds and Shver culled their defective newborns, as did many races with population problems. But while the Shver were plain about it, making the decision and quickly carrying it out, the Kanddoyds made an elaborate festival of it, calling it the Time of the Celebration of the Perfect-Born. It amounted to the same thing, except where the Shver injected the cullees before the family, so at least it was painless, the Kanddoyd culls were borne away in silence and quiet, so no one ever knew who did it or what was done.
Tau felt his guts gripe at this unexpectedly sinister side to the seemingly friendly race. And Flindyk has reputedly become more Kanddoyd than human, he thought.
Jellico said, "If we request the investigation, then we’d be required to testify, wouldn’t we?"
"Correct. You’d have to stay at your own expense, unless I arrested you and impounded your ship."
Van Ryke shook his head. "Flindyk could easily spin this out ten years if he wanted."
"Meanwhile we’re stuck here, and not necessarily safely," Tau said. "So what can we do?"
Ross tapped together the printouts, and laid them in a sealed file. "You may be certain that I shall do my own investigating, though it will have to be slowly and with care."
Jellico gave his curt nod. "Thanks, Captain. If you need us, you know where to find us."
He flicked glances Tau’s and Van Ryke’s way, and in silence the two officers followed their captain out.
No one spoke until they reached the maglev concourse. This time they waited for several pods until they found one that was empty. As soon as it started to move, Jellico turned to Tau. "Your impressions?"
"I want to check the Patrol’s public records to make certain, but I’ll just bet that this man was not the kind to interfere if things seemed fine on the surface."
"You mean he’s part of it?" Van Ryke frowned.
"No, I don’t think so at all," Tau said. "Of course I could be wrong—I’ve been fooled before—but I do think he’s by nature a depressive personality, a trait worsened by this habitat. When humans first tried to live on them, there were numbers of people who developed adverse psychological conditions."
"So if you look at the record what do you expect to see?"
"That his predecessors who were very active spent their four years here and rotated back, and those who were more hands-off stayed longer. I’ll further wager that Flindyk has enough control over com to see that Ross’s requests for transfer have never gone through."