“I went back to the writer’s colony and asked someone, it might have been Gorman, to take care of Bi Tan’s body. He and the others said they’d take care of it.
“I called Richard before the awards meeting and told him, so he could say something about her. When I found out that Zo Kim had died at the awards meeting, I didn’t know what to think. Everyone knew what I thought of Zo Kim. But, but Bi Tan was my friend. I would never have done that to her to get at Zo Kim—”
Drin felt a surge of sympathy—Gonikli was an innocent academic caught in a web of alien intrigue. Borragil’ib curved his tail around her. At last she stopped shaking and spoke.
“When Drin came to ask questions, I came out here, to talk to our ... to Bodil. You think I’m crazy, but it gives me a kind of peace to pretend she’s listening, still...”
Borragil’ib touched his tail to Gonikli’s again. She lowered her beak.
“Commander,” Borragil’ib said. “I didn’t know the full story and suspected some other motive on your part. My apologies.”
“That takes us to Richard,” Mary said, redirecting the subject. For me? Drin wondered. Did she sense his embarrassment and beak-dragging sadness at this?
Drin saw that she had some flesh-toned ointment over the spots on her face, and seemed perfectly normal otherwise. There was no way she could have what she had done, lifting almost a quarter of his weight... but he was here.
“Yes,” Richard Moon said. “I was surprised that no one had notified me about Zo Kim’s passing, but was prepared to make the sad announcement and present the award myself when Zo Kim came flying in, right on schedule! I was flabbergasted and horrified. I didn’t, myself, know that Bi Tan was dead, I’d just trusted what Gonikli had told me and had assumed Zo Kim was dead, too.”
“Did anyone,” Mary asked, very quietly and gently, “think of reporting this to the Monitors?”
“Yes, we did.” Gonikli looked puzzled. “Gorman took care of it before he left for Trimus City. He’d had words with Bi Tan when some of her critiques of his work from their group showed up in Zo Kim’s reviews, and he was, well, a little more cold blooded about it all. The rest of us were in a bit of a mess.”
“When Zo Kim died on stage,” Richard Moon added, “I knew I had to see Gonikli before you Monitors did. I found a way to go back to Hot Springs Island that didn’t expose me to any records.”
Wind, wood, sail and nothing else, Drin remembered. The face in the rigging.
“Aye,” Yohin chortled. “So ye did. People pay my agents the usual way, which makes the usual record, but ye volunteered for crew. And did good of it, too!”
“When,” Richard continued, “I didn’t find Gonikli on Hot Springs Island, I talked Yohin into coming up here.”
Something in the back of Drin’s mind was bothering him. Quite beyond Zo Kim and Bi Tan, there were two other felonious assaults to worry about, the victims being Mary and himself! What was the connection?
“Everyone?” he said, finally. “We are in the bottom of a crevasse surrounded by avalanche-prone mountains. Mary was shot by someone, who, incidentally, may have started the avalanche that buried me. Presumably that act flows from nobody in this tent, but just now that isn’t such a favorable current. I suggest we get back.”
“Stendt.” Do Tor said, ignoring Drin’s call for motion.
“Who?” Mary sounded surprised.
“Human Gorman Stendt. Quarrels with both Kleth. Present on Hot Springs Island at time. Didn’t tell monitors until Zo Kim not just dead, but humiliated, ruined, in front of everyone. Maybe he lied to Bi Tan about Zo Kim dying.”
Drin waved his beak in negation. “Stendt was with others at the colony when Bi Tan died, then he was at the awards ceremony in full view when Richard Moon got the call and Zo Kim flew in and died. Bi Tan carried no comset with her—someone who was there would have had to tell her the lie.”
“He’s here, too,” Yohin offered. “Least he came on my ship. Ye can ask him yourself.”
“But why would he try to kill Mary?” asked Gonikli, “Just because she was investigating? That would be too stupid for Gorman.”
“Whoever it was didn’t really try to kill me,” Mary said. “The dart knocked me out where I’d fall into the crevasse, but the fall wasn’t that much for a human, and it was on a snowy slope near the valley wall, an old avalanche site I think. The only thing I could think of is that he wanted Drin to come after me; and that’s what happened. Then, with both of us trapped down here, everyone else would come...
Do Tor and Go Ton weren’t waiting to hear the rest. They were getting in their flight suits again.
“Can we fix a crutch for Drin?” Mary asked. “We really should get out of here.”
Good idea, Mary, Drin thought. If not their antagonist, there was always Trimus’s unstable geology to worry about. But his inflatable splint was not going to hold any weight.
“Got an idea for that,” Yohin said. “Need to get outside first. Get some wet towels—soak ’em.”
Outside, Yohin wrapped the towels, one by one around the inflatable cast, where they quickly froze solid in the frigid wind, forming a rock hard composite casing around his lower leg. The inflated splint insulated the inner towels from his leg and distributed the pressures to its icy shell. Within minutes, Drin found he could put his weight on it and walk, in a sort of limping, peg leg manner.
The Kleth packed the tent into the aircraft and roared off into the teeth of the storm, hoping to spot their antagonist, or at least dissuade whoever it was from starting more avalanches.
Drin was in no shape to negotiate the mountain pass they’d taken to the glacier. To move, he had to swing his splinted leg forward, plant it, step with each of the other legs in succession so that at least two other legs were always firmly on the ground, then swing it forward again. They decided the quickest route back would be down the glacier to the sea. Borragil’ib arranged for another aircraft to meet the humans at the glacier foot. The Do’utians would swim home.
Borragil’ib led them toward the ramp he’d built to tend Bodil’s resting place. It was, of course, on the side of the crevasse opposite the one Drin and Mary had found themselves. Their procession was single file for Do’utians, and Drin’s hobbling gait slowed everyone down.
They passed Bodil’s body, now just a hump in the snow on the floor of the crevasse. Borragil’ib didn’t stop—a kindness to Drin. Drin reflected that Go Zom had observed in his commentaries that Do’utian memories are excellent, but that their manners were better.
Finally, they crawled out of the crevasse and started down the main glacier. The snow slowed them down even more than Drin’s leg. As they got closer to the water, it fell and fell. Drin was surrounded by a deep red fog—what light there was now came from Ember only—and that glowing dull red through layers of cloud. It was very, very dim. Drin’s audio imaging helped a bit, but the snow absorbed that too. He followed Borragil’ib’s tail with one eye, and Mary behind him with the other, all the time expecting the mountain to come crashing down on him again.
It was sheer chance that he happened to be looking in the right direction. It was training preparation and worry that had his gun loaded with knockout and in his mouth, rather than in his pouch. They’d just reached the rim of another open crevasse when the snow lifted momentarily, and Drin looked back to his left.
He saw the long tube, he saw the black beard, opened his mouth and fired.
“Everyone,” he shouted, “Commander Drinnil’ib. Break silence, I’ve just tranked a human. He was lying in ambush with some kind of weapon.”
Mary was on top of the assassin in a minute. “Drin, it’s Stendt! And I’ve found a launcher. It’s been fired!”