The protein vats were hermetically sealed. In them grew mounds of flesh cloned from highly regarded ancestors known as “esteemed cells.” The judicious metering of flavorings and odorants imparted the likeness and even the texture of poultry and pork, of fish and beef, of legume and root. “Like begets like,” chemist-wallahs sang, and so, fed upon wastes, the “mother” deep in the heart of each vessel enrobed itself in tissues like unto itself, to be shaved off, harvested, pressed, pumped to the molder, and served.
The vat room was inboard of the alfven drivers and forward of the impulse cage. The space was cramped and pantry-cool. Despite the seals, odors slipped through the seams and joints and teased the nose with the rich, earthy scent of potato and carrot, with the iron aroma of beef, with the dank stench of fish.
Beneath it all the sweetish smell of something else.
The ship’s architect had not supposed that pilots en route would have much reason to crawl around the vat room. Fresh bulk canisters were installed via external cargo doors at farmers’ markets at the hoop stations. But neither was the room nonnegotiable, since a pilot might need on occasion to refasten a hose or hand-close a valve. Olafsdottr eased matters a bit by reducing the strength of the gravity grids in the vat room by two-thirds, but she still crowded close behind him.
The stink grew worse behind the fish vat, and this was not due entirely to the faux-catfish accumulating inside it. Squeezing between it and the neighboring legume vat, Donovan spied one of the smuggler’s secret rooms, now wide open and lit. He paused in his contemplation to consider what he might tell his captor.
Knowledge is power, said the Pedant. Keep secret what we know.
On the other hand, said the Silky Voice, there are tactical benefits to knowing that your opponent knows what you know.
Ow, Silky! My head hurts.
It may need all of us together to get through this, said the young man in the chlamys. That right, Sleuth?
Some data are still lacking. Add the facts together and there is still a hole in the middle, but …
“Ya, but.” The Terran withdrew from his position and sat under Olafsdottr’s calculating gaze. “What is it, my sweet?” she said. “You can tell Ravn.”
Donovan turned to her. “Follow me,” he said, “but keep your eyes peeled for someone else. We’re not alone on this ship.”
“Ah. I had begun to wonder.”
There was a torque wrench clipped to the fish vat for use in turning valves. Olafsdottr said nothing while he unfastened it, and that silent acquiescence to his arming was the loudest thing the Confederal had said so far.
“This is a smuggler’s ship,” the Fudir said, “and it’s honeycombed with secret rooms, passages, and caches. When you hijacked it, the smuggler was aboard, drunk, in one of those rooms. Probably this one. He was afraid to act alone—”
“A man of much wisdom, then.”
“So he solicited my help to retake the ship.”
“And, of coorse, you tendered it. Ooh. I knew you had been a nooty buoy. What befell, then, seeing I am still captain of your fate?”
“He said he knew of a weapon aboard. Something the People of Foreganger were sending to assassinate the Molnar over a bit of piracy and massacre—”
Olafsdottr snorted. “The difference between the People’s Navy and the Cynthian pirates is but the number and quality of the ships at their disposal. But say on.”
“I was supposed to distract you, and he would shoot you from behind.”
Donovan did not elaborate on that and waited to see how the Confederal would react.
Olafsdottr regarded him with the stillness of a serpent. The white of her eyes and teeth, so prominent against her coal-black skin, took on some of the seeming of ice. “So,” she said at last, and patted him on the cheek. “You are a good buoy, after all. When all is said and done, and the struggle is ended, I will personally escort you home and see that you are buried with great honor.” She gestured with her teaser. “Lead on.”
Much became clear when Donovan slipped behind the vats and entered the secret room. It was a small room, but contained a chair and table as well as an open safe. The Fudir thought it might have been used as a sort of stateroom by smuggled personages.
I thought the smell was familiar, said the Silky Voice. The Brute and Inner Child immediately assumed guardian positions, listening at the ears, watching through the corners of the eyes.
Rigardo-ji Edelwasser lay sprawled on his back on the floor, arms splayed, mouth agape and bloody, as if he had been punched in the teeth by an iron fist. The wall behind the chair was spattered with blood, and bone, and bits of brain. On the table before the chair stood open a standard bushel-sized shipping container, and beside it a beautifully carved wooden chest, also open.
The chest was Peacock orangewood, from which skilled knifework had brought out vines and fruits and other figures. The interior was lined with silk over shaped foam dunnage, but it was not clear from the shape what it had once held.
Olafsdottr had crowded into the room behind Donovan and, like him, made no move to cotton her nose against the smell. “How long has he lain here?” she asked.
“By the odor and bloating, the Pedant says, four days.”
Olafsdottr nodded slowly. “And now you know why he did not appear at the ambush. A good thing too, for I think he would have botched it.”
Donovan turned and looked at her. “Why do you say that?”
She pointed to the empty box. “He came to get the weapon and managed to kill himself with it. Such mishandling does not lend confidence.”
Donovan stared at the dead man. “I don’t think it matters anymore.”
“But it does, my sweet; for where is the weapon that once sat in this wonderful box?”
Donovan had not been paying attention to the kill space, but the Sleuth and others had been.
He was sitting in the chair when he picked it up, said the Sleuth. It fired upon his mishandling, and he jerked back, then slid forward, feetfirst. The weapon would have dropped to the floor and perhaps rolled a bit. There is not much room here for it to roll very far; yet there is no sign of it. Conclusion: the weapon is self-mobile. Based on the dunnage in which it nestled, it would be the size of a ruggerball—the ellipsoidal kind used on Hawthorne Rose.
Olafsdottr meanwhile had rolled the body aside, perhaps thinking the weapon underneath. What she found was a gaping wound in the back of the skull, as if that iron fist had punched its way out of the brain. “A bore hole through his head!” she said, bending over and looking through it. “Entry through the soft palate, up through the midbrain and the parietal lobe, and smashing out between the occipital and the parietal bones. What was this weapon that so badly backfired on him?”
“It was called the ‘Frog Prince’ on the shipping manifest.”
Olafsdottr grinned. “Busy buoy! And what be the nature of this ‘Frog Prince’?”
“We’re not sure. But there are Terran legends,” he said. “It was to be a trap for the Molnar.” He looked again at the smuggler’s body and the piercing wound through his head. “If I were you, and I saw it hopping about, I wouldn’t try to kiss it.”
Rigardo-ji was stupid, he decided. Like many petty scramblers, he could think from point A to point B, but not beyond it to point C. He had read between the lines and believed Foreganger’s present to the Molnar was a vengeance for the massacre of the Merry v Starinu, but it had never occurred to the treacherous little beast that the weapon had been meant to kill its user.