The thunder of two compact machine pistols buried the high, shrill whine of the needler.
Fionna was lying on the sidewalk. It hurt-God, how it hurt!-and she whimpered a little at the terrible pain. She lay in a puddle of something hot, and she felt a gentle hand under her head, raising it to slip some sort of cushion behind it.
She opened her eyes. It was Chris Felderman leaning over her, she thought confusedly. But why was he crying?
"Chris?" The voice was hers, but she'd never heard herself sound so weak. Something dribbled down her chin, and she realized it was blood. She felt only a distant curiosity at the thought.
"D-Don't try to talk, Fionna. Please! The medics are coming."
"M-medics?" She blinked at him. A mist was rising from the pavement, obscuring her vision, and the temperature had fallen. Then she understood, and she managed a weak smile. "Don't think . . . it'll matter . . . much," she whispered.
"It will! It will!" Chris sobbed, as if saying it could make it so.
"May-maybe." She knew better, but it struck her oddly detached brain as needlessly cruel to tell him so. "What about-?"
"Dead!" he whispered fiercely. "You got 'em both, Chief!"
"G-good." The mist was much thicker, and she was much, much colder. Yet the darkness beyond the mist seemed suddenly warm and inviting. It wouldn't hurt so much there . . . but she had something left to say, didn't she? She cudgeled her fading brain, then her bloody mouth smiled up at Chris. Two police floaters screamed to a halt, but she ignored them as she gripped his hand.
"G-give . . . Lad . . . my love," she murmured. "And . . . tell him . . . tell him . . . I got them b-"
The light went out of her universe forever.
Ladislaus Skjorning sat in the Chamber of Worlds like a boulder of Beaufort granite, and the black-draped seat beside him was less empty than his soul.
He'd failed. He'd failed his planet and himself, but, far worse, he'd failed Fionna. Chris Felderman thought the failure was his, but Ladislaus knew. The entire surviving Beaufort delegation was in shock, but the others had managed somehow to keep going. Not Ladislaus.
He remembered their childhood on windy, purple seas under the orange Beaufort sun. Remembered sailing and fishing, the first time she stood for office as a seaforcer, the day she convinced him to seek the new Assembly seat. "I need someone to watch my back, Lad," she'd said, and for ten years he'd done just that-until he let her go out onto a street on the birthworld of Man to be gunned down in her blood like an animal.
His teeth ground together on the agony of memory, and suddenly a single, clear thought stabbed through his brain like an ice pick.
The Federation wasn't worth Fionna's life.
Four and a half centuries of human history had come down to this, he thought bitterly, looking at the banner-hung walls and marble floors. To this holodrama showpiece, this mausoleum dedicated to dead ideals and housing a government whose members connived at murder.
His broad face went grim. Fionna was gone, and with her went her dream. There would be no transition, no gradual change. Without her, the Fringe bloc was leaderless, headless, already splintering in rage as the local authorities sought uselessly to link the dead assassins to someone-anyone-but the tracks were well buried.
The killers had been Fringers, not Innerworlders, but the Outworlds knew who'd hired them. Ladislaus had Dieter's confirmation, though his oath meant he couldn't use it. His fellows didn't need it, for the Fringe knew its enemies well. Yet there was no proof, and without proof, there was no guilt. Without guilt, there was no punishment; and without punishment, the Fringe would shatter in incoherent fury and be swept aside by the Corporate World machine. He saw it coming, and he was glad. Glad!
He rose and pressed his attention button, and there was a moment of silence as the delegate from Xanadu looked down from the giant screen and recognized who sought recognition.
"Mister Speaker," the delegate said slowly, "I yield to the Honorable Assemblyman for Beaufort."
Ladislaus Skjorning's grim face appeared on the master screen, and the chamber fell silent. In ten years, he had never sought the floor.
"Mister Speaker!" His voice was harsh, with little trace of his habitual accent, and he felt a stir around him as he put aside his mask at last. "I would like clarification on a point of law, Mister Speaker."
"Certainly, Mister Skjorning," Haley said, his face compassionate.
"Mister Speaker, am I not correct in believing that many years ago-in 2357-Winston Ortler of Galloway's World was accused of murdering his Old Terran mistress?"
A silent gasp rippled through the Assembly, and Simon Taliaferro's face twisted in fury while Haley stared at Ladislaus in shock.
"Am I not correct, Mister Speaker?"
"Yes . . . yes, you are. But no formal charges were ever filed-"
"Precisely, Mister Speaker." Ladislaus' face was bleak. "No formal charges were filed-just as no formal charges have been filed over the death-the assassination-of Fionna MacTaggart. But in the earlier case, I believe, there was substantial evidence of guilt, was there not? Is it not true that his colleagues ruled that, as an assemblyman, he was immune from prosecution for any crime under the Constitution?"
"Yes, Mister Skjorning," Haley said softly. "I am very much afraid that was the case." He drew a deep breath and gripped the dilemma by its horns. "May I ask the purpose of your questions, sir?"
"You may." Ladislaus drew himself up to his full height, towering over the other assemblymen like an angry Titan. "It is only this, sir; just as there was no prosecution then, there will be none now. Because the men who murdered Fionna MacTaggart are in this very chamber!"
The Chamber of Worlds exploded as the words were spoken at last. The Speaker's gavel pounded, but Ladislaus grabbed the volume control on his console and wrenched it to full gain. His mighty bass roared through the tumult, battering the delegates' ears.
"Fionna MacTaggart was murdered by the political machine headed by Simon Taliaferro!" Confused shouts of outrage and approval echoed from the floor, but Ladislaus thundered on. "Fringe World fingers pulled those triggers, but Corporate World money bought them! It may never be 'proved,' but Francois Fouchet planned her murder because she stood in the Taliaferro machine's way!"
His savage words shocked the Assembly into silence at last, but for a handful of shouted denials from the Corporate World seats, and Ladislaus slowly turned down the volume.
"But let it pass," he said very softly, his amplified voice echoing in the silence. "We of the Fringe have learned our lessons well. We cannot turn to this Assembly for justice; the Assembly is the tool which took our rights. But let that pass, too. Let all of it pass. It doesn't really matter any more, because when you killed Fionna-" his eyes burned across at the New Galloway delegation "-and when these other Innerworlders let you kill her, and demanded no accounting, you also killed this Assembly. You're dead men's shadows in a hall of ghosts, and you will wake one morning to find that you are all alone here. . . ."
His voice trailed off, and an icy hush hovered as he started to turn away. But then he paused. His fists clenched at his sides, and when he turned back to the pickup the muscles in his cheeks stood out like lumps of iron in a face reduced to elemental hatred by loss and rage.
"But happen to be one last service this putrid Constitution have the doing of for Fionna," he said thickly. "Happen to be a Fringe Worlder can claim a Corporate Worlder's protection!"