“The purpose of our withholding legal protection from non-citizens wasn’t so they could abuse each other without penalty.” From across the room, a commissioner who had studied history before taking charge of Narsai’s transportation system spoke up thoughtfully. “It was simply to discourage them from settling here permanently. In the beginning we extended citizenship to the spouse of a Narsatian, if that spouse became resident here. We acknowledged the adoption by our citizens of children from off-world, and we didn’t treat opposite gender offspring differently than same gender offspring as long as there was one Narsatian parent.”
“What are you suggesting, Pal?” Cab Barrett asked that question, in a gently prompting tone.
“Only that the Council has the authority to restore the practice of older customs at any time. If a thing was done once, even very long ago, it can be done again. If the Council wishes.” Commissioner Pal inclined her head toward Senior Chair Councilor Trabe Kourdakov, in one of Narsai’s rare gestures of respect for an authority figure.
Kourdakov waited, mentally polling the room. While he did so the Harbormaster spoke up, in an almost plaintive tone. He said, “Last year I answered a distress call from a pleasure boat. One of its owners was the Terran-born husband of a Narsatian woman, and he’d drunk too much and had lost his temper and beaten his own child to death. The Terran embassy declared that the little boy was Narsatian, because he’d been born on this world and his father hadn’t registered his birth with them—but our custom said he was Terran, because that was his father’s world of origin. So except for the child’s mother all the people involved were outside our legal system’s control; and I couldn’t turn the bastard over to anyone to be punished, even though I can tell you that if I’d witnessed what he did I sure as hell would have stopped him. I don’t care whether our laws and customs covered the situation or not, I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
“It seems to me that we have the power to prevent something evil from happening now.” Cab Barrett spoke carefully, and did not look at Casey or Romanova because she did not want to remind the others in the circle of her close friendship with them. “Senior Councilor, I propose on behalf of the Commissioners that we return to our ancestral customs concerning the family members of our citizens. Let’s extend our legal system’s protection to the husband and the adopted son of Katy Romanova, and to her unborn grandchildren and those children’s mother.”
It was not unanimous, but it didn’t have to be. It was a clear majority, with the Councilors casting votes that were counted and recorded by Trabe Kourdakov and with the Commissioners expressing their guilds’ opinions.
The Harbormaster, who possessed law enforcement powers as had his long-ago predecessors back on Earth, and the often idle Chief Constable of Narsai, stayed behind with Katy Romanova and Lincoln Casey when everyone else left the meeting room.
Katy looked up into her husband’s face, and she finally felt free to give him a taut little smile. They both knew that this was only the first part of the battle won. They now had backing if they were able to get Rachel Kane and Daniel Archer away from the corporate marshal before that marshal’s shuttle headed out-system, but for all their titles the two officials who were going to offer assistance now knew almost nothing about how to accomplish that rescue. Such skills simply weren’t necessary in Narsatian society, not even for those whose jobs were supposed to include dealing with miscreants.
On Narsai almost all “criminal” behavior was nonviolent. The constabulary saw far more cases of economic fraud and electronic eavesdropping than it did of assault, and the murder rate here was the lowest of any human-inhabited world where such statistics were kept. That was why a professional warrior like Katy Romanova was just as much an aberration among her people and on her native world as Lincoln Casey was among Morthans, and on Mortha.
And that was why the two of them would now have to decide what needed to be done, and would then most likely have to do it, in order to free Kane and Archer from the corporate marshal’s custody (since a direct request from Narsatian officials had a comet’s chance in a supernova of accomplishing that end). In the meantime there was also Maddy Fralick to think about—Maddy who Linc’s mind assured his wife was still aboard the marshal’s shuttle, and still safe; but no longer happy about being with her father, and worried that when the marshal left Narsai she was sure to be taken along. There was Paolo Giandrea on the Archangel, who might or might not be under orders to get Katy Romanova back so that she could be arrested for treason (or perhaps for desertion, or both). And then there was the very personal matter of what Katy’s mind had inadvertently let Linc view at last, after keeping that memory secret through all their years of otherwise full intimacy.
One thing at a time, Katy told herself and also told Linc, as they faced the Harbormaster and the Chief Constable (more familiarly known to their fellow citizens as “Harbie” and “Mara”), and tried to determine the fastest way to get that pair out of their way without giving offense.
CHAPTER 19
The Terran Embassy on Narsai was a place Daniel Archer had never visited, because he was a citizen of Sestus 4 although for him that citizenship was meaningless. Meaningless, because on Sestus 4 humans were beasts.
Maybe that was why he had had no trouble at all seeing a gen as a person when he had the chance to know one, he thought now as he sat beside Rachel Kane and watched the wintry Narsatian plains sweep past and tried not to imagine what awaited them once Marshal Vargas got them inside that embassy. They were being taken there, and not up to the orbiting long-range shuttle, because the Marshal of course needed proper facilities to contain and interrogate his prizes; and for some reason it wasn’t possible to take them aboard the Archangel.
Maybe that was a blessing, and maybe it was a disaster. Dan Archer wasn’t sure which to call it, he only knew that it surprised him. Even though he had made eye contact with several members of the Archangel’s landing party, and had realized they loathed having to capture their ship’s former chief engineer and its former executive officer and then turn them over to the despised Marshal Service (otherwise known, popularly, as the “Jackal Service” although few would use that phrase openly); still they had done it. And he knew that once he would have done the same thing, and would have thought of it as just one more unpleasant duty.
A gen was property, a person who helped living property to escape was a thief, and thieves deserved their punishment when they were caught. Dan Archer had believed those things completely, and he was sure the people in that landing party believed them too.
“I wonder why we’re not being taken to the ship?” Rachel had finally started to wake up, now, after having slept so much during their time underground that she had frightened him. She couldn’t scrub at her eyes with her hands, as she clearly wanted to do; but she was blinking in the winter sunlight that streamed into the vehicle’s cabin, and she was turning her head to look at Dan.
“Good question,” was all he got out, before the Marshal turned from where he was occupying a co-pilot’s seat—he had someone from the Embassy piloting for him, and that was it for other occupants of this vehicle. Marshals worked alone, and that was why although his shuttle probably had some kind of accommodation for a passenger or two he hadn’t brought a teammate along on this venture. He didn’t have such a thing.
Didn’t deserve one, Archer thought as he stared at the stunner that was now pointed in his direction. Vargas said in his resonant voice, “Shut up, thief.”