“I’m shocked at you,” Nicklin said comfortably. “That was a terrible thing to say to a fellow human being.”
“I wouldn’t have said it to a human being.”
“I’m immune to insults now, Corey. I’m immune to everything.”
“Then you must be very unhappy.”
“On the contrary,” Nicklin said, maintaining his smile. “I’ve found the secret of complete happiness. Do you want to know what it is? I’ll tell you anyway. At all times you keep just one thought uppermost in your mind—that everybody is a piece of shit.”
“Does that include yourself?”
“Especially yourself, old son—that’s the whole point! It would ruin the Big Joke if you didn’t include yourself.”
Montane shook his head, the movements slow, tired, barely perceptible. “Let’s get back to the buried spaceship—where is it?”
“That’s something else I can’t remember, but I’ve an idea the letter A crops up two or three times in the name of the town,” Nicklin said, wondering if he should compel the preacher to put details of their new arrangement on to tape or paper. “I might be able to find it by going through a Pi gazetteer, but even without the name we have enough information.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Montane said, giving him a sly glance. “I could find it by myself now.”
“Yes, but Renard’s people could get there faster—if I tipped them off.”
“The ship may not even be available,” Montane countered. “There may be descendants who treat it like a shrine.”
“The facts we have suggest that the lady died, as they used to say, without issue.”
“There could be other relatives. Perhaps they unearthed the ship years ago and sold it for scrap.”
“I’ve already thought of that.” Nicklin concealed the lie as expertly as he could. Christ, he thought, the old boy has a point there—I should have kept my mouth shut until I’d done some detective work on my own. “But the scrap value would hardly cover the excavation and haulage costs.”
“And there’s always the possibility that your memory has tricked you over the location,” Montane said, now apparently enjoying himself. “It’s going to be ages before interportal flights are commercially available again—so if it turns out that the town isn’t in the Pi region I don’t see how we can get to it.”
“This conversation is starting to lose all its sparkle—and I’m starving.” In spite of himself, Nicklin was impressed by the other man’s mental resilience, and he was fast becoming angry with himself for having played all his trump cards so early on in the game. The really smart thing to do would have been to take his time, to consolidate his ground step by step. He should have verified the existence and availability of the ship, then he should have found a way to acquire ownership, by bringing in a third party if necessary. Then, and only then—when he was in a safe position to dictate all the terms—would it have been safe to talk business with Montane.
So what had gone wrong with his sense of judgement? Nicklin writhed inwardly as he answered his own question. It had been the Danea effect again. The fevered visions of inflicting revenge on her, the lurid and penis-stirring images of debauching the Bitch in Black, had robbed him of all caution and common sense. In short, he had behaved like a mindless creature with a whiff of pheromones in its nostrils, and the full price of his stupidity remained to be discovered.
“If you’re really hungry I could have Carlos bring a tray in here,” Montane said.
A pleasingly tasteless line sprang into Nicklin’s mind at the idea of eating off Milly Montane’s coffin… My wife says the dinner’s on her… but Montane was touchy about dead wife jokes and had sounded genuinely dangerous over the last one. The objective was to earn his undying hatred, not to be killed by him.
“No need to put old Carlos to all that trouble,” Nicklin said. “I daresay I can wait a while longer.”
“Very well, but if all this works out—and you do take up your ‘executive’ position—you may have to get used to grabbing food while you have the chance.” “So you’re not going to renege on our deal.” “I’m a man of my word, Jim, and the truth is that you’re likely to be of more value to the cause now than you were when you joined us. That’s what I call irony,” Montane stood up and went forward to the shelf which supported his video set. “I’m going to see if I can call up a good Pi gazetteer on this thing and then we’ll find out if it jogs your memory. There’s no point in wasting any more time.”
“I agree,” Nicklin said, then became concerned about giving the impression of turning soft and compliant again. “But the job was only part of my professional fee. Remember?”
Montane spoke abstractedly, concentrating his attention on the video’s command panel. “If you’re talking about Danea,you have to remember something. I told you the first day we met that Danea Farthing is a private individual—any personal relationship she may have had with you has nothing to do with me or this mission.”
He’s sticking it to me, Nicklin thought in dismay. He is really sticking it to me! This is what I get for letting my dick rule my head. A crazy old coot, who thinks he’s Moses Mkll and has conversations with his wife’s corpse, is running rings around me!
“Correct me if I misheard you,” he said bitterly, “but I thought you said something about being a man of your word.”
“My vows to God take precedence over everything else.”
“How convenient!”
“You must try to be consistent, Jim.” Montane was still stooped over the video set, apparently finding complexity in its simplified controls, but his words were very much to the point. “A few minutes ago you were happy with the idea that God had given me licence to procure women. If that were the case, He would positively encourage me to commit a minor sin like lying now and again—as long as it served His cause.”
Thing’s can’t go on like this, Nicklin told himself, his fingernails biting deeply into the heels of his hands. There are going to be big changes around here.
He had no idea of how accurate his prediction would prove to be…
PART TWO: The Hammer Falls
Chapter 12
The rifle had roughly the same lines as an old-fashioned sporting weapon, but for the most part its appearance was an exercise in cosmetics and nostalgia. Its stock looked like polished wood and was designed to fit snugly into the user’s shoulder, although firing produced no recoil; it was operated by a conventionally styled trigger, although a simple button might have been more appropriate for the unleashing of bolts of ultralaser energy. It had an effective range of three kilometres in dry, clear weather; and a computerised smartscope guaranteed impressive accuracy, even in the hands of a total novice.
A perfect killing machine, beautiful in its own way, the rifle looked incongruous among the frayed umbrellas in the antique hall-stand. Nicklin gazed thoughtfully at it for a few seconds, knowing he was supposed to take it outside with him, then he shook his head. On several previous occasions he had slung the weapon on his shoulder when going out to the hill, and each time had felt like an overgrown child playing frontiersmen or soldiers. He took his old sun-hat from a peg on the hall-stand, squared it on his head and—leaving the double doors wide open—went out of the huge house.