Together.A victorious team. She grinned back. ‘Yes, sir. I guess wedid.’
WHERE LIES THE HONOR
-William H. Keith, Jr.
The Prefect's hand came down on the shoulder ot the street hawkling's shoulder, and I thought the little man was going to climb right out ot his robes. 'So. little man,' Prefect Hassan roared. ‘You defy me, ne?’
'No, Lord!' The hawkling's voice rose to a falsetto squeak, his eyes bulging with terror. 'Please, Lord Prefect...I was just leaving! As you yourself commanded!’
The Prefect hauled back on the man's arm, pulling the flap of his traveling cloak open. The inside was lined with bottles, flasks, containers, and a small purse bulging with crumpled Company chits.
Holding the squirming man in the grip of his right hand. Hassan motioned with his baton of office, and Okabi and I stepped forward to do our duty.
‘Your name?* I said. Somehow I managed to keep the tremor out of my voice, to assume the aura of authority which went with my uniform. A crowd was already gathering, natural enough in a city accustomed to the usual orderliness of the Combine's rule. Kawabe's sun was only halfway to the zenith, but already the streets were baked dry, the dust heavy in the stifling air. The heat bore with it an oppressiveness that lay over the watching crowd. Was it the heat that maintained the crowd's silence, or something more?
'Name!' I commanded again. I was nervous with so many of Marakani's citizens watching, my temper raw with heat and fear. I shoved the man as I pulled him from the Prefect's grip.
He twisted away from me. anger flushing his face. ‘Aw, fer...You know who I am!’
The barrel of my shotgun caught him in the solar plexus, doubling him over. He gasped, clutched himself, and gasped again, fighting for air.
'Answer!'
‘Gu...Gunnar Holmes,' the little man said. Any fight had been driven from him by the blow. 'I was leaving town, really I was! I had affairs I needed to see to...'
‘I’d say your affairs are about to be settled for you.' I said. I nodded to Okabi, who shifted the combat shotgun in his arms to cover the prisoner. I slung my own weapon, twisted Holmes about, pulled his arms behind his back, and linked them together with wrist restraints.
'You'll have time to explain your crimes later.’ I told him. ‘At your trial.’
For a horrible moment, I thought Holmes was going to faint. There are few things less dignified than the sight of a pair of troopers from the Civilian Guidance Corps dragging an unconscious prisoner off to the holding cage, especially when the troopers are as large as Okabi and me. and the prisoner is as small as Holmes. I could have slung him over my shoulder like a sack of grain and carried him myself, but it is far more respectable to be seen marchinga prisoner to detainment. It proves to watching civilians that your authority is sufficient to force the miscreant to submit to you of his own free will, proves that it is useless to resist the lawful orders of the CGC. It says so in the Guidance Corps Manual.
'Please!' Holmes wailed. ‘You don't understand! My wife and children, they're starving!'
Hassan grinned broadly at that. Then you should have had the honor to starve yourself to death. Holmes. That would have spared your family your disgrace! As it is now...’ The grin broadened, calculation brightening the Prefect's eye. 'Perhaps they can help pay your debt to me.'
‘No. Lord, please!’
'Silence.' I growled. I brought the shotgun on its shoulder sling back to my hip and nudged him in the side with it. 'Behave with honor in this, and it will be easier for all of us. Let's move.'
The public cages were not far.
You have to understand that Marakani is a decent, orderly city. Ka-wabe, like so many of the worlds of the Draconis Combine, is not rich in natural resources. Most of the people are poor, and the economy is dominated by a handful of big, military-run combines. There is a factory outside of Marakani that produces viden extensors for BattleMech containment dampers, and a modest wire drawing plant that gives the city its principal export. Most of Marakani's citizens are employed in one of those two plants, both of which are owned by the monolithic Ka-wanashi Enterprises. Those who don't work for the Company work on the agroplantations that surround Marakani like a patchwork quilt, irrigated green against the dusty tan of the Kawabean desert. Life is hard here, but it is satisfying as well. Marakani's population numbers 20,000 or less, and at times it seems that everyone living there knows everyone else.
Prefect Vander Hassan was not a native of Marakani, or even of Kawabe. He had been born and raised on neighboring Shaul Khala, and it was said that the malicious glint in his eye was that of the Saurimat.the predatory secret society of mercenary assassins native to that world. He had arrived on Kawabe, it was rumored, as hired bodyguard for the chief executive of Kawanashi Engineering. When the workers' revolt broke out at the Kawanashi plant in Eibo. Hassan was in the right place at the right time, managing to blunt the workers' rush toward the administration bunker with a heavy machine gun cradled in his massive arms...and to save Kawanashi's president from an unpleasant death at the hands of the mob at the same time. His position as Prefect over the Marakani Workers' District was said to be a reward for his services to the firm.
The title 'Prefect’ might be translated as 'chief of police’ on some worlds, or as 'mayor,' or simply as ‘chief bureaucrat.’
Hassan was something of all three, master of the local work force in the employ of Kawanashi Enterprises, keeper of the peace of our town, and our representative before Lord Hideshi, the Planetary Chairman.
Chairman Hideshi was the ruler of Kawabe. but he was far away in the capitol at Itamiyama. So far as we were concerned, Hassan was our absolute monarch, feudal lord and master of 20,000 souls.
He looked like an absolute monarch, too, when I brought Holmes before him late that afternoon, at the-Pretecture Headquarters on the hill above the town. The Judgement Hall was a place of austerity, of bare tile floors and a frosted glass ceiling that admitted diffuse, white sunlight. The few art objects on their pedestals about the room were enhanced by the spartan interior: a porcelain bowl so thin it was translucent, a tower of fantastic and chimerical beasts carved from jade, an alabaster vase of haunting simplicity. Hassan, whatever the people In the street said of the man, was a man of delicate artistic sensibilities. Dressed in his red robe of judgement, he reclined on the divan on its dais at the end of the hall.
Before him on a table were arranged the bottles and pouches Holmes had been carrying inside his robe when we'd arrested him. They were patent nostrums mostly, tonics and waters to promote health and heal sickness. There were a goodly number of charms as well, small, carved figurines hanging from silken scarves, designed to be worn about the neck to ward off evil or mechanical failure. The workmanship was quite good, and I wondered if Holmes had made the charms himself, or if he had bought a consignment from elsewhere and was peddling them as middle man.
It made little difference. The luck charms had not helped him.
Holmes made the required obeisance, then stood with a barely suppressed tremble, awaiting judgement. Among the scattering of minor nobles and Guidance Corpsmen in the hall, there was little doubt about what that judgement would be.
'Corpsman Yancey!’
I stepped forward, snapped my best parade-ground salute, and responded. 'Here. Lord!'
‘You were witness to my instructions to this person last week, were you not?*
'i was, Lord.' Hassan was going by the
book on this one. Could he have been sensing unrest among thecitizens under the hard hand of his rule? It was impossible to say. Certainly, in a situation where he was both accuserand arresting power, judgeand jury, he had to take care that his judgement appear fair, that it follow accepted and approved tradition.