‘Then you know that I, myself, commanded that he cease peddling his wares in the streets of this city.’ He indicated the table and the handful of wares displayed there. ‘He has continued to peddle his...wares despite our merciful warnings.’
'l heard your command. Lord. lt is true.'
Hassan turned on Holmes, who now was trembling openly. Then there can be but one judgement, is that not so?' He smiled, a sight to chill the soul.
‘Mercy!’ Holmes cried out, and he tell face down at the foot of the dais. ‘Mercy, for my family's sake!’
Hassan laughed. ‘Your family will be cared for, out of the munificence of the Company. Take him away.’
I was glad that my part in the business went no further than returning Holmes to his cage, that it was Hassan's chief executioner who took over from there. The man had been fairly warned, tried, and condemned by the proper civil authorities. There was certainly nothing I could do, no reason for me to attempt to obstruct justice.
Yet I wondered at the sickness in my soul as I gave Executioner Orioff the key to Holmes' cage.
‘Well, thankee!' Orioff said in his cheerful way. 'We'll give him tonight to think about it, and start first thing in the morning!'
I struggled not to be sick.
Such feelings had been becoming more and more common as I watched Lord Hassan secure and build upon his power in Marakani. The structure within which most of the citizens worked was no different than that in a thousand other towns and villages across Kawabe. no different, I daresay, than the conditions in tens of thousands of cities across the vast expanse of the mighty Draconis Combine. Marakani was dominated by Kawanashi Enterprises, a corporate entity that served as mother and father and family to us all. The corporate rule was, on the whole, benevolent. Corporate schools trained our children, corporate hospitals cared for our sick, corporate stores provided us with all of our needs, redeeming our pay chits with food and housing and the necessities of life. Those citizens who were not directly employed by the Company could barter for those services with produce or goods.
It was only reasonable that Kawanashi's directors did not care to see peddlers and street hawklings such as Holmes shuffling about the streets of Marakani, selling their goods for far less than the Company itself could afford to provide them. While Kawabe's ruling elite did not exactly discourage competition, such practices as deliberately undercutting the Company's prices in an effort to sell inferior goods were frowned upon. Peddlers like Holmes were encouraged to join the Company, in an effort to provide the citizens of the community with uniform excellence of goods and services for sale.
Unfortunately for Holmes, this wasn't possible. He'd been fired from a minor branch company belonging to Kawanashi Enterprises a couple of years before when he'd fallen behind in his rent. Unable to find other work in a town where non-Company jobs were rather scarce, to say the least, he'd been forced to go to work as a street salesman in order to keep his family fed...and to keep up with the debt he owed the Company. His records showed he'd been threatened with arrest a number of times already... usually when he was behind on his payments. Still, he might have been able to struggle along, until Prefect Hassan decided to shut down the city's independent merchants. Marakani's independents had been warned repeatedly for the past several weeks that they would have to pack up and move elsewhere, that their services would no longer be needed in this city. I. myself, had taken Holmes in only the week before, to hear Hassan's personal warning that he had to get out of town. If he chose to ignore that warning, it was his own look out, right?
Yet why did it feel as though my honor had been soiled?
And to the people of Kawabe. honor is everything.
I could feel the resentment of the people of I the city, as tangible and heavy as the I heat, as I resumed my foot patrol through the dusty, sun-baked streets. It felt as though the eyes of all the people were on Okabi and me as we made our way past market stalls and through crowds that seemed to turn quiet once the two ot us appeared. A Civilian Guidance Corpsman's uniform is designed to call attention to its wearer The red and white stripes on forearms and shins, the red and white cap with its leather hood, even the stunner ostentatiously displayed at the left hip all are designed to make the police highly visible, a deterrence to crime and a comfort to law-abiding citizens.
We are known, in fact, as friendly persuaders,' but Okabi's expression beneath the brim of his cap was anything but friendly now. His dark eyes glinted like obsidian chips, and his normally impassive mouth was twisted into an unreadable expression.
I knew my face must bear the same message.
‘Vance.’ Okabi said. ‘That one is acting suspicious.’ He jerked his thumb toward the marketplace, and l saw the look of stark terror spread across one farmer's face as he caught Okabi's gesture and assumed we were talking about him. I had already noted the furtiveness of his behavior, the way he kept looking to left and right and over his shoulder as he threaded his way down the street. He was a typical agroworker. the black muck of the irrigation ditches still clinging to his trousers and boots. He carried the produce he had to sell at the marketplace in a pair of baskets slung from either end of a pole balanced across his shoulders.
The look on his face as he saw Okabi pointing him out was enough to raise my suspicions. Until that day. I would have set after the man at once, ordered him to halt, and searched his person and his bundles. But I saw before me the face of the street peddler, Holmes.
'Let him go,' I said.
Okabi s dark eyes hardened. 'The man is up to something. We should stop him... search him...’
'Let him go!’ My shout was loud enough to drown the subdued hum of conversation around us, to turn heads in our direction. The farmer hurried off into the crowd, thanking whatever gods he knew that he'd been allowed to pass. What had he been up to? I didn't know, nor did I care.
'We are bound of our honor to serve the Prefect,’ Okabi said carefully. He was staring hard at me.
‘Honor?’ I said.
The word bore a great weight for the people of Kawabe. as it did for many of the peoples of the Draconis Combine. A man was raised from birth to know the paths of honor and the webwork of responsibilities that bound him to his parents, his family, his city, his lords, and his way of life. To break any of those bonds was to sever or stain those bonds of honor, and. for most Kawabeans, death was preferable.
‘Honor.’ Okabi replied. ‘Hassan is our lord, and we are bound by our honor to serve him.' The dark eyes narrowed beneath the visor of his cap. ‘We are bound by oath to serve him. and to fulfill our duties.'
I nodded to the people in the street around us, shopkeepers and vendors, beggars and hawklings, merchants and moneylenders. 'These are our people. Okabi. I was born and raised in a town not twenty klicks from here. You were raised here, in Marakani. Don't we have an honor-bond with them as well?’
'That man could have been smuggling food from the country. Or been dealing in black market Company chits Or be carrying weapons.'
‘l don't care’ I searched for the man but couldn't see him any longer. He'd been swallowed by the crowd. Bitterness crowded my thoughts. 'Whatever he was up to, I hope he gets away with it'
‘You are thinking of the man we arrested earlier. Holmes.’
‘What of it? What did he do to deserve having Lord Hassan descend on him that way? How much was Holmes' street business hurling the Company? If he was lucky — very lucky—Holmes's might have made ten thousand a year...and most of that would have gone to pay his back debts to the Company.’
'And tomorrow his fresh skin will be displayed on the drying racks outside of headquarters. I know. But ours is the way of bushido.'
The expression on Okabi's face as he said it told all. Bushido—the Way of the Warrior—was the ancient warrior's code brought to Kawabe centuries before from old Earth itself. It bound us to our master, Prefect Hassan, in our willingness to kill and in our willingness to die. I knew Okabi was as hurt by Holmes's arrest as I was... but he would die by his own hand before he would betray his master. I was subject to the same code. I had grown up on Kawabe, and the people and their ways were my own.