The ceremony was not what she wanted. Moyshe kissed her and whispered, "If I get out alive, you'll have the real thing. The big one you want. That's a promise."
After the reception began, Kindervoort pulled Mouse and benRabi aside. "Finally got some word on that failsafer."
Back when the landside contractees had been boarding the service ship for return to Confederation a man had tried to kill them when it had become obvious that they were staying behind. He had suicided after missing. They had assumed he was a Bureau agent failsafing them.
"The autopsy finally got done," Kindervoort said. "He was Sangaree."
"Sangaree!" Mouse said it as if it were a swear word.
"Yes. And he did commit suicide. He was wearing a poison ring."
"Nobody killed him? There wasn't a second failsafer?" BenRabi shook his head. "That doesn't make sense."
"It didn't make sense when we thought there were two of them, and one got away," Mouse said. "Looks to me like he was Strehltsweiter's man, not the Admiral's. Makes sense in that context. She wanted us pretty bad."
"That's the way I figured it," Kindervoort said. "Till now I halfway thought it might have been a setup. To make you look more palatable. It doesn't look that obvious anymore. I'm confused, though. She was in intensive care all the time. Isolated. How did she make contact? How did she relay the order, even assuming the failsafer was pre-programed? If you come up with any theories, let me know. I'd hate to think my own people helped her."
"Uhm." BenRabi glanced at Mouse.
Mouse shrugged. "I was sure he was Beckhart's."
"Ever heard of a Sangaree suiciding?"
"It happens. Borroway."
"Those were kids. They didn't have any other way out, and they knew too much."
"He had to be programed."
"What's going on?" Amy demanded. "Consoling the victim, Mouse? You look like your best friend just died."
"We'll talk it out later, Mouse. No, we were just talking about something Jarl brought up. Sort of a puzzle. Let's dance, honey."
It was a zestless party. It did not last long. Neither did the honeymoon. Mouse dragged benRabi out early next morning.
"Hey. I'm supposed to be a newlywed."
"Come on. You been tapping it for eight months. Getting married didn't make it new. Jarl wants us. Time to go into training."
BenRabi spent the next fourteen hours talking about Angel City, studying maps, teaching the use of small arms in a coliseum cube that had been commandeered for the purpose.
His group consisted of twenty-five people. Mouse had another the same size. Mouse drilled his mercilessly in unarmed combat. His was the easier task. His students at least had some idea of what he was talking about.
BenRabi worked at it, but thought the Seiners were taking everything too damned seriously—despite his own admonition about how rough it could get.
He vacillated between a belief that they would find The Broken Wings hip deep in Sangaree and the opposing view, that Navy Security would be so tight that not one unfriendly would get through.
His fourth morning of teaching was interrupted by Kindervoort. "Moyshe. Sorry. Got to take you off this today. They've got a tour planned for citizenship applicants."
"Can't it wait? This auction won't, and these clowns are so bad they couldn't hurt themselves."
"I argued. I got shouted down. I guess they think it's important that you know what you're fighting for."
"Yeah? I never did before, and I did my job... "
"Oh. You're bitter today."
"Just frustrated. The more I see, the worse it looks. We're going to get hurt if this thing goes Roman candle, Jarl. We won't be ready."
"Do the best you can. That's all you can ever do, Moyshe."
"Sometimes that's not enough, Jarl. I want to do enough."
"Make a vacation out of today. Just relax. I don't think it's that important. They're supposed to show you what life's like for Starfishers who don't live on harvestships. Probably do you good to get away from Amy, too. I don't know what's the matter with her. She's even bitchy around the office anymore."
"You've known her longer than I have. You figure it out. You tell me."
Mouse stalked in. "You ready, Moyshe? I scrounged a scooter. Let's go before somebody liberates it back."
Eight: 3049 AD
The Contemporary Scene
Hel did not belong. It was a Pluto-sized twerp of a straggler planet which, like an orphaned puppy, had taken up with the first warm body it had come across. When it did so, it set up for business too far from the unstable Cepheid it adopted. Even at perihelion in its lazy, eggy orbit it did not receive enough warmth to melt carbon dioxide.
Hel was a black eight ball of a world silver-chased by ice lying in the canyons of its wrinkled carcass. Its sun was but the brightest of the stars in its sky. No one would expect such a planet to exist, and no one would want to visit it if a suspicion of its existence arose.
Those were the reasons Confederation's Navy Bureau of Research and Development considered Hel the perfect site for a bizarre, dangerous, and ultra-secret research project.
Hel Station lay buried in a mountain like a clam in sand. Its appendages reached the surface at just two points.
The Station was not meant to be found.
"Ion?"
Marescu was a sight. His waistcoat was soiled, ragged, and wrinkled. His hose was bagged and falling. His wig was askew. His facial makeup was caked and streaked.
"Ion?" Neidermeyer said a second time, catching his friend's elbow. "You hear the news? Von Drachau is coming here."
Marescu yanked his arm away. "Who?" At the moment he did not give a damn about anything, Paul's news included. The agony was too much for mortal man to bear. He yanked a grimy silk handkerchief from a pocket, cleared the water from his eyes. Paul should not see his tears.
"Von Drachau. Jupp von Drachau. The guy who pulled off that raid in the Hell Stars a couple of years back. You remember. The commentators called him High Command's fair-haired boy. They talked like he'd be Chief of Staff Navy someday."
"Oh. Another one of your militarist heroes." Marescu could set in abeyance the worst blues for a good fight about the Services. "Fascist lackey."
Paul grinned, refused the bait. "Not me, Ion. I know you too well."
No fight? Marescu faded off into his internal reality. Damn her eyes! How could she have done it? And with that....hat blackamoor!
"Hey. Ion? Is something wrong?"
More than normal? Ion Marescu was Hel Station's resident crank and grouch, its leading Mr. Blues and Vinegar. Most people shunned him unless work forced contact. He had one real friend, astrophysicist Paul Neidermeyer, a lady love named Melanie Bounds, and managed a certain strained formality with his boss, Kathe the Eagle. Everybody else was fair game for his vituperation.
"Von Drachau? He's Line, isn't he? Why would they tell a Line officer about this place? They planning on locking him up?"
"Ion. Man, what's wrong? You look bad. Why don't we take you down and get you a shower and a clean jumper?"
One of the curiosities of Ion Marescu was that he appeared to change personalities with his clothing. When he wore standard Navy work clothing he was almost tolerable. When he donned his Archaicist costume he became arrogant, argumentative, viper-tongued, and abnormally misty, as if half the time half of him truly did exist in eighteenth-century England.
Marescu paused before a mirror inset in the passage wall, ignoring the people trying to pass. "I do look a little ragged, don't I?" he muttered. He adjusted his wig, straightened the ruffles at his throat, thought, I wish this were Georgian England. I could call the bastard out. Settle this crap with steel.
But you would not have done that with a Negro, would you? You'd have gotten some friends together and played dangle the darky from a tree limb. If you could have stood the shame of confessing to your friends.