By taking Pilar’s hand in his, he made her meet his eyes. In a more sober tone than before he added, “We’re with the Frisian Defense Forces.”
“Oh,” the woman said. The datum fell into place. “Oh!”
“We’re not maybe the best thing that could happen to Cantilucca,” Coke said, still looking directly at her though her eyes had lifted away. “But we’re better than what I’ve seen here so far.”
Pilar gave him a bitter smile. “Sometimes I think the best thing that could happen to Potosi, at least, would be a fusion bomb,” she said.
Coke squeezed her hand. He stepped to the van, reached in through the window, and dragged one of the occupants out by the throat. The local squawked after Coke flung him on the pavement. He didn’t say anything before he hit the ground, because the Frisian’s fingers gripped too tightly to pass the sound.
The remaining two bums bleated. They slid to the other side of the open compartment. Instead of reaching for them, Coke pointed his pistol at the left member of the pair.
“You have five seconds,” Coke said. “One. Two.”
The local jumped up and stuck his head and torso out of the far window. Coke shifted his weapon’s centimeter bore toward the other derelict. “Three. Four.”
The local tried unsuccessfully to rise. His limbs were spastic with fear. He seemed afraid to turn and face the opening.
Coke pointed the gun muzzle sideways and said, “Go on, you’re all right, I’ll give you the time.”
The local thumped out into the street and began crawling after his fellow. He was moaning about his bottle, but the only bottle the trio had left in the van was empty.
Pilar stood close beside Coke. “You’re very direct,” she said in a voice too neutral to be disinterested.
“Yeah,” Coke said. He looked at her again. “What you see is what you get.”
Pilar smiled wistfully. “No,” she said, “I’m afraid that what I get is something else again. Perhaps I should have seen it, but I was younger then.”
She opened the door of the van. The ignition card clinked against the handle. “Thank you very much, Master Coke. I—I appreciate what you’ve done. I’d invite you home for a drink, but people might get the wrong impression.”
Her face hardened. “And it would be the wrong impression.”
Coke bowed formally. He wore a half smile.
Pilar suddenly leaned close and kissed him on the cheek. Then she was in the van, shutting the door needlessly hard.
Coke watched her drive away. He was smiling more broadly now. Someone watching him might have noticed the similarity of the expression to that which Johann Vierziger wore after killing.
The remaining five members of the survey team waited for a moment after Major Matthew Coke walked out of Hathaway House with a pistol and a commandeered shock baton. Georg Hathaway started to close the heavy front door. Margulies touched the innkeeper’s arm to stop him.
Hathaway glanced around. The four Frisians besides Barbour stood in a concave arc, facing out the doorway so that among them they watched a hundred meters of the streetscape. All of them held weapons.
“Oh,” Hathaway said. “Oh. I wasn’t thinking of that.”
Margulies nodded without replying, and without ever taking her eyes off the amazed clot of L’Escorials across the street. Her left hand returned to rest lightly on the foregrip of her sub-machine gun.
“There,” Vierziger said with a slight relaxation of the drumhead tautness beneath his insouciant exterior. “He’s clear of anything we can do—unless we want to follow him.”
“Which we do not,” Moden said. He set down the missile launcher with care. The weapon he carried comfortably was so heavy that if it dropped, the shock would seriously damage it.
“There’s no organization,” Barbour offered. He had directional audio from the spectators across the street, as well as a holographic view sharper than that of the others’ naked eyes. “People run inside saying they’re going to report to Raul or to the Old Man, but they don’t come back with any orders.”
“Raul Luria is head of L’Escorial,” said Georg Hathaway. “With his son Ramon, and Ramon’s son Pepe.”
“Pepe is a weasel,” Evie said in clipped tones. She looked at the Frisians and added, “We have rooms prepared for you. You’ll share baths; I hope that’s all right. But surely you’d like something to eat or drink?”
It was hard to read her expression. The sudden destruction of a dozen gunmen had opened a window on the woman’s mind, but its interior was still thick with the dust of long depression.
“I wouldn’t mind something to drink,” Niko Daun said clearly. “You say you’ve got local cacao?”
“And I think I’ll have a beer or two,” Sten Moden added, quirking the younger man a smile. “It’s been a long day. Not that it’s over yet.”
“Here, I’ll serve you gentlemen,” Georg said. “And lady of course. Evie, I wish you wouldn’t say things like that, you know, in public. Though Pepe’s off Cantilucca now, I believe.”
The local patrons had returned to the alcove in which they’d been drinking. Vierziger walked to the table of the third man, the civilian, and said, “Good day, sir. My name is Johann Vierziger, and I’m a sergeant with the Frisian Defense Forces. May I ask who you are?”
The fellow looked up. His face was handsome in a hollow-cheeked fashion, but there was a gray glaze over him that was more an aura than skin tone.
“My name’s Larrinaga,” he said. He was younger than he looked; thirty years standard at the most. “And I’m nothing, that’s who I am.”
“Pedro’s had a difficult time this past year,” Georg said; half-confiding, half in an attempt to forestall the wrath of the little stranger who made him very uncomfortable to watch. “His wife died. She was an artist in psychic ambiances, a very fine one, known all across the galaxy.”
“Really?” said Niko Daun. “I’ve worked in PAs myself. Who was she? The wife.”
His tone wasn’t precisely dismissive, but there was a challenge in it. Daun didn’t regard himself as a top PA artist, but he didn’t expect to find a better one on this wretched planet.
Hathaway drew drinks. Larrinaga looked up and said, “My wife was Suzette. That was her working name. She was a saint. And there’ll never be an artist like her. Never in all time!”
“Suzette was from here?” Daun blurted. “Blood and martyrs!”
Margulies raised an eyebrow in the direction of the sensor tech.
Daun turned his palms up. “She’s—” he said. “Well there’s taste.
But the best PA artist in the galaxy, yeah, you can make a case for it. I’m amazed…. Well, I didn’t think she’d have come from a place so …”
He looked at Larrinaga, who was staring morosely into his beer mug. “Suzette’s work is so tranquil, you see,” Daun said. “It’s not what I’d expect coming from Cantilucca. From Potosi, anyhow.”
Georg handed out beverages in rough-glazed ceramic mugs of local manufacture. The beer, for all his praises of it, had an oily undertaste that Moden found unpleasant. He’d drunk worse in the field, wine that had rotted rather than fermenting properly …and there were worse things in life than bad booze.
Daun sipped his mug of frothy, bitter, cacao drink with approval. His lips pursed as he considered Larrinaga and the situation. A Tech 4’s pay didn’t run to art the like of Suzette’s, but there was always the chance …
“I wonder,” he said, “if there’s any of your wife’s work still on Cantilucca? Some minor pieces, perhaps, that—”
The local man clutched his empty mug with both hands. He began to cry. He made a convulsive gesture that would have swept the mug against the wall to shatter.
Vierziger, who was standing arm’s length away and didn’t seem to be watching, caught the mug in the air. He set it on the serving counter.