He took a handful of fiches from his coverall's breast pocket and passed them to Tarpy. "The man fled into the Tahn worlds," Hakone said.
Tarpy half smiled. "It should be hard for him to go to ground there."
"You have whatever resources you need. If you wish, take a few of our Praetorian deserters with you for backup."
"Will it matter how I do it?"
"Not at all. He's a small-time criminal, adrift in a very violent society. No one will inquire."
Tarpy palmed the exit switch, and the chamber's portal swung open.
"By the way—the Emperor also has a man in pursuit."
"Do I worry?"
"No. He's inconsequential—some captain named Sten. Met him. Quite sloppy for an Imperial soldier."
"But if he gets close?"
Hakone shrugged. "The issue at stake is a great deal larger than the life of one Imperial grunt, Tarpy."
Tarpy stepped through the portal, palmed it shut, and vas gone.
BOOK THREE
MOUTON
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sergeant Major Alex Kilgour, detached Mantis Section Headquarters, parent unit First Imperial Guards Division, glowered down at his tasteful purple and green loose tunic and pantaloons and then across the cobbled street at the schoolyard. In the yard, a uniformed and elderly Tahn officer was drilling eight-year-olds in some sort of arms drill. When y' gie th' bairns pikes before th' war starts, Alex thought sourly, p'raps y' should be thinkit ae nae fighting.
The march-and-countermarch he was watching, however, was very low on Kilgour's pissoff list. There were many, many others. Waiting for Sten, he ran through them.
There was nothing wrong with being detached for special duty. In the back of Alex's mind, he had been considering a certain sense of morality. He'd spent enough years in Mantis to realize that sooner or later the ticking clock would stop. Just lately Alex had been hearing his personal clock slowing.
But that, he protested to himself furiously, was nae the prime reason. Ah join't th' Guard ae ah soldier, he went on. An' somehow now Ah'm on some strange world, dressed ae a panderer. One of these aeons, Alex promised himself, prob'ly on my retirement, Ah'll gie th' Emperor what Ah serve the full story. The poor wee lad cannae know.
The strange world was Heath, capital of the Tahn worlds. Alex and Sten had gone in covertly. Kilgour, however, quibbled at their cover—Sten had figured that high-credit pimps would never be questioned as to their real motives.
Whatever Alex had been expecting, in a long career that specialized in inserting him in the middle of bizarre cultures, Heath proved a great deal more.
The Tahn culture consisted of rigid, stratified subcultures. At the top were the warlords, landed hereditary politico/commanders. Under them fell the lieutenants, the tactical leaders and warriors. Then the merchant class, and, finally, the peasants. The peasants did all the drakh work, from spear-carrying in the growing Tahn military to agriculture to menial jobs.
That, Alex thought to himself furiously, dinna makit me fash. But th' stinkit peasants no seem to mind bein' serfs. A thousand years earlier, Alex Kilgour would probably have made a very acceptable revolutionary.
An' not only that, he went on, th' food's nae whae a civilized body should eat. Ocean weed, food frae' bottom-scuttlin' beasties, drakh-planted carbos dinna make a diet frae a human, he thought, and burped.
Alex, not being the sort who could keep himself at the bottom of a brooding barrel for long, was consoling himself with the thought that at least the Tahn beer and alk were strong and readily available, when Sten slouched up beside him.
"Y'r mither dresses you funny," he said. Sten's garb was even more extreme—which in Heath's underworld culture meant even less noticeable—than Alex's. His knee-length smock was striped in orange and black, and the leotards under them were solid black. It was, Sten had been assured, the height of fashion among those who sharked through the sexworld of prostitution.
Sten merely grunted at Alex's sally. He, too, stared at the schoolyard. The Tahn warrior had discovered an error in some child's performance and was systematically shaming him in front of his fellow. Sten motioned his head, and the two men moved away, headed toward the red-light district they were quartered in.
"Hae'y found our mad bomber?" Kilgour asked.
"Yeah."
"Ah, Sten. P'raps y' dinna be telling me. It's aye worse'n Ah thought."
"Even worse," Sten began angrily. "The clottin' idiot went and did it again."
Lee Dynsman was an idiot. After he'd jumped ship on Heath, found a hidey-hole, a drink, a woman, and a meal, which consumed what was left of his credits, he'd put the word out in the underculture bars that he was an expert bomber and Very Available. A small gang with large ambitions had quickly recruited him to blow the vault on a Tahn credit repository. For once in Dynsman's career, the job had gone flawlessly, dropping the thick cement/steel back wall into rubble. The gang scooped up the loot, took Dynsman to their hangout, and drank him into celebratory oblivion. No dummies, they realized that since the Tahn "police" (actually paramilitary, seconded for special duties from the army) needed a culprit, they narked Dynsman.
"So our wee lad's in the clank," Alex said.
"Still worse."
"Ah, lad, lad. Dinna be makit aye worse. Y'know, Sten, when Ah was runnin' th' museum, Ah was consider-in' m'leave. M'mum's castle's in Ross Galen Province, aye the loveliest part ah th' planet a' Edinburgh. An the castle sits on a wee loch, Loch Owen. Ah could'a gone there instead't bein' here wi' these barbarians."
"Shut the hell up." Sten was in no mood for Alex's meanderings. "Dynsman isn't in jail," he went on. "The clot's been transported."
"Oool." Alex understood.
"I thought you would, you refugee from a clan of criminals. Transported. To a clottin' prison planet."
"Ah need a drink."
"Many, many drinks," Sten agreed. "While we figure out how the hell we tell the Emperor there is no way in the world to lift Dynsman off the Tahn worlds' worst penitentiary."
Alex then saved the day by spotting a bar that was just opening. The two men pivoted and swerved inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tarpy, too, had tracked down Dynsman. His cover for travel to Heath hadn't been nearly as clever as Sten's. He and the five Praetorian deserters with him masqueraded as a touring public fight team. Arriving unannounced, they had very few bookings, which left the assassin and his men more than enough time to look for the disappeared bomber.
Tarpy twirled the cup of tea in his hands and wished for something stronger in celebration. But he had rules—absolute rules that had kept him alive for nearly seventy-five years, rules that were never broken. Among the strongest was no mind alterants on the job.
He shot the tea back and motioned for his legman, a former corporal, Milr, to continue.
Milr did, and the warm glow that spread inside Tarpy came from more than the tea.
Very seldom had he taken a job that did not require violence, toil, and blood. But the current one showed every sign of being simple, painless, and well-paid.
Tarpy scanned the fiche on the prison planet. Pre-hominid. All prisoners sentenced for life. Average prisoner life expectancy—five years, local. Number of escapes—zero.