At last, La Viro tired of pointing out in vivid detail and imagery how stupid, callous, brutal, murderous, and selfish they were. He threw up his hands and said he was sick of the sight of them. He would retire to the sanctum in the temple and pray for the has of the Virolanders they'd killed. And also, though they didn't deserve it, for the living and the dead culprits. He turned the survivors over to Frato Fenikso, Brother Phoenix, once.known as Hermann Goring.
Goring said, "You look like deservedly chastened children, and I hope you feel like it. But I don't have, at this moment, anyway, much hope for you. That's because of my anger at you. I'll get over it, and then I'll do my best to help you change for the better."
He led them to the rear of the temple where he gave each of them a free grail and enough cloths to keep them warm in the coldest temperatures.
"Anything else you need or want will be up to you to get it," Goring said. He dismissed them, but he called Burton aside.
"Have you heard that Samuel Clemens died of a heart attack?"
Burton nodded.
"Apparently, he thought that Frato Eriko still intended to settle an old score. After all he'd gone through during the battle, this was just too much, the straw that broke the camel's back or, in his case, broke his heart."
"I heard the story from Joe Miller this morning," Burton said.
"Yes. Well, unless somebody does something for the titanthrop, he's going to die of a broken heart, too. He really loved Clemens."
Goring asked Burton if he intended to go on to the headwaters. Burton replied that he had not come this far just to quit. He was going to set out for the tower as soon as possible.
"You'll have to build a sailboat. Certainly, Clemens' men won't allow you to go with them in the Post No Bills."
"I don't know about that," Burton said.
"And I suppose that if they refuse, you'll hijack the launch?"
Burton didn't answer.
"Is there no end to your violence?"
"I didn't say I would use force," Burton said. "I intend to talk to Anderson about the trip as soon as possible."
"Anderson was killed. I warn you, Burton, don't shed any more blood here!"
"I'll do all I can to avoid it. I don't like it any more than you do, really. Only, I am a realist."
The smaller launch, the After You, Gascon, had disappeared with all of its crew. No one knew what had happened to it, though some Virolando witnesses thought they'd seen it explode.
"If you really push it, you could get to the headwaters in about thirty days in the launch," Goring said. "But the agents of the Ethicals will get there before you do."
Burton was shocked.
"You know about them?"
"Yes. I talked to both Frigate and Miller last night^ trying to help them through their grief. I knew more than you'd think and suspected even more. Correctly, as it turned out. Neither saw any reason to keep silent about the renegade Ethical. I told La Viro, and he's thinking hard about the whole business. It's been a great shock to him, though it hasn't affected his faith any."
"What about you?"
"I see no reason to change my faith. I never thought that the people responsible for this world were angels or demons. There are, though, many puzzling things about the two stories I've heard. What intrigues me the most, and also upsets me the most, is the mystery of what happened to the nonhuman on Clemens' boat, Monat I think was his name."
Burton said, "What? I haven't heard about that!"
Goring described what Miller had told him, and added, "And you say that his companion, the man called Frigate, also disappeared?"
"That Peter Jairus Frigate was an agent," Burton said. "He wasn't an exact double of the Frigate you talked to, but he resembled him closely. He may have been Frigate's brother."
"Perhaps when—or—if you get into the tower, you'll find-out," Goring said.
"I'll find out sooner than that if I catch up with those agents in the launch," Burton said grimly.
After some more discussion, Burton left Goring. He had not told the German what the news about Monat and the pseudo-Frigate meant. The Ethical X, the Mysterious Stranger, the renegade, had been on the Not For Hire. And he had gotten rid of Monat about eight hours after they'd boarded the vessel. Why? Because Monat would recognize him. He would have been in disguise, but Monat would have known him sooner or later. Probably sooner. So he'd had to work fast, and he had done so. How, Burton didn't know.
X had been on Clemens' boat.
"Had he lived through the battle? If he had, then he was among the few survivors of the Not For Hire now in this immediate area.
Perhaps. He might have left at once and gone up-River or he might have gotten to the other bank.
Burton went back after Goring and asked him if he'd heard about any survivors on the other side of the lake or any who'd gone through on the cliffpath above the strait.
"No," Goring said. "If there had been any, they'd have been reported."
Burton tried not to show his excitement.
Goring, however, said, smiling, "You think that X is here, don't you? At hand but in disguise?"
"You're deucedly clever," Burton said. "Yes, I do, unless he's been killed. Strubewell and Podebrad were agents, I don't mind telling you that now, and they were killed. So perhaps X was also."
"Did anyone see Strubewell and Podebrad die?" Goring said. "I know Joe Miller thinks Strubewell was dead because he didn't see him get out of the pilothouse after it fell. But Strubewell could have gotten out later on. All we know about Podebrad is that he was seen no more after the vessels collided."
"I wish they were available," Burton said. "I'd get the truth out of them somehow. I believe, however, that they died. That you citizens haven't seen them goes a long way to prove that. As for X, well..."
He said so-long to Goring and walked to the partly burned dock at which the Bins was tied up. It looked like a monstrous black turtle. Its high rounded hull was the shell, and the long narrow prow was part of the head sticking out. The barrel of the steam machine gun projecting from the extreme front of the prow was the turtle's tongue; the steam gun poking out from the stern, the turtle's tail.
Burton had been told by one of its crew that it carried a large batacitor and could hold fifteen people comfortably and twenty with some inconvenience. It could go thirty-five miles per hour against a ten-mile-per-hour current and a ten-mile-per-hour wind. It had an armory of fifteen rifles and fifteen pistols using gunpowder-filled cartridges and ten compressed air rifles and many other weapons.
Joe Miller, his enormous arm in a plaster cast, several of the crew and some survivors of the Not For Hire were standing on the dock. Having had the new captain of the Bills described to him, Burton had no difficulty picking him out. Kimon was a short burly dark man with intense hazel eyes, an ancient
Greek whose life Burton had studied in school and afterward. He's been a great general, naval commander, and statesman, one of the main builders of the Athenian empire after the Persian wars. He was born in 505 B.C., if Burton remembered correctly.
Kimon was a conservative who had favored alliance with Sparta and so ran counter to the policies of Pericles. His father was the famous Miltiades, the victor of the battle of Marathon, in which the Greeks turned back the hordes of Xerxes. Kimon ^served during the naval battle of Salamis in which the Athenians sank two hundred enemy vessels with a loss of only forty and forever broke the Persian naval power.