‘There is a guard system. I didn’t see anything else.’
‘I will hire some people who know how to deal with these things. Meanwhile you’d better give me the exact location.’
The collector attended closely while Boaz drew a rough map and described the warehouse. ‘Good. Well, our work here would seem to be finished. Are you coming, Mace, my dear?’
The girl looked almost appealingly at Boaz. ‘I’ll follow you a little later, Radalce. I’d like to rest here a while longer – if you don’t mind, Captain Boaz.’
Though he would have preferred her to go, Boaz shrugged his consent. Obsoc looked his craggy body up and down, an obvious thought dawning on him. ‘Well, enjoy yourself, my dear. I’ll send the runabout back for you.’
He and Romrey left. When Boaz came back from seeing them down the flowrail she was still sitting at the table. As he came close her hand glided up and gently stroked his leg.
He drew back. ‘You must not do that, Mace. You cannot expect to entice me into dalliance.’
‘You’re not that much of a colonnader!’
‘So to speak.’
‘But you have bones. How can you refuse such pleasure?’
‘I never use my bones, Mace. They have been switched off for many years.’
‘A stoic indeed!’
‘Pleasure is a poor thing to me. My life is set in one direction.’
‘Oh, you’re a mystic, bent on self-transcendence,’ she said, misunderstanding him. ‘But that puzzles me. Here you are going all out after time-gems. It could only be for the money. Greed for money doesn’t square with sensual abstention – does it?’
‘It is not for money.’
‘Then what?’ She frowned.
‘Never mind.’ Boaz waved his hand in annoyance. ‘You wished to end your life.’
‘And you interfered. That was very sanctimonious of you.’
‘It was not because of you. You tried to implicate someone else, in a way that would have had harmful consequences for them. That was unfair.’
She looked unabashed.
‘Do you still intend to end your life?’
She smiled self-consciously, as though wanting to avoid the subject. ‘There’s no such things,’ she said flippantly. ‘You’re a colonnader, you know that. The world returns, and we return with it. There is no death.’
‘You are not a colonnader.’
‘I don’t have to be. Everybody knows it’s true. Science has proved it.’
‘Yes, that is so.’ He paused, deliberating, before he spoke again. ‘But as a consideration, it is too abstract an idea for most people. Even if they take it seriously, the prospect of dreamless sleep for the next nine hundred trillion years is sufficient inducement for the intended suicide. So I ask you again: is it still your intention?’
‘I don’t know.’ She dropped her eyes to the table. ‘When you came bursting in like that, it sort of broke my rhythm.’
‘Is death really the only thrill left?’
‘Well it’s one thrill anyway.’ She glanced up at him again. Her eyes were mischievous. ‘Want me to tell you what it’s like?’
‘Not now,’ Boaz said. ‘Not now. And leave Romrey alone, as far as that is concerned.’
Approaching the warehouse unseen was a problem. Obsoc’s hirelings had picked out a route which minimized the open ground to be crossed, and they carried gadgets which were supposed to keep the guard devices silent, but it was still debatable whether the party would enter undetected.
It was night and Sarsuce was moonless, but the placing of the Brilliancy Cluster was such as to send a glow through the whole atmosphere, so that every solid object was surrounded by a haze of shadow. Boaz stirred, crouching behind a low wall, and watched the three raiders as they edged into the light of Brilliancy.
Romrey was crouched stock-still beside him, peering over the wall with the intentness of a stoat. Obsoc was not present; he awaited their report back in his apartment.
The raiders raced suddenly across the stone-strewn ground to fetch up like shadows against the warehouse wall. As they went, something caused Boaz to look to the right of the building. He saw a human figure in a close-fitting catsuit flit away, loping with head down. ‘Look,’ he whispered to Romrey. But then it was gone.
A billow of fine dust expanded from the base of the warehouse as the team disintegrated a hole in it. ‘They’re going in,’ Romrey whispered hoarsely. Boaz could feel his excitement. They watched as two men went inside. The third man paused, waited, then beckoned to Boaz and Romrey. They scrambled over the wall and ran lightly to join the team.
The interior of the warehouse was as Boaz had already seen it. Obsoc’s men, wearing light energy armour, moved across the floor, holding out ring antennae parallel to it. They were looking for the trapdoor entrance. One of them, a bland-faced, plump man, abruptly stopped and held up a hand.
‘Here it is,’ he murmured, ‘but it’s too well protected.’
‘We’ll dust in through the floor,’ one of his companions said, referring to the disintegration process. He pulled out a grenade.
‘Wait.’ The other was listening to his readings through an earphone. A look of surprise crossed his face. ‘It’s already been opened. We can go through.’
‘He forgot to lock it?’
Already Boaz could guess how events were turning out. But he said nothing while the three cautiously opened the thick hinged plate, alert for traps, and lowered themselves into the cellar below. He followed, and then Romrey. It was as he expected.
The plump man was inspecting a prone body on the matted floor. ‘He’s dead,’ he announced. ‘Sonic gun.’ It was the prospector Boaz had seen asleep on the couch.
‘I saw someone run off just as we got here,’ he informed.
‘Damn. Somebody beat us to it.’
‘Maybe they missed it,’ Romrey said anxiously. ‘Look around. Look for a memory cube.’
‘We’ll look. But we won’t find it. This was an official killing.’ Another of the hirelings picked up a card from the floor. It bore a silver eagle – the emblem of the econosphere. ‘A government agent was here.’
‘Most likely there never was any external record,’ the third raider said. ‘He probably carried the data in his adplant.’
‘Can you be sure that card’s genuine?’ Boaz asked querulously.
‘It’s genuine.’ The hired raider sounded resigned as he examined the document, tilting it in the light to read ingrained patterns. ‘These are pretty difficult to forge. And eco agents always leave them after an enforcement job.’
‘It’s a way of displaying the long arm of the ecosphere,’ the other raider said in all seriousness. He flipped open a communicator. ‘Shall I report to our employer, or will you?’
‘I’ll do it.’ He took the communicator and began to press out Obsoc’s code.
Romrey was standing over the body of the murdered man, shaking his head. ‘The government certainly does want to keep Meirjain off limits, to just wipe this poor alec out like this. I wonder what they’re afraid of?’
The leader of the hirelings shrugged. ‘It beats me. The people who got down last time didn’t find anything so dangerous, from what I’ve heard. They all came back in one piece.’
Boaz got through to Obsoc. On the matt-like surface of the screen he could see the lounge of his apartment, though Obsoc did not show himself. His dry, petulant voice came through. ‘Yes? How is it?’
‘This is Captain Boaz, Citizen Obsoc,’ Boaz said politely. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t any use. A government agent got here before us. Almost certainly the data has been wiped out. It probably doesn’t exist anywhere now.’