“It is more remarkable how really unconcerned they all were,” Angel told him, running down those who had something of a normal reaction, like Ari, and those who were unnaturally curious or equally unnaturally not curious.
He listened carefully until she was done, then said, “It may be worse than I thought. You see, of course, what the link is to many of those aboard?”
“Not exactly.”
“Jewels. Gems. The Rithians are all from the Ha’jiz Nesting, and that family’s entirely involved in the gem trade. The Kharkovs are gem cutters and also specialists in fine settings. Wallinchky is a man who likes the universality of gems both as collectibles and as commodities, and he doesn’t care about the source. I would suspect that, somewhere in that vast train in front of us, we have some very, very hot gems that are changing hands here. There is no particular reason for Wallinchky to be selling, so let’s assume he’s the buyer and that he’s brought the Kharkovs along to render the loot into something customs won’t recognize without devaluing them. The Rithians are the go-betweens who are guarantors of the deal. They will certify the transfer and ensure payment. I strongly suspect that the payment isn’t money. So what is it? What could be of such importance that this kind of crime, the murder of a starship captain, the sabotage of a ship, and the almost certain intent to do in the uninvolved passengers, would be warranted?”
She gasped. “They mean to murder us?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not in the way you think. Wallinchky, for example, has more money than any human can spend in a thousand lifetimes. He’s not really interested in that except as a means to power. Power is what drives his type. Power over just about everyone and everything. Those two women he flaunts as his companions—they are treated like property. He has them in his grip and he enjoys showing it. It could be drugs, some kind of mind control, hard to say, but he owns them.”
“Why would anybody want slaves when he could have robots do anything by snapping his fingers?”
“Robots are no fun at all to him.” He stared at her, grimly amused at her questions. “You really can’t understand that kind of thinking, can you?”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t. I can understand how this happened in the past, but not in this day and age. There is no reason for it. No logic.”
“The universe is neither reasoning nor logical nor even moral,” he said grimly.
“You do not believe in God?”
“I’ve found little evidence of Him, and I’ve looked. Believe me, I’ve looked. But I believe in the devil. I’ve actually spoken with him. And I can hardly avoid his handiwork. If you cannot understand the way these people think, then at least believe in evil. It’s out there. It may be the only pure thing in all creation. Call upon your God in crisis if you wish. They will still burn you at the stake, but it may make you feel better when they do. But believe in evil. It’s all around us. It’s traveling with us, and we have to figure out a way to deal with it.”
She looked at him. “I am prepared to die battling such evil if that is God’s will, but I do not believe in suicide. Is there some way we can regain full control of the ship and keep them away from us?”
“We could. I have pretty full control of the ship, and I know what to watch for if they make a move to take it back or take something offline. Captain Dukodny could have blocked all this if he’d had the slightest suspicion something was up, but they counted on him considering everything routine, and that’s what happened. At best, I suspect we’re no more than fifty-fifty between friends and enemies. Operations like this travel with large entourages and lots of agents and hidden guards. That’s why the likes of Wallinchky can travel so openly and comfortably even though a man like him has ten thousand mortal enemies. And of the ones on our side, many will be frightened and neutral, hoping to make a deal and escape with their lives, or else put themselves into denial, and the rest probably would be lambs to the slaughter of these killers.”
“I can’t believe it’s as bad as all that,” Angel said. “Still, why not simply withdraw the tunnel here and isolate yourself?”
“It may come to that, but it wouldn’t stop them from calling me, and from executing a few people—like one of the children, or someone equally helpless—if I didn’t let them in or didn’t come down. I had to make that decision once. It is the most horrible decision a ship’s Master can make. It’s why I’ve spent most of my time since then getting close to no one, having no friends or relatives, keeping my relationships anonymous. Even then, I should not like to have to make that decision again. Once in a lifetime is too many times.”
She decided not to argue with him, knowing they’d reached a point in their relationship where the walls would be too thick to bridge even under perfect conditions in the time they had remaining aboard, and these were not perfect conditions. She decided to turn things back to the issues at hand.
“It seems so particularly awful that all this should happen over something as base as who owns some gems,” she commented.
“Oh, it’s far more than that afoot here,” he assured her. “I told you that this was the devil’s work, and that means we must look not just at who is buying whatever it is, but who the seller is, and why he is selling them. This took a lot of money and influence to set up; money, then, is the tool here, not the object. In fact, I would be surprised if this wasn’t some sort of barter. A weapon, perhaps, or something along those lines.”
She stared at him. “You mean that your enemy is going to try once more to overthrow and rule the Realm?”
“He has always thought that way. He cannot abide that which he cannot rule. The odd thing is, if he ever did rule the known galaxy, he’d probably tire of it quickly and find some new things to step on. His pride was hurt that time so long ago. It’s his pride, and his ability to hold a grudge almost to infinity, that moves him now.”
“What does the devil look like?” she asked. When he smiled, she added, “No, I’m serious.”
“No horns, no cloven hoofs, but it’s an ugly little thing. Like a lump of raw undulating meat, really, with two very mean-looking eyes protruding from the rise in the middle. Lots of tentacles beneath, making it sometimes look as if it was sitting on a nest of hair. They’re quite small, really, and can flatten out even smaller. They’re parasites in spite of the eyes; those hairs are like needles, injecting into a host and then extending within until it controls all motor and nervous system functions. But since it does have eyes, and a kind of sonar common to water creatures, and since it can extract oxygen from water through rudimentary gills, it can detach and move from host to host. What it can’t do on its own is eat. It draws what it needs from the host, and when the host gets used up, it moves on. But it has a mind that’s surprisingly close to ours, and maybe smarter. That still remains to be seen.”
“A surprising number of races are parasites, or at least symbiotic,” she noted. “Evolution almost favors it. Otherwise you get races like ours, which tend to rape landscapes and then move on until they either find an infinite supply of new resources to destroy or cause their own demise. A smart parasite knows how important it is to keep things in balance.”
“But it does tend to color the smartest ones’ views of other races,” Kincaid pointed out. “It has a vision of operating and sucking dry whole worlds.”
“Are there any Ghomas riding with us this trip?” she asked him. “It would seem logical.”