Wallinchky thought it over, but as the airlock hissed and the lens twirled to reveal the newcomers, he said, “No, let’s play their game.”
The big man had to bend down slightly to get into the area through the portal, but he straightened into almost military bearing once he did so, and his eyes took in all four as if examining four suspects in a terrorist raid, missing no detail. He clicked his heels and gave a slight bow. “I am Inspector O’Leary. My associate is Brother Bakhtar, who is along to assist me in some specialized examinations. He doesn’t talk much and has religious beliefs that prohibit him showing his face to strangers, but he’s a great aid to me. I know that you are Jules Wallinchky, and that this is your nephew, Ari Martinez. The ladies…?”
“Are not quite ladies,” Jules responded with a smile. “Androids, Inspector, linked directly to the central computer that is the god of this whole complex. I find it useful to have some humanoid units around the place, since we’re mostly containing and restoring great classic art here. Later on I can introduce you to the Kharkovs and they can show you what the work is here. They are known throughout the Realm as experts.”
“Androids. Fascinating. They are so very humanlike.” He sighed. “Well, can we go someplace more comfortable and sit down and talk?”
Wallinchky nodded and smiled. His uncle was quite smooth, but Ari Martinez knew that neither O’Leary nor he could mistake the tension in his own body language. It was disappointing; he was usually a better actor than this.
They went into the study. Wallinchky said to Alpha, “Bring us some good wine and some decent munchies. Beta, help her out.”
They both bowed and scampered out.
The huge inspector sank down into a padded chair, and the chair seemed almost to collapse from his bulk. “I hope I don’t kill your furniture,” he said apologetically. “I was born and raised on a rather high gravity world, and thanks to adaptation genetics I am, I’m afraid, a bit… well, dense.” It was supposed to be a joke, even though probably true, and he smiled as he said it.
Brother Bakhtar, still a jumble of dark brown, sat comfortably in another chair. He wore brown boots and high socks, surgical-type gloves, and not a single part of him that was real showed.
“Just what is all this about, Inspector?” Jules Wallinchky asked him. “I am a busy man—in fact, I planned to leave here later today. My art collection is very well known, and precisely cataloged. This part here is usually not seen by most people in this setting, but it’s loaned to museums and on special occasions piecemeal, and a holographic walkthrough is available to anyone who wishes it. In other words, I have the receipts for them.”
The Inspector chuckled. “I’m not involved in that sort of work in any event,” O’Leary assured him. “Right now I am operational director of Internal Security and work directly under the Ministry of the Interior.”
“I’ve been accused of just about every crime in the book, as you may know,” Jules Wallinchky admitted, “but never has anybody accused me of treason. Many of my companies do business with the military, as you well know. I’d be a fool to risk all that I have—and for what? It was the Realm that made all this possible!”
The two “androids” returned with trays, served drinks to each of them and then offered trays of hors d’oeuvres around before taking position on either side of the doorlike guards, although if anyone needed a refill, they were quick to move to offer it.
Both Jules and Ari noted that it wasn’t above Brother Bakhtar to drink wine, although the glass was moved up under that mask and little was revealed. Wallinchky could hardly wait to get to a computer terminal alone and see what the probes revealed about the mystery man.
“No one has accused you of treason,” the Inspector assured him. “However, the City of Modar was struck by a known and powerful Enemy of the Realm, Josich Hadun— or, at least, it was under his orders. Two of his family members were in the saltwater section traveling under assumed names. We assume they were in charge of murdering the Captain and coordinating the whole thing. There is no question of the perpetrators. The question is, rather, why.”
“We gave our statements, Inspector. We were just happy to escape with our lives. I gather this Hadun doesn’t usually feel so generous.”
“Not without an ulterior motive, no. That’s one of the reasons why I’m here. The other concerns some subsequent events since that you almost certainly would not yet be aware of.”
“Yes?” Jules Wallinchky didn’t like this. Information was constantly coming in to him wherever he was, but with the vast distances of space, it was always quite a bit behind, which didn’t stop him from not liking surprises.
“First, I am certain you remember Captain Kincaid?”
“Yes, more or less. We didn’t see much of him after the first day, of course. I assumed he was in one of the lifeboats or had perished with the ship.”
“Captain Kincaid is too single-minded to die. He was already outside of the ship when it was attacked. In fact, he attached himself to your lifeboat.”
Both men almost jumped in their chairs. “What!”
“Indeed. He seemed to think you had something to do with it, I’m afraid, and he suspected that you would be meeting the perpetrators. And a ship did arrive, and blow up the engine and passenger modules, and then it sent a shuttle to your lifeboat. This was a matter we hadn’t remembered you or anyone else in your lifeboat mentioning.” The irony in his tone was obvious. “Well, you see, Kincaid simply switched from your lifeboat to theirs and rode it back to their ship. They weren’t water breathers, so once he recognized the ship type and operated an emergency airlock, which was being used off and on by work crews after your departure, he got inside and managed a more comfortable ride. It’s quite a large vessel, those frigates. A shave and a uniform and the Captain could pass himself off easily as one who belonged there. The only ones likely to recognize him were the water breathers from the ship, and he wasn’t likely to meet them.”
“Then he infiltrated them and got to their headquarters?” Ari asked, amazed at Kincaid’s daring.
“He did. Indeed, he once got within sight of a Hadun dome that almost certainly had Josich inside. The problem was, he couldn’t get any closer without going through a security ring that nothing could pass without all the requisite codes and authorizations. He could do nothing more alone, so he managed to get off that world and send its coordinates to us.”
“So that’s how you know the story!” Wallinchky commented. “Kincaid sent it.”
“No, he told it to us. We got there, all right, and we caught them web-footed, as it were. Everyone but Josich and his immediate imperial family guard. They happened, by sheer luck, to be on a nearby world not unlike this one. A world with ruins of the Ancient Ones, where they were doing experiments with the thing they stole.”
Wallinchky was more upset at this implication than in being caught in a plot. “You mean it wasn’t junk?”
O’Leary smiled, knowing he’d scored a major blow to the big man’s ego and gotten at least a start of a confession all in one. “Yes, Citizen Wallinchky, it was not junk. For quite a while we didn’t have sufficient power; we spent a fortune getting power to a dead world just so we could at least tickle the Ancient Ones’ artifacts and see if they would scratch. There was finally reaction, but we didn’t get much further. The data stream that thing at the core sends, its pervasiveness, and its complexity, are beyond anything we have or know, and we have no key. In the end the thing was being packed up until we could solve the cryptography problem, if ever, and sent for mothballing.”