“Keep it, if you like. A gift.”
“Thank you.” A few tiny musical chimes drifted across the chamber.
“If I killed a couple of them, I'm not going to take the credit for it,” Colonel Cumpston said to Arthur Guthlac. The two Earth officers and Markham had drifted together. “The low profile suits me.” He had already removed the memory bricks from the main control console. With Arthur Guthlac then immobilized and Markham commanding the troops hunting down the surviving enemy, he had been the senior military officer on the spot and no one questioned this. Their records should harvest valuable security data, and any untoward scenes that had been recorded could be discreetly removed.
Arthur Guthlac, his chest bound up and leg encased in a flexi-splint, was now walking again. The damage, in the event, had not required amputation and transplant, but even with modern nerve-and-bone growth factors it would be some days before he was fully healed. They had identified the quite simple mechanisms that controlled the Sinclair fields and were turning them off one by one.
“Well, somebody killed this one,” said Arthur Guthlac, as the field before them died. “But a long time ago.”
There was part of a human skeleton. Around the bare shin and ankle-bones were orange-and-black pseudo-Kzin-striped fabric trousers, much discolored. The pelvis was female. There was some dried, crumbling tissue on and in the torso and rib cage. There was no skull. Above the clavicles there was nothing.
“No,” said Cumpston, “not a long time ago. That must be Henrietta, if she fell feet first into the field still alive. The lower part of her body would have passed into time-compression first. It received no blood-supply and her feet and legs were dead and decomposing by the time her heart passed into it. But her heart was still beating. Everything left in the circulatory system went into her head, which was still in normal time, and from which the blood had no way of returning at such speed. Bang! A quick way to die, at least from the brain's point of view, but the results aren't very cosmetic.” It was probably Henrietta, he thought. But she had not been the only one in that costume. He would look at that later. But Henrietta officially dead would help defuse the time bomb of revenge on this planet. He might not look too hard.
The other bodies that concerned Cumpston, those that had gone into a Sinclair field already dead, would be either crumbling mummies or skeletons before long, depending on how much bacteria had been present. The longer it was before that particular field was found and deactivated, the less easy it would be to tell any cause of death. Certainly if laser wounds were still discernible it would be impossible by now to identify the laser that had caused them in the confused fighting. They had had the hallmarks of genuine ARM personnel, which another ARM could recognize, as there was something else some ARMs might also recognize, but despite what he had been told, Cumpston felt credentials and mannerisms could always be faked. Anyway, they might or might not have been Early's men. ARM was no monolith: It was, he felt, a series of interlocking and competing conspiracies like those fiendish things the kzinti called w'kkai puzzles. Well, when this place was cleaned up, all the bones of humans and kzinti would go for proper disposal. Manpower was still scarce on Wunderland, and police resources would hardly be used to investigate all the bones of kzinti victims that lay around.
“Where's Rykermann?”
“Sedated. He's had a rough time. It seemed to hit him all at once.”
“What happened to Jocelyn?” Arthur Guthlac had asked this several times now. Cumpston had seen the phenomenon after battles before. People would keep asking the same question, but the answer would not stay in their heads.
“Nobody seems to know. But she had no motive to run away. That business with the laser… Accidents happen in battle. Everyone accepts that.”
“I think she was in love with Nils Rykermann,” said Markham. “Love can do strange things to people, I am told.” He was speaking good English with a fierce effort and his face was impassive. Betrayal! Stinking betrayal! But what else can one expect from prolevolk scum! And she used my Mother's name! If he saw Arthur Guthlac flinch, he betrayed no notice of the fact.
“Maybe after what happened she just took off. We'll look, of course. Maybe she'd had enough. She was a heroine of the Resistance. Maybe she'd just run out of… of…”
“We all feel that way sometimes… I'm told,” said Cumpston. Markham said nothing, but his clenched hands were trembling minutely.
“I know it,” said Guthlac. He sounded composed and normal, if a little sad. “And the Resistance's price on Henrietta's head?”
“I suppose if he pushed her into the field Raargh has the claim to it, if it's accepted that this is she,” said Cumpston. “I haven't asked him, but he was in the area and she had kidnapped and insulted him and his protégé—dangerous business to kidnap a kzin. I can imagine how much the Resistance veterans who posted the bounty will enjoy handing it over to him! They may not come at it, of course, and he may not want it. She was loyal to Chuut-Riit after all…
“Odd thing to say about the arch-collaborator,” he went on, “but in her way she was loyal to humanity, too.” And was she altogether on the wrong track? he wondered to himself, thinking of the last injunction of Chuut-Riit's testament. “I'm not sure it was Raargh who killed her. There were others with motive. But I'm not going to cross-examine him on the matter…
“Anyway, he won't do too badly. You know there are females here. He acquires most of the property and the harems of all the kzinti he killed!”
“Good,” said Arthur Guthlac.
“You're not getting fond of the old ratcat, are you?”
“No!” A slightly sheepish smile, and a laugh Guthlac cut off as his ribs pained him. “Well, to tell the truth, he did show up pretty well. I'm no kzin-lover yet, but perhaps my attitude's been a bit simplistic. I need to think. I've accumulated quite a lot of leave in the course of this war, and the time might be coming to take it. Probably take a couple of years to get my application through the bureaucracy, though. Leave would be good. Not alone, perhaps… Where's Jocelyn?”
Chapter 11
2428 a.d.
The walls of the dean's interview room were heavy with antique books. A couple of ancient computers were preserved under transparent domes. There were paintings and even some marble busts of previous eminent members of the faculty. In another of its efforts toward reestablishing a milieu of scholastic tranquility after decades of chaos and war, München University had recently introduced gowns and mortarboards for both staff and students to wear for major interviews and other important occasions.
Nils Rykermann, his robe emblazoned with the esoteric colors and heraldry of his position, looked up from the application and assessment form.
“You're taking a big spread of subjects,” he said. “Literature, history, political theory, physics and astrophysics, economics, chemical engineering, space mechanics, pure philosophy… and you want to do a unit of biology too. That's quite a load for a first-year student! We're going to have to bend the rules. Still, that's been done before for certain… exceptional cases.”
“I hope to specialize eventually, Professor, but I feel I should get a good general background first.”
“Joining the chess club, too, I see. Arthur Guthlac's become the patron, you know. When he came back from his leave at Gerning he decided to extend his posting on Wunderland. And the Drama Society! Are you sure you can manage it, Vaemar?”
“Oh yes, Professor!”
“Well, you must tell me if you find it too much. As dean of studies this year I will be responsible for your entire performance beyond my own subject… Your test scores are encouraging… And your… er… Honored Sire Chuut-Riit… was clever enough.”