Дэймон Найт - Orbit 4

“Why, yes,” Svir said, relieved. “I’m glad you see my point of view.”

Tatja didn’t say anything. She inspected the letter-cutter, tossed it into the air in a glittering whirl, and caught it just before it would have slammed into the hardwood desk. A strange gurgly sound came from her lips. Svir realized she was laughing.

“You know, Hedrigs, you are the most gullible person I ever met. Correction: the second most gullible. You’re a provincial, overgrown adolescent, and how you thought you could fool anyone into thinking you had ever been off the Islands is beyond me. I need that dorfox. Did you honestly believe that our encounter on Krirsarque was an accident? I’ve been studying those animals a long time. If I had you killed, I’m certain I could become Ancho’s new master. Only my high moral character prevents me from taking that course.”

She smiled again. It was almost a sneer, revealing a hostility that seemed to transcend the subject at hand. “If I had known Ascuasenya could be such a nuisance, I would have kept her out of your way. Yes, I heard about your activities this afternoon. No matter. For my plans to succeed I now need some new form of leverage. Poor little Ascuasenya is perfect for my purposes.”

Grimm sat back and relaxed. “I said you were the second most gullible person in my experience. Coronadas Ascuasenya is the first. She believed me when I told her that you had already left the Barge for Bayfast. She believed me when I told her that our spies had discovered new information which you had to have to avoid disaster. She believed me when I said that with the proper credentials she could get into the Keep and warn you. And she will get rather far into the castle—those credentials are very good counterfeits. When she is finally discovered, the Regent’s men will believe they have foiled a serious espionage attempt.”

Hedrigs stepped back from the desk, as, shocked by her hostility as by what she was saying. For an instant she didn’t seem human. Everything Cor had said was true. Grimm was a creature sitting at the center of an infinite complex of scheme and counter-scheme, plot and counter-plot—her ultimate goal beyond human understanding. Every detail of the last ten days had pushed him according to her whim. Even as she spoke now, she was trying to maneuver him into some new trap.

“Do you know what Tar Benesh does with spies, Svir Hedrigs?”

The astronomer shook his head dumbly. Grimm told him.

“And when they get done, the spy is generally burned alive,” she added. “So, Svir my love, run back to your cabin, get Ancho, and come back here. The briefing’s going to take a while, and I want you off the Barge well before midnight.”

Hedrigs had never before wanted to kill anybody. He wanted to now—very much. This creature had imperiled the two lives he valued most. Svir told her so in words he had never used with a woman.

Tatja just laughed. “You may be a good astronomer, dear, but you’re weak on biology. Do as I say. And don’t get any ideas of taking off on your own to' save Cor. You will find when I brief you that the only way you can help her is to save the Fantcisie collection in the process.”

Six hours later, Svir Hedrigs emerged from the offices of the Tarulle executive deck, and descended to the debarkation levels. He wore an old, baggy suit and carried a light balsir cage disguised as a suitcase. Ancho sat comfortably within die cage. He wore the mysterious clicker on his back.

The Barge had reached its pier space and was already so firmly tied in that it was difficult to tell where Barge ended and pier began. Gibbous Seraph cast a bright, cheerful twilight across Bayfast. The clashing, bright colors of the city were transformed into pastels. Here and there those pastels were highlighted by yellow and -green sparkles where people uncovered their evening lamps. This shimmery, glowing pattern stretched up toward the edge of the seaward cliffs and around the bay to the inland cliffs, which cut . off the Monsoonal Drag and made Bayfast one of the few placid spots on The Continent at this time of year.

Svir left the Barge and walked along the waterfront. The Festival of the Ostentatious Consumption was not due to begin for another six hours, but the citizens of Bayfast were already competing with one another for the best sites along the waterfront from which they could watch the events on Sacrifice Island out in the bay. Hedrigs knew he looked strange walking so seriously among the happy people. His severe costume contrasted sharply with the plaids and monochromes of the Bayfastlings. But Svir had his special reason for not wearing the costume Tatja had suggested.

The people of Crownesse were happy, confident, and nationalistic. Originally they had been colonists from the Chainpearl and other Archipelagates. The hardships of The Continent had forced an. optimistic dynamism on them. In the thousand years since they declared their independence from the sea, it had often been remarked that they showed the most initiative arid intelligence of any people on Tu. They had developed their bureaucratic system to heights existing nowhere else in the world. Their Bureaucracy was talented, flexible and, above all, devoted to the Crown. In the last two centuries the Reaches of Crownesse had grown threefold. The country already stretched most of the way across the southern coast of The Continent, and steady inroads were being made into the Interior. But the spiritual evolution of Crownesse had ended abruptly twenty years ago, when the strange and implacable Tar Benesh appeared in the King’s Court. The King had died and Tar Benesh had become the Regent. Shortly after, the Kung’s children had disappeared in a sea-wreck.

Since those days twenty years before, Tar Benesh’s rule had been a study in expanding tyranny. He had, with the faithful help of the Bureaucracy, transformed the open competitive spirit of the Bayfastlings into an aggressive barbarism which could worship the destruction involved in the Ostentatious Consumption, and which could desire world conquest.

Hedrigs was walking east, toward the Keep. That enormous semi-dodecahedron loomed black over the warehouse roofs. Even the ingenious Bayfastlings had needed seventy years to build this ultimate protection for the Crown. Nothing short of a year-long artillery bombardment could breach that artificial mountain—and the Keep had plenty of its own armament. Just ventilating the structure required the services of twenty draft animals.

Svir stopped before he reached the two-hundred-foot open space surrounding the Keep. He slipped into the entranceway o£ a closed shop and covertly inspected the castle port through which he must pass. Once more the horrible fear rose in him, making his every movement slow and clumsy. He knew he was going to die.

A figure dressed in the uniform of a Guard captain walked across the open area toward the port. That was the signal to begin. The “captain” was a Tarulle agent whose job it was to warn the Guardsmen at the door to look sharp, since the Crown’s Inspector General was expected momentarily. In truth, The Crown’s I.G. was supposed to visit the Keep at this time, but he was being demined by other Tarulle agents. In any case, the two Guardsmen at the door should now be prepared to assume that the next authority figure they saw was the Inspector General.

Hedrigs fumbled the suitcase open and lifted Ancho out. The animal responded nervously to the human’s obvious anxiety. Svir tried to reassure him. He depressed the tiny button on the side of the box strapped to the dorfox’s back. The contraption immediately began making a click-clock-click sound.

What if the device were a bomb hooked up to a clock, timed to blow up after they were within tire Keep? He debated for a moment whether to rip the machine off Ancho’s back. But there was no explosive which could possibly be fitted into a package this small and still do any damage to the castle. Tatja had no motive for tagging him with a clock bomb. And since his survival was necessary for the recovery of the Fantasie collection, the device probably had some beneficial—though certainly mysterious—role.