Дэймон Найт: Orbit 4

Tatja got up and began to take her clothes off. Maccioso stood up too. He was a big man, an experienced man, a leader. But he appeared to be none of these now. His face bore a peculiar mixture of hatred, surprise, and confusion. As Grimm laid her shirt on the chair, he reached out a huge hand, grabbed her by the shoulder, drew her face close to his.

“You never intended this plan to save Fantasie, did you?”

Tatja shrugged. “You know the saying, Ked, ‘Things are not as they seem.’ ”

“What are you after then, damn you?” He shook her violently, but received no answer. “Well, if you think I’m going to risk any more Tarulle people for your pleasure, you’re crazy.”

“Poor Ked,” Tatja said gently. Her hand moved softly up his arm, found a nerve in his elbow. As he jerked back, she slipped away. “I see that I’ve almost driven you beyond logic and self-interest. Almost.” She reached into an alcove and drew out a suit of black armor. The Crown’s Inspector General was about her height, but the armor had been designed for a male. In places it chafed, but she managed to get it on.

She slipped the épée into its sheath and picked Ancho up from the desk. At the door she turned back to face Maccioso. “But I know you will go through with that attack. You know that whatever my plan is, it’s the only chance you have of getting out of this alive, now that Benesh has Ascuasenya and Hedrigs. Right?”

Kederichi Maccioso glowered at her for a moment, then slowly nodded his head. “That’s right, you . . . bitch.”

Seraph was in its last quarter, and the evening wake period was ending. Nearly a million people—the entire population of the capital—were crowded along watersedge. In the waning blue light, the crowd was a mosaic carpet covering the streets and stretching up over the roofs of the lower buildings. The Festival was at its noisiest as the Bayfastlings cheered tire first sacrifices being towed into the bay. These were the secondary sacrifices—the appetizers. The tiny barges formed a continuous train out to Sacrifice Island. Each barge was stacked high with worked jade, optical devices, paintings. Hanging from the stern of each barge, an algae-water sphere lit the sacrifices.

A twisted smile crossed Tatja’s lips as she regarded the scene.

She descended to one of the sub-pier passageways reserved for official use, and five minutes later emerged on the city side of the crowd. Here were the stragglers, the individuals without initiative enough to push into the crowd. She petted Ancho, spoke quietly to him. This was a critical test. According to theory, Ancho should accept her as his new master, but Tatja had to be sure. She couldn’t tell whether he was radiating or not. Certainly the signal was having no effect on her. Then she noticed that people came to attention as she walked past. Good Ancho.

She reached the Keep without incident. The Guardsmen looked her over very carefully, this being the second Inspector General they had seen that day. But they let .her through. As she stood in the darkness between the two doors, Grimm moved the dorfox to her waist. The armor plates gave him good purchase, and now he was below the view of the periscopes.

At last she came to the doors of the Crown Room. Tatja spoke in a low masculine voice, to fool any listening devices. Even with her visor up, she knew that wearing the I.G.’s armor would deceive the hidden observers. And of course the Guardsmen in the hall didn’t have a chance. With Ancho’s help, even her fingerprints passed inspection.

Once in the Crown Room she moved quickly to the royal records. She lifted out the drawer she wanted, thumbed through it, and pulled out a single sheet of vellum. Good. It was the same form as had been publicly displayed at the Assignation of the Regency. From her pouch she drew a seemingly identical paper, smudges and all, and slipped it into the file.

Then she left, ignoring the puzzled Guards. They had expected the I.G. to supervise the removal of the prizes.

Tatja found the stairway to the Conciliar Facet unguarded. This was unexpected good fortune. Perhaps Maccioso’s diversion had been more effective than she had hoped.

She removed the black resin armor and set the outfit on one of the display racks which lined the base of the stairwell. This was the most perilous part of her plan. If she were discovered in the next three or four minutes, there’d be real trouble. From a gray cloth pouch she drew a white dress and jeweled sandals. She slipped them on, put Ancho on her shoulder and ran up the stairs..This stairway wasn’t often used since it was a single spiral ascending six hundred feet. Most people preferred to go by stages. Even so, Tatja kept the heavy épée. Except for that, and the dorfox clutching her shoulder, she might have been an island girl at a communion-picnic.

She took the steps three at a time, so fast that she had to lean toward the center of the spiral in order to keep her balance. When she had first conceived this scheme, she had spent three years in Bayfast studying the people and especially the Keep. Tar Benesh had created the Festival of the Ostentatious Consumption in order to draw attention from a much more solemn event that took place every five years at the same time. The top people in the Bureaucracy were scrupulously honest, but if she were even five minutes late, she would have to wait five years—or possibly forever. Taking the back way should save her from Benesh’s Special Men, but if she were wrong about the Bureaucratic esprit of the rest, then she would die—though death could make her failure no worse. If she couldn’t succeed, life wasn’t worth living.

Tatja took the six-hundred-foot stairway in a single sprint. At the top of that long flight was an entrance to the Conciliar Facet, the pentagonal amphitheater on the very top of the enormous dodecahedron that was the Keep. Beyond this next door was the final test. She slid the door open and crept out into the uppermost tier of the amphitheater. There was a faint cool breeze and Seraph-blue covered everything. From the city came crowdsounds.

Less than a third of the seats in the Facet were filled and those were down in the center, by the podium and reading lamp. Virtually everyone present was dressed in Bureaucratic black. An important exception was the gross and colorful bulk of Tar Benesh, sitting in the first row before the podium.

Tatja glanced around the Facet. Maccioso’s diversion must have worked. Few of the Guards appeared to be Benesh’s bully boys. There were only fifteen or twenty armed men present. Of course one of them might still be rotten, but that was a chance she must take. She noticed one man just five feet from her hiding place. The fellow leaned unprofessionally against the edge of the tier, blocking her entrance. She reversed the hilt of the épée and moved swiftly forward, ramming the pommel into the base of the man’s neck. He collapsed quietly into her arms. She dragged him back, at the same time watching for signs that someone below had noticed the incident.

The speaker’s voice came clearly to her. She knew there were about five minutes until the ceremony reached its critical point. She looked at her épée. It was no longer an asset. Without putting herself in silhouette, she reached up and slid the weapon over the parapet. There came a faint sound of scrape and clatter as the épée slid slowly down the side of the hundred-foot facet. Tatja sat Ancho on the edge of the tier and petted him. They waited.

In the center of the amphitheater, the ceremony was nearing its end. On the podium stood the Lord High Minister to the Crown—the highest Bureaucratic officer of Crownesse. The man was old, but his body was lean, and his voice was clear and strong as he read from the curling parchment. He had the air of a man who is for the thousandth time repeating a fervent and sincere prayer, a prayer that has so often been fruitless that it has almost become perfunctory.