The Road of Danger: Chapter Nineteen

Halta City on Cremona

    Osorio’s driver set the aircar down on the apron in front of the three-story brick warehouse. Adele had asked to borrow him with the vehicle. Not only was the fellow very skillful, he could stay with the car while she and Tovera were inside. There were bollards to keep trucks away from the building except at the loading docks, but he had simply skimmed over them.

    “I’ll do my best, mistress,” Tovera said as she eyed the Wartburg Company headquarters. “But there’ll be a lot of places to snipe from inside, and if we have to fight our way down from the penthouse….”

    The walls on the ground floor were solid, though orbital imagery had showed that there were windows on the courtyard side. The warehouse wasn’t air conditioned, so the multi-pane casements on center pivots the length of the second and third floors were necessary for ventilation as well as for light during daytime. The glass was clear, in a manner of speaking, but its coating of grime would block vision as thoroughly as muslin curtains.

    “We’ll hope it doesn’t come to that, Tovera,” Adele said austerely as she started for the pedestrian door which had been propped open by what seemed to be the stator of an electric motor. “Master Brock agreed politely to meet me in his office, after all, so I can scarcely object to where that office is, can I?”

    Adele wore a russet pants-suit rather than formal robes. She was no longer the technological illiterate she had portrayed on Madison and had intended to remain on Cremona. Her current role–for this too was acting; she was acting in all her appearances outside the hull of the Princess Cecile, which had become her real family home–was that of a well-born woman from a world more sophisticated than Cremona.

    She smiled mentally. That would be true for a real Principal of Kostroma, and Mundy of Chatsworth on Cinnabar was all those things in spades.

    The racket inside the warehouse was punishingly louder than it had been in the street, even with the door open. Fans thrummed in the ceiling, diesel-powered fork lifts blatted under heavy load, and paired elevators–when her eyes adapted, Adele saw a set at each corner of this wing–squealed and groaned. Presumably all the same things were happening on the upper floors, adding their counterpoints.

    The light banks in the ceiling were probably adequate, but for the first moments after Adele entered, she had the impression of having fallen into a deep cavern. The massive wooden beams of the ceiling were covered with soot which absorbed any illumination that fell on them. Workmen were wraiths, dwarfed by the machinery and the piles of goods among which they moved.

    Adele led the way along the aisle, between the front wall and stacks of large crates which often encroached on the passage painted in yellow on the floor. The section foreman was in a miniature office whose walls were glass from above waist height. The three loading docks were beyond him, and a passenger elevator was just in back.

    That elevator, like its larger brethren at the ends of the building, was a platform riding between two pillars without a cage. Again like the freight elevators, it was one of a pair on the same cables; one rose as a counterweight when the other half dropped.

    The foreman was alone in the office, glaring at a flat-plate display and growling into a handset cradled between his ear and shoulder. Adele tapped on the glass politely. The foreman angrily waved them away.

    Does he think I was asking his permission? Adele entered and sat down.

    She didn’t hear the door close behind Tovera so much as she felt the level of ambient noise reduce. The office must have an active cancellation system.

    “Get your bloody asses out!” the man said with a brusque wave of the hand holding a memorandum book. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready to see you!”

    Adele brought out her data unit. She shrank the foreman’s display and froze the console. That shut off his phone also, since outside communications were through it.

    “I am Principal Hrynko,” she said, her tone coldly polite. “I have an appointment with Master Brock.”

    “What in blazes happened to my console?” the foreman said, flipping the external power switch back and forth with no result except faint mechanical clicks from the toggle. “It just cut out!”

    It would be nice if I lived in a world in which people were either smarter or more polite, Adele thought, not for the first time. But I’ve learned to make do with what I have.

    Aloud she said, “Your equipment will not work until you have taken me to Master Brock. I suggest you do that so that you can go back to your business.”

    The foreman stared at her, his lower lip trembling. He was a brawny man in his fifties. A thin scar curved across his scalp, turning the hair white along its track, and he was missing the lobe of his right ear.

    “Are you a witch?” he said in hoarse surmise.

    Adele blinked. I thought Cremona was unsophisticated. Apparently it’s simply backward.

    “More like a demon if you irritate her,” said Tovera. “I suggest you do what she says and avoid that danger. Of course–”

    Tovera smiled. The expression was inhuman, which was an accurate description of the pale woman herself.

    “–I wouldn’t need to be irritated to open your belly and start winding your guts out on a stick. Why don’t you take us to your master and avoid that too?”

    “The elevator,” said the foreman, twisting his head enough to suggest the one beside his office. He didn’t turn too far to keep his eyes on Adele, however. “Just pull the cord when you get on and pull it again when you’re at the penthouse.”

    “Thank you,” said Adele. The platform would be tight enough for two, so she didn’t object to the plan. She turned on his console and got to her feet.

    The noise buffeted her when she stepped out, but she had a direction now and didn’t notice distractions. The foreman was still gaping as she and Tovera walked around the office. He seemed to have forgotten the phone in his left hand.

    Tovera stepped onto the platform. It was four feet square and supported by a cast iron double yoke; a chain hung from each arm to a corner. The cord that the foreman mentioned ran up through the hole in the ceiling and presumably to a switch at the roof level; it didn’t move with the platform.

    Adele got on also. Tovera held her attaché case half-open with her right hand inside on the concealed sub-machine gun, so Adele tugged at the cord. For a moment nothing happened; then the elevator began to rise with a series of individual jerks as though it was being hauled up on cogs instead of a cable drum.

    Tovera was trying to look in all directions, not forgetting straight up through the hole in the ceiling. Adele was determined not to let her servant’s paranoia make her equally nervous, but it was only by effort of will that she kept herself from gripping the pistol in her pocket.

    Adele looked outward as the elevator rose, viewing the warehouse. The second floor looked the same to her as what she had seen at the ground level, and the third as well when the platform rose into it. The warm, nutty odor of pink rice permeated the big building, though Adele didn’t identify any storage hoppers.

    Men–and perhaps a few women, as genderless as spacers in dim light and their loose outfits–worked among the vast array. They reminded her of ants, absorbed in their business, and seemed as oblivious of her scrutiny as those insects would have been.

    The platform rose into the arched cover–it had no front or back, so it couldn’t be called an enclosure–on the roof. It seemed silent after the cacophony within the warehouse proper.

    Adele pulled the control rope firmly. In all probability the elevator would have shut off automatically at the top, but she saw no reason to trust the quality or even the good sense of the engineer–or mechanic–who had designed the system.

    Turning to Tovera as they stepped off, Adele said, “I’m sure we could have jumped clear if it hadn’t stopped.”

    “Yes,” said Tovera. “But if the elevator destroyed itself, we would have been faced with starvation since we couldn’t have gotten down again. Life is filled with dangers.”

    She cocked her head toward the penthouse–actually a shed of structural plastic, large enough for two rooms. “Of course, we could hold out for a little longer,” Tovera said, “by eating Brock and any office staff he has here.”

    Adele smiled as she followed her servant to the door. Tovera had no more sense of humor than she had a conscience, but by observation and analysis she had learned to imitate the sort of jokes that ordinary humans made. The problem was that a sociopath finds cannibalism just as funny as she does anything else.

    So, fortunately, did her mistress.

    Adele stepped in front at the door. “You can avenge me if I’m shot down on the threshold,” she said.

    Does Tovera realize that is a joke? she wondered. Not that it mattered, as her servant would find that response as natural as breathing.

    The secretary at the console in the outer office was male, though young and attractive enough, Adele supposed. Instead of asking the newcomers’ business, he turned his head toward the open door behind him and called, “Hey boss? That Sunbright lot’s here to see you. They’re women.”

    “Well, send ‘em in!” said the man within, also shouting through the door. “And tell Herrigord that I’ll get back with him in ten minutes.”

    “You heard the man,” said the grinning secretary, jerking his thumb in the direction of the door. “I’d say he doesn’t bite, but I’d be lying.”

    Tovera grinned at him as they went past.

    Adolph Brock was as squat as a fireplug. If he had been standing, his breadth would have made him look shorter than he was, but even so he probably wasn’t as tall as Adele. He still had his hair, but it was white and cropped so closely that he would have looked bald at any distance.

    Tovera closed the door behind them. Brock barked a laugh and said, “You needn’t have done that, because you’re going straight out again. I’m seeing you to tell you to your faces that I’m not giving you a loan. I don’t consider lining the pockets of a monkey from Kostroma to be a good business decision. Now, out!”

    Adele sat on one of the straight chairs facing the outfitter’s desk and took out her data unit. The room’s furniture was wooden and attractive, though of a heavier style than the appointments of her own townhouse in Xenos. She had expected functional, mismatched pieces of metal and plastic.

    “Since I’m here, Master Brock,” she said, “I’ll explain the aspects of my proposition that I didn’t choose to state on the phone or put in electronic form.”

    “You’ve nothing to say!” Brock said. For the moment, he appeared to be more nonplussed than angry. “Look, I know people in the shipping business and ex-Fleet folk too. I put your proposition to them and they say–every bloody soul of them, I mean! They say you wouldn’t stand a prayer against the Estremadura. She’s bigger, better armed, and she’s got top Fleet officers and a crew they picked themselves from pirate-chasers when the Peace of Amiens was signed and two thirds of the ships went into ordinary.”

    He snorted. “I figure you’re a con man,” he said. “But if you’re not, you’re bloody crazy.”

    “I’m sorry I can’t convince you that investing in my proposal will rid you and your fellow… entrepreneurs, I will say, of a serious overhead expense in the form of the cruiser,” Adele said. “Still, I accept that the only way to change your opinion will be to demonstrate the fighting ability of my yacht. Before you give your final opinion–”

    “Listen, bitch!” Brock said; he was angry now. “I’ve given my final opinion. You couldn’t change it if you offered to suck me off right here in my office! Now, get out or I’ll throw you out. And you’ll be lucky if I don’t throw you right off the roof!”

    He isn’t speaking to Mundy of Chatsworth. He’s speaking to a Principal of Kostroma, a group of people for whom I have no more regard than he does.

    But she trembled slightly. Brock had started to get up from his chair but chanced to meet Adele’s eyes. He subsided with a suddenly wary expression.

    “I regret that I have to do this, Master Brock,” Adele said, as calm as ice again, “but have you considered the legal situation in which you might find yourself if your activities came to the attention of the authorities?”

    Brock blinked, trying to make sense out of what he had just heard. “What are you talking about, woman?” he said. “I’m not violating any laws, and I don’t suppose it’s a secret that the government here–the people in the government, I don’t know how much money trickles through to the treasury–are making a bloody good thing out of the operations of the Wartburg Company.”

    Adele completed the operation her wands had just directed. She met the outfitter’s eyes again and smiled, in a manner of speaking.

    “I’ve just transferred some information to your console, sir,” she said. “Will you please take a look at it? It will be there when you bring your display up.”

    “What the hell?” Brock said, again puzzled. He punched his virtual keyboard, however. His keystrokes were as forceful as Daniel’s own.

    “What is this?” he said, shrinking the hologram again to look at Adele.

    “That’s the report which will go to the 5^th Bureau if you refuse to provide the loan I request, sir,” Adele said primly. “And this–”

    Her wands fluttered like ballet dancers executing a complex routine.

    “–is the list of your relatives and associates living within Alliance territory. That’s mostly Pleasaunce, of course, but also Conbay, Mortain, and half a dozen other worlds. That list will accompany my report, though–”

    She coughed delicately.

    “–in my experience, the 5^th Bureau would be able to compile it very nearly as quickly as they can read my copy. I find the Alliance of Free Stars to be a marvel of bureaucratic organization.”

    Brock’s lips moved silently for a moment as he read. He slid the display to the side and looked at Adele.

    “How did…,” he began in a growl that was barely human. He stopped himself. “It doesn’t matter how you learned this stuff, does it?” he said, more normally. “It wouldn’t matter even it wasn’t straight, not with the 5^th Bureau doing the checking.”

    He slammed his right fist down on the desk, the only external sign of his fury.

    “Which it is, as much as I say off the top of my head,” he said, almost conversational again.

    He paused, his face hardening. “You’re not a monkey from Kostroma, though, are you?” he said. “Who are you? You’re bloody 5^th Bureau yourself, aren’t you? It doesn’t matter whether I play ball or not, it’s over–”

    Brock’s hand jerked violently toward his holographic display.

    “–for all these anyway!”

    “It doesn’t matter who I am,” Adele said calmly. “But it matters a great deal to your off-planet associates that you accept my business proposition. Of that you can be assured.”

    Brock said nothing for a moment. He gestured to the display again and said, mildly this time, “Are you going to strong-arm all the trading houses like this? Or is it just me?”

    “I have appointments with the other two large houses which have links within the Alliance,” Adele said. “Coincidentally, you three are the largest firms on Cremona. That spreads the risk enough that none of the houses involved needs feel that it’s being backed into a corner. I don’t want anyone to–”

    She grinned slightly.

    “–be driven to desperate measures.”

    “How quick do you need an answer?” Brock said.

    “I’ll be back in two days,” Adele said, rising. “After I’ve discussed the proposition with Santina Trading and Loesser Brothers.”

    “All right,” said Brock. “I’ll have an answer then.”

    Adele started for the door to the outer office. Tovera, who had been standing beside the doorway throughout the interview, said, “Master Brock?”

    “Eh?” Brock said, frowning as though his stylus had just spoken to him.

    “It doesn’t matter who she is,” Tovera said, nodding toward Adele. “But I used to be 5^th Bureau. You might keep that in mind in case you decide your best plan is that we have an accident here in the building.”

    Unexpectedly, Brock laughed. “I didn’t build this company without learning how to handle your type, mistress,” he said. “Sure, it’d cost, but there’s always costs. Your boss, though–”

    He dipped his head in a seated bow.

    “–I can’t handle, not even if I kill her. So don’t worry about tripping down the elevator shaft.”

    Adele led the way into the outer office. The secretary eyed them warily.

    Behind her, she heard Tovera say to the secretary, “You’re lucky, little fellow. Your boss is a lot smarter than most.”

Kotzebue on Sunbright

    Daniel was watching the ditch behind Riely’s storehouse when the apparent fish bobbed to the surface, just as it had done on the two previous evenings. It was the length of his finger, white and swollen as though it had already begun to decay.

    Hogg stood six feet away, far enough that he wouldn’t disturb his master’s observations. Under his breath, he sang, “Grieve, oh grieve, oh tell me why….”

    A pair of winged insectoids came from opposite directions, drawn by the shining white belly. Both were females, looking for carrion in which to insert their eggs. They dodged back and forth, neither willing to settle until she was certain that the other wasn’t a predator preparing to attack when her ovipositor was sunk too deeply to be quickly withdrawn.

    Hogg didn’t move very much. He turned his head, and occasionally his torso twisted in order to allow him to scan the terrain in all directions. His left hand was in his pocket, but his right was loose and never very far from the stocked impeller leaning unobtrusively against the drainpipe from the roof of the building.

    “Because he had more gold than I…,” Hogg sang.

    One of the insectoids eased toward the fish by tenths of an inch, two forward and one back. At last she touched, then settled on her eight jointed legs. A hair-fine ovipositor uncoiled from her tail, probed the fish, and finally straightened to stab downward. Nearly its whole half-inch length sank in.

    “But gold will melt and silver fly–”

    The wing-like sides of the fish’s flattened body folded upward to envelope the insectoid. The skin covering them was dark, in contrast to the white streak along the midback. Even knowing by now that the wings were there, Daniel had seen only hints of the real outline of the fish below the surface of the ditch water.

    “–and he will be as poor as I,” Hogg sang.

    He picked up the impeller by the grip and fore-end. With the same lilt in his voice, he added, “I think this truck’s stopping here, young master, and I shouldn’t wonder if it’s come for us. Not before time, I say.”

    Daniel stood and turned. The fish flushed the white stripe to merge with the rest of its skin coloration and wriggled to vanish on the bottom of the ditch. The spiked edges of its wings were already shredding its prey against the gristly back; shortly it would extend its toothless mouth upward and suck in the bits.

    The truck was a four-axle military vehicle. Originally it had had rubber tires, but they had worn off and it was running on the spun-wire wheels themselves. Off-road it probably made little difference, but here on pavement the undamped thrum of the wheels would be maddening.

    “I suspect you’re right, Hogg,” Daniel said. “It’s time to see if we’re the fish or the unfortunate mother.”

    He turned a friendly smile toward the six soldiers climbing from the vehicle. Automatic impellers in a twin mount took up most of the most of the truck bed, so the troops in gray uniforms had been squeezed to the margins.

    Hogg grunted. “I’m nobody’s bloody mother,” he said.

    The passenger in the cab of the truck wore a tailored uniform with only the fabric color in common with the loose fatigues of his underlings. Besides that, his tunic and trousers had silver piping along the seams and there was silver braid on the saucer hat he donned as he watched Daniel approaching.

    “You’re the courier with the dispatches I’ll take to Freedom?” the officer said. He was small and looked remarkably neat, even for having ridden in the cab rather than the truck’s open bed.

    “I’m Kirby Pensett,” Daniel said pleasantly. “And I have material for Freedom, yes. May I ask who you are, sir?”

    “My name is none of your affair, sir,” the little man snapped. “Now, get the dispatches for me and you can go about your business.”

    The building’s door opened and Riely stepped out. He wasn’t armed, but the assistant with him carried an electromotive shotgun. From its gray enamel finish, it was a military weapon rather than a sporting gun like the ones Daniel had hunted with on Bantry.

    “Hello, Kidlinger,” Riely said. “Do you have an outgoing load already? I hadn’t expected you for twenty days at least.”

    “I’m here for the dispatches,” the officer said stiffly, irritated that the agent’s greeting had made him look a prat even to himself; Daniel hadn’t been in any doubt about the matter to begin with. “I’m to take them to Freedom.”

    “I haven’t received orders about that,” Riely said, his expression becoming wary. “My understanding… but look, let’s all come inside where we can sit down and have a drink.”

    “I don’t have time or need for a drink,” Kidlinger said, “and I don’t give a fart for your understanding. Get me the dispatches and do it now. In the field, we don’t have time to bugger around with your civilian red tape!”

    He patted the flap of his full-coverage pistol holster significantly.

    My goodness, he is a little man, Daniel thought. In a conciliatory tone he said, “I’m afraid, Colonel Kidlinger–is it colonel? I’m afraid that my directions were to hand the case over to Freedom personally.”

    He was careful not to touch the cargo pocket where the case had remained ever since he boarded the Savoy. Kidlinger appeared to think the documents were inside Riely’s fortified dwelling, and at this point any indirection was a good thing.

    Though Daniel continued to smile, he was thinking tactically now. Neither he nor Riely were armed. Riely’s man was, but the fellow obviously didn’t expect trouble, and the three assistants still inside the building couldn’t get out in time to affect the business.

    On the other side–six soldiers with carbines, and the driver, who might have a weapon also, still in the vehicle. Plus Kidlinger’s pistol, but the officer was very far down on Daniel’s list of priorities. The troops had left their truck’s twin-mount unmanned, but the automatic impeller in the guard tower couldn’t depress enough to bear on anything useful either.

    “I didn’t bloody ask your opinion, did I, yokel?” Kidlinger shouted at Daniel. He fumbled with his holster flap. “You’re on Sunbright now, and the representative of Free Sunbright gives the orders. That’s me!”

    If I act now, we can take them , Daniel thought. Hogg’s long-barreled impeller wasn’t the best choice for such close quarters, but he would make do. If we don’t have surprise, though–

    “Sir,” Daniel said, raising his hands to shoulder level, palms out. “I assure you that–”

    A light aircar swung around the other side of Riely’s store. It must have approached at low level–ground level–over the hilly wasteland to the north of the town. Hogg snarled a curse and presented his impeller with a speed that would have terrified Kidlinger if he understood what it implied for his own survival had the present discussion turned into a firefight.

    Two soldiers clambered back onto the truck and sat at the twin mount. The others lifted their carbines hesitantly, looking from their officer toward Hogg, then back to the aircar which had settled to a halt.

    “Put your gun up, Hogg,” Daniel said crisply. “It isn’t needed here.”

    The driver–the car’s sole occupant–stood up. He wore a filter scarf which covered his lower face.

    “Sir?” said Riely.

    The driver pulled the scarf down. He was scarcely older than Daniel; certainly he was under thirty.

    “Hello, Riely,” he said and he jumped out of his vehicle and walked toward the group. “And you too, Kidlinger, though I didn’t expect to see you this far out of your area of responsibility.”

    “Sir, I thought….” the officer said. He stammered to a halt.

    Daniel stepped forward, extending his hand. “I’m Kirby Pensett,” he said. “The Chief on Madison gave me dispatches for Freedom.”

    “Well met, then, Pensett,” said the newcomer, shaking his hand. “I’m known as Freedom. You and I have matters to discuss.”