Analog Science Fiction And Fact - June 2014 (11 page)

Baldwin registered mild surprise. "His croak?"

"The shiroz mines will do that to you. If you'd spent three years breathing dust and coughing up your lungs, you, too, might speak with a rasp."

"But he doesn't." Baldwin's foref ingers were pointing in opposite directions—a gesture signifying
on the contrary.
"I've had two conversations with him. He doesn't sound hoarse to me."

Raising his voice, Tumanzu bellowed: "Something wrong with your hearing?" He and Baldwin were seated in the same room at the same table, but—judging by sheer volume—he might have been addressing someone in another time zone.

Baldwin flinched. He snarled: "I'm sitting next to an ogaku saruja who may have just shattered my eardrums!" He was genuinely annoyed, wasn't bothering to pretend otherwise. The expression "okaku saruja" wasn't ordinarily used in polite society. It wasn't ordinarily used in impolite society either—not unless the person using it was looking for a fight. "Apart from that, no—there's nothing wrong with my hearing."

Tumanzu's smile faded from his face like mist from a mirror. "The words coming out of Luhor's mouth sound like they've been through a grinder. How could you fail to notice?"

Baldwin—still vexed—snapped: "I failed to notice because there was nothing to be noticed. Luhor's voice isn't especially sonorous, but it isn't gruff either." He activated Minerva and meddled with her buttons. A voice emerged from the comtote's speakers: "Mr. Baldwin! I didn't realize that you and I were fellow travelers. You should have sought me out aboard ship. We could have become better acquainted." Baldwin patted Minerva's slick carapace. "See?"

Tumanzu was wearing an expression of dropjawed shock. "No—I
don't
see. But I hear—loud and clear. I just don't believe what I'm hearing."

With the air of a fisherman dangling bait in the water, Baldwin teased: "Would you
like
to see?"

Tumanzu's eyes widened. "Pictures? You have pictures of Luhor?"

"Of course I do. You gave me explicit instructions. Remember? A full report. You expected a full report from me."

"A
verbal
report. I wasn't thinking in terms of photographs." Tumanzu wagged a forefinger in a come-hither gesture. "Here. Let me see."

A quick review of the material stored in Minerva's memory revealed three images of Luhor. None were close-ups, but his features were clearly visible in the third. Baldwin enlarged it, and handed the comtote to Tumanzu. He took one look and barked an expletive that made "ogaku sauja" seem mild and inoffensive by comparison. He didn't rise to his feet so much as bounce out of his chair, was halfway across the room and headed for the front door before Baldwin could gather his wits. "Come on!"

"Where are we going?"

"I'll tell you on the way."

Tumanzu wrenched the door open and emerged from it like a cuckoo from a clock. He took four more steps, suddenly halted, slumped bonelessly to the ground, twitched, and went slack.

The kojuma dart was embedded in the hollow of his throat.

Baldwin got a fleeting glimpse of Usiga as he did a backflip off the guardrail on the seaward side of the terrace. Baldwin had no chance to interfere, was not tempted to try.

"Your willingness to grant me an audience is sincerely appreciated. If I were a Dokharan citizen, I'd be entitled to a hearing—it would be one of my birthrights—but I'm not and it isn't. I am a Zifran who subsequently became an Izmirite. As such, I have no legal status in this chamber. You could have rejected my request. But you didn't. You have extended remarkable courtesy and indulgence to a stranger. Permit me to express my gratitude."

A very pretty little speech,
Baldwin was thinking.
Well rehearsed and flawlessly recited. Smooth deliverery. No trace of a rasp or hoarseness.

The hall where the Genjuko met seemed more like a temple than a council chamber. It seemed that way because that's what it was. It did double-duty as a place of worship and as a seat of government. Directly behind the podium where the genjuki sat was a massive altar. When the Genjuko was not in session, religious rites were conducted here. Baldwin would have been willing to bet that the lawmakers of the council and the priests of the temple were one and the same. He frowned.
One and the same? Make that twenty-two and the same.
At the moment, all twenty-two of them were wearing stern expressions and listening to Luhor with unwavering attention. Their eyes were grave, and Baldwin suspected that no glance of compassion or look of pity had ever issued from them.

If Baldwin had been the object of their scrutiny, he would have been intimidated, but Luhor's composure remained unruffled. He said: "As Tajok's sole heir, I have an obligation to him. The solemnities marking his passing have become my responsibility. Tajok specified what he wanted done. What will
be
done is for you to decide."

Luhor's statement suggested that he was a supplicant thankful for any crumbs of consideration that the genjuki could spare, but he didn't really mean it and he wasn't a good enough actor to convince anyone that he did. These were polite insincerities that Nishizuki had put in his mouth. Luhor was obediently regurgitating them, but he spoke his lines without animation or conviction. His face was expressionless. His voice had the lifelessness of a mechanical recording.

Nishizuki must have warned his client that he would be addressing a unreceptive audience, unlikely to be swayed by honeyed words. Luhor wasted no more time of deferential preliminaries. Getting directly to the point, he said: "Tajok is hated by many—if not all—of his fellow Dokharans. I knew that, and I was prepared for it. I was
not
prepared for the intensity with which he is hated. The antagonism toward him should have died with him—or so I would have supposed—but no: his enemies are determined to deny him makeevasukku, his friends—with one exception—are nonexistent, and the issue wouldn't be in much doubt if you Dokharans weren't such law-abiding people. But you
are.
As such, you find yourselves constrained by an awkward point of law. Tajok was the legitimate owner of the makeeva reserved for him and of the ground in which it is planted. His right to makeevasukku and his property rights are inextricably intermixed."

Luhor steepled his hands, making a bridge over nothing. "Tajok had no offspring. He was the only surviving member of his family. Now he, too, is gone, and I have inherited all of his worldly goods. His property has become my property."

Luhor paused, allowing the implications of that to register. "Permit me to propose a compromise," he said. "With your permission, I will instruct the mizuni to uproot the makeeva with which Tajok intended to merge, prepare it for transport, and arrange to have it shipped to Izmir. I will accompany it, and I will take Tajok's mortal remains with me. The house that I shared with Tajok on Izmir has a garden. The makeeva will be transplanted there, Tajok's body will be consigned to it, and he will be united with soil that was, after all, more hospitable to him than the soil of his homeland."

Luhor scanned the faces of the genjuki, attempting to gauge their reactions, but their features remained unreadable. "This—I think—would be acceptable to Tajok himself and inoffensive to his detractors." He bowed with disingenuous obsequiousness. "Thank you for your attention. I await your judgment."

The senior genjuki bestirred himself. "Your suggestion seems very reasonable," he said, "and if you had made it yesterday, I suspect it would have been adopted—probably unanimously. But that was yesterday. Today we have received information that invalidates your argument and compels us to redefine our reason for being here. This was to have been a hearing to determine if makeevasukku would be extended to a war criminal. What it has become is a war criminal's last attempt to exploit the people he betrayed and victimized." He made an abrupt beckoning gesture. Five guards with drawn weapons converged on the witness box. "You are under arrest on a charge of high treason. Other charges will, of course, be forthcoming, but that one will do for the time being." He waved a hand in dismissal. "Take him away," he commanded.

And they did.

"I wish I could say I suspected it all along." Baldwin's shoulders slumped, implying disclaimer. "I suppose I could
say
it," he amended, "but it wouldn't be true. I didn't have an inkling until Usiga killed Tumanzu.
That
got my attention—not only because murder had been done right before my eyes but because it made no sense!" Baldwin emphasized the senselessness of it by smacking his fist into his own palm and wincing at the pain he had senselessly inf licted on himself. "Six days. Only six days had passed since I'd proved to Usiga that his contract was void. What could have happened in the meantime? What could have changed his mind?"

David Collins was seated in the same chair that Tumanzu had occupied on the night when Tumanzu and Baldwin first met. Collins was drumming on the armrest with fidgety fingers. "Usiga is a professional," Collins observed. "If there's no profit in it, he doesn't do it."

"Exactly," Baldwin concurred.

Collins raised his eyebrows in conjecture. "His contract must have been renewed."

"Yes—but who would have a motive for doing that? I asked myself that question and only one candidate occurred to me."

"And that's when you realized the truth?"

"That's when my suspicions were aroused." Baldwin interlocked his fingers, using them like building blocks to erect a more complicated structure. "That's when I started putting the pieces of the puzzle together. I
had
most of the pieces in my possession. If I'd only attempted to assemble them sooner..." His manner was that of a penitent seeking absolution. "But I didn't. I made no effort to solve the puzzle until I recognized that a puzzle existed to be solved."

"And when you did...?"

Baldwin's head rotated like a weathervane seeking the proper orientation. "The war. The Dokharan/Ambulan conflict of twenty years ago. If you take the trouble to unravel this snarl, that's what you find at the center of it. The war—and the role that Tajok played in it." Baldwin paused to marshal his thoughts. Then:

"Tajok's life-extension experiments yielded results that were undeniably beneficial. Tumanzu was proof of that. So was Tajok himself. Ten years of servitude in the shiroz mines failed to kill him. That was an unprecedented feat of endurance. It required augmented strength, extraordinary recuperative powers, and an ability to keep on keeping on that rivaled the rocks he was mining. Obviously, Tajok had been taking doses of his own medicine."

"Obviously?"

"Well, it's obvious to me
now."
Baldwin gave a snort of self-reproach. "Isn't that always the way? Life isn't a process of discovery. Not for me. My life has been the process of making all the discoveries that should have been obvious from the outset."

Collins remained silent, but it was a companionable silence that encouraged Baldwin to continue.

"At the conclusion of the war—when the Dokharans retook their homeland and ousted the Ambulan invaders—Tajok had to make himself scarce. His elixir had to be left behind."

"His elixir?"

"Let's call it that. I'm not really sure what it was. A drug? A combination of drugs? A combination of drugs and herbs? A combination of drugs, herbs, and a lamp with a genie in it?" Baldwin shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

Collins nodded. "But whatever it actually was, he couldn't take it with him."

"Right. Too bulky to carry, perhaps. Sure to be confiscated if he was caught. Or maybe he was just pressed for time. Be that as it may, he had to flee without it. And so he concealed it. The hideaway he selected for it was a makeeva—one of the makeeva growing in the cemetery plot that belonged to his family. He poured his 'elixir' into a number of vials, and inserted them into the maw of the makeeva. The heavy-duty glass would be proof against the plant's corrosive acids. The location itself would be proof against tampering. With the exception of Tajok himself, his family had been exterminated. No funerals involving this particular makeeva would be held for the foreseeable future."

"And," Collins added, "it was the gravesite of a clan of heretics whose latest and most infamous member was a war criminal. No one was likely to disturb it."

"And no one did." Baldwin seized his mug of akiku and lowered its contents by several inches. Delicious. Smacking his lips, he said: "Tajok was captured and sentenced to ten years mining shiroz. Seven years later, he met Luhor. Five years was longer than most prisoners lasted. Luhor was a total wreck after only three. When the two of them were released, Tajok was still in reasonably good condition. Luhor wasn't. Luhor didn't have long to live." Baldwin emptied his mug and scrutinized the interior as though attempting to read the dregs in the bottom. "Tajok and Luhor made a pact. They exchanged identities. The substitution benefitted both of them. What Luhor got out of the deal was a chance to spend his few remaining years in comfort. What Tajok got out of the deal was a chance to retrieve the vials that he'd stashed in the cemetery." Baldwin's hands met and married, as though sealing a bargain. "The deception worked. Why wouldn't it? No one on Izmir questioned who was who. Tajok had spent a longer period of time in the mines than Luhor, but Luhor was in much worse shape than Tajok. When the one who was frail claimed to be Tajok, he was taken at face value."

Collins—an islander born and bred—tended to be nautical-minded. He said: "Tajok was flying false colors and getting away with it."

"So he was," Baldwin agreed. "And then— just as Tajok was congratulating himself on his cunning—Tumanzu came calling. That must have been a very unpleasant surprise. Tumanzu wasn't merely an old adversary who bore Tajok a spite. He was a much bigger threat to Tajok than that.
Tumanzu could identify him.
By experimenting on Tumanzu and extending his lifespan, Tajok had created a witness who could be his nemesis. He had to get rid of Tumanzu! He had no choice."

Collins hooted a laugh. "A classic case of biter bit."