Angel of Destruction (10 page)

The guards who had brought Kazmer in took Kazmer out, surprised enough by these developments that they forgot to shove, and let him walk at a normal pace. They went back to his cell. When he was alone again Kazmer put his face down between the palms of his chained hands, fighting to quiet his mind.

He had done it.

He had elected the Malcontent. Soon he would be damned as all Malcontents were damned, despised, disenfranchised, disdained, and disregarded.

He would be alive; and if an evil fortune should call Hilton’s name up before that Dolgorukij Inquisitor, at least it would not be from Kazmer’s mouth that it would go on Record. Or maybe not at all.

And Modice Agenis?

He could not even think of little Modice.

He would be Malcontent. He did not have the right.

Knowing that he had had no choice if he was to hope to protect his friend gave him no comfort, in the horrible certainty that even the hope of Modice was lost to him forever.

###

When he got back to Port Charid Garol Vogel stopped at the yards where the courier was berthed, but Jils wasn’t on board; there weren’t any messages. There was news on the reader from Chilleau Judiciary, but Garol wasn’t interested. He sat down at the scheduler instead, keying a line for Shiron Madlev, the Combine Factor at Port Charid.

He needed to pay a courtesy call.

The Bench recognized Factor Madlev as the spokesman for the local mercantile council, which made Madlev something close to the civilian authority here. The port’s only secured communications with Chilleau Judiciary were held in Factor Madlev’s office. It was politic to go and make appropriate noises expressive of profound concern on the part of the Bench, pledges of speedy resolution, promises of action — all of those things.

Therefore, Madlev was the obvious place to start, if Jils hadn’t done the honors already. Madlev might well expect a call either way, after Garol’s previous meeting with his foreman — what had the name been? Fisner Feraltz — at the hospital at Nisherre.

There was also an errand to run, for Walton Agenis.

When the access tone cleared, Garol identified himself, his voice a little strange in his own ears in the silence of the courier.

“Bench intelligence specialist Garol Vogel. I’ve been detailed by the Second Judge at Chilleau Judiciary to solve the piracy problem at Port Charid. Requesting an entrance interview with Factor Madlev, at his earliest convenience.”

There were clicks and hushes on the line as the screener on the other end scrambled to take the message line. Garol could appreciate the humor in the situation. He was sitting in a quiet ship with his clothing in moderate disarray and what hair he had left in an emphatically uncombed condition from his journey to the Langsarik settlement and back on a speed machine; but a Bench intelligence specialist was a Bench intelligence specialist — and the line wasn’t video. Just audio.

“Excuse me, Bench specialist.” A live body, at the other end. “If you would care to nominate a time when Factor Madlev could look forward to receiving you.”

The sooner he got his duty calls out of the way the better. Jils had already gone to tie in with local Judicial resources, such as they were in a mercantile port.

“I can be there inside of an hour, if that’s convenient. And say, I heard there’s someone I need to speak to, working in the Combine warehouses — somewhere in Charid. Maybe someone could show me where to find him, after I meet with Factor Madlev. Hilton Shires. Langsarik.”

The voice at the other end sounded a little surprised, but seemed to be recovering. “He’s a new man, Bench specialist, here this morning I believe. It shall be done. When may I tell the Factor to expect you, sir?”

Don’t. It’s better if he doesn’t expect me
. Garol resisted the temptation. He’d already lost the advantage of surprise anyway. As if he needed surprise when he was just giving an in-briefing, not probing for information.

Madlev would be expecting some questions.

Best to get them out of the way up front.

“Give me an hour. I’ll be seeing you. Thanks for making the time.”

When Garol Vogel walked into Factor Madlev’s office — shaven and suited in uniform dress, and exact to the hour — he was not entirely surprised to find Jils Ivers waiting for him, with a documents case in one hand and a face that spoke code. She had something interesting, then. She was a fast worker.

Garol was surprised to see Fisner Feraltz there as well — the sole survivor of the raid on the Okidan Yards, the man he’d interviewed in the private hospital at Nisherre. Feraltz didn’t look much recovered to Garol; he was still braced from head to foot on his right side. Hadn’t been doing his physical therapy, Garol concluded. Feraltz bowed a little stiffly in response to Garol’s nod of greeting, but there was no other way to move in all that bracing but stiffly.

Factor Madlev was a big man whose face seemed fractionally too large for his head, even with his very full beard taken into account; but there was no faulting his enthusiasm, or his manners. Now that Garol had given Feraltz the nod, Madlev came forward to meet Garol with hearty goodwill, offering a greeting that seemed perfectly genuine.

“Bench specialist Vogel. An honor, sir. I’m Shiron Madlev, Factor Madlev, people call me Uncle. Or, er, Factor. You’ve met my foreman, I think? Welcome to Port Charid; we are very glad to see you.”

“Pleasure to be here. Yes, in fact, I had a talk with Feraltz before he was released from hospital. Good to see you on the road to recovery, Feraltz.”

Garol returned the Factor’s eager embrace with one of moderate warmth, not entirely comfortable with Madlev’s effusions of joy. “The Bench is deeply concerned about recent events in Rikavie, Factor Madlev, and we’ll do our best to get to the bottom of the problem. I see my second has anticipated me, however.”

No, she’d come because she knew he’d come here as soon as he got back from the settlement. The rental company’s locator on the speed machine would have told her when that had happened. She wasn’t supposed to be able to read the machine’s locator, it was private information, after all. Proprietary to the rental company. But rank had its privileges; also its problems, inconveniences, headaches, warts, and the occasional lethal surprise.

“Yes, honored by two such visits, and on the same morning. Please. Be seated. Can I offer?”

Offer what? Offer anything. It was a subtle lure, equally receptive to requests for money or drugs as bean tea or cavene. Garol discarded the cynical reflection as uncalled-for, and settled himself. Feraltz simply leaned up against the Factor’s desk, keeping to the background, resting his right leg; no sitting down in that medical web, or at least no sitting down in any chair with arms. No room.

“You’re very kind.” Garol had eaten breakfast already, a big bowl full of Modice Agenis’s grain soup. Not that it was anyone’s business. “Nothing for me, thanks. Just a moment or two of your time. The intelligence reports contain no anomalies in the head-count and reconciliation reports, yet rumor insists that Langsariks are responsible for recent raids in the Shawl of Rikavie.”

Madlev shrugged with a smile, as impervious to Garol’s lure as Garol to his. “Bench specialist. We have so few resources. What can I tell you? We have no choice but to rely on the Langsariks themselves, for self-policing.”

Madlev was a little too big for his chair, which could barely contain the span of his broad thighs. Broad powerful, not broad fleshy, but the effect was a little ludicrous all the same; it reminded Garol of a grown man trying to make use of a child’s seat, for want of anything more appropriately sized.

“Quite so. Very true.” Madlev wasn’t in a very expansive mood, it seemed; but it was hard to believe that Port security wouldn’t have caught on by now, if something was going on. If. “But you do periodic spot checks, I understand. And there haven’t been any problems there?”

The Bench had put the Langsariks here at Port Charid, but hadn’t stationed any police resources to monitor them — that was up to the Port Authority. As far as the Bench was concerned the ban on transport was all that had been needed to ensure that Langsariks stayed here. Port Charid was responsible for overseeing that ban; how did Port Charid explain the apparent access of Langsarik raiders to hulls on which to raid?

Madlev nodded. “That’s right, Specialist Vogel. We do unannounced spot checks three times a week, and we haven’t found anyone missing yet.” Madlev’s response was ready and complete enough, but Garol thought there was a hint of defensiveness there all the same. “There have been one or two minor discrepancies, but all explained to my complete satisfaction. No transport gone missing from Port Charid either, and I think we’d notice, Bench specialist. They’re good. If it’s true what they say, of course, and there’s no proof. Is there?”

No help there, in other words. Walton Agenis had claimed she didn’t know where she’d find a freighter; Factor Madlev apparently had no insight on the question — none that he was willing to share, at least.

“The public word is very much Langsarik,” Jils said, in a tone of mild — very mild — reproof. “It seems unnecessarily complicated to speculate on some unknown responsible party. They are Langsariks. And they are dangerous.”

She was feeling Madlev out, Garol knew; repeating only what she’d heard said. Garol found her remarks a little distasteful, even so. Jils hadn’t forgiven the Langsariks for having been as successful as they were. She seemed to have no room in her heart for admiration for the discipline and sacrifice of a worthy foe; or she felt it as keenly as he did, but would not acknowledge any foe worthy that challenged the rule of Law, let alone as profitably as the Langsarik fleet had done.

Madlev shrugged with his palms upturned in a gesture of conciliatory petition. “Of course everyone says Langsariks. They’re a defenseless target. When were Langsariks ever stupid, though? And what would endangering the settlement be, if not sheer idiocy? No. I don’t believe it.”

It was interesting for Madlev to be so definite, with his foreman still visibly marked by injuries sustained in the Okidan raid. Feraltz didn’t seem to find Madlev’s insistence distasteful, even so. That was right: Feraltz’s story had been that the raiders couldn’t be proved to be Langsariks. Feraltz was on the Langsarik side, at least as far as sympathy went.

“We’ll get it straightened out, Factor Madlev. That’s what we’re here for. Though I do have a personal request to make, as well.”

“Yes, anything.” Factor Madlev didn’t really have much room to lean forward in his chair; his legs were too long for its height, so that leaning forward looked more awkward than sincere. He seemed to know that. “Office space. Local transport. Communications links; dinner. Anything.”

All of which Garol could arrange just as well or better for himself, but there was no advantage to be gained by gratuitous rudeness. “You have a Langsarik in the warehouse. Hilton Shires.” He had mentioned wanting to see Hilton when he’d made this appointment; had Madlev been told? “I have a message from his aunt; I promised I’d pass it on.”

That, and he wanted access to Shires.

Garol was ready to believe that Agenis had told him the truth when she’d said that her hands were clean; she had more sense than to try to shield any guilty parties at the expense of the entire Langsarik settlement. That made the problem more complicated, but less stressful to Garol personally.

The scarf was a signal of some sort, and Agenis had chosen to let Garol deliver it. Agenis wanted Hilton to cooperate, in other words. Garol didn’t need to know the ins and outs of it. All he needed to know was who was raiding, where they were, and how to stop them before they brought horror and destruction down on the heads of innocent people.

“Yes, of course. Immediately. Fisner?” Madlev pushed himself out of his too-small chair with evident relief; and Feraltz straightened up, clearly ready to receive instruction. Why didn’t Madlev have all of his chairs done large enough to suit his size? Garol wondered. Was it because of the negotiating advantage Madlev gained, when people were foolish enough to read physical awkwardness for a relative dullness of wit and failed to shield their strategies or secrets accordingly?

Jils stood up, too.

Feraltz moved awkwardly toward the door, talking as he went. “I’m still at a bit of a disadvantage, Bench specialist, so I’ve taken the liberty of asking Dalmoss to come and escort you. He’s one of our floor managers.” There was a man waiting in the Factor’s front room, newly arrived since Garol had gotten here; the man came forward at a signal from Feraltz.

“Dalmoss will take you to Shires’s workstation, so you can talk privately if you like. Without publicity. And here’s Dalmoss. Dalmoss, these are Bench intelligence specialists Vogel and Ivers, looking for Hilton Shires.”

Perhaps not exactly “looking for,” Garol thought. Wasn’t there an implied accusation or assumption of guilt of some sort there? He’d asked to see Shires, he hadn’t come looking for Shires to question him. And yet that could be what the foreman thought he was going to do; the foreman didn’t seem to like the idea, either.

“If you’ll come with me, gentles. I’ll take it from here, sir. Shires? He’ll be in receiving reconciliation this morning, we can run him to earth there. As it were.”

Maybe he was being oversensitive, Garol decided. To consistently decline to identify the Langsariks as guilty, and then imply howsoever indirectly that Shires was a person of interest for a Bench investigation — it would mean that Feraltz was a hypocrite, or seriously ambivalent, or so secure in his conviction of Langsarik innocence that he hadn’t given the phrase a second thought.

Overreacting.

Yes.

As an Abstainer, Feraltz was probably avoiding the drugs he needed to manage his pain. That would more than cover any apparent inconsistencies in his communications. He was probably exhausted, and almost certainly distracted by the trouble his still-healing injuries were undoubtedly giving him.

Yet something was ever so slightly off-kilter; and Garol didn’t know what it was.

Oversensitive.

He’d talk it all out with Jils, as soon as he’d concluded his errand for Walton Agenis.