Asgard's Secret (18 page)

"Okay,
Rousseau," she said. "How many people can we get into this truck of
Lyndrach's?"

"It's a small
one—built to carry two, although it can take three," I told her.

"Shit,"
she said. "We're going to need another."

I was amazed.
"Do you know how much a truck costs?" I asked.

"No," she
said, "but I'll pay it. I'm not chasing the android with only you and
Crucero as back-up. If you've read this situation right, he killed seven men
with his bare hands and whatever blunt instruments he was able to pick up. It's
okay—my quartermaster's already dickering with the Tetrax. We'll all need
suits, too. You'd better start making up a list of equipment."

"You've never
been out in the cold," I said. "You have no idea what it's like. It's
dangerous out there, especially for novices."

"Do you think
it isn't dangerous wearing all the kinds of suits
we've
had to wear
these last ten years?" she said, contemptuously. "Do you think it
wasn't dangerous going down to the surface of Salamandra after the bombardment?
Believe me, Rousseau—you don't know what
real
scavenging is.
Make the list, and get it right. Let me worry about the cost and the
hazards."

I made the list. I started
while we were still on the strip, and I managed to complete it within five
minutes of arriving at the plaza. The star-captain gave it to Crucero and told
him to take care of it, as soon as possible. She sent all but two of her
troopers to help him. The two that remained were Serne and an Oriental named
Khalekhan. I thought she might be going out of her way to prove that she wasn't
afraid of any trap that the likes of Amara Guur could spring, but I had to
admit that they both looked as if they meant business once they had their
flame-pistols drawn. In theory, that was illegal, but there wasn't a
peace-officer in sight, even though we were in full view of the central police
station and the night shift was on duty. The Tetrax seemed perfectly content to
let us do whatever it was the star- captain felt she had to do. I didn't doubt
that they were looking on, from a discreet distance, and that Amara Guur would
know that too, but I was still anxious.

There were no
vormyr in the plaza either. There was nothing to do but wait. The plaza was the
largest open space in the city, directly under the pole of the dome. The
Skychain shot up like an infinite glittering arrow from the base-station a
couple of hundred metres away; it was an impressive sight, even in the muted
light, but the star-captain didn't bother gawking at it. She was looking from
side to side, scanning the passers-by on the roadstrip.

When we'd been
there about ten minutes, a Campanulan lost his balance transferring from the
faster strip to the slower one and fell with his legs on one and his torso on
the other. He brought down half a dozen people of assorted races who were
standing on the slower strip while the faster one dragged him along—if it had
been mid-morning, he'd have skittled a hundred or more. Somebody must have
dropped something into the crack between the strips, because the roller gears
suddenly started making an awful noise. The safety-relays immediately stopped
both strips.

"Does that
happen often?" the star-captain asked.

"Not at
night," I told her. "Twice or three times a day, when the lights are
on. It's okay. The repair crew will come out even at this hour. If they don't
fix it in time, we'll only have to walk to the next intersection to get a ride
home."

She had tensed up
when the accident happened; her eyes were darting back and forth, as if she
expected soldiers with blazing guns to emerge from the shadows at any moment,
although the pedestrians had meekly accepted the necessity of using their own
muscle-power and were proceeding about their business in good order. I hoped
that she hadn't actually released the safety-catch on her weapon.

"That's the
repair crew coming now," I told her, pointing to the approaching team.
"Those aren't weapons they're carrying. Take it easy, will you? It doesn't
look as if anyone's trapped an arm or a leg, so it'll just be a matter of
minutes."

I could see that
she was trying to relax, but she wasn't finding it easy.

I heard a faint
hiss coming from the top of the stairs and turned round. The doors of the Hall
of Justice had been closed when we arrived, but one stood ajar now, and there
was a face peering around it. I thought at first that it was a human face, but
then I realised that it was a Kythnan.

Amara Guur had
lied. He hadn't come in person—he'd sent Jacinthe Siani instead. I wasn't in
the least disappointed.

14

As soon as I looked around, Susarma Lear
followed the direction of my gaze—and as soon as she saw the other woman, she
went up the steps two at a time. Her men followed, guns leveled. They checked
the dark vestibule very carefully, then went to look into the gloomy hall—but
it seemed that the Kythnan was alone. Susarma Lear patted her down personally,
but she was unarmed too.

"Your friends
are drawing attention to us, Mr. Rousseau," Jacinthe Siani said, when I arrived
on the top step.

I kept my distance
from her as I said: "That's okay. The Tetrax are keeping their distance,
for the time being. They always take a tentative approach when they don't understand
what's going on—or when they want someone else to take their risks for them.
Where does Guur want us to go now?"

"You have a
suspicious mind, Mr. Rousseau," she said. "I merely came to make a
delivery."

"So where is
it?" I asked, glancing at Susarma Lear. The star-captain shook her head,
to indicate that the Kythnan didn't have anything substantial concealed in her
neatly tailored clothing.

"You will find
the notebook in the Hall," the Kythnan said. "Look on the platform
where you so nearly signed the contract I offered you. There is a niche in the
clerk's podium. You might want to hurry—it would be unfortunate if the
night-watchman were to be roused from his peaceful slumber and stumble across
it by accident."

Serne made as if to
grab the Kythnan as she moved to go, but the star-captain said: "Let her
go. If she's lying, there's no point in holding on to her." I watched th
e femme
fatale
trip down the steps, as if she hadn't a care in the world.

Khalekhan was
already moving through the inner door into the deserted Hall. He moved his gun
slowly back and forth. There was only a single light burning, but it was enough
to let us see that no one was lurking in the hall. Save for our footfalls, the
whole building was silent; one thing that could be said for the Tetron criminal
justice system was that it didn't encourage heavy traffic. The jail had been
empty when I left, and it was apparently still empty. Serne and Khalekhan
covered the star-captain from the doorway as she made her way to the podium.
Saul Lyndrach's notebook was exactly where Jacinthe Siani had said it would be;
Susarma Lear picked it up and looked at it quizzically before jumping back down
to the floor.

"You can look
at it later, Rousseau," she said, when I extended my hand to take it from
her. "Let's get out of here and find somewhere where the lights are bright
enough to read by."

"I'll look at
it as we go," I said.

She shrugged her
shoulders and let me take it, but she held on to it just long enough before
letting go to let me know that, in her opinion, I ought to be grateful for the
favour.

I flipped the
notebook open and angled the page toward the meagre light, eager to get an
impression of what it contained even if I couldn't read every word. In spite
of the gloom, one glance was enough to tell me why Simeon Balidar had told
Amara Guur that it might be a good idea to send Heleb round to see me—and why,
when Saul hadn't cracked under the threat of being slowly torn apart and permanently
crippled, Balidar had suggested to Guur that he had better increase the
pressure.

Saul's notes
weren't written in code. They were written in French.

Out of the two
hundred or so humans living in Skychain City, there'd be dozens who spoke
Spanish or Chinese, and more than a handful who spoke Russian or Japanese, but
French was a different matter.

Myrlin, I remembered,
had been able to speak English, Russian, and Chinese, but not French. Myrlin
had got Saul out before Saul lapsed into unconsciousness, though— which had
been long enough for Saul to tell him the codes he needed to sneak into my
apartment and order a ton of equipment. It had probably been long enough for
Saul to make other provisions, too. Maybe he had had time to explain to Myrlin
how to read the score-marks that he left when he was out in the cold, to make
sure that he could always find his way back to his starting-point, and where to
look for them . . . and, most important of all, where to start. More probably,
he had made a tape of the relevant information, whose instructions Myrlin
would have to follow as best he could. It wouldn't be easy for Merlin to
retrace Saul's last journey with the aid of that sort of information, and he
wouldn't be able to do it quickly. Anyone chasing him, with instructions of
their own in hand, would have a chance to catch up with him. The star-captain's
near- impossible mission suddenly seemed practicable—with my expert help.

"Come on, damn
you," my commanding officer ordered— and like a loyal Star Force man, I obeyed.

"Well,"
she said, as soon as we were out in the open and hurrying along a static
pavement. "What is it?"

I explained what it
was, and why I had been the only man on Asgard, so far as Amara Guur knew, who
could read it. I didn't bother adding the rider that it was at least possible
that there might be another French speaker around by now, on the crew of her
trusty warship; it wasn't a train of thought I wanted her to follow, if it
could possibly be avoided.

"It will help
us to catch him, won't it?" she said.

"Yes," I said.
"He's got a long head start, but we'll still be traveling at a good pace
when he has to slow down. Now that we can figure out exactly where he's going,
we can probably catch him."

"In which
case," Serne put in, "he'll go somewhere else."

"I don't think
so," I said. "The miracle is that there's anywhere at all to go. I'm
going to have to read through this very carefully, but if what Jacinthe Siani
told me is true and there really is a way down to the lower levels that no
one's found before, that's what he'll aim for. It's his only chance of avoiding
the necessity of having to come back—or of finding something so valuable that
the Tetrax will protect him against you."

"That's
good," the star-captain said, after checking with Crucero. "We'll
have the equipment and supplies ready not long after dawn. We'll start
immediately—we can catch up on our sleep in relays, once we're on the
move."

"What I can't
understand," I said, pensively, "is why Guur would just hand it over
to us."

"Because the
android got a head start," she told me. "And because he knows that
we'll chase the android, now we have the means to do it. He intends to chase
us."

It was obvious, of
course—just as it was obvious, to me if not to her, that while the star-captain
had been patting Jacinthe Siani down, the Kythnan had probably sprinkled half a
dozen showerproof bugs in her bright blonde hair. I thought about mentioning
that, but decided against it. After all, she was the commanding officer, and
the one who was determined to track Myrlin down. The moment she caught up with
him—
if
she caught up with him—she intended to gun him down. That was the extent of her
interest in him.