Dragonback 05 Dragon and Judge (25 page)

"But if I actually did what I want to do right now? I suppose
you'd say that was wrong?"

"You cannot find satisfaction in revenge, Jack," Draycos said.
"Revenge is a trap which promises something it cannot deliver."

Jack hissed a sigh. "Only justice works, huh?"

"That has been my experience." Draycos's tail twitched. "However,
the end result of justice is often the same as the end desired by
revenge."

Jack frowned. "Meaning?"

The K'da's tail arched slightly. "If you can prove Cornelius
Braxton ordered your parents murdered, and if you wish me to do so, I
will kill him."

A shiver ran up Jack's spine. To think it in the dark corners of
his mind was one thing. To hear it stated aloud was somehow something
else entirely. "I'll keep that in mind," he managed.

For a long moment they gazed at each other in silence. Then, with
another twitch of his tail, Draycos turned toward the galley. "In the
meantime, we can probably both use some extra healing time. Are you
hungry?"

"No, thanks," Jack said. "But go ahead."

"Thank you," Draycos said, popping open the refrigerator and
pulling out a plate of meat and fruit. "You said earlier you were
convinced of Langston's innocence?"

"Well, his story fits the facts, anyway," Jack said, getting up
and sitting down at the table. "We know now why those four Golvins he
creamed with his Djinn-90 were poking around topside in the first
place. Bolo had warned them not to go into the mine. But like an idiot,
he'd also told them the lower parts were flooded."

Draycos's neck arched in sudden understanding. "They were
attempting to dig a new tunnel to the water?"

"You got it," Jack said, vaguely pleased that he'd figured it out
before the K'da. "I'll give you four to one odds that their families'
land is all the way on that side of the canyon, probably as far away
from the river as you can get without running into the trees. If they
could tap into this supposed new water supply, they could pipe it over
to the edge and voila—instant rainfall."

"They were near the mine," Draycos murmured, his tail lashing
restlessly. "The One was afraid that if he let Langston leave, Bolo
would find out."

"Exactly," Jack said, nodding. "He couldn't take the chance that
they'd been close enough to the mine to make Bolo mad."

Draycos's tail tip was making the slow circles of deep thought.
"Only it didn't," he said. "We know that because Bolo's informant
Foeinatw would surely have sent a message to him about the incident."

"Which Bolo apparently ignored," Jack said grimly. "Which means
that Langston's been rotting away out here for five years for nothing."

Draycos flicked his tongue out. "He will not be happy when he
finds that out."

"I'm pretty sure I'm not planning to be the one to tell him," Jack
said candidly. "Let's at least get him back to civilization before we
mention that part."

"Agreed," Draycos said. "Now all we have to do is decide how best
to do that."

Jack looked back at the doorway. "Like you said, we've got some
time. We'll think of something."

"Three days," Frost growled as he led Alison up the wide stairway.
"Three
days
."

Alison didn't answer. Frost and Neverlin had been getting more and
more this way over the past two days, annoyed and impatient and
positively twitchy.

But then, Alison was starting to feel a little annoyed herself.

Because despite their veiled accusations, she hadn't been idle all
this time. In fact, she'd probably worked harder, and thought and
sweated harder, than she ever had in her entire life.

None of it had done any good. She was stuck. Had been stuck, in
fact, for the past day and a half.

"Well?" Frost prodded as they reached the heavily guarded corridor
leading to the Patri's private suite. "
Say
something."

"Like what?" Alison retorted. "It's tricky. You all knew it was
tricky. That's why you hired me."

"Which so far doesn't seem to be doing much good," Frost
countered. Apparently, he was in the mood for an argument this morning.

"Relax, will you?" Alison said as soothingly as she could manage
through her irritation. "When I blow the thing up,
then
you can
complain about it."

Without warning, Frost came to a halt, his hand snaking out to
grab Alison's upper arm and yank her around to face him. "Who told you
about that?" he demanded.

"Told me about what?" Alison asked, shrinking back as his fingers
dug into the skin beneath her thin shirt. Out of the corner of her eye
she could see the Brummgan corridor guards reaching warily for their
weapons.

For a long, tense moment they stood there, Frost staring hard into
Alison's face. Then, slowly, his hand relaxed its grip. "The first two
guys Mr. Arthur brought in blew up the safes they were supposed to
open," he said at last. "Well, blew up the contents, anyway."

Alison swallowed hard. So
that
was what was in the
mysterious packet Taneem had seen fastened to the safe's inside
ceiling. Like Neverlin had done with his own vault aboard the
Advocatus
Diaboli
, the K'da and Shontine advance team leaders had
thoughtfully added a self-destruct mechanism to their safes. "What did—
I mean—did it kill them?"

"In a way," Frost said. "The Patri had them both shot."

"I see," Alison said, forcing herself back on track. "And none of
you were planning to mention this bit of recent history?"

"I think Mr. Arthur would probably have said something when you
got ready to actually open it," Frost said. "Only so far, you haven't
gotten that far, have you?"

Reaching up, Alison pushed at the hand still holding on to her
arm. For a moment Frost resisted, probably just to show her that he
could. Then, he let her push the hand away. "You just let me work my
own way," she told him. "I'll get it open."

"You'd better." Turning, Frost started down the corridor again.

Neverlin and the Patri were seated in their usual armchairs, well
back from the safe resting on a transfer platform in the middle of the
room. "Good morning, Alison," Neverlin greeted her, his voice neutral.
He wasn't any happier about the delay than Frost, Alison knew. But at
least he hid his impatience better. "Is this going to be the day?"

"I don't know," Alison said. "We'll see."

Neverlin inclined his head to her. "Then let's begin."

Alison nodded back, then nodded politely at the Patri. The old
Brummga made no response, but remained slumped in his chair, his eyes
half-closed as if he were about to fall asleep.

It was all an act, of course. Brummgas were hardly the most
intelligent or insightful beings in the Orion Arm, and it was easy to
dismiss them as mobile stacks of brainless muscle. But their personal
survival instinct was as good as anyone else's. The Patri had entered
into this scheme with every expectation of making a huge profit out of
it.

But things were not going well. They were certainly not going the
way Neverlin and Frost had originally intended. It was entirely
possible that the Patri's glacier-speed thought processes were even now
reexamining the whole situation.

In fact, as Alison turned and stepped over to the safe it occurred
to her that perhaps
that
was the real reason for Frost's
nervousness. Maybe this grand alliance was starting to show cracks.

In the meantime, Alison had a safe to open.

She laid out her tools, studying the safe as she did so. It was a
big thing, about the size of a small desk, rectangular in shape, its
single door equipped with a double-twist combination lock and a break
bar for pulling open the door once it was unlocked. Along the safe's
left-hand wall, midway between top and bottom, was a horizontal line of
twenty indentations big enough and deep enough to fit the first joint
of a Brummga's finger. The whole thing was made of an incredibly hard
metal that the Patri's experts had apparently been unable to identify.

A hard metal that had impact and heat-stress marks over nearly a
third of its surface, and that had been warped visibly from its
original shape. Clearly, this was the safe that had been aboard the
Havenseeker
,
the only one of the four advance team ships to crash.

Frost had now said two other safes had been destroyed. Neverlin
had apparently decided, not unreasonably, to let her practice on the
one whose contents might already have been ruined by the crash.

Which meant there was a fourth, undamaged safe somewhere. Possibly
somewhere in this very house.

"You said yesterday it was a simple combination lock," Neverlin
reminded her as she put together her audio sensor.

"I said it was straightforward," Alison corrected. "I didn't say
it was simple."

"Then what's the delay?" Neverlin persisted.

"There are still a few problems to work out," Alison said. "Unless
you want this one to blow up like the other two did."

She had the minor satisfaction of seeing Neverlin turn a dark
glare on Frost. Setting the end of the sensor against the door above
the lock, she pretended to be digging out yet more deep, mysterious
clues.

And tried desperately to think.

Because the lock really
was
pretty simple. The problem was
much farther in.

Taneem had spent over two hours over the past three days peering
into the safe's interior as Alison sat with her back pressed against
one or the other of the safe's side walls. Late at night on each of
those days, after Alison had run the most recent data through her
MixStar computer, the K'da had described what she'd seen, giving the
girl a verbal map of the safe's interior. Alison had listened, and
asked questions, and tried to make sense of it all.

But that sense refused to come.

For one thing, the safe was way too big, with enough room in there
for two or three good-sized travel cases. Alison herself could probably
fit inside, in fact, though it would be a tight squeeze. Yet the only
contents were a handful of little plastic or ceramic diamonds the size
of Alison's thumb.

There was also that packet fastened to the ceiling, which was
connected to a wire grid that covered the entire inside of the safe.
Now that Alison knew the packet was a self-destruct bomb, she realized
that the grid itself was part of the whole defense system. Anyone
trying to cut or blast their way through the walls would cut one or
more of those wires, blowing the bomb and destroying the diamonds.

But the bomb wasn't just attached to the grid. There were also two
other cables, longer and thicker, stretching from the bomb to the wall
with the twenty indentations. In fact, from Taneem's description,
Alison had concluded that the cables disappeared into the wall exactly
opposite to the fourth and sixth of those indentations.

And at
that
point, she had found herself stuck with a
whole stack of unanswered questions.

Had there been other cables connecting the bomb to the other
indentations, cables that might have been knocked off in the crash?
From Taneem's description it looked like the packet had places where
such cables could have been attached.

But the K'da couldn't see anything lying loose inside the safe
except the diamonds. Could the cables have somehow been destroyed?

A look at the last undamaged safe might provide some answers. But
Alison didn't dare ask for such a thing. Especially since she wasn't
supposed to know that a fourth safe even existed.

Leaving the sensor attached to the metal above the lock, she sat
down with her back pressed against the safe door and pulled out her
notebook and pen. She felt Taneem shift around on her back, once again
using that ever-so-useful K'da trick for looking through walls.

"You know, we
can
get you a chair," Frost said.

"No, thanks," Alison said, making little marks in the notebook as
if she was taking actual notes. Taneem's job today was to see if she
could get a better look at the spots where the two cables and the wall
connected.

For a few minutes Alison stayed as she was, pretending to listen
to the sensor's output and making more little squiggles in her
notebook. Then she felt Taneem shift again on her skin, and there was
the touch of K'da claws on her right side. Alison half turned, moved
the sensor to a new position, and then resettled herself against the
door a few inches farther to her right.

The next three hours were spent mostly in silence. There was an
occasional clink as she rearranged the components of her equipment, or
a muted clunk as she attached or reattached the various sensors.
Sometimes she would accidentally kick the safe as she moved around it.
Twice during the morning a messenger slipped in to deliver a murmured
message to the Patri.

But aside from that no one spoke. The three watchers, for that
matter, hardly even moved in their seats. It was, Alison reflected
grimly, rather like working in a tomb.

A little before noon, she finally called a halt. "I need to go
back to my room for a while," she informed the others. "I need to do
some thinking."

"You can't think here?" Frost asked.

"I want to lie down," Alison explained. "Humans do their fastest
thinking standing up, but they do their best thinking lying down."

The Patri stirred in his seat. "It is stalling," he rumbled.

Alison turned to him, her mouth gone suddenly dry. There hadn't
been a single scrap of doubt in that voice that she could hear. "I'm
not stalling," she protested. "All I want to do is—"

"What do you mean, Patri Chookoock?" Neverlin cut her off, his
eyes suddenly hard and cold.

"It makes the same moves over and over," the Patri said. He
gestured toward the safe, his eyes never leaving Alison's face. "Today
it does the same as it did two days ago."