Price of Ransom (2 page)

Stanford and Fred hogged the bubble viewport in the transport bringing them into docking with Intelligence’s hub. Behind them Korey slept, snoring softly. If he looked better than the day he was arrested it was probably because the drugs and whiskey he had tried to smuggle along in his carry had been confiscated at the precinct office.

Fred simply gaped at the view: a complex net of stations and connecting tubes and solar arrays and ships in various stages of repair, manufacture, or loading that, in the reflected light of its sun, presented an astonishingly intricate and beautiful pattern against the deep night of space.

Stanford had his computer slate out and was busy calculating stresses, area to volume, and mass while on a second window he sketched out as complete a diagram of the web as possible, labeling it as he went.

The light chime warned them just as the door to their cell slipped aside. Fred whirled into an aggressive stance: hind legs bent, he leaned heavily on his thick, long arms, ready to propel himself forward. Because he was just about as thick as he was tall, the effect was intimidating.

Korey opened his eyes, although he did not move from his pallet, and glanced at the two guards who had just taken three steps back from the threshold.

“Fred,” he said quietly. “Lighten up.”

Fred rocked back onto his haunches, grinning again; Stanford had already taken the opportunity to surreptitiously tuck his slate back into the sling on his chest in which he usually carried his weapons.

“Get up, Windsor,” snapped the foremost guard. “We’re taking you off the ship in a flyer. The two Pongos stay on board.”

Korey laughed, short, and settled his hands behind his head, looking comfortable. “Someone afraid we’ll go on a rampage if we set foot in the happy zones?”

“You must be aware,” replied the guard stiffly, “that your record of the past fifty years does not give the common run of humanity any reason to trust you.”

Korey rolled smoothly up to his feet. “Listen, I didn’t come here for a morality lecture. I’m ready to go.” As he spoke he made a few quick gestures with one hand, sign language to his two companions. Fred rubbed vigorously at one shoulder, cursed abruptly, and with surprising delicacy removed a tiny insect from his long, dark hair and popped it in his mouth, smacking his lips.

“Move it,” said the guard, unable to hide his disgust.

Korey grinned and followed him.

The ride to the station was uneventful.

Several elevators took him, escorted by a shifting company of eight to ten guards, to some undetermined level of the Intelligence complex. He was shown into a small, square room and left alone.

He paced it quickly, measuring, and then sprawled himself untidily in its single uncomfortable chair and waited. As he had expected, the lights dimmed around him, leaving him isolated in a spotlight of brightness, and the closest wall took on a translucent sheen to reveal three persons sitting at a console behind it.

“Korrigan Tel Windsor?” A man’s voice, even and very deep.

He did not bother to answer.

“Are you aware that you have been arrested under League provision—”

“Let’s dispense with the formalities,” broke in a second voice, a woman. “I scarcely think we need bother to waste time on such as him.”

“If we do not ‘waste’ time on such as him, my dear,” replied the first man calmly, “then we cannot claim to be a free and equal society.” He paused.

Her lack of reply was eloquence enough.

“You know I’m Windsor,” said Korey, getting impatient with this. “I know what the charges are and if you can even make them stick the most they’ll pull me is a fine. I want to know what monkey has suspended my bounty license and how the hell you expect to uphold that suspension in a court of law. That is,” he added with a sardonic smile, “if people like me and what’s left of ‘my kind’ are allowed access to the courts of law anymore.”

“You see what I mean,” muttered the woman. The second man, beside her, murmured something Korey could not make out, although its tone sounded like assent.

“I see no reason to continue fencing in this manner,” said the first man, maintaining his calm. “The fact is that you possess that license on sufferance, not from any intrinsic right to hold it. You know as well as I that it can be revoked at any time.”

Korey straightened in the chair, focusing his gaze on the man’s shadowy form. “Maybe I didn’t think it would come to this. I’ve been good. As good as I can be, I guess
you’d
say,” he added, directing the comment to the woman, who sat in the center. “So maybe this isn’t about me personally. Maybe the old man has been dead just long enough now that you figure his memory can’t protect us anymore.”

“Surely,” interposed the second man—an impatient and slightly nervous voice, “surely you can’t expect us to condone the life you and the other saboteurs that Soerensen—bless his memory—established, the life you led, the actions you took. Even Soerensen had to disavow some of the things you did.”

“That’s a lie,” growled Korey. “He knew the stakes we were running. I don’t claim we were angels, or even
civilized
like you folks—”

“And none of you,” interrupted the woman sharply, “
None
of you
ever
did anything excessive?”

Korey was silent.

“My dear,” said the first man reprovingly.

“We saved your asses from the Kapellans, and now all you intellectual types have gotten squeamish about the methods we had to use to do it. Why am I not surprised?”

No one answered him.

“So what do you want me for?” he asked finally, resigned.

“A simple trade,” said the first man, still temperate. “You bring us in a few people, and we restore your license—
without
the revocation clause.”

“What?” Korey retorted, disbelieving. “You want me to bring in the queen of the highroad, or something? It can’t be done.”

The first man chuckled. “We do not interfere with the privateers. No. Here is a display—some likenesses.”

To the right of the three shadowed forms a console lit up, and eight faces appeared on a screen.

Korey stood up. “No!” He strode straight forward to the wall and slammed it with a closed fist. “I won’t hunt my own down, you bastards.”

“On the record,” said the woman smugly, “it states that when you were first granted your license you agreed that if any saboteurs had broken codified law they would be an acceptable bounty. And you did bring in one ex-saboteur named Trueblood. Seventeen years ago.”

“Trueblood deserved what he got. He went sour after the war ended, and no matter what you think, there weren’t any of ‘us’ who condoned rape. We killed a guy once—a nice, respectable stationmaster—who we caught trying to do some poor underage Kapellan female who was a refugee from Betaos. Actually,” he grinned, a predator’s look, “
we
didn’t kill him. We just got him drunk and convinced him to sleep with a sweet je’jiri girl, and let her clan do the rest.”

So close to the glass, he could see their bodies react, if not their faces. The second man shuddered, obvious. The woman stiffened, tense and disapproving.

Only the first man remained unruffled. “I am relieved to hear that there is still honor, of a kind, among thieves. Shall we return to the screen? The alternative, you realize, is that you will be arrested under inter-League law as adopted at the Second Concordance Postwar Convention and immediately sentenced to life in the prison station here at Concord, from which, I might remind you, there have been no—and I mean zero—escapes since its installation.”

“That’s it, huh? What about my partners?”

“Their visas will be revoked, and they will, of course, be allowed passage to the nearest Ardakian embassy so that they can return to their home planet.”

“And I’ll bet you know damned well that they’re not welcome there.” Korey opened his fist, tapped his index finger twice on the shielding wall, and moved to get a better look at the screen.

Eight faces. He examined them one by one.

“Apple? He’s dead. You’re Intelligence. I thought you would know that.” He chuckled, low. “Though it makes me feel better to know you didn’t. Jewel. Can’t help you there. She signed on with Yi about six years back and I’m not going to tangle with him.”

“Ah,” said the first man. The first two pictures flicked off into blackness.

“Eboi. I don’t know what happened to him. He was as decent as they come, by any standard, and he must be going on old by now. If anyone deserves some peace, he does.” He glanced back at them, scornful. “But I guess you just can’t chance that he might have some latent savagery in him, can you? And you certainly won’t trust my word.” This said with mockery. “And who’s this? Katajarenta?” He laughed, frankly amused. “You’ll never find her.” Dismissed her by moving on to the next photo. “Wing.” He grinned again. “Serve you right to bring her in. She’d cut you to pieces just with her tongue.” He shook his head briefly. “She disappeared a good twenty years ago.”

“But,” interrupted the woman, “she’s always been closely linked with—”

“Gwyn?” exclaimed Korey, disbelieving. “You expect
me
to bring in
Gwyn
? You’re crazy. Even if I could
find
him—”

“We have a less than two-year-old location on him,” said the woman sharply. “He was last going under the name of Heredes.”

“You’re crazy,” Korey repeated. “I’m not qualified. Nobody is. He’s the best.”

“If I may,” interposed the first man smoothly. “I understood there was reason to believe that Gwyn was dead.”

“Dead? Right, and I have four arms.”

“I want it substantiated,” said the woman in a voice made more cold by its implacability. “And everyone associated with him tracked down.”

Korey glanced through the glass again, wishing he could make out her face. A tone in her voice caught at him, and he felt it important that he identify her. He shrugged and looked at the last two pictures. “Hawk? What’s he doing here? He’s in prison.”

“Not anymore.” Fury underlay the words. The woman turned her head to look at the screen, revealing in that movement the careful, traditional coiffure of her hair: it took him a moment, but then he identified it: Indian subcontinent, neo-Hindi. “He was last seen with Gwyn.”

“Well, good for Hawk,” muttered Korey under his breath. Louder, he said, “I don’t recognize this last one. Never seen her before.”

“She was also seen with Gwyn,” explained the first man. “We suspect her to be a new recruit.”

“Well, I never thought of Gwyn as a recruiter.” He hesitated examining the six photos left and then his three inquisitors. “What’s her name?”

“We believe it to be Heredes also. Lily Heredes.”

“All right,” said Korey, stepping back from the wall. “I’ll bring her in. In trade for my license back.”

“That wasn’t the deal.” The woman dismissed the suggestion with a brusque wave of her hand.

“Listen. I bring her in, she’s got current information on Gwyn, and maybe on Hawk. You make a deal with her, and you won’t be asking me to break old loyalties.”

“He’s got a point,” said the second man.

“Anjahar!” snapped the woman. “Are you suggesting that we bargain with—with
this
?”

“My dear—”

“No,” broke in Korey. “He seems to be suggesting that revolutionary notion that we saboteurs might yet have some semblance of human loyalty. I know you’re ready to lock what’s left of us in the zoo and let the kids come down on the holidays to get a gaze at the old throwbacks to the days when we’d just as soon rip each other’s throats out as rip out the throat of the local rabbits for food, but hell, even back then before fire was invented we ran in packs. So don’t push me.”

The woman rose from behind the console. “You’ve got no ground on which to threaten me.”

“My dear.” The first man’s voice had not lost its evenness, but it was firm. She did not sit down, but she stopped speaking. “Agreed,” he said, looking back at Korey. “Bring in Lily Heredes, and we’ll restore your license.”

“Without the revocation clause?”

“Agreed as well. You’re a good bounty man, Windsor. We’d hate to lose you.”

“I’ll just bet you would,” muttered Korey. “You don’t find many people these days willing to track out into The Pale. So where do I find her?”

“You’ll start by going to Diomede.”

“It is The Pale, then.”

It might have been his imagination, but through the shadowy glass he thought he saw the man smile. “No. It’s a little farther out than that.”

After the guards had removed the prisoner, the three agents sat in silence for only a few moments before the woman turned, abruptly and with anger, on the first man.

“I can’t
believe
you bargained with
him
like that.”

“Maria, my dear, we
are
civilized human beings. I hope. And he is, I think, also human.” His tone was gently reproving.

“Yevgeny, that we approved cruelty, violence, and aberrant behavior in our long and frequently sordid history does not mean we should continue to tolerate those in our midst who are—as Windsor himself quite rightly put it—throwbacks to the very worst in human nature.”

“I think you exaggerate, Maria.” Yevgeny tapped his vest slate, reading the time display, and rose. “I have an appointment. We’ll meet again next week?”

She nodded, curt, but respectful. But as the door slipped closed behind him, she turned to her other companion. “Just think, Anjahar, the eight saboteurs on that screen are known to be collectively responsible for five thousand deaths. Officially recorded ones, that is.”

“Maria,” protested Anjahar, “you know I dislike them as much as you do, but after all, all but seven of those deaths were during the war. And most were Kapellan casualties.”

“The war,” she repeated sarcastically. “That excuses everything, doesn’t it? And maybe, just maybe—although I’m still not convinced—that was the only way to free the League from the Empire. Or at least the most expedient one. But they’re inured to killing now, to destruction, to that entire mind-set of using violence as a way to solve conflict. We might as well reinstate human sacrifice. I won’t let that happen. I’ll use every means I have to see that every last one of Soerensen’s terrorists is put in prison.”