The Light That Never Was (28 page)

“How many human casualties?”

“Jorno and Brance. A few critical injuries among Jorno’s men, one is expected to die. Five known dead Zrilunders, they took their injured and maybe some of their dead with them. The battle didn’t last long after Jorno’s men arrived with weapons. The Zrilunders didn’t have any.”

“They had plenty of explosives and flammables,” Wargen observed.

“Demron is trying to find out how many boats were used. The Zrilunders he’s caught won’t talk.”

“I want to see them,” Wargen said.

As they walked toward the pier, he stopped once and looked back. “I suppose, being meszs, they have no anger.”

“Being meszs, they don’t judge us by the humans who attacked them, but by the humans who died in their defense. It’s just as well. They can’t get angry at us and leave, they have no place to go.”

Three Zrilund fishing boats were tied up at Jorno’s pier. The sullen Zrilunders, those who had not been injured, were under guard in Jorno’s warehouse.

Wargen spoke to one sitting near the door. “Among your other good works of last night you managed to blow up the engines and the keel of the new underwater ferry the meszs were building for you.”

“Generous of them,” the Zrilunder drawled, “considering that they blew up the old ones. It costs them nothing to say they were building it for Zrilund—they know Zrilund is ruined and couldn’t pay their price anyway. Actually, they were building it for Jorno’s resort.”

“It was to be a gift,” Wargen said. “A gift of gratitude for the alleged hospitality of the people of Donov. Now they’ll rebuild the motors and try to finish the thing before you grateful Zrilunders blow it up again.”

The Zrilunder met his eyes with a mocking grin. Wargen turned away.

“What was it you wanted to find out?” Eritha asked.

“Whether the madness of the riot worlds has come to Donov. It has.”

Bron Demron had set up his headquarters in Jorno’s mansion. He was energetically directing the search for the missing boats and at the same time wondering what he was going to do with them when he’d caught them.

“Those characters claim they were fishing last night,” he said indignantly. “They haven’t been able to explain what a Zrilund boat is doing fishing off Rinoly with a capacity load of passengers, some of them wounded, but I’d feel better with a few witnesses.”

“Eritha can identify some of them,” Wargen reminded him.

Demron smiled at her. “So she can. I’d forgotten about that.”

“Have you found out where they got the explosives?”

“No, but I will. Say—would you two like to hear a confession? One of Jorno’s men is dying upstairs, he was caught in an explosion, and he keeps saying he wants to confess. Then he talks gibberish.”

Wargen nodded agreeably. “Gibberish is just what this situation needs.”

Eritha suppressed her shattering memory of the mesz fingers and followed the doctor and Wargen into the dying man’s room; but this victim appeared to be untouched.

“His legs were blown off,” the doctor whispered. “Many fragments of stone penetrated his body.”

Wargen stepped to the bed. “What is it you have to confess, fellow?”

“The riots!” the patient gasped.

“What about them?”

“The riots!”

Wargen coaxed patiently, but the man kept repeating the same two words. Finally they withdrew, and the doctor said, “It sounds as though he was on one of the riot worlds, and he thinks the same thing has happened here.”

“What happened last night must have been a very palpable imitation of the rioting,” Wargen agreed.

“He hasn’t been rational since he was brought here, and he’s under heavy sedation.”

“I understand. Just the same, I’d like to have a servant stationed here. If he says anything more, it should be written down.”

Demron was waiting for them. Two more Zrilund fishing boats had been captured, and he wanted to find out whether Eritha could identify any of the men already in custody. Wargen left her there and went to pay his respects to his mother, the countess.

She had found herself obliged to assume the role of hostess under circumstances as trying as any that had perplexed a Wargen in all of that family’s illustrious history. In one bedroom lay a dead animaloid. The countess had refrained from pointing out that its fur would make the most magnificent garments she or anyone else had ever seen. She sensed that some would consider the remark in bad taste, and a Wargen did not make remarks in bad taste. In another bedroom reposed an elderly woman of dubious character, worthless ancestry, and precarious health. She seemed likely to expire at any moment and the countess accepted this fact as confirmation of her lack of breeding. The carnage of the previous night had produced casualties much more urgently in need of medical attention than a woman afflicted by old age and the loss of a friend, so the doctor had been forced to leave Anna’s fate in the hands of the countess, who received it unwillingly. In the third bedroom lay her own long-time friend and companion, Lilya Vaan, who had chosen a most inconvenient moment to go completely to pieces. This offended the countess less than the fact that Lilya was so obviously enjoying it.

As a hostess must, the countess was coping. Relentlessly she made the rounds: Medicine and a surface bath for Anna, fresh sheets wrapped about her perspiring old body, a servant left to keep watch over her. A quick look at Lilya Vaan, an exchange of insults, Lilya accusing the countess of being a parasite that fattened itself upon the misery of its friends, and the countess answering that she was running the flesh from her bones looking after a lazy hypochondriac. She darkened the room, told Lilya to rest if her conscience would permit it, and left her. Next she glanced at Franff’s body, wondering what sort of death rites such creatures observed. Perhaps none. She could think of nothing to do with him or for him, death was such a risky thing to tamper with, so many silly prejudices existed. For herself, all she wanted was flowers, music, and a whiff or two of incense, something to please the sight, hearing, and scent of the mourners if there were any; but there were humans to whom all three would seem offensive. With another covetous glance at Franff’s fur, she left him.

Then her son arrived.

“I don’t suppose,” she told him bitterly, “that you came down here to succor your poor old mother in her time of trial. You merely came on some silly government business.”

“Very serious government business,” Wargen said soberly, “and you’re a part of it. You had a narrow escape last night. Eritha says you were heroic.”

“Does she, indeed!” The countess sniffed haughtily. Then she said, a touch of awe in her voice, “Eritha—did you hear what Eritha did?”

“No. Obviously it’s something I’m not likely to hear from her, or she would have told me. Did she disgrace herself?”

“Disgrace herself? Eritha?” The countess eyed him indignantly. “She’s a remarkable young woman. All she did was save our lives. Sit down, please.”

Wargen did so, wonderingly.

“Neal, I’ve been thinking for some time that you should be getting married. And I think the little Korak girl would make an excellent wife for you. She has neither wealth nor lineage, but surely we Wargens already have ample of either. There was something quite—quite regal about her, the way she faced danger. I don’t know how she comes by it, but she certainly has it. Those men had just murdered Franff and Mr. Jorno, and I knew we would be next, and she just stepped forward and ruled them. She told them to go away, and she slapped their faces, and they went! No queen could have done it better. Would you like me to speak to her grandfather, Pet?”

Wargen smiled at her affectionately. “Mother dearest, ever since Eritha was sixteen I’ve been asking her to marry me at every suitable opportunity. I have confidence that eventually she’ll consent. In the meantime, she keeps telling me that one of us still has some growing up to do. I have the uneasy suspicion that she may mean me.”

“Perhaps if I spoke with her grandfather—”

“No, Mother. Eritha will decide when she is to marry, and whom. No one knows that better than Ian Korak.”

“I see. I do have one piece of advice for you. If, after you marry, she’s ever afflicted with one of these silly whims about buying paintings—let her!”

Wargen felt both irritated and concerned because the attack on Mestil Island came without warning. His first act after Eritha’s call was to attempt, unsuccessfully, to reach Rearm Hylat. His second was to send men to Zrilund to find out what had happened. Now, using the rotunda’s communication center, he managed to get in touch with them, and he learned that Hylat, alive and furiously angry, had been a prisoner in his own adde cellar since before the fleet left Zrilund.

Wargen returned to Jorno’s mansion. Demron reported the capture of another Zrilund fishing boat, and added, “Oh, about the man who wanted to confess.”

“Did he succeed?”

“He died. He babbled about riots right to the end, but he never actually said anything. Eritha’s waiting for you in Jorno’s study.”

She looked very small indeed seated behind the vastness of Jorno’s ornate worktable, with the rows of book drawers looming behind her. She had lost her anger; now she seemed saddened and perplexed.

He smiled at her wistfully. It had been some weeks since he last proposed, but this seemed an unpropitious moment for resuming a courtship. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Exercising my curiosity.”

“On what?”

She indicated the heavily bound tomes scattered about the table. She had sketched something on the table’s work screen, and Wargen regarded it with puzzlement. “That looks like the chart on the wall of my office. Did you memorize it?”

She shook her head. “Jorno made the same study you did, only he didn’t visualize it.”

“He studied the riots?”

She nodded.

“Did he get any further with them than I did?”

“I don’t know how far he got, but he studied them in person. The man who wanted to confess was a long-time employee of Jorno’s and a crewman on Jorno’s private yacht—when the yacht is in port much of the crew works at odd jobs here on the estate. So if that particular employee of Jorno’s knew anything about the riots, it very likely concerned something that happened while he was on duty on Jorno’s yacht. I found the yacht’s logbooks here, and I checked the dates and plotted them, and the result is a chart like yours.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Jorno was extremely concerned about the refugees, you know, and he seems to have visited almost all of the riot worlds. We may never know what he learned, but if one of his crewmen was experiencing hallucinations about the riots—”

“Let me see that,” Wargen said. He seated himself beside her and scowled at the chart. “Are you certain these dates are correct?”

“They’re what the log says.”

“You didn’t go back far enough. Or maybe Jorno started too late. He visited worlds long after the rioting started and in reverse order. Let me have a look.” He opened one of the heavy volumes, found the date at which Eritha had started charting, and began leafing the pages backward. “No,” he said finally, “he followed the riots right from the beginning.”

When Demron came in he found them gazing at each other perplexedly. Eritha said to him, “This employee of Jorno’s who just died—the one who wanted to confess. What was his name?”

“Jac Grawla.”

“Since he was a crewman on Jorno’s yacht, don’t you think it might be interesting to find out if any of the others have anything to confess?”

Demron seated himself on the opposite side of the table. “How would I go about finding out a thing like that?”

“Have one in and ask him.”

“From what you saw of Jorno’s men last night, you ought to know that it’d take more than a stem look to make one confess.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t if he thought Grawla told you all about it.”

Demron nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Jorno’s men don’t know that Grawla spoke nothing but gibberish. I don’t suppose there’s much to lose by trying.” He stepped to the door, snapped an order, and returned to his chair.

Minutes passed. The yacht crewmen had their quarters in a separate building, and they were being detained there—not because their defense of the meszs had violated any law, but because Demron thought they might be needed for further interrogation.

Finally one of them shuffled in—an enormous hulk of a man who had faced far worse dangers than a world superintendent of police without quailing. He said, “You want me?”

“Name?” Demron asked.

“Sair Rondil.”

“Have you heard that Jac Grawla died?”

“I heard he was going to.”

Demron nodded. “The doctor did his best, but there was no chance at all of saving his life. Grawla knew it, and before he died he made a full confession about the riots. Since you were with him—he named you and several others—”

He broke off because Rondil was gone. Without a word he wheeled and sprinted for the door, flung it open, and disappeared. Demron sprang after him to shout an order; Wargen and Eritha stepped to a window and saw Rondil speeding along the drive with panicky, leaping strides.

“Give him time to tell the others before you catch him,” Wargen suggested.

“Right. Then I’ll question them one at a time. Sooner or later one will talk, though I can’t imagine what it is you expect him to say.”

“Neither can I. The one thing I do know is that we need to look closely at Jorno’s personal affairs. His attorney is Medil Favic.”

“I’ll send for him,” Demron promised.

“Before you go off to chase the crewmen, would you send in Jorno’s steward?”

The steward shuffled in quietly. His eyes were red with weeping, his lank old body stooped under a blow from which it would never recover. He had served the family more years than Jorno was old, he regarded Jorno more as a son than an employer, but he was bearing up bravely. The police, the doctors, the injured persons had to be considered guests, Jorno would have wanted it that way, and there was work to be done.

Wargen greeted him courteously, got him seated, and explained the problem. “We need to know a few things about Mr. Jorno. Perhaps you could help us. Are you familiar with his Good Works?”