Voyage Across the Stars (81 page)

“Dismissed!” called Herne Lordling. The ranks broke up. Men scrambled to the vans. Dewey and Bonilla from navigation, and Petit and Moiseyev from the engine room, boarded the empty vehicle. The rest split among the vans carrying crated weapons.

Deke turned and shook the adjutant’s hand. “Hey, good luck,” he said. “Sure you wouldn’t like a little company?”

Tadziki smiled wanly. “We’ve gotten this far, haven’t we?” he said. “What can happen now?”

Motors revved. Deke ran down the ramp and jumped in through the open back of a van as his brother drove it away.

“I, ah . . .” the customs supervisor said. “Where are they going with all those weapons? I realize that it’s technically beyond my competence, but. . .”

Tadziki watched the vehicles until they disappeared around a maintenance building. The mobile crane he’d rented was in a lot on the north edge of the spaceport, convenient to their destination.

“They’re going to take them back to the warehouse,” Tadziki said at last. “They’re Doormann Trading Company property, you realize?”

“Yes, of course,” the supervisor said. “Most of them. I’m familiar with the manifest, of course. Some of the serial numbers weren’t—but that’s not a serious matter. As I said, we had no intention of delaying you gentlemen needlessly. And the individuals’data were in order from your initial entry to Telaria.”

He paused. The inspectors under his direction waited on the concrete, murmuring among themselves and glancing at the battered black hull of the
Swift.

Tadziki stared northward, toward Landfall City and the Doormann family estate beyond it. He blinked and looked at the supervisor again. “Eh?” Tadziki said. “Sorry, did you say something?”

“I notice,” the supervisor said, “that your men are still wearing their uniforms?”

“Well, what else do you expect them to wear?” the adjutant snapped. “This wasn’t exactly a pleasure cruise, you know, with twelve trunks for every passenger.”

He waved toward the rumpled disaster area which the vessel’s interior had become.

“Anyway,” he continued in a milder voice, “they aren’t uniform. Not here. They’re battledress from as many different units as there were men aboard. And if you mean the commo helmets—”

Tadziki gave the supervisor a wry grin

“—we’re used to using them, you know. I’ve downloaded routes and locations into the helmet files.”

The supervisor nodded. It was all perfectly reasonable, but he felt uncomfortable. This wasn’t a standard task. The pilot who was in charge while Tadziki made calls said that one of the Doormann family had cleared through a number of passengers without even registering them. Well, what could you do when your superiors wouldn’t let you do your job?

He shook himself back to the present. “I’m sorry, Master Tadziki,” he said. “We both have business to attend, I’m sure. I shouldn’t be wasting your time.”

“All I have to do,” Tadziki said, staring out of the hatch, “is to wait. But I’m not in a mood for company right now, that’s a fact.”

The supervisor stepped down the ramp. “Come on, all of you,” he ordered as his subordinates stiffened at his notice. “The
Puritan
landed half an hour ago with seven hundred passengers on board!”

The
Swift’
s
adjutant had gone back inside. The supervisor didn’t know how the man stood it. The vessel made
him
extremely nervous.

“Look, I don’t know if I ought to be doing this,” Platt whined at the door to the basement laboratory.

“Will somebody
please
make a fucking decision?” grated the foreman of the cargo handlers carrying the capsule. The load wasn’t exceptionally heavy for the four-man team, but the seedy-looking attendant was obviously capable of dithering for hours.

Carron Del Vore snapped his fingers. “What do you mean you don’t
know,
dog?” he demanded. “You’ve got orders from the chamberlain, haven’t you?”

“All
I got,” the attendant said, “is somebody called and said she was the chamberlain. Look, I think you better bring me something in hard copy. I don’t know you from Adam and these guys, they don’t belong in the spire at
all.”

Platt straightened. He fumblingly tried to return the electronic key to the belt case from which he’d taken it a moment before.

Carron looked at the cargo handlers. “Set that down,” he ordered. “On its base, and
carefully.
Then beat this creature unconscious and open the door.”

“No!” Platt bleated.

“Suits me,” said the foreman. The crew tilted the empty capsule to set it down as Carron ordered.

Though Platt spilled most of the contents of his case onto the floor, he managed to hold on to the key. He pressed it against the lockplate. The cargo handlers started for him an instant before the heavy door began to open.

“No!” Platt said, squeezing himself against the doorjamb and raising thin arms against the threatened blows.

“That’s enough,” Carron said to the foreman. “Carry the device to the platform at the other end of the room. I’ll show you exactly where it goes.”

The men sighed and lifted the capsule again. One of them spat on the attendant as they passed him.

“We’re going to be on overtime before we get back,” the foreman muttered. “And
won’t
Kardon tear a strip off me? As if I could do anything about the estate staff getting its finger out of its bum
every
curst door we had to get through.”

“Hey, did you see Kardon having to hold his pants up?” another handler said. “Whoo-ee, I’d have liked to see when that happened!”

The carefully positioned lights flooded the lab and everyone in it with their radiance. Carron watched nervously as the crew wound its way between benches and free-standing equipment. For all their nonchalance, the men didn’t bang the capsule into anything. Platt peered from the doorway, scowl ing and rubbing his shoulder as if he’d been punched.

“What is this place, anyway?” a man asked querulously.

“Don’t move the mirrors out of alignment!” Carron warned. The crew was edging its way to the dais. It wasn’t clear that it would be possible to put the capsule back
without
moving one of the pentagonal black mirrors that ringed the location.

“Don’t have kittens!” the foreman snapped. He paused, judging the relative shapes and sizes. “All right, Hoch, let go now.”

The man at the base of the capsule with the foreman obediently stepped away. The foreman eased forward, ducking his shoulder. By keeping the device low, he managed to dip it under the narrowest point and then raise it to clear the dais.

“There!” he announced with justifiable pride. He lowered the ring base, and his men lifted together to set the capsule upright.

“We’re not done yet,” Carron said sharply.

He switched on a measuring device from the kit he’d brought with him from Pancahte. It projected a hologram of the capsule taken at the moment Lendell Doormann vanished from Telaria for the next seventy years and compared the recording with present reality.

“There, you see?” Carron said. “The orange points are out of synchrony. Turn it clockwise ten degrees and move it a centimeter closer to the wall.”

Two of the cargo handlers moved to obey. The foreman waved them back. He viewed the image, then spread his arms around the capsule and himself began the minute adjustments.

Carron watched his measurement device tensely. The areas of orange slipped into the cooler end of the spectrum. “That’s far enough!” he cried as the foreman’s boot scraped the capsule the necessary distance toward the wall. “But keep turning, another degree.”

The foreman’s face was set. His mouth was open, and he watched the holographic display out of the corner of his eyes. The display wavered into the violet range then back toward indigo. He released the last pressure and stepped away, breathing hard. The main image was violet again.

“There!” he said.

The door of the capsule showed red to orange on the display. It had been closed when Lendell Doormann vanished. The foreman put his hand on the curved panel to swing it shut.

“No!” Carron cried, grabbing the man’s arm. “No, don’t do that! This is fine, this is perfect the way it is.”

The foreman shrugged. “Whatever,” he said. He stepped out between two mirrors. “You know,” he added, “this is a spooky place.”

“It is?” said Carron in puzzlement. “I wouldn’t have said so.”

The cargo handlers were sauntering back toward the door. “No, I don’t guess you would,” one of them muttered loud enough to be heard.

Carron walked out of the laboratory behind the crew. The lights cut off automatically. Platt shut the door, avoiding the eyes of the visitors.

Carron paused and looked at the attendant. “I have the phone number of your station,” he said. “You or someone else will be present at all times, is that not so?”

“Yeah, it’s fucking so,” Platt muttered. “Unless somebody gets me up to dick around in the lab again, at least.”

“I may be calling soon,” Carron said. “You will regret it if you do not carry out to the letter any instructions I may give you.”

But the despicable little man would regret it even more if he
did
do as he was told. . . .

The boardroom of Doormann Trading Company was on the top level of the crystal spire in the center of the family estate. It was nearly an hour before the board readmitted Lucas to its presence. Ned had waited a further hour alone. He paced slowly around the broad walkway which served as an observation deck.

Two guards with submachine guns stood at the ornate bronze doors giving access to the boardroom. There were two more guards at the single elevator which opened onto the observation deck on the opposite side of the circuit. As a further security precaution, before entering the armored boardroom one had to walk all the way around it.

The two guards who’d come up with Lucas Doormann and Ned kept pace behind Ned now. They were bored, but not too bored to remain watchful.

The exterior of the spire was optically pure and had the same refractive index as Telaria’s atmosphere. Though the curved, fluted walls were at no point flat, they did not distort the view.

The view was breathtaking. The Doormann estate spread over hectares of rolling hills in every direction. Ned knew from his view out of the limousine that the surface in the frequent glades and bowers was as carefully manicured as that of the surrounding grassy areas.

Buildings in a mix of styles, mostly those of Terra’s classical and medieval eras, nestled in swales or sat on hillsides. None of the structures had more than two above-ground stories, though from the traffic in and out, some had extensive basements. The aggregate floorspace of the outbuildings probably totaled as much as that of the central spire, but the careful planners had succeeded in preserving the illusion of agrestic emptiness.

Machines and humans in drab uniforms worked like a stirred-up anthill to keep the grounds pristine. Ned noticed that when people in civilian clothes walked near or paused to view the formal gardens, maintenance personnel moved out of the area so as not to disturb them. Most of those who lived within the estate were the Doormanns’ servants and office staff, but even they had the status of minor nobility on Telaria.

One of the buildings on the grounds was the Doormann family chapel. Ned would learn where it was when he needed to; which would be very soon, unless his interview with Karel Doormann proceeded in an unexpectedly reasonable fashion.

The door to the boardroom opened with only the sigh of air and the faint trembling from the electromagnets which supported and moved the massive panel. Ned turned. Lucas Doormann walked out. “Master Slade,” he said, “the board is prepared to see you now.”

“Yes,” said Ned as he stepped forward. The entranceway was constructed on the model of an airlock. An iridium-sheathed panel closed the inner end whenever the main door was open. The designers had taken no chances with a guard going berserk and spraying the boardroom with his submachine gun.

The outer panel slid shut behind Ned and Lucas. Ned felt as if he were riding a monocycle at high speed across glare ice. At any moment he could lose his balance and go flying, and he had no control at all . . .

The inner door snicked upward with the speed of a microtome blade. It was time.

Eight men and three women faced Ned from around the oval central table. There was an empty place for Lucas, who remained at Ned’s side.

Karel Doormann was neither the oldest nor the most expensively dressed of the board members, but his dominance would have been obvious even had he not been seated at the head of the table. He watched Ned with the smile of a cat preparing to spring.

“Mesdames and sirs,” Ned said, taking off his commo helmet. His voice was clear and cool. He spoke as the peer of any of these folk. “I am here to tell you of a necessary deception. Lissea Doormann is alive on Dell, awaiting the outcome of this meeting.”

Karel Doormann’s smile broadened. His son made a startled sound. A heavyset man leaned close to the woman beside him to whisper, but both of them kept their eyes on Ned.

“I say ‘necessary,’” Ned continued, “because Lissea and yourselves have the same basic desire: to avoid trouble. Had she returned with the
Swift,
an underling might have taken actions that were not in the best interests of Doormann Trading, and which might have prejudiced chances of a beneficial outcome.”

“Go on, Master Slade,” Karel Doormann said. There was a catch in his voice between words, like the sound of a whisk on stone. “Explain what you consider a beneficial outcome.”

“Lissea,” Ned said, “Mistress Doormann. Has completed a task that we all know was thought to be impossible. The capsule which she has returned to Telaria has the potential of revolutionizing star travel—and with it the profits of Doormann Trading.”

The board members were silent, facing Ned like a pack of dogs about to move in. The table was black and shiny and slightly distorted on top. It had been made from a single slab of volcanic glass—useless as a working surface, but richly evocative of the power of the men and women who sat
around it.