Читать книгу Swan Song - Brian Stableford - Страница 7

CHAPTER FOUR

I grabbed my packsack, which contained virtually nothing except some clothes and some junk (eyeshades, a few tools, a miniature medical kit), and I didn’t pause to say good-bye to my ship. Sam spent a couple of minutes rummaging in his bunk locker and in his engine room, filling up his pockets with anything that looked potentially useful. Then we slipped out of the belly of the ship into the shadow of the fins. The cargo, unevenly distributed over an area of thirty or forty square yards, gave us some cover while we dodged away from the ship and barrelled across the field.

The gang of laborers who were trucking out toward us didn’t see us, and we didn’t see anyone else skulking in the shadows. Soulier shouldn’t have let Haeckel call the ship. It was a mistake—I thought. We made it through the perimeter fence and into the bush without the slightest suspicion of trouble. We pat clear of the environs in a matter of minutes.

We were out of breath, but we didn’t stop. We pushed ourselves on into the darkness.

At first we were traveling across land where human feet had undoubtedly trod—and trod often. Several times we skirted fields where the locals were trying to persuade things to grow or rear meat animals. The only thing which attempted to get in our way at any time was a cow. It must have sensed that I didn’t like cows, because it thought better of it when we came too close.

Eventually, however, we got out into some real wild country—moor and scrub. When dawn came we were dog tired, and making very little progress across the countryside. When gray daylight came the wind seemed sharper and the air seemed colder. It was crystal clear.

There wasn’t a hint of mist close to the ground or cloud up in the sky. The big red sun was a long time dragging himself up over the horizon, and even when he was pushing on clear into the sky it didn’t seem to get any warmer.

We’d stopped running, but we kept on making what pace we could. Sam moved with surprising ease and tirelessness—I think he was trading on a certain excitement and the sheer hell of it. It was largely desperation that kept my feet going.

We didn’t pause until we hit the road. Sam was pleased when we did and he reckoned we ought to follow it. At least we’d know we were going somewhere, and we shouldn’t find it too difficult to make ourselves unobtrusive if someone happened along that we’d rather not meet.

I trusted his judgment, and it made walking a little easier.

We ended up sometime after noon in a vast complex of fields which were in the process of being marked out for management on a grand scale. Some of the land was cleared, some of it was already under cultivation, but there were signs that this was quite an old plan which had somehow failed to get off the ground completely. It suggested optimism rather than determination. There was equipment lying around on the edges of fields which nature was in the process of reinvading, and it was both old and dilapidated. A big bulldozer sat on the crest of a ridge nearly half a mile away, looking functional enough, but this was someone’s unrealized dream, not the lifeblood of a world. From the crest of that same rise, when we reached it, we could see the whole scope of the project and get the feel of its hollowness. The land was dotted with long, low buts and barns that looked like slices cut off a railway tunnel, semicircular in section. In one of these we stopped for our first rest, and to catch up on some of the sleep we’d missed out on the night before.

It wasn’t provided with all the comforts of home, but among the paraphernalia which some kind person had left behind—a long time before, to judge by the dust—was a heating unit and some moldy sugar. Sam had some coffee, and when all the resources were pooled we had the foundation of a hot meal.

The simple victory of being able to heat and sweeten some gruel, and to wash down the sticky stuff with a cup of coffee made me feel a great deal better. Such small things can make an appreciable difference to one’s ability to look inevitable misfortune squarely in the eyes.

We went to sleep.

They arrested us before we woke up and ran us in for jumping ship and leaving port without authorization. Under the law, that made us liable for the smallest of fines, and it seemed an awful lot of trouble for the cops to have gone to. But they knew exactly where to find us. It was only a matter of driving out in a jeep.

They actually handcuffed us before carrying us back to town.

We had to share a cell because there were only two, and until we came in both contained some poor unfortunate who was still sleeping off the night before. We couldn’t expect that they’d put real desperadoes like us in with harmless individuals like that, so they let one of the drunks go home. He left his smell behind, though.

The cops never vouchsafed more than a couple of grunts in reply to any of my witty comments or polite questions. They were just doing what came naturally.

We didn’t have long to wait for visitors. Haeckel and Soulier came together. Not quite hand-in-hand, but almost.

Haeckel thanked the cops very kindly and explained that he probably wouldn’t want to press charges once he’d talked it over with us, but he’d like to give them a little present to compensate them for their trouble and demonstrate due appreciation for all their most welcome cooperation.

They took the gratuity without a murmur, all in the course of the day’s work. They knew that it wasn’t the captain’s money, and they knew that next time he was on Erica he’d be as likely to spit in their eye and howl at them for letting dogs shit in the street, but the first thing that you learn in police school is not to be surprised at the weird ways of the world. Cops have to take things calmly. They accepted the cash philosophically and collected the keys to the cell.

Soulier, meanwhile, ambled over to the cell and favored me with a patronizing smile. His face looked even more artificial in the daylight, but it wasn’t anywhere near as artificial as his benign expression.

“I put a tag on you,” he said. “While I was standing beside you in the crumb parlor. Before you even noticed I was there. You’ve been radiating like an electric skunk ever since.”

“You can’t win ’em all,” I said venomously.

“You can’t win,” he said.

I’d already figured that out. I didn’t bother to offer him any further opportunity to gloat. The fact that I hadn’t guessed about the tap before I started running left a bad taste in my mouth. I felt like a mug. Being gathered into the gaping jaws of Caradoc was one thing, being made a monkey was quite something else. At that particular moment I almost felt worse about the recent past than I did about the imminent future.

When they unlocked the door I felt a truly powerful temptation to smash one or two of Soulier’s pretty-white teeth into the back of his throat. I quelled it. It wasn’t the gentlemanly thing to do, and he’d only go and buy some more.

As I walked out, Haeckel grinned at Sam, and gave me a peculiar look that I couldn’t quite decipher. Maybe it was something like an apology for having rowed in with my nemesis. Perhaps it had some sadness because he was losing a great pilot and gaining only a mitt-full of filthy lucre. Perhaps there was also some amusement there, because I was a poor fool.

“You shouldn’t have done it, Sam,” he said. He was prepared to be friendly. Half-friendly at least.

“Fuck off,” said Sam, perhaps unwisely. He wasn’t feeling friendly at all. He was feeling deflated. He obviously realized that he was overstepping the mark, because he amended himself in a lower voice. “I mean, fuck off, sir.” The comment was directed inward, as though he were reprimanding himself for forgetting the addition.

“If you want to stay here that bad,” said Haeckel, evenly but without any remaining trace of the fake bonhomie, “I can get along without you. A kid of six could push that engine as well as you.”

“Yes, Captain,” said Sam. He sounded rather tired.

“Shall we go?” said Soulier.

And then the door opened. I don’t think I’ve ever been more pleased to see anyone in all my life. Maybe if it had been Titus Charlot himself, or even Nick delArco, my delight would have been tempered by a feeling that I’d been maneuvered right back into the net without my feet even touching the ground, and that Soulier was only a pawn in a greater game. But it was Denton. A man who stood not only for New Alexandrian cunning, but for New Roman law.

Denton was a guy who could be liked.

“I thought you weren’t going to make it,” I said.

Neither Haeckel nor Sam Parks had realized that the situation was materially changed, because Denton was wearing a police uniform, and people in police uniforms do have a tendency to walk in and out of police stations all the time. But the local cops were under no such illusion, and Soulier suddenly looked very, very nasty indeed.

The man who’d accepted the notes from Haeckel, and who still had the cash clasped in his clammy little hand, was a bright crimson color.

“This is quite amazing,” said Denton suavely. “I hardly thought that you’d have arrested the man before I arrived with the warrant.”

The blushing man let his jaw drop slightly, and then he began to gather himself together.

But Soulier wasn’t going to hang around while this thing was sorted right out from under his nose. He cut in before the cop had got halfway through identifying himself, and interposed his bulk between Denton and the desk.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he demanded. All my illusions were shattered. He’d seemed such a nice, clever, self-controlled man.

“I’m Commander Denton,” said my rescuer—he appeared to have come in for some fast promotion. “I have a warrant for the apprehension of a man called Grainger.” He dug into his pocket and brought out a gray envelope. Soulier reached for it but Denton moved it slickly out of his reach.

“Who is this man?” he demanded of the desk attendant.

“You know damn well who I am,” said Soulier. “And you can’t have Grainger. He’s been arrested for jumping ship and he has to stand trial here.”

“The charge was dropped,” I put in.

“No it wasn’t,” said Haeckel, who appeared to have caught on to the fact that he was about to wake up from his dream of avarice. “I only said I might drop it when I thought it over. The charges stand.”

“He bribed the cop, too,” I said. Not that it was relevant, but I felt that it might help the discussion along.

Denton reached out his hand and eased Soulier to one side. He presented the warrant to the man at the desk and said, “I demand that you release the man called Grainger into my custody instantly. Whether or not he has committed a minor offense on this world is quite immaterial. You’ll find that my warrant takes precedence. If you care to check the papers you’ll find everything in order. You may, if you wish, apply for him to be extradited from New Alexandria in order to face charges here, once he has been tried there.”

“I’ll have to check with the chief,” said the desk cop.

“Do it now,” said Denton.

“Yes, sir,” said the cop, and moved back from the desk into the small room where the communications panel was situated. Denton moved past Soulier to stand in front of me. Haeckel took an instinctive step backward. Soulier suddenly looked rather isolated in the middle of the floor.

“I thought you were Titus Charlot’s bodyguard,” I said.

“Promotion,” he told me. “I’m an odd-job man now.”

“So Titus wants me home.”

Denton shook his head slightly. “Titus doesn’t want Caradoc to get a tape of your memory. He feels that it would embarrass him. We could hardly have anticipated anything along these lines, but nobody can keep anything secret these days. We caught on, and we moved as fast as we could.”

“You came out in the Swan?”

He shook his head. “The Swan’s in dry dock,” he said. “Not in use. No crew. Titus has the sister ship up in the air now, and he’s taken it for a little spin around the inner rim. Place called Darlow. Observation and experiment. You know it?”

I’d never heard of it, and I said so. I asked him exactly what was going to happen to me once he got me off Erica and away from Caradoc.

Soulier came back in at this point. “I’d like to hear the answer to that as well,” he said. “This man is an employee of the Caradoc Company.”

“Like hell I am,” I protested.

“Yes you are,” he insisted. “We bought your ship.”

“Haeckel said you chartered it!” We both turned to the captain for confirmation.

“We own it,” said Soulier definitely. “Don’t we, Captain?”

Haeckel hesitated, open-mouthed.

“It’s not his to sell,” Sam intervened. “He can’t sell it.”

“He’s the authorized agent of his owners,” said Soulier smoothly. “And he sold the ship to me on their behalf last night. For thirty-five thousand.” He looked at Haeckel like a snake hypnotizing a rabbit.

Haeckel’s eyes flickered away, resting first on my face and then on Denton’s. He licked his lips and weighed his chances, while everybody waited to hear what he had to say.

“You bought it,” he said, and then added, “for forty-five thousand.”

Soulier looked as if he wanted to kick the captain in the face.

“Moron,” commented Sam. He put his face close to my ear and whispered, “That extra ten thou will go to the owners. He’d have got more kickback from Soulier than he will from them.” I agreed with him. Haeckel was a bit of an idiot.

“It makes no difference who the hell owns the ship,” I said. “I resign. I’m entitled.”

“Can’t you understand,” said Denton, who sounded tired in the face of all this desperate wrangling, “that it doesn’t matter at all. It makes not the slightest difference. He’s under arrest and he’s going back to New Alexandria with me. Things can be sorted out there. Things will have to be sorted out there.”

I felt like a parcel with an obscure address.

“Any claim,” continued Denton, “by the police on this world, or by anyone else, will have to come up to the court at Civitas Solis on New Alexandria. There it will be dealt with properly and legally.”

“Want to bet on your chances?” I asked Soulier.

“Don’t get too cocky,” Denton said to me, with a slight edge on his voice. “This law will have to deal with you, too. That warrant’s real. You take your chances in court like everybody else. And the law on New Alexandria doesn’t take bribes, nor does it appreciate your kind of humor. I should temper your exultancy if I were you.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “I love you too.”

“Well, then—” said Denton.

The chief of police finally made it through the door, banged it shut, looked around as if wondering which of us to shoot, and then demanded to know why his police station looked more like a railway station.

Denton and Soulier went to sort it out, leaving Sam and Captain Haeckel and myself in the corner. I shrugged, and went back into the cell to sit down. Sam looked at Haeckel, then at me, and he joined me. He shut the door behind him.

The captain stared at us through the bars. “Parks,” he said, “you’re out of a job.”

“Yeah,” said Sam, “and you’re out of a friend.”

“What the hell is going on here7” screamed the drunk in the other cell.

I felt suddenly and wonderfully serene. Events had caught up with me and I had no idea at all where it was going to lead—except that I wasn’t going to be forcibly augMENTed and have my memories exhibited to all kinds of prying eyes. Even if I was still booked to get my feet blistered I was well clear of the frying pan.

“All go, isn’t it?” I commented.