Part 47 (2/2)

HAGEN: Alex can take care of himself. Now that Papa's started d-jumping, he needs Manion more than ever. Still-have you tried to farspeak Walter in Kyllikki recently?

VEIKKO: It wouldn't have been much use, with us camping in valleys every night to keep out of easy fa.r.s.ense range of the Firvulag. Would I try for Walter when I couldn't even raise you?

HAGEN: Well, do it. Now that you're parked halfway up the highest mountain on Earth, you might have a chance of making contact.

VEIKKO: All right. If my brain cells haven't blunk out from oxygen starvation. Anything specific you want to know?

HAGEN: Morale conditions aboard s.h.i.+p. Whether the magnates still favour snuffing us. Whether Papa still leans toward the steel-fist-in-velvet-glove approach. Hints on how he plans to use the X-lasers. On his d-jumping itinerary and manoeuvring with the King and Elizabeth ... Would Walter tell you the truth about any of that?

VEIKKO: Jeez, Hagen, I don't know. He wants us to get away just as much as Alex does. ButHAGEN: Uh-huh. I'd be more inclined to trust him if he wasn't driving that schooner so efficiently, VEIKKO: I'll try to farspeak him tonight. In the wee hours of the morning, that is. He usually took the midwatch in the old days. But don't get your hopes up. I'm not the farspeaker Vaughn Jarrow was.

HAGEN: You're not the f.u.c.king idiot Vaughn was, either. Do your best.

VEIKKO: One other thing.

HAGEN: ?.

VEIKKO: Now that we're camped in an exposed position, we're liable to be spotted by more than Firvulag ... Hagen, what if Marc shows up here? I know he can't carry any weapons.

But he wouldn't need to. If those mountain climbers are mus.h.i.+ng along in a tricky place, just one little pushHAGEN: G.o.d, yes. At that conference tomorrow, warn Basil and the others of the possibility.

VEIKKO: And?

HAGEN: Don't take any chances. If Papa comes onto that mountain, kill him on sight.

Irena O'Malley carried a fresh load of steaming plates out of the cook-hut, plopped them onto the buffet table, checked the coffee urn, then decided to take a short break from her ch.o.r.es to see how Veikko was getting along. She climbed the slope above the camp to where he was sitting, alone on a flat rock in the suns.h.i.+ne, among scattered patches of old snow. He was still immured in misery, his slight body hunched in an untidy lotus posture while he seemed to contemplate the precipitous foreslope, which reared above them like a petrified tsunami wave crested with hanging glaciers. To the east was the huge Gresson Icefall; and beyond it, the cloud-plumed summit of Monte Rosa.

”Headache still bad, sweetheart?” Irena inquired. Veikko responded with a wan smile. She gestured at his nearly untouched breakfast. ”Didn't you care for the squiche?”

”It tasted great, Rena. Really. I'm just not hungry. Alt.i.tude, maybe.”

She knelt beside him among tufted alpine plants, a tall and robust young woman with glossy black hair done up in nononsense pigtails. Laying a solicitous hand on his shoulder, she tried to slide her redaction into his mind, only to come up against the same barrier of mysterious grief that had frustrated her earlier attempt at comfort. ”If you'd only let me in, I could help! What is it with you this morning? And don't you try to fob me off with rubbish about alt.i.tude sickness.”

He bit his lip and refused to meet her eyes. As she put her arms around him, he shed the last vestiges of self-control, struggling like a trapped wild creature. ”Tell me,” she insisted.

He had shut his eyes, and now tears forced their way beneath trembling lids. ”I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But you'll have to know sooner or later. They all will!”

”Veikko, tell me.”

”Last night I finally managed to farspeak Walter on Kyllikki.

He told me-something terrible's happened. Helayne Strangford went over the edge. Turned violent. Ten days ago, she-she-Marc was away d-jumping and none of the others on board suspected what she was up to. You know what a clever screener she is. And-she killed people.”

Irena's fingers dug into Veikko's shoulders. ”Who?”

”Barry Dalembert's father. And the two Keoghs-not that Nial will give a d.a.m.n, that coldhearted swine!”

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