Part 52 (2/2)

The friar shook his head. ”I'm only a poor old Siberian priest without a metafunction in my skull. How should I know what motivates the likes of Marc Remillard ... or you?”

Elizabeth eyed him for a moment in silence. He was smiling modestly into his half-empty coffee mug. ”It's a shame,” she said at last, ”that you never met an old friend of mine named Claude Majewski. The pair of you would have got on famously.

He was another sly old codger with a wide streak of low cunning.”

”Funny, Sister Roccaro mentioned that, too.” He gave the brandy flask a futile shake, then capped it and put it back in the pocket of his habit. ”I certainly hope there's more of that Martell hidden away in Black Crag cellars. Beats Lourdes water all hollow. You want to go to confession?”

She started. ”No!”

He lifted his hands, palms up, the little smile still in place.

”Easy does it. Just thought I'd ask.” He headed for the kitchen door. ”Any time, though.”

”Why don't you ask him?” she shot out.

”Oh, I did. Three or four days ago, after I'd stolen his coverall, thinking it would prevent him from leaving the chalet via his infernal machine.”

”You what”

Anatoly paused with his hand on the latch. ”A futile gesture, as it turned out. He doesn't need the coverall to d-jump. It's only a monitoring convenience. So I gave it back to him.”

”And your offer of spiritual a.s.sistance?”

The friar chuckled, went out the door, and shut it behind him.

CHAPTER FIVE.

”I beseech you to reconsider,” Old Man Kawai said.

He stood on the stoop of Madame Guderian's cottage, holding a tawny little cat in his arms. Three kittens tumbled groggily about his feet. Occasionally one would essay a tentative growl at the two riders on chalikos who loomed in the grey mist of the dooryard.

”You are the one who should remember, Tadanori-san,” said Chief Burke. ”Any day now, the Firvulag are likely to attack Hidden Springs-no matter what Fitharn Pegleg says. He's friendly, but he's only a single individual. And Fort Rusty was the straw that broke the hippy's back. We simply can't trust the Little People any longer. Sharn and Ayfa have lied too many times.”

”It was the Iron Villages that the Firvulag King and Queen wanted to destroy,” the elderly j.a.panese said. ”Because they const.i.tuted a threat. One that is now removed.”

”Eighty-three died at Rusty,” Denny Johnson said. ”Couple hundred more slaughtered in dribs and drabs over the months we've been slowly forced out of the other iron settlements on the Moselle-and at least that many Wounded or missing. This neck of the woods is just too close to the hostiles, Old Man.

Ol' Sharn's been saying 'Hop frog' to us for a long time now.

We just finally clevered up and decided to jump! And you will too, 'less you're ready to die. n.o.body's asking you to go on the Roniah raid. You can join the caravan heading for Nionel.

Lowlives are welcome there, bless the Howler's ugly hearts.”

”I cannot go,” Kawai said, stroking the cat. ”I understand why the rest of you wish to leave this place, but I must stay.”

Burke leaned down from the saddle, proffering a Husqvarna stun-gun. ”At least take this for self-defence.”

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