Part 18 (1/2)

”No. No, I suppose not. It's all part of the human comedy ... or tragedy.”

”We can go now, boss. It's all wound up and waiting.”

”Of course. Then take me back to the quarter, Mr. Corso. I think I must tell Colonel Veeder about this security problem.”

Corso paused, halfway through swinging into the pilot's sling. One hand was raised, grasping a support strut of the airframe's wide canary yellow wings, and half his face was in shadow. He gave me a level, appraising look and said, ”Are you sure you want to do that?”

”The security of the diplomatic quarter is at risk. It's not only Demi Lacombe who could be using that way in and out of the parklands.” When Corso did not reply, I bent and touched the bulge of the blazer, bolstered at my calf. ”Get me back, Mr. Corso. I insist.”

”You will get more people than her into trouble, boss.”

”I will tell Colonel Veeder that your part in this was blameless. That you were under my orders.”

”I'm not just thinking of myself.”

”Yani Hakaiopulos will have to take his chance. I shudder to think what Demi must have done, to gain his secrets.”

”I think it's more a question of what she did to him,” Corso said.

”I have had enough of your impertinence, Mr. Corso. Look sharp, now. I want to get this whole unfortunate business over with.”

”I don't think so, boss.”

”What?”

He let go of the strut and stepped back and said flatly, ”It won't take you long to walk back, even if you have to use the stairs to climb up to the quarter.

And as you always like to remind me, you have your blazer to protect you.”

”Corso! d.a.m.n you Corso, come back here!”

But he did not look back as he walked away across the blackened ruins of the lawn, even when I drew the blazer and blew a dead tree to splinters. I hoped that the shot might attract one of the killing machines which patrolled the city, but although I waited a full ten minutes, nothing stirred. At last, I climbed out of the airframe and began the long walk home.

Seven Uev Veeder took my revelation more calmly than I had thought he would, even though I had taken the precaution of having arranged to meet with him in the presence of Colm Wardsmead, the nominal director of the diplomatic quarter and, therefore, of the entire city. Wardsmead was a s.h.i.+fty, self- satisfied man; although he liked to think of himself as a Medici prince, the effectiveness of his native cunning was limited by his laziness and contempt for others.

I knew that Dev Veeder despised Wardsmead, but also knew that he would not dare lose control of his temper in the director's presence.

”This is all very awkward,” Wardsmead said, when I was done. ”Perhaps you would care to make a recommendation, Colonel Veeder. I am sure that you would want this matter handled discreetly.”

During my exposition, Dev Veeder had stood with his back to the eggshaped room, looking out of the huge window toward the s.h.a.ggy treetops of the parkland.

Without turning around, he said, ”She's supposed to be doing research out there. It would be the best place for an arrest.”

”Away from the excitable gaze of the diplomatic community,” Wardsmead said. ”I quite understand, Colonel.”

He was unable to hide his satisfaction at Dev Veeder's discomfort. Veeder was a war hero and so difficult to discipline, but now Wardsmead believed that he had a stick with which to beat him.

Perhaps Veeder heard something he did not like in Wardsmead's tone. He turned and gave the man a hard stare and said, ”I always do what is best, Mr. Wardsmead, not what is convenient. My men are tracking her as she makes her way back across the main dome. They will allow her to enter the back door to the quarter's parkland, and I will arrest her when she arrives.”

Wardsmead swung to and fro in the cradle of his chair, hands folded across his ample stomach, and said, ”I suppose the question is, once you have arrested her, has she done anything wrong?”

”Consorting with the enemy without permission is a crime,” Dev Veeder said promptly. ”Failing to reveal a weakness in the security of the diplomatic quarter is also a crime. Both are betrayals of trust.”

”Well, there we have it,” Wardsmead said.

”There will have to be a trial,” Dev Veeder told him.

”Oh, now, that would be an unnecessary embarra.s.sment, don't you think? One of the shuttles is due to leave in a couple of days. We can s.h.i.+p her off-”

”There will be a trial,” Dev Veeder said. ”It is a security matter, and the crime was committed outside the diplomatic quarter, so it falls under martial law. She will be tried, and so will the old man.”

I said, ”You have arrested Yani Hakaiopulos?”

For the first time, Dev Veeder looked directly at me. I confess that I flinched. He said, ”The old man was not at the hospital, but there are only so many places he can hide. Your guide, the man Corso, has also vanished. I must a.s.sume that he is also part of the plot.”

I said, ”Yani Hakaiopulos was simply helping Demi understand how the parklands and wilderness had been put together. Surely that's not a crime?”

Using her first name was a mistake. Dev Veeder said coldly, ”You have admitted, Professor-Doctor Graves, that you did not know what they talked about. I have not arrested you only because stupidity is not a crime under either civil or martial law.”

Wardsmead said, ”I don't much care what happens to the two tweaks, but even if I allow you your trial, Colonel Veeder, I want an a.s.surance that Dr. Lacombe will be deported at the end of it.”

Despite his amiable tone, his forehead was greasy with sweat. He scented a scandal, and did not want its taint to sully his career.

Dev Veeder said, ”That depends on what I discover during my interrogation. And I can a.s.sure you, gentlemen, that it will be a very thorough interrogation.

You will come with me, Professor-Doctor Graves.”

”I have already told you-”

”You will come with me,” Dev Veeder said again.

He wanted his revenge to be complete.

Eight Lamelot, Mimas fell; Baghdad, Enceladus fell; Athens and Spartica on Tethys surrendered within days of each other, blasted into submission by singles.h.i.+p attacks; the vacuum organism farms of lapetus's carbonaceous plains were destroyed by viral infection; Phoebe, settled by the Redeemers, and the habitats which had remained in orbit around t.i.tan, had all declared neutrality at the beginning of the war, and were under martial law.

Within two months of the arrival of the expeditionary force from Earth, the war was almost over. Only Paris, Dione remained defiant to the end. Singles.h.i.+ps had taken out most of the city's peripheral installations. Its vacuum organism farms were dying. And now new stars flared in its sky as troop s.h.i.+ps

took up their eccentric orbits. The emergency committee of Paris voted to surrender, and the same night were a.s.sa.s.sinated by Marisa Ba.s.si's followers. Ba.s.si rallied the citizens, organized the barricades and the block captains, killed a party of negotiators in a fit of fury and &Ued his hostages too. It was an unforgivable act, a terrible war crime, yet for Marisa Ba.s.si and the citizens of Paris it was deeply necessary. It was an affirmation of their isolation and their outlaw status. It united them against the rest of humanity. I believe that Ba.s.si was tired of waiting, tired of the slow attrition of the blockade. He was bringing the war to the heart right into his city and, like the people he led, was eager to embrace it. Imagine that last day, as lights streaked across the sky as the troop s.h.i.+ps launched their drop capsules. A battery of industrial X-ray lasers tried and failed to target them; a troop s.h.i.+p came over the horizon, pinpointed the battery, and destroyed it with a single low-yield fission missile, stamping a new crater a kilometer wide on Remus crater's floor. Marisa Ba.s.si felt the shock wave of that strike as a low rumbling that seemed to pa.s.s far beneath the ground, like a subway train. He was in the street, organizing the people who manned one of the barricades. It was mid-morning. He had been awake for more than forty-eight hours. His throat was sore and his lips were cracked. His eyes ached in their dry sockets and there was a low burning in his belly; he had drunk far too much coffee. The scow had gone, and those citizens too old or too young to fight had been moved into the tunnels of the original colony. There was nothing left to do now but fight. The people knew this and seemed to be in good heart. They still believed that the Three Powers Alliance would not dare to destroy their beautiful city, the jewel of the outer system, and perhaps Marisa Ba.s.si believed it too. He felt that he carried the whole city in his heart, its chestnut trees and caf&, trams and parklands, the theater and the Bourse and the lovely gla.s.s cathedral, and he had never loved his adopted home as fiercely as he loved it now, in its last hours. The barricade was in one of the service sectors near the perimeter of the dome, with diamond panes arching just above the rooftops of the offices and warehouses. It commanded a good view of a wide traffic circle, and on Ba.s.si's orders men and women were cutting down stands of slim aspens to improve the fire lanes. Ba.s.si was working with them, getting up a good sweat, when the tremor pa.s.sed underneath. One of his young aides came running up, waving a TV strip like a handkerchief. ”They got the lasers,” she said breathlessly. She was fifteen or sixteen, almost twice Ba.s.si's height, and trembled like a racehorse at the off. Like everyone else, she was wearing a pressure suit. The bowl of its helmet was hooked to her utility belt. ”We expected that,” Ba.s.si said, staring up at her. He had shaved off his beard, cut his hair to within a millimeter of his scalp. His hands, grasping the shaft of his diamond-edged axe, tingled. He said, ”What else?” ”They're down,” the girl said, ”and coming along both ends of the ridge.” ”Any message from their command s.h.i.+p?” ”No sir.” ”And we won't send one. Get back to headquarters. Tell them I'll be back in twenty minutes.” ”Sir, shouldn't you-” Ba.s.si lifted the axe. ”I've a job to finish here. Go!” They were mostly old men and women on that barricade, and knew that they would be among the first to engage the invaders. Why did Ba.s.si stay with them?

Perhaps he was exhausted. He had brought the whole city to this point by sheer rorce of will, and perhaps he saw nothing beyond the moment when the fighting started. Perhaps he knew then that defeat was inevitable, and wanted to make a last heroic gesture rather than face the ignominy of surrender. In any case, he stayed. Once the aspens had been cleared, he went back with the others to the barricade. It was no more than a ridge of roadway which had been turned up by a bulldozer and topped with tangles of razor wire. They closed up the wire and started checking their weapons-machine pistols and blazers stamped out by a rejigged factory, an ungainly machine which used compressed air to fire concrete-filled cans. Someone had a flask of brandy and they all took a sip, even Ba.s.si's remaining aide. The flask was going around the second time when there was a brisk series of bangs in the distance, and a wind got up, swirling foliage broken from the aspens high into the air. The invaders broke into the main dome of the city at nine points, breaching the basalt skirt with shaped charges, driving their transports straight through, and then spraying sealant to close the holes. At that point, they thought they could take the city without inflicting much damage. While some of the people at the barricade latched up their helmets and checked their weapons, others were still looking at TV strips. Ba.s.si ripped the TVs from then- hands, told them roughly to watch the street. The motor of the compressor gun started up with a tremendous roar and at the same moment sleek s.h.i.+ning man-sized machines appeared on the far side of the traffic circle. The killing things moved very quickly. It is doubtful that anyone got off a shot before the machines had crossed the traffic circle and leaped the razor wire. Ba.s.si's aide ran, and a killing thing was on him in two strides, slicing and jabbing, throwing the corpse aside. The others were dispatched with the same quick ruthlessness, and then only Ba.s.si was left, drenched in the blood of the men and women who had died around him, his arms and legs pinned by one of the killing things. Once the barricade had been cleared, a squad of human troopers in sealed pressure suits came forward. Their sergeant photographed Ba.s.si, cuffed him, and ordered one of his men to take him back for what he called a debriefing. Ba.s.si knew then that he had been selected by chance, not because he had been recognized; shaving off his trademark beard had saved him. He smiled and spat on the sergeant's visor. The squad and the killing things moved on; the trooper marched Ba.s.si at gunpoint across the traffic circle toward the command post at the breached perimeter. No one knows how Ba.s.si got free, only that he was captured at a barricade in the first minutes of fighting and then escaped. Certainly, he never reached the command post. Perhaps the trooper was killed by one of the snipers which infested the city, or perhaps Ba.s.si got free on his own; after all, he was a very resourceful man. In any case, it is known that he reached the Bourse two hours after the barricade fell, because he made a brief, defiant television transmission there. I have watched this speech many times. It is the last sighting of him. He was wounded when he escaped, and the wound had been patched but the bullet was still inside him; he must have felt it, and felt the blood heavy and loose inside his belly as he spoke, but he showed no sign that he was m pain. He spoke for five minutes. He spoke clearly and defiantly, but it was a poor, rambling speech, full of allusions to freedom and idealism and martyrdom, and his steady gaze had a crazed, glittering quality. By then, most of the outlying tents and domes of the city had been captured by the invaders; even Ba.s.si's headquarters had been taken. The citizens of Paris had fallen back to the central part of the main dome. Most of the barricades had been overrun by killing things. Thousands of citizens lay dead at their posts, while the invaders had incurred only half a dozen casualties, mostly from snipers. The battle for Paris was clearly over, but still its citizens fought on. ”I warn the commander of the invaders,” Marisa Ba.s.si said, ”that we will fight to the end. We will not let you take what we have built with our sweat and our blood. Paris will die, but Paris lives on. The war is not over.” A few minutes later, the main buildings of the city were set on fire, filling the dome with smoke. A few minutes after that, the commander of the invasion force gave the order to breach the integrity of the main dome. By then, no doubt, Ba.s.si was already at one of the last barricades, armed with the carbine he had taken from the dead trooper, his pressure suit sealed. A great wind sucked fire and smoke from the burning, broken wedding cake of the Bourse; smoke rushed along the ground in great billows which thinned and vanished, leaving the eerie clarity and silence of vacuum. And then a shout over the radio, doubling and redoubling. Killing things were running swiftly across the wide lawns toward the last barricades, puffs of earth jumping around them as people started to fire. Ba.s.si drew himself up to face his enemy, no longer the leader of the free government of Paris, his fate no more significant now than any of the last of its citizens. He thought that he was only moments from death. He was wrong. LJemi Lacombe had stapled a nylon rope to a basalt outcrop at the edge of the mossy, emerald-green meadow; its blue thread fell away to the trough of black water a hundred meters below. Dev Veeder squatted on his heels and ran a gloved finger around the knot doubled around the eye of the staple, then looked up at me and said, ”I could loosen this so that she would fall as she climbed back up. Do you think the fall would kill her?” ”I think not. Not in this low gravity.” He stood. ”No. I don't think so either. Well, she'll be here soon. We'd better keep out of sight.” I dabbed sweat from my brow with the cuff of my s.h.i.+rt. I had been marched quickly through the parkland by Veeder's squad of troopers, as if I had been under arrest, with no chance until now of talking with him, of trying to change his mind. I said, ”Are you enjoying yourself, Colonel?” ”You want revenge too. Don't deny it. She used us both, Graves.” ”This seems so ... melodramatic.” ”History is made with bold gestures. I want her arrested m the act of returning through a pa.s.sageway which presents a clear and present danger to the security of the diplomatic community. I want you to be a witness.” ”No bold gesture can be based on so petty a motive as revenge.” Dev Veeder moved closer to me, so close that when he spoke a spray of saliva fell on my cheek. ”We're in this together, Graves. Don't pretend that you're just an observer like that thing, DeHon. Be a man. Face up to the consequences of your actions.” ”She was only trying to do her work, Colonel. Your crazy jealousy got in the way-” ”We are both jealous men, Graves. But at least I did not betray her.” Veeder shoved me away from him then, and I went sprawling on the soft, wet moss. By the time I had regained my feet, he was on the other side of the little meadow, showing the four troopers where to take cover. As they concealed themselves amongst the exuberant rose briars, the sergeant of the squad took me by the arm and pulled me into the shade of the ferns which cascaded down the basalt cliff. It was hot and close inside the curtain of fern fronds. Sweat dripped from my nose, my chin, ran down my flanks inside my s.h.i.+rt. Tiny black flies danced about my face with dumb persistence. In the meadow, huge, sulfur-yellow b.u.t.terflies circled each other above the bright green moss, their hand-sized wings flapping once a minute. The sergeant, a muscular, dark-eyed woman, hummed softly to herself, watching the screen she had spread on her knee. It showed a view of the lake below the meadow, transmitted from one of the tiny cameras the troopers had spiked here and there. Tune pa.s.sed. At last, the sergeant nudged me and pointed. Centered in the screen, Demi Lacombe's silvery figure suddenly stood up, waist-deep, in black water. She stripped off her airmask and hooked it to her belt, waded to the gravelly sh.o.r.e and grasped the rope and swarmed up it, moving so quickly, hand over hand, that it seemed she was swimming through the air. I looked up from the screen as she pulled herself over the edge of the meadow and rolled onto the vivid green moss. As she got to her feet, Dev Veeder stepped out of his hiding place, followed by his troopers; the sergeant shoved me roughly and I tumbled forward, landing on my hands and knees. Demi looked at Dev Veeder, at me. For a moment I thought she might jump into the chasm, but then Dev Veeder crossed the meadow in two bounds and caught her by the left wrist, the one she had broken soon after arriving in Paris. She turned pale, and would have dropped to her knees if Dev Veeder had not held her up. ”All right,” he growled. ”All right.” The brilliant light of the suspensor lamps hung high above dimmed. I felt a few fat raindrops on my face and hands, congealing rather than falling from the humid air. The pathetic fallacy made real by Demi Lacombe's implants, I thought, and Dev Veeder must have had the same idea, because he said, ”Stop that, you b.i.t.c.h,” and delivered a back-handed slap to her face while still holding on to her wrist. Demi's cry of pain was cut off by a roll of thunder; I think I must have shouted out then, too, for the sergeant grasped mY arm and shook me and told me to shut the f.u.c.k up. Those were her words. A sheet of sickly light rippled overhead and the air darkened further as a wind got up, blowing clouds of raindrops as big as marbles. They hissed against the curtain of ferns above, and drenched me to the skin in an instant. Someone was standing at the edge of the rose thicket. It was one of the gardeners. I was sure that it was the one that Demi had summoned before-their shaven heads and blank expression effaced individuality, but he had the same stocky immigrant build and wary manner. At his side was a pair of tawny panthers; a huge bird perched on his upraised arms, its gripping claws digging rivulets of bright blood from his flesh. With a sudden snap, like playing cards dealt by a conjurer, the four troopers formed a half circle in front of Dev Veeder and Demi Lacombe. Their carbines were raised. The rain was very thick now, blown up and down and sideways by the gusting wind; water sheeted down the closed visors of the troopers' helmets, the slick resin of their chestplates. The gardener made no move, but the panthers and huge bird suddenly launched themselves across the meadow. Two wild shots turned every drop of rain blood red; the scream of air broken by their energy echoed off the ferny cliff. Dev Veeder was struggling with Demi Lacombe, a horrible, desperate waltz right at the edge of the cliff. One trooper was down, beating at the bird whose wings beat about his head; one of the panthers had bowled over two more troopers and the second took down a trooper as he fled. The trooper struggling with the bird took a step backward, and fell from the edge of the meadow; a moment later, the bird rose up alone, wings spread wide as it rode the gust of wind that for a moment blew the rain clear of the meadow.

The sergeant raised her carbine. I saw that she had the presence of mind to aim at the gardener, and threw myself at her legs. The shot went wild. She kicked me hard and in the Paul J. McRuley light gravity her legs flew from beneath her and she sat down. I fell flat on sodden moss, and was trying to unholster my blazer, although I do not know who I would have shot at, when the sergeant hauled me half-around by one of my arms-fracturing a small bone in my wrist, I later discovered -and struck my head with the stock of her carbine. Then the bird fell upon her.