Part 24 (2/2)

”That doesn't necessarily follow,” he said. ”Maybe all they know is that the Icarus is carrying something Cameron desperately wants to get to Earth, which they want to take a look at simply on general principles. Perhaps that was what the anonymous gem-smuggling tip was all about, to give them an excuse to get into the cargo hold.”

I ran that one a couple of times around in my mind. It was not, I decided, asridiculous as it seemed at first blush. ”If so, they've got terrible coordination problems,” I pointed out. ”The Najik let us go without even blinking an eye.”

”So did Director Aymi-Mastr on Meima,” Ixil said. ”I don't think the Patth have quite made up their minds just how public they're willing to make their involvement with this.”

”It's certainly public enough at the top levels,” I reminded him darkly. ”Half the governments in this region have already been threatened with sanctions if they don't find and deliver us.”

”True, but that's not the same thing as working directly with local administrators and customs agents,” he pointed out. ”Top-level governmental officials can usually be trusted not to leak that kind of information, especially when it's something that might cause economic panic among their people.”

I scowled at my displays. ”So where does that leave us?” He shrugged. ”At least we're not as much in the dark as most of the people looking for us,” he said.

”Whatever the Patth themselves know or don't know, they most certainly haven't given the details to any of their searchers. If they knew what we were actually sitting on here, there wouldn't be a government in the Spiral who would give us up to them.”

”I suppose I should be grateful for small favors,” I said, trying to think of how exactly all this knowledge gave us an advantage. Offhand, I couldn't see any. ”And that brings up another point. We might want to consider making ourselves a list of governments we'd be willing to surrender the Icarus to as a last resort, just to keep the Patth from getting it.”

”We could,” he said doubtfully. ”The problem is finding someone who'd be less of a threat than the Patth themselves.”

I c.o.c.ked an eyebrow. ”You are joking.”

”Not at all,” he said, his face deadly serious. ”As far as we know, the Patth have no real military other than their own defense forces.”

”No, they subcontract the muscle jobs out to the Lumpies,” I said sourly.

”Perhaps,” Ixil said. ”My point is that the Patth would use the Icarus stardrive to cement their stranglehold on civilian s.h.i.+pping. Someone else might instead put it to military uses.”

I chewed a corner of my lip. A faster stardrive certainly wouldn't help in s.p.a.ce-normal combat, and of course there was no combat possible in hypers.p.a.ce.

It would make it easier to ferry troops, materiel, and wars.h.i.+ps around, but that wouldn't be that much of an advantage in the small brushfire conflicts that still flared up now and then. Unless we got into another of the huge regional wars that we all hoped were safely in the Spiral's past, the Icarus stardrive wouldn't gain an aggressor very much.

But then, maybe something like the Icarus stardrive was just the edge a potential aggressor was waiting for. Not a particularly pleasant thought.

”We still ought to make ourselves a surrender list,” I said, getting up from the command chair and crossing to the plotting table. ”Maybe try for a consortium of governments, just so no one's got a strict monopoly.”

”Particularly a consortium that would allow the s.h.i.+p's crew to live,” Ixilsaid.

”Preferably in something less confining than a small lonely cell somewhere.”

”That one's at the top of my wish list, too,” I a.s.sured him, keying the table on.

”It's always nice to have a common goal. Where exactly are we headed at the moment?”

”I don't know,” I said, peering at the possibilities as they came up. ”We're currently heading for Utheno, on the grounds that having a legitimate exit record from Potosi would make it easier to get in and out of another Najiki Archipelago world.”

”Utheno is only, what, seventy-five hours away?”

”Seventy-three,” I said. ”And since that's only about half the Icarus's range, I.

also thought a stop there might throw off anyone who might be tracking our movements.”

I waved at the table. ”But now I'm starting to wonder if it would be better to not get within any single government's grasp more than once.”

”Perhaps,” Ixil said slowly. ”Still, at this point, I'm not sure it really matters. The Patth have surely alerted everyone along our vector, and whether or not we've crossed paths with any particular government agency is probably more or less irrelevant.”

”Do you think we should get off this vector, then?” I suggested. ”Veer off to the side, circle around, and try to sneak up on Earth from behind?”

”No.” He was definite. ”The Patth aren't going to be fooled that easily- they'll have the word out anywhere the Icarus can get to. All that would do is increase the number of fueling stops we would have to make, which is where we're most vulnerable, and give the Patth more time to learn what exactly the Icarus looks like.”

”And if they really do have Cameron, to get a complete crew list, too,” I agreed glumly. ”All right; Utheno it is.”

”Utheno it is,” Ixil agreed, snapping his fingers to recall his ferrets. ”I'm going back to my cabin to get some sleep,” he continued as they bounded up his legs and clawed their way to his shoulders. ”I'd like to finish healing before we hit Utheno.”

”Watch yourself,” I warned. ”Our murderer may not content himself with leaving his next batch of poison gas unmixed.”

”I'll have Pix and Pax on alert,” he a.s.sured me. ”And there are a couple of door-guard tricks I know. You just watch yourself.”

”What, me?” I said, snorting. ”The only one we know can fly this monster? I'm the safest person aboard.”

”Let's hope our murderer remembers that,” Ixil said pointedly, standing up and heading for the door. ”And doesn't have too inflated an opinion of his own piloting skills. I'll talk to you later.”

He left, leaving the door locked open behind him. I confirmed the vector and timing to Utheno, then shut down the plotting table and returned to my command chair. And tried to think.

Our talk with Tera had been good. It had been enlightening and, a.s.suming always that everything she had told us was true, very useful as well.

The problem was that it had also swept away the whole fragile toothpick-house I'd worked so painstakingly to put together since Jones's murder. Before, I'd had a puzzle where the pieces didn't seem to fit together. Now, suddenly, notonly had she swept away the pieces, she'd swept away the d.a.m.n puzzle, too. The attacks on Jones and Chort, the sabotage to the cutting torch, the anonymous tips to the various customs and port authorities-every time lightning had struck I had carefully added the details to the rest of the mix, making sure to include the locations of all the possible suspects during that time. And while I didn't kid myself that I'd sorted it out into a neat package, at least I'd been getting a handle on it all.

Now, suddenly, everything had changed. Half the sabotage had been done by Tera and her father, a character I hadn't even known was on this particular stage of our little drama, and for reasons far less malevolent than their results would have suggested. And with that confession, my careful checklist of who had been where when went straight out the airlock. In fact, about all I had left to explain was the gem-smuggling tip to the Najik on Potosi and the poison-gas components and smashed release pad on Ixil's room. And, of course, Jones's murder.

And the d.a.m.nable part of it was that those were precisely the incidents that no one had any possible alibi for. Anyone aboard could have sabotaged Jones's rebreather prior to his accompanying Chort on his s.p.a.cewalk; and everyone was out on their own during the time Ixil's room was tampered with.

Everyone. Including Tera.

Because Ixil's opinions to the contrary, I still hadn't eliminated her as a suspect. Far from it. The photo Uncle Arthur had sent wasn't nearly definitive enough for me to accept her claimed ident.i.ty, and it was for sure that if the real Elaina Tera Cameron was running around the Spiral somewhere else we'd never hear about it here on the Icarus. True, she'd known about the hull's alien grav generator; but if she was actually one of the archaeologists or techs, she would have also known about that. Uncle Arthur had said the Ihmisits had rounded up the whole group, but without knowing his source for that information I was forced to consider it incomplete if not downright suspect. As to the rest of her story, I hadn't actually seen Cameron aboard the Icarus, and I sure couldn't confirm that he was the one I'd chased leisurely around the 'tweenhull area.

And I couldn't help noticing the interesting timing of the Patth infiltrating the Meima dig with a couple of Lumpies just when the Icarus was ready to fly.

It could be coincidence, or something in their own external intelligence had caught the roving Patth eye; but it could also be that they'd had an agent inside the dig itself. We had only Tera's word that she wasn't that agent.

But then, we had only everyone else's word for who they were, too. Tera had said Cameron had kept her presence on Meima close to the vest. Maybe he'd done the same with someone else as well, s.h.i.+elding this agent's presence even from his own daughter. It was the sort of double-blind stunt a man like Cameron might well have pulled; as Tera herself had said, you couldn't tell what you didn't know. Perhaps it was that second string to Cameron's bow who had been suborned by the Patth, or had simply decided he was tired of a tech's salary and that this was his big chance to retire in comfort.And if that was true, it might finally explain why we were still free. Either our traitor hadn't turned us in to the Patth yet because he was waiting for the price to go up, or else because he suspected another of Cameron's people was aboard and didn't want to show his hand until he'd figured out who it was.

So why was Jones murdered?

Had he known something damaging to the murderer? Or, conversely, had the murderer been afraid he might learn something that he, the murderer, couldn't afford for anyone else to know? It had to be something that a s.h.i.+p's mechanic might learn through his normal duties, or else the follow-up attack on Ixil didn't make any sense.

Unless the poison-gas threat had been just a smoke screen. Maybe all Mr. X had wanted to do was get rid of Jones, and had pulled the cyanide threat on Ixil to make it look like he had a grudge against anyone who tried to fill the mechanic post on the Icarus. After all, Ixil hadn't even come close to dying on that one.

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