Part 39 (1/2)
For a minute all I saw in their faces was confusion, either at the question itself or because they were puzzling over the answer to it. All their faces, that is, except Tera's. In that instant I saw in her suddenly wide eyes that the pieces were finally starting to fall into place. ”The answer, of course,” I continued, not waiting for the cla.s.s to respond, ”is that he didn't sense any such problem because one of you is not the man he hired for your particular slot on the s.h.i.+p.”
Chort found his voice first. ”That is incredible,” he said, the whistling under only slightly better control. ”How would anyone have known the Icarus was valuable enough to do such a thing?”
”And once he knew it, why didn't he just go to the Patth and turn us in?”
Shawn added. ”This makes less sense than the psycho nutcase theory.”
”Not really,” I said. ”The answers, in order, are that he had no idea at all that there was anything special about the Icarus. And he didn't turn the s.h.i.+p in to the Patth because his purpose in coming aboard was something else entirely.”
I nodded to Everett. ”Everett was the one who finally pushed me onto the right track,” I said. ”It was back when you all learned what the Icarus was carrying, and he pointed out that Borodin and the Patth weren't the only possible players in this game. I suddenly realized that he was right; and furthermore realized who the other player was.”
”Who?” Tera demanded.
I lifted a hand. ”Me.”
There was a short silence. ”I don't get it,” Shawn said. ”What are you talking about?”
”I'm talking about me, and about the people I work for,” I told him. ”And about the fact that the murderer came aboard the Icarus for the sole purpose of delivering me a message. A lesson in obedience.”
My gun had been waving almost idly around the table, the hand gripping it making small gestures as I spoke. Now, in a single smooth motion, I brought it to point rock-steady at the center of the large torso looming up over the far end of the table from me. ”You can tell him, Everett,” I said quietly, ”that I got the message.”
Another silence descended on the room, this one as thick and dark as tar paste.
”I don't know what the h.e.l.l you're talking about,” Everett said at last, his voice husky and as dark as the silence had been.
”I'm talking about a crime boss named Johnston Scotto Ryland,” I said. ”A man who thought I needed to be taught a lesson about strict obedience to one's orders and one's master.””Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Shawn said, sounding bewildered. ”You've lost me completely. How did a crime boss get into this?”
”Because he's a crime boss who's holding a half million of McKell's debt,”
Nicabar said, his eyes studying me with an intensity I didn't much care for.
”McKell's been smuggling for him for the past few years.”
”You're a smuggler?” Shawn demanded, staring accusingly at me. ”So that's how you got the borandis so easily. I should have guessed that a big simon-pure hotshot like you-”
”Put a baffle on it, Shawn,” Nicabar cut him off. ”So what did you do to earn this lesson, McKell?”
”Ixil and I had a cargo of his bound for Xathru,” I said. ”We were running a little ahead of schedule, so I diverted us briefly to Meima.”
”Why?” Tera asked.
”I'll get to that later,” I said. ”Ryland has informers everywhere, even on a backwater world like Meima. I think Ryland was already having suspicions about my loyalty, so when one of his snitches reported I'd landed there instead of Xathru he apparently concluded I was getting ready to jump s.h.i.+p or double- cross him or some such thing. Regardless, he decided I needed a lesson on why that was a bad idea. Were you that informer, Everett, or just the local muscle for the territory?”
Everett didn't answer. ”Well, the personnel list's not important,” I said.
”Either way, Ryland ordered Everett to tail me and find out what I was up to.
He followed me as I wandered around Meima; and was probably right there in that taverno when Cameron came over and offered me the pilot's post aboard the Icarus.”
”How did he know you'd been hired?” Tera asked. ”Unless he was close enough to overhear, couldn't you two just have been having a chat?”
”I'm sure he wasn't that close,” I said. ”I was keeping a close watch, and I would have remembered anyone sitting that close. But he didn't have to hear anything. All he needed was to see Cameron give me a guidance tag to know I was taking a job with him.
”So when Cameron left, Everett decided to tail him instead of staying on me, probably hoping to find out who exactly I was dealing with. I had planned to follow Cameron myself, but I got diverted by a trio of unhappy Yavanni and lost him. He followed Cameron, watched him hire a couple more crewers; and then apparently decided to take a closer look at one of you. So he let Cameron leave, followed his latest acquisition into a nice dark alley, and clobbered him.”
”And this person was who?” Tera asked.
”Whoever Cameron had hired to be s.h.i.+p's medic, of course,” I said. ”Because when Everett called to report what he'd found-which wasn't much-Ryland told him to take this person's place and follow me aboard the Icarus. Fortunately for us, Everett was actually qualified to handle the job. Or maybe it wasn't just luck; maybe he'd picked on the medic on purpose.”
Chort whistled suddenly, a sound that hurt my ears. ”I remember,” he said. ”He was the last to arrive. He said he had been delayed at the gate.”
”Actually, he'd probably been skulking around the side of one of the other s.h.i.+ps watching the rest of us gathering,” I said. ”He probably had a whole storyworked out to spin for Cameron about how he'd bought the job from a buddy who'd suddenly taken ill or something.”
Nicabar snorted gently. ”Pretty pathetic story.”
”It may have been something better.” I c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at Everett. ”Feel free to jump in if you feel your creativity or cleverness is being maligned.”
”No, no, keep going,” he said evenly. ”It's all nonsense, of course, but it does make for fascinating listening.”
Out of the corner of my eye I caught the slight wrinkling of Nicabar's forehead.
Everett didn't seem particularly worried; and if there was anyone who had a right to be worried at the moment, it was Everett.
”Whatever his story was, it turned out to be unnecessary,” I continued, trying to distract Nicabar's attention away from questions about Everett's unconcerned att.i.tude. The last thing I wanted right now was to have a former EarthGuard Marine to go all suspicious of this setup. ”Cameron didn't show up, so Everett simply pretended he was the one who'd been hired in the first place.”
”You know, McKell, Everett's right,” Shawn growled. ”This is all Grade-A speculation. You said yourself Cameron got away from you on Meima. How could you possibly know what happened?”
”It's not speculation at all,” I said. ”You see, I had a brief talk with Cameron after the incident with Ixil's cabin. He told me he'd tackled someone busily preparing a poison-gas mixture out in the Icarus's lower corridor; but he further told me that it wasn't anyone from the crew. His a.s.sumption was that it was someone who'd come in from outside the s.h.i.+p; but if one of the crew had let a stranger in, why wasn't he there with him to help carry out this second murder? No, it's much simpler to a.s.sume that one of his original crewers was replaced right from the start.”
”You said Everett came aboard to deliver a message,” Tera said. ”What did you mean by that?”
”In Ryland's eyes, I was flirting with treason,” I said, feeling my fingers tightening on my plasmic as I stared blackly across the length of the table at Everett. ”But apparently he thought I could still be redeemed, or at least could be scared back into the fold. And so in his typically crude and heavy-handed way, he ordered Everett to kill my partner.”
”Your partner?” Tera gasped. ”Jones was your partner?”
”No, of course not,” I bit out, a flood of emotion suddenly was.h.i.+ng over me.
An innocent man had died, all because of me. ”Jones was exactly as advertised: a mechanic Cameron hired off the street for the Icarus. And that's where Everett made the mistake that so muddied the water that it took me until now to figure it out. He was so convinced that my partner and I were both jumping s.h.i.+p and abandoning Ryland's contraband on Meima that he just a.s.sumed that the Icarus's mechanic was my partner. Add to that Jones's natural friendliness and social ease, and it probably looked to him like we'd known each other for years.
”And so, knowing that it was traditionally the mechanic's job to a.s.sist with any s.p.a.cewalks, he sabotaged the rebreather on the suit that was Jones's size and sat back to wait for the inevitable.”I gestured toward Everett with my plasmic. ”But then you made a slip, a small one, which I didn't catch until a comment Revs made on Palmary jogged it back to mind. We'd gone to Xathru to turn Jones's body over to the port authorities and incidentally to pick up Ixil. While we were all out of the s.h.i.+p you called Ryland to report that the foul deed was done, but also told him I'd said something about bringing yet another partner aboard to fill Jones's slot.
Ryland confirmed that you'd missed your intended target, but since his cargo had indeed been delivered on schedule it was all cool now and to just stay aboard and keep an eye on me.”
”So where was the slip?” Shawn asked. ”I don't see any slip.”
”The slip came later,” I said, watching Everett's face. ”When you came into the s.h.i.+p while I was talking to Ixil in the wraparound. You took one look at him and said, 'So this is your partner.' There's no reason for you to have put it that way unless you'd already believed someone else was my partner.”