Part 50 (1/2)
”I've been rather curious about what you do out here,” was Commander Anne Blenheim's greeting.
”I'll gladly include some of these sites in the next tour,” the Prince replied almost absently, easing himself into a seat facing her. He realized that he must sound and look happier than the last time this woman had seen him, and he wondered what she, who probably had a good grasp of the political situation, might make of that.
From the seat beside hers, the s.p.a.cesuited youth whose name he thought he could guess was gazing back at Prince Harivarman, favoring the eminent man with a muted stare. It appeared to be an attempt to disguise sheer awe. The Prince had been the subject of enough awed glances in his time to know. But it was impossible for him to tell whether the young man was wearing a uniform or civilian clothing inside his s.p.a.cesuit. At least he was not a Templar officer, Harivarman was sure of that.
The Prince said: ”Commander, if your companion here is who I think he is, well, I've looked forward to meeting him.”
”Good,” Commander Anne answered dryly. ”That's why he's here now.” She paused. ”Also, I wanted rather urgently to have a talk with you, General Harivarman. To confront you with certain-facts. I wanted to make up my mind about certain things, as much as possible, before I am called on to make decisions.”
”If you mean your approaching decision as to whether to hand me over, when someone who hates my guts comes to the Radiant and demands that you do so-yes, I think you're right to give that one a lot of thought.”
Anne Blenheim's blue eyes, trying to conceal their own strain, studied him carefully. ”What makes you so sure that someone is coming to arrest you?”
He only looked at her.
She looked away at last. ”Yes . . . well, I may as well tell you, General. We've had radio contact within the past hour from another unscheduled s.h.i.+p; it'll be the third to arrive here in two days. It was reluctant to identify itself very precisely. But it's from Salutai, and it will of course be here in a matter of a few hours.”
Harivarman was once more looking at the young man, who still gazed back at him with starry eyes.
The commander sighed. ”General, this is Chen s.h.i.+zuoka. From Salutai.”
The two men touched hands in traditional greeting.
The youth said: ”Prince . . . I feel honored to meet you.” It was obviously a considerable understatement.
The Prince was unable to see either a mad a.s.sa.s.sin or a crafty schemer in this young enthusiast before him. But something odd was going on. Harivarman said coolly: ”I hear that you arranged a demonstration in my favor.”
”It was an honor to be able to do so, sir.” Now Chen's face and voice grew quickly troubled. ”But then .
. . a few days later-only after I had been brought here to the Radiant-I found out that Her Imperial Majesty had been killed. Even while the demonstration was going on. As I say, I was already here before I found that out. But even before I left Salutai, someone had tried to kill me too. They fired at me in the street.”
”Aha. I hadn't heard about that.” Harivarman glanced at the commander, who evidently had.
She gently prodded young Chen. ”But you said nothing about anyone having shot at you when you enlisted?” It sounded like she had been over this ground with the youth before, and doubtless more than once, but she was going to do it once more for Harivarman's benefit.
”No ma'am, I didn't. I wanted to get off world, to save my life. I thought then that it was Security shooting at me. Now I think it must have been someone connected with the Empress's real a.s.sa.s.sins.”
Chen, without further prompting, now related his whole version of the events on Salutai, beginning with the secret preparations he and his friends had carried out for their impressive demonstration. It sounded like about the hundredth time he'd told the story, so that by now it had a rehea.r.s.ed tone.
Harivarman found himself inclined to believe it anyway. He said to the young man: ”If all that's true, it seems to me that you have been used.”
Chen nodded, miserably, reluctantly. ”I still can't believe that my friends-the ones who helped me organize the demonstration-were mixed up in an a.s.sa.s.sination.”
”Perhaps not all of them were.” Harivarman looked into the blue eyes of Anne Blenheim, and there saw himself being weighed, even as he had just weighed Chen and his story. The Prince hoped she was as perceptive as he was himself.
Harivarman said to her: ”The young man here may be as innocent in this matter as I am, you see. But I shall be very much surprised if accusations, indictments, are not soon brought in from Salutai against me.”
She shook her head. ”I suppose we may know more about that when this third s.h.i.+p arrives. But your guilt or innocence is not up to me to determine, General.”
”Theoretically that is so. But in practice you may very well have to decide my future. You will be the highest Templar authority here on the Fortress when that s.h.i.+p gets here. If they're coming to get me, as I a.s.sume they are, you will have to decide whether to turn me over to them or not.”
She regarded him silently.
He pressed her. ”Isn't that what you meant just now when you spoke of having to make up your mind about certain things? And in bringing the young man out here to see me? Do you really think I've been spending my spare time in captivity trying to arrange an a.s.sa.s.sination of the Empress? When you can see what peril that puts me in?”
Commander Blenheim shook her head. ”How am I supposed to know that? I've only been here a few days myself.”
”You're going to have to know it.”
She didn't like to be told, by her prisoner, what she had to do. ”I repeat, that is not my decision, General. We'll talk of this again. Very soon, I suspect.” She keyed a circuit, and spoke to her driver: ”The general is getting out now. Then take us right back to the base.”
Harivarman closed up his helmet that he had opened on entering the vehicle; and shortly he was drifting in the corridor's near-weightlessness again, watching the staff car depart. He had distracted the commander neatly from taking much interest in what he was doing out here.
When Harivarman reboarded the other flyer, he found Lescar hunched in the same seat as before. The little man had apparently not moved at all, though his face now looked a little more normal. Impa.s.sively he heard his master's description of the encounter with their chief jailer, and with Chen.
At last Lescar commented: ”A close call, Your Honor.”
”Yes.” The Prince was being determinedly calm and regal. Close calls didn't count. ”Now, where were we? How far did you get with your job, before we were interrupted?”
Lescar dared to give his master a severe glance. ”Forgive me, Your Honor, but we had reached a point where no humans should ever be.”
”Lescar, Lescar, listen to me! Do you think I enjoy this, working secretly on a berserker? I thought that it was dead, when I brought you out here; obviously I was wrong about that. I'm sorry.”
The apology made Lescar uncomfortable, as the Prince had expected it would; the little man fidgeted, and muttered something.
Harivarman went on. ”I'm no real engineer or scientist, obviously. All I can tell you is that now I'm reasonably sure that the machine is under my control. It's following my commands. It's not attacking us.
And I'm also sure that it offers us our only chance of saving our lives. That last judgment does fall within my field of competence, and on that point I'm very sure indeed.”
Lescar moved at last. Not much. Only, as if he were cold, to huddle within his folded arms. ”But . . . if it's as you say, Your Honor, and someone's already coming from Salutai to arrest us . . . well, isn't it too late now for us to start trying to put together a stars.h.i.+p?”
”It may be too late. Or it may not. When Roquelaure's people get here I may be able to . . . well, to stall them for a time. For a few days. If I can get the commander to see the truth. I have a few ideas about that now. They can't take us away unless she turns us over to them. To get that drive installed in one of our two flyers is still our only chance, I think.”
Lescar had made a good start toward recovery from his savage shock. Harivarman judged it safe to leave him alone now. But it was only against his servant's advice, and even pleading, that the Prince himself now returned once more to the berserker chamber, intending to resume his cautious dialogue with his chained beast.
At the last moment, Lescar, aghast, actually got out of the flyer too and followed him; whatever else might happen, he was unable to allow his Prince to face a berserker alone.
As the two of them drifted in their sealed suits along the airless corridor, the radio whisper of his servant's minimally powered voice came to Harivarman: ”But why must you talk to it again, Your Honor?
We have the drive extracted, we don't need the rest. For a chance to escape, of course it's worth the risk of continuing our work on the drive. But the other thing . . . why take the chance? What do we gain? At best we'll just get ourselves arrested. Sooner or later it'll be found out, what we're doing.”
”Lescar, I spoke a moment ago of creating a delay, to give us time to modify our s.h.i.+p . . . I think I now see a possible way to manage that.”
Lescar was stubbornly silent.
His master continued inflexibly along the corridor, with the other following, until they were just outside the deadly room. There Harivarman halted. ”If I can control it, talk to it-”