Part 6 (2/2)

”It saves time. I am not noted for my diplomatic skills.”

”But you're a civil servant?”

”But not one in the diplomatic service. I deal in facts, Herr Zoruk, and the fact is, yes, you made a fool of yourself tonight.”

Zoruk started to say something, but the will to do so left him in a defeated sigh. He turned back to the window. ”I know he's right, that's the worst of it. You can't blame a man for making a bullet if that bullet is later used to kill a saint. I knew that, or I would have if I'd taken a minute to think. I was just so angry. The Desolee Suppression ... words cannot ...” He shook his head. ”I'm being a fool again.”

”I ... am not very politically aware,” said Cabal, choosing his words carefully. ”In my post, I deal with figures, disburs.e.m.e.nts, quotas, and reports. Sometimes things happen in the broader world”-he gestured at the dark earth beneath them-”and I remain ignorant of them, often to my shame. Herr Zoruk, what exactly is the Desolee Suppression? What did this Von Falks do?”

Zoruk looked at him, an odd look of mild suspicion and surprise, and Cabal wondered if his curiosity was going to cost him dearly. ”You live in a sterile, isolated little world, Herr Meissner,” said Zoruk. ”I almost envy you. Very well ... the Desolee Suppression; history lesson. You probably picked up most of the story from the dinner table. The Guasoir Valley was Priskian by right of the Treaty of Hollsberg, but the locals have always regarded themselves as culturally Dulkine. They complained about it, and especially the Priskian policy of forcible relocation and the s.h.i.+pping in of Priskian settlers, but n.o.body was listening. So they started with civil disobedience, but all that got them was a few broken heads and some unjustifiably heavy prison sentences.”

Cabal frowned. ”So this isn't a Mirkarvian affair at all?”

Zoruk shook his head. ”Politically, no. But we are all brothers against injustice, Herr Meissner, are we not?” Herr Meissner declined to comment, so Zoruk continued. ”Civil disobedience escalated to attacks on property, and finally to the derailing of a Priskian troop train. There were a handful of injuries, and one death. The Priskians responded by sending in Commodore Von Falks's aerosquadron. He was supposed to monitor activity in the valley only, and lend support to ground troops should they request it.” He looked in the direction of the dining room and his humiliation. ”DeGarre was wrong about one thing. I should have pointed it out, small victory that it was. He said the locals slaughtered patrols. That's not true; they attacked one patrol when the Priskians started enforcing a curfew, and killed two men, at the cost of four of their own. Farmers against soldiers-hardly a fair fight. But one of the dead Priskians was an officer of Von Falks's squadron who had been liaising with the ground troops.

”The commodore was furious. Insane with anger. Quite literally, insane. He located the three villages that were most likely the source of the 'terrorists' who had killed his officer, and then-” He closed his eyes, and did not speak for several seconds. When he opened them again, he said. ”They eradicated all three villages. Bombed and bombarded them. Strafed the streets with Gatling guns. Dropped liquid fire on the homes and the farms and the churches. They burnt the houses, and shot the people when they ran from the flames. By the time he received orders to cease immediately and withdraw, it was too late. Twenty-four hundred people were dead or dying.”

There was silence for a dozen heartbeats. ”Twenty-four hundred?” Cabal's voice was hollow.

Zoruk nodded. ”It was a disaster in many ways. Priskia had little choice but to cede the Guasoir back to Dulkis under international pressure. Von Falks was given a revolver with one bullet and a quiet room for ten minutes to give him the opportunity to do the decent thing, which he did. And when the world saw what DeGarre's machines had done to those poor people”-he looked Cabal in the eye-”orders went up by eight hundred per cent. I accept his argument that he didn't design his s.h.i.+ps to kill civilians, but that doesn't excuse him getting rich from it.” He shrugged. ”Or am I still being a d.a.m.ned fool?”

”Yes,” said Cabal. ”I'm expected in the salon, Herr Zoruk. Good evening.” He made to leave, but at the corner he paused and looked back. ”Humanity is a despicable ma.s.s, Herr Zoruk, and ill-suited to the compa.s.sion of romantics. Sometimes it requires culling.”

”Oh?” said Zoruk. He sounded worn out and depressed. ”And who would choose who lives and who dies?”

I would, ideally, thought Cabal. I'd make a more informed job of it than most. But instead he said, ”Who, indeed, Herr Zoruk?” and took his leave.

Walking into the salon was like entering a fog bank, albeit a very Cuban one. Every man present had a cigar in his mouth and a snifter in his hand containing enough brandy to preserve a mouse. The coffee pots sat by, unloved and unused, as the men stood around in that peculiar chest-out-and-stomach-sucked-in pose that men in dinner jackets feel obliged to strike after dinner. Cabal had suffered the misfortune of attending several such gatherings before and was quite aware that they laboured under a sense of ritual that eroded a great deal of any potential enjoyment to be had. The Mirkarvian variety, however, was almost a full-blown dominance display of the sort that gets anthropologists excited. A certain pecking order was already apparent: Captain Schten stood una.s.sailable because he was, after all, the captain, and they were all on his territory; DeGarre had age, experience, fame, and a certain cachet of notoriety about him, and so stood at an only slightly less certain second place. After that, however, it was every man for himself, with the sole exception of Herr Roborovski, who refused to play and stood off to one side, gazing mournfully into his brandy as if he really did expect a pickled mouse to surface.

Currently holding the floor was Bertram Harlmann, king of the bar snacks. He had moved on from exhaustive details of the all-conquering pork scratching, and was offering to let the gentlemen present in on the ground floor of the next breathtaking breakthrough in overpriced tidbits for the Bierkeller market. This white-hot cutting edge was called ”mixed nuts,” and apparently contained the secret weapon of dried fruit. ”Almonds,” he said in a significant tone to one half of the gathering. ”Raisins,” he said to the other. Cabal managed to reduce a full roll of the eyes to a momentary interest in the carpet's pattern, and entered the fray.

Chapter 6.

IN WHICH DEATH OCCURS AND CURIOSITIES ARE NOTED.

Cabal slept lightly. This was as much a learned behaviour as a natural aspect; far too many people and other ent.i.ties had trod lightly towards him as he slept with less kindly intentions than tucking him in and kissing his brow. He skimmed through the dreaming edges of deep sleep like a man on ice skates, standing rigid, arms crossed, and wearing a disapproving expression, as his subconscious mind threw phantasms, childhood memories, and random elements of his recent past in his path with more optimism than expectation. He slid through them all with the humourless gravitas of an Old Testament prophet challenged to a magical duel by Uncle Mungo the children's conjuror. When he did finally reach the places of the mind too dark and motionless for dreams, he paused, barely over the tree line, and waited for his body and his mind to recuperate, all the time listening to the distant call of his senses, singing like the wind over telegraph wires. If they suddenly cried with pattern and purpose, he could be up and out of the well of sleep faster than a rabbit from a trebuchet.

Tonight, he had taken almost an hour to drift into even a light slumber, and was just in the act of strapping on his figurative skates when something roused him back to full wakefulness. He did not sit bolt upright-there's nothing like visibly declaring oneself awake to precipitate an attack. Instead, he lay, his eyes opening only slightly as he took in his surroundings, and listened carefully. The steady thrum of the levitators he had grown accustomed to, and this he ignored. There was something else, however. A dull battering sound running through the outer hull, as if somebody was kicking the wall. After a moment more it ended, and there were only the sounds of the s.h.i.+p's running.

Cabal rolled onto his back and gazed at the ceiling as he wondered what had made the noises. It was, he knew, largely an exercise to bore himself back to sleep; he had no inkling of the workings of a vessel like the Hortense. For all he knew, the sound might be a common occurrence, made by some necessary component doing its job. There had been something about it, though, something organic rather than mechanical. He had heard dying men drum a similar tattoo on the floorboards with their heels, and this thought shooed sleep away.

Five minutes later there was a new sound, and at this Cabal did sit bolt upright. It was a dull roar that grew, in a rapid crescendo, to a climax that coincided with a sharp metallic thud. Cabal had heard a sound very similar to it earlier in the evening when the sliding windows in the salon were drawn back. But then they had been flying lower and slower. The window in one of the nearby cabins had been drawn back, he was sure of it, and this raised two objections in his mind. First, that the cabin would now be bitterly cold as the wind blew harshly around it. Second, that when he had been looking from his own window earlier in the evening, he noted in pa.s.sing that the sliding frame was locked shut by a bolt that would require a specialist tool to release. These two factors seemed to indicate that whoever had opened the window had not done so purely for a breath of fresh air.

Cabal sat in the darkness, his hands clasped, his index fingers extended and tapping rapidly together as he fought his curiosity. It was an anomalous sound, and-as a scientist-anomalies intrigued him. Warring with his curiosity, however, was his instinct for self-preservation. If something was awry, and he was strongly inclined to think so, then wandering the s.h.i.+p's corridors might provoke suspicion, and this was something to be vigorously avoided. Then again, if he didn't investigate something that should have induced him to wander about in Meissner's unforgivably gaudy Chinese dressing gown, wouldn't that also be cause for questions?

”Why didn't you go out to discover the source of this strange sound, Herr Meissner, as any trueborn son of Mirkarvia would?” he imagined the captain asking him.

”Because I slept through it,” he imagined himself replying and, pleased with this simple but effective excuse, he settled back down to sleep.

Whereupon there was a commotion in the corridor, talking for a minute, and the sound of one of the neighbouring doors being knocked upon, apparently without effect. A few moments later, it was joined by a light but insistent knock at his own door. Cabal was wondering whether he could reasonably say that he'd slept through this, too, when it was repeated with more vigour, and he knew he was going to have to show his face.

”Good grief,” said Leonie Barrow when he answered the door. ”Where on earth did you get that dressing gown?” She herself was wearing a red-and-blue tartan gown over a white winceyette nightdress. In purely aesthetic terms, her nighttime apparel made Cabal wonder how the English ever managed to find sufficient motivation to breed.

”How may I help you, Fraulein?” he said, ignoring her question.

”Didn't you hear anything?”

He drew breath to say he had slept through it, but changed his mind. ”I heard something.” He looked out into the corridor and saw Colonel Konstantin, the Roborovskis, and-inevitably-Cacon milling around outside DeGarre's door. ”What's happening?”

”I heard some sort of commotion coming from M. DeGarre's cabin. Well, we all did.” She waved at the other pa.s.sengers. ”Now it sounds like he's got his window open somehow.”

”Has anybody called for the officer of the watch?” He was answered by the arrival of Captain Schten himself, still b.u.t.toning his uniform collar.

”Ladies. Gentlemen. Kindly step back. I am sure there is nothing amiss.”

He made to knock on the door, but Cacon said, ”You're wasting your time there, Captain. I've been knocking until my knuckles are red raw.” Cabal noted that they plainly were not. ”There's no answer. Just the wind-whoooooo. Y'know what? I bet 'e's done 'imself in.” He crossed his arms and looked both pleased and expectant, as if he antic.i.p.ated that everybody would applaud his deduction and go back to bed, mystery solved.

The captain gave him a look that verged on hostility, and knocked sharply on the door. ”M. DeGarre? This is the captain. Are you all right, sir?”

”You won't get an answer, Capitano,” said Cacon. Irritatingly, he was right. Captain Schten listened for a moment, but all any of them could hear was the moaning wind beyond the door. Schten grasped the door handle and tried it, but it did not yield. He took a master key from his jacket pocket, unlocked the door, turned the handle, and started to open it while beginning an apology for the intrusion. Both the opening and the apology came up short as the door stopped abruptly in its travel.

”'is body's probably in the way,” said Cacon, apparently knowledgeable in such things.

”Herr Cacon,” began Schten, his temper almost visibly fraying. Whatever he was about to say was thankfully lost when Colonel Konstantin interrupted.

”Herr Cacon,” the colonel said evenly. ”Please return to your cabin. You are not helping affairs.”

”Eh?” The possibility of being less than vital in unfolding events seemed not to have occurred to Cacon. ”Eh? Me? You can't order me about, matey! I'm not in the army, y'know!”

”Sir,” said Schten, his temper reined back in the respite Konstantin had bought him. ”As the captain of this vessel, you are under my authority. Please return to your cabin.”

”Oi, oi, oi!” Cacon was outraged by this attack on his dignity. ”I 'ave as much right to be 'ere as anyone!”

”No,” said Captain Schten. ”You don't.” He summoned over the purser and a steward who had arrived and were standing uncertainly at the back of the group. ”Take Herr Cacon back to his cabin, Steward. Make sure he stays there.”

Cacon was escorted away, still complaining. ”This is a blinkin' outrage! I'll write a letter!”

”As you wish,” said the captain wearily. He waited until Cacon was gone before trying the door again. There was a distinct clunk against the handle after the first inch or so, and he could open the door no further. He regarded it grimly. ”There's a chair under the handle. M. DeGarre,” he called through the gap. ”If you can hear me, please move away from the door.” He moved back to give himself s.p.a.ce and kicked the door hard with the flat of his boot, just under the handle. They heard the chair bounce across the cabin floor, Schten already moving in to follow it.

Cabal was slightly surprised to find himself in the doorway a moment after Schten. His curiosity had, not for the first time, overridden his sense of self-preservation. Still, now he was there, it would be more suspicious for him to suddenly become all backwards about coming forward. So he stood just inside the door and looked around officiously, as if inspecting mysteriously empty aeros.h.i.+p cabins in which a chill wind whipped around his naked knees were all part of a Mirkarvian civil servant's duties. Schten was already by the window, which was slid back along its track as far as it would go. He looked out into the darkness.

”He's gone,” he said, his words almost lost in the howling wind. He shook his head. ”Stupid, stupid man.” He slid the window shut with an angry slam. The sudden silence was almost shocking.

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