Part 24 (1/2)
”Mr. Boyd,” he said. None of this sonny-boy stuff; Ranjit Singh was a man of dignity, and he respected the dignity of others. ”If I admit you to the s.p.a.ceport, will you give these people the facts exactly as you learn them?”
”That's what the _Times_ always does, Lieutenant.” Well, almost all the facts almost always.
”Will you people accept what this _Times_ reporter tells you he has learned?”
”Yes, of course.” That was Oscar Fujisawa.
”I won't!” That was Joe Kivelson. ”He's always taking the part of that old rumpot of a Bish Ware.”
”Lieutenant, that remark was a slur on my paper, as well as myself,” I said. ”Will you permit Captain Kivelson to come in along with me? And somebody else,” I couldn't resist adding, ”so that people will believe him?”
Ranjit Singh considered that briefly. He wasn't afraid to die--I believe he was honestly puzzled when he heard people talking about fear--but his job was to protect some fugitives from a mob, not to die a useless hero's death. If letting in a small delegation would prevent an attack on the s.p.a.ceport without loss of life and ammunition--or maybe he reversed the order of importance--he was obliged to try it.
”Yes. You may choose five men to accompany Mr. Boyd,” he said. ”They may not bring weapons in with them. Sidearms,” he added, ”will not count as weapons.”
After all, a kirpan was a sidearm, and his religion required him to carry that. The decision didn't make me particularly happy. Respect for the dignity of others is a fine thing in an officer, but like journalistic respect for facts, it can be carried past the point of being a virtue. I thought he was over-estimating Joe Kivelson's self-control.
Vehicles in front began grounding, and men got out and bunched together on the street. Finally, they picked their delegation: Joe Kivelson, Oscar Fujisawa, Casmir Oughourlian the s.h.i.+pyard man, one of the engineers at the nutrient plant, and the Reverend Hiram Zilker, the Orthodox-Monophysite preacher. They all had pistols, even the Reverend Zilker, so I went back to the jeep and put mine on. Ranjit Singh had switched his radio off the speaker and was talking to somebody else. After a while, an olive-green limousine piloted by a policeman in uniform and helmet floated in and grounded. The six of us got into it, and it lifted again.
The car let down in a vehicle hall in the administrative area, and the police second lieutenant, Chris Xantos, was waiting alone, armed only with the pistol that was part of his uniform and wearing a beret instead of a helmet. He spoke to us, and ushered us down a hallway toward Guido Fieschi's office.
I get into the s.p.a.ceport administrative area about once in twenty or so hours. Oughourlian is a somewhat less frequent visitor. The others had never been there, and they were visibly awed by all the gleaming gla.s.s and brightwork, and the soft lights and the thick carpets. All Port Sandor ought to look like this, I thought. It could, and maybe now it might, after a while.
There were six chairs in a semicircle facing Guido Fieschi's desk, and three men sitting behind it. Fieschi, who had changed clothes and washed since the last time I saw him, sat on the extreme right.
Captain Courtland, with his tight mouth under a gray mustache and the quadruple row of medal ribbons on his breast, was on the left. In the middle, the seat of honor, was Bish Ware, looking as though he were presiding over a church council to try some rural curate for heresy.
As soon as Joe Kivelson saw him, he roared angrily:
”There's the dirty traitor who sold us out! He's the worst of the lot; I wouldn't be surprised if--”
Bish looked at him like a bishop who has just been contradicted on a point of doctrine by a choirboy.
”Be quiet!” he ordered. ”I did not follow this man you call Ravick here to this ... this running-hot-and-cold Paradise planet, and I did not spend five years fraternizing with its unwashed citizenry and creating for myself the role of town drunkard of Port Sandor, to have him taken from me and lynched after I have arrested him. People do not lynch my prisoners.”
”And who in blazes are you?” Joe demanded.
Bish took cognizance of the question, if not the questioner.
”Tell them, if you please, Mr. Fieschi,” he said.
”Well, Mr. Ware is a Terran Federation Executive Special Agent,”
Fieschi said. ”Captain Courtland and I have known that for the past five years. As far as I know, n.o.body else was informed of Mr. Ware's position.”
After that, you could have heard a gnat sneeze.
Everybody knows about Executive Special Agents. There are all kinds of secret agents operating in the Federation--Army and Navy Intelligence, police of different sorts, Colonial Office agents, private detectives, Chartered Company agents. But there are fewer Executive Specials than there are inhabited planets in the Federation. They rank, ex officio, as Army generals and s.p.a.ce Navy admirals; they have the privilege of the floor in Parliament, they take orders from n.o.body but the President of the Federation. But very few people have ever seen one, or talked to anybody who has.
And Bish Ware--_good ol' Bish; he'sh everybodysh frien'_--was one of them. And I had been trying to make a man of him and reform him. I'd even thought, if he stopped drinking, he might make a success as a private detective--at Port Sandor, on Fenris! I wondered what color my face had gotten now, and I started looking around for a crack in the floor, to trickle gently and un.o.btrusively into.
And it should have been obvious to me, maybe not that he was an Executive Special, but that he was certainly no drunken barfly. The way he'd gone four hours without a drink, and seemed to be just as drunk as ever. That was right--just as drunk as he'd ever been; which was to say, cold sober. There was the time I'd seen him catch that falling bottle and set it up. No drunken man could have done that; a man's reflexes are the first thing to be affected by alcohol. And the way he shot that tread-snail. I've seen men who could shoot well on liquor, but not quick-draw stuff. That calls for perfect co-ordination. And the way he went into his tipsy act at the _Times_--veteran actor slipping into a well-learned role.