Ethan of Athos (23 page)

Ethan glanced at Arata too, sorry he'd brought up the subject. “I didn't do anything to him. Maybe he met with an accident. Or perhaps he deserted.” Or considering Okita's ultimate fete, perhaps “desserted” might be the better term... Ethan squelched that line of thought. “In any case, I can't help you. Even if I wanted to betray Cee to you -- if that's what you're asking me to do -- I really don't know where he is.

“Or where he is headed?” said Millisor suggestively.

Ethan shook his head. “Anywhere, for all I know. Anywhere but Athos, that is.”

“Alas, yes,” murmured Millisor. “Before, Cee was tied to that shipment. If I had the one, I had a string to the other. Now that the shipment is destroyed, a very poor second choice to our recovering it, he is entirely unleashed. Anywhere,” Millisor sighed. “Anywhere...”

The ghem-colonel, Ethan reminded himself firmly, was the one who was tied down. He had his feet under him; it was up to him to end this interview before the smooth spy plucked any more information from him.

Ethan paused in his strategic retreat out the door. “I will leave you with one last thought, though, Colonel. If you had made that pitch to me when we first met, instead of doing what you did, you might have convinced me, and had it all.”

Millisor's hands clenched and jerked against their bonds at last.

And so Ethan returned to his own hostel room, rented his first day on Kline Station and never occupied since. He thanked his spotty luck that he had paid for it in advance, for his personal effects were all as he had left them. He bathed, shaved, trimmed, changed back in to his own clothes at last, and ate a light meal from the room service console.

He sighed over his coffee. Pushing two weeks -- he would have to look up the date, having lost track -- expended on this adventure, as Quinn's stalking-goat, as Millisor's moving target, Cee's pawn, anybody's ping pong ball, and what did he have to show for it? An education? Once he returned his red coveralls and boots, he would have no more tangible souvenir than the learning. He got out his credit chit and regarded it. Quinn's microscopic bug was presumably still on it somewhere. If he shouted into it, might he cause a feedback squeal in her left ear? But she was gone, with no word of farewell. Anyhow, people who talked to their credit cards would doubtless make their neighbors uneasy, even on Kline Station.

He lay down wearily, only to find his nerves still too strung up to allow sleep. Was it day, or night? On Kline Station, who could say? He wasn't sure if he missed Athos's diurnal rhythm or its weather more. He wanted rain, or a brisk polar front to blow the cobwebs out of his brains. He could turn up the air conditioning, but it would still smell the same.

After nearly an hour spent comparing all the things he should have said and done this last fortnight with the actual events, he gave up in disgust, dressed, and went out. If sleep was to elude him, he might at least be doing something useful with his time. Athos was paying an ungodly enough sum for it.

He strolled back to the Transients' Lounge level where the embassies and consuls were concentrated and began doing some serious shopping for legitimate biological supply houses. Most of the more technically advanced planets offered something. Beta Colony offered nineteen separate sources, from purely commercial ventures to a government-sponsored gene pool at Silica University stocked entirely by invited donations from talented and gifted citizens. As much as Ethan cringed at taking any more of Quinn's advice on anything, Beta Colony did seem to be the best destination. He would not be disappointed, the woman expediting the commercial directory interface assured him. He exited feeling he had done a good day's work at last, and a little smug. He had dealt with the female expediter just as he would have dealt with a man. It could be done; wasn't hard at all.

He returned to his room for a quick snack, then sat down to his comconsole for a little comparison-shopping for the best price on a round-trip ticket to Beta Colony. The straightest route was via Escobar, giving him a chance to check out another potential source at no added cost to the Population Council. At least half the committee would be pleased with him, about as good odds as he was likely to obtain.

All his decisions made at last, his weariness washed over him. He lay down to rest for a minute.

* * *

Hours later, an insistent chiming from his comconsole hooked him to mushy consciousness. One foot was asleep, from lying at an odd angle with his shoes on, and it tingled numbly as he stumbled to press the “Receive” keypad.

Terrence Cee's face materialized over the holovid plate. “Dr. Urquhart?”

“Well. I didn't expect to hear from you again.” Ethan rubbed sleep from his face. “I thought you'd have no further use for the asylum of Athos. You and Quinn both being the practical sort.”

Cee winced, looking distinctly unhappy. “In feet, I'm about to leave,” he said in a dull voice. “I wanted to see you one more time, to -- to apologize. Can you meet me in Docking Bay C-8 right away?”

“I suppose,” said Ethan. “Are you off to the Dendarii Mercenaries with Quinn, then?”

“I can't talk any more now. I'm sorry.” Cee's image turned to sparkling snow, then emptiness.

Quinn was hanging over Cee's shoulder, perhaps, inhibiting his frankness. Ethan suppressed an impulse to call Security and tell Captain Arata where to look for her. He and Quinn were even now, help averaging harm. His mystery was solved; she had the intelligence coup she wanted. Let it end so.

As he exited his hostel to the mall a man, who had been idly seated by the central pool feeding the goldfish with pellets from a credit-card-operated dispenser placed nearby, rose and approached him.

Ethan stifled an urge to run back up the mall in screaming paranoia. The man couldn't be Setti. He was altogether the wrong racial type for a Cetagandan; tall, dark-skinned with a high-bridged nose, and wearing a pink silk jacket gaudy with embroidery. 'Dr. Urquhart?” the man inquired politely.

Ethan kept some distance between them. If this was another damned spy of some sort, he swore he would put him head first into the pool.... “Yes?”

“I wonder if I might request a small service of you.”

“Request away.”

The man produced a small flat oblong from his jacket, a little holovid projector. “Should you see him again, I wish you would give this message capsule to Ghem-colonel Ruyst Millisor. The message is activated by entering his military serial number.”

Definitely the pool. “Colonel Millisor is under arrest by Kline Station Security. You want to get a message to him, go see them.”

“Ah.” The man smiled. “Perhaps I shall. Still, who can say what chances the turning of the great wheel may bring us? Take it anyway. If no opportunity arises to deliver it, throw it away.” He tried to press the little oblong on Ethan, who foiled him by backing up. Rather than chase Ethan skipping backwards down the mall, the man paused, shaking his head. He laid the message capsule down on a bench Ethan had put between them. “I leave it to your discretion, sir.” He bowed with a flourish of his hand reminiscent of a genuflection, and turned to go.

“I'm not touching it,” Ethan stated flatly. The man smiled over his shoulder as he stepped into a nearby lift tube. “I'll take it to Security!' Ethan shouted. The man cupped his hand to his ear and shook his head, rising up the crystal tube. “I'll -- I'll --” Ethan swore under his breath as the pink apparition ascended out of sight.

Ethan circled the bench, watching the little oblong from the corner of his eye. With a wordless growl, he finally pocketed it. He would take it to Captain Arata, then, at the first opportunity, and let him worry about it. He glanced at his chronometer, and hurried on.

He had to take a tube-car to the docking bay, which was in a freight section on the opposite side of the Station from Transients' Lounge. This time he had a map ready to hand, and made no wrong turns.

The docking bay was extremely quiet. A single flex tube was activated, indicating a small ship on the other side, perhaps a fast courier hired especially for the occasion. In any case, not a commercial run lading other cargo. Quinn's expense account must be elastic indeed, Ethan reflected.

Terrence Cee, dressed in his green Stationer coveralls, sat wanly on a packing case, alone in the middle of the bay. He looked up as Ethan stepped out of a ramp corridor. “You came quickly, Dr. Urquhart.”

Ethan glanced at the flex tube. “I figured you were catching a scheduled run of some sort. I didn't realize you'd be travelling in this much style.”

“I thought perhaps you wouldn't come at all.”

“Because -- why? Because I'd found out the whole truth about that shipment?” Ethan shrugged. “I can't say I approve of what you tried to do. But given the obvious problems your -- your race, I guess -- would suffer as a minority anywhere else, I think I can understand why.”

A melancholy smile lit Cee's face, then was gone. “You do? But of course. You would.” He shook his head. “I should have said, I hoped you would not come.”

Ethan followed the direction of his nod.

Quinn stood in the shadows by a girder. But she was an unusually frazzled-looking Quinn. Her crisp jacket was gone, and she wore only a black T-shirt and her uniform trousers. Her boots were gone, too. And, Ethan realized as she moved into the light, her stunner holster was empty.

She moved because she was prodded by a man in the orange and black uniform of Kline Station Security. So they'd caught up with her at last. Ethan nearly chuckled. Watching her wriggle out of this one ought to be just fascinating....

His humor drained away as he caught a better look at the weapon with which the compact, bland-faced man was poking her spine. A lethal nerve disruptor. Altogether non-regulation for Security.

At the ring of footsteps Ethan turned his head the other way, to find Millisor and Rau walking toward them.

Ethan and Quinn were shoved together within the potential radius of fire from the bell-muzzle of the nerve disrupter, held in the tense hand of the man in the Security uniform. Cee was segregated from them under Rau's stunner. It needed nothing more than that to give Ethan a silent appreciation of their relative status.

Quinn looked even worse close up, with a split swollen lip, and white and shaking from either pain or the aftereffects of low stun. She seemed shorter without her boots. Cee stumbled like a corpse looking only for a place to lie down; congealed, cold, the blue light of his eyes extinguished.

“What happened?” Ethan whispered to Quinn. “How did they ever find you when Security couldn't?”

“I forgot the damned beeper,” she hissed back through clenched teeth. “Should've shoved it down the first trash vent we passed. I knew it was compromised! But Cee was arguing with me, and I was in a hurry, and -- oh, hell, what's the use...” She bit her lip in frustration, winced, and licked it tenderly. Her eyes returned again and again to their opponents, adding up the unfavorable odds, rejecting the sum and trying again with no better luck.

Millisor walked around them, smooth and smug. “So glad you could make it, Dr. Urquhart. We could have arranged accidents for you and the commander separately, but having you both together allows us a rather exquisite opportunity for -- efficiency.”

“Vengeance?” quavered Ethan. “But we never tried to kill you.”

“Oh, no,” Millisor protested. “Vengeance has nothing to do with it. You both simply know too much to live.”

Rau grinned nastily. “Tell them the rest, Colonel,” he urged.

“Ah, yes. With your sense of humor, Commander, you will particularly like this one. Observe, if you will, all those unused flex tubes on the outer wall. Sealed at both ends, they make a very private little compartment. Just the spot for a couple with rather odd tastes in adventure to arrange a tryst. How unfortunate that, in the sound sleep following their exertions --”

Rau waved his stunner cheerfully, by way of indicating just how that sound sleep was to be achieved.

“-- the flex tube is vented into space in preparation for locking in the auto-conveyer from a freighter hold. Said freighter being due in this docking bay immediately after my courier departs. Shall we leave you two entirely nude, I wonder?” he mused, “or merely naked from the waist down, suggesting fumbling passionate hurry?”

“God the Father,” Ethan moaned in horror, “the Population Council will think I was depraved enough to make love to a woman in a flex tube!”

“Gods forbid,” Quinn, looking equally appalled, echoed under her breath, “that Admiral Naismith would think I was stupid enough to make love to anything in a flex tube!”

Terrence Cee's eyes roved over the docking bay, as if seeking death as desperately as Quinn's eyes sought escape. He made a little jerky motion; Rau's stunner instantly drew a bead on him.

“Dream on, mutant,” Rau growled. “We aren't giving you a chance. One wrong move and you'll be carried aboard stunned.” His lips drew back unpleasantly. “You don't want to miss the show your friends are going to put on for us, do you?”

Cee's hands clenched and unclenched, despair and rage struggling for ascendancy in him, both equally impotent. “I'm sorry, Doctor,” he whispered. “They held a nerve disruptor to the commander's head, and I knew they weren't bluffing. I thought maybe you wouldn't come, just for a call from me. I should have let them shoot her then. Sorry. Sorry...”