The Devil and Deep Space (33 page)

“Your Excellency. That,” the Bench specialist said, and pointed. “That. What is that. Is that what I think it is?”

What was she looking at? There. Not alongside the courier, but at a near remove, its glittering lines elegant and evil in the bright thin azure light.

The Malcontent Cousin Stanoczk coughed. “Yes, Bench specialist,” he said. “She is. Kospodar thula.”

Kospodar. There was no escaping the beast, in all of the Combine.

“Cousin Stanoczk, I thought the Arakcheyek Yards only built twenty–seven of them. What is this one – ” She almost asked
What is this one doing here
? She almost did. Lek could hear the unspoken words clearly in the quiet cabin, though she had stopped herself in time.

“And this is one of the twenty–seven, Bench specialist. You would like a tour? Andrej. Permit me. Let me show off this pretty little animal. You can stand and talk to Ferinc if you do not care to see her for yourself.”

The courier had been secured. Lek could hear the opening of the cargo bays. Someone was working the secures to the passenger landing ramp, and let a blast of air come in. Hot air. Lek was surprised that it was not cold, but they did lie in full sunlight.

“I have nothing to say to thy Ferinc,” Koscuisko said, sourly. “Except for, ‘be damned.’ Here is supplemental, gentles, you must each wear one until you are indoors. You will want one to tour the thula. Go with Stoshik.”

Supplemental atmosphere generator, a little soft packet that sat on the shoulder, a supple tube that lay along the cheek below the nostril and clung there of its own accord. Lek took one; the courier’s navigator helped him to adjust it. His headache went away. He hadn’t realized he’d had a headache.

The Malcontent broke from his place and down the

ramp as soon as it was cleared, and the Bench specialist after him. Stildyne nodded; Lek followed eagerly. A Kospodar thula. He had only ever heard of them. He had never hoped to see one.

It would be something to tell the crew when they returned to the
Ragnarok
. Without their officer . . .

Lek put that unhappy thought aside. It was to be.

There was no help for it. And he needed all of his attention to spend on the thula.

###

Talk to Ferinc
, Stanoczk had said. Insufferable cheek, Andrej decided. Nobody had said anything to him that would change the fact of who Ferinc had been, nor had anybody a satisfactory explanation for why Ferinc should be tolerated at the Matredonat. He was home now. He was to stay. Ferinc had no place left in his house.

That Marana had taken comfort from Ferinc in Andrej’s absence he could understand, so long as he declined to think about it.

Yet Anton loved his Ferinc, and Andrej didn’t know what he was going to do about that. The Ferinc that Anton loved was very little to do with the man Andrej had disciplined so many years ago; it did no good to tell himself that it was for Anton’s sake that Ferinc should be denied him. Anton was a loving and trusting child. Children learned what they were shown, rather than what they were taught. To be fair, Andrej could not deny Ferinc credit for the beautiful spirit of his son, the openhearted affection that he had found so surprising and so endearing. How could those two Ferincs be the same man?

He was not particularly interested in Cousin Stanoczk’s thula. Unless he missed his guess, Specialist Ivers would imagine that this was the only one that the Malcontent owned; and she was impressed enough at that, because the Bench itself could not afford any more of them. That had been why the program had been cancelled. Andrej suspected that the Malcontent had more than one thula at his saintly disposal; not because he knew, but because he — unlike the Bench specialist — had the native child’s grasp of the money that the Malcontent held in safekeeping for the Saint’s purposes.

He stood outside the craft at the side of the loading ramp and looked at the sky, instead. They were so high into atmosphere at Chelatring Side that everything looked crisper, brighter, sharper in the thin air. Sometimes he thought about the old times when Koscuisko had lived at Chelatring Side and only gone down to the grain fields to raid or to marry, and wondered whether his ancestors would hold him in contempt for that he had to use a supplemental atmosphere generator when he came to his own home.

He knew that he’d looked down on Iosev for chronic bleeding of the nose, as if it were a moral weakness. There were many more reasons than just that to find his brother wanting, that was so.

Someone came around from the nose of the thula toward him, and stopped dead in his tracks when he caught sight of Andrej. Andrej sighed. “Come to me, Cousin,” he suggested, knowing that it was not a suggestion. “Stanoczk says that I am to have a word with you.”

Ferinc looked a different man, in this thin light, than he had in the library at the Matredonat, which had been comparatively dim. There was more gray in his long fore–braids than Andrej had noticed, but his gaze was clear and level. When Ferinc dropped his eyes to bow it was with professional self– effacement, not the fear that had possessed him before. “If Cousin Stanoczk says, your Excellency, I am bound to obey.”

Oh, be that way
, Andrej thought to himself with irritation.
And your soul to perdition on top of it
. “My child loves you very much, and speaks of you often. Someone has taught him to be so openhearted as to gladden the heart of a long–absent father. How are we to manage this between us?”

“We” was owed Ferinc, regardless of how Andrej felt about the man personally. Marana had not approached him to moderate his ban on Ferinc, but every time Andrej heard Anton mention the name it reminded him that there was an issue to resolve.

“Permission to speak freely, your Excellency,” Cousin Ferinc said, but it wasn’t a Malcontent talking, it was the petty warrant officer that Ferinc had once been. Andrej didn’t care to be reminded of who Ferinc had been, but that was the problem whole and entire right there, wasn’t it?

And who was he, of all men, to disdain Haster Girag for what Girag had done, when he himself was so much the more depraved a beast? “Granted.”

It took Ferinc a moment to collect his thoughts, but then he licked his lips as though they were dry and spoke. “I was sent for duty, your Excellency. I didn’t mean to grow close to the child. I didn’t see it happening. I am the slave of the Malcontent. His Excellency knows how little I have to say about where I am next to go. But, your Excellency, if I could be permitted, even if only to write from time to time.”

Andrej knew that he was Anton’s biological parent, his genetic sire. Ferinc was the man who had been Anton’s father — the realization was liberating and agonizing, at once.

“Stanoczk is right.” Andrej said it out loud, and heard the somewhat confused wonder in his voice. “A duty is owed to you, Ferinc. I don’t want to see you. Deal with Marana. I withdraw my prohibition. Anton loves you. How could I love him, if I kept you from him?”

Liberating: because what he had done to Ferinc when he had punished Haster Girag — rather than reporting his criminal behavior for Fleet to punish — had not destroyed Ferinc’s capacity for happiness, Malcontent or no. Ferinc could still feel and share a parent’s love for a child, love that was untainted by the corruption of the torture cell.

Agonizing: because Andrej despaired of ever taking Ferinc’s place in the heart of his own son. He did not deserve it; he could not truly begrudge it to Ferinc; and yet, and yet, and yet. Ferinc reached out and took him by the sleeve, as if overcome. Loosened his grip, then straightened up. “Thank you,” Ferinc said. “I won’t give you cause to regret it. I promise. Thank you.”

And yet he had only done the right thing, because the pure parental affection in Ferinc’s voice was unmistakable. Undeniable. How cruel would it have been to deny Ferinc to Anton? To deny Anton to Ferinc?

It was the Malcontent’s business; so Andrej did not have to think long or hard on it, nor could he bear to. He merely nodded, and Stildyne came down out of the thula to rescue him from awkwardness, pausing in apparent confusion to see him and Ferinc together. “Your Excellency,” Stildyne said. “Your assistance, sir. Lek’s bonding. We may not be able to pry him loose. We need your help.”

No, Stildyne had only wondered where he was, but Andrej was glad to take the offered escape route. Andrej nodded yet again; and went up the ramp into the courier to see what had gotten into his good Lek, hoping he’d done the right thing for his son.

###

Admiral Brecinn stared at the little ticket in front of her on her desk, her hands flat to the desk’s surface as though she could stop the room from spinning by main force of will.

The treachery was unspeakable.

Dame Mergau Noycannir was not at Chilleau. She hadn’t been there, she wasn’t expected, and so far as Chilleau knew she was at Pesadie. Mergau Noycannir had taken the finest, fleetest courier at Pesadie and left days ago, but she hadn’t gone to Chilleau at all. It all made too much sense, all of a sudden.

Noycannir had come from Chilleau to observe the exercise. When the accident had happened, she had offered her services to Brecinn as though motivated by nothing more than an eye toward her own advantage and a desire to ingratiate herself with the network of reasonable people. She had counseled patience, subtlety, tact, but it had all been a trick.

The
Ragnarok
had stolen the cannon from Silboomie Station and left for Fleet Audit Appeals Authority at Taisheki. Mergau Noycannir had disappeared.

It was a conspiracy; Brecinn couldn’t quite puzzle the exact framework of it out, but she knew a conspiracy when she smelled one. There was no time to sit and beat herself for her stupidity, her trusting nature, her gullibility.

This had gone beyond a simple issue of lost profit. The loss of the battle cannon was a serious compromise. Reasonable people did not tolerate being compromised. She needed a good story and she needed it fast, and she needed to get it to Taisheki Station before the
Ragnarok
had a chance to log an appeal. She had to get her word in first.

There were reasonable people at the Fleet Audit Appeals Authority. And the cannon was worth a very great deal of money.

The
Ragnarok
was clearly trafficking; they’d killed poor inoffensive Brem because he’d discovered something inconvenient, perhaps because he’d been reluctant to participate. They’d used their stay at Pesadie Training Command to forge documentation for stolen munitions, using her own validation codes. Now they intended to present the gun to Fleet to incriminate Pesadie and divert Fleet’s attention away from their own corrupt dealings.

It was not the most convincing story in the world. But it was all she had. And if it cost her everything she had left to buy credibility at Fleet Audit Appeals Authority — poverty was better than death. Poverty she could hope to recover from. Assassination was much more permanent a handicap for an officer’s career.

She would see to it that ap Rhiannon, not Sandri Brecinn, paid the price for this treachery, if it took the last resources she had at her command. She would be revenged. She could no longer hope to profit from the
Ragnarok
’s decommissioning, but she would see to it that ap Rhiannon died for her duplicity.

###

There were only fifty people at dinner, sixty at most, but Stildyne couldn’t get a decent count for the glittering of jewels in the bright lights. They hurt his eyes. And he was drunk already: not on any alcohol, but on the luxury that clothed his body and beguiled him with unimaginable sensuality.

They hadn’t brought dress uniform with them.

Koscuisko’s people hadn’t said word one, but Koscuisko’s people had been busy at it since the day that they’d arrived here on Azanry. Stildyne could only guess that garments had been borrowed, checked for size, when he’d thought they were merely being laundered. Because on gaining crew–quarters here at Chelatring Side earlier today, they had found dress uniform ready for all of them.

The fit was exact and the detail was precise, from the formal version of the service marks that Taller wore on his collar — from the Abermarle campaign — to the exact shade of green that marked Lek for a bond–involuntary. Of course, the shade of green had to be precise; not all hominids under Jurisdiction had the same sort of color vision, after all, so tone and saturation were as important as hue.

Perfect. But so much more than perfect. The boots had been shaped to the wear of the foot, but they were lined with glove leather so soft that it was almost like sex to set foot inside them. Koscuisko’s personal linen had always been that, linen, and Security had handled it often enough over the years while managing drunken officers; Stildyne had never imagined the luxury of wearing a linen hip–wrap on his own part.

And the boot stockings were silk. And the uniform blouse was a wool spun so fine that it made a man afraid to put it on, but it lay so lightly across his shoulders that he almost felt naked. It was unnerving. His under–blouse alone was worth three weeks’ pay, and the kit was complete. It was astonishing. And it made him angry, in a subtle sense; how dare Koscuisko’s people treat them with so much contempt as to casually clothe them with a year’s wages, and not even bother to mention it?

Stildyne stood by the side doors into the great dining room, brooding about it, watching his people. House security had posted Security 5.1 in visible positions around the officer, a guard of honor. Koscuisko’s people were particularly fascinated by Smath and Kerenko, to judge from their placement, because they were to either side of Koscuisko himself, with a clear corridor between down which the servers might pass.

Koscuisko would never wear his uniform again. He wasn’t wearing his uniform now, sitting at the table, talking with Specialist Ivers to one side of him and a boy–child on the other. Not that much older than Anton Andreievitch, Stildyne thought, and nudged Cousin Stanoczk in the ribs with his elbow.

“Who is that?” The boy–child looked like Anton Andreievitch, come to that. Or like Koscuisko. That meant nothing. Chelatring Side was filthy with people who