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  “Colonel Melkarsh heads the patrol and outpost crews on our grounds,” Kim stated. “Captain Urugu commands the interior guards and therefore the entire household servant corps. They have the right to represent their people, on whom your agents have worked grievous harm.”

  Van Rijn nodded. You can preserve secrets by hiring none except nonhumans from barbarian cultures. They can be trained in their jobs and in no other aspects of Technic civilization. Hence they will keep to themselves, not mix socially with outsiders, blab nothing, and at the end of their contracts go home and vanish into the anonymity of their seldom-visited planets. But if you do this, you must also accept their codes. The Siturushi of Gorzun make fine mercenaries—perhaps a little too fierce—and one reason is the bond of mutual loyalty between commanders and troops.

  “Hokay,” the merchant said.

  “Maybe best. Now we make sure everybody gets included in the settlement we reach.” He sat down, extracted a cigar, and bit off the end.

  “We did not invite you to smoke,” Anastasia Herrera said frigidly.

  “Oh, that’s all right, don’t apologize, I know you got a lot on your minds.” Van Rijn lit the cigar, leaned back, crossed his legs, and exhaled a blue cloud. “I am glad you agreed to meet private with me. I would have come out to your home if you wanted. But better here, nie? What with police swarming around grounds and trying to look efficient. Here is maybe the one place in Lunograd we can be sure nobody is dropping eaves.”

  Melkarsh growled, deep in his throat. He probably knew some Anglic. Kim said: “We are leaning backward to be accommodating, Freeman van Rijn, but do not overstrain our patience. Whatever settlement is reached must be on our terms and must have your full cooperation. And we cannot guarantee that your agents will go unpunished by the law.”

  The visitor’s brows climbed, like black caterpillars, halfway up his slanted forehead. “Did I hear you right?” He cupped one ear. “Maybe, in spite of what extrarageous fees I pay for antisenescence treating, maybe at last in my old age I grow deaf? I hope you are not crazy. I hope you know this wowpow is for your sakes, not mine, because I don’t want to squash you flat. Let us not beat around the barn.” He pulled a stuffed envelope from his waistcoat pocket and threw it on the table. “Look at the pretty pictures. They are duplicates, natural. Originals I got someplace else, addressed to police and will be mailed if I don’t come back in a couple hours. Also biological specimens—what can positive be identified for Falkayn’s, because on Earth is medical records of him what include his chromosome patterns. Radioisotope tests will prove samples was taken not many hours ago.”

  The partners handed the photographs around in a silence that grew deeper and colder. Once Melkarsh snarled and took a step forward, but Urugu restrained him and both stood glaring.

  “You had Falkayn under brainscrub,” van Rijn said. He wagged a finger. “That was very naughty. No matter what we Solar Spicers may be guilty of, police going to investigate you from guzzle to zorch. And no matter what is then done with you, Serendipity is finished. Just the suspicion that you acted not so nice will take away your customers and their money.”

  They looked back at him. Their faces were metal-blank, aside from Thea Beldaniel’s, on which there flickered something akin to anguish. “We didn’t—” she half sobbed; and then, slumping back: “Yes. But I . . . we . . . meant him no real harm. We had no choice.”

  Kim waved her to silence. “You must have had some reason for not introducing this material officially at the outset,” he said, syllable by syllable.

  “Ja, ja,” van Rijn answered. “Don’t seem my boy was permanent hurt. And Serendipity does do a real service for the whole Polesotechnic League. I carry no big grudge. I try my best to spare you the worst. Of course, I can’t let you go without some loss. Is not possible. But you was the ones brought in the policemen, not me.”

  “I admit no guilt,” Kim said. His eyes kindled. “We serve another cause than your ignoble money-grubbing.”

  “I know. You got bosses somewhere out in space don’t like us. So we can’t so well let your outfit continue for a spy and maybe someday a saboteur. But in spirit of charity, I do want to help you escape terrible results from your own foolishness. We start by calling off the law dogs. Once they got their big sticky teeth out of our business—”

  “Can they be called off . . . now?” Thea Beldaniel whispered.

  “I think maybe so, if you cooperate good with me. After all, your servants inside the castle did not suffer more from Adzel than some bruises, maybe a bone or two broken, right? We settle damage claims out of court with them, a civil and not a criminal matter.” Van Rijn blew a thoughtful smoke ring. “You do the paying. Now about those patrol boats got clobbered, who is left that saw any spaceship hit them? If we—”

  Melkarsh shook off his companion’s grasp, jumped forward, raised all four fists and shouted in the dog Latin that has developed from the League’s common tongue: “By the most foul demon! Shall my folk’s heads lie unavenged?”

  “Oh, you get weregild you can take to their relatives,” van Rijn said. “Maybe we add a nice sum for you personal, ha?”

  “You believe everything is for sale,” Melkarsh rasped. “But honor is not. Know that I myself saw the spaceship from afar. It struck and was gone before I could arrive. But I know the type for one that your companies use, and I will so declare to the Federation’s lawmen.”

  “Now, now,” van Rijn smiled. “Nobody is asking you should perjure. You keep your mouth shut, don’t volunteer information you saw anything, and nobody will ask you. Especial since your employers is going to send you home soon—next available ship, or maybe I myself supply one—with pay for your entire contract and a fat bonus.” He nodded graciously at Urugu. “Sure, my friend, you too. Don’t you got generous employers?”

  “If you expect I will take your filthy bribe,” Melkarsh said, “when I could avenge my folk by speaking—”

  “Could you?” van Rijn answered.

  “Are you sure you pull me down? I don’t pull down easy, with my big and heavy foundation. You will for certain destroy your employers here, what you gave your word to serve faithful. Also, you and yours will be held for accessories to kidnap and other bad behavings. How you help your folk, or your own honor, in a Lunar jail? Ha? Far better you bring back weregild to their families and story of how they fell nobly in battle like warriors should.”

  Melkarsh snatched for air but could speak no further. Thea Beldaniel rose, went to him, stroked his mane and murmured, “He’s right, you know, my dear old friend. He’s a devil, but he’s right.”

  The Gorzuni gave a jerky nod and stepped backward.

  “Good, good!” van Rijn beamed. He rubbed his hands. “How glad I am for common sense and friendliness. I tell you what plans we make together.” He looked around. “Only I’m terrible thirsty. How about you send out for a few bottles beer?”

  X

  Reaching Lunograd, Edward Garver went directly to the police complex. “Bring that Wodenite prisoner to an interrogation room,” he ordered. With a nod at the three hard-countenanced men who accompanied him: “My assistants and I want to grill him ourselves. Make his environment as uncomfortable as the law allows—and if the law should happen to get stretched a trifle, this case is too big for recording petty details.”

  Thus Adzel found himself in air strangely thin and wet, cold enough for his scales to frost over, and in twice the gravity of his home planet. He was almost blind beneath the stimulated light of a distant red dwarf sun, and could surely not look through the vitryl panel behind which Carver’s team sat under Earth conditions. As time passed, no one offered food or drink. The incessant questions were projected shrill, on a frequency band painful to eardrums adapted for low notes.

  He ignored them.

  “Answer me!” Garver yelled after half an hour. “Do you want to be charged with obstructing justice, on top of everything else?”

  “In point of fact, yes,” Adzel astoni
shed them by replying. “As I am merely standing upon my right to keep silent, such an accusation would cap the ridiculousness of these proceedings.”

  Garver jabbed a button. Adzel must needs wince. “Is something wrong?” asked the team member who had been assigned the kindliness role.

  “I suffered quite a severe electric shock through the floor.”

  “Dear me. Perhaps a wiring defect. Unless it was your imagination. I realize you’re tired. Why don’t we finish this interview and all go get some rest?”

  “You are making a dreadful mistake, you know,” Adzel said mildly. “I admit I was somewhat irritated with my employer. Now I am far more irritated with you. Under no circumstances shall I cooperate. Fortunately, my spacefaring has accustomed me to exotic surroundings. And I regard this as an opportunity to gain merit by transcending physical discomfort.” He assumed the quadrupedal equivalent of the lotus position, which is quite a sight. “Excuse me while I say my prayers.”

  “Where were you on the evenwatch of—

  “Ora mani padme hum.”

  An interrogator switched off the speaker system. “I don’t know if this is worth our trouble, chief,” he said.

  “He’s a live organism,” Garver growled. “Tough, yeh, but he’s got his limits. We’ll keep on, in relays, till we grind him down.”

  Not long afterward, the phone buzzed in the chamber and Mendez’s image said deferentially: “Sir, I regret the interruption, but we’ve received a call. From the Serendipity people.” He gulped. “They . . . they’re dropping their complaint.”

  “What?” Garver leaped from his chair. “No! They can’t! I’ll file the charges myself!” He stopped. The redness ebbed from his cheeks. “Put them on,” he said coldly.

  Kim Yoon-Kun looked out of the screen. Was he a shade less collected than before? At his back loomed van Rijn. Garver suppressed most of his automatic rage at glimpsing that man. “Well?” he said. “What is this nonsense?”

  “My partners and I have conferred with the gentleman here.” Kim said. Each word seemed to taste individually bad; he spat them out fast. “We find there has been a deplorable misunderstanding. It must be corrected at once.”

  “Including bringing the dead back to life?” Garver snorted. “Never mind what bribes you’ve been tempted by. I have proof that a federal crime was committed. And I warn you, sir, trying to conceal anything about it will make you an accessory after the fact.”

  “But it was no crime,” Kim said. “It was an accident.”

  Garver stared past him, at van Rijn who smiled and puffed on a large cigar.

  “Let me begin from the beginning,” Kim said. “My partners and I would like to retire. Because Serendipity, Inc. does satisfy a genuine need, its sale will involve considerable sums and many different interests. Negotiations are accordingly delicate. This is especially true when you consider that the entire value of our company lies in the fact that its services are rendered without fear or favor. Let its name be tainted with the least suspicion of undue influence from outside, and it will be shunned. Now everyone knows that we are strangers here, aloof from society. Thus we are unfamiliar with the emotional intricacies that may be involved. Freeman van Rijn generously”—Kim had a fight to get the adverb out—“offered us advice. But his counselling must be done with extreme discretion, lest his rivals assume that he will turn Serendipity into a creature of his own.”

  “You . . . you . . .” Garver heard himself squeak, as if still trying to grill Adzel, “you’re selling out? To whom?”

  “That is the problem, Director,” Kim said. “It must be someone who is not merely able to pay, but is capable of handling the business and above suspicion. Perhaps a consortium of nonhumans? At any rate, Freeman van Rijn will, sub rosa, be our broker.”

  “At a fat commission,” Garver groaned.

  Kim could not refrain from groaning back: “Very fat.” He gathered himself and plowed on:

  “Captain Falkayn went as his representative to discuss matters with us. To preserve the essential secrecy, perforce he misled everyone, even his long-time shipmates. Hence that story about his betrothal to Freelady Beldaniel. I see now that this was a poor stratagem. It excited their suspicions to the point where they resorted to desperate measures. Adzel entered violently, as you know. But he did no real harm, and once Captain Falkayn had explained the situation to him, we were glad to accept his apologies. Damage claims will be settled privately. Since Captain Falkayn had completed his work at our home anyhow, he embarked with Chee Lan on a mission related to finding a buyer for us. There was nothing illegal about his departure, seeing that no laws had been broken. Meanwhile Freeman van Rijn was kind enough to fetch Adzel in his personal craft.”

  “No laws broken? What about the laws against murder?” Garver yelled. His fingers worked, as if closing on a throat. “I’ve got them . . . you . . . for that!”

  “But no, Director,” Kim said. “I agree the circumstances looked bad, for which reason we were much too prompt to prefer charges. By ‘we’ I mean those of us who were not present at the time. But now a discussion with Freelady Beldaniel, and a check of the original plans of the castle, have shown what actually happened.

  “You know the place has automatic as well as manned defenses. Adzel’s disruptive entry alerted the robots in one tower, which then overreacted by firing on our own patrol boats as these came back to help. Chee Lan, in her spaceship, demolished the tower in a valiant effort to save our people, but she was too late.

  “A tragic accident. If anyone is to blame, it is the contractor who installed those machines with inadequate discriminator circuits. Unfortunately, the contractor is nonhuman, living far beyond the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth . . .”

  Garver sat.

  “You had better release Adzel immediately,” Kim said. “Freeman van Rijn says he may perhaps be induced not to generate a great scandal about false arrest, provided that you apologize to him in person before a public newscaster.”

  “You have made your own settlement—with van Rijn?” Garver whispered.

  “Yes,” said Kim, like one who had been rammed with a bayonet.

  Garver rallied the fragments of his manhood. “All right,” he got out. “So be it.”

  Van Rijn looked over Kim’s shoulder. “Gloat,” he said and switched off.

  The space yacht lifted and swung toward Earth. Stars glittered in every viewport. Van Rijn leaned back in his lounger, hoisted a foamful mug, and said, “By dam, we better celebrate fast. No sooner we make planetfall but we will be tonguedragging busy, you and me.”

  Adzel drank from a similar mug which, however, was filled with prime whiskey. Being large has some advantages. His happiness was limited. “Will you let the Serendipity people go scot-free?” he asked. “They are evil.”

  “Maybe not evil. Maybe plain enemies, which is not necessarily same thing,” van Rijn said. “We find out. For sure not scot-free, though, any more than what you glug down at my expense like it was beer is free Scotch. No, you see, they has lost their company, their spy center, which was their whole raison d’etre. Off that loss, I make a profit, since I handle the selling.”

  “But you must have some goal besides money!” Adzel exclaimed.

  “Oh, ja, ja, sure. Look, I did not know what would happen after you rescued Davy boy. I had to play on my ear. What happened was, Serendipity tried striking back at us through the law. This made special dangers, also special opportunities. I found four things in my mind.”

  Van Rijn ticked the points off on his fingers. “One,” he said, “I had to get you and my other loyal friends off the hook. That was more important by itself than revenge. But so was some other considerates.

  “Like two, I had to get the government out of this business—for a while at least. Maybe later we must call it back. But for now, these reasons to keep it out. Alpha, governments is too big and cumbersome for handling a problem with so many unknowns as we got. Beta, if the public in the Commonwealth learned t
hey have a powerful enemy some place we don’t know, they could get hysterical and this could be bad for developing a reasonable type policy, besides bad for business. Gamma, the longer we can work private, the better chance for cutting ourselves a share of whatever pies may be floating around in space, in exchange for our trouble.”

  He paused to breathe and gulp. Adzel looked from this comfortable saloon, out the viewport to the stars that were splendid but gave no more comfort than life could seize for itself; and no life was long, compared to the smallest time that any of those suns endured. “What other purposes have you?” he asked mutedly.

  “Number three,” van Rijn said, “did I not make clear Serendipity is in and for itself a good idea, useful to everybody? It should not be destroyed, only passed on into honest hands. Or tentacles or paws or flippers or whatever. Ergo, we do not want any big hurrah about it. For that reason too, I must bargain with the partners. I did not want them to feel like Samson, no motive not to pull down the whole barbershop.

  “And four.” His tone turned unwontedly grave. “Who are these X beings? What do they want? Why are they secret? Can we maybe fix a deal with them? No sane man is after a war. We got to learn more so we can know what is best to do. And Serendipity is our one lonesome lead to its masters.”

  Adzel nodded. “I see. Did you get any information?”

  “No. Not really. That I could not push them off of. They would die first. I said to them, they must go home and report to their bosses. If nothings else, they got to make sure their partners who has already left is not seized on returning to Luna and maybe put in the question. So hokay, they start, I have a ship that trails theirs, staying in detection range the whole way. Maybe they can lure her into a trap, maybe not. Don’t seem worth the trouble, I said, when neither side is sure it can outfox the other. The most thickly sworn enemies always got some mutual interests. And supposing you intend to kill somebody, why not talk at him first? For worst, you have wasted a little time; for best, you learn you got no cause to kill him.”