Fortune's Light Part 17

"All of that," admitted Geordi. "In the meantime, you'll have to do the best you can."

He followed Geordi's gaze into the Icebreaker dugout, where the android's teammates were frozen in various poses. Terwilliger, his foot planted on the dugout's second step, was leaning forward on his knee. His face was half turned away from the goings-on at home plate, as if he couldn't bear to watch-as if he knew that Bobo would find a way to keep him from his victory. Jackson, nestled in the shadows, looked on with what appeared to be only mild interest. Cherry was leaning on the bat rack, scrutinizing the pitcher through narrowed eyes.

"Didn't those guys know anything?" asked Geordi. "About the curveball, I mean?"

"Not very much," said the android.

His friend regarded him. "Look, Data, maybe it's none of my business, but ... well, why is this so important to you? Commander Riker no doubt intended this to be fun-relaxation. And here you are, putting an awful lot of effort into something that no one else will ever know or care about."

"Perhaps," said the android. "And I must admit, I have asked myself the same question, without being able to come up with a satisfactory answer." He looked back at Geordi. "In that respect, I suppose, the curveball and my motivation have much in common."

Geordi smiled. "Okay. To each his own." He jerked a thumb in the direction of third base. "Are you going to play some more now?"

Data shook his head. "It strikes me that there may have been some scientific research concerning the curveball, back in the twentieth or twenty-first century. I would like to conduct a search for it before proceeding to the next inning."

Geordi nodded. "Then I'll walk you as far as engineering. I've got a s.h.i.+ft starting in ten minutes, and it doesn't look good for the boss to be late. Sets a bad example."

"I understand," said Data. "Computer-save program, please."

Riker tried to sit up, found it harder than he would have thought. The ringing in his ears wasn't getting any better, and he could still taste the blood in his mouth. But he'd be d.a.m.ned if he was going to lie there on the hard, cold ground any longer. With an effort, he rolled over and got up on all fours. Then, slowly, he pushed himself to his feet.

"Riker. Are you all right?"

He turned. "Lyneea," he said dully.

She held his head steady, looked into his eyes. "I think you've got a concussion," she told him.

"Great." It sounded as if someone else had said it.

She took his arm. "Come on. Let's get out of here." She pointed to a narrow street that led off the market square. "Can you walk by yourself?"

He nodded. They walked. And what was left of the crowd let them through.

At one point Riker took note of the petmonger they'd seen before, the one whose isak had gotten loose and caused all the furor. Ironically, his was one of the few booths left untouched by the uproar. And by the looks of things, he'd even managed to recover the vicious little beast.

A moment later they were in the street that Lyneea had pointed out. There were a couple of shops here, but neither seemed to be open. The street itself was deserted-unusual, Riker decided, considering its proximity to the marketplace.

Lyneea turned him toward her, looked into his eyes again. She frowned, nodded. "Definitely a concussion."

"Feels like someone packed my head with mud," he admitted. Then a memory cut through the fog. "Where were you?"

"Watching. And hoping I wouldn't have to intervene. After all, that would have neutralized my usefulness."

He felt something like anger crawl up his gullet. "Neutralized your ... I could've been killed."

Lyneea shook her head. "Not a chance. I'm too good a shot-remember the isak pit?" She turned Riker's face to one side, looked at it critically. "You look terrible," she decided. "We should get you to a doctor."

He took her hands away. "No doctor," he told her. "There's too much to do."

"Is there?" she asked. "What, for instance? Kobar will be on his guard now. He'll never lead us to the seal."

Riker thought about that, or tried to. It wasn't easy. The ringing in his ears was starting to abate, but he still felt as if his brain had grown a size too large for his skull. And now there was a new pain, in the area of his temple-no doubt the point of impact of the knife handle, or whatever had hit him.

Then it came to him: it was something Kobar had said. Something about ...

"He didn't do it," blurted Riker.

Lyneea looked at him. "I beg your pardon?"

"Kobar. He didn't murder Teller."

"What makes you so sure?"

"For one thing, he could have killed me just now if he'd really wanted to. He could have eliminated someone who was almost certainly on to his crimes. But he didn't. What does that tell you?"

Lyneea shrugged. "That he's a fool?"

"No. That he may be innocent-of the murder and maybe even of the theft." He paused, trying to pull it all together in his mind. "Kobar said something to me after he stuck his knife in the ground. He told me that Norayan was wrong about him. Apparently she'd accused him of killing Teller, and he was pa.s.sing a message to her through me."

His partner's brow wrinkled ever so slightly. "I thought Norayan didn't know your friend was dead."

Riker grunted. "According to what she told me, she didn't. But what if she really did know? What if she went looking for Teller in the maze, and found him lying there-as we did?"

"Then she lied to you. But why would she do that?" A pause. "Unless ..." She licked her lips. Had some of the color drained from her face? "Riker ... couldn't Norayan have planted that patch we found? The one that led us to Rhurig-to Kobar?"

With hindsight, it did seem like a coincidence-didn't it?

"For what reason?" he asked out loud. "Because someone else killed Conlon? Someone she didn't want us to know about?"

His mind had finally kicked into gear, and his mouth along with it. But it took a couple of moments for his emotions to catch up-for him to realize the implications of what he was saying.

They looked at each other. For their own individual reasons, neither of them wanted to believe it. To Riker, Norayan was a friend. To Lyneea, she was an official of the madraga that the retainer had sworn to defend with her life. But if she was guilty of deceiving them ...

G.o.d. What if Norayan herself was the killer?

"Let's say it's all true," Lyneea told him. "Let's say that Norayan led us to Kobar to keep us off the real killer's trail. Why would she first alert Kobar by accusing him of the crime?"

Riker shook his head. "Maybe to make him act the part of a hunted criminal, to make his behavior more convincing to us." Something else occurred to him. "Or maybe to turn him on us, to take us out of the game."

Lyneea's temples worked. "So we wouldn't live long enough to find out she'd deceived us."

The human nodded. "And the rest of Criathis wouldn't suspect a thing. Kobar's a known hothead. It wouldn't be so farfetched if he killed an offworlder, and maybe a Criathis retainer as well, without knowing it."

His partner scowled. "What about Fortune's Light? Could Norayan have been in on the theft of that, too?"

Riker met her gaze. "It's hard to believe, I know. But is it any less believable than the rest of this?"

It hurt to say these things. However, it hurt even more to think that Norayan was trying to kill them.

Maybe Teller wasn't the only one who had changed. Maybe.

"Unless we're jumping to conclusions," said Lyneea. Her scowl deepened. "Or was that what we did back in the maze?" She sighed. "What about that oath of secrecy that Norayan swore you to? That sounded like something of genuine importance to her."

The human had to agree. "Maybe she was telling the truth about her affair with Teller and lying about the rest of it."

"But if that was the case, why let us in on her a.s.sociation with Conlon and the maze? Why not just let us blunder around and leave her secret a secret?"

Riker pondered that one. "Could it be," he suggested, "that we were close to the truth and didn't know it? That Norayan had to lead us on a wild-goose chase and take some chances because otherwise we would have found her out?"

Lyneea had a queer expression on her face. It had some surprise in it and some respect and maybe a couple of other things. "You know," she said, "you're not such a liability after all."

He wanted to smile, but his temple was throbbing too badly now. "Thanks" was all he could muster up.

"Don't mention it." She looked away from him. "So now," she said, "there are two questions staring us in the face-a.s.suming, of course, that Norayan is truly hiding something about the murder or the theft or both."

"Number one," said Riker, picking up the thread, "what were we looking at that made Norayan so nervous? What were we doing that we should start doing again?"

"And number two," continued Lyneea, "whom was she protecting?"

Lyneea seemed to think, as Riker did, that Norayan could have committed the murder herself. But, like Riker, she didn't want to drag it into the open-not yet. It was the one possibility that neither of them was quite willing to countenance.

The human pulled his tunic more tightly about himself. Somehow it seemed colder here in this narrow street.

"Let's go back," he suggested, "to the time before Norayan's visit. We had just tailed Bosch to his place at the Golden Muzza, right?"

Lyneea's eyes lost their focus a little as she remembered. "You think that Bosch was mixed up somehow with Norayan?"

"Maybe. In any case, I think we should call on him again-that is, if he hasn't decided to change his address."

Lyneea nodded, her gaze still focused elsewhere. "What if it wasn't Bosch? What if it was the Pandrilite that made Norayan nervous?"

Riker thought about it. The Pandrilite's story had seemed plausible enough, but ...

"We've got him under wraps on that blaster charge," he said. "It can't hurt to ask him a few more-"

Suddenly Riker felt something hit him in the back-hard. He turned instinctively and saw a cloaked figure fleeing in the direction of the marketplace.

Lyneea cursed and clutched at him, and at the same time he felt something long and stiff in his shoulder, something that didn't belong there, something that was beginning to hurt. Numbly he looked down at the right side of his chest and saw a b.l.o.o.d.y knife point sticking out of his tunic.

"My G.o.d," he whispered. The pain was getting worse with each pa.s.sing moment. Already it felt as if there were a hot poker inside him, searing his flesh with agonizing slowness.

He staggered against the nearest wall, Lyneea still holding on to him. There was fear in her eyes, rampaging wide-eyed fear.

The stain on his tunic was spreading quickly; he was losing blood at an alarming rate. A few drops fell into the slush at his feet, making tiny black pools.

Lyneea swallowed. "Hang on, Riker. I'm going for help." Her voice was calmer than she looked-it must have taken quite an effort.

"No," he told her. Not that he didn't agree he needed help. Only the help he had in mind was...o...b..ting hundreds of kilometers above them.

Digging into his tunic with his left hand-he had lost feeling in his right-he scrabbled about for his communicator. The pain was getting unbearable, but he clenched his teeth and forced his fingers to close about the device. As he withdrew it, he slid down along the wall to his knees, despite Lyneea's efforts to hold him up.

Will activated the communicator with thumb pressure and got as far as "Riker to Enterprise" before the d.a.m.ned thing squirted out of his grasp. He tried to pick it up out of the slush, but he was cold, so cold suddenly, and his fingers wouldn't do what he wanted them to.

He looked up at Lyneea for help, saw her narrowed eyes, and knew what she was thinking: a violation of the high-tech ban, a breach of her vows as a retainer. Technically she was wrong, but he had neither the strength nor the time to explain it now.

"Please," he rasped. There was a blackness at the edges of his vision that was beginning to eat its way inward. "Please ... Captain Picard on ... on the s.h.i.+p."

Lyneea's mouth was set in a straight, hard line. The kind of help he wanted went against everything she believed in. It meant defiling, for the sake of an offworlder, what her people held sacred.

But there was no way to get any other kind of help in time to save his life. If she'd doubted that before, she had to see it now.

"Please," he whispered again, reaching for the communicator with useless fingers. The pain was sheer agony now; it was closing down on him like a vise. And still Lyneea stood there, looking for all the world like a beast caught in a trap.

The moment seemed to stretch out forever. Before it ended, Riker lost consciousness.

Chapter Ten.

FORTUNATELY, Beverly Crusher had been in sickbay when the call came from the bridge. In a matter of seconds, she'd sc.r.a.ped together everything she needed and headed for the turbolift.

It wasn't until the lift doors closed and the compartment was headed for Deck Six that she began to gather her thoughts as well. And to replay her conversation with the captain, picking out the bits of information she thought she might need, skirting her personal feelings of hope and dread as best she could.

"You'll be taking a chance, Doctor, you know that?" Picard had said. "Whoever made Will a target may make you his next one. And we won't be able to beam you back until ..."

Then the lift stopped and the doors opened and she was rus.h.i.+ng down the corridor to Transporter Room 1. Crewmen hugged the bulkheads on either side of her, careful not to get in her way. Apparently she wasn't the only one who'd been informed of the emergency.

The transporter room doors parted without a sound. Inside, Chief O'Brien was waiting for her. Also Worf-with a bundle in his hand.

"I thought I was going alone," she told him.

"You are," he snarled, obviously none too pleased about the fact. He unfurled the bundle with a flick of his wrist, showing her the heavy dun-colored tunic she'd have to wear over her medical garb.

"Oh," she said, "that's right. Don't want to attract too much attention, do we?"

The wardrobe change seemed to her a waste of time-one they could hardly afford now, if Riker's wound was half as bad as reported. After all, if someone had bothered to stab him, wasn't the Federation's presence in Besidia probably known already?

Nonetheless, she put down her supply pack long enough to pull the tunic on over her head. Then she recovered her pack, bounded up onto the transporter platform, and gave the order: "Energize."

Chief O'Brien complied. Her last s.h.i.+pboard sight was that of Worf, his body unnaturally rigid as he resisted the impulse to leap onto the platform beside her. His eyes flashed black fire, and she had no trouble understanding their message: Do not let him die.

Then the transporter effect took over.

Picard paced in front of the command center, trying to hope for the best. The Impriman's message had made it sound bad for Riker. Very bad.