Cabal: Johannes Cabal, the Detective Part 6

"Stone the crows, what a berk," observed Cacon. "Things were different when I was a boy. Respect for your elders, oh yes. Always the same, though, isn't it? When you're young, you had to show respect for your elders or you'd get a right lathering. Now I am an elder, you have to treat the youth of today with kid gloves or they'll give you a right lathering. Doesn't matter which side of the generation gap I'm on, it's the wrong side." He breathed a deep breath so that he could sigh a deep sigh. "Typical. Abso-lutely flipping typical." He shoved his plate of disrupted fish away from him. "Oi, garkon! Give this to the cat. What's for pudding?"

Pudding, however, still lay a little way off into the future. The main course came next, steak cooked in the Mirkarvian fas.h.i.+on-so rare as to be just this side of stationary. Miss Barrow looked at her plate as red juices oozed from the flesh. "What am I supposed to do with this?" she asked Cabal in an aside. "Eat it or resuscitate it?"

"Thank your stars that you asked for it well done," he replied. He'd asked for his to be cooked medium rare, which in Mirkarvian cuisine meant it had been shown a picture of an oven for a moment and then served. A very brief moment, mind.

As his fellow diners had their full attention on their plates as they laboriously sawed away at their meals-less fine dining, more like a bayonet charge-Cabal took the opportunity to study them in greater detail. Sitting on the captain's left was a young woman, expensively yet, unusually for the Mirkarvian aesthetic, tastefully dressed in burgundy silks and velvet. This, it transpired, was the Lady Ninuka, yet another of Mirkarvia's serried ranks of n.o.bles. Apparently she was quite senior, however, based on her place at table and Schten's great and careful civility towards her. For her part, she was polite but disengaged. The businessman with the major breakthrough in bar snacks, a Herr Harlmann, was on her left, and had talked through her to Schten. She had disregarded him as easily as she might a small fly-a notable feat, in particular when Harlmann had gone on to the intricacies of manufacture.

In her early twenties, and beautiful in an obvious "flawless complexion, perfect bone structure, glistering eyes of russet brown, wine-dark hair" sort of way, there was a slight downturn at the edges of her mouth that implied a dissatisfaction with life. It left her with a mild pout, but Cabal doubted there was much of the child left in her. Her gaze ranged around the table, and he found himself the subject of it more than once, her eyes switching between him and Miss Barrow, as if gauging the nature of their relations.h.i.+p, before moving on. When her eyes met his, there was no sudden looking away, or even glances laden with meaning. She looked dispa.s.sionately into his eyes, as she might those of a statue or an animal at the zoo. He noticed that she also looked occasionally at the door through which Gabriel Zoruk-that singularly ineffectual rabble-rouser-had left earlier, as if expecting him to return. That he didn't seemed not to concern her greatly.

To Cabal's side, Miss Barrow took a rest from her knife work. "This isn't a meal," she muttered to him, "it's a cow's postmortem. I think I'll stick with the potatoes and carrots." She waved a steward over and asked for some more vegetables.

The woman on the far side of Cacon overheard her, and said, "Ah, well, that's one thing we won't be short of on this voyage, my dear," and gave a curious laugh: Muh'heh! The muh was low and slightly distressed, as if she were expressing illness, but the 'heh! was higher and girlish. The overall effect was thus: "Muh, I don't feel well ... Heh! Fooled you!"

Cabal turned to look at the woman, if only from curiosity at what sort of creature would produce such a sound. She was approximately forty, he gauged, and exhibited that interesting combination of dour propriety overlaying a coltishness inappropriate, for a lady of her age, that was a peculiarity distinctive to women who have been to an English public school. Such schools begin the process of inculcating eccentricity right from the moment it is understood that English public schools are not meant for the public; the name is not merely inaccurate, it is actively misleading. Any other country would call these schools "private," but where's the fun in that? She wore a dress that would be considered frumpy by most grandparents, a brown affair that carried a palpable air of spinsterhood. Her hair was very nearly the same shade, arranged in harsh s.h.i.+ngles about a sharp pale face. She had made an attempt at makeup, but the rouge sat on her cheeks like red paint on a white-wall.

"Why so?" he asked.

"You don't know?" b.u.t.ted in Cacon, whose tales of military ferocity had gained some veracity in light of the horrible wounds he was inflicting on his food. "Blimey, mate, 'ave you been living under a rock? This is a mission of mercy we're on 'ere."

Cabal said nothing, but his expression indicated that he had seen more likely angels than Cacon.

"The Katamenian famine, Herr Meissner," supplied Miss Barrow. "The crop failure?"

Cabal may have had many faults, but difficulty in rapidly absorbing, reviewing, and extrapolating from new data was not among them. "Of course," he said nonchalantly. "My ministry has been working towards logistical relief programmes, but I was not aware this s.h.i.+p was involved."

"It's why there are so few pa.s.sengers aboard this vessel, sir," added the woman with the aggravating laugh. "Herr ... Meissner, was it?"

Cacon paused, with a chunk of meat speared alongside a fragment of boiled new potato on his fork hovering before his open mouth. It was not a pleasing tableau vivant. "Miss Ambersleigh, this is Herr Meissner of the Mirkarvian civil service. Herr Meissner, Miss Ambersleigh, 'er ladys.h.i.+p's companion." It looked as though he were introducing the meat and potato to each other. As an afterthought, he leaned slightly towards Cabal, and said in a conspiratorial whisper, "She's English." This bombsh.e.l.l delivered, and etiquette satisfied, he dumped the food into his mouth with all the delicacy of a steam engine's fireman shovelling coal into the firebox. Cabal turned his attention towards Miss Ambersleigh quickly, that he might spare himself the sight of Cacon chewing.

"I'm sorry-you were saying, Miss Ambersleigh?" he prompted her.

"I said it's the reason there are so few pa.s.sengers aboard. This is the only occupied pa.s.senger deck. I'm told that above us is storage, and above that is the second-cla.s.s deck, but that it is entirely unoccupied. All the staterooms, you see, are full of food. Vegetables, mainly. Imagine! Tons and tons of potatoes and carrots and turnips, just above our heads!" Her eyes glittered at the prospect of so many root vegetables. Cabal sensed there was not going to be a meeting of the minds here. At least, it explained Frau Roborovski's obscure reference to exploding potatoes.

"So, only the first-cla.s.s deck is occupied? And the crew deck, of course."

Harlmann raised an interrogative hand. "I say, the crew deck's at the top, isn't it? Along with engineering and suchlike? Doesn't that make the old bird a bit ... top-heavy?"

Schten had obviously fielded questions like this before. He had his gla.s.s to his lips, however, and by the time he could lower it DeGarre had leapt into the breach.

"Yes, monsieur, it does make the vessel top-heavy, but you see, that is the intention. It is an easy error to fall into-that an aeros.h.i.+p is much like a nautical s.h.i.+p, and in many respects, especially in how they are run, that is true." He cupped his hand. "An aeros.h.i.+p does not float in a sea of air, however." He twisted his wrist so that his fingers dangled downwards. "It hangs, like a chandelier in the heavens. Thus, may the Good Lord forfend, should any of the levitators fail, then it may lean over a little. If they were at the bottom and the same thing happened ..." He shrugged. "It would fall over. Pouf!"

Cabal did not recall ever having heard an apocalyptic disaster resulting in death and horror characterised as Pouf! A disciple of understatement himself, he warmed slightly to DeGarre.

Captain Schten nodded benevolently. "Couldn't have put it better myself." Which was probably true.

"How many levitators does a vessel like this carry, Captain?" DeGarre asked.

"Or, strictly speaking, how many levitators carry a s.h.i.+p like this?" replied Schten. Delighted with his wit, he reached once again for his gla.s.s.

"As you say," said DeGarre, with the sort of smile normally employed in the patronisation of idiot children. "How many?"

Schten paused, gla.s.s halfway to his lips. "Eh?" His eyes wandered in their orbits as he reengaged his attention. "The levitators? Oh, there're two batteries of eight."

"Parallel or cross-linked?"

"Ah ... cross-linked. Much safer."

"Much more expensive, too."

Schten opened his arms in about as expansive a gesture as he dared without knocking DeGarre and Lady Ninuka off their chairs. "She's not exactly a scow, mein Herr."

DeGarre nodded. "She is impressive. I wonder, may I see more of her, please?"

"I'm sorry?"

"May I see a little of her beyond the doors marked 'Crew Only'?"

Schten paused, uncertain. "Well, it's not company policy to give guided tours. The bridge is not s.p.a.cious-"

"Please, Captain. I would be deeply obliged. As for the bridge, you need not concern yourself on that. One bridge is much like another. No, I'd much rather take a look at your engineering section, if I may. Just to see how the art has moved on since I retired."

Schten wavered. Company rules and reasonable behaviour were doing battle within him. The impetus to make his decision one way or another was provided, unexpectedly, by Alexei Cacon. "Oh, you might as well, Captain," he said as he chased the last of his peas around the plate. "The whole boat's going to be full of greasy Senzans getting their mucky fingerprints over everything, and they won't be saying 'please.' Herr DeGarre's a gentleman at least. Why should they do anything they like, and he can't even have five minutes looking at your spinny things upstairs?"

Schten ignored the reference to his s.h.i.+p as a "boat" and said, "It's not that easy, I'm afraid, Herr Cacon. I don't want to set a precedent."

"Give him his guided tour, Captain," said Lady Ninuka, in a voice that might have been gifted to her by the Lorelei and a very good elocution teacher. "I, for one, promise not to ask for a similar privilege."

"Nor I," added Miss Ambersleigh, which earned a disdainful glance from Lady Ninuka that seemed to say, "As if that were likely."

"Nor me neither," said Cacon, finally cornering the errant peas and spearing them on his fork amidst a pizzicato of dinner silver on china.

There was a general round of muttered agreements. Captain Schten gave in with good grace, and arrangements were made for the following afternoon. For his part, Cabal slightly regretted that he wouldn't get a chance to see the engineering deck for himself. He had an interest in machinery of the metallic as well as the fleshly form.

Cacon's long-awaited pudding-dessert seemed an altogether too feminine term-turned up as the next course. There was a limited choice between the famous Mirkarvian dish, tschun-which not only sounds like a sneeze but looks like it-and cheese and biscuits. Almost everybody, even the Mirkarvians, opted for cheese and biscuits. The cheese was fierce enough to strip a layer of tissue from the palate, but it was still preferable to the alternative. Cabal, however, had an unlooked-for opportunity to see tschun at close quarters, as Cacon was the only one to order it. Served in a long shallow dish, it looked and smelled like partially fermented milk, with an island of something slightly too large-grained to be sago sitting in the middle of it. Scattered across this island was a red stain of blended cinnamon and pepper. Cacon tucked into it with noisy enthusiasm. "Put hairs on your chest this will, old son," he commented to Cabal. Cabal failed to see how this could be regarded as an advertis.e.m.e.nt, particularly with respect to female diners.

Finally, they reached the time for coffee, Cognac, and cigars. The ladies retired, Miss Barrow giving him a meaningful look as she did so, and the gentlemen wandered down toward the salon. Cabal felt constrained to attend the ritual, but first made his apologies that he would be a few minutes. The same interfering steward who had placed him beside Miss Barrow now directed him to the nearest "head," which Cabal understood to be a slang or technical term for the toilet. He thanked the steward, though he had no intention of using it; he just wanted a little time to himself to gather his wits. He made his way instead to the starboard promenade, the better to find some fresh air filtering through the external vents there.

The promenades ran down either side of the s.h.i.+p on Deck B, the storage and supply deck. No pa.s.sengers bunked on this level, so the rooms had no portholes, only thin windows set high in their walls to let in light from the promenades. These were accessible only via stairs from Deck A-first cla.s.s-at both their fore and aft ends, and ran most of the length of the vessel. Wide glazed windows angled out in a shallow horizontal arc running almost the length of the s.h.i.+p to allow walkers to lean over the rail and gaze down at the hoi polloi without having their hair unduly disturbed. It was a far more scenic route from the dining room to the salon than going via the internal corridor on Deck A, but not nearly as expeditious, and Cabal was unsurprised that none of the other men climbed the stair with him, such was the lure of coffee, brandy, and tobacco.

He was hoping for a few minutes of solitude, but here he was to be disappointed. The petulant Herr Zoruk was there, hands on the rail by the windows, deep in thought, though more probably self-pity. He looked up when he heard Cabal turn the corner, denying Cabal the chance to withdraw unseen. It was an awkward situation where neither man wanted to be in the presence of the other, but manners prevailed. Cabal found a place perhaps a metre away from Zoruk at the rail, and looked out into the night.

There was silence for some moments, then Zoruk said, "I suppose I made rather a d.a.m.n fool of myself tonight."

"Yes," said Cabal.

Zoruk shot him a slightly startled look. "You call a spade a spade, don't you?"

"It saves time. I am not noted for my diplomatic skills."

"But you're a civil servant?"

"But not one in the diplomatic service. I deal in facts, Herr Zoruk, and the fact is, yes, you made a fool of yourself tonight."

Zoruk started to say something, but the will to do so left him in a defeated sigh. He turned back to the window. "I know he's right, that's the worst of it. You can't blame a man for making a bullet if that bullet is later used to kill a saint. I knew that, or I would have if I'd taken a minute to think. I was just so angry. The Desolee Suppression ... words cannot ..." He shook his head. "I'm being a fool again."

"I ... am not very politically aware," said Cabal, choosing his words carefully. "In my post, I deal with figures, disburs.e.m.e.nts, quotas, and reports. Sometimes things happen in the broader world"-he gestured at the dark earth beneath them-"and I remain ignorant of them, often to my shame. Herr Zoruk, what exactly is the Desolee Suppression? What did this Von Falks do?"

Zoruk looked at him, an odd look of mild suspicion and surprise, and Cabal wondered if his curiosity was going to cost him dearly. "You live in a sterile, isolated little world, Herr Meissner," said Zoruk. "I almost envy you. Very well ... the Desolee Suppression; history lesson. You probably picked up most of the story from the dinner table. The Guasoir Valley was Priskian by right of the Treaty of Hollsberg, but the locals have always regarded themselves as culturally Dulkine. They complained about it, and especially the Priskian policy of forcible relocation and the s.h.i.+pping in of Priskian settlers, but n.o.body was listening. So they started with civil disobedience, but all that got them was a few broken heads and some unjustifiably heavy prison sentences."

Cabal frowned. "So this isn't a Mirkarvian affair at all?"

Zoruk shook his head. "Politically, no. But we are all brothers against injustice, Herr Meissner, are we not?" Herr Meissner declined to comment, so Zoruk continued. "Civil disobedience escalated to attacks on property, and finally to the derailing of a Priskian troop train. There were a handful of injuries, and one death. The Priskians responded by sending in Commodore Von Falks's aerosquadron. He was supposed to monitor activity in the valley only, and lend support to ground troops should they request it." He looked in the direction of the dining room and his humiliation. "DeGarre was wrong about one thing. I should have pointed it out, small victory that it was. He said the locals slaughtered patrols. That's not true; they attacked one patrol when the Priskians started enforcing a curfew, and killed two men, at the cost of four of their own. Farmers against soldiers-hardly a fair fight. But one of the dead Priskians was an officer of Von Falks's squadron who had been liaising with the ground troops.

"The commodore was furious. Insane with anger. Quite literally, insane. He located the three villages that were most likely the source of the 'terrorists' who had killed his officer, and then-" He closed his eyes, and did not speak for several seconds. When he opened them again, he said. "They eradicated all three villages. Bombed and bombarded them. Strafed the streets with Gatling guns. Dropped liquid fire on the homes and the farms and the churches. They burnt the houses, and shot the people when they ran from the flames. By the time he received orders to cease immediately and withdraw, it was too late. Twenty-four hundred people were dead or dying."

There was silence for a dozen heartbeats. "Twenty-four hundred?" Cabal's voice was hollow.

Zoruk nodded. "It was a disaster in many ways. Priskia had little choice but to cede the Guasoir back to Dulkis under international pressure. Von Falks was given a revolver with one bullet and a quiet room for ten minutes to give him the opportunity to do the decent thing, which he did. And when the world saw what DeGarre's machines had done to those poor people"-he looked Cabal in the eye-"orders went up by eight hundred per cent. I accept his argument that he didn't design his s.h.i.+ps to kill civilians, but that doesn't excuse him getting rich from it." He shrugged. "Or am I still being a d.a.m.ned fool?"

"Yes," said Cabal. "I'm expected in the salon, Herr Zoruk. Good evening." He made to leave, but at the corner he paused and looked back. "Humanity is a despicable ma.s.s, Herr Zoruk, and ill-suited to the compa.s.sion of romantics. Sometimes it requires culling."

"Oh?" said Zoruk. He sounded worn out and depressed. "And who would choose who lives and who dies?"

I would, ideally, thought Cabal. I'd make a more informed job of it than most. But instead he said, "Who, indeed, Herr Zoruk?" and took his leave.

Walking into the salon was like entering a fog bank, albeit a very Cuban one. Every man present had a cigar in his mouth and a snifter in his hand containing enough brandy to preserve a mouse. The coffee pots sat by, unloved and unused, as the men stood around in that peculiar chest-out-and-stomach-sucked-in pose that men in dinner jackets feel obliged to strike after dinner. Cabal had suffered the misfortune of attending several such gatherings before and was quite aware that they laboured under a sense of ritual that eroded a great deal of any potential enjoyment to be had. The Mirkarvian variety, however, was almost a full-blown dominance display of the sort that gets anthropologists excited. A certain pecking order was already apparent: Captain Schten stood una.s.sailable because he was, after all, the captain, and they were all on his territory; DeGarre had age, experience, fame, and a certain cachet of notoriety about him, and so stood at an only slightly less certain second place. After that, however, it was every man for himself, with the sole exception of Herr Roborovski, who refused to play and stood off to one side, gazing mournfully into his brandy as if he really did expect a pickled mouse to surface.

Currently holding the floor was Bertram Harlmann, king of the bar snacks. He had moved on from exhaustive details of the all-conquering pork scratching, and was offering to let the gentlemen present in on the ground floor of the next breathtaking breakthrough in overpriced tidbits for the Bierkeller market. This white-hot cutting edge was called "mixed nuts," and apparently contained the secret weapon of dried fruit. "Almonds," he said in a significant tone to one half of the gathering. "Raisins," he said to the other. Cabal managed to reduce a full roll of the eyes to a momentary interest in the carpet's pattern, and entered the fray.

Chapter 6.

IN WHICH DEATH OCCURS AND CURIOSITIES ARE NOTED.

Cabal slept lightly. This was as much a learned behaviour as a natural aspect; far too many people and other ent.i.ties had trod lightly towards him as he slept with less kindly intentions than tucking him in and kissing his brow. He skimmed through the dreaming edges of deep sleep like a man on ice skates, standing rigid, arms crossed, and wearing a disapproving expression, as his subconscious mind threw phantasms, childhood memories, and random elements of his recent past in his path with more optimism than expectation. He slid through them all with the humourless gravitas of an Old Testament prophet challenged to a magical duel by Uncle Mungo the children's conjuror. When he did finally reach the places of the mind too dark and motionless for dreams, he paused, barely over the tree line, and waited for his body and his mind to recuperate, all the time listening to the distant call of his senses, singing like the wind over telegraph wires. If they suddenly cried with pattern and purpose, he could be up and out of the well of sleep faster than a rabbit from a trebuchet.

Tonight, he had taken almost an hour to drift into even a light slumber, and was just in the act of strapping on his figurative skates when something roused him back to full wakefulness. He did not sit bolt upright-there's nothing like visibly declaring oneself awake to precipitate an attack. Instead, he lay, his eyes opening only slightly as he took in his surroundings, and listened carefully. The steady thrum of the levitators he had grown accustomed to, and this he ignored. There was something else, however. A dull battering sound running through the outer hull, as if somebody was kicking the wall. After a moment more it ended, and there were only the sounds of the s.h.i.+p's running.

Cabal rolled onto his back and gazed at the ceiling as he wondered what had made the noises. It was, he knew, largely an exercise to bore himself back to sleep; he had no inkling of the workings of a vessel like the Hortense. For all he knew, the sound might be a common occurrence, made by some necessary component doing its job. There had been something about it, though, something organic rather than mechanical. He had heard dying men drum a similar tattoo on the floorboards with their heels, and this thought shooed sleep away.

Five minutes later there was a new sound, and at this Cabal did sit bolt upright. It was a dull roar that grew, in a rapid crescendo, to a climax that coincided with a sharp metallic thud. Cabal had heard a sound very similar to it earlier in the evening when the sliding windows in the salon were drawn back. But then they had been flying lower and slower. The window in one of the nearby cabins had been drawn back, he was sure of it, and this raised two objections in his mind. First, that the cabin would now be bitterly cold as the wind blew harshly around it. Second, that when he had been looking from his own window earlier in the evening, he noted in pa.s.sing that the sliding frame was locked shut by a bolt that would require a specialist tool to release. These two factors seemed to indicate that whoever had opened the window had not done so purely for a breath of fresh air.

Cabal sat in the darkness, his hands clasped, his index fingers extended and tapping rapidly together as he fought his curiosity. It was an anomalous sound, and-as a scientist-anomalies intrigued him. Warring with his curiosity, however, was his instinct for self-preservation. If something was awry, and he was strongly inclined to think so, then wandering the s.h.i.+p's corridors might provoke suspicion, and this was something to be vigorously avoided. Then again, if he didn't investigate something that should have induced him to wander about in Meissner's unforgivably gaudy Chinese dressing gown, wouldn't that also be cause for questions?

"Why didn't you go out to discover the source of this strange sound, Herr Meissner, as any trueborn son of Mirkarvia would?" he imagined the captain asking him.

"Because I slept through it," he imagined himself replying and, pleased with this simple but effective excuse, he settled back down to sleep.

Whereupon there was a commotion in the corridor, talking for a minute, and the sound of one of the neighbouring doors being knocked upon, apparently without effect. A few moments later, it was joined by a light but insistent knock at his own door. Cabal was wondering whether he could reasonably say that he'd slept through this, too, when it was repeated with more vigour, and he knew he was going to have to show his face.

"Good grief," said Leonie Barrow when he answered the door. "Where on earth did you get that dressing gown?" She herself was wearing a red-and-blue tartan gown over a white winceyette nightdress. In purely aesthetic terms, her nighttime apparel made Cabal wonder how the English ever managed to find sufficient motivation to breed.

"How may I help you, Fraulein?" he said, ignoring her question.

"Didn't you hear anything?"

He drew breath to say he had slept through it, but changed his mind. "I heard something." He looked out into the corridor and saw Colonel Konstantin, the Roborovskis, and-inevitably-Cacon milling around outside DeGarre's door. "What's happening?"

"I heard some sort of commotion coming from M. DeGarre's cabin. Well, we all did." She waved at the other pa.s.sengers. "Now it sounds like he's got his window open somehow."

"Has anybody called for the officer of the watch?" He was answered by the arrival of Captain Schten himself, still b.u.t.toning his uniform collar.

"Ladies. Gentlemen. Kindly step back. I am sure there is nothing amiss."

He made to knock on the door, but Cacon said, "You're wasting your time there, Captain. I've been knocking until my knuckles are red raw." Cabal noted that they plainly were not. "There's no answer. Just the wind-whoooooo. Y'know what? I bet 'e's done 'imself in." He crossed his arms and looked both pleased and expectant, as if he antic.i.p.ated that everybody would applaud his deduction and go back to bed, mystery solved.

The captain gave him a look that verged on hostility, and knocked sharply on the door. "M. DeGarre? This is the captain. Are you all right, sir?"

"You won't get an answer, Capitano," said Cacon. Irritatingly, he was right. Captain Schten listened for a moment, but all any of them could hear was the moaning wind beyond the door. Schten grasped the door handle and tried it, but it did not yield. He took a master key from his jacket pocket, unlocked the door, turned the handle, and started to open it while beginning an apology for the intrusion. Both the opening and the apology came up short as the door stopped abruptly in its travel.

"'is body's probably in the way," said Cacon, apparently knowledgeable in such things.

"Herr Cacon," began Schten, his temper almost visibly fraying. Whatever he was about to say was thankfully lost when Colonel Konstantin interrupted.

"Herr Cacon," the colonel said evenly. "Please return to your cabin. You are not helping affairs."

"Eh?" The possibility of being less than vital in unfolding events seemed not to have occurred to Cacon. "Eh? Me? You can't order me about, matey! I'm not in the army, y'know!"

"Sir," said Schten, his temper reined back in the respite Konstantin had bought him. "As the captain of this vessel, you are under my authority. Please return to your cabin."

"Oi, oi, oi!" Cacon was outraged by this attack on his dignity. "I 'ave as much right to be 'ere as anyone!"

"No," said Captain Schten. "You don't." He summoned over the purser and a steward who had arrived and were standing uncertainly at the back of the group. "Take Herr Cacon back to his cabin, Steward. Make sure he stays there."

Cacon was escorted away, still complaining. "This is a blinkin' outrage! I'll write a letter!"

"As you wish," said the captain wearily. He waited until Cacon was gone before trying the door again. There was a distinct clunk against the handle after the first inch or so, and he could open the door no further. He regarded it grimly. "There's a chair under the handle. M. DeGarre," he called through the gap. "If you can hear me, please move away from the door." He moved back to give himself s.p.a.ce and kicked the door hard with the flat of his boot, just under the handle. They heard the chair bounce across the cabin floor, Schten already moving in to follow it.

Cabal was slightly surprised to find himself in the doorway a moment after Schten. His curiosity had, not for the first time, overridden his sense of self-preservation. Still, now he was there, it would be more suspicious for him to suddenly become all backwards about coming forward. So he stood just inside the door and looked around officiously, as if inspecting mysteriously empty aeros.h.i.+p cabins in which a chill wind whipped around his naked knees were all part of a Mirkarvian civil servant's duties. Schten was already by the window, which was slid back along its track as far as it would go. He looked out into the darkness.

"He's gone," he said, his words almost lost in the howling wind. He shook his head. "Stupid, stupid man." He slid the window shut with an angry slam. The sudden silence was almost shocking.