Hooded Swan - The Paradise Game Part 6

"I know that," he said, "but what we want to look at is down a hole. OK?"

I shrugged. "Lead on, pal," I said. "If you've found the key to the whole problem, I personally will thank you very kindly, and we can work out together how we are going to run the show."

I was being heavily sarcastic, of course, but I was careful not to sound aggressive about it. It had not escaped my notice that I might yet have use for Johnny's good opinion.

We went out on to the field. It was completely deserted. All the Caradoc heavy machinery was at rest- the workers had gone home for the day. All they had done while they were actually active was to drive bulldozers and diggers around a bit, idling along in pursuit of plans whose urgency was suspended. They hadn't even left a night watchman. Who would want to steal a bulldozer in Paradise?

As we crossed the field, my mind was still trying to balance possible courses of action. There was really only one question: could I get far enough ahead of Charlot to offer to sell him a solution? That was a pretty ambitious question. Charlot was a very, very clever man. He was also ill, a fraction narrow-minded, and attacking the problem from what might just prove to be the wrong direction. I had the feeling that if only Charlot, Capella, and Holcomb could get together in a bug-free environment we could work out a satisfactory agreement. Just a little co-operation all around.

"Here we are," said Johnny.

We were right out at the edge of the field. If all went Caradoc's way, the main terminal would be here, and the hole into whose depths we were staring would contain the foundations of s.p.a.ceport officialdom. I shone the flash down into the hole.

"Lousy place to dig foundations," I said. "That rock down there's all soft and crumbling. They'll have to dig deep."

"They have dug deep," said Johnny, as he scrambled down into the pit. He was right-it was a fair way down.

"Are you sure we can get out again?" I asked him.

"I did it this afternoon," he rea.s.sured me. I hoped he Was right, and I followed him down.

"Here," he said, sc.r.a.ping at the wall of the pit with his fingertips. "s.h.i.+ne the light along... there, and ...

there..."

All I could see were marks in the soft rock.

"There must have been a lot more of it," said Johnny, "but they smashed it up with the shovel. It'll all be up there in the rubble, but I don't suppose there'll be anything identifiable. But the shovel didn't crush this bit here, you see-the face has crumbled away-the rock is very soft, like you said. This land was a lot lower once- it was probably reclaimed from the sea, very slowly. It might have been swampy once.

Here, you can see what I mean just here ... that line there, and that one. Here's the foot, and over here's the eye."

It clicked. He was showing me petrified bones. The thing in the pit was a fossil. I shone the light over the whole length of the creature, and back again. The head part wasn't too clear, but I could see what I needed to see. And the foot made it definite.

It was the fossil of an extinct animal.

With claws and teeth.

9.

We climbed out of the pit without too much difficulty, getting very dirty in the process, and began to walk slowly back to the Hooded Swan.

"Is it important?" asked Johnny.

"You bet your sweet life it's important," I told him. "It's so simple... the Paradise syndrome, of course, it misled us all. The perfect world, an innocent, unspoiled, young Earth. And it looked like a real Garden of Eden- created to order, fresh off the production line....

"Only it's not fresh. It's not primitive. It's not young. It's far older than Earth. Of course there's evolution here. It isn't that it hasn't started-it's stopped. Sure, everything's been the same for a million years or more. Sure n.o.body and nothing dies-now. The evolution's over- it's stabilised. Something's stabilised it.

Something's run the whole of life on this world into a rut and is keeping it there. Of course there's a selective agent-the reason we haven't found it is because it's not active. It has no selecting to do. Or it had none, until Caradoc ..."

"Grainger!"

The shout came from halfway across the field. Nick delArco was running to intercept us. He'd just come back from town and he'd come in a hurry. Something had happened. Things were beginning to happen all over the place.

"You'd better get the maiden out," he said, as he arrived at a distance where he didn't have to shout.

"We have to get into town quickly. I'll get Charlot. Just wants him. There's a war about to start."

"What happened?" asked Johnny.

Nick had already turned, and was heading for the Swan. Almost unconsciously, we broke into a run to keep pace with him. He looked back over his shoulder, and said: "One of the Caradoc men murdered a native. Aegis is howling for blood. The witnesses won't talk. Just's sitting with his finger over a volcano. There'll be more murder done unless Charlot can sort it out."

By the time he had finished telling us all this we were up into the belly of the s.h.i.+p, and Charlot was coming out to find out what all the commotion was about.

"Get the buggy out," I told Johnny, as delArco began to go through it all again. I leaned back against the bulkhead and began to wipe dirt off my hands on to my s.h.i.+rt.

I figured I just about had time to change my s.h.i.+rt.

-So much for the chance to have a quiet little talk with everybody, said the wind.

A promising diplomatic career, nipped in the bud, I commented.

-It's saved you from yourself, he said. You'd have been a cast iron certainty to botch it up.

Nonsense, I replied. With you to help me out, how could I possibly have failed?

He laughed. Laughing parasites feel very strange. It really kills a conversation.

I was appointed to drive the iron maiden-a testimony to my position as official transportation executive rather than to my skill at ground zero driving. Nick, with his long experience of groundhogging on Earth, might well have got us there a shade faster.

When I drive, I worry too much about other things on the road-like the four pedestrians who pa.s.sed us, going the other way. They weren't running, and they weren't in my way, but I worried anyway. I didn't see why anyone should be going to the field at that time of night while all the action was in town. I couldn't see who they were, but I was suspicious.

"Hey," I said. "Do you think we ought to have left somebody back at the Swan? "

"Why?" It was Johnny who questioned me-probably because he knew that if anyone had to go back it would be him.

"Because four shadows just pa.s.sed us on their way out there."

"They can't get into the s.h.i.+p," Charlot a.s.sured me. "Even if they wanted to."

"We shouldn't have left her alone," I said. "We're on an alien world."

"Keep driving," said Charlot.

I shrugged my shoulders and kept driving. It was all a fuss about nothing, in all likelihood. n.o.body on Pharos could possibly wish ill upon the Hooded Swan. The fact that there were other s.h.i.+ps on the field, as well as a good deal of heavy equipment, didn't really seem relevant.

We found the big confrontation scene in the bar where I'd celebrated on the first night. It was far more crowded than on that occasion-they were packed in like sardines, despite the fact that the Caradoc security men were trying to transfer people from the inside to the outside at an appreciable rate.

I made the maiden's brakes howl as I brought her to a halt. It was a theatrical gesture, just to make certain that we were noticed. We all piled out as if we were the riot squad come to clean up after a brawl. Johnny was eager to see and Nick pressed forward to clear the way for Charlot. Modestly, I hung back.

We were well past the scene where everyone inside was frozen into a dramatic tableau around the remains of the deceased. The deceased had been picked up and laid out on the bar. Capella was sitting on a chair, his head in his hand, his elbow only a couple of inches away from the alien's face. He looked bored. Just was standing, and he still had his gun in his hand-which seemed to me to be a tactical error.

The inner core of the crowd were all Caradoc police, except for Varly. I didn't have to ask who done it.

Eve was there, too, standing behind Capella. n.o.body was talking-they were waiting for the dramatis personae to be complete before they launched into impa.s.sioned defences or whatever. There had probably been a fair amount of conversation in the crowd before we arrived, but it stopped when we invaded the scene. The only sound that we could hear as we pushed our way to the heart of the matter was the sound of betting in the poker game. It took more than murder and mayhem to stop those boys.

Charlot headed straight for Just, but I didn't want to wait for the preliminaries. I faded a few steps back into the crowd, selected the nearest guy who looked a bit responsive to intimidation, tapped him on the shoulder, and said: "What happened?"

He squinted at me. "You was in here the other night," he said. I had a nasty suspicion that it might not be an irrelevant remark.

"What happened tonight!" I said.

"You saw what happened the night 'fore last. Well, she came back. If you hadn't... well, anyways, you know... this time, she let him..."

"He raped her?" I felt sick.

"It wasn't rape."

"Here?"

"Not here. Upstairs."

"Why'd he kill her?"

"Dunno."

"How'd they find out?"

He shrugged. "Varly come down and told us. He was drunk."

I shook my head. "A roomful of people," I said. "Cops too. And you all let him take her upstairs."

"n.o.body knowed he was goin' to kill her."

I returned my attention to what was going on at the centre of the crowd's attention. Someone from Aegis- not Holcomb-was screaming for a hearing, but he was over by the door and the Caradoc security men were trying to eject him. Neither Just nor Charlot objected to his being removed. They were trying to work out what was to be done. Just had arrested Varly, and wanted to lock him up somewhere under his personal supervision. The Caradoc leaders had no objection in principle, but they reckoned that practicality demanded their own men should look after the prisoner. They were prepared to be stubborn about it. It was easy to see why it mattered. The whole argument about Caradoc's supposed treaty implied a doubt as to legal jurisdiction. There was no argument about the law-merely as to who had jurisdiction. I could see that Charlot was on the spot. Just wanted him to stop the buck, and if he did then he would be prejudging the case. Charlot didn't want the buck pa.s.sed to him.

I took one look at Capella and I knew he was working an angle. I didn't know whether he had engineered the whole thing, or whether he was just trying to take advantage of a nasty situation, but the gleam in his eyes said perfectly clearly that he thought he was on to something.

"Look, Mr. Charlot," Just was saying, "there's no way we can sort out whose law applies here. If it's the natives', then I don't see that anyone can take Varly into custody except the natives, and if what Capella says is true, the aliens don't have any notion of punitive measures. On the other hand, if it's the Law of New Rome that applies here, then we've got to decide whether it's me or them that has the power of imprisonment. They claim that if the Law of New Rome holds here, their treaty must be good, and if it is then they are the official law enforcement agency. Alternatively, they claim, they ought to hold Varly pending a demand by the local agency that he be turned over."

"That's nonsense," said Charlot. "You're the ultimate legal authority on this world so far as the Law of New Rome is concerned. And if the alien law is sovereign, then Caradoc has no claim on Varly at all."

"But I can't let him free," protested Just. "And I can't lock him up if they won't give me a place to lock him. Am I supposed to arrest Capella too?"

I could understand his problems. Just had found out that the burden of decision was an awkward one.

He was in the same boat as Capella, he had to make decisions on data he didn't have. His masters weren't likely to be as unkind as Capella's, but the consequences of his decision might be far-reaching in that they might prejudice the whole outcome of this dispute. Just was as interested in this world as anybody, and he knew full well that Capella was searching high and low for an excuse to take precipitate action.

Simply stated, his problem was that he didn't dare buck Capella in case he pushed Caradoc into an action that everybody would regret, and he didn't dare not buck Capella in case he gave Capella ammunition to use in the fight for Paradise.

Charlot was a fast thinker, but I knew he wasn't fast enough to sort this one out. Not if he went through his own mental channels.

Sometimes I have brilliant ideas. Usually, I'm wary of them, because they don't always work. There was, however, no time to prevaricate in the present situation.

"Mr. Peace Officer, sir," I said, stepping right forward to make sure everybody knew who was talking.

"I'd like to make a complaint against that man there"-I pointed dramatically at Varly-" and I demand that you charge him with criminal a.s.sault on me, night before last. There can be no doubt whatsoever that this crime is covered by the Law of New Rome. I further demand that you lock him up immediately in the only location on this planet which is clearly under the administration of New Rome, which is to say in the Hooded Swan, which is currently commissioned by New Rome."

My mock-legal language sounded terrible, but there was no doubt that I got the various bits of the message across. I'd offered Just both a safe arrest and a safe prison.

"You can't arrest a man for a.s.sault when he's just committed a murder," complained Capella, with touching loyalty to his employee. But he had no chance. Just didn't even bother to think. He knew he was being offered an out, and if it didn't work he could always blame me. He was mad keen to get out of the limelight.

"Any witnesses?" he asked me.

"Sure," I said. "The barman, the card players, and the guy with the squint."

"Right," said the lawman. "I'll investigate in the morning. In the meantime, Varly gets locked up in the Hooded Swan. "

"I'll drive you," I said sweetly.

"Better have somebody not involved," he said. He was smiling now. "How about you?" He pointed at Johnny.

"Sure," said Johnny.

"I don't have to walk, do I?" I asked, cutting across Capella, who was trying to say something else.

"No," said Just. "You can ride in the back."

He didn't wait to hear whatever else it was that Capella had to say. He went.

I didn't even feel tempted to stay behind and talk to Capella. Varly had changed my priorities again. I decided that I disliked Caradoc far more than I disliked working for Charlot.

On the way back to the s.h.i.+p, I told Charlot everything. I told him about the battles.h.i.+p, and I told him about the a.s.sumption that we had wrong. I expected him to glow with pleasure, but he groaned instead.