J. F. Bone, page 20
I awoke again with my head still pillowed on Sofra’s lap. This was getting to be a habit, I thought. It was the same situation, but a different environment. The room was gone and in its place were curving walls of padded metal. A bandage encircled my chest, others partly covered my face, and I was conscious of the warm nervelessness of anodyne smothering my nervous system. I smelled like a hospital and wore clean pyjamas. The hissing noise that filled my ears bothered me. For a moment I thought Dawson had bruised my brain as well as my body. Then a recognized jetblast. I was in an aircraft that was going places in a hurry.
Sofra smiled at me. “The medics say you have a concussion, Sam. You’re supposed to take it easy.”
I blinked. How much easier could I get? “Well, where am I this time?”
“On your way to Thermopolis,” she said. “Inspector Lantham thought you’d do better in a big hospital, and besides, you can get those final skin grafts while you’re there. You’ll get plush treatment, Sam. You’ve become a pretty important fellow. Some reporter got wind of what you did, and he looked up your Service record. I didn’t know I married such an important guy. You should have told me you were a Reward of Merit winner! You’re in all the sheets and newscasts.”
“In the obituary column?” I asked. “I’m dead.”
“No fear of that,” she smiled. “You’ll live. I’m not going to let you take the easy way out. I wanted a famous husband, and now I’m going to enjoy him.” Her eyes were soft as she laid cool fingers on my aching head.
I felt warm inside, a good feeling that glowed for a moment and then chilled as I remembered what had almost happened. Arthe was apparently secure now—I’d gotten that much from my previous awakening. But there was the big untied end that led to the individual or group who planned this.
A shadow moved behind Sofra’s shoulder. I strained to see it. It took an appreciable time for my eyes to focus and translate the formless mass into John Lantham. He was smiling at me. “Except for Dawson, you’re the worst looking wreck I’ve seen recently. You two must have had quite a time.”
“We did,” I said. “But it could have been worse. I could have sat on my fat duff and let crime run rampant all over me.”
He laughed. “It looks like that’s what happened anyway,” he said—“not only to you but to Arthe. We’ve lost at least a hundred men in the riots, and Shambra knows how many civilians and ‘breeds have died. It isn’t over yet. Consol 27 and Bluestone are wrecks. The Patrol has moved in where the pushers wouldn’t surrender. They’re cleaning up. Someone blew up the power station in Bluestone and the whole center of the dome collapsed. If half Bluestone survives it’ll be a miracle. And that report of yours was the cause of it. Why, of all times, did you have to deliver it when you did? Commander Kronfield of the Patrol was in Headquarters on an inspection trip. He was in Message Center when you called, and the inquisitive old devil had to listen. Before I could turn around, Kronfeld had my phone and was calling Lyna Base. He got the Patrol’s cybernetics heated up, and the big brain figured that the situation was critical. Hell, it’s been critical for a month! He didn’t even wait until I had given him the reports of the other agents. He went blasting off to assemble a combat team. But that’s the Patrol, they’re never willing to nail down a case before they move in.
“Sure—the plot’s smashed, and most of the domes are secure, but the people we caught were all small fry. The big ones got away—unless they were all down there.” He pointed out of the viewport at something below the ship.
I looked out of the port side of my seat. It was night, the pitch black night of Arthe when the moon is down. The surface should have been a darker mass of blackness invisible in the gloom that surrounded us—but it wasn’t. Instead, it glowed with a greenish luminescence. An enormous circle, fully ten kilometers in diameter shone a faint eerie green on the surface below. “What was it?” I asked.
“That outpost dome you mentioned in your report; Trader’s Roost, I believe you called it. The fools elected to fight.” He shrugged expressively. “The Army had a division on Arthe by that time and Kronfeld called for a super. He doesn’t like tonocaine.” Lantham’s voice was flat.
“I don’t doubt it,” I said.
Lantham looked at me for a moment, and then stared out of the port at the pattern already dim behind us. His mouth twisted in disgust.
I shivered. The death of the Roost was so final. Everything was gone, the hellraising, roistering rim, the dives, Kate’s perfumed tonocaine garden, the huge warehouses, the hard-bitten regulars—it was all vanished as though it had never been.
“That was our link,” Lantham continued. “With it gone, we’ll never know who the natives were who started this.”
“Natives?”
“This whole caper is typically native. They’ve always wanted to drive us off the planet. Who else could it be?”
“Confeds,” I said.
Lantham looked at me pityingly. “Ha!” he said. “If we’d been running this show none of the domes would have had a chance!”
“Maybe they didn’t want a complete kill,” I replied. “Maybe they wanted the natives to get the blame.”
“That’s too many maybes—and besides, why would a Confed do a thing like this?”
“Power, profit, hatred, revenge—there could be a dozen reasons. I think the motive was profit—drive the companies’ stocks down, buy cheap, end up rich.”
“Could be,” Lantham said, “but I don’t think so. I’ve had a lot of people besides you working on this and most of them are sure it’s a native caper. The rest aren’t so sure, but they think it might be. You’re the only one who’s flatly opposing the idea. The trouble is that you have weight. After all, you did blow the whistle on this cleanup and nobody is about to forget it.”
I felt something give way inside me. Dawson must have done more damage than I had guessed, causing a loose connection in my brain because right then I played the fool. I did it coldly, completely aware of the probable consequences but not giving a damn. It was as though someone else were talking. “All right,” my voice said. “What was the killing for? Why do you want the natives exterminated? What do they have that you want so bad that you’d kill them all? You ran this show. You’re the big man.” My big mouth! As soon as the words were out I could have bitten my treacherous tongue for uttering them, but he made me blind mad, standing there trying to pin it on the natives, trying to make me believe his lies!
“I?” Lantham queried in an oddly mild tone. “You mean you think I’m the top man? You’re crazy!”
I nodded. The fat was in the fire now, and I might as well see it through. “It had to be either you or Crowninshield. But Crowninshield doesn’t have the brains or the organizing ability. So it was you.”
“You have proof of this?”
“Some,” I said. “And it all points to you. There’s a lot of things—a note to Kate ordering her to kill me. Whoever wrote that knew I was a Headquarters cop. Nobody in Dunkelburg knew it, because I didn’t tell anyone,—but you knew it and the Commissioner knew it. I still wouldn’t have thought of you, if it hadn’t been for that recommendation you wrote for Dawson. Dawson was a sadist. Everyone knew it. Yet you wrote him a recommendation knowing he was a bad cop.”
“That was before he went sour. He was a brave man.”
“Brave maybe, but he was always sour. I talked to Marlin about him. The chief knew him for twenty years. Then there was the obvious thing. The pushers were all cued in. They knew a cleanup was coming, and when it would start. They were ready for us. The cleanup was your baby and if Kronfeld hadn’t preempted, the kill would still have gone according to plan. Even so, you nearly got your organization off the spot. All you really needed was a few more days to get the ‘breeds organized.
“Then there was your brand of Earth cigars in Kate’s office. It’s not evidence but it’s another piece that fits. She probably bought them to butter you up. I thought it was funny a woman’d be smoking cigars but Kate was peculiar. And maybe she liked Havanas. But I never connected them with you, and I should have made the connection if I was any kind of cop. But I didn’t, I just went on dumb and happy believing in you and truth and honor and duty.
“Who’s been pushing the idea that the natives were behind this? Maybe others believed it, but if anyone had an open mind, I’ll bet you closed it for them if you could. Of course, the natives didn’t help. I thought they were responsible before I had a chance to think about what they really were. After that it looked less and less certain and despite the cleverness of making the plan look like a sloppy native caper, a coordinated plan did exist. Those diversionary actions in the domes not marked for slaughter were beautifully timed to keep the police pinned down. Someone among the high brass had to be involved. The natives, by their very nature couldn’t have had a high command. It’s impossible, considering the independent nature of the tribes, for that bunch to organize. Kate might have headed the deal, except for those voicewrite orders to kill me, but the idea of natives is absurd.
“Of all the high brass I know, you had the best opportunity. You were coordinating the tonocaine investigation. You were in control of operations and assignments and could place people like Dawson—you had enough on him to hang him—where they were needed, and put greenhorns or psychos like me on investigations that should be done by first-class professionals. You could even get indecisives like Marlin appointed to key positions in the domes you had crossed off. But I never thought of you until I saw that note to Dawson. I guess I’m really stupid. Probably that’s why you sent me on this Dunkelburg assignment. You had to send someone, and I was a perfect patsy, a medic who knew tonocaine and who had a good war record. No one would guess I was hand-picked for slaughter. You knew I was a psycho—you couldn’t have missed it after that demonstration in your office.”
Words kept tumbling out of me, angry words that I couldn’t control, and didn’t want to. “Naturally you made a mistake in your analysis of what made me the way I was. You probably thought it was burnshock. That may have had something to do with it, but it was mostly self-pity and fear of what others thought about my lost manly beauty. I straightened out when I found out that I didn’t have to feel sorry for myself—that appearance made no real difference. Sofra taught me that—and from then on I started to use my head instead of my adrenals. I wasn’t quite as bad as you thought I’d be. Oh—you were clever enough. I still can’t prove you’re the top man. Probably I’d never be able to prove it. What evidence I have would never stand up in a planetary court, except for one thing. You were too clever. You covered your tracks all right, but when you started those riots in the domes, you were endangering planetary government on a protected world. And when you decided to use tonocaine you were dealing with a prohibited narcotic. That gives the Patrol a free hand to investigate. You’re done for, Lantham. The Patrol will put you under an analyzer and you’ll talk. You’re finished.”
Lantham looked at me, an expression of utter astonishment on his face. Then he laughed. “I’ve been accused of a good many things in my time,” he said, “but being a mass murderer isn’t one of them. You’ve added something new to the list.
“It’s a good thing for you that I’m not the head man,” Lantham said. “You really would have blown it. If I were the man behind this, I’d have no alternative except to kill you—and where would a better place be than here? I’d have the perfect out. You’re injured badly. There might have been something that the doctors in Dunkelburg missed. You death would be one of those sad but unavoidable accidents, and no suspicion would attach to me.”
“How about Sofra and the pilot?” I asked. “You wouldn’t dare kill me and leave them alive.”
“Don’t you think I’d be prepared for something like this?” His voice was amused.
“Like how?” I asked.
“Like having someone stowed away in the ship,” he said. “How’s this for a scenario? A ‘breed or Confed who worked for the uprising, sees it flattened because of you. He thinks that a grand gesture would be appropriate. So he stows away in the plane and then over the desert he comes out of hiding, shoots you, Sofra, and the pilot, but I get him before he gets me. Since I’m not a flyer, I bail out. The ship crashes and all the evidence goes up in smoke. You get a hero’s funeral and I get another chance. That is, of course, if I were the master mind.”
“Not too bad,” I said. “But you’d have to have a confederate’s body. You had no knowledge that I’d pull the string on you.”
“If I were the top man, I’d have the knowledge,” Lantham said. “And I just might kill you for wrecking my plans. As for the bodies, there were lots of them around Dunkelburg and the airport. It would be no great trick to put one in the plane.”
“You’d never get away with it.”
“Why not? It’s airtight. I’d be the only survivor and my position virtually places me above suspicion. Hell—it’s a natural.” He laughed. “It almost makes me wish I was the top man. It’d be interesting to see if I could get away with murder.”
“Your interest isn’t mine,” I said sulkily. I felt about three inches high. I had been positive that Lantham was the head man a moment ago; now I wasn’t sure. His reactions were wrong. He should have been frightened or angry—not amused. After all, I had no real evidence—only a frame of suspicion that Lantham happened to fit. I couldn’t say with absolute certainty that my idea was right. Even if it was, the head man could be someone other than John Lantham. Unless I was absolutely sure, I had no business accusing him of planning the wholesale slaughter of people he had sworn to protect. “Sorry, Chief,” I muttered. “Forget I said anything. I’m acting like an idiot.”
“Forget it,” Lantham said. “You’ve been through a lot.”
I sighed. “Guess so,” I said. My house of cards had fallen and I wasn’t too unhappy to see it go. Lantham couldn’t possibly be the one. What did he conceivably have to gain? What would give him any more power and authority than he already had?—Power?—Authority? Did he know something about The Power? He had been here for almost a century. He should know everything about The Power, and if he felt anything like the way I did when I held that incredible mechanism in my arms, he still was a suspect!
After all, he hadn’t denied anything. He had offered no proof of innocence. He had just laughed at me and handed me an understanding act that could be as phony as a counterfeit munit. Considering what I had accused him of, a man who could be that understanding would never have had the ruthless guts necessary to become top man on a frontier police force, let alone stay up there for decades. His callous scenario of what he might do if he were guilty was a truer measure of the man. And that didn’t jibe with empathy.
Well, there was a way to find out. I squeezed Sofra’s wrist gently—the high sign we used back in the clinic when we thought we were going to have trouble. I hoped she would understand, because what I was planning needed support which I couldn’t give. I looked up and I didn’t have to fake the weariness in my voice as I cued her. “I guess I’m tired,” I said. “It’s been a hard day.”
She looked at me sharply and I squeezed her wrist again—harder this time. She nodded imperceptibly. “Let me get you another blanket, dear,” she said. “You look cold. I think the Inspector is right—you’re suffering from shock.”
“So now you diagnose for me,” I said. I thought with quiet admiration that she was a wonder. Now the only fly in the ointment would be for Lantham to offer to get the blanket for her, but he didn’t offer. I didn’t think he would. Confeds just didn’t fetch things for ‘breeds.
She straightened me up in the seat, disengaged herself, and walked forward to the emergency lockers lining the wall that separated the pilot’s compartment from the cabin. She opened one of them and began rummaging around inside. It contained the usual gear, flares, respirators, concentrated rations, weapons, extra clothing and blankets—all the stuff necessary to survive on Arthe until rescue parties arrived, if we were unlucky enough to make a forced landing. I wondered how she knew so unerringly where a weapon might be. There was a lot about her I still didn’t know.
Lantham flashed her a quick look as she turned around. There was a blanket draped over her right arm. He sighed and turned back to me. My spirits fell—she had missed the signal after all! An enormous disappointment welled up inside me. I couldn’t do what I had planned. I would simply have to take a chance that he was innocent, and that could be fatal. Then she moved her arm and I saw the bulge under the blanket. I felt an equally enormous relief. She hadn’t missed after all. She stopped behind Lantham about halfway down the aisle as his voice became recognizable to my ears.
“Looking at it from your viewpoint,” he said. “I can see where I might be suspect, but really, Sam, this was a native caper. More investigators than you have been working on this case and their reports indicate that the Artheans are deeply involved. There are clever men among the natives and they have access to things that some Confeds would sell their souls for. It simply isn’t true that all the Shambra artefacts are gone. There are some left, and there is plenty of money from dealings in gorron and ryk hides. The tribes could pay their way clear into Headquarters if they wanted to. Personally, I think that your ideas and suspicions have clouded your objectivity.”
I heard, but I wasn’t satisfied. And I couldn’t let it go. There was too much at stake. If I were right, he’d find some slick way to get rid of us on this ride or soon after we reached Thermopolis. That was his territory and I couldn’t take the chance of letting him loose in it now that I had tipped my hand. I looked up at Lantham. “I guess I was a fool to suspect you,” I said. “It’ll be good when we reach Thermopolis and get straightened out. After you go through the analyzer and prove your innocence we’ll all feel better. I’ll clear the air, and maybe then—” I paused a second, watching for a reaction. This time I made the grade.
Lantham’s face hardened. “You have a stubborn, single track mind,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I have no intention of clearing the air for you or anyone else.”
