Iranu flinched. Spun away from her. Caught himself and tried to put on an air of wounded dignity. "You’re completely mistaken in everything," he said. "If you repeat any of it, I’ll sue you for slander. As for the League of Peoples… your navy keeps the masses in line by portraying the League as omniscient bogeymen, but some of us aren’t superstitious peasants." He gave his jacket cuffs one more pointless tug, then strode out the door on his stubby little legs.
Festina and I watched him leave. "Do you think he’ll tell what he knows?" I asked.
She shook her head. "He’s probably got a private yacht in orbit. He’ll make a run for it… and the second he leaves Demoth’s star system, the League will make him regret that ‘superstitious peasants’ line."
Silence. Simmering with het-up frustration. Not that I believed Iranu senior had much he could tell us, but his I-don’t-need-to-talk-to-you attitude gave me the cranks.
Feeling seethy, I went back to the bed, lay down, and used my link-seed to submit a report to the Vigil. Copies to Captain Basil Cheticamp, Medical Examiner Yunupur, the Archaeology Liaison Office, the Civilian Protection Office, and the Global Health Agency. All of whom would send copies on to more agencies, boards, and functionaries. Some of whom would leak juicy bits to the media, out of context and inflammatory. Within hours, the wolfpack would be howling their self-righteous hunting calls, stalking me again.
The joys of being a proctor.
Still, I downloaded everything. About Maya, about Xe, about my own Peacock. I would catch unholy flak for freeing a potentially dangerous alien; and for decades to come, every half-baked tico on Demoth would claim to have seen Xe, been possessed by Xe, had Xe’s baby… but I still didn’t pad around the truth. Withholding the smallest detail was murderously irresponsible, given the enormity of the stakes. I drew special attention to Dr. Yasbad Iranu and the possibility he knew where Maya might hide. Let the cops collar him and sweat his smug little britches — if they broke him, he might not be executed by the League of Peoples.
Noble Faye, trying to save the man who started this mess. Who directly or indirectly killed sixty million Ooloms.
Including my Lady Zillif.
Making the report only took a few minutes. High-speed downloading. When I opened my eyes, Festina was perched in the chair where Iranu had been, toying with the invitation card he’d left.
"Thinking of going to the funeral?" I asked. "When is it?"
She tossed me the card. I caught it… then found myself thinking how I hoped Festina noticed what a smooth deft catch it was.
Sure. Trying to impress her with my athletic ability. What was I, a guy? Read the card, Faye.
THE FAMILY OF THE LATE KOWKOW IRANU
INVITE YOU TO REMEMBER HIS SPIRIT
AND CELEBRATE THE GIFT OF HIS LIFE…
My eye skipped over the blah-blah-blah, past the date/time to a tiny inscription at the very bottom.
(EVENT PRESENTED BY DIGNITY MEMORIALS,
A PROUD MEMBER OF THE IRANU GROUP)
Trust the Freeps to put advertisements, even on funeral invitations…
Wait a second. Dignity Memorials? The folks who sent androids to lug Ooloms out of our mass grave? Two dozen androids went down the ancient "mine" where we’d stored the corpses…
Except it wasn’t a mine; it had to be another Green-strider bunker. And the Iranu group sent androids into that bunker… to do what?
What was down there?
Addendum to Proctor’s Report, I sent out through my link-seed. Urgently recommend that authorities investigate a site near Sallysweet River…
I stopped. My transmission felt like shouting into a pillow. Jammed. Cut off from the world-soul.
Not again.
I had time to shout, "Dipshits!" Then a stun grenade crashed through the window.
Lucky me — I was already lying down.
NANO SLUDGE
Another hangover headache. I rated this one a honking great 7.2 — either I’d got hit with more stun power than’the last time, or I was slipping out of shape. There’s a downside to not getting blind drunk at least once a week.
This time, my hands were lashed up behind my back: one of those plastic slide-ties, cheap, common, unbreakable. The only way to get the blasted thing off was to cut it.
Of course, that brought to mind the scalpel in my purse… except that I wasn’t wearing my purse anymore. Big surprise. The dipshits were chumps, but not quite so witless as to leave me an obvious weapon. At least they hadn’t stripped me buck naked… which I’d half expected, considering how Mouth in particular had a love for the melodramatic. Thank God, the Muscle was around to keep things on a more professional kidnapper-kidnappee basis.
Forget that now, Faye. Assess the situation.
All I could see at the moment was a blank wall, painted forest green, bang in front of my nose. I was lying on something soft, a bed with musty unaired blankets. When I tried to roll away from the wall, I bumped into something thud behind me; after some wiggling, I got myself turned enough to see Festina lying on the bed too. She was unconscious but her breathing sounded healthy — just stunned harder than I was, because she’d been closer to the window.
Speaking of windows, there was one not far from the foot of the bed. Our kidnappers had stashed us in a smallish but comfortable room, not so different from the hotel room at the guest home: a nancy-pine dresser, a frilly little table and chair, windows on two walls. The windows had slat-shutters closed over the outside, and the window glass had been set to frost-opaque; still, sunlight managed to sneak its slatty-frosty way in. The whole bedroom had that "afternoon-nap" feel, darkened but not dark. In other circumstances, it might have come off as a fair cozy ambience… if my head hadn’t felt crawling-full of beetles.
So? Get the obvious over with.
World-soul? I called on my link-seed. No response.
Peacock? Nothing there either.
Festina and I were on our own.
I nudged her with my knee. She didn’t react; and now that I moved my legs, I realized they were hobbled up with a short strap of plastic, ends cuffed around my ankles leaving a stretch of half a meter between. Enough to let me shuffle like a person in leg irons, but no chance of kicking any more knees to splinters.
Pity.
The door opened. My old friends, Mouth and Muscle, swaggered in… which means the Muscle swaggered, while the Mouth only managed a swaggery-staggery limp. His one leg was locked stiff, though the knee cast was hidden by his uniform.
"Surprised to see us again?" the Mouth asked.
"Not under the circumstances," I told him.
"But you didn’t expect us to be hanging close to the guest home," he gloated. "You walked straight in without the slightest suspicion. And we knew you’d end up there eventually; you had to come back to Sallysweet River, and we were waiting, tapped into the police database. As soon as you filed your report, we knew where you were."
"You knew I’d head back to Sallysweet River?" I sure as sweat hadn’t intended to see the place again — not with pictures of Dads staring out from every shop marquee.
"We couldn’t be certain you’d come," the Muscle said before the Mouth thought up another boast. "But when you got away from the smuggler’s house, Sallysweet River was the closest place you might run. And the safest place for us to wait for you. Your home in Bonaventure has cops all around it."
"If you picked up my latest report," I said, "you know the peacocks are gone. So there’s no earthly reason for you to keep after me."
"Come on," the Mouth scoffed, "you think we believed that crap you told your bosses? Lovey-dovey Sperm-tails reunited after three thousand years, then vanishing into the sunset? Sperm-tails are physical phenomena, not conscious beings."