He looked at her hand. She took it away. He opened the door and climbed down out of the All-Terrain. He stood holding the door for a moment, checking that his legs were going to hold him when he tried to walk.
“Sharrow,” he said, looking up at her. “I’m only just starting to think that maybe you really are telling the truth about what happened to the Lazy Gun and Lip City.” He gave a sort of half-laugh. “But that’s taken eight years; let’s not rush things, shall we?”
She leant forward, imploring. “Cenuij; we need you; please… in the name of…” Her voice died away.
“Yes, Sharrow,” he smiled. “In the name of what?” She just stared at him. He shook his head. “There’s not really anything you respect or care about enough to use as an oath, is there?” He smiled. “Except perhaps yourself, and that wouldn’t sound right, would it?” He took a step backwards, letting go of the door. “Like I said, I’ll think about it.” He pulled his cloak closed. “Where can I contact you?”
She closed her eyes with a look of despair. “The Log-Jam, with Miz,” she said.
“Ah, of course.” He turned to go, facing the giant open-cast mine on the dark hillside. Then he stopped and turned back, the rain blowing about him. He nodded behind him at the mine. “See that, Sharrow? The open-cast? Mining an ancient spoil heap; sifting the already discarded, looking for treasure in what was rubbish… maybe not even for the first time, either. We live in the dust of our forebears; insects crawling in their dung. Splendid, isn’t it?”
He turned and walked away along the bank of an old tailings pond. He’d gone another few paces when he turned once more and called out, “By the way; you were very convincing about one thing… until you took the radiation scar off.”
He laughed and strode off towards the half-consumed spoil heap.
4 Log-Jam
Like a lot of Golterian oddities, the Log-Jam was basically a tax dodge.
Jonolrey, Golter’s second largest continent, lay across Phirar from Caltasp. The same root word in a long-lost language that had provided the name for the ocean of Phirar had also given the region of Piphram its name. Once Piphram had been a powerful state, the greatest trading nation on the planet, practically running the world’s entire merchant marine. But that had been long ago; now it was just another entangledly autonomous patchwork Free Area, no less prosperous or gaudy than any other part of the world.
The administrative capital of Piphram, which by sheer coincidence happened actually to lie within the area its contract covered, was the Log-Jam.
Sunlit land slid under the small jet, flowing green and brown beneath its forward-weed wings as it throttled back and adjusted its position in the centre of the conical glide-path.
Sharrow watched Dloan at the plane’s controls; he sat in the pilot’s seat of the hired aircraft, studying its instrument screens. He’d flown the plane manually for take-off and ascent from Regioner, and had wanted to land it too, but the Log-Jam had had too many bad experiences with people trying to land on Carrier Field, and insisted on autolandings. Dloan was going to make sure it went all right.
Zefla, in a seat across from Sharrow, was fiddling with the small cabin’s screen controls; channel-hopping to produce a confused succession of images and background sound bursts.
Sharrow looked out of the window at the cloud-dappled land moving smoothly underneath.
“-alked to Doctor Fretis Braäst, moderator of the Huhsz college at Yadayeypon Ecclesiastical School.”
“Well, yes,” Zefla said, turning up the sound. Sharrow glanced up at the screen to see a well-groomed male presenter talking to camera; behind him, on the studio wall, was a gigantic, slightly grainy hologram of her own face. “You’re a star, kid,” Zefla said, smiling dazzlingly. Dloan turned round to watch.
Sharrow scowled at the screen. “Is that the best photo they could get? Must be ten years old; look at my hair. Ugh.”
The blow-up of Sharrow’s face was replaced by a live holo of a trim-looking elderly man with white hair and a white beard. He had twinkly eyes and an understanding smile. He was dressed in a light-grey academic gown with discreet but numerous qualification ribbons decorating one side of the collar.
“Doctor Braäst,” said the presenter. “This is a terrible thing, isn’t it? Here we are, about to start the second decamillenium, and your faith wants to hunt down and kill-preferably put to death ceremonially, in fact-a woman who has never been convicted of anything and whose only crime appears to be having been born, and being born female.”
Doctor Braäst smiled briefly. “Well, Keldon, I think you’ll find that the Lady Sharrow does have a string of convictions for a variety of crimes in Malishu, Miykenns, dating-”
“Doctor Braäst,” the presenter gave a pained smile and glanced down at a screenboard balanced on his knee. “Those were minor public order offences; I don’t think you can use fifteen-year-old fines for brawling and insulting a police officer as an excuse for-”
“I beg your pardon, Keldon,” the white-haired man smiled. “I was just trying to keep things totally accurate.”
“Well, fine, but to return to-”
“And I’d remind you that the whole issue of the use of such Passports is not a Huhsz tenet; this is a civil process with a pedigree over two millennia old; what we are told-and what we have to accept-is that this is a civilised response to the problem of assassination and the potential for disruption it implies.”
“Well, I believe a lot of people would say that all assassination ought to be illegal-”
“Perhaps so, but it was found that its codification caused less disruption than extra-legal actions.”
“Well, well; we aren’t here to discuss the history of legal… legal history, Doctor; we’re talking about the fate of one woman you seem determined to persecute and hound to death with all the influence and resources your-extremely wealthy-faith can muster.”
“Well, I agree that on the face of it this might seem terribly unfortunate for the lady-”
“I suspect most people would put it rather stronger than that-”
“Although this is a lady associated with the Incident in Lip City eight years-”
“This is all rumour, though, isn’t it, Doctor Braäst? Smear tactics. She hasn’t been convicted of anything… In fact, she successfully sued two screen services which implicated her in the Lip City Incident-”
“I can understand you’re frightened of her doing the same to you…”
“But none of this alters the fact that you want this woman dead, Doctor Braäst. Why?”
(”That’s more like it,” Zefla said, nodding.)
“Keldon, this is an unfortunate matter going back many generations, to an act of desecration, violence and rape carried out by one of the lady’s ancestors-”
“A version of events which has always been vigorously denied by-”
“Of course it’s been denied, Keldon,” the small doctor said, looking exasperated. “If you’ll just let me finish…”
“I beg your pardon; go on.”
“In which a young temple virgin was abducted, several of our order were seriously injured and numerous acts of violently destructive desecration, some of them of an obscene and depraved nature I can’t repeat here, were committed by troops of the Dascen clan-”
“Again, this is all denied-”
“Please let me finish; this unfortunate child was then raped, despoiled by Duke Chlea, forced to marry him and to bear children. When this poor, defiled and frightened creature attempted to return herself and her twins to the safety and security of the temple she had known since she was an infant-”
“Now, really, Doctor Braäst; history is quite clear on this; the Huhsz… Huhsz supporters, I should say, simply attacked-”
“History is people and records and the human memory and therefore not infallible, Keldon; we have divine guidance in this, which is.”