The phone roused Dagny about 0600. Its program recognized that the matter must be that urgent. She sat up, ordered, “Light,” and blinked at the suddenly seen room. For a moment its familiarity came strange to her, ’Mond’s picture, the children’s from years when they were little, the recent portrait of them with their mates and many of their descendants down to an infant in arms who was her newest great-great-grandchild, a very unlunarian posing done for her sake only, the gaudy purple-and-gold drapes she had lately chosen to liven things up—She had been gone. Her dead friend faded in awareness. She turned to the bedside screen and ordered, “Receive.” Rita Urribe de Wahl’s face appeared. She too must have been wakened, for her hair was unkempt and a robe was thrown over her nightgown. Tears sheened on her cheekbones and ran down to the corners of trembling lips. “señor, S-señor Beynac,” she stammered, “él está muerto.”
Knowledge struck home like a knife. Dagny mustered her Spanish, though the other woman’s English was better, to cry, “Jaime? Oh, my dear! What happened?” Was it in truth a knife?
“In his swimming pool—found—Nobody knows. The medics are there now.” Rita gulped, squared her shoulders, and made her voice toneless. “I have called you first, after them, because of what this can mean to everybody. You will know best whom to consult, what to do. He would have wanted it, I think.” The resoluteness cracked. “And, and you were always good to us.”
Heartbreaking humility, Dagny thought. And undeserved. She’d cultivated acquaintance with the governor general, these past five years, as she had done with his predecessors, because how else could she play any part in containing the fires of strife? … But, yes, she had gained a certain liking as well as respect for Jaime Wahl y Medina, considerable sympathy as well as respect for his wife, and it showed.
“I’ll be right over.”
“No, no, that is not necessary.”
“The hell it isn’t,” Dagny said in English. “Stand fast, querida. I’m so sorry. But we’ve got work ahead, tough work, and I doubt it can be done on the com lines. Give me a couple of hours. Meanwhile, can you stall? Keep this quiet. Ask the medics to. Notify Haugen but ask him to sit tight. Collect what information you can but don’t let any of it out. Okay?”
Again Rita gathered her strength together. “Yes, I hope I shall be able … to persuade señor Haugen and the others, and keep the staff here under control, and—For two or three hours, perhaps yes.”
“Brave lass.” Dagny smiled into the grief. “I’m on my way, then. Later we’ll mourn Jaime. Right now we have things to do for him. Hasta luego.”
She flicked off and called the mayor of Tychopolis. His phone program recognized her and put her straight through to him in his own chamber. “Hallo. Not up yet? Well, move. Listen, I need immediate transport to Tsukimachi. Immediate. A suborbital if you can get me one. Yes, these bones can still take that kind of boost. Otherwise the fastest jet the local constabulary have available, and I’m not talking about a Meteor or an Estrella. I’ll accept nothing less than a Sleipnir.”—
—“Never mind why. A good many lives may depend on it. That’s enough for now, and you will please keep it to yourself. Pull rank, use my name if need be, but get me the craft.”—
—“I’ll meet you at the port, TrafCon office, in case we need to browbeat those people, in exactly one hour. It’d be nice if the boat had some breakfast aboard for me, but what it must have is readiness to launch. Okay? See you.”
She blanked and left her bed. Inalante would swing it. He was powerful, he was able, and he was a son of Kaino.
In the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face, she began to feel the aches and drag of weariness. Sleep had been in short supply these past few daycycles. She’d hoped for peace till 0900 or 1000 this mornwatch, because after that all hell might be letting out for recess. (Which it already had, in a shape she hadn’t expected.) At her age, you didn’t bounce back after just a catnap. Had she ever been that young? It seemed impossible.
The mirror showed eyes that appeared unnaturally large and bright in the bony pallor around them. Anson Guthrie had remarked a while ago that she looked more ethereal every time he saw her. But she bloody well couldn’t afford to be, not yet, maybe not anytime this side of the ashbox. After weighing what her physician had told her, what her experience suggested, and what the situation was, she took a medium-strength diergetic. That, with coffee and food and will power, ought to get her through the next hours without too high a price to pay afterward.
Somewhat recharged, if a little chilled, she made herself presentable in warm coverall and half-boots. A hooded cloak should keep her from being noticed; few people were out this early. She recorded a noncommittal message for callers, took the bag she kept packed for hasty departures, and went forth.
Hudson Way stretched quiet. The ceiling simulated blue sky, stray clouds still faintly pink from sunrise, strengthening light which set aglitter the dawnwatch moisture in the duramoss underfoot. The air blew and smelled like an appropriate breeze. The ambience was a bit too perpetually pretty for her, but most residents in this neighborhood were Terran and had voted to have it thus. There were other places she could go to pretend, in full surround, that she walked by a gray sea and its drumroll surf.
At the corner of Graham she boarded the fahrweg and rode out to the spaceport, changing lines twice. Fellow passengers were sparse and paid her no attention. She had freedom to think.
Poor Rita. Poor kids, though Leandro was at the university and partly estranged from his father, while Pilar had been in school on Earth for two or three years. Poor Jaime, above all. He’d lived with such gusto, when his job didn’t exhaust or infuriate him. He’d been her opponent more often than not, but a fair one, playing for what he believed was right, right not just for Earth but for the Moon.
And now he was dead. How convenient for some people. How potentially disastrous for the rest.
Murder? Hard to imagine, there in his home. Besides, nobody had ever attempted it when he went out, though he kept no bodyguard. To be sure, he was formidable by himself, a vigorous Earth-muscled man with combat experience and a black belt in karate.
That made his death in a swimming pool the more incomprehensible. Especially as opportune as it was.
It shouldn’t have been, Dagny thought—not for anyone, neither the coldly calculating Lunarian magnates nor the most radical, slogan-drunk Terran demonstrator. Until a short while ago, it wouldn’t have been. Given the present political climate on Earth—leaders and publics daily more conscious of how much the state of affairs on Luna contradicted and defied their world order—any governor was bound to make correction the goal of policy. Zhao’s patient pressure and Gambetta’s concessions had failed. Over and over, a crisis was patched up while the society evolved onward. Wahl’s mission was to bring this globe back under Federation law and make sure it stayed there. No compromises.
But the governor necessarily had broad discretion, and must cooperate with the legislature, unless things got to the point of outright insurgence and troops were the only option. Few leaders would have gone ahead more carefully, yes, considerately than Wahl did: step by step, glad to reward, reluctant to punish, always concerned for the other fellow’s dignity, ready to give up plans for retirement and spend a decade or longer preparing the ground for full enforcement of the major laws, even admitting that meanwhile those laws might be modified. How had it come about that any Moondwellers could wish him dead?
She had no clear answer. None existed. Human affairs are chaos. But, riding along, she could retrace their course into this particular strange attractor.
Friction, contention, hard words, disobedience, resistance open or covert, arrests, penalties, unrepentance were everywhere. However, she thought the Uconda business last year was a prime factor. She’d had a bad feeling about it at the time, and tried to warn the governor, when he forbade expansion of operations at that Farside mine because it would measurably pollute local vacuum and radio background. The astronomers, quantum experimentalists, and other researchers at Astrebourg were naturally glad of the action in itself; but a number of them, Temerir most prominently, were enraged that it had been carried out by decree like that.
Worst upset was Brandir. At his brother’s instigation, he had been quietly bargaining with the owners. He would compensate them well if they shut down altogether and began anew on territory he controlled. The deal would have enhanced his prestige, thereby his influence. It would have involved the owners and their workers giving troth to him, thus increasing his power. It would have bypassed the Lunar Authority, treated the sites as if they were private property, and so violated the intent if not quite the letter of the law. Wahl told Dagny in private that that was surely the real intention, and reason for him to forestall it. Of course this fuelled anger in the opposition.
Had the Lunarian seigneurs cleverly fanned the emotion, or had it directly caused some among them to make a new move, or what? Dagny was uncertain. Her children told her what they wanted to tell her and no more, as did their children and children’s children. Sometimes that was considerable, sometimes they actually asked for her counsel, but this had not been one of the occasions, and when she taxed Brandir with it he went courteously impassive as he had done so often before.
The catapults. Whatever brought it about, the catapults were the issue that could detonate revolt.
Spaceport the fahrweg flashed and intoned. Dagny left it. The walk through the terminal, across mostly empty floors, felt long to her.
She had come ahead of time. Nevertheless Inalante was waiting at TrafCon: a middle-aged man in black tunic and white hose, something of his father haunting the features and something of his grandfather, a steadiness beneath the rapid-fire speech, sounding through the voice. “Be you hale, kinlady. A Sleipnir stands provisioned and cleared for liftoff.”
“Good lad!” she exclaimed, pleased out of all proportion. “I’ll bet you’ve even gotten black pudding aboard.”
He smiled. “Unfortunately, what shops may stock it are not yet open. For haste’s sake, I ordered mere field rations stowed. But recalling you also like moonfruit, I brought these from my home.” He gave her a bag.
Nor did it make sense that her eyes should sting. They could be absolute darlings when they chose, her Lunarians, wholly human. Well, God damn it, that was what they were, “Gracias. Thanks. I, I’ll think of you from now on whenever I taste moonfruit.”
“Need you further help?”
“Mainly that you keep the city calm.”
“I have been preparing through these past day-cycles,” he said grimly.
“You’ll soon hear news that will change everything. I don’t know what the changes will be, nor do I dare tell you more here where we could be overheard, but expect a huge surprise.”
“While you fare alone to cope.” The oblique eyes searched her. “Have you the potence of body for it?”
“I’d better.”
“Then fare you victoriously, mother of us.” Inalante took her hand and bowed deeply over it.
He was no revolutionary, she knew. Nor was he a lackey. He cared little or naught what the constitutional structure might be, as long as he and his were left unmolested to pursue their own ends. Since that required peace, he had accepted the mayoralty here, in an uncontested election, to help maintain it. From this position he could maneuver for changes in rules that he disliked, meanwhile conniving at enough evasion of them to keep people somewhat content without provoking the Authority to intervene.
No doubt a majority of Moondwellers felt more or less likewise. But their ambitions were seldom of a kind that Federation law would much hinder. It was the powerful and the radical who strained against restraints, and it was they who would break the system or be broken by it. Or both, Dagny thought.
She went to her gate, through the gangtube, and into her vehicle.
The crew were a pair of constabulary officers, pilot and reserve, Terrans. They greeted the lady Beynac with deference and promised her breakfast as soon as they were in stable flight. She harnessed into her seat and relaxed.
Liftoff went deftly, at little more than two Lunar gravities. Altitude attained, the seat swung on its gimbals as the hull brought its length horizontal. A snort of thrust followed; then weight leveled off and there was only the almost subliminally faint thrum and hiss of downjets holding the mass aloft. Dagny’s engineering years came back to her and she spent a minute estimating how much more fuel-expensive this flight was, over the distance she must cover, than the suborbital she had tried for, besides being slower. But the idea was to be able to cruise freely and set down wherever you wanted, on a moment’s notice. When you had a pinch of antimatter to season your exhaust, efficiency was no big consideration.
The reserve brought her tray and, seeing she was not in a conversational mood, withdrew. The coffee wasn’t bad but except for blessed Inalante’s gift the food was as dull as usual. Dagny ate dutifully. For the most part her look went out the window at her side to mountains, maria, craters, wrinkled below the sun and a sickle Earth. Now and then a work of humankind gleamed into view, a dome cluster, a monorail, a relay mast, a solar collector, a microwave transmitter beaming the energy invisibly to the mother world. Glare drowned nearly all stars. Once, though, she saw a spark soar across the high black and vanish into distance.
Probably a cargo pod, catapult-launched from Leyburg, she judged. It would be loaded with something, chemicals or biologicals or nanos or whatever else was best produced under Lunar conditions. Her glimpse being insufficient for her to gauge the trajectory, she couldn’t tell what the pod was like. It might be meant for aerodynamic descent on Earth, parachute landing on Mars, rendezvous with L-5 or an asteroid or an outpost farther yet. Never mind. Wherever bound, it bore a magnificent achievement, and she had been among the builders of the groundwork.
But catapults—
Easy to hurl anything off the Moon, with its low escape velocity and its lavishness of virtually cost-free energy. The trouble lay in that “anything.” A hundred-tonne mass, shaped to penetrate atmosphere, would strike on Earth with the force of a tactical nuclear warhead.
When Brandir and three fellow Selenarchs began construction of catapult launchers on their demesnes, did they speak truth about simply wishing to enter the business? On economic grounds alone, that seemed dubious. Certainly no permission had been granted. Wahl ordered the projects halted, pending agreement on safeguards. If that failed (and surely no lord wanted inspectors stationed permanently on his holding) the works must be dismantled. The Selenarchs argued, delayed, obstructed. Satellites observed men, machines, robots going in and out of the shell thrown around the engines “for meteorite protection while negotiations proceed.” Wahl sent investigators. They were turned back at the boundaries.
His words of yesterday evenwatch passed again through Dagny’s head. How haggard his face in the screen had been; but she heard a ring as of iron. “I do not know what their intent is. They understand I cannot allow this. Do they not? Then why are they forcing the issue? I have a horrible suspicion that they have more weapons than we know of, an arsenal that would let their castles stand off what force I have at my command. They can trust that a shocked Earth will not respond with missiles, if they can threaten retaliation. They will call for talks about, yes, independence, or something that will amount to the same thing. Am I wrong in my guess? Can you give me a better one? If not, then on the mornwatch after tomorrow I will order the constabulary to occupy those estates, and we shall see what happens. I give them that long in the thin hope that you, Señora Beynac, can bring them to their senses. Nowhere else do I see any way of avoiding a fight, nowhere else but in you, señora.”
Instead of calling Brandir, she was flying to meet with a widow.
—She dozed. ’Mond spoke to her. She could not understand the words, but he smiled.
The craft gyred about, reduced forward momentum, maneuvered downward. Dagny woke to a glimpse of the docking cradle. The shaft beneath it made an O of blackness. She’d contributed to the design, long ago, long ago: a hole to receive most of the short-lived isotopes in the jet, a cup above whose skeletal structure picked up an amount negligible compared to natural background count. Nowadays motors induced much less radioactivity in their reaction mass. But coping with the problem back then had been quite a challenge, and fun.
The boat settled gently. A gangtube stretched itself on its wheels from the nearest gate to the airlock. The pilot climbed down from his control cabin, now above her, and said, “Here we are, m’lady. We’ve orders to stand by for three hours. If you’ll want us later than that, please call our headquarters and request it.”
“If I don’t have to make a lightning advance to the rear inside that time, I probably won’t need to,” she replied. “I can bum a ride home, or take the train. But gracias, boys. You’ve done well, and your being handsome didn’t hurt the trip any.” That was one advantage an old crone had, she could get away with practically unlimited impudence. In fact, people found it winning, and were disarmed.
A young lieutenant rode out in the tube and said he had been sent to escort her. She let him carry her bag.
The fahrweg ride to the governor’s mansion was short and direct. They made it in silence. Other passengers were pretty subdued too; you could almost smell the worry in them. Few details were yet public, but everybody knew a crisis of some kind was close to the breaking point.
In the entry she gave the man her cloak to stow with the bag. That was really no way to treat an officer of the Peace Authority, but he seemed honored. She continued to the well-remembered living room. Two persons rose from their chairs as she appeared. The third was already on his feet, Lunarian fashion.
Rita went straight to her. Dagny embraced the small woman, stroked the dark hair and murmured. Most of her looked over the shoulder at her breast, to Erann.
Brandir’s grandson met the gaze, smiled faintly, and bowed. He was a beautiful youth—how old by now, eighteen?—with the silvery-blond hair and silvery-blue eyes that ran in his branch of the bloodline. The towering form wore close-fitting green raiment and soft red shoes.
The second visitor was Einar Haugen. As the shivering in her arms lessened, Dagny addressed him: “Buenos dias. Though it isn’t exactly that, is it?”
She let Rita go. The vice governor—former vice governor—shambled over to shake hands. He was a tall, thin man whom Wahl had never given anything very important to do. “This is terrible, terrible,” he said in the same English. “You are most welcome, madame. Most good of you to come. Please be seated. Coffee?” A pot and cups had been set out. “Or anything else?”
Dagny waved the offer aside. “No, I’m already wound as tight as my mainspring will go.” He blinked. She saw that, while he got her drift, he didn’t recognize the idiom. It was an antique, at that. And he, he couldn’t be much over fifty. She caught Erann’s glance again. “What are you doing here?”
“I was a house guest,” the Lunarian answered.
“Hm? I didn’t know the Wahls still knew you particularly.”
“There was a matter for privacy. In kindness, Governor Wahl agreed that I sleep here. That would let us meet alone whenever he discovered an hour free, as harried as he was. This mornwatch I deemed it best I stay to relate such little as I can that may throw light on the misfortune. Having talked to the police, I would have taken me hence, but honored Haugen told me I should abide your arrival.”
As well he might, Dagny thought. Erann had spoken smoothly, his countenance revealing nothing. That too was Lunarian style, not suspicious in itself—’Mond’s and her great-grandson!—but the wind was for sure blowing weird.
They all settled down, the boy cat-watchful. Dagny regarded the woman. “Rita, dear,” she said, “you’re walking wounded and about to fall on the deck. Don’t deny it. I’ve seen the signs many a time before. In a few minutes I’m going to find you a sedative and tuck you in for a watch’s rest or longer. But first can we get it over with, telling me what you people know?” She wanted that directly, not filtered through another mind. Learning just what had happened was vital to planning her own course.
Rita stared at the hands folded in her lap. Monotone: “Juan Aguilar, our mayordomo—our, our steward—Juan found him in his pool about the break of dawnwatch. He pulled him out, called Emergency, roused me on the intercom, did his best to give first aid. The medics came within minutes. They tried and tried, but could not revive him. Meanwhile I called you. As you advised, I called Señor Haugen and asked him to keep the secret for a while, as well as he could. Then I had Juan wake Erann. The police have been here, but only for an hour, because there does not seem to have b-been—malhecho—” The voice died away. She had scarcely moved.
“I directed the police chief and medical office to keep silence,” Haugen said. “I have ordered appointments cancelled and official staff to stay away until called. That cannot go on for long. Besides the, uh, public interest, we must notify his son and daughter. And … proceed with the government’s work.”
He sounded more desperate, or frightened, than pompous. A well-intentioned political hack, Dagny thought, who took the job on Luna because he was in line for a raise in rank and expected this to be pro forma until he moved on to something harmless back Earthside. His eyes implored her.
“How do they know it wasn’t foul play?” she asked.
Haugen could deal with routine practicalities. “No sign of violence. Shortly before you arrived, I received the examiner’s preliminary report from the hospital. The case does have its puzzling features, but nothing—I would rather continue this later, Mme. Bey-nac.”
Yes. Rita. Decent of him. But a few things must yet be probed. “Any idea when he died?”
“Hours ago. The exact time is still undetermined because—We have no possibility of revivification. He was, was there too long.” Brain too deteriorated.
Hm. That was suggestive, considering how whore-frigid Wahl had kept the pool. “When did anybody last see him alive? What was he doing?”
“He had had a dreadful day, as you can imagine,” replied Rita dully. “He came home and had supper with me. He did not eat much. We finished about 2030 and he said he must work late in his study and I should not stay awake for him. That was the last time for me, until he lay dead by the water. He was preparing a speech, a statement to the world, for the … the contingency of actual combat occurring.”
He didn’t employ speechwriters, Dagny recalled. That was one of the things she liked about him. “Anyone meet him later?”
“Aguilar says he saw him come out of the room late in the evenwatch and pace the corridors for a while, then go back,” Haugen answered. “That was not extraordinary. He always needed physical activity when he was under stress.” He glanced at Erann. “Aguilar also mentioned seeing you pass by a little earlier. He had an impression you went into the office. You said nothing about that to the police.”
“Nay,” the boy admitted calmly. “It was not relevant, and it was private. He was, as you tell, seen later. I had sought my room, and I believe the steward did akin soon afterward.”
Haugen nodded. He must already have been satisfied, since he had not informed the officers himself. To Dagny he said, “Aguilar went to his apartment and was with his wife till dawnwatch. They retired about 2300, they state.”
Rita stirred. “They are old and faithful servants,” she said. “They came to the Moon to be with us. Do not doubt them.”
“I don’t imagine anyone does,” Haugen reassured her. “Aguilar told his clock to call him early, in case the governor worked through the dawnwatch and could use his services. He found the computer running in the study, text on the screen. That was not Wahl’s way. He left things neat before he went to bed. Therefore probably he had not. Aguilar searched and—found him.”
“It would be natural for him to take a swim somewhere along the line, exercise part of his tension off,” Dagny observed. “Evidently he did sometime around 2400, maybe an hour or two later. But wouldn’t you expect him to turn in then, being halfway relaxed? This was going to be a wicked daycycle, after all. Obviously, though, he meant to come back from the pool and resume work. So he was abnormally charged up, even for this political mess we’re in.” Her eyes sought Erann again. “What did you two talk about?”
“Ayomera,” her great-grandson responded mildly. She knew the Lunarian expression. It wasn’t quite translatable into any Earthly tongue: the polite equivalent of making no response whatsoever.
“We’ll have speech in a while, you and I,” she told him. “Stick around. You too, uh, Governor, por favor. Rita, let’s take care of you.”
The woman accompanied her out like a robot. Dagny led her through the motions, pulled a blanket up to her chin, kissed her cheek, and waited till the drug had brought sleep.
Emerging, she looked right and left. Nobody around. The machinery of government was shut down for now, and household staff huddled in their quarters or went about their duties in terrified silence. A guard at the door and a monitor on the phones sealed the news between these walls. Haugen was right, that couldn’t last, nor should it. Whatever called for discretion had better be done fast.
How about checking the scene, just in case? Not that she’d likely find anything the detectives and their equipment had overlooked; but it was something to do while her thoughts churned about in the middle of nightmare. She bounded down the hall.
Jaime had shown her his pool once, and laughingly invited her to take a dip. “I needn’t worry about possible brass monkeys among my ancestors,” she’d retorted, “but I’m pretty sure they included no walruses.” The chamber was, as she recalled, austere, echoey still, the water unruffled and colorless in its utter purity.
No, wait. Where was the faint smoke of mists? The air in here was fairly warm, the water Arctic. … Was it? She stooped—her bones felt as if they creaked—and stuck a hand down.
Tepid. What the devil?
She located the thermostat and went to it. The setting read 35°, damn near blood warm. Now why would Jaime want that? Maybe so he could splash and wallow around for an hour, letting the misery leach out of him? That had never been his style.
The olden cold went down Dagny’s backbone and out to the ends of her nerves.
Sickness followed. No, por favor, please, let this idea be wrong, let it pass from her.
Only one way did she have a chance of that happening. She fought back to inner balance.
But be quick! She left the place and cast about the mansion, avoiding the living room, till she found Aguilar. The gray man sat sorrowfully at the accounts. He knew her, sprang to his feet and bowed, stood hands atremble awaiting her word.
“Good morning,” she greeted in Spanish. “Forgive my intruding. You have had great shock and grief, and then you were questioned at length, no? I am sorry that I must ask you a little more.”
“I am at your service, señora.” He meant it, she knew.
“You found the señor in the pool, got him out, called for help, and until it came tried to resuscitate him. That was well done. What I must know is this. Was the water cold as usual?”
“I, I did not notice,” he replied, startled. After a moment, in which the corrugated face squinched together: “Now that I think back … yes, perhaps it was not—not icy cold. Cold, but not icy. I am not sure, señora. I was not noticing. And ordinarily I, I had no business at the pool. It was long since I had felt of that water.”
“Then I suppose, if it had been as cold as he liked, you would have been aware? You got soaking wet, after all.”
A shaky nod. “Yes, you are right, señora, I would have noticed. It was cold, but not … not extremely cold.”
And now it was lukewarm. “Do you think the soñer, this one time, may have wanted to swim at a more comfortable temperature?”
“Perhaps. I cannot say. He never did before. I well remember how he had the pool put in just for himself—” Aguilar clutched her arm. “Señora,” he gasped, “could a plunge into a surprise, could that have been fatal?”
His grip hurt her thin flesh, but she hadn’t the heart to reprimand him. “Surely not. If somebody, for a prank, let us say, sneaked in and set the thermostat high, I can see him swearing very loudly and storming off to wake everybody and find who the guilty party was. Can you not?”
“Yes.” Aguilar released her. “Yes, I think he would do that. He was never one to suffer insults meekly.”
“Macho. I agree. Well, I thank you, and please do not speak of this conversation to anybody else. We still have the truth to discover.”
The horror to uncover. She feared, she feared.
Boost onward, full thrust, and keep the radars alert. Grief was for afterward. She returned to the living room. Haugen and Erann sat in a silence thick enough to cut with a torch. The Earthman’s head snapped around in her direction. The Lunarian rose, gave his people’s salute of honor, and resumed his chair when she took hers.
“Okay, Rita’s out of this wretchedness and we can talk freely,” she said. “Governor, you were going to tell me what the doctors found.”
Haugen frowned. “With respect, Señora Beynac, isn’t that the business of the police? There is no evidence of wrongdoing. The water was not poisoned, he was not killed by an uninsulated electric appliance dropped into it, nothing of that kind.”
“I wonder how dangerous electricity is in CP water, anyway. By itself, it’s a poor conductor.” Dagny kept Erann in her peripheral vision, not to stare at him. She knew the trick of using it. He might have been a breathing statue. “Señor,” she told Haugen, “I’m old and tired. You made a remark about oddities in this case. Por favor, don’t force me to call the medical office and wade through procedures.”
“As you wish,” Haugen sighed. He assembled his words. “First and foremost, his regular physical examinations showed him to be in excellent health. What went wrong? How did he come to drown? You understand, these findings are preliminary, many details wait for laboratory studies, but it does not appear that he suffered a heart attack, an embolism, an arterial spasm, any of the obvious possibilities for him to lose consciousness and drown.”
“Did he drown?” Watch, watch, and don’t show that you are watching.
“What else?” asked Haugen, surprised. “The signs, the appearance of the body—Ah, Aguilar’s efforts, and then the emergency team’s, they have made it unclear how much water was in the lungs, but the blood shows oxygen deprivation.” He gave her an aggressive smile. “You do not imagine, do you, that somebody choked him, then threw the corpse into the pool?”
Dagny pretended to take him seriously. “No, no. Who could have gotten in here unnoticed, let alone assaulted him without a racket that’d rouse a bureaucrat at his desk? Wahl was a strong man, well able to defend himself. If nothing else, he’d show bruise marks.” Weightily: “But you hinted at a few, hm, anomalies. What?”
“It’s rather vague. The medical team leader said something to me about a general discoloration. It could be from lying for hours in that cold water.”
Erann’s visage never stirred.
“Does he have any theory?” Dagny pursued. Her pulse throbbed.
“She.” Haugen made the correction as if it were important. Well, his ego needed shoring up, poor bastard; and its stability was a public concern, when all Luna needed a competent person in charge. “Who knows, at this stage? Probably suicide is ruled out. But some kind of brain failure, nerve cells misfiring, sudden unconsciousness?” His tone went shrill. “Maybe we do not know everything that space conditions, Moon conditions, can do to humans.”
Ever so faintly, Erann smiled. He was Lunarian.
And he was human too!
She turned directly to him. “Do you have any ideas?” she asked.
The fair head shook. “Nay. I can but share in the sadness.”
Haugen’s control gave way. “Do you?” he grated. “You’re in your grandfather Brandir’s household. You know how glad he’ll be of this.” The Authority in confusion and dismay, Dagny thought; its new chief ill-informed and indecisive; the upshot, paralysis, while the barons strengthened themselves and their position; quite likely thereafter, the Authority backing down, the Federation left with scant choice but to go along, as the Selenarchs made good their tremendous claim. “What were you doing here, exactly now? What did you do?”
Erann raised a hand. “Were my lord not overwrought, I would ask satisfaction for gratuitous insult,” he said, as stiffly as his soft accent allowed. “I forbear, and point out that I have been years in friendship with the Wahl family.”
“That’s true, you know,” Dagny reminded Haugen. “When Leandro and Pilar lived here, they’d have schoolmates over fairly often, Lunarians among them.” To Erann: “That’s the last time I saw you till today. I happened to come on business while one of those parties was going on. How long ago was that? Three years? What’ve you been up to since?”
“I proceed with my studies, and, as honored Haugen said, otherwise have the pride to attend the lord Brandir at Zamok Vysoki.” That must have come out in the course of police questioning, Dagny realized. The vice governor had not been on the Moon in those earlier daycycles.
“When were you last here, before yesterday?”
“About the time you spoke of. My lady, this is wearisome and profitless.”
Dagny ignored the complaint. “Yes, that figures. After the kids, your friends, moved out, you had no more reason to visit.” Friends? She recalled the boy Leandro as bearing a dislike of most Lunarians, which he did not always succeed in masking. The girl Pilar had felt otherwise, but then Pilar got shipped off to Earth. … “What was your reason this trip?”
“I have explained it was a private affair. The lord Wahl wished it thus, and I keep faith.” Erann rose to loom above her. “My lady, your greatness entitles you to much, and I say naught more save that I have said enough, have done my duty toward this troublous occasion, and now I will begone.”
“Not yet,” Dagny said. “We need a few words together, the two of us, Sr. Haugen, may we be excused? Meanwhile, I’ll be obliged if you can get contact made with Selenarch Brandir. Use my name and explain it’s crucial. Quantum encryption, of course.”
The Earthman gaped. “Madame, I—What is this?”
Dagny gave him look for look. “You asked if I could help. I believe I can. Kindly let me do it my way.”
“I must p-point out that you have no official standing.”
“I have one hell of a long record, señor.”
His glance dropped. “Well, I will see what I can do,” he mumbled.
“Muchas gracias.” Dagny stood up. “Come along, Erann.”
The youth tautened. “Nay. I depart.”
Dagny kept her tone light. “There’s a guard at the door. He doesn’t let anybody by without Sr. Haugen’s okay. Why begrudge an old lady a few minutes’ chat? Do come along, dear.”
She left. After an instant, Erann followed. The Earthman’s gaze trailed them out of sight.
Dagny led a mute way to Wahl’s personal office. It would be secured against eavesdroppers. When they were inside and closed off, she looked around. The silence was very full of him, his pictures, souvenirs, bow and trophies, the silver icon of Christ crucified. His words were still on the computer screen: “—cannot and will not suffer this. It is more than mutiny, worse than rebellion, it is treason to humankind. That we should be led into violence against each other, when outside our fragile shelters lies inhuman space—”
“Sit down, por favor,” Dagny said.
“I have been too much seated,” Erann answered.
“My neck hurts when I crane it. Sit. Down.”
He obeyed, folding himself into Wahl’s chair and swiveling it around from the desk to glower at her. She stood before him, arms folded. O God, he was ’Mond’s blood and hers, and he looked so like Brandir at that same age! Somehow she made her voice crisp: “All right. What was the business between you and him?”
Beneath the alabaster skin, a vein in the neck pulsed blue. “I plighted secrecy. But I say to you, it was of no consequence to anyone else.”
“If you tell me, probably it need go no further. I’m good too at keeping my mouth shut. But if you don’t cooperate now, the whole damn Solar System will likely find out. There are ways of gathering clues and making deductions from them. Meanwhile you’ll be in a chemical vat of a mess—what price your dignity then?—and your lord and his cause in a bigger one. Do talk, son.”
The lips pressed tight.
Dagny sighed. “After all, I can pretty well guess. You can’t very well have been a special emissary, so this must have concerned Wahl personally, and deeply enough that he’d take time for you in the middle of a life-or-death global crunch.
“Little Pilar. She was sweet on you. It stuck out of her a light-year, the time I saw you two in the same room. I doubt you felt it about her. Not only race; a couple years’ age difference is mighty wide when you’re that young. But it would’ve amused you, and given a sensation of getting some of your own back, to string her along. Nor do I suppose anything untoward ever happened, though that may well be because her father got her out of harm’s way.”
You rarely saw a Lunarian go red. “That … is a … conclusion fetched most far, … my lady.”
“Oh, I’ve more basis than an offhand impression. I knew the parents fairly well, remember. When they told me they were sending her to school on Earth, naturally I asked why. Jaime was pretty evasive, which wasn’t his habit. Later Rita confided a bit in me. The rest was obvious. I didn’t think much about it, just felt sorry for them and for the child, and trusted she’d forget and be happy. But now—
“Of course she’d write to you, over and over, and beam to you and talk whenever a chance came along. It was easy for you to keep her on the hook, without committing yourself in any way. Easy, amusing as I remarked, and cruel.” Dagny shook her head. “I wish I could think better of you.”
Erann gripped the chair arms. “Dare you believe that of me?”
“Do you deny it? Let me remind you, if the police find reason to make the effort, they can trace such things back. Databases record where interplanetary calls went from, where to, and when. But me, I’d start with the girl. Her father is dead, Erann. She’s a good kid. Not that she’d suspect you, not right away, but she’d be quite open to skillful questioning.”
He sank back. “I would not have gone on,” he muttered, “save that I was told the friendship might someday prove valuable.”
“Exploitable, you mean,” Dagny said heavily. “Your grandfather’s idea? Not that I reckon he had anything definite in mind. It was simply a potential to keep in reserve. Until all at once—” She pointed at his heart. Her voice whipped. The lash went through and through her. “Whose idea was it to try murdering Jaime Wahl? His, yours, the both of you?”
He began to rise. Maybe he recognized that to break her apart would destroy him and his, for he lowered himself again and whispered, “You do not rave in a dream. You know what you utter. But why do you, my lady? Why?”
Again Dagny sighed. Grief was a thickness in her throat. “Oh, I’m sure you saw the deed as—patriotic—if you have anything like a conception of what Earth calls patriotism. Do you? Doesn’t matter, I suppose. You’re young, idealistic in your way, born and bred in a hard world where life often goes cheap.
“The scheme is easy to reconstruct. You sent Wahl a confidential message asking to see him at his place—in the crisis, he wouldn’t be anywhere else unless duty pulled him out—see him about his daughter. You admitted having kept in touch with her. Did you get her to message him as well? I’d rather think you didn’t. It wouldn’t have been really necessary. He’s her father, he loves her, he’d receive you, hoping to talk you out of marriage or whatever you threatened him with. You knew his habit of solitary swimming; everybody on Luna has heard of it. You knew that the right words, calculated to enrage and frustrate him, would soon drive him to the pool, to work off enough fury that he could carry on in his job.”
“And what of that?” Erann demanded.
“Only this. You’d slipped into that room and set the water thermostat way low, well under zero. Afterward, of course, you returned and set it high, because the ice had to be melted as fast as possible. Once that had happened, if you’d gotten the chance I suppose you’d have reset it for the regular temperature, but you didn’t, and I doubt you were counting on it. A warm pool would look kind of odd, but still the death would seem—accidental, or natural, if medically peculiar. In the general ruckus, and the Selenarchs touching off whatever hell they have planned, nobody would give the funny detail any close thought. By the time somebody figured out the truth, if anybody ever did, you’d be long gone. And we’d have far bigger problems on our hands.”
Erann sat expressionless.
Dagny smiled on the left side of her mouth. “Want me to spell it out, do you? Okay. Supercooling. If it isn’t disturbed, pure water can be cooled well down past its freezing point and stay liquid. Drop anything in, then, and it solidifies in a flash. Wahl plunged, and suddenly he was enclosed in ice. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe. Consciousness would have lasted a minute or two. A bad death, that. He deserved better.”
Now Erann got up. He stood above her and said, with tiger pride, “Luna deserves better than him.”
She wouldn’t let his height domineer her. She didn’t want to look into his face anyway. “Suppose the scheme had failed?” she pursued. “The crystallization could easily have been triggered prematurely.”
“Then, were I accused, I would call it a jape, of intent merely to avenge humiliation. Did they doubt me, the question could not be tried before the contest for liberty had ended. Zamok Vysoki would be no worse positioned than aforetime.”
“Nobody would buy that plea any more.”
He shook his head. Brightness slid across the platinum locks. “Nay, clearly not, when he is in fact slain and you have bared the means. Investigation can belike find traces of me in the room. Denial can but degrade me, and I will not make it.”
He soared across the floor and stood at the wall, as if to let her see him easily and entirely. “Besides,” he said, “you are now the one who grips hardest of any. I will not hamper or delay you. Maychance you can find an escape for all of us.”
The sight of him blurred. Dagny rubbed her eyes. She would not weep. Damnation, she had work yet to do. But he was honorable, by his lights he was honorable, and having done what he could, he stood ready to suffer what he must.
A thrilling went through her. He said that, had his plan miscarried, his cause would be no worse off. She couldn’t stop to quiz him further, nor to wonder whether it had slipped from him or was purposeful, a signal and an appeal to her. But it fitted in with what else she figured.
“Stay put till you hear from me,” she ordered. “Look into yourself and think. Understand that you are the first Beynac who was ever a murderer. Then make what peace with your spirit you can.”
She left him there and hastened back down the halls. Pain stabbed in her left knee and right shoulder, her pulse fluttered, she snatched after air. Mais vas-tu, ma vieille. “—when the journey’s over,” she thought, “there’ll be time enough to sleep.”
Haugen awaited her. “I have Selenarch Brandir ready for you,” he announced as if it were an accomplishment.
Dagny mastered her wheezing. “I assumed he wouldn’t stray far from a secure phone,” she said drily. “Okay, I need to speak with him in private. That means private. The communications room, right? Meanwhile see if you can get Anson Guthrie of Fireball on a similar line and ask him to stand by for me likewise.”
She didn’t pause to note how the governor general of Luna took to being commanded around by an old female wreck, but continued on her way.
With no personnel present, the communications room seemed doubly big and empty. Screens stood in blind rows, air hissed from the grilles, a fallen piece of paper rattled underfoot like a dead leaf. One holo-cylinder glowed live. Dagny sat down before it and pushed the Attention key.
The head and shoulders of Brandir appeared. Behind him the image held a piece of a mural wall. The art was half naturalistic, wholly enigmatic to her. Her son’s face was lean, sharp, hollowed and honed by time. It was not quite real that once those lips had milked her breasts while she crooned a nonsense song over the tiny bundle.
Yet: “Lady Mother,” he greeted formally. “In what may I serve your desire?”
She turned her voice frosty. “You know full well.”
“Nay. With deference, lady Mother, I tell you not to plead. You remember how I have refused calls from that Council of yours. Decision lies no longer with words.”
“But you took this call because it was from the governor’s headquarters, and you’re hearing me out because obviously I’m there too and you’d God damn well better find out why. Okay, listen.”
In a few short sentences, Dagny described her past several hours. His countenance stayed immobile. Flittingly she recalled an eagle she saw once in a zoo when she was a child. Such were the eyes that looked into hers.
“I’m not about to pass judgment,” she finished. “You murdered a decent man whom I sometimes worked together with and sometimes fought but always liked; and you did it by means of a boy who’ll never quite get the corruption out of his soul; but we haven’t time for trivia like that, do we? What’s beyond argument is that you’re desperate.”
Then Brandir smiled. “On the contrary, lady Mother, Luna is poised to seize what is rightly Luna’s.”
“Don’t shovel me that shit.” He was the least bit taken aback at hearing that from her, she saw. “If you and your gang were really confident, you wouldn’t have wanted to change any factor in the equation. You’re an intelligent son of a bitch, if I do say so myself, and you’ve had a long experience in the unforgiving history you helped bring about. You know how easily human arrangements go to chaos. This assassination was as wild and precarious an operation as I’ve ever heard of. It’s got to have been done in a mood of ‘What have we to lose?’
“Wahl reacted faster and more firmly than you counted on. He was about to hit you with everything he had, if you didn’t back down, and you knew how slim your chances were. So try killing him in a way that didn’t seem like murder. Haugen’s not formidable, he’d dither and temporize while Wahl’s military preparations went to pieces and your faction had time to build up strength as you meant to do in the first place. Then, come the showdown, you’d have your full house, and you could hope the Federation would fold.”
“I sorrow that you, of all folk, demark the cause of liberation evil,” Brandir said quietly.
“Son of mine, son of mine, don’t insult me with slogans.” Don’t strike at my heart. “You know how I’ve worked for what I believe the Moon deserves. Today that is not my business. Frankly, I think in this case ‘liberation’ is a catchword for the aggrandizement of a clique among the Selenarchs. But that is neither here nor there, nor is the question of whether a Selenarchy is maybe what Luna needs. What I want is to prevent people getting killed.”
“It was never our intention.”
“Maybe not, but you’re skirting too bloody close to it, and you did already send one man to the firecoils.” Dagny sighed. “Brandir, I’m getting very tired. I’ve no more time or patience to spare. Hear what I propose.
“You and your fellows will make an honest offer to negotiate a peaceful settlement I guess that has to include taking down your catapults, unless government crews operate them for you, and maybe surrendering assorted heavy weapons; but surely you can get concessions in return. Quid pro quo, tomorrow is another day, and so forth. The main point is that you make peace. If you do, we can pass Jaime Wahl’s death off as natural, send young Erann home, and, not so by-the-by, free you to cook your next cabal.”
“Otherwise, my lady?”
“There is no otherwise, really, if you aren’t suicidal. After you and I are through here, I’m getting in touch with Anson Guthrie. Yes, Fireball does not mix in politics, but also yes, he doesn’t approve of murder either, and Fireball stands to lose as much as anybody if civil war breaks out. Between us, we should be able to stiffen Haugen, With just a daycycle or two of delay, he’ll repeat Wahl’s ultimatum. If you still refuse, we’ll release the story of how Wahl died. Imagine the reaction on Earth. Only imagine.”
Dizziness whirled, black rags blew across vision, she had been talking far too long and fast. She sagged in her chair and breathed.
After a minute, Brandir laughed low. “It is my highest pride that my lady mother is you,” he said. “Come, we will make terms.”
No, she would not condemn him. He was what he was, forever her son, his children and their children forever hers too; let the future a thousand years hence sit in judgment on us all.
Of course they couldn’t settle matters on the spot. They simply discussed, in sketchy wise, what he would set forth before his confederates, and how she might help restrain the government. At the end, though, he said to her, the first glimpse of his inner self that she had had for longer than she could tell, “Abide in life, I pray you. Else shall we fare ill.”
Guthrie made a gruff remark to the same effect at the conference that followed between him and her. Eventually Haugen waxed fulsome on the subject. But this was well after the crisis had been resolved, for the time being. By then, Moondwellers in general, however much or little they knew about these events, took for granted that Dagny Beynac was their fountainhead of wisdom and leadership.