Текст книги "Natural Selection"

From his drawer he withdrew new identification documents and a magnetic keycard. Then he stuffed his old identification papers into it, and closed it up. He gave the drawer back to the clerk and left the bank.

Though space is at a premium on any space station, a premium price can save someone a piece of it. A corporate bank account paid the rent on a small suite of rooms in the Corona Hotel. It was purportedly for the use of executives passing through the system, but it had only been used once in the last year. That happened to have been when Carlos Negron first visited the station and Carl Ashe last left it.

Reversing the process he had used eight months earlier, the assassin went to his room without speaking to the clerk at registration. Using the keycard, he opened the door and stepped inside, then closed the door behind him. Everything looked as it had when last he'd departed, save for a light coat of dust over the room, but the assassin checked things carefully and did not touch anything until certain the room had not been disturbed in his absence.

Satisfied, he immediately stripped off all his clothes and walked into the bathroom. From a toiletries kit he took a bottle of what appeared to be allergy capsules and ate two of them. Returning to the main room, he set the alarm chronometer in the headboard for one hour, then lay down to nap. When the alarm went off, he got up and went back to the bathroom and turned on the sunlamp.

The capsules had contained a drug that stimulated his skin to produce melanin, and the sunlamp helped him darken up quickly. His pasty gray skin took on a healthy olive tone. Using hair dye he blackened the hair on his head and body. That job finished, he returned to the main room and dressed in the trousers and workshirt a merchant marine like Negron would wear.

It took less than four hours to complete the total transformation from Carl Ashe to Carlos Negron.

Carlos Negron, shouldering the duffel bag he'd left in the room eight months before, headed back out to the Merchant Marine Union Hall near the docks at the base of the station. He mixed in with a crowd of workmen like himself who had recently come in from a planetary shuttle, then entered the Hall and presented his dues card. The man at the door logged him in and waved him on through the door.

The assassin knew that the quick scan of the dues card would put him in line for an upcoming outbound job. Because Carlos' history showed him to be competent with loading equipment and even light construction 'Mechs, he would be chosen for jobs that involved such machinery. It also showed that he had done a fair amount of work on the Marik border, which meant he would be heading down and away from Tharkad, and that would take him eventually to his goal.

He left his duffel with an apprentice and headed into the bar. There, despite regulations, smoke filled the darkness. The crowd looked sparse, which pleased him for two reasons. The first was that it lowered the chances of his bumping into anyone who might remember him from his earlier visit. Second, and far more important, it meant that ships were harvesting crew at a quick rate, a good sign that he might be leaving Thuban for another world in short order.

He settled at the bar and ordered a beer. The bartender delivered it with more head than liquid and slopped half of that on the bar itself. Carlos frowned and rapped his fist against the bar. "What's this?"

The bartender looked at what he had done, then shook his head and whisked the glass away. "Sorry, mate. The holovid's showing the disk of the Archon's funeral. I missed it the first time they ran it through the system. Here, this one's full and on the house. Drink it in the Archon's memory."

Carlos respectfully raised the glass. "To the Archon and her place at God's table."

A number of others in the bar joined his toast. A man in the back followed it immediately with another. "And God rot that scrawny bastard who calls himself her son."

That toast got more drinkers than the one he had offered, confusing the assassin. "What has Victor done?"

The bartender's expression became almost a snarl. "Not what he's done, but what he hasn't. Do you remember when his father died? Old Man Hanse lay in state for thirty-one days, a month and a day! What did his mother get? Two days! Even Jesus got three!"

"You can be sure Victor didn't offer her that much for fear she'd rise from the dead!" quipped the man in the back.

The bartender leaned forward. "The way we hear it, he sent a message to Katrina and told her, 'bury the bitch!' Gave her an order, he did. He was coming in as fast as he could from the Dragon's border—will make it a week from now, I've been told by those what know—but couldn't have the funeral wait. Mind you, the other children came on a command circuit from New Avalon—over twice the distance Victor had to go—and they made it. Can you imagine that? Prince Victor didn't even want to attend his mother's funeral?"

Up on the holovid screen affixed in the corner of the bar, the assassin saw the camera focus in on a tall, slender woman dressed head to toe in black. Beside her on the left stood a tall man with blond hair, who the assassin recognized as Ryan Steiner. "That the Archon's daughter?"

"Spitting image of her grandmother—was named for her, too. Victor made her preside over the funeral. Those are her brothers Peter and Arthur, and the girl there is Melissa's youngest, Yvonne." The bartender shook his head as he wiped away a moisture ring on the bar. "Katrina's been defending Victor, pointing out that he's got a government to run. Most of the people feel sorry for her so they accept it, but deep down we know the truth."

Carlos nodded and drank some beer. "Been nothing but trouble since Melissa married Hanse."

The man from the back of the bar came over and plopped himself down on the seat beside Carlos. "You know it, brother. But you also know why Katrina gave Melissa to Hanse, eh?"

Carlos shook his head. "Why?"

"Hanse told her that if she didn't, he was going to make an alliance with the Dragons. He would have married Constance Kurita. He would have forced his half-sister Marie to divorce Michael Hasek-Davion and would have married her off to Theodore. If he'd 'a done that, right now we'd all be drinking rice wine and speaking Dragon."

The assassin, who was fluent in Japanese, decided it was no time to reveal his prowess with that tongue. "I didn't know that."

The man from the back nodded emphatically. "Yes, part of the Davion plan, you know. You can see Victor keeping it up, too, the way he carries on with Omi Kurita. Why do you think the Tenth Lyran is stationed on the Drac border?"

"Hearing you tell it like that, it all begins to make sense."

"Damned straight it does." The man's eyes narrowed. "I can even tell you who did it, who set the bomb and why."

The assassin made Carlos lean in closer. "Who?"

The man glanced around the room, then lowered his voice. "Victor had it done. Being so tight with Omi, he had some of her assassins, the nekogami,do the job. The thing is this—they missed the real target. The bomb wasn't meant to get Melissa."

"No?"

"No. See, it was meant to get Ryan Steiner. Victor pledged to his father on his deathbed that he would kill Ryan. See, Ryan was supposed to be there. He was the one who was supposed to introduce the Archon that night, not Morgan Kell. It was meant to get him, it was."

The assassin wanted to be cautious, but he knew Carlos would have pressed the point. "But wasn't the explosive powerful? Didn't everyone on the dais die?"

The man shrugged. "The Kurita character for 'enough' translates as 'overkill,' you know. Besides, not everyone died. Morgan Kell lived, though he probably wasn't meant to. Now, there's a patriotic family for you—they're waiting his wife's funeral so the Hounds can kill off bandits."

"Patriotic?" Carlos indicated that the bartender should draw two more beers. "I mean, I know what the Hounds have done and all, and I appreciate that, but isn't Morgan's son a Khan of the Wolf Clan?"

"Aye, that's true, mate." The man beside him drained off a third of the beer. "But you have to understand something. The son of my wife's cousin went to the Nagelring at the same time as bonny Prince Victor and this Phelan. He told me that Phelan wanted nothing to do with his high and mighty cousin. Makes him okay in my book, even if he was brainwashed by the Clans. And, here, look, Phelan came all the way back for his father's retirement, didn't he? You can bet that he'd have been there for the funeral if it was his father had died. And he willbe there for his mother's."

Carlos nodded as another man entered the bar. He had a clipboard propped against his belly. "Anderson, Capetti, Chung, Negron, Watterman– Woman Scornedis heading out in six hours. Lamon is the destination, with stops at Chukchi, Ciotat, and Trant. Standard compensation plus a twenty-five kilo freight allowance."

Carlos drained his beer and slapped his companion on the shoulder. "Thanks for catching me up, brother. I always enjoy talking with someone who's no fool and knows how the universe reallyworks."

24

Nadir Recharge Station, Tharkad

Federated Commonwealth

27 June 3055

Victor Steiner-Davion pounded his fist against the bulkhead of his cabin on the Barbarossa."What do you mean it will be five days before planetfall?" He spitted the station master with a vicious stare. "Why we were given clearance to come in here as opposed to the pirate point near Tharkad, I don't know, but fivedays to reach the planet?"

"Highness, please, try to understand. Even if you traveled at three gravities of acceleration, you would only shave a day off the time." The man clutched his hands together. "One and a half gravities is a much safer speed."

"I don't care about safety, dammit." Victor pointed at the porthole and the planet hanging like a jewel just beyond it. "That is my home.My mother died there and was buried there. I want to be there."

"Highness, there are government procedures ..."

"I don't care about the procedures!" Viptor's fist slammed into the bulkhead again. "Damn you, I amthe government. Recharge this JumpShip and we'll jump in closer."

"I can't."

"And I say you can!"Victor wanted to launch himself at the man, but he held back. He could see the image of Phelan in his mind, grinning at him and shaking his head. Before he could do something to spite that image of his cousin, Galen returned to the cabin accompanied by an older man with steely eyes and a face that looked chiseled from ice.

The ice man tapped the station master on the shoulder. "Go."

Victor nearly ripped into the new man, but he saw Galen shake his head slightly. The Prince held back as the station master left the cabin and the ice man closed the hatch. Taking his own time, the ice man made certain it was secure, then glanced at a boxy apparatus on his wrist. He punched two buttons, punched them again, then looked up.

"I am with the Intelligence Secretariat."

Victor leaned back against the bulkhead. "You're very welcome because I've seen damned little intelligence recently. "

The man ignored Victor's remark. "You're here and you're going in at 1.5 gees because of security concerns."

"I'm ordering this ship to recharge and jump in close so I can make Tharkad by tonight."

The ice man shook his head. "You're not."

Victor waved his denial away. "I am. I'm not concerned about an attempt on my life."

"Neither was your mother."

That hurt!Victor's hands knotted into fists. "You son of a bitch, who do you think you are?"

"I know who I am." The man's eyes sparked cold blue fire. "I'm the person assigned to make sure the maggots and vipers don't do to you what they did to the Archon. I'm part of the machine that is trying to find the animal who killed her. Right now, along with Kommandant Cox here and maybe your brothers and sisters, I'm the only person in this system who cares if you make it to Tharkad at all."

The man's directness and bloodlessness poured in through the hole in Victor's anger that the earlier remark had opened. The Prince bit back his desire to snap at the man and crossed to his desk. He sat down and pointed both Galen and this security man to chairs. "Fine, so you're doing your job. Does that include briefing me?"

The man remained standing. "Most is need-to-know basis."

"I need to know."

"He doesn't."

Galen smiled. "Excellent point, Agent Curaitis."

Galen started to get up from his chair, but Victor shook his head. "Galen can hear it as well. Whatever clearance he needs he has. If I can't trust him, I can't trust anyone.

Curaitis looked at Galen, then shifted his gaze to Victor. "The assassin used a very sophisticated plan to defeat the security around Archon Melissa. He realized, as we did later, that the one weakness she had was for mycosiaflowers. He used the pots in which they were kept to get to her."

As the man spoke, Victor sensed his anger, but it seemed unfocused. Mostly it was revealed in the rigid way he stood giving his report. It made Victor uneasy at first, but then he imagined that anger directed at those who wished him harm.

"We always varied your mother's schedule significantly to prevent an assassin from using a time bomb effectively against her. Whoever killed her knew that, and also knew that we use radio-frequency scanners to pick up RF modulations from the kind of computer chips used in a computer-controlled bomb. If the bomb's chips are shielded to prevent emission of RF mods, then they are also shielded from taking outside input through radiowaves. They have to be timers, but time bombs are unreliable."

Because you varied my mother's schedule.Victor nodded as he realized that Curaitis was not going to explain everything twice, so he paid even closer attention to his words. "How did the bomb work, then?"

"A plastic explosive—SX-497, manufactured on Hesperus II, in a lot lost in shipping—was shaped into a plant pot form. It was then baked to hardness and coated with an acrylic sealant to prevent sniffers from detecting it. The guts from four cellular visiphones were set up to start a magnesium-thermite fuse when a call came in to the number for which all of them had been programmed."

The Prince sat back. "But the cellular units must have given off RF mods, correct?"

"The pots were sealed with a semi-permeable rubber coating that allowed water through. The power supply to the cellular units was connected through a countdown timer that was itself powered by a water-conversion cell. When enough water leaked through the rubber to power the conversion cell, the connecting timer came to life and counted down. When it was done, the visiphones became live. All this happened after the last RF sweep on the room."

"Why wasn't one done later?"

Curaitis stared at Victor. "The digital watches, cellular phones, pacemakers, cybernetic limbs, and a number of the high-fashion gowns worn that night gave off RF mods. Sweeping later than five-thirty in the evening would have been futile. We believe the devices went live at six-thirty, half an hour after the doors opened and people started filing into the room. The assassin watched the speeches on the public-access holovid channel and made his call when your mother started to speak. Sometime thereafter the devices exploded."

Victor's jaw fell open. "You have the assassination on holovid?"

"Multiple angles. Review of the tapes are how we determined it was the pots that exploded and not the stand that held them."

"I want to see the tapes."

"Victor!" Galen half rose out of his chair. "Do you know what you're asking?"

"Galen, there might be something there that I—"

"No, Victor, no!" Galen almost leaped from his chair. "There is nothing on those tapes that Curaitis and the Secretariat specialists haven't already gone over. Just because you saw your father die does not mean you have to watch your mother die, too."

"But, if there issomething, Galen, I have to find it."

"This is madness, Victor. You don't need to torture yourself."

"I will have the tapes for you when we reach Tharkad," Curaitis said.

Galen turned on him. "You can't."

"Do you have a reason for not wanting the Prince to see them, Kommandant?"

Victor saw Galen stiffen and for a half-second wondered what Galen had to hide. Why is Curaitis suspicious of Galen ? Why did he want him out of the room? Does Curaitis have evidence to link Galen to my mother's murder?

Victor's aide straightened up and shook his head. "You're very good, Agent Curaitis. You see me as a risk and work to eliminate me. I applaud this principle, but not its application. The Prince is my friend as well as my lord and it is that which makes me think that perhaps, just perhaps, he is better off remembering his mother the way she always was, notafter a bomb blew her to bits."

Galen turned to Victor. "I know you, Victor. I know you think nothing gets done unless you do it yourself. That works in a military command, but not in government. Your responsibilities are greater now and will go unfulfilled if you mire yourself in the details of your mother's death."

Victor looked up at his friend and heard the caution in his words. "You're right, Galen, but you also know I have no choice. I am who I am, and I cannot let her death go unavenged."

"Vengeance will come when men like Curaitis finish their investigations, Victor."

Victor nodded and shifted his gaze to the intelligence agent. "Do you know the assassin's identity?"

"We know who he became while on Tharkad. We know where he worked and what he did for the last six months of his life. His records beyond that seem complete, but are false. We are dealing with a professional who has been working on this mission for a long time, and appeared to be prepared to work on it yet longer, had the situation demanded." Curaitis' Adam's apple bobbed up and down. "We do not yet have him, but yes, we know he was a man."

Victor's eyes narrowed. "What has the public been told?"

"Deranged, disgruntled bomber. His record showed a mother who is in a home for the care of the senile. She knows nothing and lives in a world of dementia. A state subsidy pays for her care and the facility is not the best one could hope for. This has been used to explain what motivated the assassin. We believe he is already off Tharkad, but the public believes he committed suicide."

"If you think he's gone, then why the travel restrictions?" Victor saw Curaitis's head turn slightly. "I mean, I assume trying to limit the speed of my ship is a general regulation to help you find the assassin by screening all outbound passengers."

The security man shook his head. "The public is very angry with you. Your mother lay in state for two days, as compared to your father's thirty-one day vigil."

"But the bomb ..." Victor shook his head. "She could not have been viewed as my father was."

"You missed the funeral."

"Not because I wanted to." The Prince looked at Galen. "We left immediately and commandeered every JumpShip heading in this direction, and a few that were not. I am here as fast as I could be."

Curaitis gave no sign of having heard Victor. "It is said your sister cut the viewing short and had the funeral conducted quickly on your orders."

"I told her to use her best judgment in the matter."

"Word is you told her to 'burn the witch.' "

"I never!"

"Peter, Arthur, and Yvonne made it to the funeral from New Avalon. They traveled five hundred and forty light years and made it faster than you made the two hundred-ten light-year run from Port Moseby."

"Katherine thought it best that they be there," Victor snapped.

"Some people even believe you plotted your mother's death because she did not have the good sense to abdicate in your favor. It is said she refused to abdicate because you were secretly married to Omi Kurita on Outreach." The security man looked over at Galen. "You must remember that one, for you are rumored to have been the best man."

"That is outrageous!"

"It may be, gentlemen, but it is exactly what is being whispered in taverns and bars, laundries and stores, at social gatherings and over the visiphone." Curaitis' face remained dead. "There is more. Did you know that you, Highness, actually tried to murder Kai Allard-Liao on Alyina because he advised you against pursuing your romance with Omi? It is becoming accepted as fact that he could have been taken off Alyina when you abandoned the planet but that you refused to wait for him. Men have sworn they heard his radio call but that you ordered the ships away."

Victor slammed both his fists down on his desk. "No! That is preposterous!" He opened his mouth and tried to find words to express the extent of his disbelief and anger, but he could not. Everything is perverted! Lies are being manufactured out of the truth."How, who, why?"

Curaitis shrugged, for the first time the set of his shoulders easing a bit. "I do not know, nor do I care. You have enemies, and you have allies. Kai Allard regularly dedicates victories to you on Solaris. Your older sister is your best defender. Peter, while very earnest, does not have the temperament to help your case at all. The first thing Morgan Kell wanted to know when he came out of surgery was if you had also been attacked. When the orders to the Hounds went out over your signature, he put off his wife's funeral so the bandits could be destroyed. You are not alone, but you areexposed and it is my job to make certain no one does to you what they did to your mother."

Victor swallowed hard and stared at the picture of his family on one side of his desk. My mother and father, gone. I feel so isolated. Is it too late to break through?He looked up and narrowed his eyes. "Agent Curaitis, you've mentioned my sister twice, but never called her by name."

Curaitis looked at him but said nothing..

"What is her name?"

The security man's face remained unchanged. "Katherine."

"Good." Victor nodded. "I am pleased to have you working for me. And I want to see those tapes."

"I'll get them for you, but I want to correct one misconception."

"Yes?"

"I don't work for you, I work to protect you." Curaitis smiled, but it was not pleasant. "As we spend time together, you'll see the difference."

"And if I don't?"

"You'll be dead and you won't much care."