Their Majesties' Bucketeers (6 page)

I cut his bandages as he spoke, examining the wounds beneath, which, as I had thought last night, were minor and rapidly healing, despite the cold and damp of the gaol. Giving assurances that the prisoner would be adequately supervised, Mav dispatched the guard to find a messenger, as the only telephone within the station was another unwelcome intrusion in Tis’s office. Then he spelt out the complexity of our situation for Niitood, as he had done so patiently for me.

“Ha! I suppose,” snorted the reporter, “that you expect me to be grateful. Why, you’re nearly as naïve as Mymy, here, and with less excuse! Things are
far
more twisted than you believe, and far more ugly! Of
course
Ennramo wants ‘justice’ done—to the embarrassment of his rivals in the House below! The Uppers, too, have problems: they love the booty that their factories bring, yet their servants and retainers are flocking to the cities—better to work like an animal for yourself than polish the gloves of some toff for room and board! Mark me, Bucketeer, the staunchest foes of industry someday will be the propertied class themselves!”

“Such cynicism is scarcely worthy, even of you, Niitood.”

“Is that so? Then take the Middle House, torn between the egalitarian sermons of Ascensionism—for how can class difference be justified if we are all ascended from the same cactus-hoppers—and the popular appeal of
anti-
Ascensionism! Pah forbid the ‘House of the People’ oppose their own beloved rabble!”

So much, in far more genteel words, my friend had said already, which I pointed out to Niitood. Thanking me for my support, the detective added that, in fact, the industrialists of Foddu were not the upper classes but a new breed of self-made individuals who found political comfort, not with the Lezynsiin or Nazemynsiin, but with the Mykodsedyetiin.

“Ha again! Even your much-vaunted Lower House is hoping this case’ll be bungled—that they might wrest control of the judiciary from the Uppers, and the Bucketeers from the Middle, as they have so long wished to do. But do you want to know the
real
culprits in this matter? None other than the Royal—”

“
For shame
,” I cried. “Have you no decency or loyalty?”

“Loyalty to what? To a brood that reigns because its ancestors bashed in more carapaces than others? To the liars and thieves they appoint and approve to govern us?”

“Why, Niitood,” I asked dizzily, “are you an Unarchist, then?”

“Beautiful,
all
good journalists are Unarchists, deep inside.”

Mav chuckled, unaffected by the reporter’s seditious rantings. “And nihilists in practice. That’s as may be, Niitood, but we’ll need your assistance if we’re to free you and track down the real murderer. Are you willing?”

“Rain upon them all! I’ll help find your goddamp Professor’s killer—though I must warn you, Mav old sandshrimp, that my sympathies are with the anti-Ascensionists. It’s just that I find little to admire in those who’d countenance an innocent party being falsely imprisoned and squashed.”

“Oh, you’d have been most
genuinely
squashed, my friend, believe me. There is one small thing you can do.” Mav held up a portion of the broken camera, which he must have taken from Tis’s desk. Someone once said that a good Bucketeer must be as larcenous as those he would capture, and, in this, my companion was certainly well-qualified. “I believe this contains the photographic emulsion. Is it likely that the image is still intact?”

The journalist seized the object and examined it as closely as the light here would permit. “You know, I had this custom-made—a model maker I met through the Inventors’ Club—very, very expensive. I wouldn’t say for sure until the plate’s developed, but it’s possible. Imagine—taken just at the moment the old crackshell let go! My editors will—”

There was a groan and clatter at the iron door.

“Your editors will stand your bail—reluctantly,” said Mav, reading from the note our guardslam had just handed him. Apparently the enterprising gaoler had simply stepped across the street and used the new telephone in the Bucket & Truncheon, for there was about him that mildly unsteady aspect that I associate with electrical current liberally administered.

V: Out the Door and Innuendo

How
I could ever have perceived the police court on the ground floor as shabby or unpleasant, I shall never understand. After the dungeon, it was practically as warm and familiar as my own tidy apartments. Alas, however, I wasn’t destined to witness Niitood’s scientific miracle of photography at first hand, for, as he made arrangements for his bond, Mav produced that accursed notecase of his.

“Mymy, I have failed to learn much from consideration of the
means
of Srafen’s murder. Although I do not mean entirely to abandon that line of inquiry, I think it behooves us now to take up the
second
of three legs upon which any such investigation must stand.”

“And what might that be, consultation with a medium? I doubt that even Srafen knew—”

“Flippancy ill becomes a lurry of your class, my dear…although in one or two circumstances, such a notion might be of some use.…Hmm.” Then he scribbled off a rapid series of notes, temporarily lost to the world of reality. After a while, his eyes brightened and his fur stood crisply once again: “Now, what was it you were saying, Mymy?”

I glanced around the guardroom for someone who might share my exasperation—vainly, for all were busy helping Niitood fill out the blanks on numerous forms. “
You
were telling
me
about the next line of inquiry we shall—”

“Ah! Forgive me, Mymy, but you gave me an idea for future use—spiritualism might be just the thing for rooting out the superstitious criminal. But I have digressed once again. What I meant is that we might profitably begin with Srafen’s personal and professional associations in hopes of finding someone with reason to wreak violence upon rher.”

“I see—merely half the ignorant population of the city, it would appear.” I shifted my bag uneasily, liking less and less this business of civilian dress. Perhaps I simply didn’t want to return home to change clothing, knowing that my mother would be there, full of awkward questions.

“Hardly. More and more it appears to me that Srafen’s death was at the hands of some singularly clever and determined being. Perhaps the anti-Ascensionists possess the means of such a diabolically complicated act as was required, but…” Again he spent some moments lost in thought, then brightened:

“But look here, Mymy, I was not entirely idle after my humiliation of last night.” He led me to a chalkboard, which, as might be expected in this place, was unwashed. With a swipe, Mav smeared the chalk around, then proceeded to outline his plans:

Some indication of despair must have betrayed me, although I put up as brave and enthusiastic a front as I was capable of, for he hastened to add, “Not every one of these, of course, are real possibilities, and by no means is there need to look into every one of them.”

“For example,” I suggested, “‘Accidents or acts of Pah’—if no deliberate lamviin agency was involved in that explosion, I shall take my own suggestion about spiritualism and give up paracautery.”

“Quite so, and we shall strike it out. Equally, we may eliminate all business connections. Srafen had an income, but its technicalities were administered each month by rher solicitors—”

“Who ought, on that account, to be added to the list. In fact, I’d advocate a separate category for solicitors, barristers, every other creature of that ilk, simply on general principles!”

Mav got out his pipe and dripped inhaling fluid into it. “You’re beginning to sound like Niitood. Let us strike out parents, as Srafen was very old and all three of rher parents undoubtedly dead. Likewise, although rhe felt that all young persons interested in natural philosophy were rher progeny, I know that rhe had no children. Rhe also had few political interests that rhe
acted
upon, but I shall leave that category for the anti-Ascensionists—theirs seems a sort of political effort, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Why have you a category for political
allies
, then?”

He took several pulls on his pipe before answering, in the quietest of tones: “Because, my dear paracauterist, one’s friends can be as dangerous as one’s enemies. There are always those who feel a martyr will do some good for the Cause—whatever it might be.”

“
Now
who is it sounds like Niitood?”

He crinkled his fur. “You’re absolutely right, of course. Cynicism is contagious, it would appear.”

Between us we eliminated academic superiors, subordinates, and students, for, since taking charge of the Museum, Srafen had none of these in any formal sense. However, we appended Museum employees and, at my continued insistence, family solicitors. Likewise we struck out teachers on the same logic as parents, and Naval superiors, who were likely to be dead by now. Mav had doubts about most of the Miscellaneous column, particularly suicide. “Which leaves us once again with politics, of a peculiar sort: academic colleagues—many, and on both sides of Ascensionism.”

“How so?” I asked. “Do professors desire martyrs to their Cause, as well?”

“I can think of some who wish they’d thought of Ascensionism themselves and might not resist becoming the foremost
living
authority on the subject.”

“I see. Well, to continue, we have Srafen’s social ties to examine—”

“Precisely, and there, I believe, you can be of enormous assistance. I suggest you go home, change, and spend the rest of the day chatting with your friends.”

“
What?
”

“Just so, for Srafen’s death is bound to be the topic of much conversation, and if you are clever—and not too obvious—I’m sure that you can find out much about rher social life that I cannot, and a little about rher family, who, I suspect, travel in the same circles as your own.”

That much was possible. In the meantime, Mav would take up the remainder of the list; we would arrange some place to meet in the evening. I bade farewell to him and to Niitood, who was still completing paperwork and expressed the heartsfelt wish that we had left him in his cell belowstairs.

* * *

The sky was a beautiful golden yellow—indeed, the day had reached the very pinnacle of loveliness as I walked back to my flat in Gamlo Road upon the lower edge of North Hedgerow. To my surprise and delight, it was not my mother but another of my parents who greeted me with a positively wonderful-smelling clutch of cactus pears simmering in oil, which, over the objections of my hired girl, rhe had personally prepared for our luncheon.

“How very splendid, Sasa. As you well know, they’re my very favorite! But tell me, why is Mama not here, and what is it brings you in her place?”

My surfather crinkled rher fur fondly at me as rhe lit the kood and placed the cover on its holder. “Your dear mother, I’m afraid, has taken ill again—no, there is nothing you should worry about; indeed, if she had not reacted so dramatically to the news we had this morning, I should have been far more alarmed.” Rhe swept a finger along the tabletop, examining some crumbs of something-or-other that had found refuge among the weavings of its cover. “That girl of yours is an indolent watu; I shall have to speak to your father about her.”

“Speak to Mother, then—these pears are delicious, did you use my oil or bring your own?—she’s Mother’s eyes and ears in my affairs, and perhaps inclined on that account to regard any housekeeping she does as an additional imposition. But don’t keep me in suspense. What is ailing Mother?”

“In general, your choice of vocation—as always. Bad enough a child of hers should seek some productive activity rather than marry the son and daughter of some useless, idle families, but the Bucketeers? And now, according to a crudely lettered message we received unsigned, you’re abandoning paracautery to involve yourself with criminals. I confess that even I felt a trifle disappointed in that, if it is true, but before we speak further on the matter, be reassured in one respect at least: it is your life you are leading, my very dear; you must allow no one, not your mother or your father, no, nor even myself, to determine how it is to be led.”

There are several dozen parents I know of, including two of mine, from whom this speech would have had precisely the opposite meaning than its words conveyed. Not so from
Mymysiir
Viimede
(née
Kedsat) Woom, one of the Empire’s greatest surgeons—its first and only surmale one—and, I am extremely proud and happy to say, my own surfather.

“I can’t imagine who might have sent such a message, Sasa. An anonymous tattler, really! But I have not abandoned paracautery or my ambitions to follow in your profession. On the contrary, they are precisely what has gotten me into the investigation of Professor Srafen’s murder, of which I am certain you have heard or read by now. Permit me to explain…” Thus for the next two hours, rhe and I discussed the events of the last twenty-seven. I found myself (as I have always done) telling rher everything, including the reasons I was home now and about to change out of the uniform I love.

“I see,” rhe said at length, “and I approve entirely. This fellow Mav seems quite the most dashing you have ever—”

“Oh, Sasa, that has nothing at all to do with it!” With no small effort, I regained control of the texture of my fur. “Well, very little, anyway.”

Rhe crinkled rher fur again. “As you say. Whatever the case, I do believe that I may save you some steps today. But wait— Oh, Zoobon, there’s a good girl, do be a mefiik and pop over to the Cactus Rose.” Rhe handed her a few coins. “We’ll want the afternoon papers and a twist of that new Femean kood Mymy likes so much.”

No sooner had the door shut behind the maidservant than my surfather rippled rher fur conspiratorially. “Now if I read your girl correctly, the extra change I gave her should afford us privacy for another hour. I was about to say that much of what young Mav has asked for in the way of information about Srafen’s family I believe I can provide. He’s quite right, of course; his Professor’s death has stimulated every sort of tale imaginable. Also, I’d be pleased to have you carry
my
bag this evening when you go to meet him, so that people will take you for a civilian physician.”

“What will you do for a bag, then, Sasa?”