Charon (22 page)

 
"Well, I've got to be getting on," I told her, not making excuses but being honest. My transportation back to town was waiting. "It was nice, and interesting, talking to you. And if I catch your Mr. Gneezer with his hand in the till I guarantee I'll remember you when I turn
him
over
t6
Master Kokul."

 
She chuckled evilly. "Wouldn't
that
be something,
now!
" She paused for breath, then said more gently, "Hey, look. If you get back over this way, stop by and see me, won't you? Most of the people here, they treat me like dirt. You're the first person in a long time
who's
been nice to me and treated me like—well, like a human being."

 
"I'll do that," I promised her. We started to go our separate ways, but I stopped and turned. "Hey—what's your name, anyway?"

 
"Darva," she called back. "With no family now I'm just Darva."

 
She took a branch path and walked away from me. I stood there for a moment, watching her lumber off— rather gracefully actually. I also made a mental note of the names Gneezer and Isil. One
Df
these days there would be an accounting.

 
Months passed, and I settled in very well and really enjoyed'the job. Zala taught me how to swim more expertly than I had learned as a kid, and we took full advantage of the warm bay. I also learned how to sail, although I couldn't afford a boat and had to beg or borrow one for the lessons. Zala saved up enough from her loom work to buy a pair of bicycles, obviously made off-world—on Cerberus, as it turned out—and this extended my range and gave me some much needed exercise when it didn't rain.

 
Large sailing ships occasionally came into the bay to pick up manufactured goods and nonperishables and drop off what we needed, and I was very impressed by them. Although strong steel ships could be built on Cerberus, which I understood was a water world, the cost of shipping that size and weight here was prohibitive. Charon's ships were made out of native hardwoods and were the more impressive for it. I noticed that the crews of these ships often contained a disproportionate number of changelings —every kind and variety I could imagine and many I couldn't. But certain forms and variations were particularly useful in rigging and setting and taking in sail, and in cargo management. The shipping guilds apparently didn't care who or what you were if you were best for the job. They mostly remained on board when in
port,
although once or twice I thought I saw longboats heading for Par-hara Point where the changeling colony was supposed to be.

 
Tally Kokul I saw very infrequently—he kept mostly to himself and his "studies," and I almost never needed him. His apts occasionally got playful in the wrong places though, and I'd have to send him a note or drop in if he was there and get him to control them. They were mostly young boys—with more power than young boys should have. I wondered what he did with the talented girl apts,
then
reflected that somebody who could turn a young woman into a hybrid creature could easily disguise the sex of an apt if she were really promising.

 
I also heard very little from the central government of Charon, other than the routine correspondence and manuals necessary to my job, and that suited me just fine as well. It was with some surprise, then, that .a clerk came in one day and told me that a very important visitor had arrived, and he wanted to see me in Kokul's office as soon as possible. "I'd make it possible right now," he added, shuddering slightly. "You haven't seen
him
yet."

 
That was enough to get me up there on the double.

 
Just walking into the inner office I knew what he had meant. Even before I saw the man, I could
sense
something, something decidedly wrong. It wasn't my old agent's "sixth sense" or any kind of apprehension—it was a real, tangible feeling of unease, almost of dread, like you feel just before you have to stick your hand in a damp, dark hole without knowing what's on the other side.

 
He was large and lean, dressed from head to foot in black leather trimmed with silver and gold designs. His face, peering out of a black hood, was lean, hard,
even
nasty-looking. What really struck me, though, were the eyes—there seemed to be something wrong with them, something odd and not at all human. It was as if his pupils were not solid black, but rather, transparent, like windows into some unfathomable other dimension. It was the damnedest effect I'd ever seen and it was extremely unnerving. Kokul sensed it too, and looked uneasy in his big office chair for the first time since I'd known him. This man was no ordinary man—he was Power, raw, tremendous power of an unknown sort. I noticed the man remained standing even though there
were enough chairs, the better no doubt
to negate the man-at-the-desk feeling. I, however, just nodded at Tully and sat down. I only came up to the strange man's chest, anyway. Never, not even with Darva, had I felt so totally small, puny, and weak.

 
"Park, this is Yatek Morah, from the Castle," Tully introduced us and I noticed a feeling of unease in his voice. I stood up again and offered my hand, but Morah ignored it. I sat back down.
"Any problem?"
I asked as casually as I could.

 
"I am making a survey," the strange man replied in a voice as cold and emotionless "as an assembly-line
robot's
. Coming from a living man it was unnerving, particularly on this planet where robots were impossible. "We are having severe security problems in most of the coastal areas. Ships have been pirated on the high seas and never been seen again. Soarers with important, even vital cargo have vanished, or suffered attack. Important people have been imperiled. As Chief of Security it is my job to put a stop to this."

 
I looked at Tully in genuine surprise. "First I've heard of it."

 
"I've had rumblings," the sore responded.
"But nothing in this area."

 
"That is exactly why I am here," Morah told us. "Sixty coastal settlements along the south and east have been hit, either directly or indirectly, in the last three weeks. There have also been more than two dozen incidents in the interior. Practically every community within two thousand square kilometers has been touched—except Bourget. Messages, records, you name it have been destroyed or disrupted all over—except material to or from fat, rich Bourget. Interesting coincidence, is it not?"

 
"I'll agree it sounds anything but a coincidence," I replied, "but I haven't a clue as to who or where. I've been here now the better part of—what?—five months and I've never seen a straighter, more basic and open culture than this."

 
"A culture that refuses to recognize the Queen and
festers
the largest cult of the Destroyer on the planet," Morah snapped back.
"A culture with the resources and means to mount a widespread rebellion."

 
"Except that all the Unitites want is to be left alone," Kokul noted. "As far as they're concerned, they're on another planet and they'd just as soon keep it that way."

 
"That's about it," I agreed.

 
"You have made no attempts to break the Destroyer cult," the Chief of Security noted.

 
Kokul shrugged. "What can I do? It's a safety valve for this kind of culture, and the ones I've caught have been genuine fanatics. They have someone of great power at their heart though—they know and completely change and move as soon as I get a clue. It's as if they had somebody right in my labs."

 
"Perhaps they do," Morah replied. "Perhaps you have been here too long, Kokul."

 
The wizard's face turned red, and he stood up. I had never seen him angry before, and he was a fearsome sight. "Are you questioning my loyalty? Even
you
have no right to do that, Morah!"

 
The big, weird man was unmoved. "I have every right to do whatever is necessary," he replied. However, he seemed to realize he had overstepped his diplomatic bounds if he hoped to get cooperation with a minimum of trouble, and added, "However, I am not questioning your loyalty. Were I, you would be brought up before the Synod, as you know. No, I merely reflect that you have been here a
very
long time. You
like
Bourget and its isolation, and as you are intimate with the people, they are also intimate with you. You may or may not have the power necessary to do what needs to be done, but you lack the will in any case. I have no such problems."

 
Kokul was only partially mollified, but he sat down.

 
"You will call a series of assemblies of all townsmen," Morah told him. "Groups of 500, in one-hour intervals— and I don't care if it
does
disrupt things for a day or two. I will make similar arrangements with the Companies. If I read these Upitites correctly, they would be more intolerant than even we of anyone discovered to be in the cult of the Destroyer. We will bring them into the open. We will let your precious villagers discover just who is who. And then we will stamp out this cult in Bourget."

 
"Just what are you going to do?" I asked him, still trying, and failing, to look directly into those weird eyes.

 
"My best troops are even now in the process of sealing off the town by both land and sea," he told us. "There will be no escape for this band of traitors. Be there for the first assembly tomorrow morning. It will probably be the only one required. I think both of you will find the exercise an educational experience."

CHAPTER
EIGHT
 
All
Hell Breaks Loose

"Who's this Yatek Morah, anyway, that he can come in and order
us
around like this?" Zala wanted to know.

 
"Chief of Security, he says, and I know little more except that Tully is scared stiff of him and he comes directly from Aeolia Matuze."

 
"Well, I don't think he's got any right doing this. I've got half a mind not to show up."

 
I stared at her, wondering a bit at her sudden show of spunk and bravado—or was it? She wasn't very good at hiding things, and in her eyes I saw a tinge of fear and uncertainty. For a brief moment I wondered if maybe there was more going on here than I realized.

 
"You have to go," I told her. "We all do. Anybody on the list who doesn't show up when ordered will automatically be branded an enemy of the people, and they can take whatever action they want. Besides, you saw the ships out there?"

 
She nodded nervously.

 
"I don't know how many troops he's got with him, but they're a nasty bunch and very well trained and efficient— and according to Tully they're
all
at least apts." I paused a moment to let that sink in. "Besides—aren't you just the least bit curious to see what they're going to do?"

 
"I—I suppose. Well, let's do it."

 
We left the house together and walked up the road toward the square. Everything was closed today, even the bank, and there was the general feeling of a community under sudden siege. I didn't like it—the eerie stillness, the tension so thick you could feel it, like cobwebs or dense fog oozing around, despite the fact that this was one of our few bright, rainless days.

 
Most of the first group had already gathered in and around the square, which nonetheless looked oddly barren without the vendors and cafe tables. A small stage had been erected in the center of the square, on the grassy plot where Zala and I had been ceremoniously married only five months before. The four streets leading into the square were all filled with men in the black and gold imperial uniforms of Charon. I was struck by their tough, nasty appearance and by the fact that they were all armed with very ugly-looking rifles of unfamiliar design. I looked around on top of the market buildings and the town hall and saw indications of movement, reflections in the light, everywhere. Morah was taking no chances. I had no idea what
those rifles
shot or their rate of fire, but I was pretty sure that, in a pinch, this force could probably mow down everyone in the square. Not a comforting thought

 
Zala looked nervously at the troops and gulped, grabbing and squeezing my hand for reassurance.
"Park?"
"Yeah?"

 
"Let's stay close to Tully in this. At least we'll have some measure of protection."

 
"Good idea—if we can find him in this mob." I looked around but the wizard was nowhere to be seen. "Let's try the town hall. That'll be where Morah will come from."

 
She nodded, and we made our way through a sea of worried faces; the people were milling around, looking at the troops, but not talking very much. We had almost reached the front door when it opened and Morah and Kokul emerged, flanked by four more troopers. Zala stopped at the sight of the security chief and gave a slight gasp as, for an
instant,
she saw those strange, terrible eyes. But Morah paid us no notice and, using his troopers.—all four female, I noted, deliberately chosen to thumb his nose at the Uni-tites—to clear a path, he made his way to the stage. He really didn't need the troopers—nobody was going to stand in
that
man's way.