Traitor's Sun

  there for ages, arguing about some small matter, but they paid no attention to

  him. Herm dismounted and led the horses over.

  "Well, nephew," he began quietly, "I see you got here before me. I was delayed

  in the city."

  The head beneath the hood moved at the sound of his voice, stilled, and then

  lifted. "I was starting to think you had forgotten me, Uncle."

  "I would never do that. I hope you were not bored, waiting."

  "Oh, no. I just watched the performances, and got something to eat."

  Herm! You are not who I expected!

  I know. Now, we are going to be pretending to be quite ordinary people, on our

  way to a wedding in the hills.

  We? Does that mean you aren't going to send me back?

  Not immediately, Nico. I promised your father I would keep you safe-he was not

  very pleased with you. Now, I want you to be called Tomas, and I will be Ian

  MacAnndra. It occurred to him then that there was something he had missed

  earlier, during the discussion in the study. Herm wondered why Danilo and Lew

  wanted Domenic away from Comyn Castle. Then he decided they probably had good

  reasons and stopped worrying about it.

  I understand. That's a good choice-there are hundreds of MacAnndras in the

  hills. I've been keeping an eye on the wagons while I waited, and nothing has

  happened so far. What are we going to do?

  We are going to remain here until morning-there's a bedroll for you-and then we

  are going to decide our next move. Tell me everything you have learned thus far,

  Nico.

  Tomas! Not Nico. You might forget and say the wrong name-Uncle Ian!

  Damn, but the boy was quick! Herm sat down next to the young man and stretched

  his hands toward the fire. Then he listened intently to the voice in his mind.

  The tale unwound clearly, beginning with how the Travelers' wagon had passed

  Comyn Castle that morning and ending with what the boy had heard later. Domenic

  seemed to have a good memory and an eye for detail. As he went over his story,

  Herm could sense that Nico was starting to relax, and even enjoying himself a

  bit. He asked a few questions, and discovered that Nico had never seen the men's

  faces, but thought he could identify them anyhow.

  At last they stood up together and got the bedrolls from the horses, spread them

  out beside the fire, and prepared to sleep. Herm discovered he was very tired,

  and that his legs ached from riding, but he was excited as well. The pleasant

  smells of woodsmoke and horse dung, cold air and a light breeze, refreshed him.

  He ignored the rocks under his bedding and thought about Katherine and the

  children. His spirits started to plummet, but before he could pitch himself into

  despair, he heard the boy again. I think something as happening over near the

  Travelers.

  What?

  There as some sort of argument between the one called Vancof and another driver.

  They both seem a bit drunk, and their thoughts are not very clear. But it seems

  as if Vancof as picking a fight on purpose. There as an undertone in his

  mind-he's afraid. No, he's drunk and torn up aside. He wants to get away from

  here, but he thinks he has to stay at the same time. It is all muddled up with

  remorse and firewine.

  A moment later loud voices erupted in the other field. There were shouts from

  within the wagons to be quiet, and the noise of wooden doors being opened and

  closed. Everyone who was awake looked over with interest. A few of the muleteers

  began to wander across the road, abandoning the storyteller at the fire pit in

  favor of more lively entertainment.

  Herm sat up and looked, and Domenic as well. Two shadowed figures were

  struggling in front of one wagon, fists flying and mostly missing the mark. Then

  several other people got out of the wagons and joined in the fray, trying to

  separate the combatants.

  The fight was over quickly, though the loud voices continued. One man swore at

  everyone, and shuffled away. He vanished into a wain, and reemerged a few

  minutes later with a rather clumsy bundle. He started to trudge away from the

  encampment, and a woman screamed at him. He turned and shouted back at her.

  That's the man, uncle that's Vancof I don't know who the harridan screaming at

  him is. It's not the girl I saw earlier, but someone else. I never heard a

  woman, even Mother, say such things!

  You have led a very sheltered life, Tomas. Never be surprised at what a woman

  can think of to say when she is angry. Can you sense anything more from him?

  Not much. He really is pretty drunk. He just wants to get as far away as he can.

  But I can't tell if he wants to get away from the Travelers or from the men he

  talked to before. He just seems disgusted with everything.

  We can't follow him without drawing attention to ourselves.

  He is too drunk to get very far, I think, Uncle Ian. Sometimes Uncle Rafael gets

  like this, after he has had a row with Aunt Gisela. He drinks himself into a

  stupor, and falls asleep. Vancof seems to be in a similar state.

  Good. Then let's get some sleep. Tomorrow promises to be an interesting day.

  12

  Lyle Belfontaine stared at the stack of sheets on his desk. They were the

  messages he had sent during the past two days, and all of them had been returned

  without any reply. This was something that had never happened before, and it

  left him with a knot in his belly and a raging headache. It was as if the

  Federation had vanished from the galaxy, leaving him stranded on Cottman IV. He

  had not felt so helpless since his father had dismissed him over thirty years

  before. And he had not felt so frustrated since just before the disastrous

  events on Lein III, when he had tried to overthrow a planetary government

  against all the rules of the Federation. It gave him an anxious feeling, a

  roughening of the skin at the back of his neck, an almost prescient sense that

  he might revisit those events, and this time make them work out to his

  advantage. Strange-this planet must really be getting under his skin, if he was

  starting to think like the superstitious natives who believed in such nonsense.

  Miles Granfell walked into the office without announcement, his face sober, but

  his eyes gleaming with surpressed emotion. His boots were soiled, as if he had

  been walking on dirt, and his usually tidy hair was wind-tossed. Without a word,

  he took the chair on the other side of the desk and stretched his long legs

  forward.

  "What is it?" Lyle growled the words, glaring at the stack of returned messages,

  aggrieved and almost eager to take it out on his underling. "Where have you

  been?"

  "Oh, 'walking to and fro upon the earth.' "

  Belfontaine recognized this as some sort of quotation. The last thing he wanted

  to do was play literature with Granfell, but he decided he had to be patient.

  "What is that supposed to mean?"

  Granfell grinned and crossed his ankles. "I have some good news. Regis Hastur is

  dead."

  Belfontaine found himself angry at the man's words rather than pleased. Surely

  he should have known about this before his subordinate! With an effort, he

  mastered his emotions and asked only, "Are you sure?"

  "
Vancof is, which will have to do for now."

  "I see. Well, that is news indeed," he conceded with as much grace as he could

  muster. When he did not say anything further, the other man shifted in the

  chair, as if trying to gauge Lyle's mood.

  After a minute of silence, Granfell asked, "What's all that clutter? I've never

  seen so much paper on your desk in all the years you have been here."

  Lyle eyed the other man with thinly masked dislike. Granfell's tone bordered on

  insolence. Then he dismissed his feelings-it was just Miles' way, after all. "It

  is every message I have sent out in the past thirty-six hours. Regional

  Headquarters seems to have . . . vanished."

  Granfell came to attention abruptly. "Is there some problem with the relay

  station?"

  "I don't know. Our transmitter appears to be functioning perfectly, but whatever

  I send out just bounces." He did not need to add that the transmitter for

  Cottman IV was ancient by Federation standards, that all the equipment at

  Headquarters had been there for ten or even twenty years without replacement.

  Fortunately, most of it still worked, but recently they had had to scavenge

  parts from some mechanisms to keep others going-all because of the austerity

  measures that had spread across the Federation.

  "This is serious, Lyle."

  "I am well aware of that," he answered as icily as he could. "It makes your

  concerns that we might be abandoned here take on a whole new dimension."

  "Precisely. And I think we should . . ." Miles' voice faltered, and he looked

  around the office slowly. "It makes planning anything very difficult," he said

  at last.

  Belfontaine looked at him dumbly for a moment, until he realized that Granfell

  had something he wanted to say that he did not want to have heard or recorded.

  Even the chance that they were going to be stuck on Cottman instead of removed

  did not relieve him of the fear of being suspected of working against the

  Federation. There were automatic devices in the walls of the room which heard

  everything, and he had no control over them, even though he was part of the

  Security Forces. If Lyle had been able to, he would have turned off the

  listeners long since. And just because the Federation was out of touch at

  present did not mean it would remain so. They had to proceed with caution.

  "My head feels like I have been on a three-day drunk. Let's take a walk, and

  consider our options," he replied after a moment.

  "The hangover without the pleasure of the booze, you mean?" The words were

  spoken casually as Granfell unfolded his long body from the chair, smiling

  without humor.

  "Precisely."

  Belfontaine picked his all-weather cloak off the hook beside the door. They

  walked out of the office together, down the corridor, and took the lift to the

  ground floor without speaking again. Then they exited the building, coming into

  a chilly night, the sky overcast as usual, and the wind brisk. They moved across

  the tarmac in silence, until they were well away from everything, and had some

  assurance of not being overheard.

  "So Regis Hastur is dead. And I never even got to meet him."

  "Yes. And if the Federation has left us behind, we have our own lives to think

  about. Vancof told me that Regis' heir is Mikhail Hastur, and we know even less

  about him than we did about Regis. What I do know is that they are going to take

  the body up to some place near Lake Hali, some religious site."

  "Who is?"

  "All of them, the entire Comyn Council, is my understanding, with their wives

  and children, and who knows how many else."

  "You mean that the Castle is going to be . . ."

  "I'm not sure if it will be empty, but I suspect that it would be comparatively

  easy pickings. But that is just a building. The real power here is in the

  Domains." After stating this obvious fact, Miles paused for several seconds, as

  if experiencing difficulty in continuing.

  Belfontaine waited as patiently as he could, sensing the tension in his

  subordinate. "And?"

  "What I think you should do is . . . arrange for this funeral train to be

  attacked along the road somewhere." The words came in a rush, as if Granfell

  wanted to release them as fast as possible. When Belfontaine did not react, he

  went on. "I told Vancof to scout out a likely ambush site-which he did not like

  very much. But if a substantial part of the ruling class were removed, there

  would be no obstacle to Federation rule-assuming that there still is a

  Federation in a few weeks. I confess that this sudden silence makes me very

  uneasy. What do you think is going on out there?"

  Belfontaine moved more quickly to keep the chill out of his bones. He thought

  about this sudden proposal, wary and suspicious. He did not like his underlings

  to have ideas of their own, and he was aware that such a plan was very

  dangerous. If it went awry, it was his head that was in the noose, not

  Granfell's.

  There was something about this sudden proposal that rang alarm bells in

  Belfontaine's mind. What if Regis Hastur was still alive, and the entire thing

  was some plan to discredit him as Station Chief. It would not be the first time

  some ambitious subordinate had tried to further himself at the expense of his

  commander. He had never entirely trusted Granfell, had he? The whole thing

  seemed too good to be true, and Lyle had learned very early in life to mistrust

  anything he had not learned firsthand, for himself.

  Still, he should be able to determine if, indeed, Hastur was dead. If he was, he

  knew why he had not been informed-Lew Alton was behind it, of course. It would

  be just like the man to keep him in the dark. He felt surrounded by enemies and

  incompetents, suspecting everyone, even the Planetary Administrator, Emmet

  Grayson, whom he had managed to neutralize effectively for the most part. The

  reorganization of the Federation bureaucracy had made it easy for Belfontaine to

  exclude Grayson from any real authority, but he still had a few loyal followers

  among the personnel at HQ. It seemed an unlikely prospect, but one which would

  bear considering when he was alone.

  "I can only speculate about what is happening in Federation space, Miles. My

  best guess is that in order to keep things going they have simply closed down

  intersystem communication for the time being. That would keep any ambitious

  admirals or planetary governors from conspiring or causing trouble."

  "You think they have isolated all the member worlds, then?"

  "Those that might be disloyal, certainly."

  "But why take us out of the loop?"

  "A sound question, for which I have no answer. For all I know, some group has

  seized control of the relay station itself. The dissolution of the legislature

  may have triggered some crisis we cannot imagine-it was an ill-considered move,

  in my opinion. I have no doubt that Nagy's Expansionist advisors assumed that

  they could control the situation, but I have never had a great deal of respect

  for most of them."

  "Politicians," Granfell sneered.

  "Exactly." He weighed his next words carefully, wishing to seem neither too

  eager nor too reluctant. Granfel
l's reaction to them would tell him a great

  deal. "Do you seriously think this funeral train can be attacked successfully?"

  "I think it worth a try, yes."

  "I don't want a try, Miles. I can't risk violating Federation policy. It would

  have to appear as if it were a local action, not a Federation move."

  "Yes, that's true. I thought that we might take advantage of our Aldaran friends

  in this." The wind gusted and the words were muffled.

  "What precisely do you have in mind?" Aldaran friends? He meant Dom Damon, who

  was no friend to anyone but himself. All of Belfontaine's suspicions

  hardened-why bring Dom Damon into it? What was Granfell up to?

  "If we fly some of the troops down from the Hellers, land them along the road,

  and attack the train . . ."

  Lyle was shocked for a second as Granfell paused. This did not sound like a spur

  of the moment plan, but something that had been thought out far more completely.

  On the other hand, from the evidence of his boots, Miles had walked from

  wherever he had met Vancof, and perhaps he had used the time to think it

  through. He had never underestimated the intelligence of his subordinate before,

  and he was not going to begin now. "We have about a hundred useful men up

  there," he answered reasonably, as if he were thinking about it, when instead

  his mind was racing with fresh suspicions. "The funeral procession will be

  heavily guarded, won't it? The natives here may be backward, but they know how

  to fight." He waited to hear Granfell's reply, to measure it. The strange

  prickling he had had earlier on the back of his neck returned.

  "Dress the men up in local clothing and pass them off as brigands. God knows

  there are enough of those up in the hills. And I am sure that a couple platoons

  of trained soldiers could take out these paltry guards without using blasters.

  We might mine the road or . . ."

  "And if the Federation appears, and there is a Board of Inquiry, what then?"

  "If you aren't ready to take the risk . . ."

  "I did not say that, Miles. But we have to be extremely cautious. I just want to

  be certain that, whatever happens, nothing can be traced to us. The idea of

  using men from the Hellers complex is a good one, since we can blame Dom Damon

  if anything goes wrong. We all know that he thinks that he could run Cottman if

  he ever got the chance. He would make an excellent scapegoat, particularly if he