Yevgeny Basham smiled a gently wry smile. “Min Windsor and I are acquainted, in a fashion. I see you delivered your bounty, min Windsor.”
“No, I don’t,” said Windsor roughly. “I waive all rights to it. And I won’t cooperate if you try to bring her in now.”
“Indeed.” Yevgeny raised his eyebrows, looking thoughtful. “Deucalion? You realize, of course, that as well as the original charges of aiding and abetting a fugitive who is a known threat to the lawful peace, min Ransome has accumulated charges since her arrival in League space of resisting arrest, illegal possession of historic property, reckless endangerment, and now, this afternoon, failure to appear at an arranged hearing as well as aiding and abetting escape from a maximum security facility, and now this disturbance here on the surface.”
“There is an explanation,” Deucalion began.
“Yes,” said Lily, speaking directly at Basham. “There is an explanation, min Basham. I can give it to you now.”
He turned his attention to her. His eyes were shrewd, and measuring. If he did not trust her, she thought, he did not yet distrust her either. “I think you would be better served, min Ransome, to give it before a convened hearing. I have been told that you claim salvage of what is believed to be the original Forlorn Hope.”
“Yes.”
“Incredible.” He studied the shuttle behind her for a few moments in silence. “That vessel certainly lends credence to your claim. I haven’t seen its like since my days in history class. Well, min Ransome—”
“Captain Ransome,” said Jenny in a loud voice from the ramp above.
“Captain.” He blinked, weighing this information, and Jenny’s weapons, as well. “I think it would be best if you would travel on my ship. And let some of my people escort yours.”
“If I won’t?” she asked, trying to temper the belligerence she felt. “If I choose just to leave? After one of your own officers attempted to kill me, you might understand that I hesitate to trust you.”
“One of my officers attempted to kill you?” His surprise did not looked feigned—or he was a very good actor. “This grows more serious. Deucalion?”
“It’s quite true. She tried to kill me as well. Threatened everyone here. Maria Rashmi Leung.”
Yevgeny frowned. “I would be sorry to discover that she had. In truth, Captain, I would not blame you for choosing to simply run. You wouldn’t get far. Your vessel is out of date. Now. I can reconvene the hearing in two hours. Will you travel with me, Captain?”
Everyone waited, as if this decision on Lily’s part was of vital importance. Even Deucalion did not intrude with his opinion. Lily realized suddenly who Yevgeny reminded her of, with his keen eye and mellow, but sharp, demeanor. He reminded her of Master Heredes. She wondered if he would be aghast at being compared to one of the infamous saboteurs—to the master of the art himself.
“I will,” she replied, because she knew she really had no choice. “I would request that my robot Bach be allowed to come with me, as well as my Special Officer min Seria, and min Windsor and his two companions.”
Yevgeny merely nodded. “That seems reasonable.”
Windsor grinned. “Insurance,” he muttered so softly that only Lily could hear him. “Wise move.”
Lily reached to lay a hand on Kyosti’s arm. “Hawk as well.”
Now Yevgeny looked briefly startled, but he controlled it very well. “He would be coming with us in any case, as an escaped prisoner. He belongs—”
“He belongs with me.”
“Lily—” began Deucalion, warning.
“You know it’s true. But,” and she kept her gaze focused on Yevgeny Basham, “I’ll save that story for the hearing.” Then, because it gave her an illusion of control over a situation she knew now, and finally, controlled her, a situation that she would have to completely resolve before she could ever make a new life for herself and her crew—wherever they ended up—she removed her hand from Kyosti’s arm and waved toward Yevgeny’s ship. “Shall we go?”
19 Due Process
“YOU’RE CRAZY,” MUTTERED JENNY. “We should have just run for it and blasted through anyone who got in our way.”
Lily tilted back her chair and stared at the clear dome above. Stars and the void of space and filaments of Concord’s vast superstructure showed through the clear material that made up the huge semicircle. When they had been shown into this chamber, the dome above had been opaque; then some switch had been thrown and the surface had cleared and screens had rolled back to reveal the stars. “I don’t think we could make it. Their technology is more advanced than anything we have. They may not choose to use weapons, but they’ve got them. Sometimes it’s better to negotiate.”
Bach, floating just behind her chair, sang.
Geduld, Geduld!
Wenn mich falsche Zungen stechen.
Leid’ ich wider meine Schuld
Schimpf und Spott,
Ei! so mag der liebe Gott
Meines Herzens Unschuld rächen.
“Patience, patience!
even when false tongues sting me.
Contrary to my guilt I suffer
abuse and mockery.
Ah, then, may dear God
avenge my heart’s innocence.”
Lily chuckled. “Yes. Especially when you’re outnumbered and outgunned.”
“After everything that’s happened, you still trust them? It’s all talk, Lily. Deucalion claims to be so shocked by our civil war, all of the Reft’s old-fashioned—he calls them—customs, but I don’t see that they’ve treated you much differently.”
“I don’t know.” As she considered, Lily let one hand drop down to rest lightly on Kyosti’s hair. Its blue strands snaked around her fingers. He was reclined at her feet, perfectly still, not so much reposing as waiting with a predator’s anticipation of its prey. “Think about the people we’ve run into. Most helped us. And Windsor was just doing his job. I think that Maria Leung is the exception.”
“Yes.” Jenny grinned suddenly. “We ought to introduce her to Kuan-yin. Don’t you suppose they’d get along?”
But Lily simply smiled. “They already were introduced some time ago. They didn’t get on well at all. As I remember, Kuan-yin called her a bitch.”
Jenny laughed. In the great domed chamber, the sound was swallowed immediately. The pair of attendants who had shown them into the chamber—they did not quite have the demeanor of guards—glanced at them from their stance by one of the doors, looked away again, returning to their conversation. The acoustics in the room were exceptionally sensitive. Lily and Jenny, lapsing into a brief silence, could hear the attendants’ words.
“… and the shift manager said, ‘Sure, Nazik, I’ll believe that the Sans Merci just hailed into system. Maybe you’d like to offer to lease me some cryo berths, too.’ And Nazik said, ‘No, really,’ and by this time about four of the other people on shift had come over to stare at her screen and someone called up the specs on the overhead, and the shift manager turned around to swear at the person who’d done it and looked up …”
The door opposite the attendants opened. First the low harmony of voices speaking casually together spilled into the chamber, then a number of people who quickly sorted themselves out as they took seats in the circle of chairs in which Lily and Jenny were already sitting. Arranged in such a manner—rather as if they were seated at a large table and the table had been removed—it was hard for Lily to think of the occasion as a tribunal. It seemed more like a social meeting, everyone comfortable in padded chairs with consoles embedded in each arm and no furniture or levels to set off those judging from those being judged.
Of the six people now seated in the circle, she recognized only Yevgeny Basham. The other five were strangers, three women, one a Ridani—like Diomede’s coordinator Scallop, she was only half-tattooed—and two men. One of the men had very pale skin and red hair; Lily could not help staring at him, and she wondered if he dyed it or if, like Kyosti, that was its natur
al color. Then she flushed when he smiled at her, and she looked instead at Yevgeny.
He nodded, acknowledging her gaze. “Let me introduce the board,” he said, and he went around the chairs. Qaetana, from Administration; Maphuna, from Environment; Chao, Services; Chapman, from Medical—the red-haired man; and Isfa’han, from Parliament—the Ridani woman. Evidently Yevgeny was the only representative from Intelligence. He paused, after the introductions, and looked expectantly at the Ridani woman, who settled her hands in her lap and looked at each member of the circle. “I will be moderating,” said Isfa’han. “I would like to begin by asking min Ransome to explain a bit about her background.”
So she told them, about Reft space, about growing up on Unruli, about Heredes’s academy and his kidnapping by the Kapellans and her subsequent search for him—a pause here while they all looked at Kyosti and looked away. How she had lived on Arcadia and aided Pero, and how she had joined Jehane’s revolution and followed it to its end, for her at least, in Pero’s death. And finally, the decision to take the Forlorn Hope and its crew to find the lost route back to League space.
The tale took longer to tell than she expected. As she watched her audience, she saw signs that some of what they heard shocked them—minute signs, certainly, because all six were clearly trained to listen without judging, but signs nonetheless: an averting of eyes here, a slight flush there, a hand covering a mouth. Chapman, the red-haired man, even grimaced once, when she told of Pero’s murder. She did not mention Hawk’s activities at all, except that he had traveled with her.
Silence followed her story. Isfa’han took notes on her console and, after an interval, coughed slightly to alert the others that she was about to proceed. “That brings us to the captain’s activities in League space. I show in my records that Intelligence brought a bounty hunter in on min Ransome, on the charge of aiding and abetting a dangerous fugitive.” All six looked at Kyosti. He did not look back at them, but rather beyond them, as if they did not really exist for him or were too unimportant to register. “From the record I have here of min Hakoni’s arrest on Zeya Depot, it does appear that he is unstable and potentially violent.”
“My division took that case,” said Chapman. “I recall the recommendation that he was clearly unfit to function in society and was to be removed immediately into psychiatric isolation. Austen Chorianis even got Dr. Vespa Tuan Farhad to agree to study the case until further notice.”
“He was broken out of his isolation cell from Concord Rehabilitation Center,” Yevgeny said. “That’s another serious charge levied against min Ransome.”
“Under the circumstances, min Basham,” said Chapman, “I’m surprised that he has been allowed”—now he paused, glancing almost nervously at Hawk, as if he feared the statement might precipitate some savagery—“to be present at this hearing.”
“I can vouch for him,” interposed Lily stiffly. “I take full responsibility for his actions.”
Chapman looked at Yevgeny and then at Isfa’han, as if Lily’s comment held no force for him. “I realize that this is classified information, but under the circumstances I must disclose that min—Hawk, as he has called himself at other times, is a half-blood, human and je’jiri.”
Yevgeny’s expression did not change. Lily doubted the information came as a surprise to him. Everyone else looked truly shocked.
“Yevgeny.” Isfa’han’s tone scolded. “Why wasn’t this information included in my file?”
One woman—Chao—stood up. “I need better guarantees than a simple voucher to risk myself in this close proximity.”
“Told you,” muttered Jenny under her breath.
“Min Chao. Please.”
Lily surveyed her audience, halting her gaze on Chao. “I’m his mate. That ought to be voucher enough.”
Chapman flushed bright red. Even Yevgeny looked surprised, by which Lily assumed that she had caught them all off guard. Perhaps even horrified them. Chao sat down, but she drew her feet in under her chair as if she was pulling herself as far away from Lily and Hawk as possible. “That’s disgusting,” she murmured, not quietly enough.
“I admit myself intrigued,” said Isfa’han. “But I must tell you, min Ransome, that the penalties for aiding and abetting a dangerous fugitive are severe. For good reason. You are also charged with aiding one Gwyn Himavant Simonides.”
Lily tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair. “I’m still not sure what laws they had broken that made them into fugitives.”
Chao and Chapman both began to speak at once. Isfa’han waved them to silence. “As well as the following charges.” She read off the same charges that Yevgeny had read to Lily in the clearing on Discord. “There are other witnesses relevant to the case. I’ll bring them in now.”
After a pause, the door beside which the two attendants stood opened. For a moment no one appeared, although several figures shifted and moved at the entrance, caught in some turmoil. Raised voices could be heard. A woman, looking rather harried, stepped inside. “Min Isfa’han,” she pleaded, “I have tried to tell her that this is a closed hearing but—”
Dr. Farhad brushed past her without a second glance and strode across the chamber to the circle. Both Isfa’han and Yevgeny, seeing who she was, stood up, and the other four, taking a moment longer to register her identity, swiftly stood as well. She walked directly into the center of the circle, not deigning to shake hands with anyone.
“Where is my patient?” she demanded, turned, and saw him. “Kyosti!” Her face softened an instant—but only an instant. Seeing that he was safe, or safe enough for now, under Lily’s hand, she turned back to face Yevgeny. “I have, to my great distress, discovered some serious abuses in the treatment of this patient, by Concord Intelligence. A patient, I might add, whose condition is precarious but at the moment stable. And who was, when I last treated him some fifty years ago, recovering from a complete breakdown. I now have reason to believe that he was lured into work for which he was not suited and that it eventually contributed to a subsequent breakdown, and that a later imprisonment in Concord prison was not recorded and that he was subjected to torture.”
“Torture!” gasped Chao.
“Surely not,” protested Chapman. “I’ve been with Medical for thirty years now—”
“Perhaps no one in Medical at that time was aware that to deprive a person of je’jiri blood—even if he is only half-blooded—of all sensory perception to—God help us, but I cannot possibly imagine what they were trying to accomplish! In order, I must presume, either to gain information he was unwilling to provide or else simply to deprive him of his sanity.”
“Dr. Farhad!” Yevgeny’s voice was quite cool. Lily suspected he was a poor man to cross. “Are you willing to stand by such accusations?”
“Quite willing.” Dr. Farhad raked her audience with a scathing gaze, then swept a stray lock of hair into its proper place in its tight coil on her head and sat down beside Lily. Kyosti looked up at her with interest and spoke a single word in je’jiri. She replied, briefly, and returned her attention to Yevgeny. “I do not intend to let Intelligence gets its claws into him again. I will use my very substantial influence to make sure that it does not.”
This pronouncement left Yevgeny speechless. Isfa’han coughed again, capturing the group’s attention, but into the pause as the circle settled back to business, the figures left forgotten at the door entered quietly into the chamber.
“Yehoshua!” Lily stood up. Jenny rose as well. Hawk lifted his head and scented, and came up gracefully and swiftly to his feet. “Pinto!”
“Begging your pardon,” said Lily tersely, reflexively, to Isfa’han, and she strode out of the circle of chairs and across the white, marbled floor to meet Yehoshua and Pinto halfway. Yehoshua was limping. Pinto was seated in a maglev chair.
“Thank the Void,” Lily said under her breath as she came up to them and could see that they were a little battered but in one piece, and she hugged first Yehoshua and then, leaning down sligh
tly, Pinto. The air around the edges of his chair vibrated, a soft tickle at her skin that faded as she pulled back from him, suddenly aware of Kyosti standing directly behind her.
But Jenny pushed past him and embraced Pinto as well, with her keen fighter’s instinct placing herself between Kyosti and the only male in the room he had focused on. Pinto seemed oblivious to the fuss. Yehoshua had flushed a little, watching Jenny embrace the pilot, and flushed a little more when she moved away and with a great grin of relief—perhaps of something else—hugged him tightly as well.
“Kyosti,” said Lily in an undertone as she moved to take Jenny’s place between the two men, “go back and sit down by Dr. Farhad.”
He cocked his head to one side, taking in her words. After a moment he turned crisply and paced smoothly back into the circle to sink down between Dr. Farhad’s chair and the one Lily had just vacated.
Yehoshua blinked. “What was that all about?” he asked quietly. “Never mind. Are you both all right?”
Pinto winced as she laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’d be dead if it wasn’t for Yehoshua. That last shot—I don’t even remember it. I don’t know how he got me out.”
“I carried you,” said Yehoshua, short. He glanced at his right—artificial—arm. “You weren’t very heavy. We’re all right, Captain. Or at least, not much worse for the wear. But what about you?” He looked beyond her toward the tribunal.
“Oh, we’ve just started. You haven’t missed much. Where, is—?” She stepped past Yehoshua, toward the door. “Windsor. Fred. Stanford. I’m very glad to see you.” She offered her hand to the bounty hunter.
“I’ll bet you are,” said Windsor, shaking her hand without hesitation. She supposed he had bathed—at any rate, his clothes were clean, if rumpled, but his face still had the same stubbled, nonshaven appearance, and his dark hair was unkempt. In contrast, Fred and Stanford seemed neatly groomed, as if they had been at some pains to mat down their hair.