She didn't, not immediately. Instead she asked what sounded like an
irrelevant question. "Is it true what he told me? That the Empire has a
standing offer of a reward for a working model of a matter transmitter?"
"That offer's been standing for three hundred years, Terran reckoning.
One million credits cash. Don't tell me he was figuring to invent one?"
"I don't think so. But I think he heard rumors about one. He said with
that kind of money he could bargain the Terrans right out of Shainsa.
That was where it started. He began coming and going at odd times, but
he never said any more about it. He wouldn't talk to me at all."
"When was all this?"
"About four months ago."
"In other words, just about the time of the riots in Charin."
She nodded. "Yes. He was away in Charin when the Ghost Wind blew, and he
came back with knife cuts in his thigh. I asked if he had been mixed-up
in the anti-Terran rioting, but he wouldn't tell me. Race, I don't know
anything about politics. I don't really care. But just about that time,
the Great House in Shainsa changed hands. I'm sure Rakhal had something
to do with that.
"And then--" Juli twisted her chained hands together in her lap--"he
tried to mix Rindy up in it. It was crazy, awful! He'd brought her some
sort of nonhuman toy from one of the lowland towns, Charin I think. It
was a weird thing, scared me. But he'd sit Rindy down in the sunlight
and have her look into it, and Rindy would gabble all sorts of nonsense
about little men and birds and a toymaker."
The chains about Juli's wrists clashed as she twisted her hands
together. I stared somberly at the fetters. The chain, which was long,
did not really hamper her movements much. Such chains were symbolic
ornaments, and most Dry-town women went all their lives with fettered
hands. But even after the years I'd spent in the Dry-towns, the sight
still brought an uneasiness to my throat, a vague discomfort.
"We had a terrible fight over that," Juli went on. "I was afraid, afraid
of what it was doing to Rindy. I threw it out, and Rindy woke up and
screamed--" Juli checked herself and caught at vanishing self-control.
"But you don't want to hear about that. It was then I threatened to
leave him and take Rindy. The next day--" Suddenly the hysteria Juli had
been forcing back broke free, and she rocked back and forth in her
chair, shaken and strangled with sobs. "He took Rindy! Oh, Race, he's
crazy, crazy. I think he hates Rindy, he--he, Race, _he smashed her
toys_. He took every toy the child had and broke them one by one,
smashed them into powder, every toy the child had--"
"Juli, please, please," Magnusson pleaded, shaken. "If we're dealing
with a maniac--"
"I don't dare think he'd harm her! He warned me not to come here, or I'd
never see her again, but if it meant war against Terra I had to come.
But Mack, please, don't do anything against him, please, please. He's
got my baby, he's got my little girl...." Her voice failed and she
buried her face in her hands.
Mack picked up the solidopic cube of his five-year-old son, and turned
it between his pudgy fingers, saying unhappily, "Juli, we'll take every
precaution. But can't you see, we've got to get him? If there's a
question of a matter transmitter, or anything like that, in the hands of
Terra's enemies--"
I could see that, too, but Juli's agonized face came between me and the
picture of disaster. I clenched my fist around the chair arm, not
surprised to see the fragile plastic buckle, crack and split under my
grip. _If it had been Rakhal's neck...._
"Mack, let me handle this. Juli, shall I find Rindy for you?"
A hope was born in her ravaged face, and died, while I looked. "Race,
he'd kill you. Or have you killed."
"He'd try," I admitted. The moment Rakhal knew I was outside the Terran
zone, I'd walk with death. I had accepted the code during my years in
Shainsa. But now I was an Earthman and felt only contempt.
"Can't you see? Once he knows I'm at large, that very code of his will
force him to abandon any intrigue, whatever you call it, conspiracy, and
come after me first. That way we do two things: we get him out of
hiding, and we get him out of the conspiracy, if there is one."
I looked at the shaking Juli and something snapped. I stooped and lifted
her, not gently, my hands biting her shoulders. "And I won't kill him,
do you hear? He may wish I had; by the time I get through with him--I'll
beat the living hell out of him; I'll cram my fists down his throat. But
I'll settle it with him like an Earthman. I won't kill him. _Hear me,
Juli?_ Because that's the worst thing I could do to him--catch him and
let him live afterward!"
Magnusson stepped toward me and pried my crushing hands off her arms.
Juli rubbed the bruises mechanically, not knowing she was doing it. Mack
said, "You can't do it, Cargill. You wouldn't get as far as Daillon. You
haven't been out of the zone in six years. Besides--"
His eyes rested full on my face. "I hate to say this, Race, but damn it,
man, go and take a good look at yourself in a mirror. Do you think I'd
ever have pulled you off the Secret Service otherwise? How in hell can
you disguise yourself now?"
"There are plenty of scarred men in the Dry-towns," I said. "Rakhal will
remember my scars, but I don't think anyone else would look twice."
Magnusson walked to the window. His huge form bulked against the light,
perceptibly darkening the office. He looked over the faraway panorama,
the neat bright Trade City below and the vast wilderness lying outside.
I could almost hear the wheels grinding in his head. Finally he swung
around.
"Race, I've heard these rumors before. But you're the only man I could
have sent to track them down, and I wouldn't send you out in cold blood
to be killed. I won't now. Spaceforce will pick him up."
I heard the harsh inward gasp of Juli's breath and said, "Damn it, no.
The first move you make--" I couldn't finish. Rindy was in his hands,
and when I knew Rakhal, he hadn't been given to making idle threats. We
all three knew what Rakhal might do at the first hint of the long arm of
Terran law reaching out for him.
I said, "For God's sake let's keep Spaceforce out of it. Let it look
like a personal matter between Rakhal and me, and let us settle it on
those terms. Remember he's got the kid."
Magnusson sighed. Again he picked up one of the cubes and stared into
the clear plastic, where the three-dimensional image of a nine-year-old
girl looked out at him, smiling and innocent. His face was transparent
as the plastic cube. Mack acts tough, but he has five kids and he is as
soft as a dish of pudding where a kid is concerned.
"I know. Another thing, too. If we send out Spaceforce, after all the
riots--how many Terrans are on this planet? A few thousand, no more.
What chance would we have, if it turned into a full-scale rebellion?
None at all, unless we wanted to order a massacre. Sure, we have bombs
and dis-guns and all that.
"But would we dare to use them? And where would we be after that? We're
here to keep the pot from boiling over, to keep out of planetary
incidents, not push them along to a point where bluff won't work. That's
why we've got to pick up Rakhal before this gets out of hand."
I said, "Give me a month. Then you can move in, if you have to. Rakhal
can't do much against Terra in that time. And I might be able to keep
Rindy out of it."
Magnusson stared at me, hard-eyed. "If you do this against my advice, I
won't be able to step in and pull you out of a jam later on, you know.
And God help you if you start up the machines and can't stop them."
I knew that. A month wasn't much. Wolf is forty thousand miles of
diameter, at least half unexplored; mountain and forest swarming with
nonhuman and semi-human cities where Terrans had never been.
Finding Rakhal, or any one man, would be like picking out one star in
the Andromeda nebula. Not impossible. Not _quite_ impossible.
Mack's eyes wandered again to his child's face, deep in the transparent
cube. He turned it in his hands. "Okay, Cargill," he said slowly, "so
we're all crazy. I'll be crazy too. Try it your way."