"Let's drop our masks, Charles."
"Masks? Look, Carolyn, I'd rather go clean up this glass."
"Sweep it up, then. But while you're cleaning up, we'll talk seriously."
"About what?" He got a brush from the locker and a square of cardboard
from the bottom of a ream of paper, and started to collect the debris.
"What do you know about our language?"
"Damned little. Frankly, I'd had only a very insecure suspicion right
up to the moment that you admitted it that there was any language
involved."
"So I gave it away myself?"
"Yes."
"I knew you were smart, Charles. But none of us thought that you were
smart enough--"
"Thanks, m'lady."
"Stop it!" she cried. "What do you want of me?"
"What do I want of anybody?" he whispered in a voice thick with anger.
"I had four brutal years clipped out of the middle of my life by a
three-voiced unknown party who wanted to commit suicide bad enough to
take thirty-three innocent victims along with him. They blamed it on
Hot-Rock Farradyne, the spur-wearing spaceman." His voice came back
and he was half-roaring. "I've seen the results of the hellflower in a
ruined personality that might have been a brilliant and gracious woman.
I've seen a man plugged through the middle, to die at my feet. And on
top of that, I've seen a family of prosperous stability calmly making
their place in 'society' by dealing in the stinking things that brought
the ruin and the death to millions." His voice calmed to a cold,
brittle determination. "What do I want of you? Your lovely, flawless
hide skinned alive and spread seductively before a fireplace. That's
all."
She shrank away from him; looked wildly at the stairway and back into
his face as she realized there was no place in the spacecraft where she
could hide.
He sneered at her fear. "I'm not going to hurt you, now." His voice was
heavy with derision. "You're beneath my hurting you."
Carolyn drew herself together; somehow her self-confidence was
returning; perhaps it was the realization that he was not going to do
anything violent. "Why take your hatred out on me?" she asked. "Have I
done anything but--"
"You?" he asked. "You? How in hell should I know what slimy game you
are playing? You're all painted out of the same can, and the color is
black. I know that I am not the guy responsible for the Semiramide
affair, but who's to prove it? Who's the character that started tossing
the con-rods out of the Lancaster? What was your former boyfriend
doing on my ship? Setting me up for another kiss-off? Jesus Christ,
woman, you'll be asking me not to take these things personally next!"
"You shouldn't. They're the fortunes of war."
Farradyne roared, so loud that his voice echoed and reechoed up and
down the ship. "Fortunes of war be damned!" Then he stopped suddenly
and looked at her again. "War?" he asked. "Between whom or between what
and where? Who and what are you and your ilk? I--" He sat down and put
one hand to his head. Carolyn started to speak. "Charles--" but he
looked up and said, "Shut the hell up and let me think!"
"But I--"
"Shut up or I'll slap you shut!" Farradyne meant it, and Carolyn must
have understood that slapping her senseless did not conflict with his
aversion to violence. Not now. Not any more.
He had enough evidence to make a shrewd guess if he could only sort out
the hodgepodge, throw out the dross, hang the material end to end and
then take an impersonal look at it to fill in the gaps.
Some of it had to do with a combined suicide and wanton mass-murder in
a wrecked spacecraft; he should study that incident with the view of
discovering why it was done, and not why it had been done to Charles
Farradyne. There were the Nileses who probably went to church on
Sunday, belonged to the Chamber of Commerce and the Ladies' Aid and the
Civic Welfare and considered running hellflowers a proper business.
And the daughter, Carolyn, who wanted marriage and a home and a bunch
of kids to bring up into the same hellish business so well run by
their grandfather--just as she had been raised. Something important
hinged on the triple-toned voice which now had become more than a hasty
impression made under stress and excitement. Women who were immune to
the solar system's most devastating narcotic and used their immunity to
deal in the things with safety, bringing ruin to other women. It was
more than jealousy between women, it went farther than that. It was
a form of warfare, and this idea indicated an organization large and
well-integrated; capable of out-maneuvering capable and brilliant men
who had dedicated their lives to stamping out the racket--and who died
under the juggernaut instead of destroying it.
Well, there it was and what could he make of it?
No, there was more to be added. Brenner-Hughes, who tried to remove the
control rods of the reaction pile, and who was immune to marcoleptine.
That was an oddly shaped piece of the puzzle that suddenly dropped into
place with a click and coupled up two isolated chunks to make one solid
corner.
Farradyne put himself in the position of Professor Martin, who might
have been a survivor of the Lancaster foundering. Martin might ask why
someone had tried to kill him, just as Farradyne had so often asked
himself why Party X had tried to kill Farradyne in the Semiramide.
The answer was that Brenner-Hughes had not directed his efforts at
Martin, but at Farradyne, who had some knowledge that was dangerous
to the hellflower ring. Martin would have been the same sort of
innocent victim to the second episode as Farradyne had been to the
first. Party X had wrecked the Semiramide because there was someone
aboard with dangerous knowledge. There was a coldly operating group of
persons, immune themselves to drugs, who were efficiently undermining
the rest of the human race by preying on weakness, lust and escapist
factors that lie somewhere near the surface in the strongest of human
characters.
He raised his head and looked at Carolyn Niles.