Swan Song. Brian Stableford
do have a tendency to walk in and out of police stations all the time. But the local cops were under no such illusion, and Soulier suddenly looked very, very nasty indeed.
The man who’d accepted the notes from Haeckel, and who still had the cash clasped in his clammy little hand, was a bright crimson color.
“This is quite amazing,” said Denton suavely. “I hardly thought that you’d have arrested the man before I arrived with the warrant.”
The blushing man let his jaw drop slightly, and then he began to gather himself together.
But Soulier wasn’t going to hang around while this thing was sorted right out from under his nose. He cut in before the cop had got halfway through identifying himself, and interposed his bulk between Denton and the desk.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” he demanded. All my illusions were shattered. He’d seemed such a nice, clever, self-controlled man.
“I’m Commander Denton,” said my rescuer—he appeared to have come in for some fast promotion. “I have a warrant for the apprehension of a man called Grainger.” He dug into his pocket and brought out a gray envelope. Soulier reached for it but Denton moved it slickly out of his reach.
“Who is this man?” he demanded of the desk attendant.
“You know damn well who I am,” said Soulier. “And you can’t have Grainger. He’s been arrested for jumping ship and he has to stand trial here.”
“The charge was dropped,” I put in.
“No it wasn’t,” said Haeckel, who appeared to have caught on to the fact that he was about to wake up from his dream of avarice. “I only said I might drop it when I thought it over. The charges stand.”
“He bribed the cop, too,” I said. Not that it was relevant, but I felt that it might help the discussion along.
Denton reached out his hand and eased Soulier to one side. He presented the warrant to the man at the desk and said, “I demand that you release the man called Grainger into my custody instantly. Whether or not he has committed a minor offense on this world is quite immaterial. You’ll find that my warrant takes precedence. If you care to check the papers you’ll find everything in order. You may, if you wish, apply for him to be extradited from New Alexandria in order to face charges here, once he has been tried there.”
“I’ll have to check with the chief,” said the desk cop.
“Do it now,” said Denton.
“Yes, sir,” said the cop, and moved back from the desk into the small room where the communications panel was situated. Denton moved past Soulier to stand in front of me. Haeckel took an instinctive step backward. Soulier suddenly looked rather isolated in the middle of the floor.
“I thought you were Titus Charlot’s bodyguard,” I said.
“Promotion,” he told me. “I’m an odd-job man now.”
“So Titus wants me home.”
Denton shook his head slightly. “Titus doesn’t want Caradoc to get a tape of your memory. He feels that it would embarrass him. We could hardly have anticipated anything along these lines, but nobody can keep anything secret these days. We caught on, and we moved as fast as we could.”
“You came out in the Swan?”
He shook his head. “The Swan’s in dry dock,” he said. “Not in use. No crew. Titus has the sister ship up in the air now, and he’s taken it for a little spin around the inner rim. Place called Darlow. Observation and experiment. You know it?”
I’d never heard of it, and I said so. I asked him exactly what was going to happen to me once he got me off Erica and away from Caradoc.
Soulier came back in at this point. “I’d like to hear the answer to that as well,” he said. “This man is an employee of the Caradoc Company.”
“Like hell I am,” I protested.
“Yes you are,” he insisted. “We bought your ship.”
“Haeckel said you chartered it!” We both turned to the captain for confirmation.
“We own it,” said Soulier definitely. “Don’t we, Captain?”
Haeckel hesitated, open-mouthed.
“It’s not his to sell,” Sam intervened. “He can’t sell it.”
“He’s the authorized agent of his owners,” said Soulier smoothly. “And he sold the ship to me on their behalf last night. For thirty-five thousand.” He looked at Haeckel like a snake hypnotizing a rabbit.
Haeckel’s eyes flickered away, resting first on my face and then on Denton’s. He licked his lips and weighed his chances, while everybody waited to hear what he had to say.
“You bought it,” he said, and then added, “for forty-five thousand.”
Soulier looked as if he wanted to kick the captain in the face.
“Moron,” commented Sam. He put his face close to my ear and whispered, “That extra ten thou will go to the owners. He’d have got more kickback from Soulier than he will from them.” I agreed with him. Haeckel was a bit of an idiot.
“It makes no difference who the hell owns the ship,” I said. “I resign. I’m entitled.”
“Can’t you understand,” said Denton, who sounded tired in the face of all this desperate wrangling, “that it doesn’t matter at all. It makes not the slightest difference. He’s under arrest and he’s going back to New Alexandria with me. Things can be sorted out there. Things will have to be sorted out there.”
I felt like a parcel with an obscure address.
“Any claim,” continued Denton, “by the police on this world, or by anyone else, will have to come up to the court at Civitas Solis on New Alexandria. There it will be dealt with properly and legally.”
“Want to bet on your chances?” I asked Soulier.
“Don’t get too cocky,” Denton said to me, with a slight edge on his voice. “This law will have to deal with you, too. That warrant’s real. You take your chances in court like everybody else. And the law on New Alexandria doesn’t take bribes, nor does it appreciate your kind of humor. I should temper your exultancy if I were you.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said. “I love you too.”
“Well, then—” said Denton.
The chief of police finally made it through the door, banged it shut, looked around as if wondering which of us to shoot, and then demanded to know why his police station looked more like a railway station.
Denton and Soulier went to sort it out, leaving Sam and Captain Haeckel and myself in the corner. I shrugged, and went back into the cell to sit down. Sam looked at Haeckel, then at me, and he joined me. He shut the door behind him.
The captain stared at us through the bars. “Parks,” he said, “you’re out of a job.”
“Yeah,” said Sam, “and you’re out of a friend.”
“What the hell is going on here7” screamed the drunk in the other cell.
I felt suddenly and wonderfully serene. Events had caught up with me and I had no idea at all where it was going to lead—except that I wasn’t going to be forcibly augMENTed and have my memories exhibited to all kinds of prying eyes. Even if I was still booked to get my feet blistered I was well clear of the frying pan.
“All go, isn’t it?” I commented.
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