Price of Ransom (36 page)

“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 slightly, 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.

Stanford still wore his shoulder harness, but the only instrument she saw attached to it was his thin com-slate. Stanford shook her hand with some reserve, but Fred pumped it enthusiastically.

“Don’t get a chance to do this much,” he growled. “Nice place, huh? Where do we get to sit?”

Lily grinned, waving toward Yevgeny. “You’d better ask our host. I think the main chairs are filling up. If you’ll excuse me.” She waited for the last arrivals. “Deucalion. And—” Paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was many degrees cooler. “Min Leung. I’m so pleased to see you here.”

Maria simply walked past her as if she did not exist, or were of too little importance to acknowledge. It seemed a poor and unconvincing imitation of La Belle.

“At least she’s being made to appear,” Lily said to Deucalion.

He looked grim. “I’ll see that she’s brought to account for her actions. I’m only sorry that Mother wouldn’t witness—or even let Adam—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

“Haven’t you tried to reach them again? Perhaps a recorded message?”

“They’ve already left the system. She only came to tell you about Father.” A different look sparked in his eyes a moment. “At least we learned that he’s not dead.”

She had to ask, now that he had mentioned the subject. “Do you know where Cymru is?”

“Of course.” But he did not elaborate, moving instead to the chairs. She followed him and, seating herself, found that the circle was full except for an empty chair that Windsor had forsaken, seeing that there was not room enough for the Ardakians to sit in as well. A rank of chairs behind held them, and Yehoshua, and Pinto in his elevated chair. Deucalion sat beside Jenny, Maria next to Yevgeny. There was a silence in which Maria arranged her dress and Isfa’han surveyed the new arrivals with an expression of dry amusement on her half-dappled face. “While you settle yourselves in and sort yourselves out,” she said, with a touch of irony, “I’ll bring up the rest of the file.”

While the Ridani woman scrolled up more notes, Lily leaned to speak softly to Dr. Farhad. “How did you get here? I thought you would have been on the
Hope
by now.”

Dr. Farhad looked at her, reproving. Her lips thinned. “Once I arrived, the young woman called Paisley apprised me of developments. I then had the skiff that brought me turn around and bring me back here. Just in time, I see.” Her disapproval fairly radiated around the circle.

“Now.” Isfa’han folded her hands in her lap. “Since all the principals are here, perhaps we can continue. Without interruption. This list of charges is quite extensive. Most of them seem adequately substantiated. Intent, of course, we can only deduce from this hearing now, and it seems clear to me that we’re dealing with a person whose customary, socialized behavior is rather different from our own.”

“If this story about”—Chao checked her console—“Reft space is true.”

“Have you reason to doubt it?” asked Isfa’han.

“I have logs to prove it,” said Lily without heat. “I have never been aware that logs could be faked.”

“That’s true,” conceded Chao. She frowned and glanced past Lily. “But if that’s a still functional, and bonded, composer, there’s no telling what you might have accomplished.”

Patroness,
Bach sang,
are they questioning my honesty?

No, Bach,
she whistled.
They are praising your abilities.
Bach finished off Lily’s phrase with a gorgeous, and expressively brief, coda. Lily turned back to face Isfa’han. “I am accused of aiding and abetting a fugitive. Two fugitives. I won’t deny that I—as you phrase it—aided and abetted them—”

“You see,” interrupted Maria vehemently. “She does
not
deny it.”

“Let her finish, Maria,” said Yevgeny curtly.

Lily waited a moment, but Maria did not continue. “But in so far as I was a citizen of Reft space, was not even aware of the existence of the League except as the place my ancestors came from, I don’t understand how you can charge me under your laws for traveling with people whose fugitive status I could not have been cognizant of and whose government had no jurisdiction over me in the first place.”

“Ignorance is always the excuse of the deviant.”

“Maria,” warned Yevgeny.

Deucalion stood up. “If ignorance is the captain’s excuse, min Leung, then I would like to know what yours is. If the honorables here are not aware of it, I would like to state for the record what occurred on Discord.”

“Deucalion,” said Yevgeny softly. “Please sit down.”

“I refuse to let her prejudice the tribunal!”

“How can I prejudice them?” Maria asked with false sweetness. “The facts prejudice themselves and lead to only one conclusion—that these people are unfit to function in society.”

“
You’re
unfit—”

“Deucalion!” Yevgeny silenced him.

“If you will excuse me again,” broke in Isfa’han placidly. “I believe that this hearing was convened to focus specifically on the charges laid out here against min Ransome. A separate hearing must be convoked to deal with these other charges.”

“Unsubstantiated charges,” said Maria.

“Only because I couldn’t get outside witnesses to—”

“Please, min Belsonn,” interrupted Isfa’han more forcefully. “We
will
proceed with the matter at hand.”

Deucalion sat down, mouth turned down, both fists clenched and placed on his thighs.

“Thank you,” said Lily drily, and she exchanged what could only be called a complicitous smile with Isfa’han. Yevgeny Basham could be heard to sigh as he looked at the two other representatives of Intelligence, who had subsided but only to glare at each other in silence.

“So you admit to the charges,” said Chapman. “I would think that makes intent pretty clear. I did read the dossier on this case before I came. My recommendation would be for the maximum penalty.”

“I concur,” said Chao, and Maphuna nodded as well.

“Perhaps you would enlighten me as to what the penalty is,” cut in Lily.

Jenny leaned forward. “You’re not going to just take this, are you?” she demanded. “They’ve already made up their minds before they got here.” Lily lifted her hand and Jenny sat back, crossing her arms over her chest and glowering as only a dangerous mercenary can do.

“Min Basham?”

Yevgeny sighed and brought up information on his console. “A prison term, to be commuted with public works or some service to the public as agreed on by the tribunal.”