The Light That Never Was (22 page)

“A beginning. A thousand more boats are on the way. Do the Zrilunders expect to sit around and watch while someone else cleans up their ocean?”

“A thousand boats?”

“Right. And every other kind of assistance anyone can think of, but if those fishing boats aren’t working in twenty minutes I’m calling the whole thing off. You should know whom to see about it.”

Hylat loped toward the door, opened it, and hesitated. “What’ll they do with the fish?”

“Dump them in the most convenient place. You’ll have to organize some townspeople to help them unload. Higher authority will either figure out a use for the fish or find a way to dispose of them.”

Hylat hurried away.

Brance said, “The World Manager’s First Secretary? I seem to remember your taking part in a police raid. You do get around.”

“Right,” Wargen said cheerfully. “At the moment I’m on a different sort of police raid. Can you tell me who dumped the poison?”

“If I knew,” Brance said evenly, “you’d have the chore of disposing of him—or them—along with the fish.”

“There are interesting points about this poison. It covers a limited area of the sea, but it completely surrounds the island. This suggests that it was dumped on both the windward and the leeward sides, and on one of them it had to be dumped close to shore.”

Brance was listening with interest.

“There’s a splendid sea view from the cliffs,” Wargen went on. “The moons were in the sky from midnight until dawn. I was wondering if any young lovers were admiring reflections in the water and what else they may have seen.”

“You don’t happen to know a man maned Karlus Gair, do you?” Brance asked.

Wargen smiled and did not answer.

“It’s a point worth wondering about. I’ll ask people.”

Bron Demron was seated on a bench on the cliffs, staring out at the stained and death-strewn waters. Wargen sat down beside him, and Demron said glumly, “I suppose we’re reduced to asking this Wes Alof where he was last night.”

“I’d rather he didn’t know we’re interested in him. Anyway, he was in Zrilund at midnight, which makes it certain that he didn’t dump poison at Rinoly. What bothers me is that I can’t find a pattern. Zrilund doesn’t fit. The entire world of Mestil has it in for Jorno, and both the townspeople and the artists of Zrilund recently had it in for him, and we have no notion of how many other enemies he may have, but why would anyone go to this length to kill a dying tourist resort?”

“There’s got to be a pattern,” Demron said.

Wargen shook his head. “Zrilund doesn’t fit. I think I’ll stay here tonight. Maybe it’s my eyesight that’s defective. Maybe I can smell out a few answers.”

“Smell out a few for me,” Demron said.

Wargen checked in at the Zrilund Town Hostel and sat up late with Arnen Brance and Rearm Hylat, drinking adde and talking. Hylat and Brance were stunned and angry, but if they had any answers they weren’t aware of them. Wargen slept badly and was routed out at dawn by Bron Demron.

“Do you still say there’s no pattern?” Demron demanded.

Wargen, who had a mild hangover, took a moment to reflect. “I don’t think I said there was no pattern. I just said I couldn’t see what it was.”

“Last night,” Demron said grimly, “someone put all of Jorno’s boats out of operation. With explosives. And at just about the same moment, someone wrecked both underwater ferries and the Zrilund boat. With explosives. How’s that for a shot at both resorts’ tourist trade?”

“Any reports from anywhere else?”

“None. Are you ready to leave? I’ll wait for you in the dining room.”

He left, and Wargen sat on the edge of his bed constructing a formula that balanced Jorno’s three thousand meszs with Zrilund’s poor old nonor, Franff, who no longer lived there; for he instinctively felt that animaloids were somehow involved.

Then he remembered the swamp slug. The thought so intrigued him that when he returned to Donov Metro he told his driver to take him to his office by way of Harnasharn Galleries.

And the galleries stood transformed by people. Two straggling lines of perspiring tourists stretched across the front of the building and converged at the main entrance. The amazed Wargen rushed toward the entrance, and then on an impulse he turned aside to ask a question of a waiting tourist.

The tourist shifted his feet and spoke with obvious embarrassment, as though he knew in advance that his answer would sound silly. “Well, we heard there’s these ten paintings by a Zrilund swamp slug, and, well, we wanted to see them.”

Wargen immediately confronted Harnasharn, who was exultant about the spectacular growth of interest in his permanent exhibit until Wargen deflated him in scathing tones. “Spread a rumor that you also have paintings by a Garffi wrranel and sculpture by a frost lizard, and they’ll tear down the doors to get in. What was that about ten slug paintings?”

“I have three new paintings. One of the original eight was sold.”

“Then the slug continues to paint?”

“But of course!”

Wargen hurried off to report to the World Manager. “It seems that neither our citizens nor our tourists have much feeling one way or the other about animaloid artists, except that if the animaloid is freakish enough they’d like to see its work.”

Ian Korak heaved a sigh. “Of course. We should have expected that. The tourists probably consider any artist to be at least slightly animaloid. What does this have to do with the Rinoly-Zrilund situation?”

“As far as I know, nothing at all.”

In a town on the Rinoly Peninsula, a merchant was heard remarking to a customer, “They’re having problems with the drinking water on Virrab Island. That poison and all those dead fish, you know. They’ll have to import pure water or close the resort.”

In a stylish little bistro on Tourist Row in Nor Harbor, one tourist was heard to say to another, “That talk about sabotage to the Zrilund boats is just a cover-up. The government closed the place because Zrilund’s drinking water is contaminated. That poison and all those dead fish, you know.”

Within the hour Wargen had been informed. of both conversations. He went to a conference in a thoughtful mood and listened passively while Bron Demron developed the thesis that the new resort association between Virrab and Zrilund had posed a threat to other resorts.

The World Manager heard him out and then turned inquiringly to Wargen.

“All I’m prepared to say,” Wargen announced, “is that someone has directed violence against both islands and now is making a devilishly clever attempt to exploit it.”

“The immediate question is whether they’re finished or whether we can expect more trouble,” Demron observed.

Wargen had no answer, which embarrassed him, and he was grateful when a special messenger called him away. Sarmin Lezt was at Port Metro and wanted help. Wargen’s duty officer had sent every available man and notified the regular police to stand by.

Wargen rushed off to the port. His men were still arriving, and Lezt had posted one of them to give directions and orders. Wargen found the agent in one of a long row of drinking places that marked the boundary between spaceport and seaport. Because spacers and seamen not infrequently chose to disagree, tables and benches were welded to the Boor, and the only containers permitted in the establishment were of lightweight, disposable plastic.

Lezt greeted Wargen with a grin, and Wargen said reproachfully, “Why didn’t you let us know?”

“I didn’t have a chance. They boarded ship just before blast off, and I only made it by a stroke of luck. I thought I’d better come along and point ’em out to you, descriptions are worthless for something like this, especially when some of the culprits are playing with disguises. Then one of them turned out to be a blood brother or something of the communications officer, and I decided not to call attention to myself by sending a message. If they’d suspected anything at all they could have dumped me easily before help arrived, but obviously they didn’t. They marched down here from the terminal as though they were on parade. They’re in the bistro across the street.”

“Who are
they?
”

“Four would-be thieves. From the way they’ve operated in the past, two teams.”

“Good work. With any luck at all they’ll lead us to their Donovian contact.”

“They’re meeting him now. This scheme has been working smoothly for so long that the principals are getting a mite careless. Ramsy Vorgt happened to have a directional detector in his pocket, and he’s over there pretending to get drunk while recording everything they say. They’ll split up when they leave, but the scans are ready for them.”

A short time later the newly arrived thieves emerged in pairs and went off in opposite directions, each pair trailing a smoothly functioning scan. Finally the contact stepped through the door, pondered the street gravely, and strolled away. Bristling black whiskers hid his face, and he wore the long trousers and tight-fitting jacket of a seaman on shore leave.

“Recognize him?” Lezt asked.

Wargen shook his head.

“He and the one on Rubron got their whiskers from the same wrranel.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“No, but on the basis of what’s happening on Rubron, I could guess what he is.”

They followed him at a distance until he vanished into a large hostel. Two of Wargen’s men were dose behind him. “This is the critical moment,” Lezt said. “He’ll change his clothes and disguise and leave by another exit. It’s what stumped us for so long on Rubron. If they can stay close enough to see what room he’s using and what he looks like when he comes out, we’ll have him.”

They took a front table in a bistro across the street from the hostel, and before they’d got around to sampling their adde a scruffy-looking, brown-whiskered workman in dirty clothing came out of the hostel and walked away. One of Wargen’s men followed, glanced about to make certain that others were picking up the scan, and turned in the opposite direction. The workman took his place in line at the first T-stop with two of Wargen’s men directly behind him, and the three of them boarded the next airbus.

Lezt signaled to a waiting police transport. “He’ll get off in the neighborhood of Embassy Row. We might as well wait there.”

“Do you know where he’s going?”

“I can guess. Sornorian embassy. He’ll be one of the undersecretaries. At least, that’s what the contact was on Rubron.”

Wargen took a deep breath. “So it is Sornor. But what could Sornor possibly expect to accomplish with such a stupid harassment?”

“I figure maybe they’d hoped to stir up a huge amount of trouble in a hurry and then quietly agree to call it off in return for Franff’s extradition. It didn’t work out, but they kept trying. Now it’s dragged on for so long that Franff is pretty much forgotten on Sornor and everywhere else. I was wondering if maybe the idiot who thought this up has forgotten to turn it off, and it just keeps going.”

“What I have to decide now is whether Sornor thought the thefts were taking too long and decided to speed things up by dumping poison.”

Lezt turned quickly. “What’s that about poison?”

Wargen told him. “Even knowing that Sornor is responsible may not help,” he added. “We’d never be able to prove it unless they foolishly kept on dumping it until we caught them.”

“Do we have to prove it? The instant we catch one of these new teams stealing we’ll have a complete and fully documented case, with sound recordings and photographs. The earlier attempt to abduct Franff is obviously a part of the same plot, and so is the poison. Beyond that we don’t need proof. Nothing Sornor said in rebuttal would be believed.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” Wargen mused. “We can perform our own blackmail and offer Sornor a choice between overwhelming diplomatic humiliation and a quiet arbitration settlement on the damages Donov has suffered. Very well. You wind the case up and assemble the documents. I’ll report to the World Manager. He can have the novel experience of ending a day on a brighter note than the one it started on.”

The art colony at Garffi was unique because it belonged to the artists. Those who discovered the place considered what an avalanche of artists and tourists would do to that charming village and its spectacularly beautiful surroundings, and, thinking of Zrilund, were horrified. They passed the problem to the Artists’ Council, which took it up with the Donovian government, and the government arranged a long-term lease on the entire district with the object of keeping it the way it was.

The villagers continued to live in their homes, farm the valleys, and pasture their herds. A few of them found employment in the artists’ village, which was built out of sight in a lateral valley. The artists were serious, hard-working craftsmen, given to painting all of their waking hours, and if one wanted to raise hell he went off and did it at Port Ornal, where hell had so many more interesting variations than it did in a sleepy rural village. Villagers and artists got on famously, and there were no tourists. Because of the remote location only the most passionate of art enthusiasts could have made his way there, and if he did so uninvited he found no accommodations.

A novice such as Eritha Korak should not have been permitted at Garffi, where assignments were in such high demand that the Artists’ Council maintained a carefully screened waiting list; but Eritha was only occupying the quarters of an artist who had returned to his home world for a short visit. Since the arrangement was temporary, the local committee first satisfied itself that she really was there to study and then quietly ignored her. The Artists’ Council was not even informed.

The village of Garffi stood at the head of a deep bay where a mountain river cascaded into the sea. The entire region was a scenic wonderland, with the river rushing through verdant, steep-sloped valleys, with a multitude of tinkling, leaping streams seeking it, with the steady pounding of rapids and falls sounding a dull background for the shrill coughing of fluffed-out wrranels on the high mountain pastures. In the background were formidable, oranged mountains, their jagged peaks softened with an encrustment of white. Along the arms of the bay, the quiet, warm sea lapped enormous boulders and fantastically shaped monoliths deposited there in some long-forgotten natural convulsion.