“I know,” said Tyburn, “that you can walk up to him like any other citizen, and once you’re within reach you can try to kill him with your bare hands before anyone can stop you. / can’t stop you in that case. But what I can do is catch you afterwards, if you succeed, and see you convicted and executed for murder. And you will be caught and convicted, there’s no doubt about it. You can’t kill James Kenebuck the way someone like you would kill a man, and get away with it here on Earth—do you understand that, Commandant?”
“Yes,” said Ian.
“All right,” said Tyburn, letting out a deep breath. “Then you understand. You’re a sane man and a Dorsai professional. From what I’ve been able to learn about the Dorsai, it’s one of your military tenets that part of a man’s duty to himself is not to throw his life away in a hopeless cause. And this cause of yours to bring Kenebuck to justice for his brother’s death, is hopeless.”
He stopped. Ian straightened in a movement preliminary to getting up.
“Wait a second,” said Tyburn.
He had come to the hard part of the interview. He had prepared his speech for this moment and rehearsed it over and over again—but now he found himself without faith that it would convince Ian.
“One more word,” said Tyburn. “You’re a man of camps and battlefields, a man of the military; and you must be used to thinking of yourself as a pretty effective individual. But here, on Earth, those special skills
of yours are mostly illegal. And without them you’re ineffective and helpless. Kenebuck, on the other hand, is just the opposite. He’s got money—millions. And he’s got connections, some of them nasty. And he was born and raised here in Manhattan Complex.” Tyburn stared emphatically at the tall, dark man, willing him to understand. “Do you follow me? If you, for example, should suddenly turn up dead here, we just might not be able to bring Kenebuck to book for it. Where we absolutely could, and would, bring you to book if the situation were reversed. Think about it.”
He sat, still staring at Ian. But Ian’s face showed no change, or sign that the message had gotten through to him.
“Thank you,” Ian said. “If there’s nothing more, I’ll be going.”
“There’s nothing more,” said Tyburn, defeated. He watched Ian leave. It was only when Ian was gone, and he turned back to Breagen that he recovered a little of his self-respect. For Breagan’s face had paled.
Ian went down through the Terminal and took a cab into Manhattan Complex, to the John Adams Hotel. He registered for a room on the fourteenth floor of the transient section of that hotel and inquired about the location of James Kenebuck’s suite in the resident section; then sent his card up to Kenebuck with a request to come by to see the millionaire. After that, he went on up to his own room, unpacked his luggage, which had already been delivered from the spaceport, and took out a small, sealed package. Just at that moment there was a soft chiming sound and his card was returned to him from a delivery slot in the room wall. It fell into the salver below the slot and he picked it up,
to read what was written on the face of it. The penciled
note read:
Come on up—
K.
He tucked the card and the package into a pocket and left his transient room. And Tyburn, who had followed him to the hotel, and who had been observing all of Ian’s actions from the second of his arrival, through sensors placed in the walls and ceilings, half rose from his chair in the room of the empty suite directly above Kenebuck’s, which had been quietly taken over as a police observation post. Then, helplessly, Tyburn swore and sat down again, to follow Ian’s movements in the screen fed by the sensors. So far there was nothing the policeman could do legally— nothing but watch.
So he watched as Ian strode down the softly carpeted hallway to the elevator tube, rose in it to the eightieth floor and stepped out to face the heavy, transparent door sealing off the resident section of the hotel. He held up Kenebuck’s card with its message to a concierge screen beside the door, and with a soft sigh of air the door slid back to let him through. He passed on in, found a second elevator tube, and took it up thirteen more stories. Black doors opened before him—and he stepped one step forward into a small foyer to find himself surrounded by three men.
They were big men—one, a lantern-jawed giant, was even bigger than Ian—and they were vicious. Tyburn, watching through the sensor in the foyer ceiling that had been secretly placed there by the police the day before, recognized all of them from his files. They were underworld muscle hired by Kenebuck at word of Ian’s coming; all armed, and brutal and hair-trigger—mad dogs of the lower city. After that first
step into their midst, Ian stood still. And there followed a strange, unnatural cessation of movement in the room.
The three stood checked. They had been about to put their hands on Ian to search him for something, Tyburn saw, and probably to rough him up in the process. But something had stopped them, some abrupt change in the air around them. Tyburn, watching, felt the change as they did; but for a moment he felt it without understanding. Then understanding came to him.
The difference was in Ian, in the way he stood there. He was, saw Tyburn, simply . . . waiting. That same patient indifference Tyburn had seen upon him in the Terminal office was there again. In the split second of his single step into the room he had discovered the men, had measured them, and stopped. Now, he waited, in his turn, for one of them to make a move.
A sort of black lightning had entered the small foyer. It was abruptly obvious to the watching Tyburn, as to the three below, that the first of them to lay hands on Ian would be the first to find the hands of the Dorsai soldier upon him—and those hands were death.
For the first time in his life, Tyburn saw the personal power of the Dorsai fighting man, made plain without words. Ian needed no badge upon him, standing as he stood now, to warn that he was dangerous. The men about him were mad dogs; but, patently, Ian was a wolf. There was a difference with the three, which Tyburn now recognized for the first time. Dogs —even mad dogs—fight, and the losing dog, if he can, runs away. But no wolf runs. For a wolf wins every fight but one, and in that one he dies.
After a moment, when it was clear that none of the
three would move, Ian stepped forward. He passed through them without even brushing against one of them, to the inner door opposite, and opened it and went on through.
He stepped into a three-level living room stretching to a large, wide window, its glass rolled up, and black with the sleet-filled night. The living room was as large as a small suite in itself, and filled with people, men and women, richly dressed. They held cocktail glasses in their hands as they stood or sat, and talked. The atmosphere was heavy with the scents of alcohol, and women’s perfumes and cigarette smoke. It seemed that they paid no attention to his entrance, but their eyes followed him covertly once he had passed.
He walked forward through the crowd, picking his way to a figure before the dark window, the figure of a man almost as tall as himself, erect, athletic-looking with a handsome, sharp-cut face under whitish-blond hair that stared at Ian with a sort of incredulity as Ian approached.
“Graeme . . ?” said this man, as Ian stopped before him. His voice in this moment of off-guardedness betrayed its two levels, the semi-hoodlum whine and harshness underneath, the polite accents above. “My boys . . . you didn’t—“ he stumbled, “leave anything with them when you were coming in?”
“No,” said Ian. “You’re James Kenebuck, of course. You look like your brother.” Kenebuck stared at him.
“Just a minute,” he said. He set down his glass, turned and went quickly through the crowd and into the foyer, shutting the door behind him. In the hush of the room, those there heard, first silence then a short, unintelligible burst of sharp voices, then silence again.
Kenebuck came back into the room, two spots of angry color high on his cheekbones. He came back to face Ian.
“Yes,” he said, halting before Ian. “They were supposed to … tell me when you came in.” He fell silent, evidently waiting for Ian to speak, but Ian merely stood, examining him, until the spots of color on Kenebuck’s cheekbones flared again.