“Thank you, madam, for the testimonial.” Matthew said. “We’ll let you know if you’ll be needed to repeat your statement at the hearing. Meanwhile, I must insist Ms. Senungatuk be placed into company custody and her flask seized for analysis, along with the contents of the barrels the deceased had with them in the cave. Autopsies must be performed on the bodies and the entire area sealed.”
‘No worries on that score, sir,” Ivan told him. They were standing just outside the field of coo-berries, and Ivan’s nod indicated the place where Clodagh’s path had been. It was once more covered with twining brambles.
Two weeks later, the investigation was finished and all the data collected had been entered by Luzon’s overworked computer men and hard copies made for presentation.
First, however, at Shepherd Howling’s insistence, he was sent off-planet on the same shuttle that carried the bodies. He couldn’t have been on the MoonBase for more than an hour before angry messages arrived from first MoonBase command, then the hospital facility on Bethany Station, which indicated that the Shepherd was urgently proselytizing on a broad scale for converts to his just cause of trying to raise an army to fight the monster, which must be over come before the planet could be truly holy. He had a real knack for spouting his cant to the already disaffected, the misfits, and those in the lower ranks who were more easily swayed by his rhetoric. Within the first three days, he came close to single-handedly instigating a mutiny.
Such complaints made Matthew thankful that the man was out of the way so that he would not be part of the group greeting the remaining commissioners. They were soon to arrive on the planet’s somewhat seismic-shaken surface to read and evaluate the information prior to the final hearing. He wished there had been someplace he could have immured Marmion Algemeine and her assistants, but her absence would have caused embarrassing questions even if he had thought of a way to rid her, however temporarily, of her three constant attendants.
Torkel Fiske was invaluable in helping Matthew and his committee. It was he who suggested that they should also interview newly arrived colonists in the most recently formed villages far from the influence of such people as Shongili and the Senungatuk woman, or even families such as the brood that had entertained Matthew in the south.
The new people, it was hoped, would be more objective and scientific in their outlook. When Matthew noted that the influx had come from the Mariana Islands and the Scottish highlands, where large deposits of deutronium and molybdenum had recently been located, and some resettled from the disastrous colonies of Bremer, he was equally ready to cancel that idea if the initial interviews proved negative. He resolved to read each of the collected reports before permitting them to be admitted as evidence. Meanwhile, his assistants and Marmion’s vied with each other to be the first to record the testimonies of people from the villages of the four murdered shanachies.
Matthew himself had made a special, personal effort to reach Goat-dung and persuade her to tell the truth about her part in the sudden disappearance of “the monster” who had been injured by members of Howling’s communityan injury rather too similar to the one from which Shongili was recovering. Matthew also had placed a strong letter of reprimand in the file of Captain John Greene, who had certainly exceeded his authority by removing the girl from Matthew’s custody at a critical time.
Now no one seemed to know where either the girl or Shongili was. Shongili’s mannish sister and her girlfriend were also nowhere to be found. Through Marmion’s influence, Clodagh Senungatuk, much to Matthew’s dismay, remained in her own home, under nominal “house arrest,” and still ran the village. And the whole planet, as far as he knewincluding Whittaker Fiske, who actually seemed to have the poor taste to be besotted with the fat cowpaused to gossip to her through her windows. Unstoppably, of course, those damned cats went in and out as they pleased. Discreet efforts to capture any of themeither by the lure of choice cuts of meat or by chasing them with otherwise savage canineshad met with abysmal failure. They had spurned the food and terrified any dog set on their spoors.