If I’m a romantic, you’re a true believer, Pias thought. You’d probably get along well with Tresa Clunard of Purity. She believed in strength through discipline, too. But aloud he merely said, “The change would really have hurt poor Beti. You tried to change her from alive to dead.”
“Beti has the same streak of romanticism you do. I merely wanted to have her brought back here where I could keep an eye on her, to keep her from hurting herself and others.” He gave a wry smile and shook his head. “Poor Pias, trying to be a knight coming to the rescue, just like in all those old stories you liked to read. My people had you pegged from the moment you entered Garridan; when you applied for the citizen’s card, your fingerprints and retinal patterns were examined and matched up with the old ones we had on file. We knew exactly where you were and what you were doing every step of the way. We wanted to keep you out of trouble, but it seems you have this knack for going where you don’t belong.”
“And now I suppose you’re going to lock me up for my own good, just like you’ve done with the rest of the family.”
Tas didn’t get a chance to answer, for at that moment an explosion rocked the walls of the computer facility. It was far enough away to sound merely like a dull roar, but it was quickly followed by two more blasts that came progressively closer.
“What … ?” Tas exclaimed as he looked around in confusion. The guards behind him were no less con fused, and several of them ran out of the room to investigate this new threat to the computer complex.
Recovering quickly from his moment of astonishment, Tas turned back toward his brother – but Pias was no longer the obliging target. He didn’t know, either, what the cause of the explosions was, but he’d been primed to take advantage of any break that might come his way, and when the blasts occurred he was ready to act.
Dropping rapidly behind the desk he’d been searching, he took himself out of Tas’s direct line of fire. At the same time he pulled his own blaster from its holster and prepared to fire back. He might never have a better opportunity to fight back against his mad brother, and he was determined to put up the best struggle he could. His native world depended on it.
He did not want to commit fratricide, though, if he could help it, so his first shot was a warning just slightly over his brother’s head. Tas Bavol drew back quickly, fired a blast of his own into the desk, and left the room in a hurry. Pias heard him tell the guards to kill the intruder, but Tas himself was not going to wait around to watch the outcome. He had more important things to do – like saving his own hide.
For the next few minutes Pias was too involved in his shootout with the brassies to pay much attention to any thing else happening around him. He noted almost as an incidental fact that three more explosions occurred within the computer complex, but none came near enough to distract him from his business.
He wounded two of the security agents before the rest decided to withdraw from the battle. Finally, when the shooting had stopped, he made his way cautiously out of the office, blaster ever at the ready in case of new trouble. The air smelled heavily of ozone but the outer office and the corridor beyond were completely deserted.
Wandering closer to the main hallway, he could see that the civilian personnel at the facility were in a panic over the bombings. They were rushing for the exits, which only made the job of the security guards that much harder. They were trying to deal with sabotage from an unknown source while simultaneously fighting back the tide of humanity surging for the doors.
In the noise and chaos they scarcely noticed Pias in his stolen guard’s uniform. He fought his way across the corridor and into the relatively uncrowded side hallways, hoping he could get out of here safely with the information he’d learned. He also hoped that somewhere in this incredible labyrinth he might encounter his brother again. Wherever he went, Tas would not fight the crowds at the normal exits; he’d have a special escape route of his own, and Pias wanted to find it.
But it was Tas who found him. Pias was crossing another corridor when a blasterbolt sizzled the air just past his head. Pias dived for cover and fired a shot back at his attacker. Tas fled further down the corridor, and Pias scrambled to his feet and ran after him.
The corridor opened into a large rectangular chamber, two stories tall and dozens of meters wide on each side. The chamber floor was covered with many of the large tapered pylons that were the latest design in computer memory banks. Pias hesitated as he crossed the threshold. The room appeared empty, but his brother could easily be lurking in ambush behind one of the pylons, waiting for him to make a careless move.
Gun at the ready, Pias made quick, darting motions between the pylons, playing a deadly game of hopscotch as he made his way through the chamber. The sounds of the panicky crowd were far away, and the only real noise in the room was a slight electrical buzz that filled the air. The place smelled of starched efficiency and mathematical disinterest. Even though the atmosphere was cool, Pias was beginning to sweat – and he could almost feel his brother doing the same. The game of hide-and-seek continued.
“Pias! Behind you!” yelled a female voice.
Pias whirled, gun at the ready, and spotted the figure of Tas aiming directly at him. He crouched and fired. Tas’s shot went barely over his head, but his own aim was truer – he hit Tas in the right leg and the younger man fell to the ground, howling in pain.
“Vonnie!” Pias called. “You’re supposed to be waiting at home!”
Yvonne d’Alembert came cautiously out of hiding, a stun-gun in one hand and a blaster in the other. “You can’t expect me to let you have all the fun, can you?” she said with a smile and a shrug. “Besides, you needed my help to bail you out.”
“I had the situation well in hand, thank you,” Pias said. “But as long as you’re here I’ll put you to work helping me wrap up this case.”
Pias walked over to where his brother had fallen and stood over him scornfully. Tas Bavol was cringing in pain and fear. “You’re not going to kill your own brother, are you?” Tas whimpered piteously.
“Not everyone plays by your twisted rules,” Pias said. “But I can’t guarantee what the Empress’s reaction will be when she hears what you’ve been up to. She’s not as sentimental as I am.”
He grabbed Tas by the front of his tunic and pulled him awkwardly to his feet. The younger man howled from pain.
“But before your case comes to any imperial court,” Pias continued sternly, “you’ve got a couple of other obligations. First, you’re going to come with my friend and me and help us get safely out of this building. Then you’re going to ask the kriss to reconvene. There’s a little matter of justice that’s been long overdue.”
—
Pias nervously wiped the sweat from his palms. Vonnie continued to hold Tas prisoner downstairs in the Bavol family’s formal meeting room where the kriss was due to convene in another hour or so. But it wasn’t the kriss that made Pias nervous; that was important, to be sure, but whatever the outcome, he’d already proved he could make a decent life for himself elsewhere. The confrontation that was to come now, though, was an emotional one that could affect the rest of his life, and Pias’s insides were knotted up. He’d rather be facing a roomful of enemy blasters than the ordeal before him.
He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and followed the nurse into his father’s bedroom. The room was kept dark because mottle fever made its victims’ eyes ultrasensitive to light. Pias paused on the threshold to accommodate himself to the low illumination.
The room seemed at first unchanged since Pias’s last, unhappy visit to it. The hard slate floor was covered with handwoven rugs, and the majestic ebonwood bureau with its mirror in the carved frame still stood imposingly against the north wall. The massive canopied bed faced the door as regally as ever. Only as Pias’s eyes roamed the room did he notice one tiny but significant detail that was different.
The portrait of his late mother still dominated the south wall, surrounded by pictures of the five Bavol children – no, four. One of the pictures had been re moved – Pias’s. No attempt had been made to rearrange the other portraits into a new symmetry; the missing picture thus made a statement of sorts by its very absence, unbalancing the visual unity of the display.