Tatja Grimm's World

Five minutes later they were on the other side of the barge.

This close to the Somnai, the wind was a tiny thing, but Cor found herself shivering in a film of sweat. She hadn’t realized how frightened she had been. They stopped a few feet from the entrance to Hedrigs’s cabin. Cor looked at him. “Well?”

Hedrigs was silent, looking at his feet. Then, “I don’t know, Cor. I made a promise. Perhaps if I knew more, what we saw wouldn’t be incriminating. I’m all confused.”

“When do you have to make up your mind?”

“Sometime this evening. I’m going to have a final briefing before lunch in the night wake period. I don’t know how long after that I’d be leaving.”

“Don’t go; at least think about what I said and what we saw.” She looked at him. “Please.”

Svir laughed harshly. “That’s one thing you can be absolutely sure of.”

She touched his hand briefly, then turned and walked away. She had done what she could. And somehow, for the first time in five years, she felt that Tatja Grimm had been outmaneuvered.

Svir didn’t get much sleep that afternoon. He lay on his bunk in the shuttered cabin and stared into the darkness. What was Tatja Grimm? To him she had been a miraculous discovery, an escape from loneliness. And until now he had never doubted her sincerity. To the crew she was an immensely popular leader, one who could solve any problem. To the top officers on the barge she could be a tyrant, a bitch-goddess. Where did that leave the Tatja Grimm who sat silently, crying over an engineering diagram?

In any case, Tatja was not what he had imagined. And that revelation put the present situation in a new light.

Though it was past sunset, he didn’t go down for breakfast. For one thing, crew came around and asked him to move to another cabin—something about painting the first one. Afterwards, he paced tensely back and forth in the new cabin. On the bed, Ancho chirped and croaked in misery.

Rescuing the Fantasie collection was an important project, but, as Cor said, not one worth dying for. Only now did he realize how weirdly he had been influenced by Tatja. Svir had agreed to do a job, but the promise had been extracted by means of fraud. What else was on Grimm’s agenda? If he went through with the plan, Svir Hedrigs would probably die tonight. And that death would not be the adventurous, romantic death of a hero, but an empty, final thing. Just thinking about it gave him the chills. How close he had come to sacrificing himself for … nothing. If it hadn’t been for Cor he would have, too. She was as true as Tatja was false.

He would turn Tatja down—the most she could get him for was his passage. She would have to find another sucker and another dorfox. He would see the Doomsday astronomer and get that situation cleared up. And, and he would see Cor again, and ask her to come back to the Chainpearls with him.

Svir fed the dorfox, then went down to the main chow hall. He didn’t see Cor. That was unusual, but not surprising. They were still working extra shifts. He would see her later in the evening, after he confronted Tatja. Now that the decision was made he felt so relieved, anxious only to be done with telling Grimm of it. He walked quickly up the steps to the briefing room, trying to imagine what Tatja might do when he told her he wasn’t going to help her.

The barge was entering Bayfast Harbor now. That entrance was a narrow gorge cutting through the Somnai cliffs. Seraph was nearly full, and its brilliant blue light transformed the normally brown cliffs into shimmery curtains of stone. Svir had to crane his neck to see the top, where the Bayfast naval guns were mounted, pointing down at him. The Tarulle Barge was almost half as wide as the entrance.

His stride broke as he noticed a landing boat pulling away from the barge. That girl with the helmet of short black hair—she looked like Coronadas Ascuasenya. He rushed to the terrace rail. She was a hundred yards away and not facing him, but he was almost sure it was Cor. On her lap she carried a small suitcase. What was going on? He ran along the rail, shouting her name. But the wind, channeled by the gorge, threw back his words. The boat rounded the curve of the gorge, disappeared. Perhaps it wasn’t Cor after all. But the old Fantasie motto came to mind: “Things are not as they seem.”

His mood was considerably subdued by the time he reached the executive deck. He confronted one of Tatja’s secretaries and was ushered into the briefing room.

Tatja smiled faintly as Svir advanced on her. “Have a seat, Svir. Ready to begin the briefing?”

Svir didn’t accept the proffered chair. He stood awkwardly before the table. Tatja’s physical presence made him suddenly ashamed. After all, he had given her a promise. And his spying had revealed nothing overtly evil. “Tatja—Miss Grimm, I’ve been thinking, uh, about this … project. I know it’s important to you—to everyone here. But I, uh, I don’t think that I’m the right, uh …”

Tatja picked a crystal letter opener from her desk. She flashed him a broad smile. “To make a long story short, you’ve decided you would rather not go through with it. You’re willing to pay for your passage, but you feel no obligation to risk your neck on this scheme. Is that what you are trying to say?”

“Why, yes,” Svir said, relieved. “I’m glad you see my point of view.”

Tatja didn’t say anything. She inspected the letter opener, tossed it into the air in a glittering whirl, and caught it just before it would have struck the table. A strange gurgly sound came from behind her lips. Svir realized she was laughing.

“You know, Hedrigs, you are the most gullible person I ever met. Correction: the second most gullible. You’re a provincial, overgrown adolescent, and how you thought you could fool anyone into thinking you had ever been off the Islands is beyond me. I need that dorfox. Did you think our encounter on Krirsarque was an accident? I’ve been studying those animals a long time. If I had you killed, I’m certain I could become Ancho’s new master. Only my … high moral character prevents me from taking that course.”

She smiled again. It was almost a sneer, revealing a hostility that seemed to transcend the subject at hand. “If I had known Ascuasenya could be such a nuisance, I would have kept her out of your way. Yes, I know of your activities this afternoon; no one gets on that balcony unnoticed. No matter. For my plans to succeed I now need some new form of leverage. Poor little Ascuasenya is perfect for my purposes.”

She sat back and relaxed. “I said you were the second most gullible person in my experience. Coronadas Ascuasenya is the first. She believed me when I told her that you had already left the Barge for Bayfast. She believed me when I told her that our spies had discovered new information which you had to have to avoid disaster. She believed me when I said that with the proper credentials she could get into the castle. Those credentials are very good counterfeits, by the way. When she is finally discovered, the Regent’s men will believe they have foiled a serious espionage attempt.”

Svir stepped back from the desk, as shocked by her hostility as by what she was saying. For an instant she didn’t seem human; Grimm sat in the middle of an infinite complex of scheme and counterscheme. Every detail of the last ten days had pushed him according to her whim. And still she is driving me. Only now she has a whip that could really make me die for her.

“Do you know what Tar Benesh does with spies, Svir Hedrigs?” The astronomer shook his head dumbly. Grimm told him. “And when they get done, the spy is generally burned alive,” she added. “So, Svir my love, run to your cabin, get Ancho, and come back here. The briefing’s going to take a while; and you will find that the only way you can rescue Cor is to save the Fantasie collection in the process.”

Svir had never before wanted to kill anybody. He wanted to now—very much. This creature had imperiled the two lives he valued most. He took a deep breath, fighting dizziness. Grimm watched, her smile as mocking as her words. When he finally spoke, his tone was almost mild: “You hate us that much?”

There was a change in the other’s eyes. The smile broke for an instant, then returned. “I hate stupidity, something you all have in such excess.”

Ten

Six hours later, Svir Hedrigs emerged from the offices of the Tarulle executive deck and descended to the debarkation levels. He wore a baggy suit and carried a balsir cage disguised as a suitcase. Ancho sat comfortably within the cage; he wore the mysterious clicker on his back.