Deputy Jantu Ferrar came out of the run-down apartment building, followed by Ranger Shah and Gerald 1342. Jantu squinted at the noonday sun. Eight hours before, the three of them had started their stakeout in the predawn darkness. They had been in the dim recesses of the building ever since, watching for the occupant of apartment 533, one Ottley Bassal, to come home.
They were already down to checking on people with names similar to Bissal’s, on the off chance that he might have used a name like his own to establish an alibi. The idea made damned little sense. If Bissal were to go to all the trouble of establishing a false identity, why use a name similar to his own? And if he did set up a false identity for the purpose of being untraceable, why go to the further trouble of injecting a record of the name into the official databases? Not that the databases of Limbo’s populace available to the Rangers and deputies were anything much—just a list of names and addresses, and nothing else. The SSS never did much like giving out information.
But the powers-that-be had damned little else to go on. There were no better leads presenting themselves to the Rangers or the Sheriff’s Department. Maybe they could have gotten further faster if they had been coordinating with the SSS—but no one trusted them far enough for that.
In any event, this stakeout was a bust, a failure. Bassal had come home, at long last—and proved to be female, short, dark-skinned, with a full head of shoulder-length black hair. Now they were back out on the street, and the harsh daylight made Jantu squint, made her feel a bit disoriented. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get back to the aircar.”
“What a brilliant idea,” Shah growled. “I never would have thought of that.”
“Give it a rest, Shah,” Jantu said. “We’re both tired.” Jantu did not trust Ranger Bertra Shah. For that matter, she didn’t think much of Rangers as a group. On the other hand, Jantu had the distinct impression that Shah felt the same way about her, and about Sheriff’s deputies.
Maybe they were both Spacer organizations, maybe they were both law enforcement services, but for all of that, the Governor’s Rangers and the Sheriff’s deputies had never really gotten along with each other.
The deputies saw the Rangers as little more than gardeners with guns, treehuggers more interested in soil conservation than law enforcement. They rarely had to deal with any crime more heinous than littering, or any criminal act more violent than someone picking flowers without a permit. How could they know anything about the rough-and-tumble world of the city, where the real crimes happened?
The Rangers, on the other hand, seemed to think of the deputies as a bunch of trigger-happy blowhards with exaggerated opinions of their own ability. The Rangers were very fond of pointing out that the deputies only had police powers inside Hades, and were scarcely less fond of observing that they were a purely urban force, with no training in field survival, or any sort of woodcraft. True enough, Jantu granted, she would be quite hopeless outside an urban setting. But who the hell wanted to leave the city in the first place?
Shah had made it clear more than once since she and Jantu had been teamed that she couldn’t see how anyone with no knowledge of tracking could call herself a law enforcement professional.
Not that all the tracking skills in the world would do any good on this assignment. Assassins didn’t leave many footprints behind on city streets.
Nor was it much fun to be doing stakeouts as undercover work. But if there was anything that Shah and Jantu agreed upon, it was the wisdom of not trusting the SSS. Besides which, it was more than a bit galling to walk the streets of a Spacer town—or what had once been a Spacer town—and be an undercover Spacer cop under Settler jurisdiction. Cops hiding from cops. It made the back of Jantu’s neck itch. She had the feeling someone was watching from behind. Shah was forever glancing over her own shoulder.
On the bright side, their mutual paranoia had, somehow, made for a good working relationship. Both of them were constantly on watch for any interference from the SSS, and that, at least, gave them something they agreed on.
“All right, Gerald,” Jantu asked their robot, “what’s next?”
“The next search site on the list is a warehouse about two kilometers from here,” Gerald 1342 replied.
“And why do we want to search it?” Shah asked. “Did Bissal’s cousin work there once?”
“I do not know if any of his relatives were ever employed there,” Gerald 1342 replied, “but it is on the watch list of suspected rustbacker operations centers.”
Jantu shrugged. “That almost sounds like a legitimate lead. Let’s go.”
The moment had come. There had never been any turning back, but now, suddenly, even the way forward seemed impossible. But forward he must go.
“I, Alvar Kresh, of clear and sound mind, hereby freely and willingly accept and undertake the office of Governor of the Planet of Hades, and do pledge most solemnly to discharge my office to the best of my ability.”
He spoke the words in the Grand Hall of the Winter Residence, and many of the same faces that had been here just three days before to attend the old Governor’s reception were here to witness the new one’s installation.
The clumsy, legalistic words of the affirmation of office seemed to stumble off his tongue, coming awkwardly and unwillingly out into the world. He did not want this. Not at all. But what he wanted did not matter at all. There was no provision in the Infernal constitution for the Designate refusing the office. According to Telmhock, the office would therefore have to remain vacant until an election could be held.
But Kresh knew better than that. Constitutional theory was all very well, but the cold hard reality of it was that the state could not long survive if it were leaderless. Then what? A coup, a revolt, disintegration? It scarcely mattered which, for collapse would come soon after, no matter what. And then there was the stalled, hopeless investigation. What if it was still churning away in the background, days or weeks or months from now? They knew nothing much more now than they had at the moment Telmhock had dropped his bombshell two days before. There seemed to be nothing out there but dried-up leads. There was no sign of Bissal, no further hint as to who he had been working for, nothing.
Kresh was silent for a long moment after speaking the words of affirmation. He stood on the low platform and saw the sea of expectant faces. He knew he had to speak to these people here, to the people of the planet. He had a speech ready. But he needed a moment, a moment, to catch his breath. Things had moved too fast, too hard, in the last few days.
The assassination, the state funeral, the announcement of Kresh as the Designate, as the new Governor. All of it had rushed past. But murders and funerals and all that had to be pushed to one side just now. The whole planet had been through the same chaos as Kresh. What point in telling them what they already knew? Suddenly the words of his speech were meaningless, worthless. No. He would have to say something else, something more.
He looked out over the crowd. Donald was by his side, as were Justen Devray and Fredda Leving, but still he felt alone, exposed, as he had never felt before. It seemed as though every member of the press was there—along with every security robot on the planet. There was a solid wall of Ranger GRDs and Sheriffs office GPS units. Under the circumstances, no one had wanted to use SPRs, even if they were designed for the job.
Even robots were not enough—not today. Armed deputies and Rangers—and SSS agents—were everywhere. Kresh found himself more fearful of itchy trigger fingers and a shootout between the rival security services than of an assassin.
But he looked past the security, past the robots, past the press, and even past the VIPs, to the people. The people in their homes and houses, struggling to understand what had happened. Yes. They needed to hear from him, hear the right sort of words, hear words that would give them some sense of stability, some link with the past and the future.
Yes. Yes. He cleared his throat and spoke, threw his voice out into the silence. “Ladies and gentlemen— people of Inferno. Not just the Spacers, but you Settlers among us. All of you. All of us. All of us are in this together. A few thousand years ago, we would have called the affirmation of office something like the ritual of oath-taking, and the leader would have taken office by divine right, in the name of this god or that deity. In those days the oath- taker believed, sincerely and literally, that the gods struck down oath-breakers, or cast them into the pit of eternal night, or whatever.
“Rational, modern Spacer society has no such superstitions. Spacer society has squeezed all mention of gods and afterlives and supernatural justice out of its oaths and promises. There is no juice left in the words. We have
