Staggering footsteps on the stairs brought him away from the control board, teeth bared, furious at the interruption. Wuyllum Thonks was stalking down the stairs as though he were at home in the gardens of Government House, Honeypeach behind him, both wearing expressions of angry disdain.
‘Justin,’ complained Honeypeach. ‘We’ve just been watching troopers marching in from somewhere. They’ve surrounded us. I don’t think it’s Colonel Lang’s men. I haven’t seen him. But they do have guns and things. And I can’t reach Ymries at all, I’ve tried and tried…’
Wuyllum added his own comments. ‘It’d be smart to go on out and give ourselves up, Justin. Put a good face on it, show them we’re innocent. They’ll never convict us of anything anyhow. Not you or us, not with the friends we have and the money we can put into our defense. If we stay in here, they may assault the building! We could all get killed.’
‘Shut up,’ snarled Justin. ‘You and your whorelady get out of here, Wuyllum. I’ve given you guest rooms. Go stay there.’
Ignoring the insult to his lady, Wuyllum went on. ‘At least tell your security people to let us out. If you don’t want to give up, all right…’
‘Justin!’ cried Honeypeach, ‘why, how could you say such a horrible thing …’
Justin turned, arm out, catching her across the face with the full force of his weight, crumpling her against the wall. ‘I said to get that slut out of here,’ he instructed Thonks. ‘I’ve still got a chance if I can bring enough of those damned crystals down in a hurry, and I’m not going to waste time fooling with you or your trull. If you want to go on living, get away from me.’ He turned away from them, not bothering to see whether Wuyllum dragged the bloodied Honey-peach away.
The installation before him controlled a battery of chemical rockets, rockets without electronic components, rockets carrying nothing that could be altered or burned out by the mysterious interventions of Jubal. The Watchers, the Mad Gap, the Enigma, the Black Tower, and half a hundred other Presences had been pretargeted by these missiles. Though Verbold’s troops had probably demolished some or even many of these Presences, the fact that troops now surrounded the BDL building argued that the destruction orders had already been countermanded. Justin could not depend on the troops to clear the transportation routes on Jubal …
But if the troops couldn’t, the rockets could. Let the rockets fly and the routes to the dirt towns would be open. There wouldn’t be any Presences left on this part of Jubal! Even if he had to lie low for a while, he could come back to pick up the pieces. With all that money on Serendipity – his own and what his phoney Crystallites had squirreled away – there was plenty to start again. Even if he had to leave Jubal for a while …
With the redundancies he’d programmed in to prevent accidents, it would take an hour’s work to set up the firing sequences. Once they were set, however, Justin could leave them to their work. He had a bolt hole, an escape tunnel dug ostensibly as a sewer line when the BDL headquarters was built. At the far end of it was a cavernous garage, and in that garage was a quiet-car. Eastward, about two hours’ drive, there was a refuge he had prepared years before. He could hide there until he could get off-planet to collect the money that would let him come back and start again. He had planned for trouble. Justin always planned for trouble. Just as he planned for Jubal!
His plans for Jubal were not going to be forestalled by a few talking crystals and a mutinous commission. His lips drawn back into an animal snarl, Justin set to work.
‘Stalemate,’ said Rheme Gentry to Tasmin. ‘Justin’s holed up in the BDL building. I’m afraid of what he has in there. Logically, we should take the place out now, but we don’t have the weapons here to knock it down – all the heavy weaponry on the planet is with Lang’s men. We won’t even have enough men to mount an assault until Lang’s troops return, assuming they do. All we can do is keep Justin and his men penned up in there until the General can get some help from off-planet.’
‘The General?’
‘My uncle. Zorton Pardo. He’s the commander of CHAIN, and if you don’t know what that is, neither does anyone else. It’s the very quiet, almost invisible enforcement arm of the PEC. I sort of work for him. He showed up here as one of the PEC observers. He’s taken command of the troops on Jubal. But my message never got off-planet, and with a typical lack of foresight, he didn’t bring a gun-ship with him.’
‘Has he stopped the destruction!’
‘Orders have gone out. It may take a while for them to arrive. You know that, Tripsinger.’ Rheme’s face was blotched and gray with fatigue. ‘And if Justin does what I think he means to, it won’t make any difference.’
Tasmin put his face into his hands. The Enigma was gone. Redfang was gone. The Eagers were gone. All the Presences had trumpeted the destruction of the Eagers. Tasmin remembered the Eagers. He remembered traveling through them with Clarin, when he was first aware of Clarin. He remembered going home from them to Celcy, when Celcy was still alive. The memories swirled and twined to become joined in his mind, twisted
