She put her arms around him. “You were always after me for answers, Samasnier Girat. I swore I’d never love you again, you bothered me so, wanting answers. Now here you are again, wanting answers. Sam, I don’t know why! I don’t know the answer.”
“But I need to,” he said quietly. “It was born in me, China Wilm. Born in me and the God has not taken it away. If it were useless or futile or destructive, wouldn’t the God have removed it? If the God let me go to Voorstod, didn’t the God have a reason? Perhaps I am hardwired for fruitless quests. Perhaps I am driven by guilt to make up for Maire’s death. Perhaps the anger in me is too hot to be cooled.” He sighed, put his arms around her, held her close.
“Phaed Girat lives. My father. Murderer of my mother. He who was left behind with the other bloody legends. And it isn’t over between us.”
“Sam,” she cried, feeling his words like a knell.
“Sam,” he agreed. “Who has still at least one answer to find.”
He kissed her and walked away from her, and she wept to see him go. It was not that she feared losing him so much as she feared he was losing himself. As though there were something within him even the God Birribat Shum could not—or would not—make quiet.
• On the third day after the Outrage, Howdabeen Churry was located and brought in to be questioned by the Scrutators concerning the matter of Hobbs Land. Though he had been unequivocally identified by Shan Damzel, Churry did not at first confess to being involved.
When asked where he had been three days before, he said, “We were holding training exercises several days ago. Some of my men disappeared. I’ve been conducting a search, as a matter of fact.” All of this was true, though specious. Howdabeen had indeed been going through the motions of a search.
“Do you know Nonginansaree Hoven?”
“Of course. He’s one of my men.”
“Presumably not one of the missing men.”
“No.”
“Hoven is on Hobbs Land.”
“Whatever is he doing there?”
When informed that the Hoven trooper was wearing shackles in a cell at the detention facility at CM, Churry shook his head and refused to answer any more questions. There was no religiously acceptable way that Reticingh or any other of the Scrutators could force him to do so. They could not fool with his head no matter how much, as Reticingh said to his sister over a scanty dinner, Churry’s head needed fooling with. Of course, Churry did not need to confess in order to be found guilty of grave transgressions against System peace.
Churry’s strategy, insofar as it could be called a strategy, had been to let things blow over, just as they would have done if the damned Hobbs Landians hadn’t had some method of communication Churry hadn’t counted on and still couldn’t believe. Let it get to be old news. Let the anger cool. The Baidee who controlled the planetary government did not impose a death penalty for any infraction except head-fooling, but they did sentence malefactors convicted of major crimes to lengthy sequestration. Churry had already resigned himself to years, perhaps to life, in a penal colony somewhere in the southern deserts. However, the longer things dragged on, the less urgent the matter would seem, so he would delay. So he had thought.
It had not even occurred to him that people might go very hungry on Thyker before anything blew over at all.
“Mysore Hobbs says there is another way for food to get from Hobbs Land to Thyker,” Reticingh grated. “He intimated that the persons responsible for the raid would know about that.”
Once he understood the supply situation, Churry knew when to bow to the inevitable. “Let us say,” murmured Churry, “that the raiders might have had a … oh, something like a Combat Door with them.”
“Which would be what?”
“Which would be … ah, a Door that could be set up and taken down quite rapidly, perhaps. A Door that could be moved from place to place easily. A Door perhaps keyed to some other Door on some other place.” Churry fell silent, thinking of the dimensions of that Door. It was narrow. Hardly wide enough for two troopers to walk through abreast of one another. Two of the Hobbs Land Doors they had destroyed had been bulk-shipment doors, designed for continuous feed and wide as a house.
As though reading his mind, Reticingh asked, “How large might this Door be?”
Churry looked at his shoes.
Reticingh snarled, “Large enough, for example, to get the parts of another Door through, if they were transshipped from Phansure through Thyker? Which would, of course, take some time, because there aren’t Doors just lying around on Phansure, ready to be shipped.”
Churry swallowed painfully. “Large enough for that, I suppose. If the parts weren’t too big.”
“I have a feeling that’s the minimum time Thyker will be on short rations,” said Reticingh. “Until at least one new Door gets to Hobbs Land and is installed. I would hesitate to say what the maximum time may be.”
• The news that the blockade of Voorstod had been withdrawn paled beside the developments following the Hobbs Land raid by renegade Baidee. Renegade Baidee is what System News called them. Renegade Baidee is what the planetary government of Thyker called them when it announced, even before it was petitioned by Hobbs Transystem Foods on behalf of the settlers, that generous reparations would be paid. The examination of Howdabeen Churry and Mordimorandasheen Trust by the Circle of Scrutators, the subsequent questioning of the Circle of Scrutators by Authority, these events were fully covered by System News and were followed by almost everyone in System. The food shortages on Thyker and the resultant rioting were fully reported along with the announcement that the entire Arm of the Prophetess was to be sent to Hobbs Land as a convict crew to load food through the only available Door to Thyker. Hungry High Baidee
