Believers were usually not harassed as long as they did not practice in public or proselytize, and in time they learned discretion. Though belief was not destroyed, its force was reduced and cults became indistinguishable from superstition—a set of arcane and irrational practices designed to achieve the intervention of who knew what against the inflexible workings of an unknowable fate.
There were certainly cults scattered through the empire, but most of them existed very quietly and often in fairly remote corners of the Shaa dominion. Cult members tended to marry within one another’s families and avoid public service. Occasionally a governor or a local official would try to earn a name for himself by rooting them out, executing some and forcing others to renounce their beliefs, but for the most part they were left alone.
There was no point in persecution. Over the centuries, the supernatural had simply ceased to be a threat to the empire.
Marsden returned within a few moments, carrying a pair of gray plastic boxes. “I assumed you wanted possessions other than clothing, my lord,” he said. “If you want to examine the clothing as well, may I requisition a hand truck?”
That would be for Kosinic’s trunks containing the amazing number of uniforms required of an officer, plus his personal vac suit. Thuc would have had fewer uniforms, and used a vac suit from the ship’s stores.
“The pockets would have been emptied, and so on?” Martinez asked.
“Yes, Lord Captain. Pockets are gone through, and other places where small items might be found, and anything discovered put in these boxes.”
“I won’t need the clothing then. Put the boxes on my desk.”
Martinez opened Kosinic’s box first. He found a ring from the Nelson Academy, from which Martinez had graduated before Kosinic arrived, and a handsome presentation stylus—brushed aluminum inlaid with unakite and jasper, and engraved “To Lieutenant Javier Kosinic, from his proud father.” There was a shaving kit, a modestly priced cologne, and a nearly empty bottle of antibiotic spray that a doctor had probably given him for his wounds. Martinez found some fine paper, brushes, and watercolor paints, and looked at several finished watercolors, most of them planet-bound landscapes of rivers and trees, but including one recognizable impression of Fulvia Kazakov sitting at a table in the wardroom. To Martinez’s unpracticed eye, none of the watercolors seemed particularly expert.
In a small pocketbook he found a series of foils, neatly labeled, that held music and other entertainments, and at the bottom of the box, a small pocket-sized datapad, which Martinez turned on. It asked for a password, but he wasn’t able to provide one. He slotted his captain’s key into it, but the datapad was a private one, not Fleet issue, and wouldn’t recognize his authority. Martinez turned it off and returned it to the box.
The few belongings—the cologne and the academy ring and the inexpert watercolors—seemed to add up to an inadequate description of a life. Whatever had most mattered to Kosinic, Martinez thought, probably wasn’t here: his passions remained locked in his brain, and had died with him. He looked again at the stylus, sent by the father who might not yet know that his son had been killed, and closed the box on Kosinic’s life.
He turned to the box labeledTHUC, H.C., MASTER ENGINEER (DECEASED), and found what he was looking for right on top.
A small enameled pendant in the form of a tree with green and red blossoms, hanging from a chain of bright metal links.
“Ithink there was a group of Narayanists onIllustrious, ” Martinez explained to Michi Chen. “I think Captain Fletcher was one of them. He wore a Narayanist symbol around his neck, and he had a huge statue of Narayanguru in his sleeping cabin. I think he adopted the pose of a collector of cult art so he could collect Narayanist artifacts legally, and he covered his activities by collecting artifacts from other cults as well.”
“If you insist on that theory,” Michi said, “you’re going to have trouble with the Gombergs and Fletchers, maybe even a suit in civil court.”
“Not if I’m right, I won’t,” Martinez said. “If there are Narayanists in either of those families, we won’t hear a word from them.”
Michi nodded silently. “Go on,” she said.
He had asked Michi into his office on a confidential matter, and she was surprised on her arrival to find Marsden and Jukes present. Martinez called Perry to bring out coffee and snacks, and ordered Marsden to record the meeting and take notes.
“I think there were, perhaps still are, a number of Narayanists aboard,” Martinez said. “Captain Fletcher protected them. Somehow, Kosinic found out about at least some of this, though possibly he didn’t know the captain was a part of the arrangement. As Kosinic’s knowledge was now a menace to the cultists, one of them—Thuc—killed him.”
Michi nodded. “Very well,” she said.
“It was a masterfully done murder, and we would never have found out about it if Captain Fletcher wasn’t killed the same way and made us suspicious.”
Perry and Alikhan arrived with coffee and little triangular pastries, and Martinez fell silent while everyone was served. He took an appreciative taste of the coffee and felt heat flush at once to the surface of his skin. He could feel his theories boiling in his skull, and he wanted to let them escape; he was so impatient that it took an effort for him to compliment Perry on the coffee. Finally, the two left the room and he was able to continue.
“We know that Thuc was a Narayanist because he too wore a Narayanist medallion. I think that once Kosinic was killed, Captain Fletcher began to realize that he was in a bad spot. All it would take would be a little indiscretion on the part of a petty officer, and he would be implicated in the death of a fellow officer—and not justany officer, but a member of the squadron commander’s staff.
“He couldn’t indict Thuc, because any public proceedings would expose his own membership in the cult. So he used his officers’ privilege and executed Thuc during the course of an inspection.”
Martinez gave a little shrug. “Everything from this point is completely speculative,” he said. “I think Captain Fletcher was intent on eliminating every member of the cult in order to protect himself, but I can’t be certain that he wasn’t just after Thuc. In any case, one or more other cult membersassumed that Fletcher was going after them, and they acted to kill him first.”
Michi absorbed this quietly. “Do you have any idea who those other cult members might be?”
Martinez shook his head. “No, my lady. The only people I’m inclined to exempt from suspicion are Weaponer Gulik and the crew of Missile Battery Three. Fletcher inspected them on the day of his death and didn’t execute any of them.”
“That still leaves something like three hundred people.”
“Though I would start with those among the crew who are from Sandama, like the lord captain, or who are Fletcher’s clients. Dr. Xi, for example.”
“Xi?” Michi was startled. “But he’s been helpful.”
“He helpfully explained away his own fingerprints that were found in Captain Fletcher’s office.”
“But he was the one who proved that Captain Fletcher was murdered in the first place. If he’d been part of the conspiracy, he would have kept silent.”
Martinez opened his mouth, then closed it.Dr. An-ku I’m not, he thought. “Well,” he said, “let’snot start with Dr. Xi then.”
She held his eyes for a moment, then her shoulders slumped as she seemed to deflate. “We’re no better off than we were. You’ve got an interesting theory, but even if it’s true, it doesn’t help us.”