"Who? What're you talking about? What choice?" asked Moro.
"Pel here - " I nodded at him, "knows where the assassins are hiding."
"No," said Pel.
"Well, you know enough so that we can find them," I said. "It makes no difference. And outside of this room, there's only two people on St. Marie we can trust with that information."
"You think I'd tell you anything?" Pel said. His face was still grey, but it had firmed up now. "Do you think even if I knew anything I'd tell you? St. Marie needs a strong government to survive and only the Blue Front can give it to her. I was ready to give my life for that, yesterday. I'm still willing. I won't tell you anything - and you can't make me. Not in six hours."
"What two people?" Moro asked me.
"Padma," I said, "and Ian."
"Ian!" said Pel. "You think he'll help you? He doesn't give a damn for St. Marie, either way. Did you believe that talk of his about his brother's military record? He's got no feelings. It's his own military record he's concerned with; and he doesn't care if the mercenaries tear Blauvain up by the roots, as long as it's done over his own objection. He's just as happy as any of the other mercenaries with that vote. He's just going to sit out his six hours and let things happen."
"And I suppose Padma doesn't care either?" Moro was beginning to sound a little ugly himself. "It was the Exotics sent us help against the Friendlies in the first place!"
"Who knows what Exotics want?" Pel retorted. "They pretend to go about doing nothing but helping other people, and never dirtying their hands with violence and so on; and somehow with all that they keep on getting richer and more powerful all the time. Sure, trust Padma, why don't you? Trust Padma and see what happens!"
Moro looked at me uncomfortably.
"What if he's right?" Moro said.
"What if he's right?" I snarled at him. "Moro, can't you see this is what St. Marie's trouble has always been? Here's the troublemaker we always have around - someone like Pel - whispering that the devil's in the chimney and you - like the rest of our people always do - starting to shake at the knees and wanting to sell him the house at any price! Stay here both of you; and don't try to leave the room."
I went out, locking the door behind me. They were in one of a number of rooms set up behind the duty officer's desk and I went up to the night sergeant on duty. He was a man I'd known back when I had been in detective training on the Blauvain force, an old-line policeman named Jaker Reales.
"Jaker," I said, "I've got a couple of valuable items locked up in that back room. J hope to be back in an hour or so to collect them; but if I don't, make sure they don't get out and nobody gets in to them, or knows they're mere. I don't care what kind of noises may seem to come out of there, it's all in the imagination of anyone who thinks he hears them, for twenty-four hours at least, if I don't come back"
"Got you, Tom," said Jaker. "Leave it up to me, sir."
"Thanks, Jaker," I said.
I went out and back to Expedition Headquarters. It had not occurred to me to wonder what Ian would do now that his Hunter Teams had been taken from him. I found Expedition Headquarters now quietly aswarm with officers - officers who clearly were most of them Dorsai. No enlisted men were to be seen.
I was braced to argue my way into seeing Ian; but the men on duty surprised me. I had to wait only four or five minutes outside the door of Ian's private office before six Senior Commandants, Charley ap Morgan among them, filed out.
"Good," said Charley, nodding as he saw me; and then went on without any further explanation of what he meant. I had no time even to look after him. Ian was waiting.
I went in. Ian sat massively behind his desk, waiting for me, and waved me to a chair facing him as I came in. I sat down. He was only a few feet from me, but again I had the feeling of a vast distance separating us. Even here and now, under the soft lights of this nighttime office, he conveyed, more strongly than any Dorsai I had ever seen, a sense of difference. Generations of men bred to war had made him; and I could not warm to him as Pel and others had warmed to Kensie. Far from kindling any affection in me, as he sat there, a cold wind like that off some icy and barren mountaintop seemed to blow from him to me, chilling me. I could believe Pel, that Ian was all ice and no blood; and there was no reason for me to do anything for him - except that as a man whose brother had been killed, he deserved -whatever help any other decent, law-abiding man could give him.
But I owed something to myself, too, and to the fact that we were not all villains, like Pel, on St. Marie.
"I've got something to tell you," I said. "It's about General Sinjin."
He nodded, slowly.
"I've been waiting for you to come to me with that," he said.
I stared at him.
"You knew about Pel?" I said.
"We knew someone from the St. Marie authorities had to be involved in what happened," he said. "Normally, a Dorsai officer is alert to any potentially dangerous situation. But there was the false dinner invitation; and then the matter of the assassins happening to be in just the right place at the right time, with just the right weapons. Also, our Hunter Teams found clear evidence the encounter was no accident. As I say, an officer like Field Commander Graeme is not ordinarily killed that easily."
It was odd to sit there and hear him speak Kensie's name that way. Title and name rang on my ears with the strangeness one feels when somebody speaks of himself in the third person.
"But Pel?" I said.
"We didn't know it was General Sinjin who was involved" Ian said. "You identified him yourself by coming to me about him just now."
"He's Blue Front," I said.
"Yes," said Ian, nodding.
"I've known him all my life," I said, carefully. "I
believe he's suffered some sort of nervous breakdown over the death of your brother. You know, he admired your brother very much. But he's still the man I grew up with; and that man can't be easily made to do something he doesn't want to do. Pel says he won't tell us anything that'll help us find the assassins; and he doesn't think we can make him tell us inside of the six hours left before your soldiers move in to search Blauvain. Knowing him, I'm afraid he's right."
I stopped talking. Ian sat where he was, behind the desk, looking at me, merely waiting.
"Don't you understand?" I said. "Pel can help us, but I don't know of any way to make him do it."
Still Ian said nothing.
"What do you want from me?" I almost shouted it at him, at last.
"Whatever," Ian said, "you have to give."
For a moment it seemed to me that there •was something like a crack in the granite mountain that he seemed to be. For a moment I could have sworn that I saw into him. But if this was true, the crack closed up immediately, the minute I glimpsed it. He sat remote, icy, waiting, there behind his desk
"I've got nothing," I said, "unless you know of some way to make Pel talk"
"I have no way consistent with my brother's reputation as a Dorsai officer," said Ian, remotely.
"You're concerned with reputations?" I said. "I'm concerned with the people who'll die and be hurt in Blauvain if your mercenaries come in to hunt door-to-door for those assassins. Which is more important, the reputation of a dead man, or the lives of living ones?"
"The people are rightly your concern, Com-missioner," said Ian, still remotely, "the professional reputation of Kensie Graeme is rightly mine."
"What will happen to that reputation if those troops move into Blauvain in less than six hours from now?" I demanded.
"Something not good," Ian said. "That doesn't change my personal responsibilities. I can't do what I shouldn't do and I must do what I ought to do."