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Chapter 30

Some distance downstream from the village they found a deserted hut.

It must once have been, suggested Brasidus, the abode of a goatherd. (The indigenous six-legged animals that had been called goats by the original colonists had been largely replaced, as food animals, by the sheep and cattle imported from Earth.) There was just one room, its floor littered with animal droppings and the bones of various small creatures that had been brought into this shelter by various predators to be devoured at leisure, that now crackled unpleasantly underfoot. By the flare of Maggie's and Fenella's lighters, set at maximum intensity, it was possible to take stock. There was, leaning against the wall, a crude beson. Shirl took this and began to sweep the debris out through the open door. There was a fireplace, and beside it what had once been a tidy pile of cut wood, now scattered by some animal or animals.

Grimes instructed Darleen to use the cutting edge of one of her discs to produce a quantity of thin shavings from one of the sticks. He laid a fire. The shavings took fire immediately from his match and the blaze spread to the thicker sticks on top. Too late he thought that he should have checked the chimney to see if it was clear but he need not have worried. The fire drew well. Although the night was still far from cold the ruddy, flickering light made the atmosphere much more cheerful.

They all sat down on the now more or less clean floor.

Grimes lit his pipe, estimating ruefully that he had barely enough tobacco left in his pouch for four more smokes. Maggie and Fenella made a sort of ritual of sharing a cigarillo. Shirl and Darleen sniffed disdainfully.

Maggie said, "Now what do we do? We're on the wrong side of this world with no way of getting back to Sparta City. We're wearing clothing that, as soon as the weather warms up, will be horribly uncomfortable and that, in any case, makes us conspicuous. We have no money . . ."

"And I no longer have my watch," Fenella said sourly. "What do we barter next for a crust of bread?"

"We shall have breakfast without any worry," said Shirl. She produced from the pouch in which she was carrying her throwing discs some rather squashed bread rolls and Darleen, from hers, some crumbling cheese. "Before we left the tavern we helped ourselves to what we could . . ."

"That will do for supper," said Grimes.

"There will be no supper," Maggie told him sternly.

She drew deeply on what little remained of the cigarillo, threw the tiny butt into the fire.

"Hold it!" cried Grimes—too late. "I could have used that in my pipe."

"Sorry," she said insincerely.

"We tried smoking once," said Darleen virtuously. "We did not like it. We gave it up."

Grimes grunted wordlessly.

"I'm not a porcophile," announced Fenella.

"What's that?" demanded Shirl.

"A pig-lover, dearie. Normally I've no time for the police, on any world at all. But I really think, that in our circumstances, we should turn ourselves in. After all, we've committed no crime. Oh, there was a killing, I admit—but it was self-defense . . ."

"And the 'borrowing' of a minor war vessel owned by the Interstellar Federation," said Grimes glumly. "A minor war vessel which, unfortunately, we are unable to return to its owners in good order and condition."

"But I was given to understand," persisted Fenella, "that you and Maggie have carte blanche in such matters."

"Up to a point," said Grimes. "A medal if things go well, a court martial if they don't. In any case, until things get sorted out—if they ever do—Ellena will be able to hold us in jail on a charge of piracy and even to have us put on trial for the crime. And shot." He was deriving a certain perverse satisfaction from consideration of the legalities. "It could be claimed, of course, that I have been the ringleader insofar as the act of piracy is concerned. Don't forget that I have a past record. But you, Maggie, as a commissioned officer of the Survey Service, could be argued to have become a deserter from the FSS and an accessory before the fact to my crime. Shirl and Darleen are also accessories—and, also deserters from Ellena's own Amazon Guard . . . ."

"And me?" asked Fenella interestedly.

"An accessory before the fact."

"But it would never come to that," said Brasidus. "I shall vouch for you."

"Of course you will," said Grimes. "But . . . But if your lady wife is really vicious she'll put you on charge as an accessory after the fact."

"Surely she would not," said Brasidus. "After all, she is my wife."

"Throughout history," Fenella reminded him, "quite a few wives have wanted their husbands out of the way."

"But . . ."

"Are you sure that she wouldn't, old friend?" asked Grimes. He sucked audibly on his now empty pipe. "Now, this is the way I see things. We have to get less conspicuous clothing. By stealing. We have to get money. By stealing. Luckily this is a world where plastic money is not yet in common use. In the next town we come to there will be shops—I hope. Clothing shops. And there will be tills in these shops. With money in them. Luckily this is a planet where the vast majority of the population is honest, so breaking in will be easy . . . ."

"A bit of a comedown from space piracy," sneered Fenella.

"I wasn't a pirate," he said automatically. "I was a privateer."

Then he noticed that Shirl and Darleen had risen quietly to their feet and, as they had done so, had pulled their stunguns from their holsters. Shirl squatted by his side, put her mouth to his ear and whispered, "Go on talking. We shall be back in a few minutes."

Then she . . . oozed out of the open door, flattening herself against the frame to minimize her silhouette against the glow of the firelight. Darleen followed suit. Grimes went on talking, loudly so as to drown any queries from the others regarding the mysterious actions of the two New Alicians. He discussed at some length the legalities of privateering while his listeners looked at him with some amazement.

"It is not generally known," he almost shouted, "that the notorious Captain Kidd, who was a privateer, was hanged not for piracy but for murder, the murder of one of his officers . . . ."

"And what the hell has that to do with the price of fish?" screamed Fenella.

Shirl and Darleen came back. They were carrying between them an unconscious body, that of a man in the black leather and steel uniform of the Spartan Police. His arms were secured behind his back by his own belt and his ankles by the lacings of his sandals.

"We heard him coming," said Shirl, "while he was still quite a way off."

Brasidus stared at the man's gray-bearded face.

"I know him," he murmured. "I remember him from the old days, when we were both of us junior corporals . . . ."

"You've done better for yourself than he has," said Fenella.

"Have I? I'm beginning to think that I'd have been better off as a Village Sergeant than what I am now."

The journalist laughed. "You know, Brasidus, you're by no means the first planetary ruler who's said that sort of thing to me."

The Archon laughed too, but ruefully.

"But I," he said, "must be the first one who's really meant it."

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Framed