Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [211]
"Any little thing you can tell us would be much appreciated," said Sev carefully.
"Well, I don't happen to know his CCC, so you're out of luck!" Fassa snapped. "Wait—wait—there's more."
"There is?"
"Find Hopkirk, and you'll have evidence on Alpha and Darnell both," Fassa said rapidly. "But there's another one you ought to get. His name's Blaize. . . ."
In the brawn's cabin, Forister lowered his head to rest on his clenched hands. "Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc," he whispered. "No. No."
I've family in the Nyota system . . . I was going to visit after I left Summerlands . . .
Nancia cut off the audio transmission to Forister's cabin and shut down her own sensors there. She listened alone while Fassa babbled out the details of Blaize's felonious career on Angalia; the diverting of PTA shipments, the slave labor and torture of the native population he was supposed to be guarding.
Some day Forister would have to know and face those details, but not yet. She would leave him alone until he requested the recordings of this conversation, and then she would let him listen in privacy.
And so Nancia was the only witness when Fassa's confessional came to an abrupt ending. After she finished the tale of Blaize's misdeeds, Sev probed her.
"I've looked up the records of that first voyage," he said, almost casually. "There were five of you in it together, weren't there? You, Dr. bint Hezra-Fong, Overton-Glaxely, Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, and one other. Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, newly commissioned from the Academy. What was his part in the wager?"
Fassa clamped her lips shut and slowly shook her head. "I can't tell you any more," she whispered. "Only—don't let them send me to Shemali. Kill me first. I know you never cared for me, but as one human being to another—kill me first. Please."
"You're wrong in thinking I never cared for you," Sev said after a long silence.
"You said so yourself."
"You asked if I liked you a little," he corrected her. "And I don't. You're vain and self-centered and you may have killed a good man and you've yet to show any interest at all in Caleb's fete. I don't much like you at all."
"Yes, I know."
"Unfortunately," he went on with no change of expression, "like it or not—and believe me, I'm not at all happy about the situation—I do seem to love you. Not," he said almost gently, "that it'll do either of us much good, under the circumstances. But I did think you ought to know."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Caleb recovered with amazing speed. Two hours after his arrival at the clinic, forty minutes after Alpha bint Hezra-Fong had analyzed the poisons in his blood and slapped on stimpatches of the appropriate antidotes, the nervous convulsions had stopped. Nancia knew exactly when that happened, because by then she had thought to send Sev Bryley to Summerlands with a contact button discreetly replacing the top stud in his dress tunic and a second contact button to dip onto Caleb's hospital gown. While Forister remained on board as a nominal guard for Fassa, Sev lounged about the public rooms at Summerlands trying to look like a worried friend-or-relative and chatting up the recuperating VIPs. Nancia watched the clinic from two angles: the convulsive shuddering view of a cracked white ceiling, emanating from Caleb's contact button, and the repetitive views of artificial potted palms and doddering old celebrities to whom Sev talked. On the whole, the potted palms were more valuable than the celebrities; at least they didn't waste Sev's time with their reminiscences of events a century past.
"None of these people know anything about Hopkirk," she whispered through Sev's contact button.
"I've noticed,"