Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [252]
"I am always careful," Forister told him.
"And—I don't think you should talk to him. The man's dangerous."
"I know you four are scared of him," Forister agreed, "but I think that's because you've been away from Central too long. He's nothing but an arrogant brat who was given more power than was good for him. Like some other people I could name. Now if you'll excuse me, it's nearly time to strap down for Singularity."
He nodded at the wall sensors and Nancia silently slid the door open for him.
Once he was in the passageway again, she spoke in a low voice.
"Polyon de Gras-Waldheim requests the favor of a private interview."
"He does, does he! And I suppose you think I ought to take Blaize's warning seriously, and insist on having Micaya as a bodyguard before I talk to him?"
"I think you're reasonably able to look after yourself," Nancia said, "especially with me listening in. It's not as if you were piloting a dumbship. But there's not much time; I'll be entering the first decomposition sequence in a few minutes."
"All the better," said Forister. "I won't have to spend too long with him. I'll talk with him until you sound the Singularity warning bell, if that's all right. Can't do much less. Visited Blaize—have to visit any of the others who request it."
When Forister entered, Polyon was lying on his bunk, arms folded behind his head. He turned at the soft sound of the sliding door, jumped to his feet and brought his heels together with a military precision that Forister found almost annoying.
"Sir!"
"I'm not," Forister said mildly, "your superior officer. You needn't click your heels and salute. You wanted to tell me something?"
"I—yes—no—I think not," Polyon said. His blue eyes looked haunted; he pushed a wayward strand of golden hair back from his forehead. "I thought—-but he was my friend; I can't do it. Even to shorten my own sentence—no, it's impossible. I'm sorry to have disturbed you for nothing, sir."
"I think," Forister said gently, "you'd better tell me all about it, my boy." It was hard to reconcile the haunted creature before him with the monster who'd made Shemali prison into a living hell. Perhaps Polyon had some explanation he wished to proffer, some story about others who'd conceived the vicious factory system?
It took him a good five minutes of gentling Polyon's overactive sense of honor, all the time listening anxiously for the Singularity warning bell, before he coaxed the boy into letting out a name.
"It's Blaize," Polyon said miserably at last. "Your nephew. I'm so sorry, sir. But—well, while we were playing SPACED OUT he was boasting to me of how he'd pulled the wool over your eyes, convinced you he was innocent of any wrongdoing—"
"Not quite," said Forister. He spoke very evenly to control the twist of pain that squeezed his chest. "He did sell PTA shipments on the black market. That's wrongdoing, in my book, and he'll be tried for it on Central."
Polyon nodded. His look of suffering had not abated. "Yes, he said that was the story he'd given you. Then I thought—if you didn't know—perhaps I could trade the information for a reduction in my own sentence."
"What information?" Forister asked sharply.
Polyon shook his head. "Never mind. It doesn't matter. I've enough on my conscience already," he said, raising his head and staring at the wall with a look of noble resignation that Forister found intensely irritating. "I won't compound my crimes by informing on a friend. It's all on this minihedron—well, never mind."
"What," asked Forister with the last vestiges of his patience, "what exactly is supposed to be on the minihedron?" He stared at the faceted black shape Polyon held in his hand, dark and baleful like the eye of an alien god.
"The true records of how Blaize made his fortune," Polyon said. "It's all there—he thought he'd concealed his tracks, but there were enough Net links for me to find the records. I'm very good with computers, you know," he said with a boy's naive pride. "But when I begged him to tell you the truth, he laughed at