Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [30]
For some reason, Matthew took heart from that—but he was still anxious to know exactly what had become of Shen Chin Che, and glad that he now had an opportunity to find out.
“My name is Konstantin Milyukov,” the captain told them, as he stood up to greet them. “You are Professor Fleury, of course, and you are Inspector Solari.” He ushered them to high-backed armchairs clad in some kind of cultured leather. Milyukov’s gestures seemed strangely grandiose to Matthew’s Earth-educated eyes—more so than Frans Leitz’s, even though the medical orderly had also been adapted by long habit to the low gravity. The captain took a third chair, which had been positioned to form an isosceles triangle with those set for his visitors, with Milyukov at the peak. He didn’t offer them food or drink.
“I wish that I could welcome you both to better circumstances,” the captain went on, “but you will already have gathered that this is something of an emergency. I wish that it had not been necessary to awaken you until the colony was on a much firmer footing, but our plans have been overtaken by events. We all need to know exactly how Bernal Delgado died, and why the people at Base Three are refusing to reveal the identity of his murderer.”
“Refusing?” Solari echoed. “Are you sure they’re refusing? Perhaps they don’t know who killed him, or why.”
“One or two of them may not know,” Milyukov admitted. “Perhaps as many as four—but if those innocent of any involvement had mounted their own investigation in a methodical manner, they would have been able to find out easily enough what happened. Perhaps negligence held them back, or perhaps they were unprepared to face up to what they might find. In any case, the situation requires a newcomer with a proper sense of duty. To tell you the truth, Inspector Solari, I do not expect this to be a particularly challenging case, even if you arrive at Base Three to find a solid conspiracy of liars—but we do need you to ensure that charges are brought and that the truth of this sad charade becomes clear.”
“Who’s we?” Solari wanted to know.
“Everybody,” Milyukov replied, without hesitation. “You will have gathered, of course, that there are disagreements aboard Hope as well as conflicts on the surface, but it is in everybody’s interests to know why Professor Delgado was killed, in order that the rumors that have begun to circulate can be quashed. It is in everyone’s interests to know the truth.”
“Except the murderer,” Solari observed, “and anyone shielding the murderer. If, as you seem to think, there are at least seven people shielding the murderer, I’m inclined to wonder why they’re so conspicuously uninterested in the truth.”
“Sometimes,” Milyukov said, “people intent on attaining a certain end become rather short-sighted. They sacrifice honesty to the cause of winning the argument—but in the long run, an argument won by dishonesty always leads to disaster.”
“Can we cut the crap?” Solari said. “So far as I can tell, you want the colony to stay here, and you want all the people who were frozen down before the ship left the solar system down on the surface. You presumably have the power to attain that result regardless of what anyone else wants, simply by waking up the sleepers a few at a time and shuttling them down whether they like it or not, but I guess you haven’t yet resorted to that kind of solution