Along with the proliferation of titles came the elaborate system of court etiquette and rules that are the hallmark of upper classes. Rules of succession were most important. Empress Stanley Three, in an attempt to avoid as many struggles as possible, decreed that strict primogeniture be observed in all inheritances - and, being a woman herself, insisted that the primogeniture be carried out with no distinction as to sex. The heir to a title was, by courtesy, addressed by the next lowest title - the oldest child of an earl, for instance, would be a count or countess until inheriting the full title. Younger children of noble families bore the honorific titles of ‘Lord’ or ‘Lady’, without anything more specific, and were treated with deference. Marriage laws, too, were more relaxed than under previous oligarchical systems. Nobles could marry either commoners or nobles of higher or lower rank, and the lower-born of the pair would automatically be raised to the rank of the spouse.
(Stanhope, Elements of Empire, Reel 2, slot 409.)
Leaving their involuntary guests trussed up and helpless in their country mansion, the d’Alemberts proceeded to drive to Osberg and, in particular, to Kraftig Castle, some two hundred and fifty kilometers away. As he drove, Jules could not help but shake his head when he thought of what they’d learned. ‘I knew our friends, whoever they are, wouldn’t stay out of a caper with this kind of money involved. But a noble getting in on the act! Who would have thought the boss would be the Baron of Osberg?’
‘You for one, brother dear,’ supplied Yvette. ‘And maybe me for another. At least we knew the boss traitor had to be somebody in a position of power. And we’d better get used to the thought of picking on the nobility; I’ll bet whoever is masterminding this conspiracy has a pretty high listing in the Peerage. Banion, when we find him, will either be posing as a noble or else have the protection and patronage of one. Either way we’ll have to go slow.’
The Baron’s castle was three kilometers outside the city of Osberg itself. Jules parked their car a good kilometer down the road and they walked in from there. Each carried a stunner taken from their ambushers and, in addition, Yvette carried her hypo kit containing enough nitrobarb to question a regiment.
They approached the stronghold cautiously, taking great care not to be seen or heard. Two phantoms in the night, they made their way to the outside of the castle walls. Kraftig Castle was an imposing edifice, four stories high and set on a steep slope. Its five hectares of ground were encircled by a reinforced concrete wall four and a half meters high that was surmounted by interlaced strands of charged barbed wire.
Jules and Yvette walked partway around the wall, sizing it up. There were two gates, front and rear, each built of five-centimeter-square bar steel and topped with more of the charged barbed wire. Neither could be opened except by electronic commands from inside the castle.
‘And not even a welcome mat,’ Yvette whispered to her brother.
‘I definitely get the impression that the good Baron doesn’t care for uninvited guests. Eh bien, if there’s no welcome mat we’ll have to provide our own. Over the top?’
‘Over the top,’ Yvette agreed.
The two grinned at each other and separated. Taking advantage of the high hedges lining the road to the back gate, they backed off some twenty meters down the path while keeping under cover. Yvette was on the left side of the roadway, Jules on the right. They could not see each other well in the darkness, but they were so used to working with one another that their reflexes worked practically in tandem. At an almost inaudible ‘now’ from Yvette, both ran at top speed toward the wall. Two sets of legs like coiled springs bent under them as they came within two meters; then the muscles pushed off and the pair of aerialists were soaring upward into the air. Each cleared the topmost wire with a full meter to spare. They had their stunners already drawn and, at the apex of their silent flight, they sent their beams - which were set on six for a twelve-hour stun - shooting down at the guards manning the wall. Firing rapidly and precisely, they shot down every guard they saw - and the fact that the interior of the courtyard was well lit helped their aim no end.
They absorbed most of the impact of landing with their well-muscled legs, then rolled and sprang to their feet, still running. Over to their left was a smaller house, most likely the garage and servants’ quarters. Yvette gave an almost infinitesimal nod of her head to indicate that she would tackle that building. Jules acknowledged her signal and ran toward the main house.
The ground floor had many windows he could have broken through, but he preferred to be a bit neater. It was the work of only a second to spot a small door that led into the pantry. The door was locked, but that didn’t stop him for more than a couple of seconds more. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a cutting torch so small it fitted in the palm of his hand. Only seven seconds were needed for its powerful laser action to burn through the lock mechanism, and the door flew open inward at his insistent push.
Jules found himself in a small storeroom for the castle’s provisions. The room was refrigerated, but he had no intention of staying here. Crossing purposefully down one row of shelves, he came to another door that led outward to the kitchen. This door was unlocked, and he passed through it into the cooking area. As it was now quite late, only a small handful of servants were attending to the clean-up activities after the evening meal. These hapless folk slumped tonelessly to the floor as Jules’ stunner beam hit them before they were even aware that anything untoward was happening.
Jules went through the kitchen like a purple streak, then rode an elevator tube up to the next level. He passed through the dining room without encountering anyone else and raced down a small service hallway until he came to a set of thick velvet curtains. Putting his eye to the crack between the curtains, he observed the activity in the next room.
The main hall of the castle was immense. Its beamed ceiling and paneled walls were of waxed yellow- wood; the light from the hundreds of electric false candles in the three wrought-iron chandeliers glinted off those walls and made the whole room bright and sparkling. The floor was of polished brown marble in swirling, indefinable patterns. Long divans upholstered in plush tawny velvets graced the floor at appropriate intervals. At the far end of the room was a fireplace that looked big enough to sleep two people in comfort; at the moment, however, a two-meter log was burning there, doing its best to warm the chill of the room. The walls were tastefully adorned with modernistic paintings, and above the mantelpiece was the antlered head of some animal Jules didn’t recognize.
Eleven men were in that hall, some sitting, some standing. The air was hazy from the smoke of the different types of cigarettes they were puffing, and partially empty glasses attested to the amounts of alcohol being consumed. The men talked only occasionally, and then mostly in monosyllables; they checked their watches frequently, and definitely appeared to be waiting for someone or something.
If they’re expecting news about the Velasquez kidnapping, thought Jules, they’ll get it in a very startling way. Bringing up his stunner and taking careful aim, he shot them all in quick succession. Eleven bodies collapsed limply into their chairs or onto the floor.
Jules went quickly back to the pantry door to rendezvous with his sister. ‘Everything’s khorosho outside,’ she reported. ‘I caught most of them in bed. Now for the big frisk.’
Moving rapidly, but without sloppy hastiness, the pair of agents searched the entire castle from subcellar to garrets. They moved with stunners drawn and ready, and when they had gone through an area they knew, beyond doubt, that everyone in it was unconscious. Within an hour, everyone - guards, servants, guests and family - everyone within the outer wall except for themselves was out cold. Then and only then did Jules walk over to the communicator on the wall of the main hall, cut off its video circuit, and punch out a special number.
‘This is the Service of the Empire,’ a perfectly trained, beautifully modulated female voice came from the speaker. ‘Would you p lease turn your vision on and let me know how I may serve you?’
Instead of complying with the request for visual, Jules said succinctly, ‘Sote six. Affold abacus zymase bezant. The head depends upon the stomach for survival.’
‘Bub bub-but sir ...’ The change in the girl’s voice was shocking. She had never heard- and had never thought she would hear - those four six-letter code words spoken together; and coupled with the words ‘head’ and ‘survival’ they tended to daze her for a moment. She rallied quickly, though. ‘He’s home asleep, sir, but I’ll get him right away. One moment, please,’ and Jules heard the insistent beeping of a personal pager signaling its master.
‘Lemme ‘lone,’ a sleepy voice protested. ‘G’way. Cut out the damn beeping or ...’
‘Gospodin Borton! Wake up!’ the girl almost screamed. ’Pleasewake up! It’s a Sote six,’ and she repeated the four code words.
‘Oh.’ That had done it.
‘Khorosho, Phyllis; thanks.’
‘You are connected, sirs,’ the girl informed them, ‘and I’m out. Signal gree n, please, when you are through.’ Jules smiled tightly. He could tell from her voice that she’d take a beating rather than eavesdrop on the conversation that was to follow, even if she had been able to understand it.
‘Praxis,’ Borton said, requesting identification, symbol or some sign of their authority.
‘Wombat and Periwinkle.’ (Their own identifying symbols.)
‘Holy...’ Borton began, but shut himself up. Those code names were almost legendary, and he had never thought he’d ever meet them. They were the very top skimmings of the smoothest cream of the entire Service! ‘Khorosho.’
‘Rafter, angles, angels. Angled. Suffer. Harlot static invert, cosine design. Single joyful, singer, status, stasis. Over.’
There was dead silence at the other end of the line for three seconds; then they heard Borton gulp and say, ‘Excuse me for not answering quicker. All of that takes a little time to sink in. It’s fantastic, but you didn’t say where you are.’
‘We didn’t know your local grid coordinates, and proper names don’t encode too easily. Let me think. Kinder rafter argent faster talent indent ghosts. Carbon assign silver tender leader exempt. Got that?’
‘Quite. That’s good improvisation.’
‘Come through the front gate. Do a code O on your lights so we’ll know it’s you. Over and out if it’s khorosho.’
‘Perfectly khorosho,’ Borton said and it was. If Agents Wombat and Periwinkle told any planetary chief of SOTS to go jump in the lake he’d do it- and fast. ‘Here’s your green, Phyllis. Thanks.’
It took Borton forty-five minutes to get dressed, assemble a squad of men, and get over to the castle. The d’Alemberts used that intervening time to good advantage. Even while Jules had been talking, Yvette had been quietly going about her business, injecting each of their eleven top prisoners with doses of nitrobarb.
After twenty minutes, they were ready to tell everything they knew. Unfortunately, except for the Baron, all of them knew very little. This criminal organization had been built on a cell system, with people in one group not knowing anyone from any of the others except for the one person directly above them in the hierarchy.
Even the Baron himself, the man in charge of this whole planet’s underworld, only knew of one off-world contact, but that was better than nothing. Under the drug’s influence, the Baron told them about a certain bar near the main spaceport on the planet Aston, and about the code phrase necessary to get beyond a certain point.
Finally Borton’s party showed up at the front gate. The planetary chief blinked the headlights on his vehicle three short blinks, as agreed, and the gates opened for him. He and his men entered the estate and walked quickly to the front door of the castle.
Jules and Yvette allowed only him to see them as they admitted him to the vestibule; the rest of his men were told to wait outside. Borton recognized them instantly. ‘You!’ he exclaimed, looking from one spectacular agent to the other and back again. ‘You two have been driving my office staff nuts trying to get a line on you. I must admit, it is a switch. You came in with bands blaring and pennons waving.’
‘Absolutely. We figured they’d be looking for people who skulked around in dark corners.’
‘Could be... If I may ask, I suppose there’s a good reason why I wasn’t le t in on any of this from the beginning?’
‘Very good. Follow us and you’ll see what it was,’ Jules said.
They led Borton into the main hall. The eleven bodies lay scattered about the floor in a drugged stupor. Borton took just a quick skim to size up the situation, then turned back to the d’Alemberts. ‘You used nitrobarb,’ he said. His tone was matter of-fact, though many people could not mention the drug’s name without either distaste or horror. ‘And on the Baron of Osberg, yet. With nitrobarb’s fatality r ate, half of them will die. I think I can see now why you didn’t apply for approval first.’
‘They’ll all die,’ Jules said grimly. ‘Especially the Baron. The penalty for treason, remember, is summary execution. Those who survive the drug may live a few days longer than the others. That’s all. But you don’t really see yet. Keep on looking.’
Borton gazed back into the hall. As his eyes swept over the slack jaws and glazed expressions of the drugged men, they eventually came to rest on the tall, burly figure of a blond man with a pencil-thin mustache. There they stopped, and Borton’s face turned gray. The shock and surprise hit him so hard that he couldn’t even think to swear.
‘That’s Alf Rixton,’ he managed finally. ‘My first assistant. He’s been with me for over ten years! Top clearance, too, with lie detector and hypno-interrogation every year. He’s done splendid work.’
‘Yeah for the other side,’ Yvette said coldly. ‘The only crooks and traitors he ever caught were the ones his people wanted to get rid of. It’s all yours now, Borton, the whole operation. Take over. We’ll have to stay on-planet for a while some people higher up might get a tad suspicious if the Velasquezes left Algonia the instant this ring was broken - but we don’t want to appear in this
. Not so much as a whisper. Nobody here in the castle got a look at us - we moved a little too fast for them - and your men haven’t seen us. Only you know, and you won’t tell. But there are a few others you’ll have to silence for a time, if not permanently.’ She told him about the ambushers who were now trussed up on the Velasquezes’ hideaway estate.
Borton nodded. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be taken care of. But listen, how can I explain all of this? There’ll be reports to fill out and the press will be asking all sorts of questions. They get very sharp whenever the nobility’s involved in scandal. What can I say? They won’t believe I planned this whole operation by myself.’
‘Of course not,’ Jules grinned. ‘Gospodin Rixton over there cooked the whole thing up and helped you pull it off. A fury with a short fuse as he waded into the thick of the fighting. Too bad the honors are posthumous, but he died upholding the glorious traditions of the Service.
Again, Borton nodded - more slowly, this time. ‘Thanks. One o f our very best men, he died a hero’s death, defending gallantly and so forth - sob, sob - the rat. Yeah, that’ll do it. But having me take the credit for this operation when the two of you really did all the work...’
‘It really wouldn’t be wise to let people know we’d been here,’ Yvette said quietly.
‘Khorosho,’
Borton grinned wryly. ‘Undercover agents should remain under cover.’
‘Exactly,’ Jules agreed. Then he looked at his sister and, in unison, they recited the Service salute: ‘Here’s to tomorrow, fellow and friend. May we all live to see it!’ And with that, they strode out of the room, out of the castle without being seen by Borton’s men- and out of Borton’s life forever. One scum pit had been cleaned out - it was time for them to move onward and upward to the next.
Borton stood motionless, staring at the door as it closed behind them. He knew what those two were - Agents Wombat and Periwinkle - but that was all he knew, or ever would know, about them. But they had given him too much to do to waste his time wool-gathering. He had to interrogate these prisoners, find out more about their organization so that he could sweep up the pawns as well as the kings, and concoct a story that would satisfy the press.
He let the rest of his men into the house and barked his orders. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he began questioning those of the hoodlums who were still alive.
News of the arrests broke early the next morning. Involving as it did the treason of a rich and important baron, all the news services leapt at it. Words flashed through the subether at many times the speed of light, and soon the information was being broadcast as a major scandal on every fully settled planet of the Empire.
In particular, the news reached a tall, angular man to whom it was more than just a piece of sensationalism. He lost no time in taking his private elevator tube to the subbasement, where his private map of the Empire glowed. He stood there looking up at its enormous bulk, his dark eyes scanning the pinpoints of light that represented planets. At first he could not find the green dot that represented
Algonia, one of his key systems - then he understood. His computers had already assimilated the data coming in from all parts of his domain, and had reassessed the situation. The dot that was Algonia no longer burned the green of one of his key planets, nor even the red that indicated he controlled it. That dot was a clear, steady blue-the blue that represented the Empire.
A setback, the man thought as he stroked his goatee. A definite setback. But hardly a crucial one. He felt comforted as he looked upward at his three-dimensional map. There were still more than two dozen green lights, still close to a thousand red ones. His crimson tide was still growing in magnitude, still threatening to engulf the few remaining spots of blue. The loss of one green light could hardly stop his inexorable progress.
The question remained, though, burning in the back of his brain: was the loss of Algonia a coincidence, or did it form a part of some counteroffensive against him? It would be hard to tell from this isolated incident; he would have to set his computers to looking for a pattern.
For some unexplained reason, the late Colonel Crandon crossed his mind. The traitor had said something about a special team of two agents. Could they in some way have been responsible for this affair? It was something to correlate, surely.
But he was not worried. Even if, somehow, two agents acting on their own could wipe out an entire planetary organization, they still could not begin to touch the entire structure of what he had built. Besides, he gloated, there are plenty of booby -traps along the way.