A Talent for War

XVIII

THERE WAS A gathering for Quinda on a hill outside Andiquar. It was advertised as a commemoration of her life rather than a memorial service. They set a table, and hired a band. The guests sang loudly, if not particularly well, and everyone drank a good deal.

There were maybe two hundred people present, some of whom I recognized from the Talino Society. They toasted her frequently and energetically, and regaled each other with reminiscences. The wind played over the flickering gantner shield that protected them from the temperatures of the winter afternoon.

Chase and I stood off to one side. She leaned on a crutch, moodily silent. When most of the food had been cleared away, the guests gathered around a circular table. And they came forward, one by one, to sum up her life in quiet sentences: she was not known ever to have injured anyone, they said. She was a friend, she was unfailingly optimistic, she’d been a good daughter, and we would not see her like again.

All clichés. And I reminded myself that this was a woman who’d twice broken into my home, who’d shown a reckless disregard for my life, who’d damned near killed Chase, and who was, finally, a victim of her own ruthlessness.

Toward the end, I noticed Cole, Chase’s rescuer and the man Quinda had saved, standing quietly off by himself, beside a tree. We walked over and stood with him.

A young man who looked startlingly like Quinda approached us, introduced himself (he was her brother), and thanked us for coming. He knew us, understood that we had been with her at the end, and asked whether I would speak to the assembly. I hesitated. Principle seemed to demand that I forego that particular hypocrisy.

But I agreed nonetheless, and walked through the crowd to take a place at the table. The brother introduced me by name.

"You’ve already heard all the important things there are to know about Quinda," I told them. "I knew her only at the beginning, and again at the end, of her short life. And maybe the only thing I can add to what has been said here this afternoon is that she did not hesitate to sacrifice that life for a man whose name she never knew."

An hour later, in possession of a court order, I reluctantly visited Quinda’s quarters accompanied by her executor, and searched for the Tanner file. It was not there.

I hadn’t thought it would be. We never did learn what she’d done with it.

I inquired of the executor, and later of the family, whether I could have access to her private papers. It was a difficult request to honor, in light of the fact that I’d forced myself on them with a court order. They understandably refused, and a few days after her death, certain designated private documents, according to the wishes of the deceased, were burned.

I suspect they contained indirect evidence of her conniving: possibly some record of the preparation of the bogus simulations. In any case, I consoled myself with the knowledge that the location of the artifact was not being burned too: she obviously had known no more about that than I did.

That evening, there were two pieces of news. Patrols in disputed areas were being beefed up as a result of another clash near the Perimeter. Some observers thought the scare was being fanned by a government anxious to stem the political power of separatists throughout the Confederacy.

The other item came in the form of a message from Ivana: Hugh Scott’s house on Fishbowl had been sold.

The proceeds had been deposited in an account on Dellaconda! What more appropriate for the driven Scott than that he be found at last on Christopher Sim’s home world.

I was off again.