第 21 页

We were seen by a Colonel Ibbet, a powerful, lean man in his forties who looked like he should have been leading the charge into the

Eye of Terror: He was courteous, but mistrustful.

'We have no files on illegal or suspect immigration.'

'Why is that, colonel?'

'Because it doesn't happen. The system does not permit it.'

'Surely there are unfortunate exceptions?'

Ibbet, his grey and white camoed uniformed starched and pressed so sharply you could have cut yourself on the creases, steepled his

fingers.

'All right, then,' I said, changing tack. 'What if someone wanted to get onto the planet anonymously? How could that be managed?'

'It couldn't,' he said. He wasn't giving at all. 'Every identity and visit-purpose is logged and filed and any infractions quickly dealt

with.'

'Then I'll start with the files annotating those infractions.'

RESIGNEDLY, IBBET SHOWED us into a codifier room and assigned us a military clerk to take us through the records. We sorted and

checked for about three hours, slowly becoming bored with the interminable lists of orbital boardings, air-space interceptions and

ground-based raids. I could tell that a thorough review of these records alone was going to take weeks.

SO THAT'S WHAT we did. We spent ten and a half weeks scouring the archives and catalogues of Kasr Derth, working in shifts and

living out of the quarters on the gun-cutter. Every few days, we returned to the Essene for a little rest and reflection. It was the dead of

winter by the time we were finished.

FOURTEEN

WINTER BRINGS A CHANCE.

THE DAMNED HAS A NAME.

THE PYLON AT KASR GESH.

WINTERTIDE ON CADIA.

There had been glinting ice-floes in the gun-metal waters of the Caducades that morning, and light snow had fallen on the moors. At

that time of year, the foul corona of the Eye of Terror was visible even during the fleeting hours of daylight. The unholy mauve

radiance of the nights became a violet fuzz in the cold daylight, like a badly-blotted ink stain on white paper.

It made us feel like we were under surveillance all the time. The Eye, bloodshot, angry, peering down at us.

Worst of all were the moor winds, cold and sharp as a Cadian's bayonet, blowing down from arctic latitudes. The high lakes were all

frozen now, and lethal pogonip fogs haunted the bitter heaths and uplands. In the Kasr itself, it seemed like the locals had a morbid

fear of heaters or window insulation.

Chilly gales breathed down the hallways of the minster and the Admin-istratum building. Water froze in the pipes.

Despite it all, the war-bells sounded every few days, and the moors rolled with the sounds of winter manoeuvres. I began to imagine

that the Cadians were simply shooting at each other to keep warm.

Ten and a half long, increasingly cold weeks after we had begun our systematic search of the Kasr's records, I was making my now

habitual morning walk from the minster of the Inquisition to the headquarters of the Interior Guard. I wore a thick fur coat against the

cold, and spike-soled boots to combat the sheet ice on the roads. I was miserable. The search had left us all pale and edgy, too many

fruitless hours spent in dark rooms.

There had been so many promising leads. Links and traces of the Sons of Bael, unauthorised starship traffic, suspicious excise logs.

They had all dwindled away into nothing. As far as we could make out, no living member of the Sons of Bael, or any living associate

or family member, remained. There had been no pylon-related cult activity, not even registered xeno-archaeological work. I had

interviewed specialist professors at the universitary, and certain tech-priests from the Mechanicus who were shown in the records as

having expert knowledge of the pylons.

Nothing.

With Inshabel, Nayl or Fischig, I had travelled the region, as far afield as Kasr Tyrok and Kasr Bellan. A worker in the gunshops of

Kasr Bellan, who had been identified as a Bael cult member, turned out to simply have the same name, misfiled. A wasted ten hour

round trip by speeder.

Aemos had constructed a codifier model by which we checked record anomalies against the timetable of past cult activity.

There seemed to be no correlation at all.

I WALKED UP the steps of the Ministry of Interior Defence, and submitted myself to the clearance check in the postern guardhouse. It

should have been a formality. I had been arriving at the same time almost every day for the last seventy-five. I even recognised some

of the guardsmen by sight.

But still, it was like the first time I had ever been there. Papers were not only stamped, but read thoroughly and ran through an anticounterfeit

auspex. My rosette was scrutinised and tagged. The duty officer voxed my details through to the main building to get

authorisation.

'Doesn't this ever bore you?' I asked one of the desk officers as I waited, folding my papers back into my leather wallet.

'Doesn't what bore me, sir?' he asked.

I HADN'T SEEN Ibbet since the first week. I'd been rotated between a number of supervisors. One told me it was because of shift

changes, but I knew it was because none of them liked to deal with an inquisitor. Especially a persistent one.

That morning, it was Major Revll who escorted me in. Revll, a surly young man, was new to me.

'How can I assist you, sir?' he asked curtly.

I sighed.

Open log books and data-slates were piled around the workstation where I had abandoned them the night before. Revll was already

calling for a clerk to tidy them away and make space for me before I could explain that I'd made the mess in the first place.

He looked at me warily. 'You've been here before?' I sighed again.

I HAD TWO HOURS. At eleven, I was due to meet Inshabel and Bequin and fly out to a village on one of the islands in the Caducades to

investigate a rumour that a man there knew something about smuggling. Another waste of time, I was sure.

I started in on the air-traffic day-book, reading through the lists of orbital transfers for a summer day two years earlier. Halfway down

the slate was an entry showing a shuttle transfer from an orbiting ship to a landing field near Kasr Gesh. Gesh was near to one of the

pylons frequented by the Sons of Bael. Moreover, on checking, I realised the date put it three days before the last incident of cult

activity at the pylon.

I stoked up the data-engine, and requested further information on the entry. I was immediately denied. I used a higher decrypt key, and

was shown a report that withheld both the name of the ship and the source of its authority. I began to get excited, and scrolled down.

Even the purpose of the visit was restricted.

Now I typed in the teeth of my highest decrypt key. The terminal throbbed and chattered, sorting through files and authorisations.

The name came up. My elation peaked, and plunged away.

Neve. The mysterious entry had been a record of a classified mission by the inquisitor general. Back to square one.

THE ISLAND WAS cold and bare. A small fishing community clung to the rim of the western bay. Inshabel swung the speeder down

onto the cobbled tideway where spread nets had gone stiff with ice.

'How much longer, Gregor?' Bequin asked me, winding her scarf around her throat.

'How much longer what?'

'Until we give up and leave? I'm so sick of this fate-forsaken world.'

I shrugged. 'Another week. Until Candlemas. If we haven't found anything by then, I promise we'll say goodbye to Cadia.'

THE THREE OF US trudged up the icy walk to a grim tavern overlooking the sea wall. Anchor fish, as tall as men, were hung outside,

salted and drying in the winter air.

The barman didn't want to know us, but his steward brought us drinks and led us through to a back parlour. He admitted that he had

sent the message about the smuggler. The smuggler was here to meet us, he said.

We entered the back parlour. A man sat by the roaring grate, warming his jewelled fingers at its flames. I smelled cologne.

'Good morning, Gregor,' said Tobias Maxilla.

Despite the shouting coming from the back parlour, the steward brought us herb omelettes and bowls of steaming zar-fin broth, along

with a bottle of fortified wine.

'Are you going to explain?' asked Inshabel tersely.

'Of course, dear Nathun, of course,' Maxilla replied, pouring a careful measure of wine into each glass.

'Be patient.'

'Now, Tobias!' I snapped.

'Oh,' he said, seeing my look. He sat back. 'I confess I have become despondent these last few weeks. You've been so busy and I've

just been waiting up there on the Essene… well, anyway, you've said a number of times that the answer you're searching for depended

on one key thing. It depended on you establishing a way of getting past this dire planet's obsessively tight security. Anonymously.

And I said to myself… "Tobias, that's what you do, even though Gregor doesn't like to think about it. Smuggling, Tobias, is your

forte." So I decided to see if I could smuggle myself down here. And guess what?'

He sat back, sipping his glass, looking disgustingly pleased with himself.

'You smuggled yourself onto the planet to prove it could be done?' asked Bequin slowly.

He nodded. 'My shuttle's hidden in the spinneys behind the village. It's amazing how many zipped mouths and blind eyes you can buy

with a purse of hard cash round here.'

'I don't know what to say,' I said.

He made an open-handed gesture. 'You told me weeks ago that the Interior Guard recognised no illegal or suspect immigration. Well,

I'm here today - literally - to prove that claim wrong. Cadia's a tough nut to crack, I'll admit. One of the toughest I've faced in a long

and naughty career. But not impossible, as you see.'

I sank my wine in a single gulp. 'I should sever my links with you for this, Tobias. You know that.'

'Oh, pooh, Gregor! Because I've shown up the Cadian Interior Guard as a bunch of fools?'

'Because you've broken the law!'

'Ah ah ah! No, I haven't. Bent it, possibly, but not broken it. My presence here is entirely legal, under both Cadian local and Imperial

general law.'

'What?'

'Come on, my old friend! Why do you think my shuttle wasn't blasted out of the heavens this morning by eager Cadian lightning

jockeys? That was a rhetorical question by the way. Answer… because when the interceptors came scrambling up to meet me, I

broadcast the right security clearance, and that contented them.'

'But the day codes are privileged! The counter-checks are triple! They are issued only to those with appropriately high credentials.

What authority could you possibly have used to get them?'

'Well, Gregor… yours, of course.'

IT HAD BEEN staring me in the face, and it took the grandstanding flamboyance of Maxilla, in his very worst showing-off mode, to

reveal it. The reason the Interior Guard had no file on illegal or suspect immigration was because there was nothing of that nature to

file. Those that tried to run the strict gauntlet of Cadian security and failed, died. The ones that got through were never noticed.

Because they were using high-level security clearances, masquerading as the sort of official visitor who would not be stopped.

People like me. People like Neve.

'I NEVER MADE this trip,' Neve said, staring steadily at the data-slate I was showing her. 'Or this.'

'Of course not. But someone borrowed your authority code. Used it to gain trans-orbital access. That's how they were getting in. Look

here, your code again, and again. And before that, the code headers of your predecessor, Gonfal. It goes back forty years. Each and

every flurry of activity from the Sons of Bael… and other cults… can be matched by space-to-surface transfers cleared as genuine

Inquisition flights.'

'Emperor protect me!' Neve looked up. She put down the data-slate and called hoarsely for a servitor to bring more lights into her

octastyle sanctum.

'But my authority code is protected. How was it stolen? Eisenhorn, yours was used to prove this. How was that stolen?'

I paused. 'It wasn't, not exactly. One of my associates borrowed it to prove the point.'

'Why doesn't that surprise me? Oh, no matter! Eisenhorn, there's a great deal of difference between you and me. You may have rogue

elements in your band who act behind your back in unorthodox, unilateral ways. I do not. My code could not have been abused so.'

'I accept your point, but it could. Who has access to your code?'

'No one! No one below me!'

'But above you?'

'What?'

'I said this could be one of ours. A senior inquisitor, a grandmaster even. Certainly a wily veteran with enough clout to pull the right

strings.'

That would require a direct override at the highest levels.

'Exactly. Let's look.'

IN THE END, that was my adversary's downfall. All the blood and fury and combat we had gone through was as nothing to this prosaic

clue that revealed his identity. To steal Neve's authority code, and the authority codes of her predecessors, my adversary had been

forced to use the clout of his own identity get into the files.

The record of that operation was encrypted, of course. Sitting side by side at the codifier in her sanctum's annex, Neve and I quickly

found it. It wasn't even hidden. He never thought anyone would look.

But still, it was encrypted.

The cryptology was beyond both me and Neve. But together, combining our ranks, we could request, via the Astropathicus,

permission to use the Inquisition's most powerful decryption keys.

It took five hours to approve our joint rating.

JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, a scribe from the Officio Astropathicus brought us the message slate. Midwinter winds shook the sanctum's

casements.

I was alone with Neve. We had felt it inappropriate to have company. This was a matter of the gravest import. We had talked, of this

and that, to pass the time, though both of us were restless and edgy. She poured generous glasses of Cadian glayva, which took the