Гэрет Уильямс - Темное, кривое зеркало. Том 5 : Средь звезд, подобно гигантам

He could speak Minbari fluently, of course. Or two dialects of it anyway. He had learnt the warrior caste dialect during the war, to be better able to communicate with prisoners. The worker caste dialect he had picked up here. It was not all that difficult.

He turned away from the risen sun and walked down towards the city. Yedor, the Minbari called it, the capital of their civilisation. It was a city older than any on Earth, a city built when humans had still not even fully comprehended their own world, let alone the mastery of space, a city of wonder and intrigue and ancient mystery.

And the human and Drakh fleets had all but annihilated it in a single day.

Not all of the city, admittedly. The Temple of Varenni had survived, and a few other buildings.

And now there were more.

Someone had built Yedor after all, those countless years ago. Who was to say they were not rebuilding over the ruins of an even older city? Everything had to begin somewhere.

For over a year David Corwin had been a pilgrim, seeking some sort of peace with the galaxy. He had not found it, not on Proxima, not during the Brakiri Day of the Dead, not in the vastness of space.

He had not found it here on Minbar either, but he felt he was getting close.

He took the same path he had before, several times over the past year. It was not the most direct, nor the safest, certainly not the quickest, but there was one reason and one reason alone that Senator Dexter Smith took this route from his office to the Pit Trap .

It brought him past a certain nondescript alley, one just like countless others here in Sector 301, aptly dubbed 'the Pit' until something had happened here that had changed everything.

This was where the Blessed Delenn had died and risen again.

The shrine had grown quite a bit since he had last been here. His duties in the Senate had kept him busy, and this was the first night he had had off in months. His first chance to come back here.

The shrine took up almost the whole alley now. There were pictures and drawings and poems and scribblings. There were quite a few other people here. There always were. The homeless — and Sector 301 still had plenty of them, although fewer than previously — slept here, claiming her presence gave them protection. Perhaps it did.

He paused, as he always did, and remembered this place the way it had been. He remembered the feel of the PPG in his hands, and the look in her eyes.

Then he remembered her beautiful green eyes filling with blood as her body fell.

I killed her. S he had told him to. The crowd — many of whom now worshipped here — would have torn them both apart if he had not. But he had still killed her, and nothing could undo that.

He sighed, and turned to leave. As he did so, he caught sight of a picture of himself pinned to the wall. He vaguely recalled that picture being taken. It had been for an interview with Humanity magazine.

Someone had scrawled the word 'Murderer' over it.

He left.

It was not a long walk from the shrine to the Pit Trap , and he made it in about ten minutes. It was busier than he remembered, and he wondered how much of that was due to the very public knowledge that he drank there. Celebrity was not something he liked. He had not liked it when he had been captain of the Babylon and he did not like it now, but he could not blame Bo for taking advantage, he supposed.

"Senator," said Jinxo, the barman. It was a sign of how much things had changed that Bo could actually afford to hire more staff. "They're waiting for you."

"I know, I know, I'm late." There was a bottle of Pit Bull on the bar almost instantly. As he always did, Smith offered to pay, and as always, Jinxo wouldn't take the money. Smiling as he swigged from the bottle, Smith walked past the bar into the back room, the one marked 'Private'.

"Hey, here you are at last," said a familiar voice. "Don't they have clocks in that posh part of town?"

"You and the horse you rode in on, Allan," Smith replied genially. He took the seat that had been set aside for him and leaned back in the chair, looking around the table.

Security Chief Zack Allan, his assistant Jack, and Bo himself. A pack of playing cards was placed beside Bo, as was a pile of counters. Everyone had a drink of some kind in front of them. "Prepare to lose all that you own," Zack said. "For tonight is poker night at the Pit Trap ."

"I dunno," Jack said. "I think I've already lost all I own."

"The way you play I'm not surprised." Zack looked up at Dexter. "So?"

"So what? Bo's the dealer for the first hand. You know that."

Zack rolled his eyes. "Not that. The other thing."

"Uh…. what other thing?"

"Oh, for the love of…. Here, give a minute." Zack bent down and picked up a newspaper from the floor at his feet. It was the Proxima Yesterday . Dexter caught the front page headline, and immediately wished he hadn't.

"Here we are," Zack said. "'War hero Senator Dexter Smith was spotted leaving the Dome One-o-five apartment of Captain Bethany Tikopai late last Wednesday night, fuelling rumours of a romance between the two. We've been unable to get in touch with either to comment, but friends of Senator Smith, who wished to remain anonymous, stated that he was 'head over heels' with the Earthforce Captain. There have been rumours linking Smith, who was voted the seventh sexiest man alive in a survey by For Her magazine four years ago and is expected to rank even higher in this year's survey, with a number of women over the last year, but nothing has developed into anything permanent. Could this be love at last for the high-profile Senator? We'll have to see his reaction when Captain Tikopai returns from her tour of duty at Kazomi Seven next month. And if he's feeling lonely in the meantime, we know several woman who will only be too happy to keep him company.'"

"Give me that!" Dexter snapped, snatching the paper from Zack. It was open at the gossip page, unsurprisingly. "Oh, for the love of Gandhi. Mental note: Get that Media Bill passed as soon as possible."

"So?" Bo asked.

"So what?"

"Is it true?"

"No, it's not true. We're just friends, that's all. We had dinner together."

"Oh," Zack said. "I see. Just dinner. Right." He started nodding, knowingly.

"She's not bad looking," Jack said. "I hear Ladded asked her for a photo-shoot and she turned them down."

"Did you see that picture of her in Humanity when the new uniforms came out last year?" Bo asked.

"Oh, did I ever?" Jack added. "Mamma mia! I wonder if I can get the missus a uniform like that?"

"Uh, did we come here to play cards, or to talk about my non-existent love life?" Dexter asked. "'Cause I can hear all the gossip I like in the Senate."

"No, we want the juicy details," Zack said. "Come in, indulge all us poor working-class plebs here. We don't get to move in the celebrity circuits like you do."

"Zack, we start playing now, or I tell everyone about you and that doctor from the underground clinic. What was her name again? Something Rosen?"

Zack coughed. "Ahem. Come on, Bo. Get dealing."

The chips were soon piled up and counted, while Bo began to shuffle. "So," Jack said. "Explain that dealer chip again?"

Everyone groaned. "Jack, that joke stopped being funny two hundred and sixty-four years ago," Zack said.

"No, it was funny then."

"No, it really wasn't."

Half an hour later everyone had gone through several bottles of beer, Jack had gone through half his chips, Bo three-quarters of his, and Dexter three full houses and a straight flush. He had always been good at poker, but he largely played it because it was a break from everything else in his life. No squabbling Senators. No watching Alliance advisors. No gossip columns. No kiss-and-tell revelations from women he had dated fifteen years ago.

Slowly he fanned his cards out, and listened to Jack raving about how wonderful his hand was, which meant it was the biggest pile of rubbish since Sector 301 after the refuse collectors strike of 2251. Jack had never managed a good poker face.

Zack raised, Jack matched it, Bo folded, and Dexter looked at his cards again. He matched, and raised again.

"You haven't got the cards," Zack said.

"Yes, I have. They're right here, in my hand. See. Five of them."

"Ah, you've got rubbish. Here, I'll match you, and raise another…. fifty."

Jack matched, and Dexter. "Off you go, Zack. Let's see them."

"Read 'em and weep, boys. Straight flush. Seven, eight, nine, ten and…. hey, where did the bloody ten go?"

"That looks like a three to me," Dexter observed. "A three of hearts as well."

"There was a ten here. The bloody ten of clubs."

"What, the one that was a part of your drivel last hand?"

Zack took a moment's realisation and then started swearing.

"'Read 'em and weep,'" Dexter said, chuckling.

"And then, he did," Bo pronounced.

"Yeah, yeah, a mistake that could have happened to anyone."

"Anyone who can't tell the difference between a three and a ten. Bo, never let this guy behind your bar."

"Fine, fine. Let's all have a laugh. Jack, try and knock the smile off his face. Tell me you've got something."

"Two pairs," Jack announced, laying them down. "Aces and twos."

Dexter nodded. "Not bad. Not half bad. I've got two pairs myself. Kings." He laid down the Kings of Hearts and Spades. "And…. er, Kings." Followed by the Kings of Clubs and Diamonds.

Zack groaned. "Can I owe you?"

"Zack, you already owe me…. let's see. Seventeen jillion zillion credits, otherwise known as the Gross Planetary Product of Proxima for the next seven years."

"Only Proxima. Get back to me when it's the GPP of somewhere important."

"Where's important?" asked a new voice, and everyone stopped. Someone was interrupting their poker session. They'd all left standing orders never to be interrupted during a poker session. Dexter had told his assistants to contact him only if the Minbari invaded, and nothing else.

"Have the Minbari invaded?" he asked the newcomer. He supposed it would have to be something pretty important for Julia to come here. She knew the significance of Poker Night, even if she didn't claim to understand it. Even if she wasn't legally old enough to enter the bar, not yet. It would be her eighteenth birthday in a couple of months. Dexter had already picked out what he hoped was a good present. Bethany had confessed to having no idea what to get her daughter.

Legally, of course, she wasn't old enough to be in the Proxima Security Force either, but there were always exceptions in Sector 301.

"Not that I know of," she replied dubiously. "Who's winning?"

"Funny story," Dexter began. Zack looked at him and held up the newspaper, glaring dire threats. "But not that funny. What's up?"

"Something you're going to want to see. You too, Boss. It's…. strange. Very strange."

"Well, who am I to pass up the call of serious strangeness?" Zack replied. "Lucky for you, Smith. I was going to clean you out next round."

"I'm not worried. I'd see you counting on your fingers to work out which number is ten."

"Remind me why I don't play this again?" Julia said.

"Guy thing," Dexter replied.

"Oh, definitely," Zack added. "Guy thing."

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

It seemed that everywhere he turned, Londo saw a place where someone had died. That corner, where Malachi had breathed his last. That room, where Dugari had been murdered. That doorway, where the guardsman had fought off the Shadow Criers.