"You shouldn't. They're the fortunes of war."
Farradyne roared, so loud that his voice echoed and reechoed up and down the ship. "Fortunes of war be damned!" Then he stopped suddenly and looked at her again. "War?" he asked. "Between whom or between what and where? Who and what are you and your ilk? I—" He sat down and put one hand to his head. Carolyn started to speak. "Charles—" but he looked up and said, "Shut the hell up and let me think!"
"But I—"
"Shut up or I'll slap you shut!" Farradyne meant it, and Carolyn must have understood that slapping her senseless did not conflict with his aversion to violence. Not now. Not any more.
He had enough evidence to make a shrewd guess if he could only sort out the hodgepodge, throw out the dross, hang the material end to end and then take an impersonal look at it to fill in the gaps.
Some of it had to do with a combined suicide and wanton mass-murder in a wrecked spacecraft; he should study that incident with the view of discovering why it was done, and not why it had been done to Charles Farradyne. There were the Nileses who probably went to church on Sunday, belonged to the Chamber of Commerce and the Ladies' Aid and the Civic Welfare and considered running hellflowers a proper business. And the daughter, Carolyn, who wanted marriage and a home and a bunch of kids to bring up into the same hellish business so well run by their grandfather—just as she had been raised. Something important hinged on the triple-toned voice which now had become more than a hasty impression made under stress and excitement. Women who were immune to the solar system's most devastating narcotic and used their immunity to deal in the things with safety, bringing ruin to other women. It was more than jealousy between women, it went farther than that. It was a form of warfare, and this idea indicated an organization large and well-integrated; capable of out-maneuvering capable and brilliant men who had dedicated their lives to stamping out the racket—and who died under the juggernaut instead of destroying it.
Well, there it was and what could he make of it?
No, there was more to be added. Brenner-Hughes, who tried to remove the control rods of the reaction pile, and who was immune to marcoleptine. That was an oddly shaped piece of the puzzle that suddenly dropped into place with a click and coupled up two isolated chunks to make one solid corner.
Farradyne put himself in the position of Professor Martin, who might have been a survivor of the Lancaster foundering. Martin might ask why someone had tried to kill him, just as Farradyne had so often asked himself why Party X had tried to kill Farradyne in the Semiramide. The answer was that Brenner-Hughes had not directed his efforts at Martin, but at Farradyne, who had some knowledge that was dangerous to the hellflower ring. Martin would have been the same sort of innocent victim to the second episode as Farradyne had been to the first. Party X had wrecked the Semiramide because there was someone aboard with dangerous knowledge. There was a coldly operating group of persons, immune themselves to drugs, who were efficiently undermining the rest of the human race by preying on weakness, lust and escapist factors that lie somewhere near the surface in the strongest of human characters.
He raised his head and looked at Carolyn Niles.