The public cages were not far.

You have to understand that Marakani is a decent, orderly city. Ka-wabe, like so many of the worlds of the Draconis Combine, is not rich in natural resources. Most of the people are poor, and the economy is dominated by a handful of big, military-run combines. There is a factory outside of Marakani that produces viden extensors for BattleMech containment dampers, and a modest wire drawing plant that gives the city its principal export. Most of Marakani's citizens are employed in one of those two plants, both of which are owned by the monolithic Ka-wanashi Enterprises. Those who don't work for the Company work on the agroplantations that surround Marakani like a patchwork quilt, irrigated green against the dusty tan of the Kawabean desert. Life is hard here, but it is satisfying as well. Marakani's population numbers 20,000 or less, and at times it seems that everyone living there knows everyone else.

Prefect Vander Hassan was not a native of Marakani, or even of Kawabe. He had been born and raised on neighboring Shaul Khala, and it was said that the malicious glint in his eye was that of the Saurimat.the predatory secret society of mercenary assassins native to that world. He had arrived on Kawabe, it was rumored, as hired bodyguard for the chief executive of Kawanashi Engineering. When the workers' revolt broke out at the Kawanashi plant in Eibo. Hassan was in the right place at the right time, managing to blunt the workers' rush toward the administration bunker with a heavy machine gun cradled in his massive arms...and to save Kawanashi's president from an unpleasant death at the hands of the mob at the same time. His position as Prefect over the Marakani Workers' District was said to be a reward for his services to the firm.

The title 'Prefect’ might be translated as 'chief of police’ on some worlds, or as 'mayor,' or simply as ‘chief bureaucrat.’

Hassan was something of all three, master of the local work force in the employ of Kawanashi Enterprises, keeper of the peace of our town, and our representative before Lord Hideshi, the Planetary Chairman.

Chairman Hideshi was the ruler of Kawabe. but he was far away in the capitol at Itamiyama. So far as we were concerned, Hassan was our absolute monarch, feudal lord and master of 20,000 souls.

He looked like an absolute monarch, too, when I brought Holmes before him late that afternoon, at the-Pretecture Headquarters on the hill above the town. The Judgement Hall was a place of austerity, of bare tile floors and a frosted glass ceiling that admitted diffuse, white sunlight. The few art objects on their pedestals about the room were enhanced by the spartan interior: a porcelain bowl so thin it was translucent, a tower of fantastic and chimerical beasts carved from jade, an alabaster vase of haunting simplicity. Hassan, whatever the people In the street said of the man, was a man of delicate artistic sensibilities. Dressed in his red robe of judgement, he reclined on the divan on its dais at the end of the hall.

Before him on a table were arranged the bottles and pouches Holmes had been carrying inside his robe when we'd arrested him. They were patent nostrums mostly, tonics and waters to promote health and heal sickness. There were a goodly number of charms as well, small, carved figurines hanging from silken scarves, designed to be worn about the neck to ward off evil or mechanical failure. The workmanship was quite good, and I wondered if Holmes had made the charms himself, or if he had bought a consignment from elsewhere and was peddling them as middle man.

It made little difference. The luck charms had not helped him.

Holmes made the required obeisance, then stood with a barely suppressed tremble, awaiting judgement. Among the scattering of minor nobles and Guidance Corpsmen in the hall, there was little doubt about what that judgement would be.

'Corpsman Yancey!’

I stepped forward, snapped my best parade-ground salute, and responded. 'Here. Lord!'

‘You were witness to my instructions to this person last week, were you not?*

'i was, Lord.' Hassan was going by the

book on this one. Could he have been sensing unrest among thecitizens under the hard hand of his rule? It was impossible to say. Certainly, in a situation where he was both accuserand arresting power, judgeand jury, he had to take care that his judgement appear fair, that it follow accepted and approved tradition.

‘Then you know that I, myself, commanded that he cease peddling his wares in the streets of this city.’ He indicated the table and the handful of wares displayed there. ‘He has continued to peddle his...wares despite our merciful warnings.’

'l heard your command. Lord. lt is true.'

Hassan turned on Holmes, who now was trembling openly. Then there can be but one judgement, is that not so?' He smiled, a sight to chill the soul.

‘Mercy!’ Holmes cried out, and he tell face down at the foot of the dais. ‘Mercy, for my family's sake!’

Hassan laughed. ‘Your family will be cared for, out of the munificence of the Company. Take him away.’

I was glad that my part in the business went no further than returning Holmes to his cage, that it was Hassan's chief executioner who took over from there. The man had been fairly warned, tried, and condemned by the proper civil authorities. There was certainly nothing I could do, no reason for me to attempt to obstruct justice.

Yet I wondered at the sickness in my soul as I gave Executioner Orioff the key to Holmes' cage.

‘Well, thankee!' Orioff said in his cheerful way. 'We'll give him tonight to think about it, and start first thing in the morning!'

I struggled not to be sick.

Such feelings had been becoming more and more common as I watched Lord Hassan secure and build upon his power in Marakani. The structure within which most of the citizens worked was no different than that in a thousand other towns and villages across Kawabe. no different, I daresay, than the conditions in tens of thousands of cities across the vast expanse of the mighty Draconis Combine. Marakani was dominated by Kawanashi Enterprises, a corporate entity that served as mother and father and family to us all. The corporate rule was, on the whole, benevolent. Corporate schools trained our children, corporate hospitals cared for our sick, corporate stores provided us with all of our needs, redeeming our pay chits with food and housing and the necessities of life. Those citizens who were not directly employed by the Company could barter for those services with produce or goods.

It was only reasonable that Kawanashi's directors did not care to see peddlers and street hawklings such as Holmes shuffling about the streets of Marakani, selling their goods for far less than the Company itself could afford to provide them. While Kawabe's ruling elite did not exactly discourage competition, such practices as deliberately undercutting the Company's prices in an effort to sell inferior goods were frowned upon. Peddlers like Holmes were encouraged to join the Company, in an effort to provide the citizens of the community with uniform excellence of goods and services for sale.

Unfortunately for Holmes, this wasn't possible. He'd been fired from a minor branch company belonging to Kawanashi Enterprises a couple of years before when he'd fallen behind in his rent. Unable to find other work in a town where non-Company jobs were rather scarce, to say the least, he'd been forced to go to work as a street salesman in order to keep his family fed...and to keep up with the debt he owed the Company. His records showed he'd been threatened with arrest a number of times already... usually when he was behind on his payments. Still, he might have been able to struggle along, until Prefect Hassan decided to shut down the city's independent merchants. Marakani's independents had been warned repeatedly for the past several weeks that they would have to pack up and move elsewhere, that their services would no longer be needed in this city. I. myself, had taken Holmes in only the week before, to hear Hassan's personal warning that he had to get out of town. If he chose to ignore that warning, it was his own look out, right?