Suzanne waved Dunham to the chair facing the windows, with Saaret on his right hand and she on his left.
“Now, Bobby, I’ve already warned Geoffrey there’s to be no shop talk. You both can get enough of that downstairs. Nothing current, or you will be wearing your soup. Both of you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they both said together, then laughed.
“Well, then, I have a question I hope won’t violate the rules,” Dunham said. “Geoffrey, how did you become the Chairman of the Council at such a relatively young age?”
“Forty-six. Actually, the youngest Chairman in the history of the Council. I would have been the longest-serving, too, had the Council not been disincorporated.”
“Careful,” Suzanne said menacingly.
“Yes, dear. It’s a long story, Bobby, but it starts with my father. He fought his way up through the politics to become Councilor for the Treasury. That’s where the power is, because that’s where the money is. You can make or break almost anybody from there. He had put off marriage to concentrate on his career.
“When Father did marry, at age forty-one, he married a woman twenty years his junior. I think she kept him young. I came along soon after.”
The staff came in and served them dinner while Saaret talked. Tonight’s dinner was beef tenderloin tips in a Bourbon mushroom sauce, served over egg noodles, with fresh bread – still warm, in fact – a garden salad, and peach pie for dessert.
“Now, I was the product of a system of privilege our last two Empresses pretty much did away with. I was put on the Imperial payroll as a junior administrator in the Treasury Department when I was born. I attended the best private school in Imperial City, sidestepping the Imperial curriculum entirely, and received a scholarship in government finance and Imperial history to the Imperial University of Sintar. I went on to get the Masters degree in finance, and I was out of college and married to Suzanne by the age of twenty-one.
“I then went into the Treasury Department to begin serving in the position I actually already held but had never done, senior administrator. Luckily, I didn’t make any youthful mistakes fatal to my prospects.”
“Oh, but you’re leaving out the best part, Geoffrey,” Suzanne said. “Bobby, when Geoffrey went to the Treasury Department, he went out of his way to look older than he was.”
“He did?”
Saaret nodded, but Suzanne went on.
“Oh, Bobby, he was shameless. He shaved the top of his head and added grey at his temples.”
“Don’t forget the age spots,” Saaret put in.
Suzanne laughed.
“I married him at the end of college, and two weeks later, he was in his forties.”
Dunham laughed.
“It wasn’t so hard to believe,” Saaret said. “By that time, my father was in his sixties, and had been Councilor for the Treasury for over twenty years. Suzanne did not age herself –“
“I should say not.”
“– and she just looked like my much younger wife, much as Father’s was. Like father, like son. You know.”
Saaret shrugged.
“I moved up steadily in the Treasury Department, much of which was based on my seniority. On the side, I studied Imperial history. How the government worked, when it worked. Who did what to whom, when, and for how much.
“Ultimately, I became Assistant Councilor for Treasury. When my father finally retired at age seventy-seven, after thirty-six years as Councilor for Treasury, I was named to his place. Too many people owed him too many favors for that not to go through.”
“So you became Councilor at age–?” Dunham asked.
“Thirty-five. One of the youngest ever. And I controlled the Treasury. Between that and my twenty-year study of Imperial history, I was a force to be reckoned with on the Council, even as young as I was. Of course, most people didn’t realize how young I was, and, even if they knew, people tend to react more to appearances than facts.”
“And he looked like he was in his fifties,” Suzanne put in.
“With a beautiful trophy wife twenty years his junior,” Saaret said.
“The answer is no,” Suzanne said.
“The answer to what?” Saaret asked.
“To whatever you’re trying to butter me up for.”
Saaret and Dunham both laughed.
“So then there was Chairman,” Dunham prompted.
“Yes. After eleven years as Councilor for the Treasury, the Chairmanship opened up. There were a lot of contenders, of course. There always are. But so many people owed me favors, and I had done well by so many people, I was the least objectionable candidate to the greatest number of Councilors, and I was elected Chairman when I was forty-six.”
“And he finally tapered off the cosmetic aging,” Suzanne said.
“Yes. I looked like I was in my mid-sixties when I was elected Chairman, and I stayed in my mid-sixties for twenty years, until my actual age caught up with me. The other Councilors thought I would never get old.”
“That’s a fascinating story, Geoffrey,” Dunham said.
“What about your story, Bobby?” Suzanne asked.
Dunham told his story, of hunting from the age of six, of Dee’s disease and his role in its cure, of Dee’s engineering their scholarships to Sintar together, of meeting Cindy, of his time in the Imperial Marines. He choked up a bit when talking about Cindy, but soldiered through. He also added his father’s revelation about Aunt Martha and the deaths of her attackers, and ultimately their relatives, at his hand.
“So the Imperial Council attacked the family of a second-generation feudist from hill country,” Saaret said, shaking his head. “Well, I warned them.”
Suzanne reached across and slapped his hand on the table.
“What I find so interesting is you were both men acting well above their age,” Suzanne said. “Bobby, you were hunting from the age of six, took Deanna six miles into town for the Melsbach cure when you were just fourteen, were a year ahead when you entered the Imperial Marine Academy, and already a crack shot to boot. And we know about your many subterfuges, Geoffrey.”
“Mine were less heroic,” Saaret said. “Pretending to be older than you are is not the sort of things one makes statues of.”
“I don’t know,” Dunham said. “I just did what seemed the right thing at the time.”
“And you have good instincts and great values,” Saaret said. “Just stick with them, Bobby. You’ll do right by everybody.”
Salad and dinner and dessert had all come and gone by this point.
“Well, I should probably be getting on,” Dunham said. “Thank you so much. This has been much more enjoyable than eating alone could ever be.”
“We should make it a regular occurrence, Bobby,” Suzanne said. “Rather than you eating alone all the time, and the same for us. Twice weekly, perhaps.”
“That would be great, Suzanne. Thanks again.”
“All right, everybody,” Markov said. “If I can have your attention for a moment.”
The denizens of the zoo turned toward Markov. He had another fellow with him, who looked to be in his early thirties, tall and fit, with black hair and brown eyes.
“I’ve got a new guy here, Bob Furlan. He was in the Imperial Marines and has fourteen years in Imperial service. He’s got another big project going on, but he has some extra time once in a while and I figured we could use some more military experience in here. Anyway, if you need some grunt-level military perspective in what you’re doing, he’s your guy.”
Dunham waved a hand.
“All right, everybody,” Markov said. “That’s it. Thanks.”
Markov turned to Dunham.
“All right, Bob. I’ll see you around,” Markov said and disappeared as he dropped out of VR.
Dunham turned from Markov back to the room and saw a girl wave at him.
“Bob!” she called. “Over here.”
Dunham walked over to the table where she and two other people, a guy and another gi
rl, were sitting.
“Call me Bobby.”
“All right, Bobby, have a seat. We have some questions for you.”
Dunham took a seat and she launched right in.
“What we’re doing is working on the division of the logistics support groups that feed the military. There’s too many of them to be in one working group, but we can’t figure out how else to structure them.”
She pointed at a diagram displayed on the table.
“You see, here we have ....”
Dunham spent two hours in the zoo that day, even while he physically sat in his office on the Imperial office floor, the two Imperial Guardsmen looking on impassively.
A Chance Encounter
It was a beautiful Saturday. The sun was out, and a shower on Friday evening had cleaned the air and left a fresh smell. Dunham had had the window wall in his sitting room open all morning, as well as in his dining room during breakfast and lunch.
It was early afternoon, and he now steeled himself for the one thing he had not been able to bring himself to do during the seven weeks since the Council Revolt: go up on the roof. The rooftop gardens had been the foursome’s favorite place. It was full of memories – happy ones, as Suzanne had said, but that made it all the more emotionally treacherous.
He was wearing his lounging clothes – an Imperial Marine-issue T-shirt, MCU fatigue pants, and sandals on bare feet – and his hair was uncombed other than the simple expedient of running his hands through it.
He walked over to the rebuilt escalator and stared at it for a long time. Hell, just get it over with. He pushed the button and the escalator started up. He rode it to the top and stepped off in the glass cupola as he had so many times before.
Dunham turned to the Imperial Guardsmen in the cupola with him.
“Remain here.”
He took a deep breath and stepped out into the gardens.
His wanderings took him past the pool. The water was clean and sparkling. Out of curiosity, he looked in the cabana. Above the shelf where four name tags had once stood, there was now just one: ‘His Majesty.’ Two swimming suits were there – one briefs, one trunks – in case he wanted to swim.
He walked further, until he came to the fire pit around which they had so often sat on cool evenings. He sat there now, leaned back and closed his eyes, and just felt the sun on his face. He could almost imagine them there with him. Dee’s calm voice, Cindy’s frenetic city pacing, Sean’s slow drawl. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he fully realized, finally and utterly, that he would never hear any of them again.
Dunham must have dozed off there, leaned back in the deck chair. He woke to the sound of a voice singing, a trick of the wind blowing over the twenty-foot glass wall that protected the gardens from the winds three hundred feet above ground level. Great. Now I’m hearing things.
No, there it was again.
He got up, and walked down the lane in the direction of the faint sound. It came and went, depending on the breeze and the vegetation, but it gradually grew louder as he approached. And then he was there. The voice was coming from right around these shrubs, from the meadow there.
He edged just his head around the corner, and saw a young woman dancing and singing in the meadow. She was barefoot, wearing only a sundress, and he got glimpses of slender legs flashing as she danced and the dress flared. She was lithe, not unlike Cindy, but with brown hair and a complexion as light as Dee’s.
He felt like a peeping tom, so he walked out from behind the bush and simply stood watching. At some point, she realized he was there and stopped.
“Oh. What are you doing here?”
He started to say something, but she cut him off.
“This is the Emperor’s private gardens. You shouldn’t be up here.”
Dunham realized that, dressed as he was, she hadn’t recognized him. For that matter, she may never have seen a photograph of him. The coronation was still over two months off. After the success of his incognito trip to the zoo yesterday, he decided not to tell her who he really was. Not entirely, anyway.
“I, uh, I’m in charge of the building.”
“Oh. Well, that’s different then. I’m one of the gardeners. You can’t really be a good gardener if you don’t love a garden. Isn’t it beautiful?”
“It’s lovely. You’re to be commended.”
“Well, mostly I help out my father. He’s the head gardener for these gardens. Has been since I was a little girl. Now I work in palace finance, and I don’t get up here during the work week anymore.”
“I see.”
Dunham sat down on the bench at the edge of the trail, put there to allow someone to contemplate the meadow as a resting point on their walk. The young woman – twenty-five, maybe – came up and sat on the other end of the bench. She was a little winded from her dancing.
“You see, the Empress – the Emperor, now – works all day during the week, so that’s when we would come up and work in the gardens. My father and his crew still do. But now I work nine-to-five at a desk, so I can only come up on the weekends. Sometimes my father has something I can help with, but mostly I just sneak up here to the gardens to enjoy them.”
“Well, it’s nice you can do that.”
“It’s easier now, because the Emperor doesn’t come up here. They used to come up here all the time. The Empress and her husband and her brother and his wife. That’s what my father told me. He was very proud that they enjoyed the gardens so much. That he could make the gardens such a wonderful escape from her duties for Her Majesty. But now, they sit unused.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Well, I can imagine that for him it might hurt to come up here. If they had such good times here, then how would it feel to come up here, now that they’re all gone?”
She took a deep breath and looked around at the gardens and the meadow before she went on.
“I think it would be a help, myself, but who knows. Everybody’s different.”
“Well, that’s certainly true,” Dunham said.
“Well, I should be going. It was nice meeting you, Mr?”
“Bobby. Bobby Allen.”
“Amanda Peters.”
She shook his hand and got up from the bench.
Afraid she would disappear as ephemerally as she had appeared, Dunham thought quickly.
“Amanda.”
She turned back to him.
“Yes?”
“Would you like to have a picnic up here? With me? Say, tomorrow? I’ll bring the food.”
“Why, yes, Bobby Allen. That sounds like fun.”
“Here then. This meadow. This same time?”
“I’ll see you then.”
With that, she turned away and was off down the path, half skipping, half dancing, and singing once again.
Dunham sat on the bench and listened to her singing until it faded away into nothing.
That evening, Dunham put in an order for a picnic lunch for two, and requested typical picnic fare – the sort of thing they served at town picnics in Craigs Notch when he was growing up. Small sandwich triangles of sliced chicken and ham and beef, with cheese and either mayo or Dijon mustard, some sort of potato salad, some apples, and cookies for dessert. He had never been much of a drinker, so he passed on the idea of wine and asked for pink lemonade.
He skipped normal lunch, having had a Sunday breakfast already, and, at two o’clock, the staff brought up the requested picnic in a wicker picnic basket.
Heart pounding, he pushed the button for the escalator to the roof.
Dunham found her there, sitting on the bench where they had talked yesterday. She was dressed as yesterday, barefoot and in a sundress, as was he, in a T-shirt, MCU fatigue pants, and sandals.
“Ah, you’re here already.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I missed hearing your singing, and seeing you dancing down the lane.”
“You’re a sweetheart, Bobby. An incurable romantic. I can tell.”
“It’s true, Amanda. Guilty as charged.”
They walked along the lane between the bushes until they were at a mowed, grassy spot. It was on a slight rise to give a view of the meadow and its flowers.
“Here we are,” Peters said. “Now let’s see what we have here.”
Dunham set the picnic basket down. Peters opened the picnic basket and pulled out a red-and-white-checked gingham table cloth.
“Ah. Very traditional. See. I told you. Incurable romantic.”
She snapped the tablecloth out, and it was a big one. Big enough for them both to sit on with their lunch spread between them. They lounged on the tablecloth and began rummaging in the picnic basket for food and drinks.
“My word. Look at all this stuff,” Peters said.
“Well, you wouldn’t want to be hungry after a picnic. That’s not traditional.”
They nibbled and noshed, and drank pink lemonade, there in the shade, looking out at the meadow flowers bathed in sunlight. They didn’t talk much, other than the occasional ‘Oh, try one of the ham ones, they’re good’ or ‘More lemonade?’
When they had eaten, Dunham stretched out on his back on the tablecloth, nibbling on a cookie. Peters pushed the basket to the other side of the tablecloth and lay on her side alongside him. He could feel the heat of her. He closed his eyes and sighed in contentment.
She pulled his arm under her head, using his bicep as a pillow, and considered him.
“You know, Bobby Allen, it is not good to build a relationship on a lie.”
“I know.”
That was interesting. He didn’t argue with her.
“I checked with a friend in personnel. There is no Robert Allen on the palace payroll. No Allen at all, as a matter of fact.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Because you seem nice. There’s something about you I like. Strong but sensitive.”
“You weren’t afraid to meet me alone?”
“Afraid? Of you? Here? No, no, and no. These gardens are monitored all day and night by the Imperial Guard. If I called for them now, they would show up in minutes. But I’m not afraid of you. Besides, I know your secret.”
Tyrant Page 11
