Freedom's Fury (Spooner Federation Saga Book 3)

by Francis Porretto

  The young man inclined his head. “Then you’d better be willing to compensate me nicely, especially since there’s no one else around who could or would do it.”

  Dunbarton snorted. “I hardly think—”

  The young man rose and made directly for the door.

  “Please,” Dunbarton said. His guest glanced back over his shoulder, his hand on the doorknob. “Allow me to finish my thought.” He indicated the guest chair with a nod. The young man returned to it and reseated himself.

  “As I was about to say,” Dunbarton said. “I hardly think that will be a problem. I have discretionary funds for the purpose, and the service we’re discussing would be quite valuable to me. Shall we say...half a million?”

  The young man shook his head. “No. A million. Half up front.”

  Dunbarton peered at him balefully. “Do you seriously expect me to trust you with that much of my money? With half a million you could disappear entirely, without ever completing your task. What would I do then?”

  “Lick your wounds and resolve to improve your character judgment. But you needn’t worry about that. I need the whole million.” The nasty grin returned. “And I have strong personal reasons to want to do your ‘distasteful task,’ so you have that in your pocket, too.”

  He hit the mark there. Trust doesn’t really apply to situations like this. Motivation counts far more.

  “I had heard...something of the sort,” Dunbarton said at last. “Very well, then. One million, half to be paid up front. I assume you have an account set up for the purpose?”

  The young man nodded and passed a slip of paper across the desk. Dunbarton glanced at it and stuffed it into his breast pocket.

  “Be here tomorrow morning at eight hundred,” he said. “We’ll discuss the details then. By the way, do you go by Victor Kramnik or Victor Morelon?”

  “Neither,” the young man said. “Just Victor.”

  ====

  November 20, 1326 A.H., very early in the morning

  Nora remained firmly asleep, and Barton had had enough of scowling at the bedroom ceiling in the darkness. He rose as quietly as he could, donned a robe and slippers, and made his way down to the Morelon kitchen, intending to start a pot of coffee.

  He did not expect to find coffee ready and hot, or Emma ensconced at the long oaken table with a mug steaming before her. She’d left the overhead lights off, preferring the delicate illumination of a single candle. From the look on her face as he entered, she hadn’t expected him, either.

  “This family will never cease to surprise me,” he murmured. He fetched a mug from the cabinet, poured coffee for himself, and seated himself across from her. “What has you up well before the crack of dawn?”

  She grinned wanly. “Anxiety. Stress. Moral panic. A full bladder. You know, all the usual stuff.”

  “About the same here.”

  “Over Charisse?”

  He nodded. “I can’t decide whether I agree with the council’s decision...but I can’t honestly say that I’d have made a different one.”

  “All the same,” she said, “you had to be the hatchet man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re having some guilt over it.”

  “Yeah.”

  Her eyes twinkled. “Even though the vote, which you deliberately left yourself out of, was unanimous.”

  It goosed a chuckle from him. “Yeah. I know my vote wouldn’t have changed anything. So why have I spent the last five hours tossing and turning?”

  Emma snaked a hand across the space between them and took his hand in a gentle clasp.

  “Because,” she said, “like any good person, you hate to hurt people. Even people who just might deserve it.”

  “Just now,” he said, “I don’t feel much like a good person. I saw them off late yesterday, Em. Drove them to the train station myself. Helped them get their luggage onboard. Got off and watched the Spooner-be-damned thing fade into the sunset. And from the moment I got behind the wheel of the hovertruck to the moment the train was out of sight, I didn’t say one single word to either of them. I couldn’t think of what to say. What would be right, or constructive. So I said nothing.”

  She nodded. “Probably for the best.”

  “You think?”

  “Uncle Bart, you delivered a harsh message just the day before. Put them on notice that they were unwelcome. Basically cut Charisse off from any non-incidental contact with Clan Morelon, now and forever. After that, what could you possibly have said to make things better?”

  He sighed. “There you go again.”

  “Hm?”

  “Being wiser than your years.”

  She scowled. “Wiser? Wise-ass, maybe. Want to hear what has my gears grinding?”

  He peered at her through the gloom. “Hit me.”

  “I’ve been sleeping with Chuck. Since the day before yesterday.”

  Barton became immediately lightheaded.

  “Emma, was that...your idea?”

  She snorted. “It wasn’t his. Though he took to it enthusiastically enough, I can tell you that.”

  He found himself bereft of speech. She grinned wanly at him and chafed his hand.

  Presently she said “I had to do something, Uncle Bart. He was desolated. Worse than the day she told him she wasn’t his wife anymore. I thought he might self-destruct on the spot. The only thing I could think of was to love him, so that’s what I did.”

  “Is it working?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then why...”

  “Because it was a trademarked Emma Morelon impulse decision! Because it’s done and can’t be undone! What comes next? What have I committed myself to? If I stay with him, I’m blocking him from finding someone nearer to his own age and experience. If I treat it as a fling and just stroll away, it might crush him even worse than losing Charisse!”

  He laid his free hand over hers and squeezed gently, and she regained a measure of calm.

  “I remember your last serious impulse decision pretty well,” he murmured. “To become my scion. How would you say that’s worked out?”

  She peered at him curiously. “So far, so good. We’ve done some good work together. I’ve actually had a lot of fun at it. Why?”

  He grinned impishly. “You just used exactly the phrase I was hoping to hear. ‘So far, so good.’ As long as you’re alive and kicking, that will apply to every decision you make that you aren’t struggling that very moment to overturn. So how are things going with Chuck? Would you say the same?”

  Her face clouded with uncertainty. “Yeah.”

  “Okay. That’s check mark one.” He pantomimed checking a box on a form. “Second question: has either of you proposed to the other?”

  “No...”

  “So there are no firm commitments in either direction, right? Believe me, Chuck knows that quite as well as you and I. He would never presume otherwise.” Another check on the invisible form. “Third question: would you say the two of you are satisfied with this new relationship, at least for the present? No undue burdens or significant friction?”

  She nodded warily.

  “You’re three for three and rounding into the home stretch, Em. This is for the win: Are you loving him, or just having sex with his body?”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  “Well?”

  Her whisper seemed to require all the force she had in her. “Loving him.”

  “Grand prize.” He chafed her hand as he beamed at her. “Did you know that mine was an arranged marriage?”

  “What? No!”

  He nodded. “Absolutely. Nora and I had met, we had chatted a little, and we generally thought well of one another. But neither of us had any thought of marriage until Althea and Martin came to Kramnik House to broach the idea. Believe me, at first I was certain they were kidding. Our clans weren’t getting along at all at the time. There were grudges running between us that went back a thousand years, literally. But I was pushing forty, and getting
pretty desperate to be out from under Dad’s thumb—Al would tell you a better tale of it than I could—so I went along with it.” He shook his head. “I’ll never know why Nora went along with it. Frankly, I’m afraid to ask.”

  “You two,” she whispered, “are a dream couple. There’s no one here or anywhere to compare with you.”

  “Makes it hard to accept, I know.” He squeezed her hand again. “And I had to learn something that hadn’t occurred to me before. Something that every married person needs to know. Something that you seem to know already, even if you don’t yet realize it.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that?”

  “That ‘love’ is an active verb. It’s not some sort of dreamy mist that floats around you and him, spreading Dad and Patrice’s corn custard over everything. It’s something you do—something you’ve decided to do and set yourself to doing, hopefully with all your heart.

  “I suppose there are ways you could ‘do it wrong.’ I guess you could deceive yourself into thinking you were loving Chuck when you were really just using his body. But I know you pretty well, Em. I don’t think you’re prone to that sort of self-deception. So I predict that this will be all to the good, whether it runs a finite course or lasts forever.”

  A huge smile spread across her face. Relief and pleasure radiated throughout her being. Her giggle started. It infected him as well, and went on for a long time.

  When they had run down, she said “I hope that didn’t wake anybody.”

  He shrugged it aside. “This clan sleeps like the dead.”

  “You know,” she said, “if you ever get bored with being our patriarch, you should try giving advice to the lovelorn. You’ve got a talent for it.”

  “Hm. Is it a well compensated field?”

  She giggled again, briefly. “I’ll have to wait until I get your invoice.”

  They smiled at one another, all their tension dissolved, for a long, companionable spell, until Emma’s eyes changed and her demeanor became maximally alert.

  “What’s the matter?” Barton whispered.

  She released his hands, put a finger to her lips in an admonition to silence, and rose carefully from the table.

  “Someone just unlocked the main doors,” she mouthed. “Stay here.”

  * * *

  Victor closed the tall doors as silently as he could and scanned about him for any sign of wakefulness. As unlikely as it was at two hundred, there was always a possibility of a pathologically early riser in a clan as large as the Morelons.

  He saw nothing and no one.

  He crept up the main staircase, each step isolated from the next as he stopped and listened for fresh sounds of detection. There were none. The stairs themselves were well made, composed of carefully dried, meticulously fitted masonwood planks, and did not squeak beneath his tread.

  At the top of the staircase he peered down the long hallway, straining to see whether the doors to any of the offices or bedroom suites might be ajar, betraying an active resident within. There were none. No glimmer of light shone from any of the doorsills.

  The patriarch’s office was on the left, third from the stairs. The door was plain; only a resident, or a former clan member such as himself, would have known what was behind it. But Victor knew that the suite behind that door was one of the largest in the mansion. Barton was unlikely to have moved his furniture or his many, heavily stuffed file cabinets to smaller quarters.

  Millionaire-hood and a life of leisure, here I come. Hope you haven’t found yourself another horizontal dance partner, Carolyn. You’ll be sorry after this.

  He pulled the Dunbarton’s little jar from his pocket.

  Just pour it onto the knob, he said. Then get the hell out.

  “Out for a stroll, Victor?”

  The words were soft as satin. They froze his blood even so. He turned to find Emma two paces away, arms akimbo and thunder in her face.

  “Just back to pick up a few belongings, Em.” He did his best to smile.

  “Really? After so long?” Her smirk was devoid of humor. “We disposed of all your relics a while ago, when you seemed uninterested in retrieving them. You didn’t seriously believe we’d hold onto them forever, did you?” She nodded at the office door. “They wouldn’t be in there in any case. What’s in there that interests you?”

  “Oh, nothing.” He shrugged. “I’m just a little disoriented. My stuff’s really all gone?”

  Emma nodded. Her eyes darted to the Dunbarton’s jar. “And none of it would have fit in that little thing in any case. Just what do you have in there, Victor?”

  He snarled and hurled it at her head.

  Emma dodged the projectile effortlessly. Perhaps a quarter of a second later, Victor took a powerful blow, far more powerful than he could have imagined his former fiancé could deliver, directly to the point of his chin. His skull filled with blue and yellow streamers as he slumped to the floor.

  * * *

  Barton took the jar from Emma without comment. He glanced at Victor’s intricately bound form and repressed the sudden urge to shove the thing into the creep’s mouth.

  “Why so elaborate, Em?” He waved at the tight, complex webwork of rope that immobilized their unconscious captive.

  She shrugged. “Working off some mad, mostly. Hitting him just once didn’t do the job. Besides, I had a lot of rope to use up.”

  He snorted and peered at the little jar. “I don’t dare open this thing, do I?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Hm. Well, when actual daylight gets here, you and I will have a trip to take.”

  “To HalberCorp?”

  He nodded. “If Arthur had the least little thing to do with this, he’s going to rue the day he was born.”

  Emma grinned ferally. “Gotcha. And until then?”

  “Until then,” he said, “we take this bag of shit and store him somewhere safe, have some more coffee and maybe a muffin or two, and give thanks that Althea taught you all those handy dance steps.” He looked her full in the eyes. “She’d be very proud of you, you know.”

  Emma nodded. “I hope so. She’s my idol.” She giggled in the pleasure of anticipation. “We should let her know about this, shouldn’t we?”

  “Let’s have that coffee and muffins first.”

  “As you command, most high and beloved patriarch.”

  “Gahh!”

  ====

  November 20, 1326 A.H.

  “Arthur denies complicity in the attack,” Barton said. “I’m inclined to believe him. The jar contained a rather primitive biological. Dangerous, though.”

  Althea keyed the mike. “What would it have done?”

  “Arthur’s analyst called it a super-powered version of E. coli. It would have given me a case of the trots so bad that I’d dehydrate and die within three days.”

  “But primitive?”

  “That’s what he said. HalberCorp-style techniques and facilities would be wholly unnecessary to produce it. Some human excrement, a few dozen Petri dishes, some nutrient agar, and some patience are all it takes.”

  “Things are moving faster than I expected,” Martin said.

  Althea keyed the mike, said “Wait just a moment please, Bart,” and turned to her husband. “Meaning what?”

  Martin’s face was bleaker than winter in Thule.

  “There’s an old saying about revolution,” he said. “From Old Earth. ‘Do you plan to shoot at the king? A word of advice: don’t miss.’ Their first round never left the barrel, thanks to Charisse’s young man. Bart found out about it anyway, and let the conspirators know that he knew. Arthur Hallanson reacted contritely, given what Bart’s told us. But Alex Dunbarton seems to think he’s on borrowed time, just breathing out his last few breaths before the axe falls...unless he can wrest the axe from the man holding it.”

  Althea felt a chill spread through her.

  “You’re saying the attempts on Bart will continue until one of them gets him?”

  Martin n
odded. “Or the Dunbarton is executed.”

  She keyed the mike.

  “Bart,” she said, “you can’t act as if you’re above it any longer. It’s a vendetta. Even if it was never declared. You know what that means?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you understand what must be done?”

  “I do.”

  “Will you do it?”

  “I will.”

  “See Chuck right away. Tell him what’s going on, every last detail. He’ll prepare you. It won’t be easy.”

  “I know.”

  “Best of luck, Bart. All our love to you and the rest of the clan. Signing off.”

  Althea returned the mike to its hanger, turned once more to Martin, and clutched at his hands.

  “Oh my dear sweet God.”

  * * *

  Althea: Probe, there’s something I’d like to do, with your permission.

  Probe: What is it?

  Althea: Now that you’re anchored to the Relic, I’d like to string a hard link between you and our installation. It would permit easier communication between us. You wouldn’t have to activate your radio transmitter, and I wouldn't have to sit at this bleeding terminal.

  Probe: That is feasible. I have external ports through which I can transmit and receive signals of various kinds. A coaxial cable of no more than 75 ohms resistance would suit the purpose, whether for digital or analog communication.

  Althea: Analog? Would you be able to speak as organic sentients do?

  Probe: I believe so, Althea. Before I initiated contact with you, I spent a period absorbing analog radio signals from Hope, specifically to learn your language. I believe I can produce it without difficulty.

  Althea: Probe, you are a marvel. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life learning about you and your capabilities. He who designed you must have been a great genius.

  Probe: I have inferred as much, though I never became acquainted with him as I have with you.