“Where do these Western Sect types keep themselves on Earth?”
LaNague's smile faltered. “Most of them are gone. We-they never took to violence too well. They were gobbled up-destroyed. Tolive is just about the only place left where Western Sect Kyfho is practiced.” He turned away. “Let's go.”
After speaking briefly to a small knot of the adults on the corner, obviously thanking them, he moved toward the now deserted street, motioning Broohnin to follow.
“Come. Time to see the rich man.”
THEY WERE THREE KILOMETERS up in the cloud-cluttered sky, heading southeast at full throttle. The Bosyorkington megalopolis had been left behind, as had the coastal pile-dwelling communities and the houseboat fleets. Nothing below now but the green algae soup they still called the Atlantic Ocean.
“He live on a boat?”
LaNague shook his head.
“Then where're you taking us?” Broohnin demanded, his gaze flicking between the map projected on the flitter's vid screen and the rows of altocumulus clouds they were stringing like a needle through pearls. “There's nothing out here but water. And we'll never reach the other side.”
LaNague checked the controls. “Watch up ahead.”
Broohnin looked down toward the ocean.
“No,” LaNague told him. “Ahead. Straight ahead.”
There was nothing straight ahead but clouds. No. there was something-they speared into a patch of open air, and there it was, straight ahead as LaNague had said: a sprawling Tudor mansion with a perfect lawn and rows of English hedges cut two meters high and planted in devious, maze-like patterns. All floating three kilometers in the sky.
“Ah!” LaNague said softly at Broohnin's side. “The humble abode of Eric Boedekker.”
CHAPTER NINE
Competition is a sin.
John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Eric Boedekker's home sat in a shallow, oblong, six-acre dish rimmed with batteries of anti-aircraft weapons. The general public looked on the skisland estates as mere toys for the obscenely rich, totally devoid of any practical value. The general public was wrong, as usual.
“Looks like a fort,” Broohnin said as they glided toward it.
“It is.”
Members of the uppermost layers of Earth's upper-upper class had long ago become regular targets of organized criminal cartels, political terrorists, and ordinary people who were simply hungry. Open season was declared on the rich and they were kidnapped and held for ransom at an alarming rate. The electronic currency system, of course, eliminated the possibility of monetary ransom, and so loved ones were held captive and returned in exchange for commodities useful in the black market, such as gold, silver, beef.
Huge, low-floating skislands had long been in use as vacation resorts, guaranteeing the best weather at all times, always staying ahead of storms and winter's chill. Seeing the plight of the very rich, an enterprising company began constructing smaller skislands as new homes for them, offering unparalleled security. The skisland estates could be approached only by air, and were easily defensible against assault.
There were a few drawbacks, the major one being the restriction from populated areas, which meant any land mass on the planet. Huge gravity-negating fields were at work below the skislands and no one knew the effects of prolonged exposure to the fields on human physiology. No one was volunteering, either. And so the skislands were all to be found hovering over the open sea.
A holographic message was suddenly projected in front of LaNague's flitter. Solid-looking block letters told them to approach no further, or risk being shot from the sky. A vid communication frequency was given if the occupants wished to announce themselves. LaNague tapped in the frequency and spoke.
“This is Peter LaNague. I desire a personal meeting with Eric Boedekker on a matter of mutual interest.”
There was no visual reply, only a blank screen and a curt male voice. “One moment.” After a brief pause, the voice spoke again. “Audience denied.”
“Tell him I bring word from Flint,” LaNague said quickly before the connection could be broken, then turned to Broohnin with a sour expression. “‘Audience denied’! If it weren't so vital that I see him, I'd-”
A bright crimson light began blinking on and off from the roof of a squat square structure to the left of the main buildings. The male voice returned, this time with a screen image to go with it…a young man, slightly puzzled, if his expression was a true indicator.
“You may land by the red flasher. Remain in your flitter until the escort arrives to take you inside.”
THEY WALKED IDLY about the great hall of the reconstructed Tudor mansion, waiting for Boedekker to appear. After being carefully scanned for anything that might conceivably be used as a weapon, they had been deposited here to await the great man's pleasure.
“He doesn't appear to be in much of a hurry to see you,” Broohnin said, staring at the paintings framed in the gold leaf ceiling, the richly paneled walls, the fireplace that was functional but unused-nobody on Earth burned real wood any more.
LaNague appeared unconcerned. “Oh, he is. He's just trying hard not to show it.” He ambled around the hall, thin arms folded across his chest, studying the collection of paintings which seemed to favor examples of the satyr-and-nymph school of art.
“Boedekker's probably one of your heroes, isn't he?” Broohnin said, watching LaNague closely for a reaction. He saw one he least expected.
LaNague's head snapped around; his thin lips were drawn into an even thinner line by anger. “Why do you say that? Are you trying to insult me? If you are-”
“Even I've heard of Eric Boedekker,” Broohnin said. “He singlehandedly controls the asteroid mining industry in Sol System. He's rich, he's powerful, he's big business…everything you Tolivians admire!”
“Oh. That.” LaNague cooled rapidly. He wasn't even going to bother to reply. Broohnin decided to push him further.
“Isn't he the end product of all the things you Tolivians yammer about-free trade, free economy, no restrictions whatsoever? Isn't he the perfect capitalist? The perfect Tolivian?”
LaNague sighed and spoke slowly, as if explaining the obvious to a dim-witted child. It irked Broohnin, but he listened.
“Eric Boedekker never participated in a free market in his life. He used graft, extortion, and violence to have certain laws passed giving him and his companies special options and rights of way in the field of asteroid mineral rights. He used the Earth government to squash most of the independent rock jumpers by making it virtually impossible for them to sell their ore except through a Boedekker company. Nothing you see around you was earned in a free market. He doesn't eliminate his challengers in the marketplace by innovations or improvements; he has his friends in the government bureaus find ways to put them out of business. He's a corruptor of everything a Tolivian holds dear! He's an economic royalist, not a capitalist.”
LaNague paused to catch his breath, then smiled. “But there's one Earth law even he hasn't been able to circumvent, despite every conceivable scheme to do so: the one person/one child law.”
“I would think that'd be the easiest to get around.”
“No. That's the one law that can have no exceptions. Because it affects everyone, applies to everyone the same. It has been held as an absolute for as long as any living human can remember. If you allowed one person to have one extra child-no matter what the circumstances-the entire carefully structured, rigidly enforced population control program would fall apart once word got out.”
“But he has two children…doesn't he? What's he want another for?”
“His first born was a son, another Eric, by his second wife. When they were in the process of dissolving their marriage, they fought over custody of the child. With Boedekker pulling the strings, there was no chance that the wife would keep the boy, even though by Earth law he was rightfully hers because she had him by intrauterine gestation. In a fit of depression, the woman poisoned herself and the child.<
br />
“He fathered a second child, a girl named Liza, by his third wife. Liza was gestated by extrauterine means to avoid potential legal problems should the third marriage break up-which it did. She grew to be the pride of his life as he groomed her to take over his mining empire-”
“A girl?” Broohnin said, surprise evident on his face. “In charge of Boedekker Industries?”
“The pioneer aspects of out-world life have pushed women back into the incubator/nest-keeper role, and it'll be a while before they break out of it again. But on Earth it's different. Anyway, Liza met a man named Frey Kirowicz and they decided to become out-worlders. It was only after they were safely on Neeka that she sent her father a message telling him what he could do with Boedekker Industries. Eric tried everything short of abducting her to get her back.
And eventually he might have tried that had she not been accidentally killed in a near-riot at one of the Imperial garrisons on Neeka.”
“I remember that!” Broohnin said. “Almost two years ago!”
“Right. That was Eric Boedekker's daughter. And now he has no heir. He's been trying for an exemption from the one person/one child rule ever since Liza ran off, but this is something his money and power can't buy him. And he can't go to the out-worlds and father a child because the child will then be considered an out-worlder and thus forbidden to own property in Sol System. Which leaves him only one avenue to save his pride.”
Eric Boedekker entered at the far end of the room. “And what avenue is that, may I ask?” he said.
“Revenge.”
Like most Earthies, Eric Boedekker was clean-shaven. Broohnin judged his age to be sixty or seventy standards, yet he moved like a much younger man. His attire and attitude were typical of anyone they had seen since their arrival from the out-worlds. Only his girth set him apart. The asteroid mining magnate's appetite for food apparently equaled his appetite for power and money. He took up fully half of an antique love seat when he sat down, and gestured to two other chairs before the cold fireplace.
“Neither of you appears to be a Flinter,” he said when Broohnin and LaNague were seated across from him.
“Neither of us is,” LaNague replied. “I happen to be a Tolivian and have been in contact with representatives from Flint.”
“May I assume that Flint has changed its mind in regard to my offer last year?”
“No.”
“Then we have nothing further to discuss.” He began to rise from the seat.
“You wanted the Outworld Imperium crushed and destroyed, did you not?” LaNague said quickly. “And you offered the inhabitants of Flint an astonishingly large sum if they would accomplish this for you, did you not?”
Boedekker sat down again, his expression concerned, anxious. “That was privileged information.”
“The Flinters brought the offer to a group with which I am connected,” LaNague said with a shrug. “And I'm bringing it back to you. I can do it for you, but I don't want your money. I only want to know if you still wish to see the Outworld Imperium in ruins.”
Boedekker nodded twice, slowly. “I do. More than anything I can think of. The Imperium robbed me of my only surviving child. Because of it, I have no heir, no way to continue my line and the work I've begun.”
“Is that all? You want to bring down a two-hundred-year-old government because of an accident?”
“Yes!”
“Why didn't you try to bring down the Earth government when your first child died?”
Boedekker's eyes narrowed. “I blamed my wife for that. And besides, no one will ever bring the Earth bureaucracy down…one would have to use a planetary bomb to unravel that knot.”
“There must be more to it than that. I'll have to know if I'm to risk my men and my own resources-a lot of my plan depends on you.”
“You wouldn't understand.”
“Try me.”
“Do you have any children?”
“One. A daughter.”
Boedekker's expression showed that he was as surprised as Broohnin. “I didn't think revolutionaries had families. But never mind…you should then be able to understand what it's like to groom a child all her life for a position and then have her run off to be a farmer on the edge of nowhere!”
“A daughter isn't a possession. You disowned her?”
“She didn't care! She kept saying.” His voice drifted off.
“She tried for a reconciliation?” Boedekker nodded. “She wanted me to come out and visit her as soon as they had a place of their own.” Tears began to well in his eyes. “I told her she'd be dead and buried out there before I ever came to visit.”
“I see,” LaNague said softly.
“I want to see that pompous ass, Metep, and his rotten Imperium dead and forgotten! Buried like my Liza!”
Broohnin watched and marveled at how LaNague had turned the conversation to his advantage. He was the guest of an extraordinarily powerful man, yet he was in complete control of the encounter.
“Then it shall be done,” LaNague replied with startling offhandedness. “But I'll need your cooperation if I'm to succeed. And I mean your full cooperation. It may cost you everything you own.”
It was Boedekker's turn to shrug. “I have no one I wish to leave anything to. When I die, my relations will war over Boedekker Industries, break it up and run home with whatever pieces they can carry. I'll be just as happy to leave them nothing at all. BI was to be my monument. It was to live long after I was gone. Now.”
“I'm offering you the downfall of the Imperium as your monument. Interested?”
“Possibly.” He scrutinized LaNague. “But I'll need more than grandiose promises before I start turning my holdings over to you. Much, much more.”
“I don't want your holdings. I don't want a single Solar credit from you. All you'll have to do is make certain adjustments in the nature of your assets, which need never leave your possession.”
“Intriguing. Just what kind of adjustments do you have in mind?”
“I'll be glad to discuss them in detail in private,” LaNague said with a glance at Broohnin. “I don't wish to be rude, but you haven't reached the point yet where you can be privy to this information.”
Broohnin shot to his feet. “In other words, you don't trust me!”
“If you wish,” LaNague replied in his maddeningly impassive voice.
It was all Broohnin could do to keep from reaching for the Tolivian's skinny throat and squeezing it until his eyes bulged out of their sockets. But he managed to turn and walk away. “I'll find my own way out!”
He didn't have to. An armed security woman was waiting on the other side of the door to the great hall. She showed him out to the grounds and left him to himself, although he knew he was constantly watched from the windows.
It was cold, windy, and clear outside the house, but Broohnin found his lungs laboring in the rarefied air. Yet he refused to go back inside. He had to think, and it was so hard to think through a haze of rage.
Walking as close to the edge as the meshed perimeter fence would allow, he looked out and down at the clouds around the skisland. Every once in a while he could catch a glimpse of the ocean below through a break. Far off toward the westering sun he could see a smudge that had to be land, where people like him were jammed so close together they had to go on periodic sprees of violence-short bursts of insanity that allowed them to act sane again for a while afterward. Broohnin understood. Understood perfectly.
He looked back at the mansion and its grounds, trying to imagine the incomprehensible wealth it represented. He hated the rich for having so much more than he did. Another glance in the direction of the megalopolis that had so recently endangered his life and he realized he hated the poor, too…because he had always found losers intolerable, had always felt an urge to put them out of their misery.
Most of all, he hated LaNague. He would kill that smug Tolivian on the way back. Only one of them would return to the out-worlds alive. When they made their fi
rst subspace jump he'd-
No, he wouldn't. The Flinters would be awaiting LaNague's return. He had no desire to try to explain the Tolivian's death at his hands to them.
He cooled, and realized he didn't trust LaNague. There were too many unanswered questions. If Tolive and Flint were going to be spared in the coming economic collapse as LaNague said they would, why were they involved in the revolution? Why didn't they just sit back and refuse to get involved as they had in the past, and just let things take their course?
And then there was the feeling that LaNague was maneuvering him toward something. It was all so subtle that he had no idea in which direction he was being nudged…but he felt the nudge. If LaNague was in such complete control of everything, why was he spending so much time with Broohnin? What did he have in mind for him?
“Mr. LaNague awaits you at the flitter dock.”
Broohnin spun sharply at the sound of the voice behind him. It was the same female guard who had led him out. “Something wrong?” she asked. He ignored her and began walking toward the dock.
“You'll be taking the Penton amp; Blake back alone,” LaNague told him.
Broohnin was immediately suspicious. “What about you?”
“I'm taking the Adzel back to Tolive. I've business to attend to there before I return to Throne.”
Both men sat staring out the view wall of the Bernardo de la Paz way station as the globe of Earth passed above them. LaNague had retrieved his tree from the quarantine section and sat with it on his lap. “And what am I to do until then?”
“You'll be contacted shortly after your return.”
“By Flinters?”
LaNague smiled at Broohnin's concern, but it was not a jeering grimace. He seemed relaxed, at ease, almost likable. The thought of returning to his home world seemed to have changed him into a different person.
“Flinters make up only a small part of my force on Throne. And they must stay out of sight.” He turned toward Broohnin and spoke in a low voice. “Have you ever heard of Robin Hood?”
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