Kris Longknife: Defiant: Defiant

by Mike Shepherd

  Dinner was in the hotel’s smaller ballroom, and Kris found herself sitting between the mayors of Port Stanley and Port Phoenix, a town so far upriver that its creek was nowhere close to navigable. However, until only a few years ago, out of respect for the Islanders, every town on Hikila, no matter how high and dry, was a port.

  Kris wondered how much the Islanders appreciated that.

  “So, what’s King Ray really up to?” kicked off the dinner conversation over a delicious clam chowder. A check around the table showed everyone was a mayor or the spouse of a mayor seated at another table sent to hear and report back. And all wanted to know what was really going on in United Sentients.

  Kris gave her usual bland, “I don’t know. Good chowder.”

  “Is Ray slipping, letting the Constitutional Convention convene at Pitts Hope while he stays on Wardhaven?” a fellow who might have fought the Iteeche asked. “I mean he’s a Longknife, but that’s a bit far to pull strings even for one of them.”

  Kris kept a smile on her face and kept spooning chowder.

  A younger woman whom Kris could easily grow to like asked, “Do you know anything about what’s going on?”

  “No, I don’t know if the next course is salad or fish,” Kris said with a straight face.

  That got a laugh. She took a napkin to her lips, folded it again, and glanced around the table. “My grampa takes seriously that he’s a constitutional monarch, and we don’t have a constitution. Kind of makes it rough figuring out what we so-called royalty are supposed to do,” Kris said with a wry grin.

  That got her a round of dry chuckles.

  “Anyway, he’s on Wardhaven, and the palavering is on Pitts Hope because he really wants it that way. The folks who have tossed in their hats are deciding how United Sentients is going to run. Should the legislature have one house, two, or three? I don’t know; they’ll decide. One planet, one vote. Join now and have a say. Join later and, well, you’ll know what you’re joining, but the saying will be done.”

  “I take it you’re for joining early,” the mayor of Port Stanley said.

  “I tend to want to be heard when I say my say.” Kris grinned.

  “I’ve heard something to that effect,” brought a chuckle from around the table. Kris did her best impression of wounded innocence. The chuckles grew to full laughter.

  “Will this U.S. thing protect us?” One mayor asked.

  “A major chunk of the Wardhaven fleet is at Boynton taking the pressure off them,” Kris answered.

  “All of it, I understand,” one corrected.

  Kris said nothing.

  “Is it there to protect Boynton, or to pressure them into joining United? If we don’t come in, will we be looking up at a squadron of Wardhaven battleships blockading our trade?” said a young mayor. Kris hadn’t gotten his town.

  “That’s one interpretation of the situation out there I hadn’t heard,” she said slowly. “For the record, Boynton was in the final process of completing its application when ships started showing up from two, three different other planets. I don’t know what they were planning on doing, or who called them in. They aren’t saying. Boynton’s government asked for help. Wardhaven responded. So did several other planets. At least that’s what I saw on all the news. Where’d you hear different?”

  “One hears different things, different places,” the man said, returning to his chowder.

  The salad arrived, and talk lapsed into generalities about the future of humanity and the problems of six hundred planets. Nothing specific to Hikila, Kris noted. She ate what was put before her and answered the questions posed to her, careful to avoid any hypotheticals that might come back to bite her or her grampa.

  After dinner was a “dance,” which meant that some people actually got out on the floor and danced to music that might have been popular long before humanity left old Earth, or music derived from such sounds. It was music intended to let some people move together in a lovely fashion while others looked on and got about the main reason they had gathered here: talk.

  They talked about the other people with them or talked about politics. Tonight, politics seemed to be the main topic.

  And Kris found herself pretty much out of the mainstream.

  She enjoyed the quiet for a while until an attractive man of about her own age and height settled into the chair next to her and said, “Lovely jewelry they make in the Islands. You and the other princess swap baubles?”

  Kris held up a bracelet of coral and pearls. “It’s probably the most authentic object I’ve ever worn in my life.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Authentic is big with them.”

  “You’ve probably figured out I’m Kris Longknife. You are . . . ?”

  He offered his hand and a smile. “I’m Sam Trabinki, son of the mayor of Port Stanley. I’ve been watching you two young ladies from the cheap seats most of the day, seeing how this political thing is done, taking notes. My dad will be inflicting a quiz on me as soon as you leave town.”

  “Your dad sounds very much like my father.”

  “Politician first, everything else much later?” he said.

  “And I would have sworn they only made one like him, and I got him.”

  “And I thought I had that privilege.” He chuckled dryly.

  “Did yours refer things you wanted ‘to committee for further study’ and leave you scurrying around the family to corral enough votes to get it out?” Kris asked.

  “Yes.” He laughed. “I was the only ten-year-old to organize my family supper talk in bullets.”

  “I started that at nine,” Kris said, hoping he wouldn’t feel one-upped.

  “We’ll, your dad was a Longknife. Did it get worse?”

  Kris thought for a moment, blinked, then nodded. “Yes, it did. Father quit coming home for supper.” And she found herself talking about Eddy’s kidnapping and death. Her eyes still stung, and there was dampness there, but she didn’t choke on her words. Not now. He was a good listener, head nodding, making those faint listening noises that encouraged her to go on. She still stripped out anything she wouldn’t want to see in the paper tomorrow, but she did feel better for the talk, or maybe it was the finish. “Then again, I did kill the last kidnapping bastards that crossed my path.”

  “I thought you captured those punks on Harmony.”

  She blinked, full defenses going up. “You researched me!” she said in full accusation.

  He grinned and threw himself happily on her mercy. “When a Longknife comes to town, an apprentice politician kind of has to do a bio on the visiting fireman, er, woman. Dad gave me an A-plus,” he said by way of mitigation.

  “Send me a copy. I need to know what the news has me officially guilty of these days. But I think that last kidnapping was kept out of the paper, or at least my name wasn’t attached to it. Anyway, if you’re ever kidnapped and I’m nearby, the rescue is free.”

  “You’re quite a spectacular woman.”

  “And that’s the best pickup line anyone’s ever tried on me.”

  “No, really, you did whatever you did at the Paris system and on Turantic, and yet you’re sitting here quietly, letting Aholo get all the attention tonight.”

  “It’s her planet, her show.”

  He glanced Aholo’s way. “Were you in the Islands long?”

  “A couple of days.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “I think paradise is the usual word that’s overworked.”

  “Yeah, that’s what my dad says, but my mom keeps coming up with reasons why I can’t manage to fit a visit into my schedule.”

  Kris could understand that. She surveyed the room; dress here was light on skin and solidly conservative. Even Mother’s latest fashion delivery from Earth would be decidedly out of step here. Yep, the Mainland was in rebellion from the Island culture, and not just work versus subsistence, cash versus barter. There were a lot of differences, and they went deep and philosophical. Whatever political machinery they came up w
ith would have to be resilient enough to survive a lot of pushing and pulling over the next fifty years.

  Nobody said it would be easy.

  Kris let Sam get her talking about how her one fishing expedition almost landed her in the water with sharks. “And while some folks talk about us Longknifes and sharks in the same breath, I don’t think I would have gotten any professional courtesy from that big mouth.”

  That had him laughing, but she noticed that as she talked, he’d glanced more and more toward Aholo. Not that Kris could blame him. She was an eyeful, and she did carry herself with all the poise you’d expect of a soon-to-be-reigning queen.

  “Do you think she’d like to dance?” Sam finally blurted out.

  “I know that after an hour or more of yakking, I’d kill for a chance to get out on the dance floor.”

  “Do you mind if I leave you?”

  “I’ve enjoyed talking with you.” But it is his planet, and Aholo is the local girl, seen from the distance of twenty-five light-years, Kris reminded herself. And it wasn’t as if she was really letting this one get away.

  So he slipped off, and when the noise around Aholo paused for a second, he asked her for a dance, and she said yes without looking too relieved to slip out of the conversation straitjacket. As Sam led her away, the bubble around her broke up. The mayor of Stanley cadged a refill for his wineglass and a refill for Kris’s sparkling water before taking the still-warm chair beside Kris.

  “Sam keeping you company?”

  “He has the makings of a first-class politico,” Kris assured the father of the topic at hand.

  “He doesn’t dance too bad, either.”

  “Considering that he’s probably having to teach her the steps,” Kris said, taking a sip.

  “I understand you had to learn some pretty fancy steps a few nights ago,” he said with a raised eyebrow.

  Kris decided to ignore the reference to her going native—or to her stopping someone from blowing up the native treasures—and chose to cut to her chase. “How long is everyone going to keep saying what everyone knows, and when are you going to start solving the problem everyone knows has to be tackled?”

  “You are one of those damn Longknifes, aren’t you,” he said, raising his glass in salute.

  “All one word,” Kris saluted back.

  “Well, your daddy must have taught you the importance of letting folks vent.”

  “When I was still in diapers,” Kris agreed.

  “And what we said here today will be in all the news out on the Islands and all over the Mainland. Lots of folks will say, ‘Right, you tell ’em,’ and we’re doing it here, in Port Stanley where things won’t get too hot, ’cause we all know what really needs to be done.”

  “You do.”

  “Yeah. While we have some hotheads here, and they have their hotheads there, just about all of us agree we need a government that respects both the majority and the minority. Say a House that’s popularly elected and a Senate that represents specific locals. Problem is, which locals? They have some mighty small islands and we have some mighty small towns. They don’t have many more islands to settle, and our population is growing, and there’s a lot of land up here on the Mainland that hasn’t been touched yet.” He scratched his head. “I sure don’t know how we’re going to juggle all that, I just know we have to.”

  “Where does my grampa’s United fit into this picture?”

  “At the heart of it. Money.” The mayor’s grin was all teeth. “As soon as Earth folded its Society of Humanity, we eliminated that tax from our budget or started spending it on something local. Now, if we have to pay for that fleet your grampa wants—and don’t tell me that hasn’t been decided; I can read the need as good as any blind man—that means taxes. If Queen Ha’iku’lani took us into United without a popular vote, there’d be riots here on the Mainland and . . . well, I think even Stanley would be voting for independence from Nui Nui.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “No, not so long as you keep the status quo. It’s only if you try to change anything that things get interesting.”

  “But things are changing.”

  “You noticed that, too.”

  “So you can’t change just a little bit,” Kris said.

  “We got to eat the whole apple, core, seeds, and all.” The mayor sighed. “Damn, if my boy ain’t talked your girl into a second dance.”

  “If it was dance or talk politics, which would you do?”

  “Dance at their age.” He sighed. “So, Longknife, what you going to do?”

  “My grampa sent me here to hold an old war buddy’s hand while she dies. She asked me to help her great-granddaughter try to make her heart light as she lies dying, so I borrowed a gig to get things moving fast.” Kris eyed the mayor sideways, “But this isn’t my world, so I’m sitting here like a good wallflower.”

  “Like you did on Turantic.” He grinned.

  “That being the subject of several legal proceedings, I am advised by counsel to reserve comment for my day in court, if I ever get one,” Kris said dryly. They both laughed.

  He went his way, no doubt to report on their conversation. She warmed her seat. There were several other young men at the dance, but none so much as looked her way. What was it about her that scared them off: the Princess, the Longknife, the money, or the target painted on her . . . front and back?

  At eleven, Aholo called it quits; there were early meetings next morning. Back in their room, as Abby got them out of their formal rigs, Kris got to dissect the night with another girl for the first time in her life. Beyond the “Wasn’t that wonderful,” and “Oh, my feet hurt,” and “I wondered if they’d ever stop talking,” Aholo got in “What did you think of Sam?”

  “He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

  “He dances well. For a Big Islan—Mainland guy.”

  “Both of you danced well. What did you talk about?”

  “He has a sailboat. Not an outrigger, but a sailboat with a keel. He loves sailing with the wind in his hair. I didn’t think any Mainlander was like that.”

  “People surprise you,” Kris said. Why hadn’t he mentioned that to her? She loved sailing. “Too bad we’ll be losing Sam when we leave Port Stanley tomorrow.”

  “Oh, but we may not. He’s asking his papa if he can come along as his secretary. The Mainlanders have decided to start forming a Constitutional Convention by kind of rolling up the members from the cities where I’ve been. That way when we hit the last ones, the more difficult ones, we’ll have not only my elders with me, but also the Mainlanders who support me.”

  That was news to Kris. Maybe she needed to rethink being a wallflower. Or maybe she was finding out things just about the time she needed to. After all, this was these people’s show.

  Not mine. Remember that, girl. Not mine.

  By the fourth city, four days later, Kris was ready to draw some conclusions. The cities were big, and they’d flown over quite a few small towns. In all of them, recent urban renewal had replaced the last remnants of the refugee camps and hasty occupation with centrally located city services, arenas, and gleaming shopping opportunities. Progress.

  The fourth city also had demonstrators.

  Oldsters in proudly mismatched clothes lined the street with signs saying, It’s Our Land, We Worked for It, and similar sentiments. Another line of protesters was more worrisome to Kris. Youngsters in spiked hair in a riot of colors and dressed in somber long-sleeved shirts and pants, buttoned at the neck despite the heat, showed signs demanding, Don’t Give the Nudies Nothing. Since attitude toward skin didn’t prevent a young mom from nursing her baby without so much as a blanket to block the view, Kris suspected the issue was all political.

  It was time to get ready for trouble. The tight lines around Jack’s eyes as he studied the crowd along the street their motorcade drove showed his vigilance had gone up a notch. Kris leaned forward, signaling Penny and Tom to do the same.

  “We got a problem
?” Tom asked softly.

  “None I’m more aware of than you, but ...” Kris nodded toward the show outside their limo. They nodded back. “Jack stays with me. Penny, you connect with the local constabulary and plug into their command center. Tom, that leaves you with the princess. First chance you get, draw a body stocking from Abby and start hanging as close to Aholo as the situation allows. If someone takes a shot at her, try to take it on your backside.”

  “Like I took your last one.” He grinned, lopsided.

  “But don’t get too close to the princess,” Penny said.

  “Sam’s holding down that slot all by himself.” The boy wasn’t in the car with Aholo, but once things sorted themselves out in the conference room, he was usually close to his father, which was never far from the princess. And somehow, he’d managed to outcompete a lot of guys to be her main dance partner.

  NELLY, ASK ABBY IF SHE HAS ARMORED BODY STOCKINGS FOR TOM AND SAM.

  There was only a short pause. SHE DOES.

  ASK HER WHERE SHE FOUND A SALE ON ARMORED BODY STOCKINGS?

  THAT IS A RHETORICAL QUESTION, CORRECT?

  FOR NOW.

  ABBY SAYS TOM’S ALREADY DRAWN A STOCKING. SHOULD BE WEARING IT.

  Kris eyed Tom. He grinned. “And I was about to get around to telling you that Penny and I have been in stockings since we came ashore. Just like you and Jack, right?”

  Jack elbowed Kris without looking away from the crowd.

  “And I’ve been working with the local police since Port Stanley,” Penny said. “They’re good, but they’re about two hundred years behind the tech curve. A high-tech bank robber here uses a computer-printed note and a gun.” Penny sighed. “There’s a couple of cops from Port Stanley with us now. A couple more from each town have been added. They know how important it is, but they’ve never worked at anything like what I talk to them about. They just shake their heads and say, ‘That can’t happen here.’ ”

  “Let’s hope they’re right,” Kris said, reminding herself that there was a reason why she was not alone here. She had her job and was doing it. These professionals had theirs and were doing them very well, thank you.