by David Drake
If you knew where to look and you used moderate magnification, you could see that one of the anti-starship weapons on the Doormann estate’s perimeter wall was trained on the hotel. The precaution was probably unnecessary, but nobody thought it was a bluff.
Nobody in his right mind thought it was a bluff.
There had been street traffic all night. Now that dawn had washed away the patterns of head- and tail-lights, the number of vehicles visible through the clear walls of the room increased exponentially. It seemed to be business as usual in Landfall City.
There had been virtually no damage in the city and rural areas outside the estate boundary. Within that perimeter, well—the Doormann Estate had been an enclave on the world it ruled. It would be some time before Telaria as a whole appreciated just what had happened on the previous day.
Ned made a sound in his throat.
“Sir?” said Deye, the Telarian in his late fifties standing at the window a few meters away. Deye was a military man by his carriage, though at the moment he wore ruffed civilian clothes. Lucas had made the Acme his temporary headquarters, but in this room, by agreement, the principals were supported by only two aides apiece.
“I was thinking,” Ned said. “About what they’re going to say. About us.”
Deye nodded seriously. “I lost some friends today, Ensign Slade,” he said.
The voices of the lawyers chirped at a high rate like gears meshing. They spoke and gestured simultaneously at the holographic display in the center of the table. The words fell into unison, as if the pair were giving a choral reading.
“But I want to say,” Deye continued, “I’m proud to have faced you. I wouldn’t have believed anybody could fight at the odds you faced. Fight and win, I’ll give you that; you won!”
Ned looked at him. Are you insane? We killed hundreds of people and most of them were civilians. We killed thousands of people, and we were ready to raze Landfall City to the ground if you hadn’t capitulated!
Aloud he said, “That isn’t quite what I had in mind. And I . . . haven’t quite processed everything that’s gone on.”
Deye’s arm twitched. With a convulsive gesture, the Telarian extended his hand for Ned to shake or reject. He had the air of a man reaching into a furnace.
More embarrassed than he could have imagined ever being, Ned shook Deye’s hand. Ned had bathed as soon as they reached the hotel, but he still felt as though his skin was sticky with blood.
“Agreed?” Lucas said on a rising inflexion.
Ned and Deye faced around.
“Agreed!” Lissea said, standing to extend her hand across the table to her cousin. The lawyers bent their heads together for a further whispered conversation as their principals shook on the deal.
Lissea stepped back from the table. “We can have the other parties in now,” she said. “I think it will be best for me to present the terms so that they can be quite clear that I am in agreement.”
“Yes, a good idea,” Lucas said. He raised the multifunction stylus he’d been using as a light pen and spoke into the opposite end.
The door to the hall opened. “Yes sir?” said the attendant, a solid-looking woman named Joyner. She had been chief of Lucas Doormann’s personal staff before yesterday’s disaster wiped out Telaria’s governmental bureaucracy.
“Send in the . . .” Lucas said. He paused, groping for a word other than “survivors.” His attorney whispered to him.
“Send in the successors in interest, Joyner,” Lucas said.
No one in the Acme wore a uniform, much less battledress, today. Ned wore ultramarine trousers and a teal jacket. The fabric was processed from the tendrils of a colonial invertebrate which floated in hectare-wide mats across the seas of Tethys. Ned looked more like somebody’s date than a—whatever he was.
But when Joyner’s eyes fell across him, her face congealed in a mixture of awe and terror.
Thirty-odd chairs had been arranged in a single row set forward from the room’s flat partition wall. Ushers guided a file of men, women, and children from the doorway to their places. The principals sat; guardians, a mixture of attorneys and spouses out of the Doormann bloodline, stood behind the chairs of their underage principals. Some of the children were infants in the arms of mothers or nurses, but the range extended through adults in their fifties.
Grey and Duenna Doormann, Lissea’s parents, sat in the two end-seats. They watched their daughter with as much suppressed nervousness as the others in their company did.
Lissea eyed the gathering. “Mesdames and sirs,” she said. “Master Lucas, acting in his own behalf and for yourselves as agent, has come to an agreement with me regarding my claims against the Doormann Trading Company.”
One of the infants began to cry. Its mother offered a bottle.
“The shares of my branch of the family, previously voted by the late Karel Doormann, have been transferred to my control.” Lissea continued. “I have voted those shares in favor of Lucas Doormann to fill the position of President of Doormann Trading left vacant at his father’s death.”
There was a collective sigh of wonder and relief from the assembly. Two of the guardians began to whisper, then broke off when they noticed Ned watching them.
The infant cried louder. Its bottle bounced down onto the hand-loomed carpet brought in for the occasion. The mother lifted the child close to her face and began to croon under her breath.
“I myself,” Lissea said, “will proceed to Alliance to set up an office there for Doormann Trading. I’ll be traveling with my consort, Carron Del Vore, who has interests and expertise in the Twin Worlds. The recent opening of the Sole Solution to free trade will cause massive structural adjustments on the Twin Worlds. There are huge profits to be made by the companies which are first on the ground. We—”
The infant began to wail. Its mother rocked and stroked her child. Tears were running down the woman’s cheeks. The man standing behind a neighboring chair bent over with a disapproving look to say something.
“The baby is all right,” Ned said.
Everyone stared at him. The leaning man looked like a beast caught in the headlights.
“Babies cry,” Ned said. His face muscles were as stiff as a gunstock. “It’s all right.”
Lissea glanced over her shoulder. She nodded, turned again, and said, “Master Slade is correct.”
Clearing her throat she went on. “Doormann Trading Company will be in the forefront of the new expansion beyond the Sole Solution. I expect we’ll be able to double our gross trade figures within the decade. Even with the higher margins due to long Transit distances, net increases should be in the order of twenty percent.”
The mother took a soft block from her bag. The infant chewed it and gurgled.
“I would expect to be absent from Telaria for the foreseeable future,” Lissea said in a cool, dry voice. “My father, Grey, will act as my agent when required, though all decisions regarding the normal running of Doormann Trading will be made by the president as before.”
She looked across the row of her relatives and their representatives. Only a few of them would meet her eyes.
“Are there any questions?”
A seated woman of thirty or so, overweight and overjeweled, looked at Lissea, opened her mouth—caught Ned’s expression from the corner of her eye—I wasn’t even thinking about her!
—and closed her mouth without speaking.
“Lissea and I,” Lucas Doormann said, “have discussed yesterday’s events and the situation that gave rise to them. Lest there be any question, let me say that everything that happened before today is a closed book. Doormann Trading Company is starting fresh, with a solid structure and bright prospects.”
He looked at Lissea and added, “I appreciate the confidence Lissea has shown by supporting me for the position of president. I intend to show myself worthy of that confidence by focusing on the company’s future. No one will be permitted to undermine that future by word or action.”
The sitting and standing lines of representatives faced Lucas Doormann, but many of them watched Ned out of the corners of their eyes.
No one in his right mind thought it was a bluff.
“Very good,” Lissea said, verbally gaveling the meeting closed. “I’m informed that the president will call an organizational meeting for the new board within the next few days. I may still be on Telaria at that time, but I won’t be at the meeting. Therefore I’ll take leave of all of you now.”
She bowed stiffly to the representatives, then glanced over her shoulder. “Ned,” she said, “I need to see you for a few minutes in my suite.”
Lissea started for the door. Her lawyer got up and reached toward Lissea’s shoulder for attention. Lissea batted the hand away. “Not now!” she said. Joyner opened the door as Lissea swept toward it with Ned silent at her heels.
The hallway was packed with aides, attendants, and Doormann guards identifiable by the blue collar flashings on their civilian clothes. The security personnel broadened the corridor they already held open between the banquet hall and the bank of elevators.
Lissea got in with Ned and touched 12. The whole twelfth story had been converted into a suite for her and her burgeoning household. Ned waited till the elevator had dropped to midfloor and touched emergency stop. A chime sounded three times before he got the access plate open with a tool from his wallet and switched off the alarm.
“We can talk in my suite,” Lissea said. She licked her lips and added, “Carron isn’t there.”
“That’s all right,” Ned said. He had to force himself to meet her eyes. “I wanted you to know that I’m going back to the Swift to pick up my pay from Tadziki. I’ll ship out then. I’m not sure where to.”
Lissea backed against the side of the cage with a thump. “Ned, I want you to come to Alliance with me. I’ll need you on Alliance. S-s-somebody I can trust.”
“No, I’m going to travel for a while,” Ned said. “I . . . have some things to think about.”
He was staring at his own haunted eyes in the polished brass wall of the elevator cage. He’d looked away without realizing it.
Lissea took his hands. “Listen to me,” she said. “Carron understands. But I made a promise to him, Ned. I can’t . . . I shouldn’t . . . break a promise like that. He put his life on the line.”
Ned grinned wryly. “Yeah, he did,” he said. “Carron’s a decent guy, and he’s got a lot of guts. I wish you both well.”
“Ned!”
He looked at her again. Embarrassment forced his grin into a rictus.
“Don’t you care?” she demanded. “I’m offering you everything I can. You know I am!”
“Lissea,” he said, “I fought for you, I did things for you that I’d never have done for myself. I’d partner you anywhere in the universe. But I’m not anybody’s consort. And I’m not anybody’s puppy!”
He reached past her and touched emergency stop again, releasing the cage.
Lissea’s face was white. “Things can change, you know,” she said harshly. “It might take time, a few years even, but I waited longer than that to get justice here on Telaria. You’ve got to take the long view sometimes, Ned!”
The cage stopped. The door opened onto a foyer full of servants and recently hired bodyguards nervously awaiting the arrival of the stalled elevator.
“I do take the long view,” Ned said. “I want to be able to live with myself. Good-bye, Lissea.”
She stepped out of the cage with her back straight and her face composed. Ned touched lobby.
As the door closed, he thought of calling, “Lissea, I love you!” But that would just have complicated matters.
Ned walked up the ramp of the Swift. Part of the engine-room hull plating was off. A mobile crane prepared to lift out one of the drive motors.
A rehab crew from the dockyard had made a pass over the main bay already. The bunks and lockers had been removed, the spray insulation stripped and replaced, and a fresh coat of robin’s-egg-blue paint applied.
All that was fast work, but the Swift had become the private yacht of Mistress Lissea Doormann, the controlling stockholder of Doormann Trading Company. The vessel would carry her and her immediate entourage to Alliance as soon as its reconditioning was complete.
Tadziki sat at the portable data unit placed before the aft bulkhead. Carron Del Vore was with him. Carron gave Ned a plaster smile.
“Hey, trooper!” the adjutant called. “The Warsons were just in, asking about you. How did the business go?”
Ned grinned back, slipping unconsciously from one persona to another because of Carron’s presence. “Slicker ’n snot,” he said, watching the prince blink in disgust. “Full amnesty, full pay and bonuses. The only thing Lucas would have called a deal-breaker was if Lissea had insisted on staying on Telaria. She already knew that was impossible after all the people we’d killed.”
Carron nodded twice as though priming a pump to bring up his words. “Our new duties on Alliance should be very interesting, shouldn’t they, Slade?” he said in a voice resembling that of a hanging man’s.
“Your duties,” Ned said nonchalantly. “I’m going to—I don’t know, knock around a while. I’ve got no apologies for anything we did to get through the Sole Solution, but—”
His mouth quirked. “There’s more widows and orphans on the Twin Worlds just now than I want to look at.”
Tadziki watched Ned with a raised eyebrow, but he didn’t enter the conversation.
“Ah . . .” said Carron. “Ah. I’d understood you’d be accompanying Lissea as her personal aide?”
“I regretted turning the offer down,” Ned said evenly. “But I thought it was better that I do so.”
Carron swallowed. “I see,” he said with obvious relief. “Ah. Do you chance to know where Lissea is now?”
“Back in her suite in the Acme,” Ned said. “At any rate, that’s where she was going when I left her after the negotiations were complete.”
“Master Slade, Master Tadziki,” Carron said, nodding to either man, “I’ll leave you then. Good day.”
Tadziki waited for the Pancahtan to stride down the ramp before saying, “A better day for him than he expected to be having a few minutes ago, anyway.” Then he added, “You all right, Ned?”
“Via, I don’t know,” Ned said honestly. “I will be all right.”
He looked around for someplace to sit. Apart from Tadziki’s chair and the navigational consoles forward, there was nothing.
Tadziki slid a software file sideways and offered a corner of the portable data unit.
“No, that’s all right,” Ned said. “Look, I just came to draw my pay. I—”
His vision blurred for a moment. “I’d kind of like to get off Telaria without seeing the rest of the crew, do you know? I—”
He was choking. He swallowed. “Tadziki,” he said, “they’re the best there ever was. If I have grandchildren, I’ll tell them I served with the Pancahte Expedition, with all of you. But when I see your faces, I think about things that I’m not ready to handle just now. Do you understand? Do you understand?”
“As it happens . . .” the adjutant said. His fingers called up a file. He loaded a credit-transfer chip. “I do.”
He hit execute; the data unit chuckled to itself. He looked up at Ned. “You’ll get over it,” he added. “I don’t say that as consolation—it isn’t consolation. But everybody gets over it in time, you and me . . . and your uncle did, I’m sure.”
The unit spat the loaded chip halfway out of the top slot. Tadziki pulled the chip the rest of the way and handed it to Ned.
Ned looked at the value imprinted on the face of the chip. He shook his head. “It’s a lot of money, isn’t it? For a soldier.”
“It’s never the money,” Tadziki said. “Nobody does it for the money.”
He smiled sadly at Ned. “Do you think you’ve proved you’re a man, then?” he asked.
Ned blinked. “Is that how you see it?” he
said.
“How do you see it, Ned?”
Ned looked toward the bulkhead and through as much time as he could remember. “I think . . .” he said, “that there’s a guy named Ned Slade, a person. And I learned that there’s a big universe out there, and that he hasn’t seen much of it yet.”
His face broke into an honest grin. He reached across the data unit. “It’s been good to know you, Tadziki,” he said. “With luck, we may meet again in a while.”
“I’d like that,” Tadziki said as they shook hands. To Ned’s back, as the younger man walked out of the Swift’s hatch for the last time, Tadziki added, “When you’re ready.”
Ned watched through the fence surrounding Berth 41 as the integral cargo-handling machinery of the Ajax finished stowing within the vessel’s hold the contents of a lowboy. The emptied lowboy whined away on its multitude of full-width rollers. The waiting line of eight similar vehicles jerked forward by fits and starts.
The Ajax was a mixed passenger/freight vessel displacing some four kilotonnes. She was configured for operations on less-developed worlds, where the port facilities might be limited to human stevedores and animal transport. On full-function ports like that serving Landfall City, the Ajax docked at outlying quays and still loaded as quickly as the port’s own systems could manage at the more expensive berths.
The load that had just gone aboard the Ajax was small arms and ammunition.
Whistling “You Wonder Why I’m a Trooper” under his breath, Ned walked to the berth office, an extruded-plastic building set into the fence. Three sides were bleached white, but there were still traces of the original pink dye around the north-facing window- and door-jambs. A balding man in his mid-thirties stretched at the desk within. He covered his yawn when he saw Ned.
“Can I help you, sir?” he asked, politely but with a slight wariness. “I’m Wilson, the purser.”
“I was wondering where the Ajax was loading for,” Ned said.
The walls of the small office were covered with holovision pinups of both men and women. The images ranged in tone from cheesecake to pornography that would be extreme on nine worlds out of ten. Apparently it was a tradition that the purser or supercargo of every ship using Berth 41 tacked up his or her taste.
