Conquistador

by S. M. Stirling

  “Yes, the Crimea is a little like this,” the Batyushkov said. “Many have said so.” He scowled. “That is as well, since the real Crimea is lost to the rodina, the motherland. Part of that absurd Ukraine, like amputating a man’s leg and calling it a brother… and probably those Ukrainian peasant bumpkins will let the Tatars take it over sooner or later. Stalin was a fool to kill only half of the Tatars when he deported them, and Khrushchev was a worse fool ever to let a single one return from Kazakhstan.”

  The younger man nodded. “Uncle Dimitri… I thank you for bringing me here. Science no longer prospers in Russia; things are not as bad as they were even five years ago, but they are not good. And the Gate!”

  His face took on a transfigured look, one Batyushkov had seen on mujahideen in Afghanistan, as they called on their stupid Allah just before they were crushed under a tank’s treads from the feet up to encourage them to talk.

  “The Gate… our theories have only the merest hints of the possibility of such a phenomenon. Many would call it impossible; until this month, I would have called it impossible!”

  “I would have as well, until I saw it,” Batyushkov said. “The question is, though, can you understand it? Can you duplicate it?”

  Sergei Lermontov spread his hands. “I do not know,” he said. “If I can understand it, it will take much time—much effort—many facilities, supercomputers, experimentation. Eventually, I must bring colleagues to join me.”

  Batyushkov smiled, a smug expression. “And the ami, they have no hint of what it is?”

  “Very little,” Lermontov said. “I have studied the papers of the physicists at the University of New Virginia. They are not particularly capable men.”

  “They are what the Commission could get,” Batyushkov said. “Men embittered by failure in their original homes. And they are not allowed free transit, so they have no access to the laboratories or talent of FirstSide.” The satisfied smile grew broader. “And you, my nephew, will be. Thus you may study the phenomenon, have access to the facilities of FirstSide, and travel freely.”

  Lermontov nodded. “This will be helpful. I cannot, however, guarantee results. Certainly not at anytime within the next two years.”

  “Nichevo,” Batyushkov said: It cannot be helped. His hand closed into a fist on the table as he went on: “Understand, you must take no chances. Playing at boyar here, that is acceptable; certainly better than living in today’s Russia and looking always over my shoulder. The wealth I gain as a member of the committee, that is more than acceptable, and I can keep it and hand it down to my children, which would probably not be the case in Russia. But control of the Gate—knowledge of how to make more—that is power. Imagine whole new worlds… better still, imagine being able to establish more such gates to our world. To be able to come and go anywhere, at any time; the storage facilities of a nuclear facility, the inner chambers of any headquarters or fortress… given that, much that we have had to accept as inevitable becomes much less so!”

  “Za nas!” Sergei Lermontov said, springing to his feet and raising the glass.

  “Za nas!” Dimitri Batyushkov replied. “To us, indeed!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Mermaid Café

  June 2009

  Commonwealth of New Virginia

  MERMAID CAFÉ

  RALPH BARNES, PROPRIETOR AND FREEHOLDER

  BEST BURGERS IN NEW VIRGINIA

  GASOLINE AND DIESEL SOLD, ENGINES SERVICED

  ALL STANDARD FIREARMS AND PARTS

  BEST CHANCE FOR FUEL AND AMMUNITION THIS SIDE OF TAHOE

  BEDS BY THE NIGHT

  ALL WELCOME, EVEN YOU FASCIST BASTARDS FROM THE FAMILIES

  AS LONG AS YOU MIND YOUR MANNERS

  THIS MEANS YOU

  Tom grinned at the big billboard—it was the first one he’d seen this side of the Gate—and put the binoculars back into the case between the front seats. The wind from the water ahead dried the sweat on his face. For the moment they were stopped at the crest of a low hill, where two live oaks overhung the road in a patch of grateful shade, to enjoy that and the silence. Ahead the land fell away to a flat valley that ran down to the strait.

  “No respecter of persons, eh?” he said, before he pressed the starter button. “I like Ralph Barnes already.”

  “Ralph’s a law unto himself. He’s not lying about the burgers, either.”

  The Mermaid Café was roughly where the downtown section of the city of Martinez would have been, although differences in the details of the shoreline made it hard to be certain. A thousand yards farther north there was a long wooden pier out into the blue water of the Carquinez Strait, with a second cluster of buildings at its base. The road was graveled dirt, as it had been since they left the northern outskirts of Rolfeston, which ended in a Tivoli-style amusement park. After that the bayside road had run through man-empty country nearly to the site of Richmond—the sheer absence of the great oil refineries and chemical plants had left him speechless—and then they’d dog-legged back down the Briones Creek and along Vaca Canyon, much of the trip through hills he remembered as the upscale suburb of Orinda.

  Here… the hills dreamed under the early-summer sun, grass turning the color of champagne colored by late wildflowers, oaks and firs green and cool by contrast, and redwoods in the sheltered bay-facing canyons. He’d seen two grizzlies, including one that stood in the road until they were within rock-throwing distance; other game too often to count; and once he’d heard the unmistakable rebel-yell squall of a catamount. They’d stopped often, to ramble or just sit and listen to the wind soughing through the grass. He kept noticing the taste of the air, as well.

  Now that they were over the hills another dusty-white road wound southward from here, through farming country in the valley lowlands between the Berkeley hills and the Diablo range—lightly settled, mostly tawny pasture, but with the evidence of man in fields of grain, the regularity of orchards, planted windbreaks around tile-roofed farmsteads. This country was solid suburb on FirstSide, of course, built up in the fifties and sixties of the last century. Here it looked as if the first settlers had moved in about then and not many since.

  Right, Tom thought. Let’s not get euphoric; yeah, all that wilderness along the bay looks wonderful, but that’s Mother Nature, not the Thirty Families and their Commission. Let’s get some input on how the people do here. The present population, that is; we already know what happened to the original one.

  Tom waved a hand toward the farms. “This belongs to…?”

  “The Filmers, from Ralph’s land back a ways; their Prime’s seat is where Concord’s located FirstSide. Then the Tuke and the Hammon domains, down through Amador and Livermore valleys. The uplands on both sides are permanent Commission reserve; so’s Mount Diablo.”

  “Yah, but how do the farmers fit in, if your friends and relatives own all the land?”

  The houses scattered across the flat-to-rolling valley land were at roughly half-mile intervals, and the fields were modest-sized. It didn’t have the look of ranching country or large landholdings worked as single units. The Christiansen home place in North Dakota was a lot farther from the nearest neighbor.

  “The farmers are tenants, allod tenants. The way it usually works is that the head of the Family, the Prime, keeps a seat—a home place—from his domain, and hands out the rest in estates of a few thousand acres to his kids and collaterals—everybody but the Prime and the eldest of the firstborn’s line are collaterals; I am, for example, but my eldest brother and father and grandfather aren’t. I hold Seven Oaks, and I can farm it, hand it down to my children when and if I have any, and sell or will it to another Family member. I’d need the Prime’s approval to sell. I can’t subdivide it or alienate it outside the Family. The landholders rent to farmers on shares; they provide the land and fixed assets, buildings and fences and irrigation and so forth, pay any taxes, and get three-tenths of the crop. The farmer finds the labor and working capital, the machinery and livestock, and keeps the
other seventy percent.”

  Tom grunted, and thought back to the prices he’d seen in that farmer’s market. “I don’t see how that makes the landlord any money,” he said.

  “It’s hobby farming as far as the landholders are concerned, so far,” Adrienne said with a laugh. “Our country estates are how we spend our money, and where most of us live—the money comes out of the Gate and the mines.”

  “And what does the ‘allod’ part mean?”

  “Allod? It means ‘inalienable’; I think it’s a German word originally. As long as the tenant keeps the land in good heart and pays his share, he can’t be turned out, nor his heirs; the landholder only gets a say and part of the price if the tenant wants to sell it outside the farmer’s bloodline. Not that anyone would lean on his tenants anyway—good ones are too hard to find! Most landholders rent their land except for a home ranch around their country house, but I keep Seven Oaks in hand and work it directly myself, the way Aunt Chloe did. It takes more of my time, but I’ve got a good manager and usually I manage to keep in the black… a little, at least.”

  She nodded down into the valley. “Ralph’s a special case. Granddad got him three hundred and sixty acres of Commission land here, rent-free. Long story.”

  Tom grunted again, and put the Hummer in gear. The Mermaid Café sprawled parallel to the road but a hundred yards back and to the west of it; beyond was a stretch of lawn, then outbuildings, paddocks and a small reservoir that did double duty as a swimming hole, to judge by the kids swarming around it. One swung out over the water whooping as Tom watched, on a rope suspended from the branch of an overhanging tree, let go, and landed in the middle with a heroic splash.

  The inn itself was an I-shape of single-story whitewashed adobe, with the inevitable red-tiled roofs, but the blocks were of slightly different sizes and the alignments were all a bit off—it gave the structure a funky look, something of a relief after the manicured neatness of Rolfeston, and so did the blocks of colorful tilework here and there on the walls. A line of big eucalyptus separated the parking lot from the roadway, their scent familiar and faintly medicinal. The dirt and gravel lot was dotted with the same great valley oaks that surrounded the rest of the inn, each on an island of long tawny grass extending out halfway to the drip line of the branches. There were a dozen cars in the parking lot, and another dozen pickup trucks—working vehicles, to judge from the dust and dings. They swung in and parked, the tires crunching on the crushed rock surface. Adrienne pulled her rifle out of the rack behind the front seat as they stepped down from the Hummer, carrying it casually in the crook of her left arm.

  “Doesn’t all this adobe give a lot of trouble?” Tom asked, following her toward the café. “It isn’t southern California, after all.”

  “Not with a powdered waterproofing compound in the stucco,” Adrienne said. “With that, as long as you keep the foundation dry and the roof tight it lasts like iron, it’s fireproof, and it’s good insulation. Dirt cheap, too.”

  “Ouch,” he said, missing a stride, and found himself grinning for an instant.

  More trees and a flower bed separated the cars from the outdoor patio with its picnic-style tables. Off to one side was a row of brick firepits; smoke and an intoxicating smell of grilling meat came from there, and several cooks wielded tongs and spatulas. Others, mostly teenagers, bustled in and out through the doors of a long adobe kitchen. A girl came and took the rifle, unloading it, working the action to make sure there wasn’t a round in the chamber, and then stashing it in another rack by the main doorway with matter-of-fact competence. About half the tables were occupied, mostly with family parties, and there were a few kids running from one to the next; a pleasant burr of conversation and well-wielded cutlery filled the air. An oak cast fifty feet of shade in the center; farther out there were striped umbrellas above the tables; chalk-boards with the menu stood at several places.

  A big man came out from the main house as they entered the patio, a little under six feet but bear-wide, the kettle belly straining at his tie-dyed T-shirt simply adding to his impression of burly strength. He had a grizzled brown beard, and his graying shoulder-length hair was held back by a beaded headband; the shoes on his splayed feet were beaded as well, moccasin-style.

  Leftover hippie, Tom thought automatically—California was still lousy with them, particularly in the backcountry, and would be until the last of the boomers went to their reward. Then: But a smart one, as he met the small shrewd eyes in the hairy face.

  “Ralph Barnes,” Adrienne said in an aside to Tom. Then, louder: “Ralph! How’s my favorite subversive seditionist?”

  “Hey, princess!” the thickset man said, in a happy bull bellow. “How’s it hanging in the Gestapo?”

  “A continuous merry festival of arbitrary torture and death, Ralph,” she replied, and they exchanged bear hugs.

  After a moment she turned. “This is Tom Christiansen—you’ll have seen his picture in the paper this morning. Tom, Ralph Barnes—one of the few people willing to talk to a wastrel like myself, back when I was doing the pimples and rebellion thing. You wondered where I picked up the taste for classic rock and folk songs?”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Barnes said, looking him up and down and extending a hand. “Christ, it’s the Swedish Superman. You’re the game warden, right? Don’t let any of the von Traupitzes see you. Those Nazi shits’ll shanghai you off for breeding stock.”

  “My family were Norwegian, actually,” Tom said as he took the hand and shook it; it was as strong as he’d expected, and callused with work. “Pleased to meet you,” he went on. “I presume you’re not as hostile to the Thirty Families as your sign suggests?”

  “I hate their guts,” Barnes said with a broad white snaggletoothed smile, shepherding them to a vacant table. “I just make a few individual exceptions, like for the princess here. So sue me. I am vast”—he slapped his belly and misquoted—“I contain multitudes.”

  “Could you get Henry over here?” Adrienne said. “I think Tom would like to meet him.”

  “Aha,” Barnes said. “You want to get the Bitch-and-Moan squad together, hey? Show him the revolutionary element—right on! Sure, we ain’t too busy right now.” He turned and shouted: “Hey, Henry! Over here—two of the usual, and some beer!”

  The man who came bearing the tray was younger than the innkeeper; in his late thirties, of medium height, lean and fit. He was also the first black Tom had seen this side of the Gate—light brown in fact, but unmistakably of that mixed breed miscalled African-American, with regular blunt features and inch-long, wiry, tight-kinked hair.

  “You the one who bellowed like an ox with a hernia, beloved ol’ massa?” he said, setting the tray down. It held four pint steins of beer, moisture beading on the thick glass, two hamburgers and a basket of chunky-looking French fries.

  “Show some respect for your father-in-law and set your worthless cop ass down on the bench,” Ralph replied genially.

  Tom coughed and took a drink of his beer; then he stopped and savored it as it deserved while Henry joined the party, sitting beside the older man across from Tom and Adrienne.

  “Not bad,” Tom said, putting his mug down. “Well hopped, and a nice sharp taste… some local microbrewery?”

  “We brew it ourselves,” Ralph said.

  “I brew it ourselves,” Henry said, and offered his hand. “Henry Villers. Ex-Oakland PD. Welcome, fellow Involuntary. I’m the Black Settler of this little transdimensional Rhodesia.” He jerked a thumb at Ralph. “He’s Zorro, but don’t tell anyone; if they found out, they might stop him branding big Z’s on the Thirty’s asses with a red-hot iron.”

  “It’s a sword, man—how many times do I have to tell you? Zorro uses a sword.”

  “I sell them the hops,” Adrienne cut in. “Also the meat for these hamburgers.”

  Tom shook the black man’s hand, smiling. “How’d you end up here?” he said.

  The other three burst into laughter, and he looked at them
curiously.

  “That’s not… usually considered a tactful question here, Tom,” Adrienne said gently. “Commonwealth etiquette. A lot of people are sort of, ah, sensitive about what they or their ancestors did back FirstSide. The way some Aussies don’t like the word ‘convict,’ only it’s a lot fresher here.”

  “No problemo,” the black man said. “Me, I got here ’cause I was smart. I cunningly went undercover as an RM and M warehouse employee. In the outer circle, of course, the ones they keep as camouflage. Everyone in Oakland said that RM and M was the greatest thing since grits, but in my prodigious wisdom, I knew they were a bunch of evil honky despots down deep. I could tell from the way the company executives looked at me, on their rare visits—which somehow always included the same secluded set of warehouses in the old section. And wasn’t I right?”

  Tom looked at Adrienne. “What happened to your Old Man’s indifference to FirstSider sensibilities?”

  She shrugged: “Well, we’d look pretty conspicuous with an all-pink-faces workforce in twenty-first century Oakland, wouldn’t we, Tom? Lawsuits would be the least of it. A lot of genuine traffic goes through that complex—which means we can divert a certain amount without suspicion. We keep shuffling the deck so that nobody notices the kernel at the center of the peanut, to mix a metaphor. That means the outside has to look as genuine as possible.”

  Henry Villers nodded vigorously. “RM and M is Oakland’s mostest equal-opportunity false-front scam. So, patiently and slowly I accumulated clues that something funny was going on there. All the while neglecting the really funny thing.”

  He paused, and Tom took up the obvious straight line. “Which was?”