"It's those legal and moral obligations I'm fighting for," the Montanan said, his voice quiet. "I don't believe the government has the legal right to discard our own Constitution. This star system was settled by a bunch of fools who'd fallen in love with an over-romanticized fantasy about a time and place, Captain. They didn't have a clue about how accurate or inaccurate their fantasy was, and it didn't matter. They set up a government and a Constitution predicated on principles of independence, orneriness, the freedom of the individual, and the individual's responsibility to look after himself and stand up for what he believes in. I don't say they built the perfect government. Hell, I don't even say the system we had before this annexation plebiscite came along was what they actually had in mind in the first place! But it was my government. It was a government of my friends and my neighbors, and of people I didn't much care for, but it didn't involve any foreign queens, or any baronesses, or any kingdoms and parliaments. I won't stand by and see my planet sold out to someone else, no matter how good a price some of the folks who live here think they're getting. I won't give up the laws and customs my ancestors built, brick by brick, on this planet, not on Rembrandt, and not on Manticore."
"So to protect our government and way of life you're willing to blow up buildings and eventually kill people-and you and I both know that's coming, Steve-to prevent your fellow citizens from doing what three-quarters of them voted to do?" Chief Marshal Bannister shook his head. "Steve, I've always respected your guts and integrity, and God knows I've come to respect your ability. But that's just plain loco. You can't preserve something by blowing it up and shooting it."
Westman looked stubborn, and Van Dort pushed back from the table.
"Mr. Westman, we're not going to magically resolve issues like this in a single meeting, even with the best of intentions. Probably not in half a dozen meetings. I think we've made at least a start on explaining our position to you. As I say, Baroness Medusa invites you to send a detailed explanation of your own views and desires to her. She doesn't want to browbeat you into some sort of abject surrender. Mind you," he let a flicker of a smile show, "I don't think she'd object if you suddenly decided you wanted to turn in your guns! But she's not foolish enough to expect that. What she hopes, I think, is that she may be able to convince you that what you fear isn't going to happen. That, unlike the Trade Union, the Star Kingdom isn't interested in squeezing every drop of profit it can out of the Cluster. That you won't give up your individual liberties, or your right to local self-government. But she can't do that, and you can't explain your concerns and your reservations to her, if there's no communication between you except bombs and pulser darts."
He paused, looking into Westman's eyes.
"We'll be here in Montana for at least the next few weeks. Rather than continue the discussion at this time and risk turning a debate into a quarrel that backs people into positions they can't get out of later, I think we'd be wise to consider this a good beginning and call it a day. Before we do that, though, I'd like to address one other point, if I may."
Westman looked back at him for several seconds, then made a small inviting gesture for him to continue.
"Up to this point," Van Dort said quietly, "all your operations have been directed against property, not people. Don't think for a moment that Baroness Medusa is unaware of the extraordinary effort you've made to keep it that way. She recognizes-as I'm sure Captain Terekhov could confirm-that you've deliberately handicapped your operational flexibility and, in fact, accepted a greater degree of risk to your organization, in order to avoid killing. But as Chief Marshal Bannister just pointed out, you must be aware that you won't be able to do that much longer. At the moment, there's a huge distinction between you, your actions, and your apparent objectives, on the one hand, and those of butchers like Agnes Nordbrandt, on the other."
Something flashed in Westman's eyes at Nordbrandt's name, Helen realized. She didn't know what, but that moment of intense emotion was impossible to hide.
"Right now," Van Dort continued, "you're technically a criminal. You've broken the law and conspired with others to break the law, and God only knows how many millions of stellars worth of damage you've done. But you're not a murderer like Nordbrandt. I think you might want to consider keeping it that way. I'm not trying to convince you to surrender your weapons or turn yourself in. Not yet, anyway. But I do think you should very carefully consider the possibility of declaring at least a temporary cease-fire."
"And give you time to finish voting out your draft Constitution without opposition?" Westman demanded.
"Possibly. Maybe even probably. But I submit that whatever you do here on Montana, you won't stop the other systems represented at the Convention from voting out a Constitution if they decide to do it. If a Constitution is voted out, and if the Montanan legislature votes to ratify it, and if the Star Kingdom's Parliament votes to accept it, then-if your principles leave you no other choice-you can always start shooting again. But do you really have to push things to the point that people get killed, and no one in your organization-not just you, but no one-can ever step back from the brink, before you even know a viable Constitution's going to be put into place?"
"Listen to the man, Steve," Bannister said quietly. "He makes sense. Don't make my boys and girls and your people kill each other when there may never even be any need for it."
"I won't say yes or no to the possibility of a cease-fire," Westman said bluntly. "Not here, not without a chance to think about it and talk it over with my people. But," he hesitated, looking back and forth between Van Dort and Bannister, then gave a short, jerky nod. "But I will think about it, and I will discuss it with my people." He smiled tightly at the Rembrandter. "You got at least that much of what you wanted, Mr. Van Dort."
* * *
Helen followed Captain Terekhov and Van Dort back towards the air car. Bannister and Westman walked a little apart from the other two, talking quietly. From their expressions, Helen suspected they were discussing personal matters, and she wondered what it must feel like to find close friends suddenly enemies over something like this.
The Captain and Van Dort reached the air car and climbed aboard. Helen waited politely for Bannister to do the same, and the Chief Marshal shook Westman's hand and did. She started to step past the guerrilla leader to follow the others, but Westman raised a hand.
"Just a minute, please, Ms.... Zilwicki, was it?"
"Helen Zilwicki," she said a bit stiffly, glancing towards the air car and wishing fervently that at least one of her superiors was in earshot.
"I won't keep you," he said courteously, "but there's something I'd like to ask you, if I may."
"Of course, Sir," she agreed, although it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.
"You remind me of someone," he said quietly, his eyes on her face. "You remind me of her a lot. Did Mr. Van Dort ever mention Suzanne Bannister to you?"
"Suzanne Bannister?" Helen repeated, trying to keep her eyes from widening at the surname. She shook her head. "No, he hasn't."
"Ah." Westman seemed to consider that for a moment, then nodded. "I wondered," he said, and inhaled deeply.
"Economic warfare isn't the only thing that lies between Rembrandt and Montana, Ms. Zilwicki," he said softly, then he nodded to her again, politely, and walked briskly away.
She gazed after him for several seconds, wondering what he meant. Then she shook herself and turned back towards the air car.
Bernardus Van Dort and Trevor Bannister sat side by side, watching her, and she suddenly wondered how she'd managed to miss the pain on both their faces whenever they looked at her.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The stars outside the armorplast dome were dominated by the huge cloud-swirled blue marble of the planet called Montana. There were fewer ships and orbital constructs circling it than there would have been back home, but Helen had grown accustomed to the sparser traffic here in the Verge. Now she lay sprawled across one comfortable chair, s
taring at the huge storm system dominating the planet's eastern hemisphere. One of the things spacers missed was the feel and smell of weather, and for someone from Gryphon, where it was always lively (to say the very least), the sense of deprivation sometimes hit hard.
But it wasn't really weather that was bothering her, and she knew it.
The hatch opened with its familiar silent speed, and she looked up quickly, then relaxed.
"How'd it go?" Paulo d'Arezzo asked.
Helen gazed at him thoughtfully, reflecting on how much their relationship had changed over the past month. It was sometimes hard to remember how standoffish she'd thought he was... until she saw him with the other middies. It wasn't the nose-in-the-air sense of superiority she'd once thought it was, but Paulo was an intensely private person. She wondered, sometimes, if anyone else aboard Hexapuma had the least idea about his background and the demons he carried quietly around with him. Even now, she wasn't prepared to ask him, but she thought she knew the answer.
"Better than I expected, in some ways," she said after a moment in response to his question.
"Can you talk about it?"
"They didn't tell me not to, but they didn't tell me I could, either. Under the circumstances, I'd just as soon not, if you don't mind."
"Fine," he said, and she smiled at him. That was something she'd come to appreciate about Paulo. He could ask a question like that without giving the impression he was trying to entice her into telling him something she shouldn't. He was simply asking if she could talk about it, and he was perfectly prepared to talk about something else entirely if she told him she couldn't. Even Aikawa would have looked disappointed if she'd told him no; Paulo didn't.
He dropped into the other chair, propped his heels on the edge of the com console, and dug out his sketch pad. He began to work, and she watched him from her comfortable drape across her own chair.
"Is this the only place on board where you sketch?" she asked several minutes later, into the quiet, companionable sound of soft pencil lead kissing sharp-toothed paper.
"Pretty much," he said, eyes on the pad and his gracefully moving pencil. He paused and glanced up at her with an off-center smile. "It's kind of a private thing for me. I started doing it as much for a sort of therapy as anything else. Now-" He shrugged. "I guess it's kind of like Leo's poetry."
"Leo writes poetry?" Helen felt both eyebrows rise, and he shook his head with a chuckle.
"You didn't know?"
"No, I certainly didn't!" She looked at him suspiciously. "You're not just pulling my leg to see if it'll come off in your hand, are you?"
"Me? Never!" He chuckled again. "Besides, I understand you're a very dangerous person. Wouldn't be very safe to try pulling your leg, now would it?"
"So how come you know about his poetry and I don't?"
"Far be it from me to suggest that you can sometimes be a bit unobservant," he said, his pencil moving across the paper again. "On the other hand, I sometimes have to wonder where all of your father's sneaky, all-seeing, spymaster genes went, because you sure didn't get any of them!"
"Ha ha, very funny," she said with a grimace. "You aren't going to tell me how you found out, are you?"
"Nope."
He looked up with another smile, then returned his attention to his artwork, and she glowered at the top of his head. For somebody who didn't mingle worth a damn, he seemed to do an extraordinarily good job of picking up information. In fact, he seemed to do quite a number of things extraordinarily well in his quiet loner's kind of way.
"Paulo?"
"Yes?" he looked back up, his expression intent, as if some odd note in her voice had alerted him.
"I need some advice."
"I'm not exactly the best person to ask, if it's a social question," he cautioned, with something almost like panic in his eyes.
"You're going to have to get over that rabbit-in-the-headlights reaction to mingling with other people, you know. A successful naval officer doesn't have to be a howling extrovert, I suppose. But a hermit's going to experience a certain difficulty in building sound professional relationships."
"Sure, sure!" He raised his hand, waving his pencil at her admonishingly. "Stop criticizing and ask your question."
"I said I'd prefer not to talk about the meeting, but there was one really weird thing, and I'm not sure what to do about it."
"What do you mean, 'weird'?"
"As we were leaving, Westman asked me if Mr. Van Dort had ever mentioned someone named Suzanne Bannister."
"He did what?" Paulo frowned with the expression of someone who knew he didn't have all the information required to understand something. "Why would he do that?"
"I don't know." She turned her eyes away, gazing back out the armorplast at the storm system. "He said I reminded him of someone, then asked me if Mr. Van Dort had ever mentioned her. And I don't think the last name's exactly a coincidence," she added.
"Bannister? I guess not!"
He sat there for several seconds, frowning at her profile.
"You're worried that he had some kind of ulterior motive for telling you, aren't you?" he asked finally, and she gave an irritated little shrug.
"No, not really... most of the time. But I can't be sure. And even if he doesn't, I've got a strong feeling it might be painful to Mr. Van Dort if I brought it up.
"Well," Paulo said, "it seems to me you've got three options. First, you can keep your mouth shut and never bring the question up. Second, you can ask Van Dort who this Suzanne Bannister was. Or, third, if you really think Westman might've had some sort of ulterior motive, you could report it to the Skipper and see what he thinks you should do about it."
"I'd already pretty much come up with those same options on my own. If you were me, which one would you choose?"
"Without being there and actually hearing what he said to you, I'm not prepared to say," he said thoughtfully. "If you're reasonably certain this isn't simply a case of Westman looking for some way to upset Van Dort or create some kind of suspicion between him and the Skipper-or between him and you, for that matter-then maybe you should just go ahead and ask him. If you're seriously afraid it is a way to make trouble, you should probably tell the Skipper without letting Van Dort know anything about it. Let the Skipper decide the best way to handle it." He shrugged. "Bottom line, Helen, I don't think anyone else can make that decision for you."
"No," she agreed, yet even as she did, she realized just talking to Paulo about it had helped her decide what to do.
* * *
"Yes, Helen? What can I do for you?
Bernardus Van Dort laid aside the old-fashioned stylus with which he'd been scribbling longhand notes when the cabin hatch chime sound. He tipped back his chair, smiled, and indicated the small couch on the other side of the cabin he'd been assigned.
Helen settled down and looked at him, wondering one last time if she was doing the right thing. But she'd made her mind up, and she inhaled unobtrusively.
"I hope I'm not out of line, Sir," she said. "But someone suggested that I reminded him of someone called Suzanne Bannister."
For just an instant, Van Dort's face froze. All expression vanished, and for that moment, Helen felt as if she were looking at an old-fashioned marble statue. Then he smiled again, but this time the smile was crooked and contained no humor at all.
"Was it Westman? Or Trevor?" His voice was as calm and courteous as ever, yet wrapped around a tension, almost a wariness, she'd never heard from him before.
"It was Mr. Westman," she said steadily, meeting his gaze without flinching, and he nodded.
"I thought it probably was. Trevor and I haven't mentioned Suzanne to one another in over twenty years."
"Sir, if it's none of my business, just tell me so. But when Mr. Westman mentioned her-I don't know. It was as if he really, really wanted me to know and, I think, to ask you about her. And as if his reasons didn't have anything at all to do with the annexation or why we're here."
"You're
wrong about that, Helen," Van Dort looked away at last. He gazed intently at a perfectly bare patch of bulkhead. "It has quite a lot to do with why we're here-why I'm here, at any rate-even if only indirectly."
He was silent for a long time, still gazing at the bulkhead. The blindness in his eyes made Helen regret that she'd begun the entire conversation, but he hadn't bitten her head off or told her to go away. He simply sat there, and she couldn't just leave him wherever he'd wandered to.
"Who was she, Sir?" she asked quietly.
"My wife," he said, very, very softly.
Helen stiffened, her eyes opening wide. She'd never heard that Van Dort had been married. Then again, she thought, she hadn't actually heard anything about his personal life.
David Weber - Honor17 - Shadow of Saganami Page 59
