Patriots

by David Drake

  The visitors' gallery was by contrast only sparsely occupied. Mark saw Amy looking prim by the front railing. To Zenith society, sitting in the gallery meant you weren't of any importance.

  Amy didn't care—shouldn't care, anyway—what a bunch of overdressed clowns thought was important. She had a better view from where she was, besides. Mark thought of waving but contented himself with a nod before walking on.

  He was becoming uncomfortably aware of his clothes. Mark wore one of the two pairs of coveralls he'd brought on his journey to the frontier. They were neat and clean but absolutely utilitarian, in no way the sort of formal garb he'd worn to court back home.

  His idea had been that he didn't want to stand out from his Greenwood fellow-defendants, whom he'd expected would dress in leather and coarse fabrics as they did at home. Boy, had that been a miscalculation.

  Yerby's sparkling green coat and a pair of fluorescent peppermint-striped trousers that he must have bought last night in New Paris—and OK, he'd been drunk then but he was presumably sober now and he was wearing them—weren't the most dazzlingly ugly garments among the defendants. The prize went to Dagmar Wately, in a fur ensemble that made her look like a road-kill Frankenstein, pieced together from a number of planets. None of the animals who'd given their all to clothe her were native to Greenwood.

  The other five defendants were in lesser degrees of holiday finery. They weren't quite as striking as Yerby and Dagmar, but all told they made the Zeniths in the rest of the courtroom look staid. Mark wouldn't have believed that was possible.

  Elector Daniels, acting as chief counsel for the defendants, was within the enclosure with a half-dozen junior legal personnel from both Quelhagen and Zenith. Daniels had dressed in the height of Quelhagen's severe fashion: charcoal gray coat, charcoal gray trousers with a single black stripe on either leg, and a gunmetal gray vest over a white shirt. The elector saw Mark and nodded in approval. A moment before Mark had been embarrassed to appear without formal garments, but Daniels seemed to be pleased that at least one of his clients didn't look like an explosion in a fireworks factory.

  Mark entered the enclosure and squirmed to Yerby's side. Yerby clapped his shoulder with numbing cheerfulness. Seconds later, a stentorian bailiff roared, "Court of Common Pleas of the New Paris District is now in session! Judge Reesa Maglaglen presiding!"

  Judge Maglaglen, a small woman in scarlet robes, entered from behind the bench and took the middle of the three seats. She'd be sitting alone during this preliminary hearing for the presentation of documentary evidence and motions.

  Maglaglen's eyes swept the courtroom, pausing for a moment on the defendants' enclosure. Mark had seen more pleasant expressions on a tangle of razor wire.

  "I'll now accept documentary evidence relating to the case of Biber et alia against Wately et alia, an action in ejectment," Maglaglen said. "Counsel for the plaintiffs may come forward."

  The procedure was a lot more abrupt than what Mark was used to on Quelhagen, but that didn't mean it was unfair. Or does it? he wondered.

  Biber and Finch approached the bench with an usher. The two principals didn't look at one another. The usher between them handed a set of recording chips to the bailiff and said, "Your Honor, the plaintiffs wish to place in evidence true copies of grants made by Protectors LaCoque, Manering, and Giscard during their terms as Protectors of Zenith."

  "Accepted for verification by the Public Record Office," Maglaglen said. "Counsel for the defense, if you have any documentary evidence to offer you may come forward."

  Elector Daniels stepped forward. Finch smirked at him as the plaintiffs returned to their enclosure. "Your Honor," Daniels said, "the defendants wish to place in evidence true copies of grants validly issued by Protector Greenwood of Hestia."

  Daniels held out a chip case. The bailiff ostentatiously refused to accept it.

  Judge Maglaglen said, "As the world commonly termed Greenwood was never subject to the control of the Protectors of Hestia, such material has no bearing on the matter at issue. I therefore refuse to accept it. Do the defendants offer any other documentary evidence supporting their right to possession?"

  "Your Honor, I protest!" Daniels said. He looked genuinely outraged. "The Protector of Hestia was acting under at least color of the authority of his office in—"

  Instead of raising a gavel in the traditional style still followed on Quelhagen, the judge touched a button. A gong rang in the ceiling of the courtroom. When the metallic note had quavered to silence, Maglaglen said, "As defendants offer no evidence to support their claims, I find for plaintiffs."

  Her bitter face swept the room. "Plaintiffs' counsel," she continued, "will provide an order for my execution as soon as the plaintiffs' grants have been verified by the relevant authorities."

  She rang the gong again.

  "What is this?" Yerby Bannock said. He stepped forward.

  One of the junior counsel put a hand on his arm. Yerby brushed the man aside like a fly. "What the hell is this?"

  "Defendant, you're out of order!" the judge said, her voice rising with each word as if she were reciting a musical scale. Bailiffs and ushers were converging from all points in the courtroom.

  Yerby took another step. He missed the enclosure's opening and smashed the rail into shards of plastic with a quick jerk of his arm.

  Elector Daniels and the bailiff before the bench stopped in the middle of their strides toward the frontiersman. Judge Maglaglen hunched down, ready to bolt like a fuzzy red bunny. Mark stumbled on the bottom of the barrier's framework as he followed Yerby.

  He didn't think about what he was doing. He was afraid to think, and anyway, this didn't seem to be the time for it.

  "Oh, don't get your bowels in an uproar!" Yerby said. "I'm not going to hurt any of you delicate flowers."

  The frontiersman turned and looked slowly around the whole courtroom. He seemed surprised to see Mark jumping out of the way beside him, but he put his arm around the smaller man. "All right, you lot!" he said. "It may be that on Zenith the sun rises in the west and there's no human justice. But I tell you—"

  He turned slowly to face the bench again. The bailiff leaped back so suddenly that he fell over. Daniels had already eased himself toward the aisle, trying not to come too close to Yerby. Even the other Greenwood defendants stood uneasily within the enclosure. Nobody but Mark was within ten feet of the big frontiersman.

  "I tell you," Yerby repeated. "If any of you fine folk come to Greenwood, I think you'll learn that the sun there still rises in the usual place."

  He spun and marched down the aisle.

  "Hey, wait for me, Yerby!" black-bearded Holgar Emmreich cried, scrambling to follow. All the Greenwoods fell in with a haste just this side of panic. What they were probably afraid of was the whole unfamiliar situation, not what the bailiffs or municipal police were going to do because of the outburst. They followed their leader because that was a lot easier than thinking for themselves.

  Mark paused where he stood. Thinking wasn't doing him a bit of good. Spectators in dazzling clothes swirled out of the Greenwoods' way, then swirled back, chirping and gabbling. It was like watching a windstorm in a parrot cage.

  Amy no longer sat where she had been. Mark thought of searching for her, but the chances were she was coming down to join him. His best choice was to stay put. If they both wandered around in this brilliant chaos, they'd never find each other.

  "Mark," said a familiar voice, "your counsel and I have never been formally introduced. Will you do the honors?"

  Mark looked at the speaker, a slim, gray-haired man. He wore brown Quelhagen formalwear, so he'd been lost in the clouds of color.

  "Hi, Dad," Mark said. He cleared his throat and added, "I didn't expect to see you here."

  And boy! was that ever the truth.

  15. Fallback Positions

  "There aren't so many interplanetary attorneys that news of my son appearing as defendant on Zenith wasn't going to reach me, Mark," Lucius M
axwell said. "Now, will you introduce us? Because I have business to discuss with your counsel."

  "Elector Daniels, allow me to present my father, Mr. Lucius Maxwell," Mark said. He bowed to each party as he spoke his name. "Dad is . . ."

  "An attorney of note," Daniels said, voicing the words that Mark had smothered because he hadn't wanted to sound like he was bragging. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir. Though there wasn't a great deal of law to be seen here today."

  He glared balefully at the judge's bench, now empty.

  "Zenith law," Lucius said with a cool smile. "Which one might compare to Zenith art—flashy, with very little at the core."

  His tone changed as he went on. "What do you intend to do now? Appeal?"

  Amy appeared through the crowd. She would have stayed apart from the three men if Mark hadn't motioned her closer.

  Daniels nodded. "Yes, of course," he said, "though I don't know that we have much chance."

  "If you mean to appeal to the Council of State under Zenith procedure," Lucius said, "you have no chance whatever. Vice-Protector Finch sits as president of the council, and half his fellow-councillors have shares in the Greenwood grants at issue."

  Lucius spoke crisply, stating facts with no perceived possibility of argument. Mark had heard that cold tone often enough. He swayed closer to Amy.

  "If you're empowered by your principals to associate additional counsel—" Lucius continued. He raised an eyebrow in question.

  "Yes, of course," Daniels said. "Goodness, I hope you don't think these hicks have anything to do with planning the defense!"

  Lucius exchanged glances with Mark. Daniels had the decency to look embarrassed and the sense not to try to unsay the words he'd already blurted.

  "I don't know that the hicks, as you put it, could have been less effective in their own defense," Lucius said without heat. "Be that as it may, if you'll authorize me to act in the matter I'll carry it to Protector Giscard instead of to the Zenith council."

  "Mr. Maxwell," Daniels said in puzzlement, "the grants by which we're being dispossessed were issued by the Protectors of Zenith. Some of them were issued by Giscard himself."

  "Exactly what do you believe we have to lose, Elector Daniels?" Mark said. His tone was sharper than he'd intended, but at this stage in the proceedings he didn't much care.

  Daniels stiffened. Lucius nodded to his son.

  "Oh, all right," Daniels said. "What is your proposed fee, sir?"

  Lucius smiled again. For some reason, the expression made Mark think of Yerby Bannock. "One Quelhagen franc," he said, "to bind the deal. Beyond that, reasonable expenses. The first of which . . ." He looked at Mark with a slight curling of his lip. ". . . will be to buy a set of proper clothes for my son, who will act as my aide when I approach the Protector. It'll be tomorrow before I can get a meeting anyway."

  Everyone stared at Mark. He folded his hands over his belly to cover the slight tear in the coveralls there.

  "We'll dress you as a gentleman of Quelhagen, boy, not as a painted whore from Zenith," Lucius said. "But you will be dressed appropriately."

  16 Plotting with the Enemy

  Pulsing light and a bugle call awakened Mark in the middle of the night. He shot bolt upright in a bed disguised as a tussock of grass,

  It was pitch dark; the only sound was the vague traffic noise to which Mark had fallen asleep. Zeniths might have odd ideas of decoration, but the rooms here in the Safari House were at least soundproofed.

  The eyes of the little lion statue on the nightstand strobed red and its belly trilled Charge! again. Mark grabbed the statue and wrenched its head off. That was the right move, because the lion turned out to be a telephone.

  "Huh?" Mark said.

  "Mark, is your father there?" asked Amy's voice.

  "Huh," Mark repeated. He wasn't one of the people who were at their best when awakened from a sound sleep. "No, he's staying at the Quelhagen trade mission. He had a lot of things to do before tomorrow, he said."

  He looked at the clock masquerading as a pair of assegais rotating across the face of an imitation-bullhide shield, It was three in the morning of a twenty-six-hour Zenith day. "Before today," Mark corrected himself.

  "Well, you'll have to do," Amy said. "Will you come over to our rooms right away? We're on the corner, the Ishandlwana Suite."

  Huh? thought Mark.

  "Yerby went out with some of the plaintiffs," Amy continued. "He isn't back yet and I'm worried. We have to do something!"

  "Ah," said Mark. "Ah. Sure, I'll be right over."

  He put on his coveralls rather than his new suit. He had no idea what Amy thought was appropriate garb. On Quelhagen it was never appropriate for a gentleman to visit a lady's room alone.

  Except under circumstances that clearly weren't what Amy had in mind.

  At least Mark hoped that wasn't what Amy had in mind. He'd played second fiddle to his father in a lot of ways, but that would really hurt.

  Amy snatched the door open at the first knock. "I don't know what to do," she said by way of greeting. "If we were on Kilbourn I'd go searching bars, but everything's so big here! I'm afraid they're going to do something terrible to him."

  Mark didn't recall a time when he'd thought Yerby was in more danger than everybody else around him was. He said soothingly, "Well, the Zeniths won in court, so they shouldn't be too angry . . ."

  He looked about him. The central room of the Ishandlwana Suite had furniture that looked as if it were made from rocks, rifles, and spears. Slit curtains covered the walls. When the fabric moved in the draft, Mark caught sight of fierce-eyed warriors painted behind the hangings. It was the sort of place that would have given him the creeps even if he'd had a good night's sleep.

  "Can we go somewhere else?" he asked, meaning the hotel lobby. Amy wore Kilbourn-style street clothes. They'd stand out a little on Zenith because they were so staid, but Mark didn't suppose that mattered at three in the morning.

  "Right, the kitchen," Amy said. "In case they come in while we're—"

  Good as the hotel's soundproofing was, it wasn't up to Yerby Bannock singing "Fanny Bay" as the doors of the elevator down the hall opened. Other voices tried to hush him—loudly, because otherwise Yerby couldn't have heard them over his song.

  Mark bolted for the kitchen between the suite's two bedrooms. He wasn't worried about whoever might be with Yerby, whether they were from Zenith or not. He was a lot worried about how the frontiersman would react if he found Mark alone with Amy at this hour in a hotel room. Even when they were sober, guys could get very upset about their sisters. There wasn't a high likelihood that Yerby was sober at the moment.

  Amy had just closed the slatted door behind them when the hall door opened and Yerby called, "Welcome to my humble abode! Time for a drink, I'd say."

  Mark squatted to peer between the slats. If he held his head at exactly the right angle, he could look out into the main room. Amy sat cross-legged beside him, doing the same thing at a lower level.

  Yerby slid open the liquor cabinet against one sidewall. Six of the men—no women—Mark had seen in the plaintiffs' enclosure in court watched dubiously. The frontiersman lifted out a bottle in either hand.

  "I don't think we need to drink more until we've got the terms worked out," said Heinrich Biber. He and Vice-Protector Finch now wore civilian clothes. Mark suspected, though he couldn't be sure, that the other Zeniths present were aides or servants rather than principals in the lawsuit.

  Yerby snorted. "Don't worry about me being able to figure terms, laddie," he said. "But it's a fact that you haven't said what you want me to do. Not in so many words, anyhow."

  Amy sucked in her breath with a sharp gasp. Mark didn't let himself move or make a sound. Surely Yerby isn't going to let the plaintiffs buy him off?

  Yerby unstoppered a bottle with a flick of his horny thumb and drank. He waved the other bottle toward the Zeniths as an invitation. None of them took it.

  "We're just tryi
ng to avoid trouble," Berkeley Finch said. His voice was melodious, but his arm's oratorical sweep accompanying the words was completely ridiculous in the present setting.

  Yerby lowered the bottle. He belched. "Well, I guess you come to the wrong address, then," he said. "Stirring up trouble's about the most fun there is. Most fun I've found, anyhow."

  "All right," Biber said. "You want plain words, I'll give you plain words. We know you've got influence with your neighbors on Greenwood. We'll pay you to use that influence to prevent them from acting violently against the agents we send to enforce our claim on the land."

  "You'll be doing them a favor," Vice-Protector Finch interjected. This time he spread both arms wide. Here's a guy who's on stage every waking moment. "Obviously they can't withstand the enormous power of Zenith."

  Yerby shrugged and drank again. A good half the quart bottle had gurgled down his throat in the minutes since Mark watched him enter the suite.

  "We'll permit current settlers to reclaim their land under our grants," Biber said. "We'll offer them special rates. Say, only two-thirds of what we normally charge."

  Yerby belched again. This time the lamps rattled. "Awright," he said. "I want five thousand Zenith dollars a month. A Greenwood month, that is."

  "Are you—" Finch began in an angry voice. He shut up instantly when he saw Yerby's smile start to broaden.

  "We're thinking more in terms of a thousand a month," Biber said carefully. "With a bonus for success, of course. A large bonus."

  Amy clasped her hands tightly together as though she was praying. Mark didn't look directly at her, but from the corner of his eye he could see that her face was white. She'd never thought her brother was a saint, but this barefaced treachery amazed as well as horrified her.