The Gripping Hand (4 page)

"I'd be surprised if he didn't," Commander Cohen said. "It's a big export item. Now. You wanted to know about the Governor. He grew up here, was here before the Purchase was brought back into the Empire. He joined the Navy from school, and when he got out of the Navy, he brought a friend, another retired Navy man, Randall Weiss, and they started a freighter service to supply the asteroid miners."

"Sounds reasonable," Renner said. There had been a time when that would have been his career: finish a tour in the Navy Reserve, then go into a civilian shipping line, maybe eventually buy a ship.

"Only the Outies kept raiding their ship," Ruth said. "They took two cargoes, and the firm was about to go broke."

"Where was the Navy?"

"That was sixteen years ago."

"Ah. They were still beefing up the blockade fleet." Mote system again.

"Exactly." Ruth sipped at her drink. "That really is good, you know? Anyway. Sir Lawrence—he wasn't Sir Lawrence then of course—and Weiss decided to do something about it. They armed their ship and recruited locals and asteroid miners and anyone else they could and went out looking for pirates, or rather let the Outies find them. I guess they were lucky because they captured an Outie ship, and that gave them a bigger and better-armed ship, and they used it to hunt more Outies."

"I think I read about that," Renner said. "Didn't realize it was here. They ended up with four ships, and quite a battle."

"Yes. Randall Weiss was killed, but they pretty well smashed the Outie threat. Weiss got a statue, Sir Lawrence got a knighthood, and the local council sent him to the sector capital to represent the Purchase. Pretty soon the Viceroy sent him back as Governor."

"Good story." Renner frowned. "By God, I have met him, but I can't think where."

A faint gong sounded through the reception hall.

"Dinner," Ruth said.

Renner offered his arm.

The first course was a variety of sashimi. Renner looked to Ruth Cohen for advice.

"That one's yellowfin," she said. "Earth tuna grow well here. And the light gray one is a freshwater fish called dancing silver. Oh!"

"What?"

"The dark red one is cecil. It's expensive. Not exactly rare, but they don't catch one every day."

Renner took some of each. "What is cecil?"

"Big sea snake. You saw it caught, I think. In the holograms. Hmm. Kevin, I think we've been watching our dinner! I wonder if that means we'll have snow ghost?"

"Yes," Lady Jackson said from down the table. She was an ample woman who clearly liked to eat. "Do you like it?"

"I've never tasted it," Ruth admitted. "We had cecil once, though. Kevin, you're supposed to dip it in that sauce."

Renner used the chopsticks to dip the dark meat, then chewed thoughtfully. "Peanut sauce."

"And ginger," Lady Jackson said. "The Thai influence. Purchase cuisine tends to be simple. The planet was settled by Mormons, but there was strong oriental influence. The gripping hand was that we kept the simplicities of both for nearly everything."

Bury's travel chair, near the head of the table, took up the space of two normal chairs. It gave him a sense of isolation, which he welcomed, and still allowed him conversation.

Snow ghost meat was served julienne with carrots, turnips, and unfamiliar root vegetables. The dish was hot enough to wake the dead. The meat was tough. No wonder if had to be cut fine. Bury's teeth cut through it well enough, but they were harder and sharper than the teeth he'd been born with.

He asked, "Maxroy's Purchase was brought into the Empire fifty years ago?"

"Not quite forty, actually," Governor Jackson said. He was eating left-handed; his silverware had been laid out reversed.

Bury nodded slowly. "But I am told there is still considerable sentiment for the Outie cause."

Governor Jackson spread his hands expressively. He never seemed to shrug. "It's not what it seems," he protested. "Our people—especially in the outback—tend to think of New Utah as more like Heaven than a mere planet. Habitable from pole to pole, and covered with green plants and wild game."

"And it is not?" Bury asked.

"I've read the old records," Governor Jackson said. "It's a planet. More land surface than the Purchase, higher mountains, and even fewer minerals close to the surface. Stayed molten longer, maybe. The weather's more extreme. Do you care for more wine, Your Excellency?"

"Thank you, no."

"Oh, that's right, Moslems don't drink," Mrs. Muller said. "I'd forgotten."

"Probably most do not," Bury said. "Just as most Jews do not eat pork." He'd noticed that both the Governor and his wife were drinking soda water. "Governor, would there be strong reasons for the Outies to wish for trade with the Purchase?"

"Very likely, Excellency," Governor Jackson said. "New Utah is quite deficient in certain minerals and organics. There's no selenium at all, for example. They'll need food supplements."

"Just a few tonnes a year," Norvell White Muller said. "A couple of ships' worth, and the profits on those ships—" He licked his lips. "Utah Churchies would buy medical supplies, too, if the Empire would let them."

Governor Jackson laughed. "The Navy can't spare me any ships," he said. "So I can't go bring New Utah into the Empire by force—"

"You can't even get there," Mrs. Muller giggled.

"Well, we can, but I agree, it's not easy. Two jumps past wretched red dwarfs, and then across a big bright E-class system with only one planet and that a rock ball. There was an expedition a few years before I got here." Jackson looked thoughtful. "The Navy has records showing it wasn't always so hard."

"I believe I heard that as well," Bury said.

"Anyway, as long as I don't have Navy ships, the trade embargo is the only weapon I've got to bring New Utah in. All they have to do is join and they can have all the trade they want."

"The gripping hand is they don't want to," Renner said.

Jackson laughed. "Maybe. They've had time enough to change their minds. It's all academic because the direct Jump point disappeared a hundred and thirty years ago, during the Secession Wars. I sent them an ambassador twelve years ago, with a trade ship . . . one of yours, Mister Bury. No luck."

Stars wander, Bury thought. Jump points depend upon the luminosities within a pattern of stars. They come and go . . . why did that thought suddenly have the fringe of hair around his neck trying to stand up? Tiny six-limbed shadows flailed behind his eyes. . . .

Across the table he heard Renner murmur, "Jackson and
Weiss
?"

Governor Jackson said, "There was some traffic, I think, up until the Navy came back forty years ago. New Utah would have paid high for fertilizer. But with
what
? And the trip is just too long—"

Renner's belly laugh cut through all conversation. Into the silence Renner said, "I was trying to remember where I met you."

The Governor was laughing, too, with his head thrown back. His wife giggled.

"Governor? Sir? I watched your hands," Renner said. "Like this?" He pushed back his chair and stood; never mind that they were in the middle of dessert. Right hand up, closing: "On the one hand, high price for fertilizer." Right hand dropped to near the hip, closed again. Bury nodded. "On the other hand, they don't seem to have anything to pay with," Renner said. Left hand out, fingers closed in pairs, like a hand with three thick fingers. "Gripping hand, it's too far anyway. Did I get that right?"

"Why, yes, Sir Kevin. My wife's tried to break me of the habit—"

"But the whole planet's doing it. Did you learn it here, or on Mote Prime?"

Bury's vision swam. He pulled the diagnostic sleeve out of his chair arm and inserted his arm, hoping nobody would notice. Orange dots blinked, and he felt the coolness of a tranquilizer injection.

The Governor said, "I was sure you wouldn't recognize me. Couldn't remember where you'd met me, hey? . . . Bury? Are you all right?"

"Yes, but I don't understand."

"You were an honored passenger, and Sir Kevin was the Sailing Master, and Weiss and me, we were only Able Spacers. I was sure you wouldn't know me. But we went down to Mote Prime, and we stayed till Captain Blaine decided we weren't needed and sent us back. Weiss, he picked up that habit from the aliens, the Moties. One hand, other hand, gripping hand, and they shrug with their arms because their shoulders don't move. I learned it from him. We were on the holoscans a lot when we were fighting the Outies, and I've been on since Sparta made me Governor, and I guess . . . The whole planet, eh?"

Renner said, "All of Pitchfork River, at least. Top to bottom, hill to spill, they've taken up that three-sided Aristotelian logic. You're not just the governor, you're a holo star too."

The Governor seemed embarrassed, but pleased. "That's the way it is in the outlying worlds. Sir Kevin, Excellency, I was purely delighted to meet you again after so long." As equals, he didn't say.

"So that's all there was to it," Renner said. He sprawled back in the big RelaxaChair in Bury's study and let the massage begin as he lifted a glass of real cognac. "Jackson and Weiss got successful and become tri-vee stars. Local boys made good. So everybody copied them. Wow! And to think we knew them when." He laughed suddenly. "Weiss must have driven his Fyunch(click) crazy, imitating him like that! It's supposed to go the other way around."

"Naive." Bury let himself sink cautiously into his chair and touched the button twice for coffee.

"How so naive? You heard the Governor."

"I heard him explain away a peculiar habit," Bury said softly. "I did not hear an explanation of why there is too much money in this system."

"That's true," Renner admitted.

"He has been to Mote Prime," Bury said. "The Governor himself. He and Weiss had money to buy and outfit a spacecraft. If there ever was a man better suited to hide captured Watchmakers. Or an Engineer, or—"

Renner laughed. "Bury, that's bizarre!" He leaned back into the massage chair and let it work as he remembered the miniature Moties. Small aliens, not really intelligent, but able to manipulate technologies beyond anything Renner had ever seen. Oh, they'd have been valuable, all right! And they'd destroyed the battle cruiser
MacArthur
.

Still. "Horace, you've been clinically paranoid since long before I met you. Blaine let the Watchmakers get loose on his ship, but Christ, it was impossible to get Moties into
Lenin
! The Marines didn't let anything through unless it went through molecule-by-molecule inspection!"

"Not impossible. I did it myself." Bury's hands kneaded the chair arms.

Renner sat bolt upright. "What?"

"It would have worked." Bury waited as Nabil came into the room with an ornate silver coffeepot and thin cups. "Coffee, Kevin?"

"Sure.
You smuggled out a Motie?"

"We did that, didn't we, Nabil?"

Nabil grinned mirthlessly. "Excellency, that is one profit I am pleased that you never collected." It was a liberty Nabil would not normally have taken; but Bury only shivered and sipped at his coffee. He was wearing the diagnostic sleeve.

"Bury, what in hell?"

"Have I shocked you after twenty-five years? The Watchmakers were potentially the most valuable thing I had ever seen," Bury said. "Able to fix and repair and rebuild and invent. I thought it madness not to keep a pair. And so we arranged it, a pair of Watchmakers in suspended animation, hidden in an air tank. My air tank on my pressure suit."

"On your
back
?" If Bury was lying, he was doing it well. But Bury did lie well. "You don't have Watchmakers. I'd know."

"Of course I do not," Bury said. "You know part of the story.
MacArthur
was lost to us, the Watchmakers were running wild throughout the ship, changing the machines for their own use, killing Marines who peeped into their nests. We crossed on lines between
MacArthur
and
Lenin
. Long spiderwebs of line with passengers strung like beads. The universe was all around us and the great globe of Mote Prime below, all circles, the craters left by their wars. The huge globe of a ship came near. I could feel the wealth and danger on my back, Marines ahead, and the risk of running out of air too soon. I had accepted that risk. Then—"