Voyage Across the Stars (30 page)

“No!” said Marilee. She had been leaning forward. Now she thrust herself against the back of her chair. “I wanted him, and that may have been a mistake even then. But I don’t want Don to come home now. It’s too late. They’d only kill him.”

“They’re trash, Mistress,” said the tanker. The emotion in his quiet voice was not anger. “You can’t live, worrying about trash.”

“My husband was a good man,” said Marilee, “a
good
man—”

“I know that.”

“—but he let Beverly Dyson build his organization for two years. All very careful, taking over the Port that was too much work for any of the other board members to bother about. Loans to some, help of other kinds and blackmail besides to some who needed more than money.”

The woman swept to her feet again. She stood like a warrior queen. Her voice rolled out in challenge. “All very quiet, Mister—Holt—and none of the thugs, the gunmen, till all that had been taken care of. But the thugs are here, they killed Tom. And theykill anybody else who threatens Dyson’s plans, I see that now.”

“Look,” said Slade as he stood also. Half his mind would have taken him nearer to the woman, but instead he walked back toward the trophy wall. They were part of what had forged him, those monsters; and beyond that, he felt a certain kinship with what they represented. “You knew that—Mistress,” he said, “when you called your brother-in-law home. Nothing’s changed, except your nerve’s giving out. And it’s not your nerve that matters when h-he gets home.”

“That’s not
true
about nothing changing!” the woman cried. She raised both hands. “It was a chance for the Council to back a strong leader against Bev Dyson. All right, not Teddy . . . and not me either, some of them because they’re fools and some because they didn’t see the skills for this—kind of business—in my background. Man or woman. But I thought somebody they
could
respect, and somebody who
could
organize them, lead them—Bev doesn’t have any army, and all the Council together could muster enough men to, to get him away. I thought they’d all jump at the chance not to be bullied by Bev Dyson, but . . .”

Marilee sagged in on herself without completing the thought.

The flaring pectoral fins of the orc had been razor sharp when Don Slade first grew tall enough to touch them gingerly. That edge had long been worn round as awe was slowly replaced by ritual. Slade touched a fin now. A part of him visualized the creature alive, forty meters of it spiraling up toward the platform on which the Old Man waited with a rocket gun.

Memory of his grandfather was by no means out of place to current needs. “And Councilor Dorcas, your brother?” asked Slade as his hand caressed the deadly fin.

“The present Councilor is my nephew, I’m afraid,” said the woman. She paced to the window. Through it now gleamed only the lights of those trying to deal with the wreckage in the courtyard. As generally on Tethys, the haze of clouds blocked any but the brightest stars.

“He’s even younger than Teddy—isn’t that amusing?” Marilee continued. “But well-advised, I gather. The vote to put the Slade Estate in guardianship was unanimous. I don’t expect there to be much change tomorrow when the Council determines who the actual guardian should be.

“So you see,” the tall woman continued as she faced her visitor again, “why I no longer believe that any possible rallying point would make—” she sniffed— “men out of the Councilors. Except perhaps for me to retain a mercenary regiment. I was almost willing to consider that course, until I talked to Mister Pritchard the other day. I will die before I bring that to Tethys. I will die.”

“Yeah,” said Don Slade to the window. “Well.” Seconds after she thought he was finished, the tanker continued. “I suppose the Old Man’s room’s been cleaned out years since. I mean, Counc—”

“I know who the Old Man was,” the woman said. “Even during Council sessions, there has been space to spare in this House since it ceased to be a barracks. My husband would never enter—his grandfather’s room, Holt, but he never permitted anyone else to enter it either. Would you like to, to . . . ?”

“Yes, Mistress,” said Slade. “Very much.”

Slade stretched. The muscles that rippled across his arms and shoulders gave the lie to his dyed, razor-thinned hair.

“And—” nervous again, but soft as she paused—“you’ll be staying tonight in the House?”

The tanker shrugged. He touched the orc again. “I’ll get back to Number Six, Mistress. It’ll cause less trouble. If you can arrange transportation when you get someone to let me into the Old Man’s room? I doubt the truck I came in will run me back.” Slade’s smile was as bleak and distant as that of the orc.

“Of course,” said Marilee. Her voice was normal, but it sounded thin in her own ears as her world shrank down to a point. “I suppose you can understand why Don can’t appear now?”

The man did not speak. He stood before the trophies. He looked as massive and powerful and inert as a stalled ox.

“Perhaps,” Marilee went on, “things might change. Soon. And it will be safe for Captain Slade to return to Tethys.”

“Tethys won’t be safe for
any
man, or a woman,” said the tanker flatly, “until there’s enough men or women—to make it safe. I’ve heard what I need to hear, Mistress.”

Marilee turned and bent over the chair-arm controls. She gave quick orders to the Under-Steward on call. Then, in a clear voice, she said to the man behind her, “That will be all, then, Holt.”

Only when the door closed solidly did Marilee open her eyes again. She felt as if the maelstrom had just swept past her last hope of survival.

The pumps were already sluicing the lines again in start-up mode, testing the system for leaks which had opened during the hours of darkness. Their
hoosh
announced Slade as he entered the crew area, then closed the door behind him.

“Hey, it’s Soldier,” called Chesson as Leaf was saying, “Via! Look how he’s togged out!” Slade wore a Steward’s tunic, blue-green with silver piping. It fit him no worse than the garment he had worn to the House.

“Fried potatoes with your breakfast?” asked Pretorius. He shook the skillet.

“Via, yes,” Slade said as he sat down beside the fourth chair at the table. He took the plate the foreman handed him. Raw fries, nothing processed about them, gleamed beside a filet of shallotte or some similar fish. “You guys teaching potatoes to swim, then?” the tanker asked. There was certainly no garden plot at the station, swept as it was by tides on an average of once a month.

“My wife grows them,” said Chesson as he took another mouthful. “Well, we both do every other month when I’m off, but I can’t take much credit.”

“No trouble at the House, then?” Leaf asked.

“Yeah, what did the Mistress say?” Chesson added as he recollected the circumstances in which the big man had ridden off in the truck.

“Let the man eat his breakfast,” said Pretorius. He took his own place at the table. Even in the foreman’s eyes, however, were questions dancing to be answered.

“There was a bit of trouble,” Slade said. Instead of eating, he eased his chair back and looked across the other three men. “Nothing that couldn’t be handled. What happens this afternoon, though, that’s going to be harder. They’re going to give Bev Dyson guardianship of the Slade Estate.”

Unexpectedly Leaf said, “I wasn’t but a boy, not so much as Chessie’s age.” Chesson, who was a good thirty years old, bridled but did not interrupt. “The storm of 161 it was, the Great Storm. You remember that, Piet?”

Pretorius shrugged. “Before my time,” he said.

Leaf nodded as if to pump up his memory. “There was never anything to match it,” the old man said. “Fifteen days of wind and waves. There wasn’t a let-up till the end. The eye missed Main Island altogether, just curled through us like the blade of a circle saw. But you know, lads—it did pass. Master Teddy is of age in two years?”

Chesson and the foreman were nodding slowly in agreement. Slade said, “If Bev Dyson takes over—” he raised his left hand, palm up and fingers extended— “in six months, Teddy will be in a fish’s belly.” The hand clenched with the suddenness of jaws snapping.

The three other men looked at Slade, at the fist and at the face set as hard as that fist. “This planet’s been run a certain way since the Settlement,” the tanker said. “Some mightn’t like it, but it seemed to suit most pretty well. If Dyson takes over, the system isn’t going to change, not really . . . but the way it’s applied won’t ever be the same. The Council Islands’ll toe the line set from the Main, from Slade House or Paraclete, whichever Bev decides should be his capital.”

Slade’s voice was getting louder, but he did not move from his chair. “Councilors won’t decide anything but who they screw on a given night. And all right, that doesn’t bother you or me either. But the rock-hoppers, the independants, they’ll all be pulled in and settled if they’ll come—or hunted down if they won’t, you
know
Bev Dyson. And when there’s nowhere to run, he’ll start squeezing every laborer on Tethys . . . and he’ll squeeze you the worst, my friends, because he hates every soul and thing that ever wore Slade Blue.”

The clenched fist opened again as if it bore the future on a platter.

Pretorius shook his head with a look of sad wonder. “
I
can’t leave, Holt,” he said. “Maybe you can go back as a mercenary, but they wouldn’t have me at my age. And I wouldn’t have them! This is the life I want, right here. And if that means Dyson and all the things that
Dyson
means, then it’ll have to be that way.”

“It’s not what Mistress Slade wants,” said the tanker softly.

“It’s not what
we
want,” Chesson burst out, “but what bloody difference does that make?”

“A good question,” said Slade. He grinned as the pieces came together, working his fingers closed again without haste. “You know, I used to wonder why the Old Man put us so heavy into food production. There’s ten stations just about like this one, right?”

“Sure, but that’s business,” said Leaf, watching Slade with puzzlement.

The tanker nodded. “Business, sure,” he agreed. “The Slades feed most of the planet from these stations. But there’s a lot more profit to cost of plant and maintenance in mining operations, which is why we’ve pretty well got food stations to ourselves. Right?”

The crewmen gaped or frowned. The economics of the situation had never consciously affected them. They were Slade retainers, and they did the jobs their forebears had done before them.

“Right,” said Slade gently. “So what’s the difference between mining and food extraction?
Besides
what you’re trying to bring out of the sea?”

Pretorius saw where the conversation was directed. He said, “No.”

The others looked at him. The foreman nodded to the weapons racked beside the doorway. “The mining rigs have guards, too. Any time you work men near the sea, you need sensors and guards.”

“Right again,” said Slade. It was good to be sure he could trust the men he was with. Trust them to think as well as act. “But a manganese dredge doesn’t bring them halfway around the planet the way the juice does from your rig, does it? How many critters—how many monsters, they’d call them back at the House—have you put down, Piet?” He gestured. “Leaf? Chessie?”

Chesson snorted. “I remember my first, though not real well,” he said. “It was when Pops was on this rig, so I must have been maybe five. He let me pull the trigger when a networm surfaced right under the platform.”

“All right, friends,” said the tanker as he rose to his feet. He stood, arms akimbo, facing the crewmen. “This isn’t your job or that of the crews off-duty and at the other stations. But if it isn’t done by you, it won’t be done at all. For yourselves, and for the Mistress—and for Master Teddy, who can just maybe set things straight again, like they were when I was a kid. If he just gets a chance and a little help. Are you up to it?”

The pumps gentled the silence with their background of
hoosh, hoosh.
At last Pretorius spoke. “It’s us you’ll want to call the others, I suppose, Soldier?”

“Mark,” said Beverly Dyson to key his throat mike. “Subiyaga, be
very
careful with that one. Take the detector down to aluminum spray if you have to to make sure he doesn’t have a throwaway derringer. Mark.”

“Mark,” said the civilian-suited specialist responsible for the detection unit. “Yes, milord.” Subiyaga nodded toward Councilor Dyson, halfway across the courtyard on the roof of his van. Dyson had moved the vehicle ostentatiously into the courtyard the night before when he was ordered out of Slade House.

A squad of Dyson retainers had been told off specifically to support Subiyaga. Besides them, representatives of five other Council Islands observed the detector. Coon Blegan glowered at the equipment on behalf of the Slades. The newness and tailoring of Blegan’s blue livery could not disguise the old man’s paunch; but the pistol beneath his left arm was to be surmised rather than seen with clarity. Whatever might be the instructions other Councilors had given their observers, it was quite certain that Blegan would object forcefully if anything irregular occurred during the weapons checks.

Councilor Dyson did not care. He and those of his retainers whom he chose to bring within the Hall would submit to the same careful vetting as the others. For this mercenary from Friesland, however, the search had to be extraordinary.

“Bastard,” Dyson whispered. The three men of his personal staff stood behind him on the van roof. They looked sidelong at one another in concern.

Ten Dyson retainers were playing music opposite the detection station. Danny Pritchard did not recognize their wind instruments. Allowing for local conventions, Pritchard did not think the musicians were particularly skillful, either. Certainly the pair of Slade Housemen who accompanied Pritchard to the Hall did not seem to appreciate the music any better than did the ex-mercenary.

In all likelihood, the musicians were there to divert attention from the indignity of search; for even Councilors and their families had to go through the detection loop.