The Serrano Succession (98 page)

When the call finally came, he'd immersed himself in a study of the shipping figures for a colony Terakian & Sons was thinking of offering regular service to. He picked up the buzzing comunit absently. "Captain Terakian—how may I help you?"

"Goonar—" It was Bethya. His heart started to pound. "It's done. I'm still at the hotel, and I'm really too tired to move tonight. But I'd like to have dinner—would you mind coming here?"

"Of course not," Goonar said, dragging his mind away from the profitability analysis of the colony. "How formal?"

"Not very."

Bethya looked very tired, almost wan in fact. He wondered if the execrable Dougie had been nagging at her and felt a strong urge to hunt Dougie up and push his face in.

"Are you up to this?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "Don't be fooled by theatrics, Goonar. I—came up with something.

"The problem," she said, over the salad, "was money. It usually is, in theater. Money or jealousy, or both. In this case, both."

Money Goonar understood. "They owed you?"

"They owe both of us," she said. "We still—
they
still—haven't paid for the passage, beyond the first segment. And when we founded the company, the four of us—Merlay, Dion, Sarin and I—all contributed equal shares. Merlay died five years ago—the most ravishing tenor you ever heard, and it was just a stupid traffic accident. Dion got an offer from his homeworld's most prestigious school of the arts a year later, and we bought out his share. We being Sarin—who's our set and costume designer—and me. Well, we were short two males, and Sarin and I decided to look for more partners. What we really wanted was another good male lead and a business manager, but the people you want don't necessarily have the money when they're available. Usually, in fact."

"So . . ."

"So Lisa, already in the company, wanted to buy in. She had the money—an inheritance, she said. We couldn't reasonably refuse. Dougie was working for the Greenfield Players—he'd pulled them out of a financial hole, and he said he wanted to travel. We still didn't have enough capital, so we talked to the rest of the troupe, and most of them scraped up enough to buy a share when we restructured."

"Is it equal shares now?"

"No . . . the way it was, Sarin and I each had four, and everyone else had one. I thought it was fair, as long as we were all together. But when I leave, I'll want to take out my shares in cash, and they won't want to pay it."

"What did you do?"

"I went to a clinic, and came back looking the way I look now, and explained I'd had a shock."

"A shock."

"Yes. I reminded Lisa that she'd been saying my voice was not what it had been—I could have smacked her for smirking at me—and that I hadn't wanted to tell them where I was going ahead of time. And the doctors had found a problem—that I was going to have to give up singing, and have surgery, and it might never be as good after. That it would be months—it was something difficult, which regen wouldn't fix."

"Is that true?" Goonar asked. "When Brun Meager's voice was lost—"

"Goonar, what Lisa and Dougie know about medicine would fit in a single pill. They want to believe I'm over the hill, that my voice is going; they ate this up like whipped cream with honey in it. I said I'd decided to leave the troupe and wanted to buy out my shares. That's when the haggling started, but since I was leaving for reasons of sickness, I had the high ground."

"Did you . . . ?"

"Goonar, there's truth and truth. I've known since before Lisa started carping at me that my voice isn't as good as it was. I've pushed it to the limit in some of the theaters we've played. It's time and past time for me to quit. This is a reason they can accept, and still fork over my share; if I told them it was to marry you, they'd say 'Oh, he's a rich trader, you don't need the money.'" Her trained voice conveyed both the whine in theirs, and the scorn she felt for that whine.

"I'm not shocked, Bethya," Goonar said. "We traders know about creative explanations."

"Good. I'd hate to have burned all my bridges and then found I'd alienated you."

"What about a wedding? Do we have to wait until they go away?"

"No. They saw us on the ship; they know I think you're a fine man, and that you admired me. Lisa even had the gall to suggest that perhaps I should console myself with the nice Captain Terakian, if he didn't mind the fact I wasn't the same offstage as on."

"So . . . this dinner . . ."

"Lets them think I'm working their suggestion. In the meantime, I have the bank draft."

"You are a wicked woman, Betharnya," Goonar said. "You might have been a trader born."

"My grandparents were, in a minor way," Bethya said. "If you count wholesalers in kitchenware and restaurant supply."

"So . . . what about a wedding?"

"There are some I'd like to invite, including Sarin—we've known each other fifteen years—which means there's no way to exclude the others without causing trouble."

"Fine with me," Goonar said. "At this point, we might as well wait for the
Princess
to come in—" He explained the crisscross of routes. "She's insystem now. It will make the Fathers happier if we have another Terakian witness. What kind of wedding party do you want?"

They dove into wedding planning, and when Goonar came back to the ship that night, Basil looked at his face. "Did you ask her?"

"Yes, cuz, I did," Goonar said, and grinned. "And she accepted, too. We'll have the wedding when
Princess
gets here."

"I don't suppose she's brought much dowry," Basil said. "Not that it matters, really."

"As a matter of fact, she has," Goonar said. She had shown him the bank draft. "Or rather, she has some money of her own."

"That's what I meant," Basil said. "I didn't expect her to turn it over or anything."

"That's good, because she won't. She's investing it."

"Trust you," Basil said, "to find a second wife who is beautiful, talented,
and
rich."

"She said we're on our own." The militia captain from Hospitality Bay glared at the militia captain from the home village. "Fleet can't come, and we sure can't fight off an invasion. My men know what to do with drunks, thieves, and stupid younglings who think it's funny to cut the nets of fishing boats . . . not NEMs in battle armor."

"So what are you saying, we should all take to the woods? Or just stand around to be beaten up or shot?"

"No—but I can't see wasting any time on fancy stuff—pictures and books and that."

"I'd like to save as much as we can. The Thornbuckles'll be back some day."

"Maybe. Maybe not. You heard what she said. What if she meant it? Then it's our choice."

"If it's my choice, there's things in there I'd save," the other man said.

"I don't want to see war here," said another. "I served in the first Patchcock mess, you know."

"We know, Gordy."

"You don't realize what they can do from space. If we go hide out in the bush, if they don't have time to bring us in, it's a lot safer."

"We can't possibly move everything—that house is stuffed with treasures—art, books, furniture—"

"And the stables with horses—"

"Horses can move themselves, house furnishings can't."

"People first, then the animals, then things . . ."

"Yes, but—"

"We don't have time for anything else."

Much of the main landmass had been kept a hunting preserve, dotted with small camps and lodges here and there. Every flitter and aircar on the planet was pressed into service, moving family groups and neighborhoods out to the remote areas. When everyone who would go had gone, the same flitters and aircars descended on the home village. Already the staff had prepared what they could of the furnishings—the jewels, the old plate, the oldest and rarest books in the library, the pictures known to be family favorites. The heaviest went down the service lifts into the basements . . . maybe it would be enough protection. The rest went into the vehicles, to be dispersed as far as possible.

Meanwhile, Neil had organized the stable staff—first to move feed and supplies, then horses. The staff tacked up every rideable animal and set off with the others in a long, uneven string across the hayfields and grainfields that spread for kilometers south and east. Almost all the mares had foaled; Neil assigned the lightest riders to the mares, and the foals romped alongside. That group necessarily lagged, as they had to stop for the foal to nurse every hour or so. Lumbering along with them were the village's milk cows and their calves; the sheep and goats skittered along in their own flocks, chivvied by excited dogs that had never had this much fun. The foxhounds trotted along in their couples, obedient to the huntsman's horn.

The only animals Neil didn't take were those that couldn't travel; it broke his heart to leave them behind, but they would be all right in the home paddocks if the mutineers didn't specifically attack them. He'd left his log—or what looked like his log—in his office, with the comment that he had sprayed for graylice, and evacuated the stable for 60 days. If the attackers believed that, they might not come looking. At least, not if they were in a hurry.

Former R.S.S. patrol
Gaura Secundus

Harlis had interacted with Fleet only at the higher levels, when, as Seated Family and younger brother of the Speaker, he had been treated with great courtesy. He had gone aboard ships, certainly—ships docked at Stations, whose crews stood for inspection. He had been impressed with the crisp salutes, the obvious discipline, the spotless cleanliness, the deference accorded superiors. He had imagined himself as another admiral alongside Lepescu, commanding ships in battle . . . cool, imperturbable. Let Bunny play with politics: he would have real power, he had thought often, remembering the racks of missiles, the orderly arrays of power coils for the beam weapons. Of course, he couldn't actually join Fleet, not with his Family responsibilities. But he could befriend admirals, and know that he, under his civilian exterior, was at heart a warrior.

The reality aboard
Gaura Secundus
was very different from his earlier brief experiences. Order, discipline, efficiency—yes. The crew, still in Fleet uniforms, with the Familias insignia removed, saluted crisply and moved briskly to their work. But the deference due him, as a Family member, as a Seat in Council, as the brother of the former Speaker . . . that was missing. They were coolly polite—they addressed him as Ser Thornbuckle—but they did not consider him one of them.

He had never realized before just how closed a community the military might be. True, Captain Sigind had never warmed to him, but he'd assumed that was Bunny's fault. By the time the
Lillian C.
was partway to Millicent, he was wondering if he might have made a mistake. When his "hirelings" bundled him into a p-suit and pushed him through a docking tube from the yacht to their warship—to his eyes a vast black blot on the starfield—he was uneasily aware that he was alone in a crowd of men and women who had killed before, who enjoyed killing, who would kill him if he stood in their way. Right now, as the source of funds, he was useful to them. They respected money, in a way, as another form of power. But if they decided he wasn't useful? If Brun or Stepan managed to cut off his access to the banks?

Harlis shivered in his little cabin, and realized that he did not want to die. He found himself rubbing his ears, and yanked his hands down.

He had never really liked the staff at Sirialis. They were Bunny's people, and though they treated Family members with due courtesy, he knew they were not
his
. He had always wanted an empire of his own—his estates were not enough. He had thought hiring his own military force was a good idea. His private space navy, his private army—then he could have what he deserved, and forget about Bunny.

He had his meals with the officers, with Taylor always at one end of the table and himself at the other. It was here, even more than in the working parts of the ship, that the difference between himself and these men showed up most. He had grown up in a sea of politics, playing at power even as boy—he'd thought he knew all about it. When he'd pressured old Trema into leaving him her shares, he'd been, he was convinced, as straightforward and pragmatic as any admiral planning a war.

No. He had been held back, he now realized, by his own shrinking flesh. He had not himself gone to Trema's house; he had not himself risked injury or discovery by any of the acts he'd hired. These people had no such scruples. They were as direct as a blow. The uniformity of their dress, which also excluded him (his best-cut suits looked slovenly next to their uniforms), proclaimed them.

Finally one day, Taylor commented, "I fear we alarm Ser Thornbuckle."

"Alarm me?" Harlis said. He could feel his pulse speeding up. "In what way?"