The Reaches (37 page)

I opened my purse and took out the 10-Mapleleaf coin. That left me only twenty Venerian consols to live on for the next week, but I'd find a way. Eloise, I supposed. I hadn't planned to see her again after the problem with her maid, but she'd come around.

"Barman," I said crisply. "I want the unrestricted use of your phone, immediately and for the whole of the afternoon."

I rang the coin on the rippling blue translucence of the bar's ceramic surface.

The barman's expression sharpened into focus. He took the edges of the coin between the thumb and index fingers of his right hand, turning it to view both sides. "Where'd
you
get Fed money?" he demanded.

"Gambling with an in-system trader on the New Troy run," I said truthfully. "Now, if you don't want the coin . . ."

That was a bluff—I needed this particular phone for what I intended to do.

The tapster shrugged. He had neither cause nor intention to refuse, merely a general distaste for strangers; and perhaps for gentlemen as well. He nipped up the gate in the bar so that I could slip through to the one-piece phone against the wall.

"It's local net only," the tapster warned. "I'm not connected to the planetary grid."

"Local's what I want," I said.

Very local indeed. The tool kit on my belt looked like a merchant's papersafe. I took from it a device of my own design and construction.

The poker game three weeks before had been with a merchant/captain and three of his officers, in a sailors' tavern in Ishtar City. The four spacers were using a marked deck. If I'd complained or even tried to leave the game, they would have beaten me within an inch of my life.

The would-be sharpers had thought I was wealthy and a fool; and were wrong on both counts. They let me win for the first two hours. The money I'd lived on since the game came from that pump priming. Much of it was in Federation coin.

The captain and his henchmen ran the betting up and cold-decked me, their pigeon. I weepingly threw down a huge roll of Venerian scrip and staggered out of the tavern. I'd left Ishtar City for Betaport before the spacers realized that I'd paid them in counterfeit—and except for the top bill, very poor counterfeit.

I attached to the phone module's speaker a contact transducer which fed a separate keypad and an earpiece. The tapster looked at me and said, "Hey! What d'ye think you're doing?"

"What I paid you for the right to do," I said. I pivoted deliberately so that my body blocked the tapster's view of what I was typing on the keypad—not that it would have meant anything to the fellow.

On my third attempt at the combination, the plug in my ear said in Piet Ricimer's voice, ". . . not just as a Venerian patriot, Captain Macquerie. All
mankind
needs you."

The communications console in the private room was patched into the tavern's existing phone line. The commands I sent through the line converted Ricimer's own electronics into a listening device. I could have accessed the console from anywhere in Betaport, but not as quickly as I needed to hear the interview with Macquerie.

"Look, Captain Ricimer," said an unfamiliar voice that must by elimination be Macquerie, "I'm flattered that you'd call for me the way you have, but I gave up voyaging to the Reaches when I married the daughter of my supplier on Os Sertoes. Long runs are no life for a married man. From here on out, I'm shuttling my
Bahia
between Betaport and Buenos Aires."

"We mean no harm to the Southern Cross," said Stephen Gregg. "Your wife's family won't be affected."

With Macquerie, there was obviously no pretense that the expedition had anything to do with asteroids. Os Sertoes was little more than a name to me. I vaguely thought that it was one of the most distant Southern colonies, uninteresting and without exports of any particular value.

"Look," said Macquerie, "you gentlemen've been to the Reaches yourself. You don't need me to pilot you—except to Os Sertoes, and who'd want to go there? It's stuffed right in the neck of the Breach, so the transit gradients won't let you go anywhere but back."

"Captain," said Ricimer, "I wouldn't ask you if I didn't believe I needed you. Venus
must
take her place in the greater universe. If most of the wealth of the outworlds continues to funnel into the Federation, President Pleyal will use it to impose his will on all men. Whether Pleyal succeeds or fails, the attempt will lead to a second Collapse—one from which there'll be no returning. The Lord can't want that, nor can any man who fears Him."

A chair scraped. "I'm sorry, gentlemen," Macquerie said. His voice was subdued, but firm. Ricimer's enthusiasm had touched but not won the man. "If you really need a pilot for the Reaches, well—you can pick one up on Punta Verde or Decades. But not me."

The door opened at the corner of my eye. The Molt standing there stepped aside as noise from the public bar boomed through the pickup on my earpiece. Captain Macquerie strode past, his face forming into a scowl of concern as he left the Blue Rose.

"No one just yet, Guillermo," called Piet Ricimer, his words slightly out of synchrony as they reached my ears through different media.

The door closed.

"I could bring him along, you know," Gregg said calmly in the relative silence.

"No," said Ricimer. "We won't use force against our own citizens, Stephen."

"Then you'll have to feel your way into the Breach without help," Gregg said. "You know we won't find a pilot for Os Sertoes at any of the probable stopovers. There's not that much trade to the place."

"Captain Macquerie may change his mind, Stephen," Ricimer replied. "There's still a week before we lift."

"He won't," snapped Gregg. "He feels guilty, sure; but he's not going to give up all he has on a mad risk. And if he doesn't—what? The Lord will provide?"

"Yes, Stephen," said Piet Ricimer. "I rather think He will. Though perhaps not for us as individuals, I'll admit."

In a brighter, apparently careless voice, Ricimer went on, "Now, Guillermo has the three bidders for dried rations waiting outside. Shall we—"

I quickly disconnected my listening device and slipped from behind the bar, keeping low. If Ricimer—or worse, Gregg—saw me through the open door, they might wonder why I'd stayed in the tavern after they dismissed me.

"Hey!" called the barman to my back. "What is it you think you're doing, anyway?"

I only wished I knew the answer myself.

The brimstone smell of Venus's atmosphere clung to the starships' ceramic hulls.

Betaport's storage dock held over a hundred vessels, ranging in size from featherboats of under 20 tonnes to a bulk freighter of nearly 150. The latter vessel was as large as Betaport's domed transfer docks on the surface could accommodate for landings and launches.

Many of the ships were laid up, awaiting parts or consignment to the breakers' yard, but four vessels at one end of the cavernous dock bustled with the imminence of departure. The cylindrical hulls of two were already on roller-equipped cradles so that tractors could drag them to the transfer docks.

I eyed the vessels morosely, knowing there was nothing in the sight to help me make up my mind. I'd familiarized myself with the vessels' statistics, but I wasn't a spacer whose technical expertise could judge the risks of an expedition by viewing the ships detailed for it.

I supposed as much as anything I was forcing myself to think about what I intended to do. I rubbed my palms together with the fingers splayed and out of contact.

A lowboy rumbled slowly past. It was carrying cannon to the expedition's flagship, the 100-tonne
Porcelain.
The hull of Ricimer's vessel gleamed white, unstained by the sulphur compounds which would bake on at first exposure to the Venerian atmosphere. She was brand-new, purpose-built for distant exploration. Her frames and hull plating were of unusual thickness for her burden.

The four 15-cm plasma cannon on the lowboy were heavy guns for a 100-tonne vessel, and the Long Tom which pivoted to fire through any of five ports in the bow was a still-larger 17-cm weapon. The
Porcelain
's hull could take the shock of the cannons' powerful thermonuclear explosions, but the guns' bulk filled much of the ship's internal volume. The most casual observer could see that the
Porcelain
wasn't fitting out for a normal trading voyage.

I ambled along the quay. Pillars of living rock supported the ceiling of the storage dock, but the huge volume wasn't subdivided by bulkheads. The sounds of men, machinery, and the working of the planetary mantle merged as a low-frequency hum that buffered me from my surroundings.

The
Absalom 231
was a cargo hulk: a ceramic box with a carrying capacity as great as that of the flagship. She was already in a transport cradle. Food and drink for the expedition filled the vessel's single cavernous hold. Lightly and cheaply built, the
Absalom 231
could be stripped and abandoned when the supplies aboard her were exhausted.

The expedition's personnel complement was set at a hundred and eighty men. I wondered how many of them, like the hulk, would be used up on the voyage.

A bowser circled on the quay, heading back to the water point. Its huge tank had filled the
Porcelain
with reaction mass. I moved closer to the vessels to avoid the big ground vehicle. I walked on.

The
Kinsolving
was a sharp-looking vessel of 80 tonnes. A combination of sailors and ground crew were loading sections of three knocked-down featherboats into her central bay. Though equipped with star drive, a 15-tonne featherboat's cramped quarters made it a hellish prison on a long voyage. The little vessels were ideal for short-range exploration from a central base, and they were far handier in an atmosphere than ships of greater size.

What would it be like to stand on a world other than Venus? The open volume of the Betaport storage dock made me uncomfortable. What would it be like to walk under an open sky?

Why in
God's
name was I thinking of doing this?

The last of the expedition's four vessels was the 80-tonne
Mizpah,
also in a transport cradle. She was much older than the
Porcelain
and the
Kinsolving.
Clearly—even to a layman like me—the
Mizpah
wasn't in peak condition.

The
Mizpah
's main lock and boarding ramp amidships couldn't be used because of the transport cradle, but her personnel hatch forward stood open. On the hatch's inner surface, safe from reentry friction and corrosive atmospheres, were the painted blazons of her co-owners: the pearl roundel of Governor Halys, and the bright orange banderol—the oriflamme—of Councilor Frederic Duneen.

The
Mizpah
wasn't an impressive ship in many ways, but she brought with her the overt support of the two most important investors on the planet. If nothing else, the
Mizpah
's participation meant the survivors wouldn't be hanged as pirates when they returned to Venus.

If anyone survived. When I eavesdropped on the private discussion between Ricimer and Gregg, I'd heard enough to frighten off anyone sane.

Thomas Hawtry—Factor Hawtry of Hawtry—stepped from the
Mizpah
's personnel hatch. Two generations before, Hawtry had been a name to reckon with. Thomas, active and ambitious to a fault, had mortgaged what remained of the estate in an attempt to recoup his family's influence by attaching himself to the great of the present day.

He was a man I wanted to meet as little as I did any human being on Venus.

Hawtry was large and floridly handsome, dressed now in a tunic of electric blue with silver lame trousers and calf-high boots to match the tunic. On his collar was a tiny oriflamme to indicate his membership in Councilor Duneen's household.

Hawtry's belt and holster were plated. The pistol was for show, but I didn't doubt that it was functional nonetheless.

"Moore!" Hawtry cried, framed by the hatch coaming two paces away. Hawtry's face was blank for an instant as the brain worked behind it. The Factor of Hawtry was a thorough politician; though not, in my opinion, subtle enough to be a very effective one.

"Jeremy!" Hawtry decided aloud, reforming his visage in a smile. "Say, I haven't had an opportunity to thank you for the way you covered me in the little awkwardness with Lady Melinda."

He stepped close and punched me playfully on the shoulder, a pair of ladies' men sharing a risque memory. "Could have been
ve
-ry difficult for me. Say, I told my steward to pass you a little something to take the sting out. Did he . . . ?"

Lady Melinda was an attractive widow of 29 who lived with her brother—Councilor Duneen. Hawtry'd thought to use me as his go-between in the lady's seduction. I, on the other hand—

I would never have claimed I was perfect, but I liked women too much to lure one into the clutches of Thomas Hawtry. And as it turned out, I liked the Lady Melinda a great deal more than was sensible for a destitute member of the lesser gentry.

"Regrettably, I
didn't
hear from your steward, Thom," I said. No point in missing a target of opportunity. "And you know, I'm feeling a bit of a pinch right now. If—"

Not much of a target. "Aren't we all, Jeremy, aren't we all!" Hawtry boomed. "After I bring my expedition back, though,
all
my friends will live like kings! Say, you know about the so-called 'asteroids expedition,' don't you?"

He waved an arm toward the docked ships. A hydraulic pump began to squeal as it shifted the
Absalom 231
in its cradle.

"Captain Ricimer's . . ." I said, hiding my puzzlement.

"
And
mine," said Hawtry, tapping himself on the breast significantly. "I'm co-leader, though we're keeping it quiet for the time being. A very political matter, someone of my stature in charge of a voyage like this."

Hawtry linked his arm familiarly with mine and began pacing back along the line of expedition vessels. His friendliness wasn't sincere. In the ten months I knew Hawtry intimately in the Duneen household, the man had never been sincere about anything except his ambition and his self-love.