Conquistador (43 page)

The story below listed their CVs, right down to their military service in the Rangers and Tenth Mountain Division, respectively, and had the chutzpah to wish them well, and recommend applying for jobs with the Frontier Scouts, whatever the hell those were.

“Gate Security don't miss a trick, do they?” Tully said. “This place is a small town—hell, this whole
country's
a small town. Now everyone will know our faces.”

Tom gave the rest of the paper a quick scan. The focus was strictly local, with virtually nothing about events back on the other side of the Gate. The politics made no sense to him except for picayune stuff, school board and road improvements. Foreign affairs were
really
incomprehensible, stories about events abroad, in the Mexican city-states or East Asia. He simply lacked the background information the writers assumed in their audience; it was like a man from Mars trying to understand why the secessionist movement in Iraqi Kurdistan was important to Turkey. Who, what or where the hell was Changdan? And why was it interesting that someone named Lord Seven Flower in a place called Zaachila was buying more horses via San Diego? The back pages were full of amateur theatricals, sports and reviews. Movies, he noted, were often from FirstSide; books seemed to be largely local, and so did TV shows apart from very old reruns.

There
was
one domestic item that drew his eye.

“Well, lookie here,” he said. “Ahem. ‘Hostile Indian remnants skulking in the Tulare marshes have been taught a stinging lesson for their unprovoked attack on a party of Frontier Scouts accompanied by the adventurous granddaughter of our Founder. Lieutenant von Traupitz reports that even though Miss Adrienne Rolfe, daughter of Chairman Charles Rolfe and granddaughter of the Founder, was temporarily in some danger, timely intervention by his force of Commission Militia—' ”

Adrienne came back wearing laced hiking boots, loose brown cords and a black polo shirt. She looked over his shoulder; he was acutely conscious of the slight warmth, a scent of laundry-fresh clothes mingled with shampoo and
her
.

“That's where those extra condors came from,” she said. “And Karl von Traupitz has an inflated sense of his own place in the world. The whole Family is like that. If they decide to build a new bacon-curing plant they boast about it beforehand, they tell you how world-historically important it is while they're doing it, and then they write a seven-volume epic complete with footnotes about it afterward. Maybe it's genetic—although you'd think all the intermarriage would have diluted it by now.”

She had a floppy broad-brimmed canvas jungle hat on her head, with the cord under her chin; she also had two holstered pistols in her hands, and a rifle across her back.

“Here,” she said, sliding the pistols across the table.

Tom caught his automatically; it was his Fish and Game-issue 9mm Glock. “Ah . . . I presume carrying a gun's legal here?” he said.

“For Settlers, carrying anything short of mortars and heavy machine guns is legal,” Adrienne said cheerfully. “But be cautious. Dueling is legal here too, with single-shot pistols, usually.”

Both men looked at her in disbelief. A little defensively, she went on: “Well, it's not
common.
Maybe once a year. But it is legal—and when a man in town carries a gun openly, he's saying he's ready to fight. Sort of like the Code of the West. I'd advise concealed carry, which is also legal here. I wouldn't put it past the Collettas to set someone on to pick a fight with you two, if my dark suspicions are correct. I'd have canned that story in the
Commonwealth Courier and Herald
if I could. That would have caused a fuss, though, and they'd probably be fully informed anyway.”

“Do you really need the artillery for a trip into the country?” he said, his eyes sharpening on her rifle.

“No, but it's sort of customary to have a rifle in the rack beyond city limits,” she said. “We'll be going through a couple of reserves where big predators are common and big, irritable herbivores are
very
common.”

“That's not a Garand, is it?” Tully asked curiously, as she laid the weapon and a rucksack down on the table and turned to a wall-mounted screen.

“No,” she said over her shoulder, as she pressed her hand to the plate beside the screen and looked into the scanner. “It's an O'Brien-Garand; a modification that Uncle Andy—Andy O'Brien, the first O'Brien Prime—made back in 1949. He was the Old Man's top sergeant in Baker company, in the Pacific, and he thought the Garand was the perfect battle rifle except for two things.”

A slight sadness touched her face. “He taught me rifles; and he used to play grizzly bears with me when he came visiting, back when I was a little girl, and give me sips out of his wineglass.”

Tom examined the rifle; it was the classic WWII semiauto, but with the gas port moved back four inches from the muzzle and a twenty-round detachable box magazine instead of the awkward eight-round integral clip you loaded from the top in the GI version. The Pentagon, in its infinite multilayered bureaucratic wisdom, had taken until 1959 to make similar changes—Tom's grandfather had soldiered through Korea with the original model. The only other difference he could see was a slotted flash suppressor-cum-grenade launcher attachment on the end of the muzzle.

He removed the magazine and looked at the cartridges; they were the old full-power .30-06, but these were hollow points, like a game-hunting round, designed to mushroom inside a wound. Pulling back the operating rod, he saw that the chamber and barrel were chrome-lined; the construction was excellent but in an old-fashioned way, everything beautifully machined from solid metal forms, rather than assembled from stampings and synthetics and powder forgings. And the stock was some close-grained hardwood, polished silky-smooth save for the checker work on the grip and forestock.

“I notice your Gate Security Force has assault rifles,” Tom said, laying the weapon down again. “G-thirty-sixes, weren't they? Good gun.”

“Just a second.” The screen had come alive, and was showing a logo with a central CICN. “This is Adrienne Rolfe,” she went on to the machine.

“Confirmed: voice, retina, palm.”

“Ronald Tully and Thomas Christiansen, ident numbers as follows, to have access to these premises. Transfer one thousand dollars to each account.”

“Confirmed.”

“Wait a minute—” Tom began.

“You wanted to investigate this place. Having money of your own will help.”

He couldn't say anything to that.
Because it's so self-evidently true, idiot,
he thought, and went on aloud: “Thanks. That
will
help.”

“Good, because I don't think we have all that much time to get started.” She tossed a house key to each of the men. “I like to have old-fashioned backup locks. Try not to run wild in the fleshpots of Rolfeston with the thousand while we're gone, Roy.”

Roy frowned, and spoke with grim seriousness: “It'll be a tough battle, but a twelve-step program will see me through the temptation.”

She went on to Tom: “You're right about the assault rifles, but the Gate Security Force might have to fight FirstSiders. The militia's probable opposition uses bows and arrows. And it doesn't hurt to have the GSF stronger than any equivalent number of Family militia.”

Tom pocketed the key. “Isn't it a danger to your reputation, giving dubious characters like us door keys?”

“Oh, my reputation can't be damaged; it got wrecked back in my teens,” she said with a chuckle. “Popular perceptions of my standards of
taste,
now . . .”

“Good day, Dimitri Ivanovich,” the young scientist said.

He looked uncertain, a slight dark fellow who still blinked as if he had thick glasses on his face, despite the expensive corneal surgery Batyushkov had financed.

“Uncle Dimitri, please, Sergei,” the Prime said, and the two Russians smiled at each other. “Sit, sit—refresh yourself.”

The Batyushkov country seat was only recently completed; it was not far from FirstSide's town of Aptos, with the sea breaking at its feet and the Santa Cruz Mountains to the north, stretching eastward along the valley of the Pajaro River and south nearly to the site of Castroville. He'd been offered a selection of coastal properties, all the way from Oregon to San Diego—he supposed he could have picked something in Australia, for that matter—but this had been his choice. It was close enough to Rolfeston to be convenient, but not close enough that the Commission was looking over his shoulder every moment of the day; and it was even closer to Colletta Hall, over the hills in the lower Santa Clara. He sensed opportunity there; the Prime of the Collettas was a discontented man.

“It reminds me of the Crimea,” the young scientist said. “Mountains, the sea, fertile land between, and the climate of heaven.”

Batyushkov nodded. That was true, and as a bonus the land was spectacularly beautiful. Greener than much of New Virginia, which soothed his Leningrad-born eyes. At this time of year, the young apple and apricot orchards of his Settlers left patches of fragrant pink mist strewn along the valley, and the colts kicked up their heels in the green pastures thick with golden poppies. The mansion's design was based on that of a nobleman's manse from the old days before the Revolution; one he'd seen on the shores of the Black Sea, converted to a sanitarium and resort. Waves crashed on the cliffs not far away.

Many of those Settlers were Russian too. Most were not, which Batyushkov grudgingly admitted was a wise precaution from the Commission's point of view. They would let him flavor this part of the stew, but not make a separate pot of his own.

“Yes, the Crimea is a little like this,” the Batyushkov said. “Many have said so.” He scowled. “That is as well, since the real Crimea is lost to the
rodina,
the motherland. Part of that absurd Ukraine, like amputating a man's leg and calling it a brother . . . and probably those Ukrainian peasant bumpkins will let the Tatars take it over sooner or later. Stalin was a fool to kill only half of the Tatars when he deported them, and Khrushchev was a worse fool ever to let a single one return from Kazakhstan.”

The younger man nodded. “Uncle Dimitri . . . I thank you for bringing me here. Science no longer prospers in Russia; things are not as bad as they were even five years ago, but they are not good. And the Gate!”

His face took on a transfigured look, one Batyushkov had seen on mujahideen in Afghanistan, as they called on their stupid Allah just before they were crushed under a tank's treads from the feet up to encourage them to talk.

“The Gate . . . our theories have only the merest hints of the possibility of such a phenomenon. Many would call it impossible; until this month,
I
would have called it impossible!”

“I would have as well, until I saw it,” Batyushkov said. “The question is, though, can you understand it? Can you
duplicate
it?”

Sergei Lermontov spread his hands. “I do not know,” he said. “If I
can
understand it, it will take much time—much effort—many facilities, supercomputers, experimentation. Eventually, I must bring colleagues to join me.”

Batyushkov smiled, a smug expression. “And the
ami,
they have no hint of what it is?”

“Very little,” Lermontov said. “I have studied the papers of the physicists at the University of New Virginia. They are not particularly capable men.”

“They are what the Commission could get,” Batyushkov said. “Men embittered by failure in their original homes. And they are not allowed free transit, so they have no access to the laboratories or talent of FirstSide.” The satisfied smile grew broader. “And you, my
nephew,
will be. Thus you may study the phenomenon, have access to the facilities of FirstSide, and travel freely.”

Lermontov nodded. “This will be helpful. I cannot, however, guarantee results. Certainly not at anytime within the next two years.”

“Nichevo,”
Batyushkov said:
It cannot be helped.
His hand closed into a fist on the table as he went on: “Understand, you must take no chances. Playing at
boyar
here, that is acceptable; certainly better than living in today's Russia and looking always over my shoulder. The wealth I gain as a member of the committee, that is more than acceptable, and I can keep it and hand it down to my children, which would probably not be the case in Russia. But control of the Gate—knowledge of how to make more—that is
power.
Imagine whole new worlds . . . better still, imagine being able to establish more such gates to
our
world. To be able to come and go anywhere, at any time; the storage facilities of a nuclear facility, the inner chambers of any headquarters or fortress . . . given that, much that we have had to accept as inevitable becomes much less so!”

“Za nas!”
Sergei Lermontov said, springing to his feet and raising the glass.

“Za nas!”
Dimitri Batyushkov replied. “To us, indeed!”