Orphan's Triumph (Jason Wander) (22 page)

Celline smiled. “All my life. But you say it wrong. Pytr is like my family. Now he’s old. I take care of him, and I will until one of us dies.”

“The rest of your family—”

“There is no rest. Since the war, my old soldier is the nearest to family I have left.”

I stared at Jude, and he at me. Wherever or whenever, war is an orphanage, and now there were three of us.

We three talked for another hour. She told us about the hierarchy of Iridia, and about the pitiful Iridian resistance, which she nominally led. I told her about Jude, about his family, which were as close to royalty as America’s peculiar meritocracy came. Jude told her stories about me that made me sound better than I was.

At noon, Jude accompanied me on a rehabilitative limp, with a cane Pytr provided, inshore from the ducal fishing lodge. Pytr assured us the route was rhiz-free. Jude carried a pistol anyway.

“Jason, all these people can’t be lying. What I’ve seen since I’ve been back on Tressel is no illusion. I’ve been criminally stupid.”

I shook my head as we picked along the rocks. “You’re not the first soldier who was too busy to look over his shoulder. Honest men believe other men are honest.”

“I think Aud made the same mistake.”

“I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“Do you think Celline would give me the benefit of the doubt?”

“You could ask her.”

“No. After what she’s seen of the RS, I need to show her who I am.”

“You like her a lot.”

“No.”

I swiveled my head toward my godson and raised my eyebrows.

“Jason, I love her.”

“Don’t you think that’s a big word? You’ve barely met her.”

“How long after Dad met Mom, did he know?”

My eyes moistened, and I swallowed, then smiled. “About the time he barely met her.”

That night, we three sat together again, staring into Pytr’s tiny fire. Celline asked me, “What is it that the motherworld needs from Tressel?”

I told her the whole thing. She knew about the Slugs and the Slug War in an abstract way, like any Tressen or Iridian who knew her world’s legends and kept up with current affairs. When I finished, she looked at us. “Will the motherworld give Zeit a free hand if necessary, in order to get at this Cavorite?”

I sighed. “That’s not our opening position.”

“Even provide him more weapons? To use on anyone the RS chooses?”

“Again, that’s not—”

“But you have to if he insists. You know Zeit will insist.”

Jude said, “Celline, you don’t understand. It’s not just our world at stake. It’s Tressel, too.”

“I do understand.” She cocked her head and cast her green eyes toward the ceiling beams. “But what if Chancellor Zeit were not the only game in town? It’s an Iridian expression.”

I smiled at the duchess. “It’s an American expression, too.”

FORTY-NINE

FOUR WEEKS LATER, Aud Planck was sufficiently recovered to travel. During those weeks, I honed my trident skills without further incident and swapped war stories with Pytr. Meanwhile, the duchess of Northern Iridia and my godson talked late into every night, walked the pools together every day. Eventually and inevitably the two orphans of very different wars became an item. Our return trip was less eventful than our trip out.

I parted with the others at an Iridian safe house, then reentered the consulate the old-fashioned way, in an upturned-collar coat and turned-down-brim hat, walking like a garden-variety passerby, then abruptly ducked up the steps and buzzed myself in the door before the Ferrents could cross the street and snatch me.

That earned me a lecture from Bill the Spook, which was cut short when the Ferrents showed up demanding that the consulate disgorge the defector and Bill had to go lie to them. With Bill busy, I slipped up to the Duck’s corner office on the top floor. I buzzed myself in the Duck’s side door, bypassing his outer office. His inner sanctum was small for his GS grade, plain-furnished with a set of leather desk accessories he had toted over half of Earth and a smaller fraction of the Milky Way. He looked up from his screens and smiled. “Jason!” As he waddled around his desk and shook my hand, he frowned. “What happened? Where’s Jude? What about Planck?”

“They’re both fine. The rest is complicated. Diplomatic progress with Zeit?”

The Duck motioned me to a chair as he dropped back into his, crossed his ankles on his desk, laced his fingers behind his head, and sighed. “They’re slow-playing. They don’t know what we want, but they know we aren’t going to offer anything for it that would strengthen them relative to us. They don’t need much from us.”

“While we wait for Zeit’s permission to mine Cavorite, the Slugs could fry ten planets, including this one. But we have a cruiser in orbit that could fry Zeit first.”

The Duck swung his feet to the floor and leaned across his desk toward me. As he spoke, he poked his finger into his desk blotter. “We’ve been through this together before, Jason, on Bren. We’ve both been ordered to make a deal, not a war. If a public servant can’t carry out an order, his option is to resign, not to whine. You’ll never quit. So quit whining!”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.”

I reached inside my jacket, removed a paper sheaf and pen, signed the top sheet, then slid the sheaf across the desk.

The Duck poked it like it was a dead rat. “What’s this?”

I pointed at page one. “Acceptance of Relief and Retirement. Pre-signed by my boss. If retiree is posted outside the continental United States, Copy A of this document may be delivered to any United States Embassy or similar facility for transmittal to the Army Officer Personnel Directorate without charge for postage. Retiree’s separation will be backdated to the date of delivery to said facility.”

The Duck snorted. “Jason, that just fixes your pension pay start date. You can’t quit.”

“You just dared me to.”

“We’re at war. You could be shot for desertion.”

I reached beneath my jacket again, unholstered Ord’s .45, laid it on the Duck’s desk blotter, then stood back, hands on hips. “All you have to do is cock it. Then shoot me.”

The Duck’s eyes bugged.

I unbuttoned my jacket and stuck out my chest. “Go ahead!”

“They were right to retire you. You’re nuts.” The Duck stared at the pistol in front of him with his palms on his desktop for thirty seconds. Then he sighed and closed his eyes. “Okay. What do you want?”

“Recognize me as spokesperson for the legitimate government of Iridia.”

“Jason, there is no Iridia. Zeit’s made it part of Tressen.”

“Read the Armistice. Zeit’s police powers over Iridia are temporary until the indigenous government of Iridia chooses to restore itself.”

“Jason, the indigenous government of Iridia can’t choose jack. The Armistice became a dead letter when Zeit’s goons killed the last Iridian duke a year ago.”

I walked to Duck’s coatrack, tugged his coat off it, and chucked it at him. “Let’s take a walk.”

The Duck covered his face with his palms and muttered through them. “France. For this, I turned down France.” Then he stood and walked toward the door, slipping an arm into a coat sleeve.

“Almost forgot!” I raised my index finger, then leaned across the Duck’s desk and scooped Ord’s pistol off the blotter.

As we got to the office door, I fished an object out of my trouser pocket. I tapped the pistol’s clip back into its butt while the Duck stared at it, jaw dropped. I shrugged. “I’m not nuts. But you might have been.”

Once the Duck gave the orders, it took only an hour for Bill the Spook to shuffle us out of the consulate and set us loose in the old town, free of Ferrent escort.

FIFTY

SUBVERSIVES IN DOWNTOWN TRESSIA were as likely to seek out the tenements on the north side as antelope were likely to seek out lion dens. The Ferrents knew it and ignored the neighborhood. That was why the gray three-story apartment building to which I led the Duck overlooked the departure point for

“pioneers” bound north.

We paused on the building’s grimy stoop and looked back at barbed-wire enclosures filled with gray Tressen motor coaches waiting to be filled with lines of grayer people.

“Just one smart suborbital down the Interior Ministry chimney, Duck? One?”

He gritted his teeth as he stared at the coaches. “Don’t push the cuteness, Jason. Just show me whatever magic beans you’re peddling.”

In the tenement’s stairwell, we passed an old man, head down, mopping the stone first-floor landing. As we passed, he moved his bucket and its rattle echoed upward.

The second sentry’s hand was inside his jacket when we stepped to the door of the first apartment on the second floor.

Pytr opened the apartment door while he held a pistol in one hand, an antique weapon even by Tressel standards.

Aud and Jude stood in front of us, both in threadbare civvies, like defendants in the dock. Aud leaned on a cane.

The Duck nodded to Jude. “Good to see you safe.” He made a little bow to Aud Planck.

“Chancellor.”

Aud made a smile. “Your courtesy is overstated, Consul. We both know there’s only one chancellor now. And I hope you believe that I am as appalled at what you can see from the stoop of this building as you are.”

Jude said, “And so am I.”

The Duck looked from Jude to Aud, and back to me. Then he shook his head. “Gentlemen, it doesn’t matter whether I believe you or whether I think you’re both gallows-converted hypocrites.”

Both Jude and Aud drew back like they had been slapped. I stepped across and stood with my godson and my friend. Aud Planck had risen from his sickbed to save my life—yet again. He might have been too trusting, but he was no Nazi.

The Duck pointed toward the barbed-wire pens beyond the building. “The reason it doesn’t matter is because that abomination out there is the internal affair of a duly constituted government recognized by the Human Union.” The Duck turned to me. “Jason, I’ve bent plenty of rules for you over the years. I’ve bent plenty more before you ever got here, for the sake of my own conscience. But I can’t pretend that Chancellor Planck here is the successor to the legitimate government of Iridia. The union won’t play king maker between squabbling generals. Which is what this looks like, no matter what my conscience tells me.”

I crossed my arms. “Are you done?”

The Duck crossed
his
arms. “Are you?”

“Perhaps he is, Consul. But I am only beginning.” Celline stood in the doorway that led to the apartment’s second room.

Clothes may not make the woman, but they make a duchess if she looks the part to start with. Celline was so pure-blood royal on both sides of her family tree that her rank survived her father’s death. Chin high, Celline, fifty-seventh Inheritrix of the Duchy of Northern Iridia, and last surviving successor to the common throne of the Unified Duchies of Iridia, lit the gritty tenement. Her business suit was the color of a fawn in autumn, and her blond hair was drawn back so that her eyes looked bigger and greener. Her jewels of rank, as if she needed any, were what the netbloids would call understated, a tiara set with grape-sized emeralds that matched her eyes.

I held my breath, partly because, well, Celline merited it. Partly because we couldn’t produce jack squat in the way of credentials if the Duck didn’t believe Celline was the duchess. The Duck stared at her.

My heart pounded.

“Your Grace favors her mother.” The Duck bowed.

I exhaled.

Celline cocked her head and smiled. “You are too kind. Have we had the pleasure?”

The Duck didn’t have to work at smiling. “I would surely remember, Your Grace.”

I leaned toward Jude and whispered, “She’s really good at this.”

He whispered back, “I liked her better barefoot.”

After ten minutes of diplomatic slap and tickle, Celline turned and motioned to two vacant chairs in the room’s corner. “Sit with us, Mr. Muscovy.” After they sat, she crossed her legs, then knit her fingers over her knee. “Consul, we must inquire as to the union’s intentions as a cosigning guarantor of the Armistice.”

The Duck cocked his head. “Your Grace?”

“We are not rabble. We are the duly constituted government of Iridia. We no longer require Tressen assistance to maintain order. We intend to expel Tressen by such force as required, as is our right.”

The Duck nodded. “That is your right. That is what the union agreed to.” He glanced across the room, where deaf old Pytr stood guard at the window with a single-shot pistol. “But I’m not authorized to alter the current—ah—imbalance of force.”

Celline shook her head. “We’re not asking for star-ships, Mr. Muscovy. Or for unrewarded charity.” Celline leaned toward the Duck and gave him a look that, I suspected, had been the last thing many a sea monster had seen. “Give us the tools to defeat these butchers and we’ll give the union Cavorite to choke on.”

A smile and a tiara will get a girl only so far, even with a man of conscience. In the subsequent negotiation, the Duck insisted on Cavorite first, within a month, tools of revolution after. The Spooks would prime the pump with a sprinkling of weapons, communications gear, and intelligence dope. America had handed out under-the-table party favors like that since the Cold War. But there would under no circumstances be any military or Spook hands-on participation, not even real-time intelligence if things heated up, except to haul away Cavorite when and if my new boss and her “reformed government”

delivered.

Considering that my new boss’s negotiating muscle consisted of maybe a double handful of resistance fighters as fierce as old Pytr, we shouldn’t have expected any more generous terms. The Duck had no choice but to hedge his long-shot bet, which he was placing with his employer’s chips. If we failed, the Human Union needed to be able to plausibly deny connection with these misguided rebels when it knuckled under to the RS, and to knuckle under fast.

So job one was to deliver Tressel’s weapons-grade Cavorite to the Human Union within a month. But a planet’s a big place, and I didn’t even know where to start. However, I knew who did.

FIFTY-ONE

WITH THE SPOOKS’ HELP, I met Howard Hibble the next day, at the Tressen National Museum of Natural History, a logical place for a person of Howard’s peculiar predilections to visit. I found him in a basement storage room that reeked of formaldehyde.