The Gripping Hand (22 page)

He accepted coffee. It was excellent . . . it was Jamaica Blue Mountain. Bury held the cup before his face for an extra moment, to gather himself. "Very good. Sumatra, perhaps, mixed with local black?"

The Blue Mountain's entire coffee crop had been reserved for Sparta, the Palace and the nobles, for half a thousand years. Bury recognized it—but he wasn't supposed to.

The Earl said, "Kevin, I take it you're with him."

Renner nodded. "Yes, Captain. I came with him. I want to see the blockade fleet in action.
I
want to know if they're ready for something totally off the wall. Captain, we did some talking last night, and things came out. Have you spent any amount of time talking to Jacob Buckman, the astronomer?"

"No, of course not. Who would?"

"I
would," Bury murmured.

"Forgive me, your Excellency."

Renner laughed. "Two green monkeys. What kind of company could either of them find aboard a working battleship?"

Bury glared. Renner continued, "None of us knew why Bury was aboard.
I
suppose Jack Cargill did, but all you said to us was that His Excellency was a guest, and he was not to leave the ship.
I
never quite knew—"

Blaine said, "All right. Did Buckman say anything worthy of note?"

"We thought so," Renner said. "Some old data on Buckman's Protostar surfaced from
Lenin
. Do you remember the curdle in the Coal Sack, twenty light-years in and a light-year across?"

Sally Blaine looked puzzled. Lord Blaine nodded without enthusiasm.

Get to the point, Bury wanted to shout, but he sat tight-lipped. He had agreed to let Renner begin the conversation.

"It's a protostar, an unborn star," Renner said. "Buckman's Motie said it'd ignite around a thousand years from now. Buckman confirmed that. Now there's a young guy who thinks he can prove that it'll happen much sooner, and he's using observations from
MacArthur
."

"So? It'll still be Buckman's Protostar."

"It'll be a T Tauri star, Captain. Very bright. The second question is when. The gripping hand is, is the blockade fleet ready to deal with several new Jump points?"

Blaine's lips moved silently.
New Jump points—
"God's teeth."

The coffee trembled in Sally Blaine's hand. "Kevin Christian—"

"Yeah," Blaine said. "All right, I owe Cziller an apology. How valid is this?"

Bury said, "My Lord, it was a very late night. I summoned up this Arnoff's work and went over it with Jacob at my shoulder. He pointed out equations and compared them to his own. I understood nothing, but I know this. They use the same observational data, but Jacob used additional data, older data, which he took from Motie astronomers."

"That could have been faked." Blaine sat at his desk. "Which would mean they were ready for us from the first moments they saw us. They saw how the protostar could be used. Before we did."

"They knew about the Alderson Drive," Renner said. "They call it the Crazy Eddie Drive. It makes ships vanish. But they already knew how to build it, and they won't have forgotten."

"Cycles," Sally Blaine said. "They play on them. Use them. We can ask Jock—"

"We will," Blaine said, "but we know what answer we'll get. Buckman was given doctored data."

Bury shrugged. "Moties lie to their Fyunch(click)s. Who should know that better than we?"

Sally nodded grimly. "They don't like it—" and she saw Bury's flicker of a smile.

Rod Blaine finished his coffee before he spoke again. "All right, Kevin. You've made your point. A good one. The government has to do something about this. I'll call the Palace as soon as we're done here. That still doesn't tell me why you. Why Bury. Why
Sinbad
."

"A piece at a time," Renner said. "Okay? First, you have to send Buckman. We need new observations, and someone to interpret them."

No interruption came. He said, "Second, New Cal system has to be ready. However the Moties get out—and this includes anything they might try, Captain, protostar or no protostar—they'll have to come through New Caledonia. That's where the crucial Jump point leads, as far as I can tell from a first cut.

"We met Mercer, the new Governor General. Had him aboard
Sinbad
last night. He's a politico, Captain. Sharp, but still a politico. Not a Navy man. He's got the sense to listen, but you still have to talk slow and repeat yourself and use simple words. He has to have things explained to him."

"So?"

"We'd have time to work on him if he rides with us to New Cal. Once we get there, there's a certain large-mouthed reporter named Mei-Ling Trujillo who's doing her best to cut the funding for the Crazy Eddie Fleet. The noise she's stirred up, Cunningham already wants to send her to the Fleet. She's got the clout, she might find something she likes, and at least it would shut her up for a while.

"Fourth, there's Bury. If you haven't seen the record, I can tell you. He's been one hell of an effective agent for the Empire. More than me. Now one of your best agents sees a threat to the Empire and wants to investigate. So do I."

"I see." Blaine looked at Bury. His expression was anything but friendly. "It seems we made a good decision about you, all those years ago."

"As it happens, my Lord."

"I still don't trust you."

"Do you trust me, Captain?" Renner demanded.

"Eh—"

"And while we're on the subject, trust who to do what?"

"Sure I trust you," Blaine said. "You think the whole Spartan nobility is working for you. Okay, I don't mind being supervised. Maybe it makes the Empire stronger. But—Excellency, I'm not sure you want the Empire stronger."

Bury said, "If twenty-eight years of service—" and ran out of words. If twenty-eight years of holding back the darkness wasn't sufficient, then . . . there was nothing to be said.

"You see?" Blaine was trying to be reasonable. "We don't have to send Buckman, Kevin, in case you've arranged things so he'll only go with Bury."

"No, Captain, it's just that way. He's—"

"We can send Arnoff. Or a host of others. Kevin, I have good reason not to trust Bury, and damned little reason why I should."

Renner's voice rose. "Captain, for twenty-eight damn years we've been out working for the Empire—"

"Kevin, you can't possibly convince me you haven't enjoyed it," Sally said.

"Well, all right, so I did." Renner sipped his coffee. "Captain, let's talk about your arm for a minute."

Blaine took a count of three. Then, "Why in blazes would you want to talk about my arm?"

"Well, you're wearing short sleeves, for one thing. And I now recall that when you came back aboard
MacArthur
at New Chicago, you were wearing a big padded cast. How'd you get those scars? Did it have anything to do with the revolt?"

Blaine said, "Why don't you stick to the subject, Renner?"

Bury was wishing the same thing with all his heart. It was hopeless. Bury hadn't tried to shut Renner up in a very long time.

Renner said, "Nobody wears short sleeves to meet someone he doesn't like. I think your scars may have something to do with your attitude here. Was it a burn-through? You don't get those anymore."

"Yeah. New Chicago. The Langston Field took a torpedo, got a hot spot, burned right through the hull. The flame fused my arm to the sleeve of my pressure suit."

"And now they're plating all the Navy ships with Motie superconductor."

"Ye-ess. You understand, it doesn't mean we don't get killed anymore. We don't get
hurt
. Burn-through in the Langston Field, the whole hull warms up. Till it gets too hot. Then it isn't a superconductor anymore, and everyone fries."

"And the sleeves?"

The Earl was rubbing the bridge of his nose. It hid his expression, a bit. "I . . . suppose I was being belligerent. I wasn't going to mention it myself, but I was damned if I'd let His Excellency forget. Petty of me. Kevin, I wouldn't let an old grudge get in the way of Imperial goals. I thought you knew. Bury was a prisoner on
MacArthur
. He was suspected of instigating the New Chicago revolt."

"And you were in one of the prison camps," Renner said to Sally Blaine.

"And a friend came with me, and she never went home," she said. Her eyes narrowed. "And he's guilty as hell. He pushed a whole world into revolt just to bloat his already bloated fortune!"

"Um," said Renner, "no."

"We had the proof," the Earl said. "We showed it to him. We used it to make him work for us— What?"

Lady Blaine had put her hand on her husband's scarred wrist. She said, "Kevin. What do you mean, no?"

"I've known him more than twenty-five years. Bury breaks rules for enough money, but there
wasn't
enough money. There couldn't have been. New Chicago isn't rich. Never was, was it?"

"Well, it was once . . . come to think of it—"

"Captain, we've
stopped
revolts. You know what causes revolts? Bury knows. Crop failure! It's an old tradition: when the crops fail, the people depose the king. Trust me, if New Chicago was ready for a revolt, then it probably wasn't worth robbing, not to the likes of Horace Bury."

Blaine said, "All right, Bury. Why? We never asked."

"I wouldn't have answered. Why should I testify against myself?"

Blaine shrugged.

"You will listen?" Bury demanded.

Blaine looked at him quickly. "Yes, Excellency."

Bury spared a glance for his diagnostics. He'd set them high; he didn't want to be too calm. Nothing had triggered. Good . . .

"Thirty-five years, my Lord. You would have been twelve when I entered New Chicago politics. Of course I was not acting for myself."

"For whom, then?" Sally demanded.

"For Levant, my Lady. And all the other Arabs that Levant represents."

"You were ALO?" Blaine asked.

"My Lord, I was the Deputy Chairman of the Arabic Liberation Organization."

"I see," Blaine said carefully.

"So my life was forfeit in any event," Bury said. "If you had found out." He shrugged. "ALO membership was covered under the amnesty, in case you're wondering."

"I'm sure," Blaine said. "But what in the devil was the ALO doing on New Chicago? It wasn't an Arab planet."

"No," Bury said. "But it had once been a source of ships. I take it you know little of New Chicago's history."

"Almost none," Blaine admitted. "I was only there to fight, and Lady Blaine has painful memories."

Bury nodded. "So, let me tell you a tale, my Lord. New Chicago was settled late, well after the formation of the First Empire. It was far away beyond the Coal Sack, an insignificant world, settled by North American transportees but administratively part of the Russian sphere of influence. That is significant because the Russians favored a planned economy and what they planned for New Chicago was that it would be a source of ships for the future expansion of the Empire."

"Figures," Renner said. "Edge of the frontier."

"What's your point?" Sally Blaine demanded.

"A source of ships," Bury continued carefully. "The people of the First Empire were largely transportees.
Not
trained astronauts. Spacesuit and habitat technology had not moved as fast as spacecraft technology using Alderson Drive and Langston Field. Metals on New Chicago are easily available. Foundries could be built. The settlers had decent gravity and reasonably Earthlike conditions. The regions of exposed ores are east of the good farming land, and there's a dependable east wind to carry away the industrial stenches. My Lord,
nobody
knows more than I do about New Chicago."

"Local asteroid belts."