Tomorrow’s Heritage (6 page)

“. . . must be a very proud event for you. Carissa, how do you feel? Holding up under the campaigning? Today’s kind of a break in the schedule, isn’t it?”

The on-going interviews drew Todd’s eyes. Jael was gracious, doing her best to live down her reputation as a cutthroat businesswoman. She put Carissa stage front, and Carissa smiled. That ought to be good for a few million extra votes. Carissa’s ash-blonde hair was slightly disheveled, but not messy. Her green eyes were wide with innocent delight. She looked lovely and vulnerable. “Oh, it’s just wonderful,” she said in that husky voice, one that was becoming almost as famous as her husband’s. Her voice had a poignant little crack in it, an endearing, childlike note. “What? I can’t hear you. It’s so loud in here! Everybody’s so happy! I just know everything will work out perfectly!” She jumped as the milling crowd jostled her. Jael’s burly security guards eased back the crush, not discouraging the Saunders’ admirers, but keeping their charges safe from mauling. Carissa grabbed at her stylish hat and scarf and laughed. She looked like a beautiful adolescent at a carnival.

“ComLink Tele network, top priority, Todd Saunder. I want a personal channel,” Todd ordered the systems. “Put me through to the location on screen one.”

“Whom did you wish to speak to, sir?”

Dian floated in while Todd set up the call. She hooked her feet around the bed webbing and sat in the air, her arms crossed under her breasts. Todd told the terminal, “Jael or Patrick Saunder. Either one. I’ve got plenty to say to both of them. Hurry it up.”

“Give the poor comp a chance,” Dian said.

The terminal acknowledged. “Thank you, sir. Your party will be on the line in just a few minutes.” The comp had a female voice today, one with a slight French accent, very sexy. Some people forgot there was no living presence behind a voice like that and reacted accordingly. Todd hadn’t done so Since he was a boy.

“Better to take it out on the equipment than on someone who can feel it. Maybe this way I’ll be calm enough to be coherent when they complete the call.”

Dian’s brown face was a mask. She was inside her United Ghetto States guise, presenting an unruffled, unreadable exterior to the world. Todd sensed the reason. In her own way, she was as upset as he was. But Dian wasn’t a screamer. Her anger took a different form.

“. . . isn’t it true that your son controls the housing industries and krill fisheries in Antarctica, the ones supplying the war zones? Doesn’t he have the controlling interest in SE Trans Co, too? Isn’t that profit-taking . . .”

A crack reporter from Worldwide TeleCom had managed to break through the security cordon. Guards edged toward him, but Jael stopped them with a pitying smile. “That’s a false assumption. If you examine the evidence, you’ll find there’s no basis for such an accusation. In fact, I resent it.”

Her plump face quivered with righteous indignation on her son’s behalf. It was a good performance. This stylish matron on the edge of tears surely couldn’t be the same corporation president who had ruined kings and brought nations to their knees. Jael didn’t look the part, not at all. The rival network reporter seemed to be picking on a gentle, innocent victim.

Nuñez wasn’t fooled, however. He knew his target and bored in. “But what about that energy-funding clause in the treaty? Isn’t that also Patrick Saunder’s company? Won’t he . . .?”

“I know nothing whatever about such matters, young man.”

Todd groaned. “They’re not going to believe that, Mother. What’s the matter with you? Quit putting on the fluttery-dowager role. A year ago, you would have thrown Nuñez to the sharks.”

“A year ago your brother hadn’t announced he was a candidate for the Chairmanship,” Dian put in. Todd met her penetrating stare. “She’ll shuffle the cretins around a while, then dump them,” she added. “Works every time.”

“Did your grandmother tell you that?” Todd asked sourly. He shook his head, seeing the screen, but thinking how the language changed to suit recent history. Before one of the BW pandemics, “cretin” had been a word in a medical textbook. After whole populations were afflicted with viral-caused thyroid anomalies, the word moved into general usage as an epithet, hurled with malice aforethought. Todd concentrated on Jael’s corny routine, disgusted. “This is as phony as Pat’s speeches. They’ve both changed, for the worse, since he got into politics.”

“Carissa hasn’t changed,” Dian commented. “She’s still a high-fashion doll.”

Todd wasn’t sure how to respond to that barb. He drummed his fingers on the console, muttering, “Hurry up. What’s taking so long on this damned call?”

Still on screen, Jael put her arm around Carissa, drawing the delicate younger woman out of the reporter’s reach. The guards cut him off and pressured him to the outside of the cordon, thereby effectively silencing him. “That does it for Nuñez,” Dian said. “He’s not bad. Maybe ComLink should hire him.”

“Maybe he’s got too much integrity to switch sides.” Dian blinked at him, and Todd backed down, shrugging off the suggestion. “You stalling me, Tele network?”

Before he could say anything further, the private channel screen went black. Then it came up with a picture of Jael and Carissa, huddled close to a terminal in the lounge. Background noise assaulted the speakers despite the override filters. “Is that you, Todd?” Jael asked ingenuously.

“The signal’s not that bad. It’s me. I want to say a few words about that marvelous stunt you and Pat pulled on me. What happened to those heartrending pleas that we had to keep the family together and your begging me to coax Mari into coming to Dad’s birthday memorial? Remember? You said you’d make any concession, any promise, so I could pull it off. You promised me you wouldn’t do anything else to Goddard’s pipeline. Right?”

Geosynch HQ wasn’t that far from Earth. There was no discernible time lapse. Todd didn’t have to wait for Jael’s reaction. The teary matron was gone. “Keep your voice down,” her soft, ominous voice warned. “You’re blasting all over the lounge.”

Undaunted, Todd pushed on sarcastically. “Oh, am I? Maybe I ought to borrow my techs back from you and go global. I want you to understand that I’m mad and in no mood for cute answers. I want to know why the hell you set me up for this. It’s a damned dirty trick.”

Carissa’s green eyes widened more than normal. Startled, she watched Jael and Todd’s image, a spectator at a controlled-violence arena match, expecting to see blood spilled.

“Todd, shut up,” Jael said savagely in an even lower tone. “You haven’t the faintest idea what we’ve been up against. I’d expect that from Mariette, but not from you. I thought you had more sense, realized what’s involved in this campaign . . .”

“I realize, all too well. That’s the trouble. Don’t delude yourself, Mother. Mari understands what’s going on, too. You’re killing her,
that’s
what’s involved. It’s not easy to overlook.”

The computer voice broke in. “Here is your second call, sir.”

The screen split vertically, Jael and Carissa on the left, a confusing tangle of faces and bodies on the right. Pat was coming out of the melee, still talking to his aides and colleagues. A big-breasted, revealingly clad honey blonde hung on his arm. Todd wondered scornfully if she was the latest spare-time playmate for the candidate. Since Carissa didn’t seem to mind her husband’s notorious extracurricular flings, it was no one else’s business. His attitude probably made him more fascinating to a lot of the voters, too.

“What? Yeah, you’re right, Jake. Just wait until nobody’s watching, then boot him out. Arrange a mix-up with his press ident so P.O.E. won’t get edgy.” Pat shrugged out of the blonde’s grasp and loomed over the terminal. He was obviously somewhere else in the huge lounge, visible to Jael and Carissa only via their screen. Strongmen guards elbowed the crowd back, giving Pat space. “Todd? That you, kid? How did the speech come through up there in orbit?”

“Smelling like a boatload of month-old dead krill.”

A crease deepened between Pat’s dark eyebrows. “Hey! What are you . . .”

“What am I supposed to say? That it was wonderful? That I love being stabbed in the back? That Mari’s going to love it, too? You’d better understand me . . .“

“Shut
up
!” Jael roared at them.

There was a time when that would have chastened both men. Now they went on without any sign of repentance. “I can handle my own arguments,” Pat said heavily. “And as for you—”

“She’s in on this,” Todd cut in. “I’m paying for the call, anyway, so what’s your complaint? I thought I was due some answers, and it didn’t look like you’d have the grace to call
me
.”

“We can straighten this out, kid,” Pat said, the faintest hint of apology in his tone.

“Can we? How? You don’t hear me. I don’t think you’ve really listened to me for months, years. I’m the one you take for granted, isn’t that so? I’m not even talking the same language you are.” Todd’s anger was faltering, becoming weary frustration. He closed his eyes a moment, then said, “How long do you think you can keep on juggling all these lies? You’re lying to me now, along with everyone else. I thought I was part of the family, a trusted member of the firm, not just a flunky. You keep wanting me to come planetside more often, you say. Is that so it’ll look good for the campaign?
Candidate’s brother supports him in drive for the Chairmanship.
Going to set up a session on all the satellite nets, interviewers catching us together, me nodding and yes-manning? Why bother with all this family unity nonsense if you were going to pull—”

Pat sliced through Todd’s bitterness; he appeared concerned. “Has Mariette canceled on you?”

Todd didn’t know whether to laugh or rage at his brother. He wanted to hit him. Impossible. Telecom was a handy tool, but it made direct contact wishful thinking. “I do admire your ability to trim away the fat. You get right down to what’s important—important to you. No! Mari hasn’t canceled. I’m not sure why she hasn’t. Maybe I’ll get the word halfway there and have to turn around and come back. Wouldn’t that be interesting?” Todd considered the matter more calmly, resignation setting in. “No,” he said quietly, “no cancellation. And if she were going to, she would have by now.”

“You’re going ahead with the trip to the Colony, then?” Jael dug at him from the second part of the Earth-based conversation.

“What if I said no?’ Todd heard Dian suck in her breath.

Jael’s face crumpled. “You wouldn’t do that, Todd. Please! You promised!”

“So did you and Pat. Promises don’t seem to mean a lot between us any more. Promises go two ways. I
told
you I didn’t have a prayer of persuading Mari to come to Saunderhome if you didn’t lay off Goddard for a while.”

“Todd . . .” Jael’s eyes were misty. She wasn’t faking it this time. Those tears were angry tears. She didn’t cry for any other reason.

Jael, standing on the shore, watching the rescue crews returning from the flier’s wreckage, knowing they hadn’t found Ward’s body. Pat embracing her, and Todd and Mariette crowding close, forming a tight, mourning circle. They had wept, but Jael hadn’t then. Only later, sobbing with fury, she had cursed the weather and the sloppy flight traffic control, blaming those for the tragedy, and crying as she hadn’t while the agony of Ward’s death raked at her. In pain or grief, she was stoic, enduring both without tears.

“Mother, let me explain,” Pat said. Todd heaved a sigh, loving and hating them, outflanked, helpless. They were light-years apart, and the distance was increasing every week.

“Never mind,” he muttered.

“I
have
to explain it to you, kid,” Pat insisted. He was in so tight on the screen he blocked all view of the crowds and the heavily armed bodyguards surrounding him. Lowering that world-famous voice, he whispered, “I had to deal. It was a last-minute maneuver by Ybarra and the others. They were ready to wipe everything out and go back to killing one another. Dammit, kid! Do you think I
want
to drown you or Mari? I wanted to tip you off, but I couldn’t.” A subtle warning crept into his words. “We may have to go to scramblers when we call each other in the future, Todd. The campaign’s getting really ugly. The Spacers would love to sabotage me. One word of the final details before this public broadcast, and the whole truce would have collapsed.”

Grim speculations whirled in Todd’s mind. Secret deals. Why? The answer was all too plain—so that the Trans-Pacific leaders would have ample opportunity to round up all those “war criminals” and political rivals and ship them off to the Pole before anyone could stop them. Now, what was done as done.

I had to deal.

“You wouldn’t have dealt with those warlord bastards five years ago, Pat, or even one year ago,” Todd said with great sorrow.

Jael opened her mouth, thought better of whatever she had been about to say, and fell silent. She watched her sons, waiting, as she had when they were kids squabbling over toys. She had let them blacken eyes and bloody noses, then would pick up the mess and punish them both. Lesson five in Jael Hartman Saunder’s theories on child rearing. It had worked, then. But in those days, there had been three Saunder siblings fighting and spitting childish epithets. This time, a crucial factor in the argument centered around that third sibling and the space station to which she was devoting her life and fortune.

Pat raked both hands through his dark hair. The lenses recorded a dancing curtain of reddish highlights in the black waves. Those pale eyes were haunted, not seeing Todd or Jael or Carissa. Seeing nightmares come to life. “The children . . . it was . . . my God, the children. The little bodies, all stick-bones and distended bellies, looking at you, past hoping. Plague sores covering them, and the one little girl . . .” Pat leaned on the terminal frame, getting out the memory, a man forced to describe the horror to free his soul. “Dying, bleeding . . . I . . . I was holding her, trying to make the doctors . . . they wouldn’t bother. Triage, they said. No chance for her, for any of those thousands of victims. I was there. I had to . . . had to do
something
. It stinks. The, damned fucking war, it . . . well, it’s over! It’s over! I don’t care what I had to deal to pull it off, kid. Do you hear me? I
had
to.” Visibly, he came back to the present, pleading in his manner. “You think I enjoy compromising, lying? It’s the goal that counts. I can make it up to you, and to Mari, once I get where I’m going.”