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FIVE

The tuxedoed maître de hôtel behind the polished wood rostrum of the High Rand Lodge’s dining room shook hair as long as a woman’s into place and smiled. “Good evening, Mr. Hickok! Successful day on the Cols?”

Maximillian Polian, Director General of Internal Security for the Unified Republics of Yavet, let his mute stare melt the man’s grin. Polian knew that his Yavi accent didn’t match his Trueborn alias, and had no desire to further advertise an already obvious lie.

The man made a small bow. “Yes, sir. If you would be so good as to follow me?” The maître d’ swept a hand toward the open double doors that led to the private salon on the opposite side of the chandeliered dining room. The place was empty during mating season. Shooting animals that were about to swell their population was bad policy here. Polian thought that perverse.

Max Polian didn’t roll his eyes at any of it until the poof turned away and snaked through the silent shoals of linen-draped tables. As Polian followed, he sawed a bony finger between his throat and the stiff collar of the tuxedo shirt that had been hung in his closet for his use. The thing threatened to strangle him. His police mess-dress uniform collar was actually even tighter, but Polian would gladly have traded.

As he swiveled his head back and forth, Polian ground his teeth at three annoyances. First, poof tuxedos were not just uncomfortable, they were Trueborn fashion, rather than Yavi. Every detail of this overwrought palace of a hunting lodge, from the heavy table silver to the chandeliers glittering beneath the high ceilings, copied Trueborn opulence. Like most outworlds, Rand borrowed its cultural cues from Earth. Second, Polian’s host chose a Trueborn alias for Polian. As a Yavi first and last, Polian chafed beneath the alias worse than beneath the stiff shirt. Third and worst, this entire meeting was mere playing at espionage. It fooled not even these outworlders. Any ten of the thousands of Yavi criminals Polian had spent a lifetime bringing to justice created more credible lies than this overprivileged Earthman had fabricated.

As the maître d’ ushered Polian into the private salon, Polian’s host stood, crossed in front of the crackling hearth. Like Polian and the dining-room staff, he wore black-tied evening dress. Unlike Polian, his host looked at ease in his Trueborn skin. He shook Polian’s hand with the overt familiarity that marked a Trueborn as clearly as the pearlescent perfection of the man’s smile. “Mr. Hickok!”

Polian squeezed up the corners of his mouth up beneath his moustache. “Mr . . . Quartermain.”

Max Polian, like most members of Yavet’s martial services, had been selected over generations and stood a head taller than the civilians they ruled. But the eyes of Polian’s host were level with his own, and set in a tanned face symmetrically handsome even by Trueborn standards.

Polian turned his gaze to the fire laid in the great stone fireplace that warmed the private dining salon until he heard the double doors click shut behind them. Once the maître d’ bowed out, the only sound in the room was the blazing crackle of logs, which would defeat listening devices. “Mr. Cutler, I understand Trueborns love their melodrama. But can we stop playing spies?”

Bartram Cutler smiled, nodded. “Sure. It was mostly to make you comfortable anyway. I’ve trusted the Rand all my life.”

Polian didn’t doubt that. Like any good cop, Polian had done his homework. Bartram Cutler, third-generation owner of Cutler Communications, was the fourth richest man on Earth. Or he had been. Two years ago, Cutler had been imprisoned by his own government for publicly undisclosed crimes. The scandal had cost Cutler not only control of the family business but, presumably, the fortune that business had created. Presumably.

Polian covered a smile with a cough as he glanced at the padded, silken wallpaper.

Smart criminals hid a nest egg. Cutler’s nest egg was obviously proportional to his family fortune, and just as obviously hidden in an encrypted account here on Rand.

From a bottle in the table’s center, Cutler poured amber liquid into two glasses, then handed one to Polian and raised the other. “To the Rand. Where I come from, we say that the Rand can keep a secret.”

Polian grunted, didn’t drink. He wasn’t in the habit of drinking with crooks, or of trusting them, especially failed Trueborn crooks. “Where I come from, Mr. Cutler, we say that three can keep a secret. If two are dead.”

Cutler threw back his head and laughed. “I take your point. Director, I asked to meet you here precisely so that we could speak face-to-face. Rand’s the most discreet and secure venue in the Human Union. But as you see, I dismissed the clerks and jerks. Any secrets we share will be between us. No middlemen to reveal our business.”

“Our business? Mr. Cutler, you and I have no business.” Polian pulled his fingers back from the glass on the tablecloth and sighed. “And you have no business at all these days, from what my people advise me.”

Polian read the frown that flicked across Cutler’s smooth face. Bart Cutler still had a great deal of money, even by Trueborn standards. But money without influence was almost worthless to someone born to both.

Polian frowned back. “My sources are unclear about what crimes you committed. But we have it on good authority you were pardoned only because you hired clever lawyers. Who in turn hired an even cleverer elected official.”

Blood pinked the Earthman’s cheeks. “And neither the lawyers nor the outgoing bitch in the White House came cheap. Director, I was the victim of a power play and trumped-up charges.”

Polian allowed himself an eye roll. “A policeman’s heard that one before.”

“You doubt that my government would persecute an honest man?”

Polian smirked. “Now it is my turn to get your point. A crime committed against Earth hardly bothers a Yavi. But I don’t know how I can help you.”

“Not you personally, perhaps. But Yavet can.”

Polian wrinkled his brow. “I carry no portfolio for Yavet, sir. I am here as a private citizen on medical leave.” It was true. The old fools on the Central Committee were always ready to believe that someone nearly as old as themselves had medical problems. If they knew the truth of this they would suffer strokes, themselves.

Max said, “Yavet can help many people. But why would she?”

Cutler leaned forward. “How did you get to Rand?”

Polian snorted. “Sir, if you expect a candid conversation, don’t answer a question with a question. Especially one to which you already know the answer. You arranged my passage, to conceal our meeting.”

Cutler nodded. “Even so, like every Yavi, like every interworlds traveler in the Union, you were booked aboard a Trueborn starship. Even more unjustly, although you represent the most populous planet in the union, the nuclear and economic co-equal of Earth herself—in fact because of your position—you had to pretend you were a common tourist. Because Earth presumes to dislike the way Yavet runs its own society.”

Polian’s hands wrinkled the tablecloth as his fingertips whitened. “You pander to a Yavi’s pride. But you’re right. Your government’s patronization of Yavet insults our people and our principles. A great society has the right to the principles that made it great, and to gift lesser societies with them.”

Cutler hesitated, as Trueborns always did at self-evident truths with which they disagreed.

Then he said, “First, Director, it isn’t my government any more. Looking out a cell window for twenty-one months changes a man’s world view. Second, Yavet’s problem isn’t obtaining the right to expand, is it? Your problem is obtaining the means.”

Polian felt himself nod.

Cutler smiled. “And right now you’re dead in the water on that.”

Polian’s nod froze.

Cutler leaned forward, lowered his voice, even in the empty room. “Six months ago your people conducted a covert military operation on Tressel. Yavet came away with enough propulsion-grade cavorite to fuel a fleet of cruisers.”

Polian’s eyes widened a millimeter. The wretched business on Tressel. His eyes burned, moistened, at the mention, even now. But he swallowed and said nothing.

Cutler stabbed a finger into the tablecloth. “But starship fuel without starships is useless to Yavet, isn’t it? So you tried to steal a C-drive unit.”

Polian blinked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Cutler cocked his head, sat back. “Of course not. But I’ll speak hypothetically, as a man who knows industrial espionage. I’d say that even if you had managed to salvage a Scorpion fighter’s C-drive unit from some wreck, reverse engineering a small interceptor’s engine into a strategic fleet of jump-capable cruisers would have taken decades.”

Polian forced his face blank. Cutler might have lost much of his influence, but he still knew how and where to buy accurate information. And he knew how to draw accurate conclusions from that information. Max Polian was not, however, about to concede an inch to a Trueborn.

He shrugged. “Time favors the righteous.”

Cutler poured again into Polian’s half-full glass. “Sure it does. But wouldn’t the righteous prefer to get keel-up starship technology delivered to them on a silver platter, instead?”

Now Polian sat back, narrowed his eyes, even as he felt his heart skip. “Assuming—purely for the sake of argument—that Yavet were interested in acquiring, as you put it, Trueborn keel-up starship technology on a plate, why bring your offer to me? I’m just what you call a flat-footed cop. My responsibilities are internal. Stealing external secrets isn’t a simple policeman’s job.”

“Director Polian, if you’re just a simple policeman, I’m just a simple salesman. Did you know that my father made me start at the bottom at Cutler, as a field salesman? He said he wasn’t going to turn the business over to a rich bum.” Cutler shifted in his chair. “But tough love taught me plenty. Before I made a sales call on a big client, who do you think I always contacted first?”

Polian made a show of shrugging again, but he didn’t turn away. “I have no idea, and less curiosity. Peddling disinterests me.”

“I approached the guy on the inside who I figured had the best reason to buy. Because if I got to him face-to-face first, and sold him, he’d sell the rest of management for me.”

Max Polian waved his hand at the glittering room around them, snorted. “You think this frosting can sell me? Or buy me?”

“Bribe you with a hunting trip? My father didn’t raise a fool.” Cutler paused, softened his voice. “And you didn’t raise your son as one, either.”

The old man stiffened, stood. “My son?”

Cutler paused a heartbeat, then said even more softly, “Director, how much do you know about the circumstances of your son’s death?”

The old cop narrowed his eyes. “What do you know about—?”

Cutler raised his palm. “I know he died a hero. And I know the power of the bond between a father and a son.”

Polian swayed, silent, for ten seconds, then whispered, “It’s my turn to answer a question with a question. Why do you bring up my son’s death?”

Cutler inched Polian’s glass toward him again. “Sit down. It’s real single-malt. I brought the bottle out from Earth myself.”

Polian sat, lifted the glass and sniffed.

After Ruberd’s first off-world posting, Polian’s son had brought home a bottle of Trueborn whisky, purchased duty-free at a hub layover, for the two of them to share. But they had argued on the shuttle down from the Ring. He could no longer remember about what. Max Polian had found the bottle, still unopened, among his son’s effects, when the service had delivered them.

Max Polian sipped, and the scotch—he was sure it was the scotch—made his eyes water.

Polian blinked back the tears and peered at his host.

It seemed to Polian that Cutler was now watching him with the same expression that the Earthman had worn two days before, while he watched a snow leopard taste a bait. Moments later, Cutler had killed the animal with a shot so clean that it tore the trophy’s heart out.

Cutler nodded. “Here’s what I have in mind.”


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