Chapter One
Chapter One
Haven, 2627 A.D.
Charity Boulevard was as crowded as any street in Hindutown. Homemade booths of every size, shape and color jammed the sidewalks; a few military-surplus tents joined them in pushing the pedestrians and hawkers into the gutters or out into the street itself. John Hamilton, youngest grandson of the Baron of Greensward, slowed the fans of his hovercar as he reached the corner of Charity and Hope.
If there’s any corner in Castell City more appropriately named, I haven’t found it, he thought to himself. The corner held the busiest black market money exchange on Haven. If there’s any charity or hope left on this world, the transactions made here would have a lot to do with it.
In the past four years since the last Imperial Governor had departed and Government House shut its doors, inflation had pruned the Haven mark until an old copper pfennig was worth a thousand paper marks. Imperial credits, what few remained, were worth more than a hundred thousand marks each. The official rate of exchange was five thousand to one, but all the official edict had done was to create a thriving black market in currency where prices changed hourly.
John’s grandfather, Baron Hamilton, preferred to do things correctly and dealt with the Imperial Exchange. Or at least he had until John had showed him that he was being cheated by a factor of twenty to one. Then the Baron had let him do things his way. At Whitehall and on the estate, hundreds of dependents owed their very survival to the financial stability of the Hamiltons. Duty to their subjects was something both the Baron and his grandson understood very well, even if they might disagree as to the means by which it might be achieved.
And being loosened on the black market money exchange allowed John to finally render service to his family. It was about the only one he could provide now, apart from whatever help his gambling winnings might add to the family exchequer.
John lowered the passenger window; half a dozen heads attempted to thrust themselves through the opening.
“One hundred-sixteen thousand marks per crown, yer Lordship,” cried a brown face with a dirty eye-patch.
“A hundred-seventeen,” yelled a boy who appeared barely into his teens.
“One hundred twenty and not a pfennig less,” he replied blandly. If he’d had either the time or disposition to haggle, he knew he could get one twenty-five, but he didn’t want to remain here amidst the garbage reek and bright-eyes marketeers any longer than he had to. Neither were improving the hangover that was shortening both his vision and his temper.
A large man in a faded red-satin shirt with a yellow stain across the front cried out, “I’ll take it, yer Lordship. Now, how many Imperials would you be thinkin’ to exchange?”
“Twenty.”
“That will be two and four,” the man said, as he removed two wrist-thick bundles of currency from one pocket, then counting out the change with his other hand.
John took the proffered cash and, without counting, put it quickly into his jacket pocket, while he handed over twenty Imperial crowns to the moneychanger. Once, just to make sure he wasn’t cheated, he’d spent half an hour counting each bill only to discover that he’d been overpaid by twenty thousand marks—at that time enough to buy a loaf of bread. There was too much competition in the black currency market for anyone to risk cheating someone who might spread the word, or take even more drastic action.
It was too early to hit the markets for this week’s supplies so he headed to Dupars; the last functioning Gentleman’s Club in the city, if not Haven itself. Most of the people of means had left with, or after, the last Imperial Viceroy. Those who’d stayed were the aristocrats with neither family nor wealth, a handful of the rich who’d rather die as a big fish in this little pond, ne’er-do-wells like John Albert Hamilton and a definite minority who saw Haven as their home, warts and all. John’s grandfather was one of the latter sorts.
Dupars was surprisingly crowded for two in the afternoon. Or maybe it wasn’t so surprising. Orin Haverstill never turned away one of his former patrons who needed a meal or a drink, no matter what his circumstances. A dozen or more gentlemen would have eaten their last meal weeks ago without Haverstill’s generosity. As far as Hamilton was concerned, when Dupars shut its doors, Haven would have gone completely to hell.
The Hamiltons themselves might have been as badly off, if John’s sister Matilda hadn’t discovered one of their great, great-grandfather’s long-lost chests of silver Imperial crowns and gold ingots while planting mushrooms in the castle basement. Mattie had only told the Baron, John and the family banker about her discovery. Everyone else had thought Old Baron Edward Hamilton eccentric, to say the least; some had even doubted that his hoard was anything more than the product of a deluded and/or senile mind. Now, with silver going at thirty thousand crowns per hectogram, or close to three billion marks, great-grandfather Edward was beginning to look like a genius whose foresight had saved the family.
Master Orin Haverstill came over to greet Hamilton in person, as was his wont. “How’s his Lordship, Sir John?”
“Well enough, Haverstill. He has a new project to keep him busy this month.”
Haverstill tried to keep a smile from breaking out. “What is it this time?”
“Rebuilding. The Baron is determined to fortify the estate and is rebuilding the main gate. He thinks the old one might be too flimsy if the mobs from Castell spill over into the countryside.” Personally, Hamilton thought fifty centimeters of durasteel was overkill; it would stop anything short of a tank (an endangered, if not extinct, species on Haven), but it would do nothing for the habitability of Whitehall.
He was surprised to note that Haverstill was nodding in cautious approval. “Whitehall would be just the place to weather a siege.”
Hamilton raised his eyebrows. “You think the Baron might be right?” If Haverstill did, it was information worth noting. The owner of Dupars had contacts on all levels of Haven society, from the upper echelons of the nobility and Provisionalist Party to day-laborers and beggars.
“Times are hard, sire. Without the bioplast and protocarb, there would be food riots and worse if the Empire can’t spare us a few regiments of Marines. And quickly at that!”
Haverstill was usually reticent on matters of politics and hearing him speak like this was unprecedented. Things must be going to Hell in a handbasket!
He followed Haverstill over to his usual table; his thoughts were elsewhere as he almost collided with the club’s last serving robot.
Hamilton’s usual companions were in their seats, but their usual brittle cheerfulness was missing. Even Roger Morgan, the President of Castell Union Bank, failed to greet him with his usual upraised eyebrows.
“Sit down, John,” David Steele said. Steele was a wealthy planter who hadn’t harvested anything but dividends since Hamilton had known him. Howard Whakley, the remaining member of their daily card game, sat with an untouched drink beside him, staring at the center of the table as if he expected a hangman bush to sprout there at any moment.
Hamilton took his seat and asked, “What is this? A wake? I came here for amusement, gambling and the pernicious influence of bad companions. Now, here you all sit, as sober as a bench of Harmony deacons or Imperial Magistrates. Have I missed something?”
Steele silenced him with a sharp look. “Whakley here has suffered a bit of a reverse.”
“What do you mean ‘a bit’!” Howard Whakley exclaimed” Obviously, some earlier drinks had not gone untouched since Whakley was usually polite to a fault. “And what would you know about it, anyway, Steele? You sit there clipping coupons the bank has to redeem in Imperial crowns, while the rest of us barely scrape by. With this damned inflation, your wealth goes up with every sip of that whisky you’re drinking; meanwhile the bastards are forcing me right out of business!”
“What’s wrong with your bearing factory?” Hamilton asked. “Everything mechanical needs bearings; you should have lots of work now that there’s no off-world competition. Business should be booming.” He decided he must have missed something, but didn’t think it was a good time to make a joke about it, not in light of Whakley’s disheveled appearance.
“Oh, business is fine,” Whakley said, waving a finger under Hamilton’s nose. “So damned fine that the Chamber of Deputies bowed to Provo pressure and decided that bearings are Essential Materials.”
“Damn, bad for you!” Hamilton said. It wasn’t a sympathetic remark, but at least the pieces were starting to fall into place.
“Do you understand that now we can’t raise prices without government approval. That could take weeks; meanwhile, prices are going up daily. I was beating inflation by overbuying steel, warehousing the surplus and selling later when prices had doubled. Now, I’m stuck and every bearing I sell from now on will cost me more than I can ever sell it for. And I’m not the only one; by winter, there won’t be a non-essential factory operating anywhere within a hundred klicks of Castell City.”
“It can’t be that bad, can it?” he remonstrated. “Don’t you get a price break on Essential Raw Materials, as well as reduced taxes?”
“TAXES!” the word came blaring out like a rarely heard obscenity. “The miscarrying Parliament can’t raise taxes fast enough to keep up with the devaluation of the mark. Any tax breaks’ll be too late. The state-subsidized mines have already cut their production in half during the past year; the workers make more by stealing the ore and selling it on the black market to privateer furnaces. Where do you think I’ve been getting my cobalt and tungsten?”
“Sell the factory, then,” Steele said, with a chill in his voice, “before you lose it.”
“To whom? And for what?” The only thing left that has any real value is land. Who’s crazy enough to sell that to buy a factory guaranteed by the government to lose money? They’ve already taken over half the factories in the city. The only ones that are still running are staffed with conscripts guarded by troops.”
“I’ll buy your factory,” Steele said.
Hamilton saw Whakley’s face turn bright red and his hands ball into fists as he tried to rise up out of his seat. Morgan’s hand pinned him to his chair.
“Hear him out” Morgan ordered.
Whakley subsided and shriveled under Steel’s glare.
“I mean it,” Steele continued. “I can use the loss as a tax write-off.”
Lately Steele had been buying bankrupt plantations and farms for just that reason. Behind his back, people were calling him “Loot, Pillage and Steele,” and other things less polite. I wonder how long it’ll be before they start calling him King Steele? That sobering thought turned his attention back to the man himself.
“…all things considered,” Steele continued, “five billion marks seems a reasonable price for the plant, including land, building, computers, inventory and all the records, including software.”
“Five billion! It’s worth ten times that much right now; probably ten times that by tomorrow morning. John, you were out this morning changing currency. What’s the mark going for today?”
“A hundred and twenty-thousand to one crown. Or, at least it was an hour ago.”
“You see?” Whakley stormed. “You’re trying to ruin me!”
Steele laughed. The hard edge to that laugh told Hamilton he’d played his last “friendly game of cards” with the man. It was beginning to look as though he never should have played the first hand.
“You’re already ruined, Whakley,” Steele sneered. “I’m just offering you a raft off your sinking ship. Whether you take it or not is up to you. I’m sure the new owners will be more amenable to reason.”
It was no secret that Steele owned a good part of Parliament. It was greedy-guts like Steele who were driving the economy right into the pavement.
This time Whakley’s struggles to rise almost knocked his chair over, until Morgan whispered into his ear. Then he turned white and slumped back down.
Hamilton wondered what Morgan’s hold was over Whakley; probably he held the notes on his factory. Whatever it was, it had turned the man’s spine to jelly. A man with a wife and four children, one of whom needed constant medical care, had too many things to fear during times like these. Hostages to fortune, came to mind.
Morgan turned to Steele. “If you make that offer in Imperial crowns, you might have yourself a factory.”
Steele scratched his chin, then fumbled with his pipe and its fixings. “Hmm. Fifty thousand crowns—that’s my final offer.”
Hamilton looked at the dejected Whakley and felt his gorge rise. “Don’t sell, Howard. I’ll loan you fifty thousand crowns. Use it to play the currency market and keep your factory afloat. You can pay me back when things return to normal.”
Whakley sat up, his eyes overflowing, like a man who’d just heard his death sentence commuted. “Do you mean it, John?”
“I certainly do. You have my word.”
“You might want to reconsider,” Steele said, his words blanketed with menace. “You and the Baron aren’t that far from Whakley’s porch, if you get my meaning. Unless you’ve got a license to print the damn stuff?”
John felt his blood chill. The last thing they needed were hostile eyes turned toward the state of Hamilton finances. And Steele’s would be hostile. The man was much more ambitious, not to say ruthless, than he’d ever believed. The Baron had said as much a year ago, but he hadn’t listened. Too late for regrets now; the damage was done.
Morgan had a Cheshire cat grin on his face, but Whakley was still reeling. His voice trembled as he spoke: Thank you, Lord John. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Cecilia’s back in the hospital again… you’ll never know how much this means to me…”
“I think ye may be makin’ a huge mistake, m’lord,” Steele said, deliberately shifting into Lowtown patois to remind everyone of how he’d clawed his way up from poverty and the underclass.
Their little ruckus was now being observed by everyone in Dupars. A cliff lion could have stalked into the room and no one would have noticed.
Personally, Hamilton wanted to kick himself in the arse. He’d been drinking and playing cards—yes, and probably letting secrets slip out—for years with a man who secretly hated and despised him. He pushed his chair back and rose, to stand with his feet wide apart and his hands clenched into fists. “Steele, get the Hell out of here before I turn you inside out and hang you out to dry! And don’t ever come within five meters of this table again. You’re no friend of mine, or anybody else at this table.”
Whakley nodded, but Morgan rose up: “You’ve got that wrong, Hamilton. Steele is a good friend and business partner. You’re going to live to regret this insult.”
“You two have made a big mistake,” Steele said with a snarl. “You’ll live to regret this; I promise you.” He strode out of Dupars with Morgan in tow, and the eye of everyone in the dining room.
Haverstill, shaking his head, made his way over to their table. “You two have just made yourselves a bad enemy. Steele hates to be embarrassed and you’ve done that in spades.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Hamilton said. “I’d like to buy a round of drinks for the house.”
That cheered the room up, but Haverstill left shaking his head.
Whakley called the waiter over and ordered a bottle of Tabletop bourbon, probably the last one in the house since no one knew when another trading ship would arrive in-system. “A toast,” he offered. “To friends and good companions.”
The bourbon went down smooth, but it didn’t take the chill out of John Hamilton’s blood, nor make him forget Steele’s parting glare. He opened his belt pouch, taking out five hundred crowns. He handed them to Whakley, saying, “I’ll have the rest for you next dimday.”
“Christ, John…I don’t know how to thank you. I really don’t…”
“Then don’t try. I know how much that factory means to you; I’m just glad I could help. Now, I have to go and tell the Baron what just happened.”
“You don’t think he’ll be mad—?
Hamilton shook his head, knowing that he’d made the right decision. His grandfather would have done the same thing.
Whakley held the bottle up and asked, “Another drink before you leave?”
“No, thanks. I want to get to the market while there’s something left to buy. I’ll see you soon.”
II
David Steele sat at his desk, slamming things down. He picked up a crystal vase that had once adorned an Earth home and smashed it into the wall. I’ll kill them all, the entire Hamilton family, he fumed.
There was a timid knock at his door.
“Come in!” he shouted.
His personal assistant, Emil Proxmyer, came rushing into the office. He was a little man with wet eyes, a round face and his sparse brown hair styled in a bad comb-over.
“What is it, sir?”
“Pour me a glass of my best New Aberdeen Scotch.”
The small man scampered over to the large bar and filled a thick tumbler with his favorite single-malt Scotch. Behind Proxmyer’s meek and ingratiating manner, rested an encyclopedic memory, a finely-honed legal mind and an easily fanned resentment against anyone taller, richer or more handsome—which included just about every male inhabitant of Castell City.
“Tell me everything you know about the Hamiltons,” Steele demanded.
Proxmyer’s gray eyes darted up into his head and he seemed to go into some sort of trance. Steele was used to his assistant’s peculiar tics and mannerisms and waited impatiently for his response.
“The Hamiltons are one of Haven’s oldest families. Edwin Albert Hamilton was originally born in Alberta, Canada. Records about his early days are sketchy but he attended Mount Royal University in Calgary, but left—due to gambling charges—without obtaining an undergraduate degree in geology. After three years at the university, it appears he worked at a number of itinerant jobs, including that of a prospector. He was busted in Alberta for fraudulent sales of mining stocks to abandoned mines that had been salted to gullible investors. He quickly migrated to the United States where he used his financial knowledge for outright fraud and confidence games.
“Edwin first met up with Bill Castell, the founder of the Church of New Harmony, in Colorado. The two of them made a small fortune selling phony gold mining stocks to medical men with cash to hide. They were quite successful; Bill Castell used some of that money to found his new church while Edwin lost most of his fortune playing poker in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“When Edwin was unable to pay his gambling debts, one of the gaming outfits—I believe it was the Stardust Syndicate—put a price on his head. As with most compulsive gamblers, he’d set aside enough cash to bribe Bill Castell, who was desperate for funds, into providing a one-way ticket to Haven. The story is that once he arrived on Haven in 2038, he quickly left the Harmony Compound behind and went prospecting.
“For the next few years the story is light and there are many rumors as to what happened next. From the evidence, it appears that Edwin was the first man to discover the shimmer stones. Some say he killed and stole them from another prospector. Regardless, Edwin quickly realized that he had something very special and valuable. He somehow made his way back to Earth—no easy matter in those early colonial times—and made an exclusive deal with Dover Mineral Development to provide them with the sole location of the stones. Edwin had covered his tracks very well and the Bronson family, which owned majority stock in Dover, provided Edwin with a very generous cash settlement and royalty for providing them with his knowledge of which planet the shimmer stones were from.
“DMD had an exclusive monopoly on the shimmer stone market until 2052 when they were rediscovered by Sergei Pulatov. Erhenfeld Bronson, the former head of Dover, was exiled to Haven as governor because he hadn’t been ruthless enough to keep the secret of their location from the competition. Edwin fell out of favor as well and retired to Haven where he had Whitehall castle removed stone by stone from Scotland. He claimed that it was the Hamilton ancestral home, Bothwell Castle. The castle had been in ruins for centuries so it’s debatable as to how much of the current building was actually transported from its ancestral home in Scotland.
“His claim of being related to the Ducal House of Hamilton is unproven. No one was ever able to verify or deny his claim. In his defense, the Hamilton family was part of the Norman force that conquered England in 1066 and were well-rewarded with estates in the British Isles. Edwin traces his ancestry back to the Thirteenth Century to William de Hamilton (third son of Robert de Beaumont, third Earl of Leicester) and Mary of Strathearn and Bothwell Castle. According to his own words, Edwin was a direct descendant of the Irish branch of the Hamilton family, in particular Lord Claude Hamilton of Lock Nee, the only lock in Ireland—”
“Enough of the family history,” Steele interrupted. One of Proxmyer’s issues was that he tended to take orders literally and would continue the family history for however long it took to recite every bit of information in that round head of his.
“To sum it up,” Proxmyer continued, with a pained tone, “the Hamiltons have continued to manage their ancestral estate and have flourished through the First Empire and up to today. The family is currently reduced to just four members: Baron Albert William Hamilton, John Claude Hamilton III, Matilda Hamilton and Roger Douglas Hamilton, who is a member of the Imperial Space Navy. It is doubtful that Roger will be returning, since there hasn’t been an Imperial warship landing on Haven since the Seventy-seventh and the Imperial Governor departed. The Hamiltons have done better in the current economic downswing than most of their peers. According to rumor, the estate contains a hidden cache of specie and Imperial currency; this, however, has not been verified.”
“I know young Hamilton has been exchanging Imperial credits for Haven marks on the Black Market,” Steele said. “I want you to dig into the Hamiltons finances and learn where they’re getting their money.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Proxmyer said. “You might want to talk to your friend at First National; he could probably tell you more than I’ll be able to learn.”
“I have,” Steele snarled. “Apparently, he knows very little. The Hamiltons closed their safe deposit box a decade ago and do very little banking there, or anywhere else. Yet, they always have enough hard currency, more than enough to bail out friends.”
Steele cursed a blue streak before adding, “Young Hamilton embarrassed me in public. No one gets away with that! Especially if I stand to make a profit on the side.”