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CHAPTER 2

Rumors of War

“All rather different from when we were young men,” Destry observed, glancing around the dock.

Port Newquay’s syncrete aprons glittered white in the bright Manzanita sunshine. The amber field in front of Rayman Destry’s eyes lightened and darkened as he turned his head. It responded to the changing strength of the polarized waves of light and ultraviolet bouncing into his face from the perfectly flat surface.

This year the fashion among the upper classes was a field shaped like a great curved visor hanging in the air ten centimeters from the face. Hints of smoky fractal patterns in darker brown formed and disintegrated seemingly at random.

“Yes, there was just Port Clearwater then. It impressed me when I first saw it fifteen years ago,” Allen Allenson replied.

Port Clearwater was still there, a kilometer or so along the shore of Lake Clearwater. Wealthy tourists and business men alighting at the trans-Bight terminal would not have their vision polluted by its appearance but it was close enough to move goods to and from. Port Clearwater catered for the tramp ships and barges short-hauling freight around the Cutter Stream worlds along the edge of the Bight.

The conversation between the two old friends was surreal, not least because it was likely to be the last. There were many things Allenson could have said, even should have said, but the words wouldn’t come. There was a pause in the conversation while both men studied the massive rectangular gray box of the Interworld liner. It floated, moored to a long solid quay projecting into the lake.

It was difficult to grasp the ship’s true size, as the entry ports were mostly closed so the vehicle was featureless. Even the field support rods projecting from every surface gave little clue to scale.

“I envy you,” Brother-in-Law, Destry said quietly.

“What?” Allenson asked, startled. “Why?”

“You started with every disadvantage . . .”

“Hardly,” Allenson interrupted. “You make it sound like I was born in a stable.”

“Of course not,” Destry waved a hand in denial. “I didn’t mean to suggest that you were one of the great unwashed but you didn’t have my advantages.”

“Very few people did have your advantages,” Allenson replied, with a smile to show he meant no offense. “Mind you we Allensons did enjoy a link to Gens Destry when my brother Todd married Linsye.”

“Alliance with the Allensons was definitely one of our better decisions. It was down to my sister you know,” he said, turning to face Allenson. “Father was initially reluctant to sanction the match as he had plans for her to marry on Brasilia. Linsye can be most forceful when she chooses.”

“I know,” Allenson said, making a rueful face. “She gave me one hell of a wigging when Todd died on Paragon. I wallowed in self-pity but she knocked me out of it.”

“I watched the conversation from a window,” Destry said.

“You never said.”

“No, well, I’ve been on the end of Linsye’s tongue far too often myself to bait a fellow sufferer. I never wanted to discuss her advice to me with a third party so I saw no reason why you would.”

He gave Allenson a sly grin, which he switched off after a tenth of a second.

“I envy you because you have achieved so much while I have stood still my whole life.”

“That’s nonsense,” Allenson said forcefully. “You played a critical role in the Rider and Terran Wars and have well-deserved combat and campaign medals to prove it.”

“We did do rather well, didn’t we?” Destry asked.

“Indeed, we did!”

“But you know what I take most satisfaction from?” Destry asked.

“No?”

“That first trip into the Hinterlands with you and Jem Hawthorn. The Harbinger Project set up the exploitation of the new worlds and we achieved that—just the three of us. And dammit, Allenson, we were young and everything was new and such fun.”

For a moment they were both lost in the past.

“What I most remember about that expedition is fear,” Allenson finally said, as much to break the silence as anything.

“You, afraid?” Destry snorted derisively. “I recall you charging a pack of renegades single-handed. You remember. Your gun crashed so you whirled it ’round your head like a club.”

“You mistake stupidity for bravery,” Allenson said dryly. “But it wasn’t death I was afraid of.”

Being afraid of death always seemed pointless to Allenson. After all, it was the one inevitable in life and at least then all your problems were over.

“I was afraid of failure, of disgracing myself in the eyes of my peers since I had no idea what was going on half the time let alone what I should do about it.”

“You always know what to do,” Destry said simply. “That is why you are so successful. “

“Rubbish, I’m just a gentleman-farmer who got lucky and inherited my brother’s estate.”

“A shrewd businessman who is now one of the largest landowners in the Cutter Stream,” Destry corrected sharply.

Destry’s eyes focused on infinity and he cocked his head, listening to a private holographic message that only he could see or hear.

“Sarai is going aboard,” Destry said.

The Interworld liner was fueled, loaded and ready to sail. Destry and his wife would join at the last moment. Even in first class, room on an Interworld ship capable of crossing the Bight was extremely limited, with much space given over to fusion motors and iron heat sinks. Metallic elements like iron created enormous drag in the Continuum. Drag must be overcome by power, power that created heat, heat that needed heat sinks to dispose of, and so on and so on. When it came to ship design, everything was a compromise.

The trans-Bight colonies only existed because of a major chasm, the Cutter Stream. Chasms were permanent rivers of energy flowing through the Continuum. This one linked the Home Worlds to the colonies. Without that free push across the Bight, colonization of the Cutter Stream Worlds would have been uneconomic as there were no intermediate inhabitable worlds to use as stopovers.

The liner was scheduled to sail down the edge of the Bight to the Brasilian colony of Trent. There it would shed heat before joining another chasm that would boost it back across the Bight to the Home Worlds. Its first class staterooms looked luxurious enough. Clever camera angles appeared to show spacious lounges and restaurants but that was all an illusion. By the end of the journey Destry and his sensual wife would barely be on speaking terms. So passengers boarded in reverse order of rank, stateroom guests last.

“I fear Sarai is disappointed in her marriage,” Destry said. “Disappointed in me.”

“That’s nonsense,” Allenson said, somewhat curter then he had intended. “Sarai lucked out when your families agreed to the marriage contract. As Lady Destry she has enjoyed far more status and luster than she could ever have hoped to attain as the daughter of a Manzanita merchant. If she is disappointed in that then the fault is with her not you.”

Destry shrugged. “Her family had money but little status. Mine, as you know, lacked the financial wherewithal commensurate with membership of one of the ruling gens of Brasilia. That was why my great-grandfather came out to the colonies in the first place—to make his fortune. My marriage alliance with Sarai was a good match for both families. We have both fulfilled our contractual commitments but sometimes I wish she could show me the affection she has found for others.”

Allenson struggled for an answer. He had grown acquiescent if not entirely comfortable in Sarai’s presence but it hadn’t always been like that. Old memories, old feelings long suppressed rose unbidden from the swampy depths of his memory—feelings of guilt and shame but most of all passion—terrible all-encompassing passion.

“Cocktease am I?” she had asked throatly. “What makes you think I am teasing?”

Her thin orange gown tore easily under his hand and she had opened her legs in blatant invitation.

“You and Trina enjoy a good marriage,” Destry said.

“That is true,” Allenson agreed, mentally shoving the past back in its box.

“She clearly adores you.”

Allenson stared at his friend. Trina was a loyal, attentive and affectionate wife, he supposed, but that was not what he meant by a good marriage. She brought money and useful connections to the contract. Over the years he learned to rely on her good sense and political instincts but he had never hungered after Trina as he had after Sarai. Perhaps that was one reason it was a good marriage.

“I hope you will speak out for the Stream back in Brasilia,” Allenson said, changing the subject.

“Of course but I doubt anyone will take any notice of my opinion,” Destry said. “Trance is convinced there will be war. That is why he has put up the money for Sarai and me to go home.”

Trance was the Paterfamilias of Gens Destry which made him one of the hundred or so most influential people on Brasilia. When Destry spoke of “putting up the money,” he was not just referring to the cost of the liner tickets, expensive though they were, but of the purchase of an estate on Brasilia suitable for the dignity of Destrys, albeit minor colonial offshoots of the gens like Royman and Sarai.

“No one who has experienced war wants to go through it a second time,” Allenson said. “Let’s hope Trance is mistaken.”

“Yes, but he rarely is,” Destry said. “Probably because he is one of the people whose decisions mold the course of events so his opinions tend to be self-fulfilling.”

“Is that why you have decided to go home?” Allenson asked. “Because of the rumors of war?”

“Partly,” Destry replied. “And partly because I think Sarai and I need a new start. Maybe she will agree to children if it goes well.”

A low wheeled car slid out of the terminal and drove towards them.

“That’s my transport,” Destry said. “Goodbye, Allenson.”

They solemnly shook hands.

“Sod it,” Destry said giving Allenson a hug, to his astonishment and no little embarrassment.

The chauffeur opened the door of the car for Destry to climb in. He held up his hand, preventing the door closing.

“Promise you will look me up, Allenson, when you visit Brasilia.”

“Of course,” Allenson replied.

Destry removed his hand, letting the door shut. The car pulled smoothly away and Allenson watched it drive out onto the quay. In his heart he knew he would never see Royman Destry again.

He was going to miss him.


Allenson’s chauffeur attempted to open the door of the carriage but Allenson waved him back to his post at the front of the vehicle. The carriage looked a bit like an open sleigh, roofless and resting on two skids. The chauffeur sat in a small open cockpit with a control screen by his left elbow and a small stick on the right. Black rods projected out at forty-five degrees at the sides of the coachwork.

Trina already sat on the leather-upholstered bench seat at the rear. His wife was petite, a little plumper than current fashion dictated but attractive in a motherly sort of way. She watched him climb in beside her but she said nothing. She correctly gauged his mood as not conducive to chitchat. She was good at that, judging his mood. She knew when he wanted to talk and when it was best to leave him be.

“Home, sar?” asked the chauffeur, turning around.

“Yes, Pentire,” Allenson replied brusquely.

The chauffeur said nothing but turned back and busied himself turning on the power and keying the carriage’s automatics to Port Newquay Control. Even the damn chauffeur knew when Allenson was out of sorts. The fact that everyone could anticipate his humor so easily did nothing to improve Allenson’s mood. Neither did the fact that they sat stationary for second after second.

“If we don’t get clear soon we will be trapped for hours by the liner’s lift sequence,” Allenson said irritably. “The new Control’s automatics were supposed to stop these pointless bloody traffic jams. Heaven knows Brasilia charged us enough to install them. I suppose we’ve been ripped off again.”

Trina unfurled a bright yellow parasol and adjusted the angle so she disappeared under it. The chauffeur switched on an eye shade colored a hideous bilious green through which swam the dark orange silhouettes of naked girls.

“Ping control, Farant, and tell them that Delegate Allenson demands priority.”

“I’ve just done that, sar.”

“Then bloody do it again.”

“Yes, sar.”

The chauffeur touched the control screen and leaned forward to mutter something into a microphone. There was no point, Allenson reflected, in having authority if you didn’t abuse it occasionally.

A hum from the centrally -located motor was the first sign that Control had acquiesced to Allenson’s queue jumping. Balls of green and blue light rolled down the rods and out onto carbon filaments that extended from the rods like spreading ice crystals. A faint shimmer in the air like a heat haze was just detectable around the carriage. Frame fields were theoretically invisible if exactly adjusted but when was any machine perfectly tuned? Not in the Cutter Stream, that was for sure.

The carriage lifted from the ground and turned away from Port Newquay, climbing slowly until it levelled out at a thousand feet. Trina fastened her lap belt and gazed at Allenson stonily until he did the same. Allenson was pleased to see that Farant kept his right hand on the control stick and his left on the screen even though they were on full automatic.

Farant was a competent and careful man. That was why Allenson bought his contract when he decided Trina needed a new chauffeur. That, and because the man was a proficient shot with an ion pistol. Allenson paid the indentured servant a generous salary that gave him every expectation of buying out his contract in a few years. Farant had every reason to be solicitous of Lady Allenson’s future good health.

Control routed them around the edge of Lake Clearwater to avoid flying over Manzanita City. That flight path was forbidden ever since an overloaded lighter frame with burned out batteries came down onto the island despite the one sober crew member pedaling like mad to generate power. It hit one of the villas along the shore, killing the young mistress of a Member of the Upper House.

The surviving crew member, the sober one, was carefully questioned before being exiled to one of the more unpleasant Hinterland colonies. The interrogation revealed nothing that was not already known. The local frame technology was unreliable and half the stuff imported from Brasilia was crap. Brasilia did not permit its colonies across the Bight to trade freely with other Home Worlds. Streamers had to put up with whatever Brasilia’s merchants chose to dump on them. Reflecting on this didn’t calm Allenson so he concentrated on watching the world go past.

New settlements were springing up all around the shores of the lake. Land on the original island shot up in value as Manzanita City grew in prosperity and population. Middle-class citizens decamped out to the new suburbs on the mainland. With no Rider attacks on Manzanita in living memory, the need for a defensible island site became irrelevant. The island was now home just to the Cutter Stream local government, the wealthy owners of the villas on the shore and barracklike buildings for the poor who provided the necessary cheap labor.

They passed over the site of a new settlement still under construction. Allenson was intrigued to see that it was not just utilitarian blocks of cheap flats but also more upmarket houses in terraces with individual gardens. The jetty was already up and being used to bring in materials and labor by boat.

There was still only one causeway running from the island to the mainland where it ended in Port Clearwater. Unused by anyone, that is anyone who mattered, it slowly fell into disrepair. Nothing ever came of the talk of putting in a new causeway to Port Newquay. Myriads of small private boats, ferries and lighters weaved backward and forward across the lake linking Manzanita City to its suburbs. Far too much money and hence political influence was tied up in waterway transport for a new causeway to get backing in either the Upper or Lower House.

The power supply in Trina’s carriage had been retrofitted from a Brasilian military lighter that Allenson had used his influence as Colonel of Militia to acquire. Terran Home World technology was state of the art so Allenson had every confidence in its reliability. Nevertheless, he was pleased to see from the movement of Farent’s shoulders that he was pedaling every so often to keep the batteries charged. The chauffeur was indeed a careful man.

Allenson checked Farent’s background carefully before employing him. The driver wound up in the Cutter Stream after having been caught defrauding his employer to pay off gambling debts. He was addicted to betting on which dog could run the fastest. He became an indentured servant when his labor was sold to provide compensation for the theft. Farent was spared temptation in his new home as the Stream colonies had never felt the need to import racing dogs across the Bight.

Competent people in the colonies were always in short supply, especially if they had saleable skills. You either paid ridiculous sums of money to persuade a qualified young employee from the Home Worlds to work on a short-term contract so he could build up a nest egg before going home or you took what you could get. And what you got could be pretty undesirable. Better an indentured servant exiled from the Home World with a known vice you could live with than an unskilled local or worse, an incompetent immigrant.

This terrible social system hobbled colonial society. It might have been designed for maximum inefficiency, but you worked within the system you had. Most people in the colonies never gave it much thought. After all, they knew nothing else. The wealthy, of course, had no incentive for change because they were already at the top of the tree. Sometimes in an idle moment Allenson dreamed up better ways for mankind to spread across the Bight but he was a pragmatic soul and recognized the pointlessness of fantasizing.

Brasilia’s main Home World rival colonizing across the Bight was Terra, still licking its wounds from losing the last colonial war. They used convicts as forced labor in their colonies rather than indentured servants. It was a distinction without much difference and just as inefficient.

The carriage rose and fell, overtaking slower-moving traffic. Trina keyed the screen beside her elbow. Background noises cut out and they could converse without the driver overhearing.

“I shall miss the Destrys, too,” she said, squeezing his arm.

Allenson managed to smile at her.

“Yes, it was nice to have one friend who wasn’t after anything. Someone could be relied upon to tell me exactly what he thought even if I didn’t want to hear it.”

“Sarai was extraordinarily kind to me when I was sick,” Trina said.

Somehow it always came back to Sarai. Allenson could not decide whether he was sorry or relieved that Sarai was out of his life forever. Perhaps he was both. The Destrys were regular guests at Pentire when they had business in Manzanita or Sarai wished to visit her family. In return, the Allensons occasionally stayed with the Destrys on Wagener when Allenson was required to sort out whatever mess his stepmother was currently making of his late father’s demesne.

He and Sarai behaved as would properly be expected between in-laws with no overt impropriety. But there was always the glance, the touch on his arm, the flash of her eyes: things that Trina and Royman Destry carefully failed to notice.

“She was good at that, caring I mean,” Allenson said. “She nursed me once.”

“I know. She told me,” Trina said, squeezing his arm again to show it was allright.

“Maybe Destry is better out of it the way things are going,” Allenson said absentmindedly, still remembering Sarai’s tears when he married Trina.

Sarai never could see that a liaison was impossible. She married Royman Destry, his friend, and that was the end of it. A properly discreet fling would have been socially acceptable. It did not matter even if everyone knew provided no one acknowledged that they knew. But it would never be just a fling between Sarai and him. It would never be just another meaningless adventure. The passion ran too deep, burned too fiercely, and Sarai was incapable of discreetness.

Sooner or later she would have precipitated a crisis. Destry would have been publically cuckolded. He would have had to call Allenson out or be humiliated and dishonored. Whatever happened then would ruin four lives. He had been right to end it almost as soon as it began. But sometimes, just sometimes, in the dark of the night he remembered her legs opening beneath him like the petals of an exotic flower.

“Why do you say that?” Trina asked.

Allenson dragged his thoughts back to reality.

“What?”

“That maybe the Destrys are better off leaving.”

“Because of the political crisis,” Allenson replied.

“Oh that! Isn’t there always a political crisis? I mean, crisis seems to be the normal state for our political system. What makes this one any different from all the others?” Trina asked.

A soft beep sounded and an amber triangle came up on Trina’s screen. She turned away from him to touch it with a finger.

“Pardon the interruption, ma’am, but we have permission from Control for free flight. I propose to phase out,” said Farent’s voice over the intercom.

“By all means, carry on,” Trina replied, removing her finger from the screen to break contact.

“It’s the new taxation proposals,” Allenson said.

Trina shrugged.

“No one likes paying taxes. It’s not unreasonable that the colonies make some contribution for their defense. We couldn’t expect the Brasilian taxpayer to shoulder the burden alone indefinitely. Why should this tax be so more unpopular than any other?”

Allenson almost snapped at Trina for asking such a damn fool question but bit back the jibe. Increasingly over the years, Trina looked inward to her family. Her role as matriarch of a great estate meant she took little interest in politics and events of state, content to leave such matters to her partner. For that she should not be blamed. She had much to occupy her attention.

Her son, Reggie, took after his biological parents. He combined his mother’s charm with the cheerful irresponsibility that marked his father’s life. Money slipped through his fingers and any sum “lent” to Reggie must be marked as permanently lost. He occasionally “borrowed” sums from his stepfather’s study without troubling Allenson by asking first.

The list of schools from which Reggie had been expelled read like a guide to the finest education establishments this side of the Bight. Trina had tried enrolling him in everything from a military academy—Reggie had taken out one of the dormitories with a homemade fifty centimeter mortar constructed to celebrate his birthday—to a liberal arts academy—where he had been caught running a protection racket among the younger boys.

Trina’s son was always contrite, always apologetic when rebuked for his misdeeds. He faithfully promised never to repeat them. To be fair he rarely did. The next catastrophe would be something novel. Trina doted on the boy and could rarely be cross with him for long. Allenson gave up trying to apply discipline early on since Trina robustly defended her son against such interference, even scolding Allenson in the boy’s presence.

Allenson quickly realized that further efforts on his part to constrain Reggie would merely further undermine any authority he had left with the boy and drive a wedge between him and his wife. He contented himself with a stepfather’s duty of good stewardship of the lad’s inheritance until he came of age. He had no expectation of a good result long term but that would be neither his fault nor his responsibility.

And then there was Trina’s daughter, Minta. Poor beautiful sweet Minta, another victim of the genetic damage from the biowars that preceded the collapse of the Third Civilization. The terrible legacy of bioweapons struck too close to home. He suppressed the thought, packing it neatly in a mental box marked “do not open here be daemons.”

“You are very preoccupied, husband,” Trina said.

“What? Oh, sorry, my dear. I was just ordering my thoughts to answer your question. It’s not the tax as such. As you say, the colonies would eventually have to take over the cost of their own infrastructure spending. It’s the way the tax is being applied.”

“Indeed?”

“Look, if you’d asked me twenty years ago, ten even, how we’d govern the Brasilian Trans-Bight colonies like the Stream, I’d have confidently assumed that Brasilia would be withdrawing its governors and officials. I envisaged the Home World gradually replacing them with diplomats and technocratic advisors. Instead they are moving in the opposite direction and curtailing the powers of the Manzanita Houses. Local government’s become little more than City Councils arguing about how often the ferry boats run and how many life belts they should carry.”

“Taxation without representation.” Trina said, looking at him.

Allenson got out his datapad.

“That’s a rather pithy phrase, my dear. I must make a note of that.”



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