Barbarians at the Gates (42 page)

“And there is a price to be paid for such luxury,” her father said, overriding her protests. “The family that gives you your position, your wealth and your access to things banned to the vast majority of the population comes first, always. You exist to serve the family, so the family can survive and prosper in its rightful place. Your happiness comes second, as does mine. I had to give up the girl I loved because her family was part of the Imperialist Faction and disgraced. Her descendants are the laughing stock of High Society. Do you understand me?”

Tiffany bowed her head. “Yes, father,” she said as submissively as she could. “I understand.”

She was already thinking about escape. She had access to a private shuttle and a space yacht. She didn’t have a stardrive, but she could navigate through the Gateway and escape, perhaps changing ships at the commercial yards at Terra Nova and heading to the Rim.

Her father wasn’t fooled.

“I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same when they brought Sally to me and told me she was going to be my first wife. I thought of nothing but escape, until my father told me that if I refused to marry her, I would be cut off completely from the family. Tell me something, Tiffany: could you survive without the family’s protection? Without the influence that saved your life, or allowed you to bend and break flight control rules at will, or ensured that there would be no lasting repercussions from your crazy stunts?”

Tiffany clenched her fists, but said nothing.

“And this marriage is very important, both to the family and to the Faction,” her father continued. “We cannot allow the Socialist Faction to gain unwarranted influence over Admiral Drake. And who is in the best position to influence a man? His wife, the charming girl he married and allows into his bed. That wife has to be one of us.”

Tiffany blushed bright red, knowing that her father would see. “Father, with all due respect, I am not a virgin,” she pointed out. “I am unsuited to a formal marriage.”

“Do you think I was a virgin when I married your mother?” Her father laughed.

“You were married before,” she pointed out, fighting down an insane urge to giggle—or scream. Her blush deepened. “You had four wives!”

“And my first wife wasn’t my first woman, and I wasn’t her first man,” her father said bluntly. “I assure you that virginity isn’t a factor in an arranged marriage. If it was, they’d have put that bitch Lola Pond forward as a possible candidate. She’s so frigid that any man who tried to have sex with her would freeze his cock and it would snap off.”

“Dad!”

Her father laughed.

There were times when Tiffany found his bitter attacks on the Socialists amusing—not least because, outside the Senate, there was little infighting among High Society—but this wasn’t funny. There were some things that no child wanted to discuss with her parents, and sex was very definitely one of them. She knew, intellectually, that her parents had to have had sex in order to produce her—and that her father must have had sex with at least four other women when he’d produced her half-siblings—but she didn’t want to think about it.

“Tiffany,” he said with a cold finality, “I understand how you’re feeling. You’ve been a child, but now it is time to take on adult responsibilities. The family needs your sacrifice and I’m afraid the wedding will happen, regardless of your feelings on the matter.”

She turned away and said nothing. This could not be happening!

“You will take your vows even if I have to march you to the altar in handcuffs and chains,” he said, “and hold a gun to your head to force you to speak. This is too important—both for you personally and for the family—to allow you to refuse. I am very sorry.”

Tiffany felt angry, but didn’t know what to do or what to say. Yes, she’d had lovers; she’d had plenty of lovers. And yet, she’d chosen them all, even the ones who had disappointed her. The thought of allowing someone she didn’t know and didn’t want to sleep with her was horrifying. She had known, intellectually, that it happened, yet she hadn’t realized that it could happen to her. She was a fifth child, after all, inherently less important than her older siblings. Her father shouldn’t have had to use her for decades yet.

She thought, bitterly, about some of the other marriages she’d seen in High Society. Some had worked out fine, with the couples growing to love one another and remaining close even after they’d separated. Long-life made it harder to spend one’s life with another until death did them part, although there were a few who did live together until the end of their lives. Others were very formal, with the partners having their children in artificial wombs and never going near one another otherwise; some went very bad. Even then, the partners were on Earth in High Society. They had a place to run.

But if she accompanied Admiral Drake back to his command on a starship, she would be completely alone.

Her father took a glass of wine from one of the servants and passed it to her, an odd compassion in his eyes. Tiffany took it gratefully and sipped it slowly, hoping that it would help clear her head. She thought, again, of escape, but if her father had anticipated the possibility, he would have guards set on her private ship and probably an entire security team escorting her. The guards on the estate reported to her father, she reminded herself; even her own servants couldn’t be trusted.

“It won’t be that bad,” her father said seriously. “The admiral’s psych profile shows him to be a good man...”

“I recall that
my
profile once claimed that I was a pathological liar,” Tiffany snapped. “You insisted that I visit one of those psych morons when I started writing fiction about living in an alternate world where magic, not science, ruled the universe.
You
thought that it was a psychological problem, rather than a young girl exercising her imagination.”

“You were at the age where making things up is common,” her father said. He stood up in one smooth motion and turned towards the door. “Tiffany, this marriage won’t be for very long. You won’t have to stay with him for more than a decade and you have a century of life ahead of you. And if you want to choose your next husband yourself, or remain unattached, I will honor your desire.”

“
Thank
you,” Tiffany said sourly. “Now please, father, get out!”

Her father stepped through the door and closed it behind him.

Tiffany looked at the maid rearranging her bed and ordered her out of the room too. The brain-burned always sent shivers down her spine, if only because there were some people in High Society who would have happily brain-burned everyone else merely to ensure that their rule was never challenged. It was a nightmarish thought and, back in the days when it had first occurred to her, she’d had problems sleeping because she feared that she’d wake up a brain-burned slave, or worse.

The folder her father had given her had landed on the floor somewhere. She reached around for it and picked it off the floor, placing it on the bed before opening it. Admiral Marius Drake, her unwanted husband, stared back at her, the unmoving photograph a mocking reminder of her fate. He wasn’t the most handsome man, but she had to admit that that spoke well of him. A man in his position could have had himself reshaped into a living god, so perfect as to be inhuman. Instead, he was pug-ugly.

She skimmed through the file and knew that some of her friends in High Society would never talk to her again. Marius Drake had been born on Mars to middle-class parents, not to High Society; indeed, she understood now why it had taken so long to find him a bride. His kids wouldn’t be part of High Society—at least not completely—and few people nearer his age would be willing to tolerate that for their children. Tiffany was already on the lower rung of High Society, so marrying a man from outside High Society wouldn’t reflect too badly on her family. And besides, having influence over the admiral, as her father had said, would be worth any amount of social shunning.

“Damn you,” she muttered, and turned to her terminal. It took only thirty minutes to realize that her father had locked her out of every secure system and cancelled all of her authorization codes. The only thing she could access was Drake’s service record. She wouldn’t be able to escape, either on her yacht or by booking a ticket off-planet on a commercial starship. The walls of her father’s mansion—one of the largest on Earth—were closing in around her. She was trapped. “Damn you to hell.”

Picking up the file, she keyed her terminal and started to record a message. If she had to be miserable, she saw no reason why the misery couldn’t be shared.

* * *

The Gateway defenses, Marius was relieved to see, had been strongly augmented in the wake of Admiral Justinian’s first attack on Earth. Newly built fortresses surrounded the Asimov Point, bristling with weapons, while four entire squadrons of superdreadnaughts backed them up. Nor had the Admiralty neglected the defenses of Mars, Jupiter or Earth itself. Home Fleet had been strongly reinforced and new squadrons were working up on the other side of the Dead End. There might have been hundreds of problems with a sudden massive increase in production, but the Federation was responding to the challenge.

“Admiral, we are approaching Earth,” Captain Sinclair informed him. Marius had been tempted to ride back to Earth in
Magnificent
, but the superdreadnaught had been needed back at Boskone. Instead, he’d borrowed the battlecruiser
Swift
, which had been due for a refit at the Jupiter Yards. “Would you like to take command of the approach?”

“No, thank you,” Marius said. Strictly speaking, he shouldn’t have been on the bridge at all, but he missed the days when he commanded his own starship,
Master under God
. Commanding a fleet deployment—even the largest deployment made since the Blue Star War—wasn’t quite the same. “The ship is yours.”

He settled back as the battlecruiser reduced speed, heading into the Earth-Luna Sphere. Prior to the war, Home Fleet hadn’t stationed a sizable force near Earth. Now, a dozen superdreadnaught squadrons orbited Luna, with hundreds of smaller ships zipping around, scanning space for cloaked starships or other unpleasant surprises.

Their mere presence was a sore spot, for if those ships had been released to join his fleet, he could have punched through the Asimov Point and broken into Admiral Justinian’s inner worlds. The Senate, however, felt differently, and in the wake of the Battle of Terra Nova, it was hard to blame them. Victory over one warlord might mean defeat by another. Indeed, the Senate was fortifying other Asimov Points and organizing nodal forces at nexus stars. By the time the war was over, it should be possible to start a large-scale operation against the Outsiders.

If, of course, the Outsiders let them have the time.

He’d read, carefully, the report from Admiral Mason and the shorter report from Captain Garibaldi. Someone was recruiting with an intensity that surprised him, which suggested that they had something in mind. Who? The warlords wouldn’t have needed to hire so many mercenaries, but the Outsiders would definitely have wanted to learn from people who had been at the sharp end of the military operations over the last century.

There was little doubt in Marius’s mind that the war against Admiral Justinian was only the precursor to a long and bloody war against the Outsiders. They’d never have a better chance to topple the Federation.

“Admiral,” the communications officer said, “we have picked up a recorded message for your eyes only.”

Marius nodded slowly. The communications officer was so
young
! The war had brought a great many accelerated promotions to deserving young officers, while killing a great many more.

“I’ll take it in my cabin,” he said. “Pipe it down to my private terminal.”

Once he was in his cabin, it was a simple matter to decode the message. A hologram formed in front of him, showing a red-haired young lady. Marius frowned, uncertain of who she was or why she would be sending a message to him. It was hard to read the emotions of the tiny figure, but she didn’t look happy.

“Admiral Drake,” the woman said. Her voice was curt, very formal. “Please accept my salutations. I am Lady Tiffany Eleanor Diana Katherine d’Artagnan, your bride—to-be. My father has ordered me to marry you for the sake of the family and the Conservative Faction. I trust that I meet with your approval”—her voice darkened—”as it seems that neither of us have much of a choice in the matter.”

Marius started. He’d known that the Senate intended to find him a bride, but he hadn’t realized that it would be someone unwilling.

“I have argued against it, but my family have refused to even consider my pleas,” Tiffany continued. “I think that even if you find the prospect of marrying me terrifying, you won’t have any choice either. I think we should try and make the best of it. I don’t bite—much. I’ll see you on the planet’s surface in a few hours, where we may have some time alone together. Or maybe not. It seems that my father thinks I might run away.”

She looked up and smiled. “I wonder where he might have picked up that idea?”

Marius had to laugh.

“I’ll see you soon,” the message concluded. Her voice broke down into bitter laughter. “And if you don’t like me, tough!”

When a marriage takes place in High Society, it is rarely—if ever—about love. Couples are married by their parents to bind together agreements, resources or even political influence. There is no marriage without careful consideration of the pros and cons of a match. A High Society person who marries outside High Society may be shunned by the remainder of High Society and their children mocked and teased at school...