The View from the Imperium (18 page)

“An eight-room suite is hardly a cell,” Barba Linden said dryly, with a humorous glance toward DeKarn. “Even you have to admit he excites talk.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Urrmenoc asked.

“Because it would be wrong for him to prejudice the public toward his offer without giving equal time to both other possibilities we are debating,” Zembke said. “This is not a referendum. We have been entrusted with the final authority to decide with whom we will ally, or not. Pending full discussion and resolution, neither of them should be seen on any Grid programs or other media. They can emerge when our decision is made.” The Yolkovians protested as one, and huge pictures of the Trade Union captain appeared behind them. Impatiently, DeKarn hit the override control, and cleared every screen in the room.

“He is a distraction, my friends. We must have clear minds for this discussion. Will anyone move for a vote?”

“I do,” Linden said, raising her hand.

“Seconded,” Marden said, his face sour.

“In favor?” DeKarn asked. Eight lights went on at once. Slowly and in some cases reluctantly others followed, until thirty votes had been cast. “Against?” she asked, though it was pro forma. The remaining ten, all of Yolk plus a few of those who had clearly fallen in love with Sgarthad, voted no. “It is carried. Now, can we go on from the point at which we left off yesterday? Councillor Rengin, will you read from the minutes?”

Rengin rose to his feet. “Honored fellow members of the council . . .”

DeKarn settled herself into a comfortable position. When Rengin began with a deep intake of breath, it was going to be a long speech. She propped her chin on her fist and commanded her eyelids to stay up.

* * *

“. . . Therefore, I move that we halt for lunch,” Councillor Bruke said, the last of nine councillors to speak. He sank heavily into his chair. DeKarn shook herself thankfully.

“Seconded?” she asked the council. Several members illuminated their voting lights. “So moved.” She slammed her gavel down on the desk.

“Did it really have to take ten minutes to propose that?” Six asked, with a lift of one elegant eyebrow.

The eldest councillor smiled patiently at him. “One wants things done in the proper form, my lad.”

DeKarn palm-locked the console and rose. Nothing had yet been decided, but that was unsurprising. She estimated the minimum of two sixdays and maximum of . . . infinity. It was possible that her colleagues would never agree to anything, not even raising Zembke to the position of speaker to the envoys. The interim votes on affiliation had been slightly toward independence. She had to convince herself she was not already tired of all of them. A quiet yogurt in a corner of the council lunchroom was all she wanted. Five started automatically to follow her, but she waved him off. The doors to the chamber opened out onto the anteroom. A figure rose majestically to its feet from a chair facing the entry.

“My friends!” Sgarthad exclaimed, coming toward them with his arms outstretched. “You must all join me for lunch! I have a delightful repast prepared!”

DeKarn regarded him with shock. She rounded upon the Yolkovian contingent. “What is he doing out again?”

“We called for his release,” Pinckney said, firmly. He moved to shake the visitor’s hand. “What a delight to see you again, Captain! I trust you passed a comfortable night?”

“Sumptuous,” Sgarthad said, expansively. “Such fine quarters. I’ll never be content in a way-station merchants’ hotel again.” Councillors crowding around him laughed when he laughed. “Come, friends! Don’t let the food get cold!”

He led the way. The majority of the council fell into line, beaming, obviously delighted to be in his presence. They were enthralled by him. DeKarn thought of summoning Colm to see what he had learned, but decided to do so in private. They must figure out the source of his hold on people. It was becoming . . . annoying.

The weeks that followed were no less annoying. Though Ambassador Ben placidly stayed unseen in her quarters, Sgarthad continued to slip out of his so-called secure suite whenever he felt like it. He made appearances on all the major opinion shows. He and his crew were viewed seeing the local sights, and asked what they thought of the city-state. They were followed everywhere they went by thousands of fascinated beings. Merchandise with his image was brought out on the Grid and in the shops dotted through Pthohannix and gradually spread to the other population centers. So much for maintaining anonymity pending a council decision. Protests erupted, some of them violent, when the governor was forced to send out politely apologetic agents to bring Sgarthad back to the mansion. Keeping him bottled up was futile, though she persisted in invoking the council ruling. He was dangerous; she sensed that, as did some of her fellows.

Yuchiko never complained about Sgarthad or his fellow Trade Unionists, but he did bring an official protest to the council about the grounding of interplanetary travel filed by a number of cargo companies.

“They are worried about their finances,” he said.

“This is ridiculous!” Zembke erupted. “We didn’t order a closure! It must have come from the Imperium.”

But Rengin and others could prove that no new missives had arrived from the Core Worlds since before the ambassador had arrived. In fact, no information was being sent over the local Grid or through its interface with the Imperium’s Infogrid.

In an effort to speed up the council’s decision, DeKarn herself proposed that both envoys be allowed to speak before them. Over the course of time, more and more of the members had begun to fall under the Trade Union captain’s glamour. She was outvoted overwhelmingly. In fact, she began to avoid calling for votes on alliance. Colm Banayere had not come through with any information on the cause of the general fascination—too small a word, she knew—and until she had it, she was afraid that that vote would be swayed by artificial means. Only a few of them, Zembke, Marden, Linden, Six and herself, seemed to be immune—or, at least, less enchanted by the visitor.

She had also been unable to interview the crew of the
Little Darling
. Though Sgarthad promised her and any member of the council unfettered access to the survivors, it was always inconvenient or technically difficult to allow them on board the
Marketmaker
to see them. It seemed that the crew of the small ship had disappeared into the bowels of the TU ship and was never seen again. Another mission for Colm, once he was finished with his present research.

Captain Sgarthad also made it a point to appear at the council chambers at least once a day, most often when the committee had broken for lunch. From the private dining room, the event expanded to a local hotel restaurant, then a banquet center, all the better for members of the public who could not get enough of this visiting celebrity to drop by and pose for images taken by giggling friends.

She and the holdouts joined the party as seldom as they could without drawing attention to themselves. Sgarthad’s influence was growing, not only in the council but among members of the public. Somehow a whisper had gotten started that he might become a permanent resident of Boske. The Grid filled up with speculations, passionate pleas, even bribes; offers of homes, vacation residences, loans or outright gifts of personal vehicles, and many offers that were so openly indelicate that DeKarn blushed as she deleted them.

Worse yet, Sgarthad was aware that he had failed to win her approval. She didn’t like him. She did not understand why he was so popular. Zembke was openly scornful of Sgarthad’s attempts to persuade them over to his point of view. He knew a few of the councillors were against him, or at least holding the line on what position of authority he could occupy.

As far as the general public was concerned, over eighty percent were ready to name him dictator for life. Subtle mentions began to appear in the opinion press that the council should grant him a position. Over the following weeks, the suggestions grew stronger, with advice to get in touch with one’s representatives at state and planetary level and tell them what to do. Once Boske ennobled him, reaching out to the other Castaway systems was the next logical step. Though with communications cut off, all but what was allowed by the Trade Union captain, no doubt a whisper campaign or something more direct had already begun.

Even Colm had joined the Sgarthad faction. Of all her employees, she thought he was the least likely to go in for hero worship, but there was that face on Colm’s office screen when it was idle. All the others had at least one image of the captain on their personal communicators. They giggled together until she approached one of them, then the giddy expression vanished into one of disapproval. DeKarn began to feel isolated. Who could she trust now?

She became aware of eyes on her as she went about her business outside of the council chamber. Her popularity polls fell. Angry pundits published articles and interviews demanding that she be recalled from office, or at least opposed when the next election came along.

Chapter 10

“Margolies, sir, Sergeant, Campbell Q.,” said the first individual in response to my query for his name. The truth be told, I already knew it. I had matched his image to the file I had read aboard the
Wedjet
and reviewed that morning before our hatch was unsealed.

The review was being conducted in the huge bubble that was the hangar for mining equipment on the largest asteroid—a planetoid, really—in the Smithereen sector of the belt. A gas giant had exploded at one time in prehistory, possibly when it was attempting to ignite into a second sun in the system, leaving a field of debris especially rich in transuranics. The field of the Imperium’s influence narrowed to a few dozen light years beyond it, with the Uctus on one side and the Trade Union on the other, each wishing it had claimed this sector first. Hence its commercial and strategic importance.

Smithereen Prime had eight hangars, all busy. Enormous cranes carried containers of unprocessed ore from the mining ships, and processed ore to ships departing from the system. I had noted from my reading that this was a popular transshipment point for settlements in the galactic north of the Imperium as well as to the core worlds. We made a tiny group in the midst of the vast enclosed space of number five hangar, beside our scout ship, which was the most minute of the ships currently present. I felt even smaller compared with what I could see above me. Beyond the slight blue glow of the settlement’s forcefield, I saw stars given a hint of a twinkle by the minuscule though toxic atmosphere that Smithereen Prime attracted.

I gasped with wonder as I saw a scatter of faint white dots soaring upward. Could that be a meteor shower, outbound from atmosphere? Hastily, I deployed my small camera to take pictures of it. I heard the rasp of the tiny globe’s shutter (a recorded sound-effect; cameras were programmed to make a noise because it had been proved by successful marketers that humans need a somatic, aural or visual signal to accept that a machine has activated.) as it focused in upon the quadrant I designated. Meteor showers were considered lucky by my ancestral house. Pleased with the omen as well as the unexpected sight, I ordered the camera to return to hover just above and behind my right shoulder, taking snaps of each of the soldiers as I greeted them.

The militia, consisting of fifty or so beings of all races, genders and ages above majority, had arranged itself in two long rows, beginning at the bottom of my ship’s ramp, no doubt so I could go stride and back with an eye toward departing as soon as was possible. I sensed that the Smithereenians had gotten used to a dilatory visit over the years, and found that notion deplorable. My crew had debarked behind me and stood at attention, awaiting my pleasure. I had beaten Bailly three games out of four at handball, and looked forward to trouncing him similarly on the way home. The defeats hadn’t lessened his enthusiasm at all. Plet had beaten me six to five. She remained implacably formal, though I believe we had reached a state of mutual respect. All the Kinago charm was wasted upon her.

I was turned out to the very best possible of the combined efforts of Parsons and myself. I wore my ancestor’s sword and my great-grandfather’s sidearm, both polished to blinding gleams, and every thread of my uniform was in pristine order. I positively glowed beside the objects of my scrutiny who, if they had uniforms, wore hand-me-downs that had passed through a considerable number of hands since leaving the factory. Not a few of the volunteer soldiers shuffled embarrassed feet and tucked in belt ends and snapped closed flapping pockets before I reached them. The pulse rifles and combination pistols at their sides were as mismatched and scarred. The two armored suits standing hollow but at attention beside their operators had to have come from a BidWay auction. But in truth, I saw no flaws worth remarking; they were my first militia, and I was proud to be there with them.

“Margolies,” I said, returning the salute of the large-jawed man in the dark green coveralls. “How is your wife? I believe the two of you just had a son? Three and a half kilos?”

Margolies grinned, the corners of his jaw lifting the round and slightly weathered apples of his cheeks. “Yes, that’s right. They’re both doing fine, sir. Boy’s a bruiser like me. Wife didn’t mind birthing him the old way.”

“You should be proud, Sergeant,” I said, marched on to the next soldier in line. The captain of the militia, a meaty human female named Olga Chan, preceded me by one decorous pace. Parsons was starboard off my elbow and ten degrees aft, the perfect placement as an aide-de-camp. I kept my hands behind my back in the manner of sea captains of ancient Earth, which, alas, allowed the sword of my ancestors to bang rhythmically against my leg. I made a mental note to consult Parsons later on how to prevent that. I noticed his sword was not beating a tattoo on him. I alternately sweated and shivered in the hangar, as the heating coils in the floor and around the landing hatches fought their neverending battle against the cold of space. I hoped that the volunteers could not see the beads of sweat that I feared were gathering upon my brow.