Daimler-Wilkinson closed his mouth. Henry Martyn lifted the coverlet, swung his legs across the divan, and rose to his feet. "What have I left," he asked, "to offer a defender who defends me-rfrom enemies he made for me—by taking more away than they could? What am I free to say of a liberator who defends liberty by placing it in protective custody?"
The brigand folded his good arm about his sling. The man sighed and shook his head. These searching questions were the same as he had often asked himself (in mental privacy) for which he had never found adequate answer.
"You are an even greater idealist," he offered at last, "than I was given to believe. Albeit one who backs his ideals with intelligence and a palpable courage. Allow me to appeal to both, your idealism and your courage, for they are rare. You cannot help having seen how our rather overcivilized young men today lack—let us use olden words—the 'grit' or 'gumption' you manifest every minute. My bo—Captain, it was your sort who made Hanover great for a millennium. Yet even now, at its peak, the rot begins to show. Your imperium-conglomerate needs you if it is to survive another thousand years."
"Your imperium-conglomerate, sir. And I observe, in passing, that it was not to my intelligence you chose to appeal. I repeat, I am an outlaw."
"By your light, I am a contract-defaulter," Daimler-Wilkinson chuckled. "One outlaw to another, what may I
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offer in exchange?" He held up a finger. "Shall I hand you a traitorous brother for whatever you consider justice?" He held up a second finger. "Shall I play a thille I brought of my Ceo promising to restore all Islay properties to you?" He held up a third finger. "With title and power of a Drectorhood, not for this world alone, but the region of the Deep surrounding it? It would hardly be unprecedented. Someday, visiting the 'Droom, you might appropriately affect the visage of Sir Henry Morgan, an outlaw who forged a similar bargain with his sovereign."
"Were I to wear a masque, it would likelier be of Jean LaFitte, an outlaw who rejected the same bargain." Henry Martyn shook his head. "Make clearer why you need me badly enough to offer these things."
This was too much for Demondion-Echeverria who leapt up, threw his hands wide, and shouted: "Why do you let him speak to you in this manner? Give him to me! What I leave will be happy to cooperate!"
"He merits an answer, Frantisek." Daimler-Wilkinson shrugged, "Strategic reasons, Captain Martyn. Skye itself is of no value. Yet, fearing Jendyne interference, with due respect to the ambassador, and an increasing alien presence in what has become, through a degree of neglect, an unstable region, the Ceo is anxious to find a competent, popularly supported governor—"
Henry Martyn nodded, "One well able to supply his own firepower?"
Daimler-Wilkinson's smile verged upon a grin. "Yes, and perhaps, in the process, rid himself of an increasingly bothersome freebooter by some means other than the lengthy and expensive one of hunting him down."
"Or attempting to gain his confidence through the ancient hardfellow-softfellow game, with the help of your 'oflicial enemy'?"
Demondion-Echeverria threw back his head and laughed. "Pay me, Sedgeley! I wagered it would not last half an hour! Pay me my thousand gavelles!"
Daimler-Wilkinson gifted Henry Martyn with a look of rueful admiration. "Clavises, Frantisek, and I shall pay you once the captain has answered."
Henry Martyn took a long while. "Living the life I have
thus far lived, I shall suffer no one to call me master, nor ever call another by that name."
"Well spoken, sir," Daimler-Wilkinson smiled, "and in future I shall make bold to quote you. Yet it appears that I confront futility. Permit me a final inducement." He strode to the desk, leaned over and pressed an annunciator lever. "Will you please send in my niece?"
Chapter XLVI: The Ceo'S Hand
"Arran!"
Nodding with satisfaction, Daimler-Wilkinson watched an emotional reunion between Loreanna and Henry Martyn. Unable to avoid melodrama, she rushed to his arms and afterward made fussing noises over his bandages. In his own way, the young man was no less moved. Their undisguised joy at finding one another confirmed everything the Executor-General had suspected of the pair. Having established what would doubtless prove useful leverage, he left them to their embraces, pulled a chair round the desk, and gathered his wits as he had been unable to before. At last he steepled his fingers and cleared his throat.
"Where were we?" Employing the distraction to fullest advantage, he pressed his former line with Henry Martyn as if it had not been rejected. He believed all men desire power, the noblest only seeking means by which to justify the craving. With analogy and historic example, he amiably countered each of Henry Martyn's earlier protests, invariably to the effect that someone will always be needed to rule. "You must not judge others by standards you set. Captain. Ordinary folk require governing. It may be stifling to you. To them it is vital, as their need for food, clothing, and shelter. Evil it may be, as you insist. It is the archetypal example of necessary evil."
Now that Loreanna was restored to him, Henry Martyn
was willing to look away from his beloved only briefly. Nevertheless, accustomed to thinking upon his feet, to giving orders and making plans in the heat of battle or the teeth of storms, he was less defenseless than the Executor-General believed. He released Loreanna, took a breath, a step forward, and framed an answer.
"I wonder about this phrase, 'necessary evil.' You do not suggest that a person may coexist with cancer—simply to name another widely acknowledged evil. Whatever the quality of rhetoric supporting it. Nor can he long endure *a little bit' of cancer, believing it somehow consumes his capacity for illness and protects him from all other diseases." He looked from Daimler-Wilkinson to Demondion-Echeverria, from one wielder of power to another. "Nor would any but the most venal quack regard cancer as a 'necessary' evil."
The ambassador sniffed. "What do you offer as a substitute?"
"What does any conscientious physician offer as a substitute for cancer except its complete obliteration?"
Daimler-Wilkinson frowned. "The aptness of your analogy. Captain—"
He was interrupted by pounding upon the door. "Sir," cried a messenger who followed it into the room, "word from the starport brigadier! An armada—Jendyne, he says, sir— has arrived in stationary orbit off Skye!"
"The Ceo you say! How many, how armed, and how disposed?"
"Thousands, sir, heavily armed. Three, four-deckers, starships-of-the-line, dreadnoughts, arrayed in almost a solid ring and signaling one another by ... I recollect the word was 'radio.'"
"Radio?"
Despite an implied breach of courtesy, Daimler-Wilkinson glanced at the ambassador who spread his palms, displaying innocence. Himself a student of obsolete technology, Henry Martyn supplied, "Electromagnetic communication, short-ranged and lightspeed. Highly effective within limits."
The messenger nodded. "Almost the brigadier's words,
sir, now I hear 'em again. Electromagnetic impulses, some bein' relayed t*what appears a thousand vessels more, hove to somewheres in the Deep beyond instrumental range of the planet! In orbit, sir, they caught our minimal—"
"—and complacent?'*
Not bothering with Henry Martyn's wry suggestion, the Executor-General waved a hand to silence him. "Our minimal what?"
"Deckwatches, sir. Caught off guard, they did. Boarded half our ships. They've issued an ultimatum to the rest: surrender or be destroyed."
Daimler-Wilkinson examined the messenger, Demondion-Echeverria, and, with an odd look, the young ship-robber beside his niece, one good arm about her shoulders. "Jendyne, did you say?"
The messenger gulped. "B'look of 'em, sir, yes."
Daimler-Wilkinson leaned back, placed his steepled fingers to his lips, regarded those about him shrewdly, and leaned forward. "Quite a coincidence. I wonder what Henry Martyn would—never mind, I know what I shall do." He pointed a finger. "Seize me that man and have him thrust upon the spot! Have his body se
nt to this armada in answer to their ultimatum!" He pointed at Demondion-Echeverria. The two Oplytes who had dragged in Henry Martyn burst through the doorway past the messenger, spilling him onto the floor. One took the ambassador by his arms. The other placed its thrustible at his temple.
"What's that?" For a moment they were all distracted as a roar buffeted the windows and, heavily curtained as they were, the glare of flames became visible. Loreanna swept the drapes aside. Fire had broken out in Newtown and seemed to be consuming the entire shabby settlement.
"Never mind that," her uncle ordered as a chorus of screams added to the roar, "others will deal with it. We have important matters at hand. I am sincerely sorry, Frantisek, but I am also sure you understand— now what?" Even as the Jendyne Ceo's man prepared about to breathe his last—of air or any other substance—certain actions, high aloft in stationary orbit, had manifested themselves in a noisy crackling within the Black Usurper's desk.
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"Pardon, Executor-General, I believe that is for me." His face lit by the flames outside, Henry Martyn approached the desk, glancing over his shoulder at the Oplytes holding a thrashing, cursing Demondion-Echeverria. "Pray do not let me interrupt your duties, gentlebeings." Leaning over the desk, he pressed a concealed button, waited as the hidden cabinet raised itself through the surface, and removed the weird, glowing object he knew he would find within. Without; hesitation, he laid a hand upon the Riidin communicale. "I • am hstening, Mr. Krumm."
"AYE, AYE, SIR!"
The young brigand jerked away with a yelp. Krumm's' words, he was aware, were audible only within his mind, received by the same sort of nacyl virus which had sent them. He was surprised, given their perceived intensity, that the entire planet, let alone those in the room about him, had not heard them. "Easy! This is not another demonstration for our enemies of Riisin prowess and ineffability. Just an ordinary conversation!"
Thirty-five thousand klommes overhead, Krumm stood upon the quarterdeck of the Osprey, making noises of embarrassment as he hastily requested that the signal gain be, reduced by one of the flatsies— nacyl —and the virus in its circulatory system. "Sorry I am, sir, to have forgot it! You'll be happy t'learn, to a ship and a bein', the Hanovers have meekly allowed themselves t'be boarded. They're greatly surprised, rather than the Jenny cutthroats they expected, that we're squads from Henry Martyn's modest fleet!"
Henry Martyn chuckled. In his mind's eye he saw hordes of hardened men and women, dangerous children, aliens of many species, swarming aboard vessels of the flotilla, claiming them under Krumm's command. He relayed what he knew to the others in the room. Even with a city burning just beyond the windows, the Executor-General must have seen them, too. With a gesture, he released Demondion-Echeverria who, glaring about him as he straightened his clothing with brisk, furious motions, looked from Daimler- j Wilkinson to Henry Martyn.
"My dear Sedgeley, would it be presumptuous to suggest that you seize the genuine culprit? Dismaying odds aloft to
the contrary, arrest of their leader would stop what is happening in orbit."
Sliding a hand into a trouser pocket, Henry Martyn wrapped it about the comforting, familiar shape of the walther-weapon which, despite their passionate greeting, Loreanna had thought to pass him. Firelight gleamed along its polished sides. The Oplytes tensed. He discouraged any sanguine ideas upon their part by giving the mysterious (if not very potent) weapon a gentle wave in their direction. Before they made matters worse, Daimler-Wilkinson called them off with an absent shake of his head, all the while thinking as quickly as he could. A glance at Loreanna, who looked defiance back at him, confirmed where the weapon had come from. He looked back as if to say, well struck, my dear, and I deserved it.
Meanwhile, Henry Martyn prudently equipped himself with a thrustible from one of the guards. "I fear. Ambassador, my arrest would not affect a thing. My crewbeings serve me by serving their own interest.*' He handed the walther back to Loreanna, turning to Daimler-Wilkinson. "Each one would have had to be arrested in order to stop this, an advantage they enjoy over those who believe in the supremacy—or indispensability—of authority."
"Why," the Executor-General asked, one eye upon the window and hundreds of refugees beginning to stream out of Newtown, "do I doubt, despite your formidable reputation, that you control thousands of heavily armed three- and four-deckers, starships-of-the-line, dreadnoughts, et cetera?"
"You are correct to doubt it," replied Henry Martyn. "Ours is a small fleet, augmented, to be sure, by the armed craft of various friendly trading captains, and by numbers of unbeinged inflatable drones which I recently had fabricated in the Sisao-Somon system."
Daimler-Wilkinson nodded, resigned. It was annoying the way his niece gazed upon this dangerous puppy with such awe. "A fleet which has been feigning these arcane communications with a greater fleet which does not, in fact, exist?"
"Nonetheless," Henry Martyn told him, "it produced the desired effect. With or without your Ceo's leave, by ancient
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usage as well as my more recent practice, I now command the world which was always mine by right!"
Hearing dried leaves crackle beneath his feet, Morven was suddenly aware he had not been outdoors and afoot for thirty years.
In one hand he held the device, delivered by the same mundane means as the communicale, which he had privately dubbed his "persuadible," disdaining to bear another weapon in the belief that this was the function of a servant. At the moment his daughter performed that humble service, walking beside him, adding to the racket. "Creeping" might have been a better word, he thought, for their slow, blind progress through the forest edge about the Holdings.
Uppermost in mind was a dire need for transport to the base Alysabeth's dead husband had named for her, then a starship of any size, the intent being to employ alien technology not just to seize command of the intruding force or recapture the estate, but an entire planet. The device had only just arrived, its first test interrupted by invasion. Yet in their desperate estimate, it might allow them to reverse the deteriorating situation.
Meanwhile, an Oplyte contingent and increasing numbers of brigands were turning over every leaf in their pursuit and had to be avoided. At long last—when their clothing had been dew-soaked to the hips, and they were cold, hungry, and exhausted—they found what they had been looking for.
One of Daimler-Wilkinson's flyers lay in a clearing within sight of the Holdings, backlit in orange-red by what could not yet be the dawn, even had the direction been correct. Newtown must be set afire. Morven shook off the distraction. It was a transport, not remarkably different from the draywherry which had brought them here, save for nacelles holding projectibles or thrustibles (whatever they were called when this size, he thought) giving it the appearance of a huge creature sleeping with its legs beneath it. It still hovered siemmes above the ground, even in this somnolent state. More to the point, the crewbeings and soldiers it had carried were nowhere to be seen. It was guarded by two Oplytes, for whom he held effective treatment in his hand.
He arose from the soggy grass where they had been hiding.
Alysabeth's teeth were chattering, her hairdo had collapsed, and, in the light thrown by a fire at the stem of the transport, her lips appeared blue. "Remain here," he told her, "until I have made certain of those soldiers."
Striding across three dozen measures separating him from the campfire, he stood some distance from the Oplytes, raised the artifact, and squeezed its lever, bathing them in eerie light. To his immense satisfaction, they stayed where they were, hunkered behind the flames, their eyes expressionless as always. "Do not move or make a sound!" he ordered. "Alysabeth!"
"Here, Father!" Her harsh whisper had come from close behind him. She had hurried to catch up. He turned and saw that her color was improving.
"Follow me aboard, but have a care. We may find more of the creatures inboard. If not, we have a clear run ahead, and the rigorous military trainin
g of my youth should serve me well in—"
Lx)oking over his shoulder, Alysabeth's eyes had widened. Before he could turn, he felt a rough hand upon his face, another upon his arm, stretching his body as if it were bread dough. The palm over his mouth kept him from echoing his dau^ter as she screamed. The other Oplyte had seized her. It had never occurred to her to use the thrustible she wore. Morven twisted to face his captor, raised the alien device and brought it down upon the warrior's head, shattering both cylinders, releasing their contents in glowing wisps, but doing his adversary no discernible damage. He struck again and again until the soldier tired of the annoyance and broke his arm.
"Father!" The other Oplyte threw Alysabeth to the ground, spread her legs, and, one hand upon her chest to keep her, knelt between her knees. Morven knew real horror when his own assailant spread him the same way.
Having no better occupation, and deprived of a world to ravish and bum freely, the Oplytes had set fire to Newtown, which fulfilled their fondest wishes by sending forth a screaming flood of refugees and flames a hundred measures into the sky. By dawn the broad plain before the Holdings would be empty again of everything but ashes and the
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crumbling skeleton which was all burnt metalloid leaves behind. Before a year passed, two at most, the meadow would be green and filled with flowers.
Coordinated Arm 01: Henry Martyn Page 47