“Any space for truth?” he asked the commodore, almost as if the question were an afterthought.
“Only if you are careful, ser…and now is not the time to begin…Admiral Keraganis is the one on the far right…next to him is Admiral Fleiter, head of logistics and personnel…and behind him is Rear Admiral Thurson, Information Services—”
“That’s basically the Service rep to the Eye Council, right?”
“He does sit as liaison to the council, currently.”
The admiral refocused his attention on the officers approaching as he moved up to the table area.
“Congratulations, Admiral Horwitz,” boomed out the man Medoro had identified as Keraganis. “Look forward to working with you. Heard a lot about you, especially the way you handled the original Ursan contact. Brilliant strategy.”
Horwitz inclined his head. “Thank you. Just fortunate to have the right people in the right places. I look forward to having the benefit of your unique experience, and your distinguished advice will certainly be welcome.”
“Glad to see you again, J’rome,” broke in another admiral, a silver-haired and thin man who stood a half head above the others.
“Marsta! Didn’t expect to see you. When did you get here?” The Fleet Admiral sidestepped Keraganis, favoring him with a pat on the shoulder that he hoped would get the point across that Keraganis was not working with him, but for him, and around the end of the laden table.
He stopped before reaching his friend.
“All of you, it’s a happy occasion. Please enjoy the food and the company. Dig in.”
Immediately several junior commodores and a senior commander, appearing rather out of place among the senior officers of the I.S.S., took refuge in the food.
“J’rome. Didn’t expect to make it, but we wound up the Rim maneuvers almost a week ahead of schedule. For once, everything worked. Smart idea that Alexandro had, insisting on premaneuver checks at Standora.”
“Alexandro? Standora?”
“C.O. of the Dybyykk. He had some emergency work done there a year ago. Better than any Service yard yet, he insisted, and since no one else out that way could fit the squadron in, I agreed. Took a week more than we thought, but it cut the down time on station by twice that. So I’m here.”
Horwitz frowned. “Standora? Why is that so familiar?”
The rear admiral laughed. “How could you forget? Gerswin? He’s the commandant at Standora.”
“Gerswin is still around? He was ancient at the time of the Ursan contact.”
“Doesn’t look it, but I understand he’s on his last or next-to-last tour—”
“Congratulations, Admiral Horwitz,” broke in another voice. “Marc Fleiter, here. Logistics and personnel. I just wanted to meet you informally before we get together officially, and I wanted to let you know how much I look forward to working for you.”
Horwitz repressed another smile. Fleiter was sharp, and had seen Horwitz’s reaction to Keraganis’s attempt to put the Fleet Admiral down.
“Good to meet you, Admiral Fleiter. I’m sure we will do well together, and I appreciate your interest.”
“Not at all, Admiral. Just wanted to say hello, and I apologize if I intruded.”
“No problem…no problem.”
As Fleiter stepped back and away, and as Horwitz and Marsta were left alone momentarily, Marsta smiled a brief and rueful smile.
“Watch out for that one, J’rome.”
“Sharp, isn’t he?” Horwitz responded. “And dangerous, I suspect,” he added in a lower voice. “But not the most dangerous one.”
“Who’s that?”
“I think it was Gerswin. Too bad he got mixed up in that Old Earth mess. Or maybe it’s a good thing he did.”
“Admiral Horwitz…”
The new Fleet Admiral turned to greet the next in the stream of well-wishers.
Admiral Marsta nodded and turned toward the fruit.
XXVIII
The emptiness struck the commander as soon as he stepped through the portal into the foyer, with its real slate tiles that had been left from the days when the base had boasted a commodore in residence.
Boots clicking, the slender officer in working grays glanced into the salon, into the living room, into the formal dining room, and into the kitchen that was twice the size necessary even for the entertainment needs of the base commandant it served.
Empty—the main floor rooms were empty.
A dozen quick steps carried him up the wide formal staircase to the second floor, opposite the room she had used as a nursery. The standard crib, which had been presented to them by a local acquaintance, stood empty; the handmade quilt the boy loved, gone with him and his mother.
The I.S.S. senior officer crossed the small room and checked the closet. No clothes remained.
With a sigh, he surveyed the room once more.
Another deep breath, and he left, heading for the master suite, knowing she would be gone, and that the room they had shared, briefly it seemed, would be immaculate, and vacant.
In the wide hall outside the old-fashioned doorway, he paused, not wanting to burst in, nor wishing to find what he knew he would discover.
His eyes traced the perfectly squared panels of the wood. Finally he reached and touched the handle. The door swung inward at his touch.
For a moment, an instant, everything seemed normal. The crimson trimmed gray quilt still covered the outsized bed. A solideo cube still graced the bedside table on the side where he slept. Late afternoon sun still poured through the western windows of the sunroom and spilled through the archway into the bedroom itself.
His fears were confirmed by the other absences—the bare table-top on the right side of the bed, the empty space on the wall where the portrait of the three of them had hung, the missing daccanwood box where she had kept her uniform insignia.
With slow steps he reached the closet, opened it, and saw his own uniforms on the right, and the emptiness on the left.
He turned, paced back and forth three times along the foot of the bed, almost as if she were still there, always back before him, her long legs curled under her, Corson at her breast, listening to him tell her about the day.
His eyes flickered to where she usually sat, then back to the floor before he realized that a white square lay across her pillow.
The commander pounced upon it, so quickly an onlooker would not have believed the speed with which he moved, and studied the script, the nearly childish lines with the large loops and clear and precise letters.
My dear Commander—
It is time to go. My resignation has been accepted. While it will hurt, it would hurt so much more later, when Corson and I would become a wall between you and destiny.
Already, you pace the floor at the foot of the bed at night. A thousand projects are on your mind, and you are torn between us and what you must do. I can see the fury building, though you have never been other than gentle.
The Service owes me a last trip home, and that is where we will head. I do not expect you to follow. This is not a hidden plea to show how much you care. I know nothing could stand in your way if you chose to find us, and I have hidden nothing. All that can stop you is your own good sense.
Please do not come after me. I would rather have eighteen months of wonderful memories than a lifetime of resentment. I bear you only love. Both you and having Corson were my choices. Most would say I was foolish. Now, perhaps, I should admit that I was. That is past. I have Corson, and to keep him, in any real sense, I must resign. I have, because he is too wonderful to leave.
For his sake as well, we must leave. No matter how brilliant and talented he grows up to be, he would always stand in your shadow. Because he is you, and your son, he will need his own light.
In time, I will lose him as well. Already he resembles you. That is why time is precious, and why I will give him what you never had. He may not be the great man you are and will be, but I trust he will find the universe a more
loving place.
It is strange, how you inspire love. You do not want to accept it. As you accept it, you become outwardly more gentle. But the furies inside you build. Istvenn help the universe should you ever unleash them.
I can say no more. I love you, but I love Corson more, and, for now, he needs that love. If you love him, if you have ever cared for me, let us be, Commander dear.
The formal notecard in hand, he straightened and let his steps take him into the sunroom. From the wide windows, he looked downhill toward the empty shuttle field.
She and Corson had taken the Graham back toward the Arm, back toward Scandia and its tall conifers and rocky islands.
Scandia…the name even sounded like her.
He shook his head and turned away from the vista.
She had liked the view from the commandant’s quarters. How many times had she sat in the swing chair in the late afternoon, after she had gotten home, Corson cradled in her left arm, just looking out?
“Destiny…” The single word seemed to cast a shadow on the sunlit carpet.
Was he that driven? Was it so obvious that those who loved him turned away? Or did they really love him at all? Were they just drawn to him for some other reason?
He laid the notecard on the arm of the swing chair before he left the sunroom, before he looked through the rest of the quarters for the two he would not find, for any trace of the pilot, woman, and officer who had loved him, and of his son, whom he had known so briefly.
The sunbeams played across the weave of the Scandian carpet he had bought for her, illuminating the soft golds and browns in the silence.
XXIX
Senior weapons technician Heimar scanned the list on the screen again. Shipment four—standard heavy cruiser replacement pack—was listed as having been picked up by the Bernadotte’s tender.
Heimar checked the orbit schedule and frowned. According to New Glascow orbit control, the Bernadotte had closed orbit less than four standard hours ago. The pick up time had been more than ten hours earlier.
The technician compared the screen list to the hard copy receipt. Then he called up the code section. The authentications were identical.
Finally he turned to the impatient major.
“Your shipment is listed as already having been picked up. It’s not here, either. That rules out screen error.”
“How could it have been picked up?”
“That’s what we’d like to know.”
Heimar tried not to show the shaking he felt inside. A standard weapons pack for a heavy cruiser consisted of a dozen tacheads and four hellburners.
One pack was apparently missing, properly logged out, apparently properly picked up by a cruiser tender with the right identifications, the right codes, and loaded by Heimar’s own crews.
The only problem was that the tender couldn’t have belonged to the Bernadotte.
Would the commander be upset? Would he? Heimar shuddered. Although it had not happened in his watch, his men had obviously been the ones suckered, and Heimar did not want to be the one to notify the commander.
He reached out and slapped the red stud on the console. Then he waited, but only for a few seconds.
“Commander, this is Heimar, at off-load. The weapons officer of the Bernadotte has some information that you should know.”
Heimar stepped back and motioned the major to the screen.
He stared at the dome above, thinking about the murky atmosphere outside, the nearly unbreathable air, wishing he were anywhere, even there, besides on-duty and in reach of the commander. It had never happened before, not that he knew. Sixteen nuclear warheads gone—disappearing from a tightly guarded Imperial system, disappearing without even an alarm being raised or anyone being the wiser.
Heimar had heard the rumors about the great dozer theft of a half century earlier, or whenever it had been, but that had happened in orbit, not planetside.
But twelve tacheads, and four hellburners? He bit his lips. It wouldn’t be as bad for him as it would be for the commander, but that wouldn’t make it any easier.
“HEIMAR!”
He stepped back to the screen to explain what he had discovered.
XXX
The man stepped inside the building’s foyer. Although the wind whipped snow with the force of needles along the broad expanse that would be a boulevard in the short summer, he wore but a light gray jacket and black, calf-high boots. Hatless, he showed blond hair, like the majority of Scandians. Unlike theirs, his was short and tight-curled to his skull.
Once inside, he shook himself, and the light dusting of snow fell onto the wide entry mat. Three steps took him to the directory block, where he confirmed a suite number before taking the low stairs behind it two at a time to the second story of the three-floored building.
The office he wanted was at the rear northern side, and, as he walked through the open archway he could immediately see a panorama of the lake at the base of the hill on which the building stood. Below swirled drifts, and frozen white covered the lake. The wind-sculpted drifts ran from the stone wharves and the docks of the town on the right, and from the treed slopes of the park on the left out into the indistinctness of the white north.
“May we help you?”
The young man who spoke was black-haired—the single dark one of the five in the office—and clean-shaven.
Before answering, the visitor studied the other four, two men and two women. All five wore collarless tunics, trousers, and slippers. He glanced to the rack at the side, where parkas and heavy trousers hung above thick boots.
“Looking for Mark Ingmarr.”
“That’s me,” laughed the darker man, who stood more than a head taller than the slender visitor. “You are—?”
“Corson…MacGregor Corson.”
“You mean Gerswin?”
“Said Corson. Meant Corson.”
The two women exchanged glances, but said nothing.
“If that’s the way you want it…”
“That’s the way I want it.”
“You called earlier.” The tall man’s tone was flat.
“That’s correct. You are an advocate…an attorney?”
“I told you that.”
“Satisfactory. Need your professional ability.”
“What if I don’t want to give it?”
The visitor looked up at the heavily muscled young advocate. “You don’t have to. Find someone else. You would be better.”
Ingmarr stared down at the other, found his eyes caught by the hawk-yellow intensity of the smaller man’s stare. For an instant, it seemed as though he were trapped in blackness. He dropped his eyes, breaking the contact.
“I’ll talk about it,” the attorney conceded.
He pointed to a console and two chairs in the far corner, half concealed behind a bank of indoor plants.
The man in gray took the right-hand chair, the one farther from the console.
“What do you want?” asked the advocate.
“A modest trust. Designed to receive funds from a blind account in the Scandian Bank. Should include certain provisions for education, an alternate to the trustee, and a termination and succession clause.”
“That’s rather general.”
“The beneficiary is about seven standard years old. I’m acting for his father’s family. His mother felt that his father was not the most stable of individuals. Mother left with son when the boy was less than a year old. Father couldn’t do much. Family feels son should be provided for, particularly education. Half the trust would be his ten standard years after he reaches statutory majority. The other half goes to his mother, ten years after he reaches majority, or after he would have. Should he not reach majority, his half would be used to endow scholarships in his name at the university.”
“What if the boy’s mother doesn’t want the money?”
“We can’t prevent her from not using it, but the funds would be his at some point regardless.”
“You seem r
ather determined.”
“It is both the least and the most that can and should be done under the circumstances.”
“Rather a strange way to put it.”
The shorter man shrugged. “Strange situation.”
“Why didn’t you have the bank set it up? You wouldn’t even have had to make a long trip. They could, you know.”
“Some things require a personal touch.” He handed Ingmarr a sheet. “This contains the securities that will compose the trust, as well as the specified asset composition for incoming cash flows.”
“I’d have to advise against too much inflexibility.”
“Only the investment parameters are inflexible. The categories, not specific choices.”
“You said a modest trust…this looks to be more than that.”
“In addition to the listed securities, the initial credit transfer will be fifty thousand credits. Annual payments will be in the neighborhood of about five thousand credits for roughly the next ten years. After that, the trust will be expected to be self-sustaining.”
Ingmarr looked at the list and touched his console, his eyes darting back and forth between the information he called up and the securities listed.
The man who called himself Corson watched in silence.
“For Scandia, this is much more than a modest trust, much more, ser…Corson. This would set…the boy…up comfortably for life.”
“Not wise without conditions. Mentioned those earlier. First, may not collect even any of the interest unless he finishes primary studies. Second, not more than half the interest until he finishes graduate level. Third, he may not ever acquire control of the principal capital until he is commissioned as an I.S.S. officer or completes the full Nord Afriq survival course.”
“But if he cannot collect without the schooling—”
“Sorry. Should have made that clear. Trust pays school expenses directly, as necessary. Any excess income is reinvested, unless he needs it for living expenses, but he or his mother must submit records, like an expense account, to the trustee.”
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