“Where’s that from?” Barton said.
Before Dunbarton could reply, Althea said, “A Hub site called The Searching Eye. The owner is anonymous. A rabble-rouser who won’t give his name. Why he finds it worth his while to set our neighbors against us I can’t imagine.”
Dunbarton nodded. “Do you dispute anything he wrote here?”
“How about everything?” Althea said. “Clan Morelon is a family business just like yours, Alex. We live by selling what we produce. Would you care to give away the machine tools your clan produces?”
“The difference being,” Dunbarton said, “that Dunbarton machine tools aren’t essential to human survival. Food and power most certainly are—and Clan Morelon controls both.”
He turned to face the crowd.
“It’s for us all to decide, neighbors, whether it’s in our interest to allow one clan to grow so great that it dominates us in all our essential needs. Take it home and sleep on it. We’ll have a follow-up meeting when you’ve had a chance to think the possible consequences all the way through.”
The crowd began to disperse. The smile Dunbarton bestowed on Althea as he made to depart broke her self-control. She grabbed him by the shirtfront, and he halted.
“I suspended your punishment in hope you’d see the error of your ways,” she growled. “Looks like I was wrong.”
“Al...” Barton murmured.
Dunbarton’s smile became superior, mocking. He jerked himself free, stepped down from the dais, and strode off to the west.
==
September 15, 1326 A.H.
“It’s going to happen again, isn’t it?” Nora said.
Barton shook his head. “It can’t. Not the same as last time, anyway. We’re too well defended now. Al’s laser cannons can destroy anything that comes within two miles.”
“Bart,” Sebastian Kramnik said from the opposite end of the conference table, “why is Nora here?”
Nora stiffened. Barton laid his hand on her arm. “Because she ran this place most of the last siege,” he said. “She has more experience with operating the clan in a state of emergency than anyone else in Morelon House. Of the councilors at this table, only Patrice has equal experience of the previous siege. That suggests that her insights are of potential value to us.”
Sebastian Kramnik’s gaze flicked swiftly over to Douglas. The former patriarch of Clan Kramnik cocked an eyebrow at his kinsman, and he subsided.
“You have...full confidence in those guns?” Patrice Morelon said.
Barton nodded. “I have full confidence in Althea and Martin. That covers their guns.”
“Our guns,” Teodor Chistyakowski growled. “The clan did pay for them.”
“Teodor,” Nora said, “I’m sure you know perfectly well what Bart meant.” The genesmith scowled but held his peace.
Barton pondered the somber faces around the table. Not one member of the council looked normally calm or confident.
Are they right to be so nervous? Even a total boycott by all of Jacksonville couldn’t hurt us...much.
“Kinsmen,” he said, “if we’re not adequately defended against a repeat attack, no one could be. The cannons defend the mansion. Al’s backpack units give us sally capability, should we need it to defend the fields. And there’s always Freedom’s Horizon, Freedom’s Promise, and the mass driver on the Relic if things should get really nasty. Does anyone here seriously doubt the deterrent power of all that?”
He waited for a rejoinder. None came.
“Bart,” Dorothy Morelon said, “there are other ways to hurt us.”
Though Dorothy’s unease at having been tapped to fill Elyse’s place at the table had faded months before, her attitude of uncertainty returned whenever a matter more serious than the routine allocation of clan resources came before the council.
And she’s more than a century my senior.
Yet none of the other genuine elders was willing to take the seat. The excuses varied, but the “no, never” attitude was uniform. They were all perfectly willing to have Patrice sit here, even though she’s far younger than any of them, but they were completely unwilling to join her.
Maybe there’s a lesson in that.
“Yes, Dot, no question about it. But those other ways would hurt the givers just as much as the receivers.” He raised his eyebrows. “Unless you think there’s better corn available from some other clan.”
“I was thinking,” Dorothy said slowly, “of the power stations. The Spacehawks still permit anyone to tap into their cable runs for any reason whatsoever. At no charge.”
“As long as the poor clod is willing to endure a four hour blackout twice weekly for calibration, maintenance, and target practice,” Teodor said. “Still, Bart, that’s something to keep in mind. We charge for those stations. Spacehawk electrical power is still free.”
“As it should be,” Beatrice Kramnik said. “Their consumables are donated and their labor is a hundred percent unpaid volunteers.”
“And the fissionables came down from the Relic with the First Settlers.” Teodor said, “At some point that’s got to run short.”
“At which point,” Nora said, “there’s going to be trouble. Althea isn’t likely to send down what’s left up there—how much is that, Bart?”
He scowled. “I’ve never asked, but it can’t be all that much. There’s only one medium-size reactor still running up there.”
“What’s the output?” Teodor said.
“About two hundred megawatts, if memory serves,” Barton said.
“A lot of juice, but not enough to power all of Jacksonville, much less the whole of Alta,” Patrice said. “Power consumption has gone way, way up since we started leasing fusion stations.”
Barton nodded. “Damned home computers. One of Al’s pet investments. I told her they’d cause trouble.”
“They’re not trouble for us, Bart,” Sebastian said.
“No, I suppose not,” he said, “but combine that with clean, cheap electric heat, and air conditioning, and refrigeration, and air and water filtration, and lots and lots of electrically powered hovercraft, and the AltaBourse, and the music net, and the Hub, and...Spooner's beard, I could go on for an hour.” He flipped his hand in irritation. “We didn’t have any of that before the fusion plants. The Spacehawk power grid wouldn’t have tolerated the load from a quarter of it. And none of it is strictly necessary. Still, can you name one single person in Jacksonville who’d be willing to go without it? Any of it?”
No one spoke.
“That’s our vulnerability, if we have one,” he said. “We don’t sell those stations, we lease them. That way, they’re still ours. The responsibility for keeping them operating is ours. A program of deliberate vandalism would sting us pretty badly.”
“If we accept the responsibility for repairing stations that are deliberately sabotaged,” Patrice said. “I can’t see that being a vendor’s ethical obligation.”
“Think collaboration among our enemies, Pat,” Teodor said. “Think conspiracy. There’s no reason to assume the damage would be openly inflicted, or that it would be a simple matter to prove it was vandalism.”
Barton grimaced again.
If we’re really exposed somehow, these aren’t the people most likely to know how, or the ones best equipped to plug up the chink in our armor.
“I think I should talk to Al and Martin about this,” he said. “Anyway, it’s just about time for Pat and Doug to start dinner. Would you all be available to reconvene afterward?”
Heads nodded around the table. Barton rose.
“Then thus shall it be.”
* * *
“Cripple a fusion plant without making it look like deliberate sabotage?” Althea peered at Barton as if he’d grown a second head. “Bart, those things are wrapped in three-quarter-inch flexosteel plates. All six sides. Only four people on Hope have the tools and know-how to open them. You’d have to hit one with...well, a backpack laser might do it, or one of the
rocks I’ve got racked up in the mass driver on the Relic. But anything like that would destroy the W-minus emitters and reduce the evacuated bubbles to slivers.”
“So sabotage that doesn’t look like sabotage is out of the question?” Barton said.
“I think we can omit that possibility,” Martin said. He took his wife’s hand. “The technology is inherently safe, but Al and I knew there’d be some nervousness about the idea of ‘a backyard H-bomb,’ so we did everything we could to make them obviously safe. Visually reassuring.”
Barton nodded. He drained the last of his cordial, set the little glass down carefully on the coffee table, and struggled to impose order on his thoughts.
“Bart,” Nora said, “is it possible we’ve gotten ourselves worked up for no reason?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I wish I’d brought you to last night’s meeting. If it weren’t for that...”
“I was there, Nora,” Althea said. “Given recent history, I don’t think we should take it lightly.”
Barton noted the flash of irritation in his wife’s eyes.
We never worked all the way through that issue. This isn’t a great time for it to come back at us.
“The way the lease agreements are worded,” he said, “our lessees can terminate them at any time, for any reason or none. At that point it becomes our responsibility to repossess them.” He smirked without humor. “I remember the contention over that phrasing. Dad thought I was crazy for insisting on it. I pointed out that if we wanted the same privilege of recall and revocation, we had to allow it to the customer as well. So,” he said, “maybe they can’t destroy or damage the units, but they can return them. How many of them do we have room to warehouse?”
Althea snorted. “Not a lot,” she said. “Three or four, maybe.”
“There are twenty-one lessees within a five-mile radius of here,” Nora said.
“Well,” Martin said, “we haven’t yet offered them to anyone on Sulla.”
Althea elbowed him in the ribs. “Brilliant! A solution to the problem and a whole new continent-size market at the same time. But as long as we’re fantasizing about markets we could never service properly, why not the archipelago? If that doesn’t work, maybe we could ship them to Eridanus!”
“Althea...” Martin murmured. She scowled but said no more.
Barton felt a surge of weariness, a sudden yearning to flee his responsibilities. His hand clenched involuntarily as he forced it down.
“Bart?”
“Hm?” He looked up to find Martin peering at his left arm. The engineer was smiling quizzically.
“There might be some...good news.” He pointed to Barton’s left hand.
Though the regenerated arm was almost full-size, up till then the hand had been inert, useless. Claire had fretted over the lag in neural development and reintegration with the rest of his axial nervous system. She’d told him to keep hoping, but said she could guarantee nothing. He’d accepted it with all the poise he could muster and reminded himself to be thankful for what benefit her therapy had brought him.
His left hand was as tightly clenched as his right.
Nora was staring at it in open-eyed wonder.
He flexed the fingers, opening and closing them several times, first in unison, then individually. The hand was far from his normal strength, but his control seemed fully restored.
“She did it,” he murmured. “I can’t quite believe it, but she did it.” Tears welled in his eyes as he tested the appendage over and over. “It works.”
“Thank God,” Nora breathed.
Martin grinned. “And Claire.”
Barton staggered up from the love seat and threw his arms, old and new, open to his kinsmen. They surged into his embrace as all four of them wept for joy.
* * *
“You didn’t solve the problem,” Claire said. “You were diverted.”
Althea nodded. “I don’t know that there is a solution. If our customers start demanding that we repossess the units—”
“We repossess the units,” Martin said. “Period. If we have to dismantle them and store the components for future use, then that’s what we’ll do.” He nuzzled Althea’s left breast as Claire suckled at the right one. Althea cooed and rustled the covers. “We’d take less damage to our reputation that way than if we were to renege on our contractual obligations.”
“Guys,” Althea murmured as she squirmed, “you’re making it hard for me to think.”
“Who says you have to think?” Claire said.
“You do,” Althea said. “By bringing all that crap up again.”
“Oh, sorry,” Claire said. “I’ll stop.” She latched onto the nipple again as her hand drifted down Althea’s body. Althea’s writhing grew steadily more pronounced.
Presently Claire said “I think she’s ready.”
Althea moaned wordlessly.
“Agreed,” Martin said. “Whose turn is it to be in the middle?”
“Yours.”
“Mine again already? Very well, then.” They rearranged themselves accordingly.
A long time later, when Althea’s eyes had closed and her breathing had taken on the rhythms of sleep, Claire gently disengaged from her, quenched the light, and slid into Martin’s arms. She laid her head on his shoulder as he caressed her.
“How does this work so well?” she whispered into his ear.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not anything like what I would have expected. I was certain there’d be a lot more tension, a lot more...competition.”
“I think I understand,” she said. “And I think it would probably be that way for most other threesomes that might try something like this.” She trailed her fingertips along his broad chest, and he pulled her even closer. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that it isn’t that way for us. What do you think makes the difference?”
He was silent for a long moment.
Presently he said “We’re not most other people, love. Each of us is unique in one or more ways. I suppose this is just one more difference.” He chuckled softly. “It’s not something I’ve thought about before. I’m just glad about it.” He hugged her gently. “All of it.”
“But you were happy before...me.” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I was. Althea tells me that we loved each other from the day we first met.”
“You still don’t remember how that felt?”
“No. Probably I never will.”
“Does it bother you?”
He nodded. “But there’s this, too, love,” he said. “If I hadn’t been so grievously injured—if I hadn’t been shorn of all those memories—maybe this wouldn’t work as well as it does. We’ll never know. It’s not the sort of experiment we can repeat.” He chuckled again as he slid his palms down her back and settled them on her rump. “Not that I’ve been itching to do so.”
“Do you know,” she whispered, “when you and Althea call me ‘love,’ I think I can actually feel you loving me?”
“I do love you,” he said. “Unreservedly. I know Al does, too.”
“I wonder how it makes her feel.”
“We could ask her.”
“Maybe tomorrow. For now, do you think you could...?”
“With pleasure, love.”
“Yours and mine, love.”
He fitted their bodies together carefully, and she gasped.
“Oh! Yes,” she whispered. “Like that. Please.”
He moved slowly against her. “Of course.”
Beside them in the warmth and darkness, Althea smiled.
==
September 19, 1326 A.H.
“Althea?”
“Hm?” The sound of Claire’s voice pulled Althea’s gaze away from her AltaBourse trading program.
“What’s the state of our finances?” The bioengineer’s color was unusually high.
Can’t be the run. That was seven hours ago.
“Funny you should ask.” Althea beckoned Clair
e to stand behind her, waited until her spouse was in position, and showed her an account evaluation summary.
“Wow,” Claire murmured. “You’re good at this.”
Althea chuckled. “I like to think so. Why’d you ask? Been seized by a sudden desperate yearning for Sullan chocolates?”
Claire smiled enigmatically. “Oh, nothing like that. Martin and I were tossing an idea around just before. Ready to break for a slightly late lunch?”
Althea glanced at the wall clock, nodded and rose. “Whoops. The time got away from me. Let’s see if there's anything left.” As they started down the stairs to the main level, she said “An idea about what?”
“You might call it a working vacation.”
“Whose work? Yours or mine?”
Claire smiled again but did not reply.
They found Martin alone in the kitchen. Spread before him was a large sheet of vellum bearing an intricate design, heavily annotated in several colors of ink. He was scrutinizing it closely. Three place settings, each laden with an ample sandwich and a mug, sat across the table from him. As his spouses entered, he looked up, grinned broadly, and gestured to them to sit.
“What do you have there?” Althea said. She hefted her sandwich, took a large bite, and her eyes widened in surprise and pleasure. The sandwich proved to be bacon, lettuce, and tomato with horseradish dressing. The mug contained cold apple juice.
“A design for a bit of new equipment for the Relic,” Martin said.
“I didn’t realize we needed anything up there.”
“Need might not be the best word,” Martin said. “Did Claire tell you about our little vacation idea?”
Althea glanced sideways at the other woman. Claire giggled briefly.
“She said she and you had an idea for a working vacation. No details, though.”
Freedom's Fury (Spooner Federation Saga Book 3) Page 17