So he brought the people down to the water, and the Lord said to Gideon: "Everybody that laps the water with his tongue shall be set apart from those that bow down on their knees to drink."
The three hundred men lapped up the water, putting their hand to their mouths; all the rest bowed down on their knees to drink.
The Lord said to Gideon: "With the three hundred I will save you."
—Judges 7:1-7
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Celia von du Mark
Circum-Alsace Station
03/07/44 1047 local time
The inspector's men hauled the three of us off the shuttle five minutes before it was due to leave, ten minutes before the drop window to Port Marne closed.
Of course, the forms had to be followed. We couldn't be hauled off, not if we'd accept a polite invitation, even though the polite invitation was delivered by five security men.
"Inspector-General Tetsuo Hanavi?" The largest one, a stocky Aryan type, smiled down at me with patently false friendliness; I returned the smile. The collar insignia on his blue coveralls proclaimed him to be a Commerce Department Security man; the five gold service strips on his sleeve said that he had been at it a while.
I nodded. "That's me."
"General Shimon Bar-El?"
"No such person." Shimon shook his head. "Just Mr. Shimon Bar-El. I'm retired." He smiled.
The guard leader didn't see the humor in that, and I wasn't about to spend a lot of time and effort explaining it.
"Sergeant Zev A-runny?" he asked.
"Aroni," Zev corrected. "Aroni."
"Yes, sir. Aroni. If you will all follow us, please?"
I eyed the five of them just for practice as we unstrapped ourselves from our acceleration couches. Shimon and I handed our bags to Zev, then we followed the guards back into the Gate complex, one man at my right, one man at Zev's left, Shimon in the middle.
Their training was fair: they stayed close to our arms, the leader in front and the last two guards walking behind, their batons in their hands.
We were neatly hemmed in, assuming that the guards at our sides were willing to take some damage. If we tried to make some sort of break, my guard would grab my arm, Zev's guard would grab his, while the leader and the other two moved in for the kill.
Shimon wouldn't be much of a factor in a fight, and even if he were, it would still be possible for two guards to trip up all three of us while the others took us out with their batons.
Not bad, but not the way I'd handle a guard detail. My feeling is that when it's necessary to guard someone, manners can go out the nearest airlock.
I didn't look at Zev, and he didn't look back at me, but we could have taken them.
"May as well leave the bags in a locker," Shimon said, as we walked through the broad, low-ceilinged concourse.
I paused in front of a battered set of lockers and gestured a question, rewarded by a tolerant nod.
The leader held back a smile. As soon as we were out of the concourse, the lockers would be opened and our gear would get much more than the casual Customs inspection we had already gone through—but we had to maintain the polite fiction that a locker in the Commerce Department's Gate complex was inviolate.
My only regret was that I hadn't brought any contraband. Just two spare uniforms, a Fairbairn knife, a combination toiletries and medical kit, a sheaf of letters from home, and a few books, including the copy of Twain's Life on the Mississippi that Shimon had made me read on the trip over.
There was something about part of it that seemed strange, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
I wasn't even carrying a pistol—we'd cached some of the Vators' weapons, left some others for the New Portsmouth constables to find—figuring to procure a flintlock dirtside, without the necessity of going through the usual protracted argument about whether or not the weapon was permissible under the restrictive Proscribed Tech list of the planet—in this case, Alsace.
Shimon's insistence to the contrary, that was probably a mistake. A harmless one, this time—but still a mistake. If you don't give the Commerce Department people something to find, they'll just keep looking until they do.
"This way, General Hanavi, General Bar-El, Sergeant Aroni. If you please."
I chuckled. The lower ranks in the Commerce Department are always polite, even when the situation doesn't call for it. Except the peacemakers, of course—and they're only technically part of the Thousand Worlds Commerce Department: their enlisted ranks get their training from the TW Marines; their officers are all graduates of the Contact Service Academy.
We walked into a corridor, slid along a walkway, bounced up a jumpshaft, then eased ourselves down another corridor in low-weight, toward the inspector's office. I understand why the local inspectors tend to put their offices and quarters up toward the hub of their complexes—low-weight is addictive, once you get past the queasiness—but I wish that just once I'd be able to confront one under higher gravity. I was raised in Metzada's gravity of twelve hundred centimeters per second squared, and anything less than half of a standard gee makes my stomach tie itself in knots.
We waited for a solid half hour in the inspector's outer office. Zev did some paperwork while Shimon pulled a book out of his shirt pocket, thumbed it on, and pretended to read.
It was Patton's War as I Knew It; the unabridged edition, with both the diary entries and the Warczinsky commentaries, which meant that he wasn't really reading: he'd long since memorized that one. I just stared at the walls and tried to gather my thoughts.
I wasn't going to try to hurry them, or complain about the delay; I'd felt the vibration through the deck as the shuttle was booted away, and I knew that we'd have to wait for the next skipshuttle's departure. I once spent an idle hour figuring out how many man-centuries busy people have been kept waiting in bureaucrats' offices. The bottom line is damned depressing.
I didn't have any particular reason to want to be depressed. I was too busy trying to figure out what Shimon was up to, and what I'd have to do about it.
And about him.
There was some fix, clearly. Some cards were hidden up his sleeve, certainly. He had stumbled on some trick that could be applied to the Alsace situation, something that would turn what was going to be an increasingly bad campaign of the French forces against the Dutch Confederation into a victory for the French and Metzada. The question was what it was, and what I'd have to do after he played his hand.
Make it look like an accident, Pinhas Levine had said. Make it look like an accident.
Finally, the inspector's secretary beeped, and the door to his inner office slid open. "You may come in now."
At that, I sighed. Here we go again.
"Patience, Tetsuki, patience," said Shimon.
Thousand Worlds Commerce Department Inspector Arthur McCawber was a chubby little man, brown hair receding toward the top of his skull; a rather bad case of low-gee acne speckled his face. His handshake was tentative, as though he were afraid that the big, bad Metzadan would crush his fingers to a pulp if he exerted any pressure.
I don't like the short, nervous types with weak handshakes; they tend to sublimate their fear. It almost always comes out in other ways. I also didn't like the way that he only shook hands with Shimon and me, as though the stripes on the sleeve of Zev's khakis made him a non-person.
"I'm pleased to meet you, Inspector," I said, releasing his hand. "But it's not General—I'm Metzada's Inspector-General. I'm here to witness the Eighteenth Regiment's fulfillment of its contract with the Montenier colony."
He waved us to seats, two guards taking up positions on either side and one behind. "Or lack thereof," McCawber said. "When last I'd heard, the Dutch still had them bogged down on the banks of the . . . Nouveau Loire."
Shimon raised an eyebrow. "Loire? I thought that the river was generally known as the Neu Hunse. Named after the river in Der Nederlands, Earthside, no?"
"For the time being, that is the name that's being used. But
, as soon as the Metzadan Mercenary Corps regains control of the French-chartered region for the French, I expect that the original, French name will become more . . . appropriate." He smiled at his little joke, then sighed. "Quite a mess."
"I've seen worse," Shimon said.
Alsace was a mess, of course. The chartering colony had been French—hence the planet's French name. But the original Montenier colony died off in one of the harsh winters that sweep across Alsace's only habitable continent. The Dutch settlers had managed to hang on, but neither they nor their countrymen back home had the political leverage to get the Montenier charter lifted.
If you're into morality as opposed to legality, you'd probably agree that the Dutch had the better claim: they had managed to survive, and even flourish a trifle—and it was a Dutch settler who had taken the time to examine the properties of hempwood, and turned Alsace from a dumping ground into a financial bonanza for the Thousand Worlds.
And, of course, indirectly stimulated the second wave of French immigration. Old Van Huysen was probably regretting, from the safety of his grave, that he'd discovered that the hempwood tree's fibers were long, tangled monofilament chains with an incredible tensile strength and heat resistance, usable as linings for rocket nozzles or as the basic building material for skystalks on small, low-gee worlds.
His discovery had brought the French back. And, indirectly, brought some employment to Metzada, when the Dutch Confederation started to express its resentment at French taxation of goods flowing south on the Neu Hunse to the launcher.
McCawber went on: "I'm sure you're wondering why I had you taken off of the shuttle."
He was ready for me to snap back at him, so I didn't answer for a moment. Besides, I wasn't at all curious: McCawber's Dutch sympathies were obvious.
Not that I had any complaint about that. My sympathies were similar. And, similarly, beside the point. Since when does your duty have anything at all to do with your personal sympathies?
I looked at my uncle. Since when does your duty have anything at all to do with your personal sympathies?
Shimon Bar-El smiled back at me, as though to say, Never has, never does, never will.
I'd let McCawber stew long enough. I dropped a few words into the silence: "You want to negotiate a settlement."
The Commerce Department people always want to negotiate a settlement. There's a belief on Metzada that the Commerce Department was actually founded by Neville Chamberlain, but that's a canard. Chamberlain had been dead for a century before even the predecessor to the Commerce Department was founded.
"Obviously." He smiled slightly. "The Commerce Department's only interest is in improving the hempwood trade."
And, as usual, trying to put some shorts in Metzada's circuits, I thought.
Zev didn't see any reason to leave it as a thought. "The hempwood trade. Not Metzada's trade. I get awfully tired of that."
McCawber wasn't used to us. He looked from Shimon to me as though asking which one of us was going to slap this sergeant down for his presumption. Under other circumstances, I might have done that, just to try to build a basis for communication between McCawber and me—which was probably why Zev had spoken out in the first place—
But I couldn't do it in front of Shimon. We tend to behave differently around him. My shoulders pulled themselves back. "Good point, Zev."
Zev sneered for just a moment "Thank you, General," he said, insincerely.
McCawber's lips were almost white. "Are you suggesting that there's something wrong with the Dutch and the French settling their difficulties by negotiation?"
I shrugged. "As I'm sure General Davis told you, that's not what Metzada does. If Phillipe Montenier wanted negotiation, he could have taken it up with you."
He shrugged. "Montenier says that he isn't interested in settlement, just in collecting his taxes on Dutch shipping. I'd hoped that—"
"I'd betray an employer?" I shook my head. "I doubt it."
"I was once accused of betraying an employer, inspector," Shimon Bar-El said quiedy. "There wasn't enough evidence to prove it, mind you, but there was enough to have me stripped of my rank and citizenship, and exiled from Metzada." His hand gripped my shoulder with surprising strength. "Don't expect my nephew to put himself in the way of that."
"Metzada has a contract with Montenier," I said. "For the next five-minus-a-fraction standard years, the Eighteenth will do its damndest to keep the lower river under French control." I shrugged. "As far as we're concerned, he can take one hundred percent of the cargo of Dutch shipping, not the seventy-five he's demanding."
I didn't discuss Montenier's response when a Dutch paddle-wheel would try to evade the tax; McCawber knew it as well as I did.
But he pressed. "Perhaps you'll consider forfeiting your performance bond, and pulling the regiment off Alsace? I'm authorized to rebate most of the bond. My only interest is in seeing the planet develop, helping them sell enough fiber to bring their technology up to—"
"So what?" Shimon snorted. "Metzada doesn't give a shit what your interests are."
"Shimon." I held up a hand. "Inspector, what if word gets out that Metzada can be bought off? Even by the Thousand Worlds Commerce Department?"
"Really, I am just trying to see if there's a peaceful way to do this, to—"
"You're ignoring the fact that Metzada wants to sell its services elsewhere, is what you're doing," Shimon Bar-El said.
"The matter is closed." I can be diplomatic, when the situation calls for it. It rarely does. "Now, when can we shuttle down? I'm looking forward to getting to work."
He smiled thinly. "Almost immediately. We have a shuttle leaving for—"
His secretary beeped. "Deputy Inspector Celia von du Mark is—"
It shut off as she barged in, her shortish black hair whipping around her face as she squared off with McCawber. "I thought we agreed that my people would go over these Metzadans' gear," she snapped. "They're tricky, Arthur. You can take my word for it."
"Hello, Celia. How are you?" I kept my voice casual.
She hadn't stopped to take a good look at us before; she did now.
"Shimon Bar-El. Aren't you supposed to be dead?"
"It's good to see you, too," Shimon said. "I'm surprised you recognize me in mufti. Flattered, too. You'll remember my nephew, Tetsuo Hanavi. I don't think you've met Sergeant Zev Aroni."
Celia glanced at my collar. "General?"
"Inspector-general, actually. I was just a line colonel when we met, wasn't I? And I seem to recall you were a full inspector; don't quite remember for sure. . . ."
"I remember," she hissed. "I was demoted to deputy after that Indess affair. You and your uncle came close to ruining my career."
I allowed myself a smile.
"You are much too kind," Shimon said. "How do you like your new post?"
Ignoring us, she turned back to McCawber. "I thought we'd agreed that I'd take care of screening the Metzadans' gear. Your monkeys are swarming all over it."
I raised an eyebrow. "Find anything interesting? Someday, I swear I'm going to leave a bomb in a locker—no timing device or anything like that; just a gimmick to set off a kilo of HE if someone opens my bag. Negative feedback can correct many a problem. In fact—"
"Tetsuo. Shush." For a moment, Shimon's eyes twinkled. "Besides, essence of skunk would work better."
"In any case . . ." I stood. "I'll leave you two to your argument. Inspector McCawber, please let me know when we're cleared for the surface." I didn't bother to tell them where I'd be; no doubt McCawber's people would be keeping an eye on me.
He glared at me. "You're cleared now. Your shuttle leaves in . . . fifty-three minutes."
"Fine." I glanced down at my thumbnail. "Then we should be in Marne in—"
"Not Port Marne. Port Leewenhoek. All of the shuttles down to French territory are full for the next . . . seventeen hundred hours," he said, clearly picking the figure out of the air. "Perhaps you would prefer to wait? Or would you r
ather shuttle down to Port Leewenhoek? I'm sure that the Dutch have some things that they would like to . . . discuss with you."
I looked slowly from the guard on my right to the one on my left, then back to McCawber. Clearly, we were not going to be getting on a shuttle into French territory. Not now. And not in seventeen hundred hours, either.
Zev's voice was almost too low. "Maybe there's something you and I should discuss right now, Inspector."
"Shut up, Sergeant," Shimon Bar-El snapped. "We'll take the Leewenhoek shuttle," he added, said, quiedy. "Leewenhoek is just fine."
McCawber didn't know what to make of that. We were supposed to refuse.
"Sounds good to me," I said, nodding.
Celia didn't like it, either. "I'll be going along, Hanavi," she said.
"Be a bit dangerous around me, won't it?" An inspector-general is, technically, a non-combatant; officially, the Dutch couldn't touch me or my staff.
I wasn't worried about that; it was the possibility of unofficial touching that bothered me. My experience is that a body cools to room temperature just as quickly when the killing is informal as it does when all the forms have been met.
She shook her head. "I'll have a squad of peacemakers. This way," she said as she turned to McCawber, "I can keep an eye on him. I don't understand people who kill for money."
Shimon looked straight at her. "No, you don't understand," he said.
She snorted. "So be it. I'll be watching you, you can be sure of that."
I forced a smile. "Going to protect me, eh?"
"Don't count on it."
"I'm not," Shimon said.
Neither was I.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Alsace Landfall
Alsace, Northern Continent
Port Leewenhoek
03/07/44, 1357 local time
From the window of the banking skipshuttle, the four-klick-long runway looked awfully short, awfully narrow. Some trick of color and perspective made it look separate from the green that surrounded the landing field, as though it were a narrow stick that God was going to use to swat us out of the sky.
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