by David Drake
But Lady Anne McGill, companion and confidante of the President's wife, had no wish to advertise her presence here in the rotunda.
Desoix tapped on the door. He heard the lock click before the panel opened, hiding Anne behind it from anyone outside. Maybe her ambivalence was part of the attraction, he thought as he stepped into a conference room. There was a small, massively built table, chairs for six, and space for that many more people to stand if they knew one another well.
All the room held at the moment was the odor of heavy tobaccos,so omni present on Bamberia that Desoix noticed it only because he'd been off-planet for two weeks . . . and Anne McGill in layers of silk chiffon which covered her like mist, hiding everything while everything remained suggested.
Desoix put his arms around her.
"Charles, it's very dangerous," she said, turning so that his lips met her cheek.
He nuzzled her ear and, when she caught his right hand, he reached for her breast with his left.
"Ah . . ." he said as a different level of risk occurred to him. "Your husband's still stationed on Two, isn't he?"
"Of course," Anne muttered scornfully.
She was no longer fighting off his hands, but she was relaxing only slightly and that at a subconscious level."You don't think Bertrand would be here when things are like this, do you? There's a Consistory Meeting every morning now, but things are getting worse. Anyone can see that. Eunice says that they're all cowards, all the men, even her husband."
She let her lips meet his. Her body gave a shudder and she gripped Desoix to her as fiercely as her tension a moment before had attempted to repel him."You should be upstairs now,"she whispered as she turned her head again."They need you and your major, he's very upset."
"My call unit would have told me that if I'd asked it," the UDB officer said as he shifted the grip of his hands. Anne was a big woman, large boned and with a tendency toward fat that she repressed fiercely with exercise and various diets. She wore nothing beneath the bottom layer of chiffon except the smooth skin which Desoix caressed. His hand ran up her thigh to squeeze the fat of her buttock against the firm muscle beneath.
"Then don't be long . . ." Anne whispered as she reached for the fly of his trousers.
Desoix didn't know quite what she meant by that.
But he knew that it didn't matter as he backed his mistress against the table, lifting the chiffon dress to spill over the wood where there would be no risk of staining the fabric.
Chapter Seven
"Captain Tyl Koopman,representing Hammer's Regiment,"boomed the greeter, holding the door of the Consistory Room ajar—and blocking Tyl away from it with her body, though without appearing to do so.
"Enter," said someone laconically from within. The greeter swept the panel open with a flourish, bowing to Tyl.
Machines could have done all the same things, Tyl thought with amusement; but they wouldn't have been able to do them with such pomp. Even so, the greeter, a plump woman in an orange and silver gown, was only a hint of the peacock-bright gathering within the Consistory Room.
There were twenty or thirty people, mostly men, within the domed room above the rotunda. Natural lighting through the circumference of arched windows made the Slammers officer blink. It differed in quality (if not necessarily intensity) from the glowstrips in the corridors through which he had been guided to reach the room.
The only men whose garments did not glitter with metallic threads were those whose clothing glowed with internal lambency from powerpacks woven into the seams. President John Delcorio, in black velvet over which a sheen trembled from silver to ultraviolet, was the most striking of the lot.
"Good to see you at last,Captain,"Delcorio boomed as if inassurance that Tyl would recognize him—as he did from the holograms set in niches in the hallways of the Palace of Government."Maybe your veterans can put some backbone into our own forces, don't you think? So that we can all get down to the real business of cleansing Two for Christ."
He glowered at a middle-aged man whose uniform was probably that of a serving officer, because its dark green was so much less brilliant than what anyone else in the room seemed to be wearing.
John Delcorio was shorter than Tyl had assumed, but he had the chest and physical presence of a big man indeed. His hair, moustache, and short beard were black with gray speckles that were probably works of art: the President was only thirty-two standard years old. He had parlayed his position as Head of Security into the presidency when the previous incumbent, his uncle, died three years before.
Delcorio's eyes sparkled, and the flush on his cheeks was as much ruddy good health as a vestige of his present anger. Tyl could understand how a man with eyes that sharp could cut his way to leadership of a wealthy planet.
But he could also see how such a man's pushing would bring others to push back, push hard . . . .
Maybe too hard.
"Sir," Tyl replied, wondering what you were supposed to call the President of Bamberia when you met him. "I haven't been fully briefed yet on the situation. But Hammer's Slammers carry out their contracts."
He hoped that was neutral enough; and he hoped to the Lord that Delcorio would let him drop into the background now.
"Yes, well," said Delcorio. The quick spin of his hand was more or less the dismissal Tyl had hoped for."Introduce Major Koopman to the others, Thomas. Have something to drink—" There was a well-stocked sideboard beneath one of the windows, and most of those present had glasses in their hands. "We're waiting for Bishop Trimer, you see."
"How long are you going to wait before you send for him, John?" asked the woman in the red dress that shimmered like a gasoline flame. She wasn't any taller than the President; but like him, she flashed with authority as eye-catching as her clothes. "You are the President, you know."
It struck Tyl that Delcorio and this woman who could only be his wife wore the colors of the Easter factions he had seen at daggers-drawn in the plaza. That made as little sense as anything else in Bamberg City.
"Major, then, is it?"murmured a slender fellow at Tyl's elbow, younger than the mercenary had been when he joined the Slammers. "I'm Thom Chastain,don't you see, and this is my brother Richie. What would you like to drink?"
"Ah, I'm really just a captain," Tyl said, wondering whether Delcorio had misheard, was being flattering—or was incensed that Hammer had sent only a company commander in response to a summons from his employer. "Ah, I don't think . . . ."
"Eunice,"the President was saying in a voice like a slap,"this is scarcely the time to precipitate disaster by insulting the man who can stabilize the situation."
"The army can stabilize—" the woman snapped.
"It isn't the business of the army—" boomed the soldier in green.
The volume of his interruption shocked him as well as the others in the wrangle. All three paused.When the discussion resumed, it was held in voices low enough to be ignored if not unheard.
"Queen Eunice," said Thom Chastain, shaking his head. There was a mixture of affection and amusement in his voice, but Tyl had been in enough tight places to recognize the flash of fear in the young man's eyes. "She's really a terror, isn't she?"
"Ah," Tyl said while his mind searched for a topic that had nothing to do with Colonel Hammer's employers. "You gentlemen are in the army also, I gather?"
There were couches around most of the walls. Near one end was a marble conference table that matched the inlaid panels between the single-sheet vitril windows. Nobody was sitting down, and the groups of two or three talking always seemed to be glancing over their collective shoulders toward the door, waiting for the missing man.
"Oh, well, these," said the other Chastain brother, Richie—surely a twin. He flicked the collar of his blue and gold uniform, speaking with the diffidence Tyl had felt at being addressed as "Major."
"We're honorary colonels in the Guards, you know," said Thom. "But it's because of our grandfather. We're not very inter . . . ."
"Well, Gra
ndfather Chastain was, you know," said Richie, taking up where his brother's voice trailed off. "He was president some years ago. Esteban Delcorio succeeded him, but Thom and I are something like colonels for life—"
"—and so we wear—"
They concluded, both together, "But we aren't soldiers the way you are, Major."
"Or Marshal Dowell,either,"Thom Chastain added later, nodding tothe man in green who had broken away from the Delcorios—leaving them to hiss at one another. "Now, what would you like to drink?"
Just about anything, thought Tyl.So long as it had enough kick to knock him on his ass . . . which, in a situation like this, would get him sacked if the colonel didn't decide he should instead be shot out of hand. Why in blazes hadn't somebody from the staff been couriered over on an "errand" that left him available to talk informally with the civil authorities?
"Nothing for me, thank you," Tyl said aloud. "Or, ah, water?"
Marshal Dowell had fallen in with a tall man whose clothes were civilian in cut, though they carried even more metallic brocade than trimmed the military uniforms. The temporary grouping broke apart abruptly when Dowell turned away and the tall man shouted at his back, "No, I don't think that's a practical solution, Marshal! Abdicating your responsibilities makes it impossible for me to carry out mine."
"Berne is the City Prefect," Thom whispered into Tyl's ear. The Chastain brothers were personable kids—but"kid"was certainly the word for them. They seemed even younger than their probable age—which was old enough to ride point in an assault force, in Tyl's terms of reference.
From the other side, Richie was saying, "There's been a lot of trouble in the streets recently,you know. Berne keeps saying that he doesn't have enough police to take care of it."
"It is not in the interests of God or the State," responded Marshal Dowell, his voice shrill and his face as red as a flag, "that we give up the Crusade on Two because of some rabble that the police would deal with if they were used with decision!"
Tyl saw a man in uniform staring morosely out over the city. The uniform was familiar; desire tricked the Slammers officer into thinking that he recognized the man as well.
"'Scuse me,"he muttered to the Chastains and strode across the circular room. "Ah, Lieutenant Desoix?"
Tyl's swift motion drew all eyes in the room to him—so he felt/knew that everyone recognized his embarrassment when the figure in silhouette at the window turned: a man in his mid-forties, jowls sagging, paunch sagging . . . Twenty years older than Charles Desoix and twenty kilos softer.
"Charles?" the older man barked as his eyes quested the room for the subject of Tyl's call.
"Where have you—"
Then he realized, from the way the Slammers officer's face went from enthusiastic to stricken, what had happened. He smiled, an expression that reminded Tyl of snow slumping away from a rocky hillside in the spring, and said,"You'd be Hammer's man? I'm Borodin,got the battery of the UDB here that keeps them all—" he nodded toward nothing in particular, pursing his lips to make the gesture encompass everyone in the room "—safe in their bed."
The scowl with which Major Borodin followed the statement made a number of the richly dressed Bamberg officials turn their interest to other parts of the room.
Tyl was too concerned with controlling his own face to worry about the reason for Borodin's anger—which was explained when the UDB officer continued, "I gather we're looking for the same man.And I must say,if you could get down from orbit in time to be here, I don't understand what Charles' problem can be."
"He—" said Tyl.Then he smiled brightly and replaced his intended statement with,"I'm sure Lieutenant Desoix will be here as soon as possible. It's very—difficult out there, getting around, it seems to me."
"Tell me about it, boy," Borodin grunted as he turned again to the window, not so much rude as abstracted.
They were looking out over the third-story porch which faced the front of the Palace of Government. In the courtyard below were the foreshortened honor guard and the flag, still drooping and unrecognizable. The river beyond was visible only by inference. Its water, choked between the massive levees, was covered with barges ten and twelve abreast, waiting to be passed through beneath the plaza.
On the other side of the river—
"That's the City Offices, then?" Tyl asked.
Where he and the men under his temporary charge were billeted. And where now police vehicles swarmed, disgorging patrolmen and comatose prisoners in amazing numbers.
"Claims to be," Borodin grunted. "Don't see much sign that anything's being run from there, do you?"
He glanced around. He was aware enough of his surroundings to make sure that nobody but the other mercenary officer would overhear the next comment. "Or from here, you could bloody well say."
The door opened. The scattered crowd in the Consistory Room turned toward the sound with the sudden unanimity of a school of fish changing front.
"Father Laughlin, representing the Church," called the greeter in a clear voice that left its message unmistakable.
The President's face settled as if he had just watched one wing of the building crumble away. Eunice Delcorio swore like a transportation sergeant.
"Wait out here, boys," said a huge man—soft-looking but not far short of two meters in height—in white priestly vestments. "You won't be needed."
He was speaking, Tyl saw through the open door, to a quartet of "hospital orderlies." They looked even more like shock troops than they had in the street, though these weren't carrying their staffs.
Eunice Delcorio swore again. The skin over her broad cheekbones had gone sallow with rage.
Father Laughlin appeared to be at ease and in perfect control of himself, but Tyl noticed that the priest ducked instinctively when he entered the room—though he would have had to be a full meter taller to bump his head on any of the lintels in the Palace of Government.
"Where's Trimer?" Delcorio demanded in a voice that climbed a note despite an evident attempt to control it.
"Bishop Trimer, you—" Laughlin began smoothly.
"Where's Trimer?"
"Holding a Service of Prayer for Harmony in the cathedral,"the priest said,no longer trying to hide the ragged edges of emotion behind an unctuous wall.
"He was told to be here!"said Berne, the City Prefect, breaking into the conversation because he was too overwhelmed by his own concerns to leave the matter to the President. He stepped toward the priest, his green jacket fluttering—a rangy mongrel snarling at a fat mastiff, which will certainly make a meal of it should the mastiff deign to try.
"Bishop Trimer appreciated the President's invitation," Laughlin said, turning and nodding courteously toward Delcorio. "He sent me in response to it. He was gracious enough to tell me that he had full confidence in my ability to report your concerns to him. But his first duty is to the Church—and to all members of his flock, rather than to the secular authorities who have their own duties."
The Chastain brothers were typical of those in the Consistory Room, men of good family gathered around the President not so much for their technical abilities but because they controlled large blocks of wealth and personnel on their estates. They watched from the edges of the room with the fascination of spectators at a bloody accident, saying nothing and looking away whenever the eyes of one of the principals glanced across them.
"All right," said Eunice Delcorio to her husband. Her eyes were as calm as the crust on a pool of lava. "Now you've got to recall troops. Tell him."
She pointed toward Marshal Dowell, scorning to look at the military commander directly.
"Your will, madam—" Dowell began with evident dislike.
"My will is that you station two regiments in the city at once, Marshal Dowell," Eunice Delcorio said with a voice that crackled like liquid oxygen flowing through a field of glass needles. "Or that you wait in the cells across the river until some successor of my husband chooses to release you."
"With your leave, sir," D
owell huffed in the direction of the President.
The Marshal was angry now, and it wasn't the earlier flashing of someone playing dangerous political games with his peers. He was lapsing into the normal frustration of a professional faced with laymen who didn't understand why he couldn't do something they thought was reasonable.
"Madam," Dowell continued with a bow to Eunice Delcorio, "your will impresses me, but it doesn't magically make transport for three thousand men and their equipment available on Two.It doesn't provide rations and accommodations for them here. And if executed with no more consideration than I've been able to give it in this room, away from my staff, it will almost certainly precipitate the very disasters that concern you."
"You—" Dowell went on.
"You—" Eunice Delcorio snapped.
"You—" the City Prefect shouted.
"You—" Father Laughlin interrupted weightily.
"You will all be silent!" said John Delcorio, and though the President did not appear to raise his voice to an exceptional level, none of the angry people squabbling in front of him continued to speak.
The two mercenary officers exchanged glances. It had occurred to both of them that any situation was salvageable if the man in charge retained the poise that President Delcorio was showing now.
"Gentlemen, Eunice," Delcorio said, articulating the thought the mercenaries had formed. "We are the government, not a mob of street brawlers. So long as we conduct ourselves calmly but firmly, this minor storm will be weathered and we will return to ordinary business."
He nodded to the priest."And to the business of God,to the Crusade on Two. Father Laughlin, I trust that Bishop Trimer will take all necessary precautions to prevent his name from being used by those who wish to stir up trouble?"
Delcorio's voice was calm, but nobody in the room doubted how intense the reaction might be if the priest did not respond properly.
"Of course, President Delcorio," Laughlin said, bowing low.
There was a slight motion on the western edge of the room as a door opened to pass a big woman floating in a gown of white chiffon. She wasn't announced by a greeter, and she made very little stir at this juncture in the proceedings as she slipped through the room to stand near Eunice Delcorio.