Lou nodded uncomfortably. "I think I have to agree with that."
"Don't go getting yourselves all jumpy too hasty," Zeke told them. "That's just what they want. Things aren't gonna get like that anytime soon. Folks out here might like their independence, but they have a way of acting together real quick when someone starts getting too heavy-handed. These Zorken people might be mean, but they're smart enough to know that. It'll be talk and bluff for a long while." Kieran wasn't so sure he agreed, but any advice not to panic was good advice. He let it ride.
Nailikar, who was watching the c-com unit mounted on the wall at the end of the table, looked around suddenly. The screen was showing the view from an outside camera trained on the parked Mule a few hundred feet away. "They're coming out now," he announced. Conversation ceased as everyone moved to get a better view. Two suited figures were descending the Mule's access steps. Nailikar brought up a zoom window showing their heads and shoulders in close-up as they began walking back toward the expedition's camp. Trevany was not looking happy behind the visor of his helmet; Jean, about the same. "Base here, Walter, we're reading you," Nailikar said. "How'd it go?"
Trevany shook his head. A heavy sigh came over the audio. "We tried, guys. Offered to give them a tour. The upshot is they think it's quaint, but they're not interested—it's just a pile of old rocks. Their orders from head office are to wheel in some persuasion if we don't move. I don't know what we do now. I'm new here. Wait until Hamil and the others get back up from the Hole, I guess."
But even from where he was sitting, Kieran could read the dejection written across his face. This wasn't a situation that these people were equipped or experienced to handle, he could see. As Katrina had said, trying to match force with force wouldn't be Hamil's way; furthermore, a group such as this, divorced from Terran scientific orthodoxy, would have little recourse to institutions or political connections capable of initiating some defense from that quarter either.
It was a job, then, he decided, for the Knight.
11
The first requirement of any job was adequate information. While the scientists went into a cycle of debating around repeating circles, Kieran ensconced himself in the Juggernaut and began familiarizing himself with as much as was publicly on record concerning Zorken Consolidated's plans for the area. To his surprise, it turned out that the project to develop a spaceport at Tharsis was on hold indefinitely. The results of the pilot survey were stated as deeming the site unsuitable, although no further details were given. Zorken had already filed intentions to proceed with investigating possible alternative sites. And that made Kieran immediately both curious and suspicious. If they were no longer interested in the Tharsis site for the original reasons, then what did they want it for? It might help, he decided, to know something more about the kind of people that Banks had brought with him.
A code that Donna at Triplanetary had supplied him with a while ago gave him access to the spacelines' passenger lists of recent arrivals on Mars. Kieran located the Zorken group without much difficulty, all on tickets charged to the corporation: Justin Banks; Gertrude Heissen; Tran Xedeidang; Clarence Porter. Whoever else was with the Mule—crew, more employees, agents and consultants—must have been brought in locally. That was all that the spaceline records could tell him. Building meaty bodies around such scanty bones was part of the magic that June excelled at. In any case, it gave Kieran a reason to call her. She answered from her apartment in Nineveh.
"Well, hi! A face from the wilderness. I was beginning to wonder if you'd decided to take up a life as an ascetic recluse out there."
"Oh, there are times when it sounds tempting, but fortunately they don't last," Kieran replied. "How are things in the vast metropolis?"
"Metropolitan. Sarda's been retired from the limelight at Quantonix—the story is, to rest up and concentrate on getting straightened out."
"At Doctor Balmer's spa and cure-all."
"Exactly. More likely it's to concentrate on finding where the money went before the money people's patience runs out."
"They've been covering the territory. I got a call from Mahom a few days back, saying that some unworthies had been out at the lot asking about me. I don't think it was because of concern over my health and happiness."
June's eyebrows rose. "Really? Then maybe my concern for it, and getting you out of sight wasn't such a bad thing after all."
"Seems like it."
"How did they get a lead on you at Mahom's?" June asked.
"I'm not sure. Sometimes my popularity just runs ahead of me."
June dismissed it with a toss of her head as one of those facts of existence surrounding Kieran that would never be explained. "So how's the budding archeologist? Have you decided yet that your whole life so far has been misguided, and discovered your true calling to be a search for solitude, serenity, and peace of the soul?"
"Not quite. But we've run into some complications."
"Now why doesn't that surprise me?"
"What they've found here as far as the scientific side goes is staggering: constructions from some long-lost culture. No question about it. But even more astounding is that they show every sign of being related to the Technolithic structures on Earth. I can see now why Walter rushed out here."
The frivolity vanished from June's face. "You're serious?" The question was reflexive. Even with all Kieran's quirks and convolutions, she knew when he was and was not joking. "So what's the complication?"
"A big construction and mining outfit from the Belt, called Zorken Consolidated, has first dibs on the site, and they're not letting a few rocks and ideas of dead aliens get in the way of the holy flow of dollars. Some of their people showed up here and are waving an eviction notice with threats."
June nodded in a way that called for no elaboration. "What are they staking it out for?" she asked curiously.
"That's the funny part. The original plan was for another spaceport. But I've just checked with the registries in Lowell, and that plan has already been shelved. So who are these people from Zorken and what do they want? I've got four names who arrived from off-planet out of the spaceline lists. Will you get what you can on them for me?"
"Sure. Shoot them through."
Kieran clicked a button to send off the list. "And how is the new lord of your manor making out?"
"Guinness? Oh, he's out somewhere with Patti from the Oasis and her friend. I think you might be lucky if you get him back." Kieran was about to respond, and then a distant look came over his face suddenly. June waited. "What is it?" she asked.
"Guinness . . . That could be it. He was with us when we intercepted Sarda-One on his way to the bank. Balmer has probably restored his memories by now. Guinness would have given something different for people going around asking questions to latch on to."
"So how would they connect from there to Mahom's place?" June asked.
Kieran thought for a moment longer, then shook his head. "I don't know. Anyhow, it doesn't make any difference now. I've got some more things I want to check. Get back to me with whatever you come up with on these four as soon as you can, would you, Lovely Lady?"
"Flattery will get you most places you want to go. Okay, Kieran, I'll get on to it right away."
* * *
Like celebrities and political leaders, high executives in business tended to be driven by egos whose sense of importance was served by having their success stories, views on life, pearls of wisdom, and whatever other contributions they felt might be valuable to posterity, widely circulated for worldly consumption. In short, they were hardly publicity shy, and since they suffered from no shortage of the wherewithal and influence to gain visibility, were always happy to oblige media foragers looking for some fill or another angle on a story. This made it not especially difficult to put together surprisingly detailed pictures from interviews, gossip columns, profile pieces, and other sources available across the General Net. This, Kieran proceeded to do, garnishing the result with a few extra inside det
ails gleaned through calls to contacts he had acquired in media research departments and elsewhere.
Zorken's chief executive and president was a one Hamilton Horatio Gilder, who at 58 had held the position for eight years after promotion from vice president of the Legal Division—it was interesting that Zorken needed a full legal division, whereas most of even the larger-scale operations were able to make do with a department. Before that, he had climbed through the ranks from a background of finance, law, and business administration in a demonstration of loyalty and treachery surgically applied in appropriate directions in a way that would have earned a no-fault rating from Machiavelli. He had carved his way to the top—at least, so the adulatory testimonials said—without benefit of family connections or the impetus of previously entrenched wealth, but now presided over a dynasty of interlocking marriages and other forms of individual contract that owned the lion's bite of Zorken-controlled assets across the Central Solar System. The clan disported themselves in residences scattered through the Belt and the Jovian moons, and had been featured in articles depicting life among the fashionable on the beaches of western Florida, mountain resorts in Bavaria, and the pleasure city of Durban, South Africa.
Gilder himself had three offspring, none of them from the brief marriage he had attempted at an early age, declining to repeat the experience since. In this he represented a departure from the staid conformity still generally expected of senior executives, but far from offering contrition, he apparently reveled in the image of rebelliousness and untamed individualism that it gave him. "Moral high ground is just a refuge for the mediocre," he had told a journalist when the subject came up in an interview. The oldest daughter, Deirdre, 36, had withdrawn into a recluse religious order out in the Belt, and as a consequence wasn't alluded to much in the "Who's Where" reviews or the glitter pages. The antics and affairs of the 27-year-old playboy son, Achilles, however, received plenty of coverage. And then there was Marissa, 24, beautiful, beguiling, and doted upon, her wedding due that week, to be held at the corporate space-based citadel, Asgard, when it approached close to Mars.
It had been Hamilton Gilder, personally, who instigated the seizure of a delinquent customer's asteroidal minerals-extraction facility—and, it turned out, several similar actions that hadn't received the same publicity. In defense he had quoted Feliks Dzerzhinski, founder of the Soviet political police in the early 20th century: "Trust is good, but control is better." Gilder seemed to like airing quotes and being quoted. A couple of others that Kieran took as indicative of his broad philosophy of life were Collis Huntington, the long-gone U.S. railroad tycoon's: "Whatever isn't nailed down is mine. Whatever I can pry up isn't nailed down." And Charles Dickens: "Do other men, for they would do you." There was also: "Our work is business. Assuring freedom and justice has never been the money community's job," attributed to Gilder, but suspiciously close, Kieran was sure, to something he'd come across somewhere else.
Like many figures who worried that one day their power might wane, Gilder was concerned about health and dispensed advice on promoting it. Germs weren't the prime cause of anything, he maintained. Diseases happened when bodies already stressed and damaged for other reasons were no longer able to keep them in check. Attacking germs with drugs was just another way of misdirecting efforts on symptoms. The real causes lay with states of mind. If mere emotional extremes or exposure to the object of a phobia or a mania could produce physical changes, such as sweating, palpitations, flushing or paling, that were readily visible in moments, then what greater effects could be wrought by deeply rooted mental attitudes that persisted for months, years, or an entire lifetime? One of his favorite lines was, "There's a reality behind what you see that you have to connect with." Then, pointing to his head, "Learning to control what's in there is the key to controlling everything else."
And that was the lead into Hamilton Horatio Gilder's fundamental world view, which he used as his explanation or justification for everything else. Much of it seemed to have come from Marissa. Kieran wondered if she might have been influenced at an earlier age by the apparently spiritual and mystical leanings of Deirdre—but that wasn't the issue here.
Gilder believed that some higher force or powers guided the universe's fortunes, and that he and a certain select few enjoyed a privileged rapport with them. That, of course, accounted for his methods and successes without implying any recourse to the baser instincts that his critics were wont to invoke. It was simply that Gilder was in tune with the way of things. He didn't pretend to understand whatever laws drove the tides of human events in the complex patterns they moved in, but like any skillful navigator who knows the elements, he rode with them, claiming superior guidance and approbation for just about anything that suited his inclinations.
As an apology for grabbing what was going and sending others to the wall, it was a better construct than materialism and Darwin. Instead of pleading the absence of any law, Gilder embodied an even Higher Law. And of course he justified it with a quote: "It's the duty of any free person to live for their own sake, not for others. Exploitation isn't a mark of a depraved or primitive society. It's a consequence of following the natural compulsion to greatness and growth." This time Kieran recognized it as a steal from Nietzsche. Out of curiosity, he looked up references to the Gilderism that he'd been suspicious of earlier about freedom and justice never having been the money community's job. Sure enough, it was from Albert Camus.
He was still ruminating on how to put this newfound knowledge to use, when a call came through on his comset. He channeled it to the main screen he was using, expecting it to be June calling back. But the caller turned out to be somebody who preferred keeping to audio only. "Is this Kieran Thane?" a voice asked. It sounded like a young man's. "The guy they call the Knight?"
"This is he."
"You have a dog, right? And you're driving a rented Kodiak?"
Kieran's brow creased. "Who are you, and what is this?"
"A friend. I just wanted to warn you that the guys who are looking for you know where you are. I told them . . . but I didn't know who you were then. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm sorry. I'm trying to put things right."
Kieran's mind worked furiously. He had already said to June that Guinness must have been a giveaway. But even if someone had noticed the car and traced it to Alazahad Machine—which would explain Mahom's call before the expedition left Stony Flats—how would this person have gotten Kieran's net code? Only by rummaging through Mahom's directory or records. Kieran decided to gamble. "Come on," he challenged. "You work for Alazahad Machine, correct? So I can place you with one call to Mahom. You might as well show yourself and let us talk in a civilized fashion without the melodramatics."
A few seconds went by. Then the screen came on to show a character maybe in his early twenties, with a lean, swarthy face and wispy black hair, wearing a yellow bandana. He looked sheepish, apprehensive, yet at the same time visibly amazed. "How did you know?"
"I think I'm the one with the prerogative to be doing the asking," Kieran said pleasantly. "But first, how about a name, since you already know mine? Then let's have it from the beginning. Some people showed up at Alazahad's, asking about a man with a dog. . . ."
And so the story came out. Kieran had no doubt that Heaven was sending him an opportunity—in his own way, he sometimes believed in guiding higher powers too. His mind went back to the glimmerings of an idea that had begun to form about how Gilder, despite all his convictions—or maybe because of them—might prove the weak spot. "Okay, Solomon," he said when Leppo had finished, "I always admire a straight confession. But absolution will cost you more than three Hail Marys."
"What?" Leppo asked guardedly.
"You know those Aerobot 6-Cs? Mahom has a couple of them in that arsenal of his out back."
"Sure." Aerobots were a type of small flying drone, used for miscellaneous errands and deliveries all over Mars.
"I've got a small list of items from the store that I could us
e out here. Square things with Mahom, and then I'd like you to send them out right away. I'll get back to you shortly with an approach path and landing code. Would you do that?" Kieran's expression and tone conveyed that if Leppo did the sensible thing, he could find he had a strong and valuable friend for life—just as Mahom had. But he really didn't want this person as a foe.
Leppo swallowed visibly and nodded. "Sure," he said. "What do you need?"
12
After he had finished talking to Leppo, Kieran went back to the inflatable-frame cabin, where he set Harry Quong the task of downloading available plans for construction and standard communications equipment of the Mule general purpose, low altitude, medium-haul transporter. By then it was late in the afternoon. While the others took a break from their debating to move around, some going outside to stretch cramped limbs, he sprawled out with a pen and note pad in an easy chair in the corner of the messroom and lost himself in thought, intermittently adding to a growing web of jottings and doodles copiously sprinkled with arrows, query marks, and exclamation points. Almost an hour later, he chewed on his pen and stared at a summary account of his labors in the form of the lines:
Replete with empire, fame, and wealth,
Hamilton frets for mind and health.
Seeking after higher things,
That guide the fates of priests and kings.
Would such a soul fear ancient powers,
Locked in pyramids and towers?
Then he got up, poured himself a mug of coffee, and went over to where Dennis Curry was sitting with Jean at the end of the long table.
"Hi, guys."
"Well, it's nice to see you're among us again," Dennis said. "You looked as if you were composing your life's memoirs or something."
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