by David Drake
"Where's Biber?" Yerby shouted cheerfully as if he were calling a dog. "Here, Mayor-Mayor-Mayor! Ah, there you are."
Mayor Biber was covered, head to toe, with half-dried muck. He'd managed to blow his nostrils and mouth open; his eyes glared furiously out from deep mud caves.
"I demand you provide us with showers and clean clothes this instant, you pirate!" he cried, showering chunks of dirt. The other Zeniths edged away from him.
"Oh, I don't figure we'll do that," Yerby said mildly. "You folk were so determined to take our land that it'd be right unneighborly to let you go home without some of it. But that's not what we need to talk about."
"I demand!" Biber screamed.
Settlers began to laugh. Mark noticed from the corner of his eye that Amy was recording the scene.
"The question," Yerby said, as if the Mayor hadn't spoken, "is whether you pay your folks' passage back to Dittersdorf or I do."
"There's no way you can make me pay anything, you bandit!" the mayor said. "Any payment will be extorted by force! My bank will refuse any such demand if it's presented."
"Not a bit of it," Yerby said. "Amy, dear, you're getting all this?"
She nodded from behind the camera.
"What I'm saying is that I will pay the passage for every single one of your people to Dittersdorf myself," Yerby said. "Because I'm a friend to the distressed. It's just yours I won't pay. And you won't be held a prisoner if you don't want to pay, neither. I'll return you to your own ship this instant."
Biber's mouth opened, closed, and stayed closed for a moment.
"That's a damned good idea," a woman said. She was one of the prisoners. "A damned good idea!" There was a general rumble of agreement among the Zeniths close enough to hear.
"I'll pay," Biber squeaked.
"One more thing, Yerby," Mark said. "Our guests should be stripped and hosed off right here before they board."
Yerby planted his fists on his hipbones. "I like 'em the way they are," he said truculently.
Mark grinned and shook his head. "One at a time," he explained. "While Amy records the process. For history."
Yerby guffawed and hugged Mark. "See how smart the little fellow is?" he called to the laughing crowd.
"And while that's going on," Mark added, "I'm going to the tavern and taking a proper shower!"
23. More Company
The Zeniths would get clean enough in the jet from the firehose, but hot water in the Spiker's shower room sucked the fatigue from Mark's muscles as well as sluicing the mud away. He was stretching, wondering what could be a greater luxury, when a draft from the door opening made the mist swirl. Mark peered from the spray.
"Mr. Maxwell?" Blaney called. "There's a fellow here wants to see you when you're free. A gentleman, I shouldn't be surprised."
Mark shut off the taps. "What's he want?" he asked, taking the borrowed towel from a sheltered niche. Under the towel were the canvas work clothes he'd borrowed also. He wasn't sure he'd ever believe the coveralls that went through The Goo were clean enough to wear again.
"Wouldn't say, sir," Blaney said, helping Mark on with the pull-over shirt. "Got in this morning from Dittersdorf. When he saw you come in, he said he'd wait till you cleaned up. He figured you'd want that."
"He was right," Mark muttered. It couldn't be somebody from Zenith intending to kidnap him, could it? Surely not here at the Spiker!
The local boots were soft and almost shapeless. Mark cinched them to his legs with the external straps and strode with Blaney into the barracks-style bunkroom to see who was waiting for him.
His father was waiting for him.
Lucius put a finger to his lips and said "No names just now!" before Mark could blurt a greeting. "Let's take a walk, shall we?"
He gave Blaney a nod of bland approval. Down the hallway somebody overset a tray with a crash. A man and a woman began to shout recriminations at one another. Blaney shook his head regretfully and scurried off to take charge.
"Yeah, I guess we ought to," Mark agreed. He followed his father toward the back door. Lucius wore loose-fitting battle dress that had been used hard in the past. It gave Mark the general impression of being gray, but in the sunlight he could see that it was really a mix of many tiny dots of color from violet to deep red.
As well as being practical, the garment was a perfect disguise. No casually met Greenwood settler would connect this figure with Attorney Maxwell of Quelhagen. It was typical of Lucius to wear something absolutely appropriate. Mark only wondered where his father had found it.
"I wasn't expecting you," he said. Boy, he was repeating everything since he came to Greenwood.
Lucius shrugged. "I had a question that only you could answer," he said. "It wasn't one I thought I could entrust to anybody else to carry, so I—" He smiled, a tight expression to cover embarrassment with humor. "—took the excuse to visit you in your new environment."
They were at the back of the tavern, overlooking the river. From here the view was beautiful. If you got closer to the edge of the bluff, you could see the moraine of garbage and slaughterhouse waste. The recycling plant hadn't been delivered yet, and Mark hadn't figured quite how to deal with the accumulation from previous years either.
"I believe," Lucius said, fixing Mark with his eyes, "that the Alliance Protectorate Office is going to suggest a compromise: that all Hestia grants held by actual settlers be confirmed, but that Hestia grants in the hands of nonresident investors become void. I suspect that the Zenith syndicate will be smart enough to accept the offer." He grinned coldly. "Certainly I would advise them to accept it if they were my clients. I need to know what your feelings about the offer are, Mark."
Mark's face remained blank. The question didn't matter. What worried him was why his father had asked him. He couldn't imagine a reason.
"Ah," Mark said. There were two dirigibles and dozens of flyers in the sky, more than you'd usually see airborne at one time. Settlers were pouring toward the Spiker from distant tracts, either too late to join the defense or just interested in the spectacle of victory.
Mark met his father's gaze again. "Dad," he said, "I can't speak for Greenwood. I don't have any idea what the people want. There's probably as many notions as there are settlers. It's that sort of place."
He cleared his throat and added diffidently, "Besides, it's the investors who're really paying your costs, isn't it? Surely they wouldn't agree to that."
"If I wanted to know what the whole citizenry of Greenwood wished," Lucius said, each syllable snapping out like a trap shutting, "I suppose I'd hold a referendum. I cannot imagine bothering to do so, since they've put Yerby Bannock in charge. If they're wise, they'll do whatever he says and like it."
Mark stiffened to attention. "Father—" he said.
"As for the investors who may ethically be considered my clients, Mark," Lucius continued with the same cold passion, "I assure you that if it becomes impossible for me to meet both my personal and my professional obligations, I will resign the latter without a qualm. I was a man before I became a lawyer. Now—" His tone softened minutely. "—will you please answer the original question?"
"Yes, sir," Mark said. "Sir, I stand with Greenwood. With the planet, I mean. I hope with the people too, but I can't say about that."
He coughed and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. His skin smelled of the harsh soap with which he'd scrubbed off The Goo.
"Dad," Mark went en, "if the Zeniths win—and that's winning—they'll bring in preformed cities, hundreds of thousands of people. Settlers like that aren't really immigrants, they're people Earth governments have exiled to get them off the welfare rolls. They'll swamp the planet and turn it into a garbage dump. I don't want that."
Lucius' grin had a cruel edge. "Do you think Elector Daniels heads a syndicate of altruists, then?" he asked.
"No," said Mark. "No, they're the same sort of people as the Zeniths, I know that. But Biber and Finch own the Zenith government."
He slapped the wall of
the Spiker. "The Greenwood Assembly's going to meet right here in ten days' time," he said. "That's everybody on the planet who wants to come. They're going to pass a minimum requirement of owning two thousand square miles for anybody who stays on the planet for more than thirty days!"
"Clever," Lucius said. "Did you come up with the idea?"
Mark grinned. "Yeah, I sort of did," he admitted. "Daniels' lot can't say a word about it."
Lucius nodded. "So far as the Alliance is concerned, Greenwood remains under Zenith administration," he said. "But you know that."
He chuckled. "And we can let the evil of the day be sufficient unto it," he added. "Well, Elector Daniels will be pleased, and I'm rather pleased to be able to continue taking his money in good conscience. That's all the business I had to transact here."
"Ah, Dad?" Mark said. "I guess you'll be here a few days."
Lucius nodded.
"Let me introduce you to some people, then," Mark said. "Even the ones you've met are a lot different here than when you saw them on Zenith."
"Except," Lucius said, "for Yerby Bannock, I suspect. Yes, I'd like that."
He linked his arm with Mark's. They walked through the tavern to the celebration on the other side.
24. Local Political Differences
The giant ribbonfish was at least a quarter of a mile long. It glittered beneath the slow billows like a bracelet made of millions of tiny jewels, each a separate living organism. Amy had been careful to keep the dirigible to the east of the creature so that their shadow wouldn't spook it. One of the high clouds moved across the afternoon sun. The whole huge assemblage dived slowly, following the microorganisms that were its food.
"I'm so glad we got to see that, Lucius," Amy said. "I hope it made the last day of your stay memorable."
Mark straightened; he'd been leaning over the deck railing. "You bring good luck, Dad," he said. "I hadn't seen a ribbonfish myself. Yerby'd mentioned them, is all."
"The luck was the sharp eyes of our hostess, I'd say," Lucius remarked. "Amy, I'm much obliged to you. Greenwood is indeed a lovely planet, and I couldn't have had a better pair of guides to it."
The men went into the cabin to join Amy at the controls. They'd followed the giant ribbonfish for nearly an hour, entranced by the shifting patterns of its structure, so it was probably time they headed home anyway. The Bannock compound was a good eighty miles away, so they wouldn't be reaching it till pretty close to nightfall.
"There's a village down there," Amy said, nodding to the right as she turned the rudder and four engine nacelles to full lock. The dirigible was the safest vehicle Mark could imagine for a planet as sparsely inhabited as Greenwood, but it was glacially slow to execute any change. "Where are we, Mark?"
Mark brought up a map display on his viewer. Lucius watched over his shoulder, hunching slightly to be able to see the air-formed holograms.
"I think . . ." he said. "OK, it must be Blind Cove. About ten houses?"
He peered out the side window. The community was several miles away, but its size seemed several times the figure in the atlas. The Spiker's database was out of date.
Several flyers were lifting from the houses. The sky was mostly sunny with sharply defined clouds. The locals would have no difficulty joining the dirigible in a few minutes.
"Blind Cove sounds familiar," Amy said. The slight breeze was still enough to make the dirigible handle like a barge in a millrace. As the bow came around, the whole vessel drifted downwind at better than a walking pace.
"A magistrate in Blind Cove issued the summonses in the ejectment suit," Lucius said. "Mark, are there any weapons aboard?"
Mark didn't know. He began to bang open the doors of the deck-level cabinets around the cabin. There were ropes and quite a lot of obvious trash, but nothing useful. The black patch on the royal blue fabric made the Bannock dirigible identifiable as far as anybody could see it.
Lucius checked the toolbox on the back of the cabin. "Some wrenches and screwdrivers," he announced. "Useful in a pinch, but I think we'll be better off not displaying them until we're quite sure of the others' intentions."
He not only sounded calm, he sounded as if this were the sort of thing that happened to him every day.
Mark walked out on the open deck. There were four flyers. They moved sluggishly, indicating they were heavily loaded even though each had only one man aboard. Amy was gaining altitude as quickly as she could without emergency measures. No matter what she did, the flyers could still outclimb the clumsy dirigible in ten or fifteen minutes, so there was no point in dumping ballast.
The dirigible wallowed, losing a noticeable amount of height and power. They'd entered the shadow of a cloud. The engines picked up again as the batteries came online, boosting the output of the solar cells on the top of the envelope. The Blind Cove flyers were of off-world manufacture and had working battery packs, though they had to keep beyond the shadow to climb.
"Amy," Lucius said. He stepped to her side. "Give me the controls, please." As he spoke, he put his hands on the helm without waiting for the woman to reply.
"Dad?" Mark said in amazement.
Amy backed away from the controls. Blank calm replaced her initial look of consternation. She didn't know what Lucius planned to do, but she was willing to trust his judgment in a case where she saw no way out.
Mark watched the flyers. When Amy joined him on the open deck he said, "I suppose they think we're Yerby."
"I suppose," Amy agreed in a flat voice.
Lucius had dropped the dirigible to twenty feet above the shadowed forest by the time the flyers from Blind Cove reached them. Three flyers mounted high while the last circled close to the gondola. The pilot was a bearded man whose face was red with drink and anger.
"Where d'ye think you're going, Bannock?" the man shouted. "We're not going to let you get away so easy, you know!"
He hurled a bottle one-handed at Mark. It didn't come within twenty feet of the dirigible. Several more empty bottles plunged past the vessel, warbling as the air streamed past their mouths. A clank and a shower of broken glass indicated that one of the flyer pilots above had found the range.
Amy took out her camera. A flyer dived past the gasbag, then zoomed up again as the pilot shouted curses in a hoarse voice.
Mark pressed his lips together and said nothing. Lucius had headed basically downwind. With a following breeze, the dirigible was about as fast as a flyer, but this course was going to take them out over the ocean again very shortly.
More missiles dropped. Several hit; the locals were improving their technique with practice. Even though they weren't using lethal weapons, the impacts would damage the solar cells. Sooner or later they'd start tearing holes in the ballonets. Mark didn't want to be over salt water if the dirigible was forced down.
When the dirigible was forced down.
"Dad?" he called. "If you get some altitude, we can maybe get a radio signal through to Yerby or the Spiker."
"In good time," his father said. He didn't raise his voice, but there was steel in his tone.
The dirigible crossed the sandy beach, still only twenty feet above the surface. A jagged piece of metal screamed past them and splashed in the surf. What sounded like a wooden crate of bottles smashed on the upper surface and rained shards of glass down on all sides.
The flyers were holding course directly above the dirigible, so now they hit more often than not. Mark put an arm around Amy without looking at her. She leaned forward, recording the pattern of fragments splashing in the water.
The dirigible was traveling at nearly forty-five miles an hour. Immediately ahead of them the sea brightened to sunlit splendor; they were about to leave the shadow of the cloud in which they'd been proceeding since before Lucius took the helm.
"Hold tight!" Lucius shouted. The dirigible entered sunlight. Lucius pulled the lever that dumped the entire water ballast from the bottom of the gondola. The sea roiled like a storm surge as the dirigible shot upward faster
than Mark had dreamed it could.
Somebody screamed in fear from above them. The flyers flicked past to either side. Three were under marginal control; the wing of the last was cocked up at a 45° angle with a bent spar. It spiraled wildly down toward the sea as the bearded man who'd thrown the first bottle fought his controls in vain.
The dirigible gained five hundred feet in a few seconds and continued to rise. "Amy?" Lucius called from the helm. "Would you care to take the controls again? I'm not sure I could find the compound."
"Dad, what did you do?" Mark asked as Amy took the helm. They'd passed a thousand feet. At this rate, the flyers wouldn't be able to reach the dirigible again in less than an hour, even if the Blind Cove settlers had the stomach to try.
"The gas cools in the cloud's shadow," Lucius said. He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. "When we came into the sunlight, it expanded very quickly and gave us a great deal more lift. In combination with dumping the ballast, I thought we could rise fast enough to . . . at least disconcert the others."
"There's only a few hundred settlers on Zenith grants on the planet," Mark said quietly. "I suppose they've been treated pretty roughly the past month or two."
"No doubt," his father said. Lucius turned to Amy and went on, "Ms. Bannock? I'm very sorry about the ballast, but I thought it was necessary. I'm afraid it will make landing difficult."
"I'll manage, Lucius," she replied. "And I'm still Amy, remember."
Mark lifted the radio handset and said, "This is the Bannock blimp to all Woodsrunners. We're headed home from just west of Blind Cove, and I'd really like some company!"
25. A Pause for Reflection
The fireworks for Lucius' send-off celebration were homemade. The first bomb choonked into the night sky from the tube by the Spiker's front entrance and exploded in a green flash five hundred feet over the starport. The second followed twenty seconds later and burst brilliantly white.
The third blew the launcher up in a great scarlet eruption. Fragments of metal pinged off the courtyard wall. The pyrotechnics crew, four brothers jointly settling a tract well to the east, capered and beat at places where sparks had ignited their clothing and hair. The crowd—those who hadn't been close enough to have their own mini-fires to deal with—cheered wildly and continued drinking.