The Mercenary

by Jerry Pournelle

  Then: “Don’t let him frighten you, Allan. He’s about as dangerous as that-as that moosehead in the trophy room!” She fled before there could be any reply.

  IV

  They sat awkwardly. Grant left his desk to sit near the fire with Torrey. Drinks, offer of a smoke, all the usual amenities-he did them all; but finally Hapwood had brought their refreshments and the door was closed.

  “All right, Allan,” John Grant began. “Let us be trite and get it over with. How do you intend to support her?”

  Torrey looked straight at him this time. His eyes danced with what Grant was certain was concealed amusement. “I expect to be appointed to a good post in the Department of the Interior. I’m a trained engineer.”

  “Interior?” Grant thought for a second. The answer surprised him-he hadn’t thought the boy was another office seeker. “I suppose it can be arranged.”

  Torrey grinned. It was an infectious grin, and Grant liked it. “Well, sir, it’s already arranged. I wasn’t asking for a job.”

  “Oh?” Grant shrugged. “I hadn’t heard.”

  “Deputy Assistant Secretary for Natural Resources. I took a master’s in ecology.”

  “That’s interesting, but I would have thought I’d have heard of your coming appointment.”

  “It won’t be official yet, sir. Not until Mr. Bertram is elected President. For the moment I’m on his staff.” The grin was still there, and it was friendly, not hostile. The boy thought politics was a game. He wanted to win, but it was only a game.

  And he’s seen real polls, Grant thought. “Just what do you do for Mr. Bertram, then?”

  Allan shrugged. “Write speeches, carry the mail, run the Xerox-you’ve been in campaign headquarters. I’m the guy who gets the jobs no one else wants.”

  Grant laughed. “I did start as a gopher, but I soon hired my own out of what I once contributed to the Party. They did not try that trick again with me. I don’t suppose that course is open to you.”

  “No, sir. My father’s a taxpayer, but paying taxes is pretty tough just now-“

  “Yes.” Well, at least he wasn’t from a Citizen family. Grant would learn the details from Ackridge tomorrow, for now the important thing was to get to know the boy.

  It was difficult. Allan was frank and relaxed, and Grant was pleased to see that he refused a third drink, but there was little to talk about. Torrey had no conception of the realities of politics. He was one of Bertram’s child cru­saders, and he was out to save the United States from people like John Grant, although he was too polite to say so.

  And I was once that young, Grant thought. I wanted to save the world, but it was so different then. No one wanted to end the CoDominium when I was young. We were too happy to have the Second Cold War over with. What happened to the great sense of relief when we could stop worrying about atomic wars? When I was young that was all we thought of, that we would be the last generation. Now they take it for granted that we’ll have peace forever. Is peace such a little thing?

  “There’s so much to do,” Torrey was saying. “The Baja Project, thermal pollution of the Sea of Cortez. They’re killing off a whole ecology just to create estates for the taxpayers.

  “I know it isn’t your department, sir, you probably don’t even know what they’re doing. But Lipscomb has been in office too long! Corruption, special interests, it’s time we had a genuine two-party system again instead of things going back and forth between the wings of Unity. It’s time for a change, and Mr. Bertram’s the right man, I know he is.”

  Grant’s smile was thin, but he managed it. “You’ll hard­ly expect me to agree with you,” Grant said.

  “No, sir.”

  Grant sighed. “But perhaps you’re right at that. I must say I wouldn’t mind retiring, so that I could live in this house instead of merely visiting it on weekends.”

  What was the point? Grant wondered. He’d never con­vince this boy, and Sharon wanted him. Torrey would drop Bertram after the scandals broke.

  And what explanations were there anyway? The Baja Project was developed to aid a syndicate of taxpayers in the six states of the old former Republic of Mexico. The Government needed them, and they didn’t care about whales and fish. Shortsighted, yes, and Grant had tried to argue them into changing the project, but they wouldn’t, and politics is the art of the possible.

  Finally, painfully, the interview, ended. Sharon came in, grinning sheepishly because she was engaged to one of Bertram’s people, but she understood that no better than Allan Torrey. It was only a game. Bertram would win and Grant would retire, and no one would be hurt.

  How could he tell them that it didn’t work that way any longer? Unity wasn’t the cleanest party in the world, but at least it had no fanatics-and all over the world the causes were rising again. The Friends of the People were on the move, and it had all happened before, it was all told time and again in those aseptically clean books on the shelves above him.

  BERTRAM AIDES ARRESTED BY INTER-CONTINENTAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION!! IBI RAIDS SECRET WEAPONS CACHE IN BERTRAM HEADQUARTERS. NUCLEAR WEAPONS HINTED!!!

  Chicago, May 15, (UPI)-IBI agents here have arrested five top aides to Senator Harvey Bertram in what government officials call one of the most de­spicable plots ever discovered....

  Grant read the transcript on his desk screen without satisfaction. It had all gone according to plan, and there was nothing left to do, but he hated it.

  At least it was clean. The evidence was there. Bertram’s people could have their trial, challenge jurors, challenge judges. The Government would waive its rights under the Thirty-first Amendment and let the case be tried under the old adversary rules. It wouldn’t matter.

  Then he read the small type below. “Arrested were Grigory Kalamintor, nineteen, press secretary to Bertram; Timothy Giordano, twenty-two, secretary; Allan Torrey, twenty-two, executive assistant-“ The page blurred, and Grant dropped his face into his hands.

  “My God, what have we done?”

  He hadn’t moved when Miss, Ackridge buzzed. “Your daughter on four, sir. She seems upset.”

  “Yes.” Grant punched savagely at the button. Sharon’s face swam into view. Her makeup was ruined by long streaks of tears. She looked older, much like her mother during one of their-

  “Daddy! They’ve arrested Allan! And I know it isn’t true, he wouldn’t have anything to do with nuclear weap­ons! A lot of Mr. Bertram’s people said there would never be an honest election in this country. They said John Grant would see to that! I told him they were wrong, but they weren’t, were they? You’ve done this to stop the election, haven’t you?”

  There was nothing to say because she was right. But who might be listening? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve only seen the Tri-V casts about Allan’s arrest, nothing more. Come home, kitten, and we’ll talk about it.”

  “Oh no! You’re not getting me where Dr. Pollard can give me a nice friendly little shot and make me forget about Allan! No! I’m staying with my friends, and I won’t be home, Daddy. And when I go to the newspapers, I think they’ll listen to me. I don’t know what to tell them yet, but I’m sure Mr. Bertram’s people will think of some­thing. How do you like that, Mr. God?”

  “Anything you tell the press will be lies, Sharon. You know nothing.” One of his assistants had come in and now left the office.

  “Lies? Where did I learn to lie?” The screen went blank.

  And is it that thin? he wondered. All the trust and love, could it vanish that fast, was it that thin?

  “Sir?” It was Hartman, his assistant.

  “Yes?”

  “She was calling from Champaign, Illinois. A Bertram headquarters they think we don’t know about. The phone had one of those guaranteed no-trace devices.”

  “Trusting lot, aren’t they?” Grant said. “Have some good men watch that house, but leave her alone.” He stood and felt a wave of nausea so strong that he had to hold the edge of the desk. “MAKE DAMNED SURE THEY
LEAVE HER ALONE. DO YOU UNDER­STAND?” he shouted.

  Hartman went as pale as Grant. The chief hadn’t raised his voice to one of his own people in five years. “Yes, sir, I understand.”

  “Then get out of here.” Grant spoke carefully, in low tones, and the cold mechanical voice was more terrifying than the shout.

  He sat alone and stared at the telephone. What use was its power now?

  What can we do? It wasn’t generally known that Sharon was engaged to the boy. He’d talked them out of a formal engagement until the banns could be announced in the National Cathedral and they could hold a big social party. It had been something to do for them at the time, but...

  But what? He couldn’t have the boy released. Not that boy. He wouldn’t keep silent as the price of his own free­dom. He’d take Sharon to a newspaper within five minutes of his release, and the resulting headlines would bring down Lipscomb, Unity, the CoDominium-and the peace. Newsmen would listen to the daughter of the top secret policeman in the country.

  Grant punched a code on the communicator, then an­other. Grand Admiral Lermontov appeared on the screen.

  “Yes, Mr. Grant?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  The conversation was painful, and the long delay while the signals reached the moon and returned didn’t make it easier.

  “When is the next CD warship going outsystem? Not a colony ship, and most especially not a prison ship. A war­ship.”

  Another long pause, longer even than the delay. “I suppose anything could be arranged,” the Admiral said. “What do you need?”

  “I want . . .” Grant hesitated, but there was no time to be lost. No time at all. “I want space for two very impor­tant political prisoners. A married couple. The crew is not to know their identity, and anyone who does learn their identity must stay outsystem for at least five years. And I want them set down on a good colony world, a decent place. Sparta, perhaps. No one ever returns from Sparta. Can you arrange that?”

  Grant could see the changes in Lermontov’s face as the words reached him. The Admiral frowned. “It can be done if it is important enough. It will not be easy.”

  “It’s important enough. My brother Martin will explain everything you’ll need to know later. The prisoners will be delivered tonight, Sergei. Please have the ship ready. And -and it better not be Saratoga. My son’s in that one and he-he will know one of the prisoners.” Grant swallowed hard. ‘There should be a chaplain aboard. The kids will be getting married.”

  Lermontov frowned again, as if wondering ifJohnGrant had gone insane. Yet he needed the Grants, both of them, and certainly John Grant would not ask such a favor if it were not vital.

  “It will be done,” Lermontov said.

  “Thank you. I’ll also appreciate it if you will see they have a good estate on Sparta. They are not to know who arranged it. Just have it taken care of and send the bill to me.”

  It was all so very simple. Direct his agents to arrest Sharon and conduct her to CD Intelligence. He wouldn’t want to see her first. The attorney general would send Torrey to the same place and announce that he had escaped.

  It wasn’t as neat as having all of them convicted in open court, but it would do, and having one of them a fugitive from justice would even help. It would be an admission of guilt.

  Something inside him screamed again and again that this was his little girl, the only person in the world who wasn’t afraid of him, but Grant refused to listen. He leaned back in the chair and almost calmly dictated his orders.

  He took the flimsy sheet from the writer and his hand didn’t tremble at all as he signed it.

  All right, Martin, he thought. All right. I’ve bought the time you asked for, you and Sergei Lermontov. Now can you do something with it?

  2087 A.D.

  V

  The landing boat fell away from the orbiting warship. When it had drifted to a safe distance, retros fired, and after it had entered the thin reaches of the planet’s upper atmosphere, scoops opened in the bows. The thin air was drawn in and compressed until the stagnation temperature in the ramjet chamber was high enough for ignition.

  The engines lit with a roar of flame. Wings swung out to provide lift at hypersonic speeds, and the space plane turned to streak over empty ocean toward the continental land mass two thousand kilometers away.

  The ship circled over craggy mountains twelve kilo­meters high, then dropped low over thickly forested plains. It slowed until it was no longer a danger to the thin strip of inhabited lands along the ocean shores. The planet’s great ocean was joined to a smaller sea by a nearly land­locked channel no more than five kilometers across at its widest point, and nearly all of the colonists lived near the junction of the waters.

  Hadley’s capital city nestled on a long peninsula’ at the mouth of that channel, and the two natural harbors, one in the sea, the other in the ocean, gave the city the fitting name of Refuge. The name suggested a tranquility the city no longer possessed.

  The ship extended its wings to their fullest reach and floated low over the calm water of the channel harbor. It touched and settled in. Tugboats raced across clear blue water. Sweating seamen threw lines and towed the landing craft to the dock where they secured it.

  A long line of CoDominium Marines in garrison uni­form marched out of the boat. They gathered on the gray concrete piers into neat brightly colored lines. Two men in civilian clothing followed the Marines from the flyer.

  They blinked at the unaccustomed blue-white of Hadley’s sun. The sun was so far away that it would have been only a small point if either of them were foolish enough to look directly at it. The apparent small size was only an illusion caused by distance; Hadley received as much illumination from its hotter sun as Earth does from Sol.

  Both men were tall and stood as straight as the Marines in front of them, so that except for their clothing they might have been mistaken for a part of the disembarking battalion. The shorter of the two carried luggage for both of them, and stood respectfully behind; although older he was obviously a subordinate. They watched as two younger men came uncertainly along the pier. The newcomers’ unadorned blue uniforms contrasted sharply with the bright reds and golds of the CoDominium Marines milling around them. Already the Marines were scurrying back into the flyer to carry out barracks bags, weapons, and all the other personal gear of a light infantry battalion.

  The taller of the two civilians faced the uniformed newcomers. “I take it you’re here to meet us?” he asked pleasantly. His voice rang through the noise on the pier, and it carried easily although he had not shouted. His accent was neutral, the nearly universal English of non-Russian officers in the CoDominium Service, and it marked his profession almost as certainly as did his posture and the tone of command.

  The newcomers were uncertain even so. There were a lot of ex-officers of the CoDominium Space Navy on the beach lately. CD budgets were lower every year. “I think so,” one finally said. “Are you John Christian Falken­berg?”

  His name was actually John Christian Falkenberg III, and he suspected that his grandfather would have insisted on the distinction. “Right. And Sergeant Major Calvin.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, sir. I’m Lieutenant Banners, and this is Ensign Mowrer. We’re on President Budreau’s staff.” Banners looked around as if expecting other men, but there were none except the uniformed Marines. He gave Falkenberg a slightly puzzled look, then added, “We have transportation for you, but I’m afraid your men will have to walk. It’s about eleven miles.”

  “Miles.” Falkenberg smiled to himself. This was out in the boondocks. “I see no reason why ten healthy mercenaries can’t march eighteen kilometers, Lieutenant.” He turned to face the black shape of the landing boat’s entry port and called to someone inside. “Captain Fast. There is no transportation, but someone will show you where to march the men. Have them carry all gear.”

  “Uh, sir, that won’t be necessary,” the lieutenant pro­te
sted. “We can get-well, we have horse-drawn transport for baggage.” He looked at Falkenberg as if he expected him to laugh.

  “That’s hardly unusual on colony worlds,” Falkenberg said. Horses and mules could be carried as frozen embryos, and they didn’t require high-technology industries to pro­duce more, nor did they need an industrial base to fuel them.

  “Ensign Mowrer will attend to it,” Lieutenant Banners said. He paused again and looked thoughtful as if uncer­tain how to tell Falkenberg something. Finally he shook his head. “I think it would be wise if you issued your men their personal weapons, sir. There shouldn’t be any trouble on their way to barracks, but-anyway, ten armed men certainly won’t have any problems.”

  “I see. Perhaps I should go with my troops, Lieutenant. I hadn’t known things were quite this bad on Hadley.” Falkenberg’s voice was calm and even, but he watched the junior officers carefully.

  “No, sir. They aren’t, really. . . . But there’s no point in taking chances.” He waved Ensign Mowrer to the land­ing craft and turned back to Falkenberg. A large black shape rose from the water outboard of the landing craft. It splashed and vanished. Banners seemed not to notice, but the Marines shouted excitedly. “I’m sure the ensign and your officers can handle the disembarkation, and the President would like to see you immediately, sir.”

  “No doubt. All right, Banners, lead on. I’ll bring Ser­geant Major Calvin with me.” He followed Banners down the pier.

  There’s no point to this farce, Falkenberg thought. Any­one seeing ten armed men conducted by a Presidential ensign will know they’re mercenary troops, civilian clothes or not. Another case of wrong information.

  Falkenberg had been told to keep the status of himself and his men a secret, but it wasn’t going to work. He wondered if this would make it more difficult to keep his own secrets.