The thin man stopped pacing.
“You knew the Leavans, no?” he asked.
The other man nodded.
“My family had connections to them. But that was quite a while ago, when I was a much younger man. I think Juv and Dee were hoping that Milla and I would make a couple, but there was no chance of that. I didn’t like her much, I’m afraid, and, in any case, I was already sweet on my Cassi by then. I would have ignored beauty, property, and sweet temper for her, and Milla had only property.”
The thin man smiled.
“No-one can deny the correctness of your choice,” he said. “Cassi has been good for you, even if she brought only herself into your union, not having been born into an Old Family, nor into money.”
The other man smiled, too.
“Yeah, even my parents, eventually, had to acknowledge her value. She has given me good advice, and our children are healthy, whereas many of the offspring of the Old Families, especially of those who have been marrying into one another for generations, are weak, stupid, and sickly. If the Family Gurt thrives, Cassi should get the credit.”
“Don’t discount the fact that you had the brains and the determination to keep your counsel about that,” the thin man said. “Another man might have caved, in the face of Family and Class opposition.”
“But meanwhile Juv and Dee Leavan died, and then Judd Gorsh came along to court Milla. She was pleased; he was not an unattractive man, in those days, and a charmer as well, I understand. An unpleasant charmer, but a charmer, nevertheless.”
“And he thrilled her no end by setting out to expand her holdings.”
The thin man settled down to sit in the hard chair which faced the desk. Seated, he had a view of his companion, the cityscape outside the window, and the bouquet of flowers. Cassi’s doing, the blossoms, he thought. Karn’s wife was like that, always inserting a touch of brightness into the Gurt Family doings and holdings, in this case the Government office which was Karn’s workplace.
“We of the Old Families have been fools, to a great extent, you well know, Max,” Karn Gurt said with a sigh. “For much too long, we insisted on separating ourselves from the classes of people whom we, foolishly, considered to be our inferiors. So we intermarried, and stagnated; and, worse, grew weak, while the ruthless and the ambitious ones of the so-called lesser classes began to erode the control which we had simply assumed to belong to us by birthright.
“And now we have a creature such as this Gorsh, running half of Salamanka, and using his shady off-world businesses to finance the take-over of the rest of that, once fair, city.”
“Yes, and that’s why I’m here now, Karn,” Max replied with mirthless grin. “You and I have worked together before, trying to save our world—or at least our own Continent Nord. You and I are two of a much too small a number of Old Family members who understand the need for honest and effective government. The corrupt and foolish of the Old Families have been—mostly—defanged, but now it looks like we’ll have to take action against the ruthless men of other classes, too, men who don’t care who they use to advance their power grabs. The likes of Gorsh are just as prepared to make common cause with the Old Families as with the lowest of the criminal minds, if it suits their purposes. We’ll have to persuade the rest of the population to help us fight a man like Gorsh, if we want our very young experiment in democratic, representative government to have any hope of lasting success.”
“Ah, Max, so you are not willing to be pushed into oblivion, helped on your way with drugs and pleasures, your silence bought with bribes!”
Karn Gurt smiled.
“Instead,” he added, “you, once again, come to join forces with the rebel Family Head, the man who refused to follow the old rules!”
“The man who had the courage to defy the old rules,” Max corrected him. “When many, including me, did not.”
He sighed.
“I have often regretted it,” he added. “I have come to understand that I could have saved my Family the way you saved yours by marrying Cassi. But I did not have what it took to defy my Father, and I allowed him to pick a wife for me when he and my Mother refused to accept Rache as my partner. As you know, they chose my cousin, Sash, who did her best, I know, but we were not good for one another, nor, together, capable of seeding a generation.”
He sighed again.
“You have met my son. I would rather the Family Lordz disintegrate than that he Head it. A hard thing to say about your own son.”
“Whatever happened to Rache?” Karn asked. “I remember her as such a delightful woman, but I was not much more than a child then. I suspect that when I met Cassi, I saw something of Rache in her, and that was one reason why I fought so hard to marry her.”
The thin man’s face twisted for a moment; then he smiled.
“If that’s so, it makes me glad. Something worthwhile came out of that fiasco.
“I haven’t seen Rache since she left. That’s makes it about twenty-five years.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I haven’t told this to anyone before, but it hardly matters anymore. She asked me, before she left, if I’d give her enough money to get a safe abortion; she was pregnant apparently. She said that she didn’t want to cause a scandal by bearing the child, so she would get the abortion, and then go off-world, working for her passage on space ships, and find her fortune somewhere among the stars.”
He brushed a tear from the corner of an eye.
“I hope she did go, and I hope she found that fortune.”
“She probably did,” said Karn gently. “She was that kind of a woman.”
Max Lordz shook himself.
“But we have a continent to save, Karn,” he said. “I can’t afford to dwell on regrets. We have to stop Judd Gorsh, and Milla—whatever it is that they’re up to. It is not good, that much I’m certain of. If they succeed in it, that will encourage others with like mindsets to follow suit, and pretty soon we won’t have much of our lovely world left for the rest of us.”
Karn grinned at the older man. He had always liked Max Lordz, in spite of the fact that as a thirty-year-old he had been unable to take an effective stand against his father. Milos Lordz had been a terror, by all accounts; compared to Milos, Karn’s own father had been a pussycat. Milos would have thought nothing of chasing his thirty-year-old son and his lower-class intended across the continent, and horsewhipping them both before separating them, and forcing Max to marry the woman he had chosen for him. He belonged to the old school which believed that the paterfamilias had the right and the duty to make the decisions for all his Family members. Unfortunately, he was also a rigid idiot, and his decisions were often bad.
After his death, Max had been the much better Family Head. He had been instrumental in creating the Great Council which had taken over from the doddering Council of the Families the running of the Continent Nord. He had helped to forge the compromise that had allowed each of the Old Families a seat on the Great Council, even while the majority of the positions were filled by officials elected by regular folk from the cities and the rural districts. He had worked behind the scenes to get Karn Gurt named the First of the Families, the second most influential Councillor in the Great Council, after the democratically chosen Council President. Max Lordz had taken the persistence he had inherited from Milos, and put it to use improving his home continent, and the whole planet. Karn admired that, although, on occasion, he wondered how much of what Max was now could still be traced to the woman he had loved and lost, twenty-five years ago.
“You are no doubt interested in hearing the latest scuttlebutt about Gorsh?” Karn asked.
As The First of the Families he had access to information which the run-of-the-mill Councillors, such as Max was did not necessarily always have.
“If you have some new information, yes, of course I want to know,” Lordz answered. “I’m a little uneasy right now, having been approached by a couple of other Councillors who are also Family Heads, about supporting a motion to
expropriate the lands of the Leavan Estates’ nearest neighbour. Milla Gorsh used that trick, some years ago, to cheaply take over a few of her smaller neighbours, I recall. Ii was in the days of the Council of the Families, of course, when the ordinary citizen had few protections from the foolishness, or the greed of the Old Families.”
“I’m not surprised; I wondered how long it would be before they’d get to approaching you,” Karn said. “The word is that Gorsh has offered as bribes some items of the illegal merchandise which he peddles off-world, and had the temerity even to approach President Naez with the notion. She told him what to do with the goods—she said to him that they ought to be taken back to their homes and freed. But then, she is one of our good Councillors, a very progressive woman. We could use more of her kind.”
“Yes, we could. I don’t much like this recent rush in some circles to try and drag us back to the bad old days, with the difference that it’s not the Families who are the autocrats, but a collection of ruthless, moneyed fools from various levels of society. The idiot Councillor who approached me made some ridiculous accusations about the pair who run the Estate in question; they’re two women who form a same-sex pairing, apparently. Milla Gorsh has been complaining that they are taking an inordinate interest in the young people she has working on her Estate; she claims to be worried that the women may be child predators.”
“Hah! The nerve of the Madame! I suppose her husband must have put her up to that; I can’t believe that she thought of it herself! The women in question have been making some complaints and asking questions—it appears that Milla has entirely too many school-age children working on that Estate, and no facilities or arrangements for their education!”
“Wasn’t that one of the observations that the Star Federation Agent who came to interview Milla a few years ago, made in the report which he sent to the Council of that time as a gesture of courtesy?” Max screwed up his face, making the effort to remember the event. Since Wayward had given up on the Star Federation, its population had not been getting many translation nodes. “It was a preliminary report, if I recall correctly; we never did get a final one because the man disappeared quite mysteriously, the very next day.”
“Yes, and we had Federation Agents running around, asking questions, for weeks afterwards. All signs pointed to Gorsh, but neither we, nor the Federation had proof that he was involved in any crime. And, as usual, he had his paid defenders.”
“Who don’t admit to taking bribes,” Max sighed. “I wondered how he was paying his helpers, this time, having heard that he has recently had some serious business reverses. But I suppose that if he can’t sell his human cargo off-world, it only makes sense to start passing them off at home, even if not many on this planet will pay cash for them. Not because we’re virtuous—we’re most definitely not—but because we have plenty of local bodies to do the necessary work.”
“I’d give a lot to know what goes on in that stronghold of his in Salamanka,” Karn said. “It’s the first place he took over. He bought it for a measly sum from the heirs of a Family that had disintegrated—I looked into the records for the President, some months back, after we got her elected.
“It has a reputation. The Family that owned it used to call it the Citadel; I think the name came from way back in history, when it actually was used to house soldiers. That was in the days when the Families kept armies and fought one another. The Family that disintegrated—name was Letz—claimed that their ill fortune was spawned in the Citadel. I’m not sure how seriously I’d take that; they were gamblers, I understand, and poor ones at that.”
“You know, maybe there’s a way to find out what does go on,” Max said, rubbing his chin. “Some of Gorsh’s off-world acquisitions must have spent some time in the Citadel. If we can find a reason to question the ones that he has sent out as bribes, we might discover something.”
“Yes! I will bring up your idea with the President.” Karn Gurt rubbed his hands. “And she can be counted on to think of a thing or two which might not occur to you or me.”
“That’s the advantage of not belonging to one of the Old Families,” Max Lordz responded drily. “Thoughts don’t necessarily run in predictable patterns. You might ask Cassi what she thinks, too. I bet that she’ll come up with something.”
*****
“Add Nic to the list of those to be sent to the Old Family Heads who agree to support the motion to expropriate the Marque Estate, and to attach it to the Leavan Estate,” Gorsh growled to his Overseer. “If he grouses about doing what is required in the Citadel, and refuses to go back to the Estate to do manual labour, he’s an obvious choice for the out-rental roster. Who does he think he is, anyway, making demands?
“It’s a pity old Milos Lordz has been dead for years; he would have dealt with the snotty boy in no time. Max Lordz, now, he’s useless, though his fingers are to be found in every political pudding that’s being cooked. I had one of my Old Family contacts in the Grand Council sound him out about supporting my cause, and apparently he turned the idea down flat.”
The Overseer nodded. The notion about Nic was a good one, he thought. Nic was one of the annoying fools among the snatchees. He had been very slow to learn to do as he was told, and to keep his mouth shut. The Overseer was a Waywardian, and could not understand the independence of thought that some of the slaves acquired from other worlds seemed to take for granted. He did as his employer ordered him to do, without question, and he was a salaried employee. The people that he was overseeing were chattels—Gorsh owned them—yet some of them seemed to have no concept of obedience. Well, there were some real hard-asses among the Old Family Heads; he’d be sure to send Nic to one of those.
“Only the couple that specified that they want a female are to get girls,” Gorsh added. “We don’t have that many of them, these days. I’m going to have to make a run, soon, specifically to pick up young women. Although the Lizard has become a problem; he doesn’t seem to be healthy anymore. That boy he likes to communicate through says that the atmosphere in the Citadel cellars, when combined with the effects of the long term use of the mind-tangler, and the overwork of his talents, has been destructive. Mind you, that won’t matter, now; I’ve got me another Lizard, though she’s a female.”
“Do you want to keep Shyla helping out with the drugged bodies, or can I send her to one of the Family Heads?” The Overseer asked. “As you said, we’re a little short of girls, and I know that you want to keep Jaqui for your own use. Shyla’s not as intractable as some, but she could use some lessoning. Her attitude towards the Mage is deplorable.”
“Sure, send her to Councillor Koruse. He asked if he might have a virginal young woman, and Shyla is that. That should ensure Koruse’s cooperation for some time, and since we’ll get our merchandise back in a year, Mosse can still have her, just like he wants. She won’t be a virgin then, but I don’t see what difference that should make to Mosse. She’ll be easier for him to handle, what with having been taught a few lessons by old Koruse.”
With that Gorsh sent the Overseer off. He did not share his frustrations with the man; things were not going as well as he might have wished. Jac and Ric had only the one small mind-tangler production facility left; it was the one they had set up on Wayward according to his, Gorsh’s instructions, in the first place. It was barely producing enough of the product to keep the Lizards and the Federation Agent under, never mind keep the felines supplied with dosages to disable the targeted snatchees. His thought had been to go back to Kati’s home world to pick up young women—they had some comely ones there—but he needed the mind-tangler to do that. The felines had not been pleased with the amount of resistance that the snatchees from there had shown; Kati, especially, had infuriated them.
Losing Vultaire as a market had also been a blow. Vultaire had been a wonderful place to peddle his wares; the fact that the planet was a Federation world, and therefore supposed to be free of the scourge of slavery, made his untraceable merchandise extra valuable. G
orsh had no problem with laws forbidding slavery; they were good for his business. Just so long as they were not strictly enforced; unfortunately the Star Federation had somehow found out about the Vultaire’s elites’ fondness for flouting regulations, and had come down hard on them. Those pesky, holier-than-thou Lamanians apparently were busy returning democratic rule to the planet!
There was nothing that Gorsh could do about such reverses, except try to recoup, and to somehow turn the losses into gains. He would have to consolidate his gains at home on Wayward, insuring that interfering busybodies could not make a mess of his businesses, whether they were of the on-planet, or off-planet, variety.
He still had an ace, or two, or three, up his sleeve. He had two Xeonsaurs to navigate for him, just as soon as Jac and Ric had provided him with an adequate supply of mind-tangler. And he had that irksome Federation Agent, drugged in the Citadel cellar. It could not take all that long before he was ready to sing out all the Peace Officer Corps’ secrets! Those secrets would be worth money, once he had them! The operators on the shady side of the Space Trade Lanes would pay handsome sums for them!
Map of the Planet Wayward (Detail)
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Wayward had more of an early warning system around the planet than Tarangay did.
“Hailing the unregistered Free Trader vessel orbiting the world, parallel with the Equator, and at the latitude of the capital of Continent Nord, Strone City,” crackled the sound system of the communications console of The Spacebird Two, almost as soon as Lank had established the orbit. “Hailing the unregistered Free Trader....”
Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers Page 25