Part 48 (1/2)

The colonel, flushed and tending toward chubbiness, raised his gla.s.s in a light salute to Harivarman.

”Cheers, Harry.” He had been much less free with that informal name when he was still officially the Prince's jailer. ”How are you and the Iron Lady getting on? I hear you took her sightseeing the other day.” Phocion accompanied the statement with a wink. He was graying, getting along in years and in fact nearly ready for retirement, though still nowhere near as aged as Greta Thamar.

”There was nothing very exciting about our outing, I'm afraid,” said Harivarman.

”What you always say in the early stages, old boy, as I recall. Well, if true, too bad. Maybe I'll call on the lady m'self. No reason why you should have all the crop attending you.” And Phocion made a bow, his version of gallantry, to the two ladies.

”Have a drink with us?” Gabrielle inviting him confirmed that she was really happy about something.

”You won't be on the Fortress that much longer, I suppose,” she commented.

”Nor perhaps . . .” Phocion gave the Prince a look with a mixture of sharp things in it, and drowned the rest of what he had been going to say in his gla.s.s. He was waiting to get a s.h.i.+p that would take him away, either to an early retirement that Harivarman knew he did not want, or some uncongenial a.s.signment that would amount to a demotion. The SG had evidently not been pleased with Colonel Phocion's performance of late.

”Nor am I going to be here much longer,” said the Prince as cheerfully as he could. ”And there's not much perhaps about it. You're right.” He raised his own gla.s.s, returning the salute, and drank.

The colonel looked at the ladies, apparently a.s.sessing them in his quietly arrogant way; he'd already met Gabrielle, naturally, and now he looked at Greta Thamar as if he knew her too. But he still spoke only to the Prince. Now he would do his best to be bracing. ”I suppose there's an excellent chance that you'll be recalled now.”

”To power? Hardly.” Harivarman spread his big hands. ”Arrested is infinitely more likely.”

Phocion's return look said that he had realized that all along, but had wanted to hold out hope.

There was a faint sound from Gabrielle across the table. The Prince looked at her, and saw incipient shock. He'd been right; it appeared that until this moment she really hadn't understood. Maybe he should have tried to break it gently.

Then she rallied suddenly. ”Harry, for a moment I thought that you were serious.”

Around them the interior of theContrat Rougewas slowly filling up. The pa.s.sage of falsified figures, costumed, b.e.s.t.i.a.l, or mechanical, past the booth was becoming almost a steady parade. Now a little knot of tourists pa.s.sed, their appearance altered again in mid-transit by some perhaps automatic readjustment of the optics. Then some military people going by the other way created a brief distraction.

One of the tourists could be heard stage-whispering to another on the subject of how one should address a real Prince.

Phocion saluted Harry sadly and moved on, from all indications going in pursuit of one of the tourist women.

Gabrielle glanced at the woman beside her, who appeared to be far off somewhere in her own thoughts.

Then she leaned across the table. ”Harry, what did you mean, really?Arrested?”

Harivarman reached absently to give the set of optic controls on his side of the booth a random shuffling.

Now the people pa.s.sing were suddenly all nude, and certainly the booth made handsomer nudists of them than nature. The optics computers were biased toward subtle flattery in one mode, in another toward total exaggeration, enough for comedy. That mode did not come into play so often.

The Prince said gently to Gabrielle: ”I meant arrested. I take it you've heard about the Empress?”

”Of course. But I don't see what that has to do with-you.”

”Being arrested these days is nothing,” said Greta Thamar suddenly, and Harivarman looked at her; she was looking past him. ”Not like it was in the old days,” she said, and suddenly peered at him closely.

”What do you really do, out there in the outer corridors? That's where Georgicus Sabel met the berserker.”

Harivarman could feel his nerves draw taut. He told her: ”I stockpile heavy weapons, oxygen, food supplies. So that when my friends land in a rescue expedition I'll be ready. I rather wish that they'd hurry up.”

Greta was gazing past him. ”I'm going to dance,” she said.

He was about to say goodbye, and wish her luck on the resumption of her career, when he realized that Greta was not getting up, that her gaze was directed at the large holostage in the center of the room. The optics in the booth walls had been trained to let the holostage images come through unaltered.

And now, on the holostage, Greta Thamar's two-hundred-year-old image began to dance. It was an old holographic recording of a performance done live, perhaps on the very same stage, and here sat the woman herself, watching it with them.

She spoke, in a hushed voice, as if the recorded performance deserved reverence. Harivarman could not hear very clearly, but she was trying to tell them something about Sabel, and Harivarman could feel his scalp creep.

The image on the stage was that of a girl of eighteen, twenty at the most.

The first segment of the dance ended. Greta Thamar sitting in the booth appeared to come to herself, to realize that she had been rambling somewhat.

”The memory extraction still gets me sometimes. The Guardians could still use that then. Being arrested now is nothing.” And now, moving somewhat stiffly, the old woman slid out of the booth and departed.

Harivarman grinned wryly, or tried to grin, at Gabrielle's worried face.

”Harry, tell me once and for all, what the Empress's a.s.sa.s.sination is going to mean.”

”To me, a lot of trouble. Serious trouble. To you . . . well, I suppose that depends.”

”On what?”

”On how closely you a.s.sociate with me. No, it's too late to worry about that. On what my enemies think about you. On what mood they're in when they get here. On . . .”

Gabrielle was becoming intensely frightened, looking this way and that, as if those who bore his death warrant with them were here already. ”Harry, if they do come after you . . .”

”Oh, they're coming. Naturally you want to know if they'll be interested in you as well. Quite natural.” He felt less hurt by her att.i.tude suddenly, and more sorry for her. ”I wouldn't think so, Gabby, though of course I don't know for sure. But you're not political, everyone knows that. I shouldn't worry too much if I were you.”

But it was hard to rea.s.sure Gabrielle. ”I'm going, Harry.”

”You haven't had your dessert.” But then he relented. ”Then leave. I'll stay. But I don't think it's going to matter, at this point, if you leave or not. Everyone knows that you and I have been-”

She was gone. He spun the optics control, watching her vary with the optics as she hurried away. The last spin dealt her nudity, in this case not doing justice to the original.

But now for some reason she was hurrying back . . . no, the optics had confused him, this wasn't Gabrielle at all.

Harivarman's heart gave a surprising leap.

He looked up, at close range, to see his wife standing beside the table at which he now sat alone.

Beatrix, darker, compact, in every way less spectacular than Gabrielle, said: ”I waited till your girlfriend left.”

”Thank you.” He heard his own voice, sounding almost meek. ”Will you sit down?”

She sat, pus.h.i.+ng used dishes indifferently from in front of her. ”Not the most enthusiastic welcome I have ever experienced.” Beatrix was of course in her own way, in her own style, a lady of great beauty, fit consort for a Prince. As Princess she had lived here on the Radiant with Harivarman long enough to know his habits here and his haunts, and she had known where to find him this evening. She was, like him, an old experienced berserker-fighter, though few would have guessed the fact from looking at her demure loveliness now.