Part 8 (2/2)

And the guns would take the place of the excuses.

12.

I thought the next thing on the agenda just had to be a flaming row between all parties concerned, which would probably end with a cessation of diplomatic relations. But Charlot didn't want that. So far as he could see, the nature of his mission hadn't been changed. He was still looking for a lever to use in the courts of New Rome in the media of every world in the civilised galaxy. It made no difference to him that he was looking for a needle in a haystack that looked ever more likely to catch fire. He knew what he was doing and he intended to do it.

If it was humanly possible.

I stood on the s.p.a.cefield with Keith Just, and we watched the s.h.i.+p come down. It couldn't land on the tiny area that Caradoc had cleared-with or without bomb craters-and her captain wouldn't want to drop her in the sea or blast a hole a mile in diameter just so he could waste fuel taking off again. He was only making a low sweep so that he could disgorge a percentage of his personnel and equipment into atmosphere. They could make their own way down.

We watched her come in from the eastern horizon, growing bigger and bigger all the while, until she overtook the sun and blotted it out, casting the whole field into black shadow, and surrounding herself with a halo of brightness. She slowed down until she seemed to be inching her way across the sky, and still she grew as she dropped farther and farther.

I could see the awe in Just's face out of the corner of my eye as he misjudged her distance and her size because of her velocity. Suddenly, while she was still some way from overhead, but still blocking the sunlight with her tail, she shot forth a horde of tiny black dots. She looked like a seed pod bursting, spewing out hundreds of tiny spores. Each one was a copter or a flipjet, and each one was large enough to carry heavy artillery as well as armour and a platoon of men, but as they moved in the shadow of the mother-s.h.i.+p they seemed like a swarm of black flies.

Then the sun was exposed again, and we both had to look away, dazzled. By the time we could see again, the battles.h.i.+p was beginning to shrink as she accelerated and climbed, while the infant fleet grew as it descended, changing appearance momentarily as our prospective adjusted, so that it was first a swarm of bees, then locusts, and then black b.u.t.terflies.

The mother-s.h.i.+p pa.s.sed on, and her children became recognisable. We could see the shape of their bodies, sense the whirr of rotors, hear the soft buzz of low-power piledrivers. It hardly seemed that they would be able to find s.p.a.ce on the field, but as they fell they sorted themselves out into formation, and began to manoeuvre themselves into a tight bunch. As they sank still farther they began to circle, and then they began to peel off in fours and set down with military exactness in the available s.p.a.ce.

The copters came down in rows so tight that there was hardly a yard of clearance between the tips of their blades. They were big-not as big as the Swan, but easily of a size with the old Fire-Eater and the Javelin-the s.h.i.+ps I used to fly. Yet these things were fitted in hundreds into the coat lining of the battles.h.i.+p. I didn't know how many battles.h.i.+ps Caradoc possessed, but the mere thought of one would be enough to intimidate most worlds. I knew New Rome had nothing to compare, and I knew that the s.h.i.+pyards on Penaflor had never turned out a monster like that. That s.h.i.+p had been built in s.p.a.ce, in the system of Vargo's Star, where the Caradoc operation had its guts, if not its heart. The Engelian hegemony might have half a dozen s.h.i.+ps of kindred spirit, and no doubt the other companies were busy putting them together, but I had seen nothing like her before.

As I watched the field fill up with planes, and saw the black dot that was the battles.h.i.+p disappear into the thin tissue of cloud that hung above the western horizon, I realised for the first time exactly what sort of a threat the companies posed. The first power that went out into s.p.a.ce had been the power of the Earth governments. If Earth had had only one government, like Khor, that power might have proved effective. But as it was, it proved worthless very quickly as colonies seized independence as soon as they became self-sufficient. The power that took over then was the power of know-how-Library power and bureaucracy power. The power to do things was completely devalued-everyone had that. The power that mattered was the power of knowing how to do them. New Alexandria supplied the worlds, and then New Rome unified them into a civilisation. When I had first gone into s.p.a.ce, nearly twenty years previously, that had still been a fair picture of the situation. But during those years the companies bloomed like novas. New Alexandria and New Rome had civilised the galaxy-had fed it and nurtured it like a suckling pig-and had created opportunity on a scale hitherto unsuspected. Suddenly, it was possible to own whole worlds. The capacity for growing rich through exploitation suddenly acquired near-infinite proportions. There were no horizons in s.p.a.ce. There was a Caradoc Company before I was born, of course-and a Star Cross Combine, and a Sunpower Incorporated-but it was during my lifetime, and my years in s.p.a.ce, that their exponential growth gave them such awesome proportions. They had grown to the point where their power was measurable against the power of New Alexandria and New Rome. But it was a different sort of power.

Up to now, the Library and the Law had always contained and controlled the companies. I had always known that there would come a time when the situation would reach a balance-when the companies would try to reverse the containment and the control. I had not expected it so soon.

It wasn't the two years on Lapthorn's Grave that had left me unprepared for such developments-it was a general tendency throughout my life to misjudge the velocity of change. Things happened faster now than they had at any time in history. And we were still accelerating.

I looked out at the serried ranks of Caradoc's pride and joy-at the men in black who were piling out of the copters and the flipjets-and I knew all of a sudden that they weren't playing toy soldiers. This was for real. If it wasn't this world, it would be the next or the next. The galaxy was full of worlds for the taking, and sooner or later (sooner, it now seemed), Caradoc was going to start just taking them. It had grown too big to be ordered around. Charlot was busy hunting for a miracle to s.n.a.t.c.h this world from its cavernous maw. He might find one. But not even t.i.tus Charlot could provide ten miracles, or a hundred, to order.

”I guess this is it,” said Just quietly. ”The war starts here.”

”No,” I said. ”The war started many, many years ago. What starts here is the choice of weapons.”

”What the h.e.l.l am I supposed to do?” he said. ”This is illegal. You know it and I know it. So who do I arrest? Capella? The battles.h.i.+p? Just what the h.e.l.l am I supposed to do?”

”Just be thankful,” I said. ”Everybody here is sitting on dynamite cus.h.i.+ons. You can't do a thing. That's good. If you had an army as well, you'd be carrying the fate of worlds on your bony shoulders. Be glad that you haven't.”

”What about you?” he asked, a slight hint of spite creeping into his voice, as if I'd just accused him of being impotent in more ways than one. ”What are you going to do?”

”Me?” I said innocently. ”It's not my fight. It's not my scene at all. I only work here. My soul is only in hock-it isn't pledged to any side except mine. As for Charlot-he won't fight with fire. The last thing in the world he'd ever think of is levelling a gun at the smallest of Caradoc's minions. He'll fight this on his own ground, and if Caradoc wins he'll simply pack up his ground and move inside. It won't matter to him whether the Library and the Law control the companies or vice versa. He'll try to run the whole show regardless, inside or out, from the top or from the shadow behind the throne.”

Just shook his head. ”I could almost throw in with those Aegis b.u.ms,” he said. ”For all the trouble they've been to me, they're not bad people. At least they have the questions clear in their minds.”

”Sure,” I said. ”They have the questions clear in their minds. They have simple minds. Whatever gives you the idea that the questions are clear? The questions are as murky as the depths of a stagnant well, and so are the answers. It's just not that easy. It never is. Turn the Aegis boys loose-let 'em sink their teeth into this lot. Then we can forget all about them.”

”I don't get you,” said Just. ”I don't get you at all.”

”Few do,” I consoled him. ”Few do.”

The Caradoc private army marched away into town. A couple of hours later, they marched back. By that time, Eve and Nick had returned with everything they could steal from Kerman and Merani. They hadn't been able to take the maiden out to the camp, of course, so they'd had to carry most of it by hand.

They'd apparently asked for help and it had been provided-in the shape of one solitary Caradoc tech, who must have weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds. But among the three of them, they had a pretty impressive haul. It would provide t.i.tus with some heavy reading for a good few hours. At least it would mean that he didn't have to leave the Swan. Although he wasn't issuing any medical reports, it was fairly clear that he was suffering somewhat. As if he didn't have the odds stacked high enough against him anyway.

When the army came back-not quite so many of them -they got around to sending some people out to us.

The first one to arrive on our doorstep was the security officer, who explained to our anxious ears that he had been ordered to approach Keith Just with a view to co-operating in the matter of dangerous murderers on the loose.

Just, unfortunately, was not in the best of moods, and had taken refuge from the situation in an orgy of self-pity and resentment. The security officer was quite a young man, and although he was probably not innocent of all the evil-mindedness of the Caradoc higher echelons with respect to this affair, he was not an outstandingly nasty man.

Just's only address to him, however, was quite short, and merely consisted of a suggestion that the security officer should do something rather horrible to himself.

The young man did not appear to be terribly offended, nor in the least surprised. As he turned to make his way back to his superiors, probably in order to make preparations for his own search, I called to him to wait.

He half turned, and hesitated.

”If it's any help,” I shouted, ”he went thataway.”

The security officer gave me a dirty look.

I was only trying to be helpful.

About five minutes later, someone else came across to the Swan, and was likewise accosted on the doorstep by a small group of people, including myself, intent on stopping him from invading the s.h.i.+p's sacred precincts.

The new arrival was broad, and red-haired, and wore a broad grin that curled at the edges. He didn't have any vast quant.i.ties of braid on his uniform, nor any specially ornate insignia, so I a.s.sumed that he wasn't important. But he obviously expected his personality to carry enough evidence of his rank.

”I want to see Charlot,” he announced. ”My name's Ullman.”

”You can't,” I said. ”My name's Grainger.”

”I'm the captain of the s.h.i.+p up there,” he said, pointing at the sky. ”And I'm in charge of this operation on the ground. I have important business to discuss with your boss.”

I stared at him for a measured ten seconds, hoping that his grin would falter. It didn't Finally, I said: ”I'll tell the captain you're here.”

I called Nick delArco, and left him to look after Ullman. I went to see Charlot myself.

Eve was with him. He'd made a start on the reports-he had them spread out all over the lower deck-and he was giving Eve a careful account of the ideas he'd come up with earlier in the day.

”The battles.h.i.+p skipper's down below,” I said. ”I've left him with Nick. What's our policy?”

”Ignore them,” he said.

”And perhaps they'll go away?”

He looked at me sharply. ”I thought that you were too involved with this operation to adopt your customary flippant approach,” he said, with deceptive softness.

”Believe me,” I said, ”if I were to worry about the situation I'd be scared to death. Battles.h.i.+ps always bring out my sense of humour.”

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