The Man-Kzin Wars 05

CHAPTER TEN

“ID cards? We don’ need no ID cards! We don’ need no stinkin’ ID cards!”

The bandit chief struck his fist on the table and snarled; the jugs of drink jumped, and one flask of sake fell. The porcelain was ancient and priceless, an heirloom from Earth; one of the black-clad attendants had crossed the room to catch it before it had time to travel half the distance to the floor. Scalding-hot rice wine cascaded across his wrists and forearms, but there was no tremor in them as he set it reverently back in place, bowed, and stepped smoothly to his guard position along the wall. Shigehero Hirose spared him the indignity of sending him to the autodoc; repairs could be made at any time, but an opportunity to demonstrate true loyalty-and to accumulate gin-was more rare.

The bandit, Gruederman, lost some of his bluster. Hirose thought that was merely from the guard’s speed, not from the true depths of disciplined obedience it showed; but any lesson learned by a barbarian was an improvement. “Herr Gruederman,” the Nipponjin said. “I have gone to some trouble to secure false identities for you and your group as members of the Provisional Gendarmerie. I am sure you will find them very useful.”

Gruederman threw himself back in the chair, taking up his bottled beer and gulping at it. Hirose hid a cold distaste behind his bland smile. The other man was short and thickset, bouncy-muscular, which was something; many Wunderlanders who did no manual labor were obscenely flabby. Humanity had had only a few centuries to adapt to the. 61 gravity, and millions to develop a physiology suited to 1.0. But for the rest he was a slobbering pig, not even bothering to depilate-Hirose suppressed a shudder at the sheer hairiness of gaijin-with great bands of sweat darkening his khaki tunic under the armpits and at the neck. Granted, the hotel room was hot, even with the ceiling Ian, but…

He wrinkled his nose. Gruederman didn’t wash very often, either, and he had the rank body odor of a red-meat eater.

“More guns is what we need, more equipment,” he was saying. “Not stinkin’ ID. Why can’t you get us guns? You slants fence what we take, you’ve got to have good contacts.”

“Our contacts are our concern,” Hirose said quietly. “We have provided a valuable service; you may purchase weapons elsewhere with the valuata we supply.” And we are not going to make you so much of a menace that the Provisional Government looks too closely, which would happen f we provided you with the equipment you desire “In return, we ask only that you do an occasional favor..

Gruederman frowned. “Jo, no problem, we boot some head. Who you want done?”

Hirose pushed the holos across the table and sipped delicately at his sake.

“Lieber Herr Gott!” Gruederman swore, taking another swig of beer. “Ratcats!”

“The humans are the crucial targets,” the oyabun said quietly.

“I know these fuckers! They were on the convoy to Neu Friborg last week. Shot us up! You say they’re goin’ into the Jotuns?” Hirose inclined his head. “No problem, we boot their heads good.”

“Excellent,” Hirose said, nodding.

Gruederman belched huge pushed back his chair and swaggered to the door. “We boot them good.” The bandit hitched at his belt and went out without bowing. The tyabun walked quickly to the window and flung it open; without needing orders, the others began to clean the room and lit incense.

The things I do for the Secret Rule, he thought ironically. Or for fear of the Secret Rule. Once your family was in the Brotherhood, there was no such thing as resignation. That was how the world had been knit together, back on Earth; slowly, but oh so surely. “Until Holy Blood fills Holy Grail…” he quoted to himself. And now, it seemed, the extra-solar colonies would go the same way. He sighed; it had been pleasant, the degree of autonomy four and a half light-years interposed between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Virtual independence, the way it must have been on Earth before Nippon was opened to the West, when the Eastern Way families had received their orders from the Elders only once or twice in a generation. All things came to an end, though; the kzinti had come, the hyperdrive had followed, and now the universe had shrunk drastically once more.

It was useless to think of resistance. Even more so to think of rebellion, or exposing the Brotherhood; it had been exposed a dozen times, and it did not matter. In more than one century investigators had managed to publish books with most of the details of the Brotherhood, its origin, many of the membership, even some of the signs of the Craft. They hadn’t mattered. The books were not believed. They were buried under a mountain of disinformation, the tale-tellers ignored if outsiders, silenced if initiates. Outright rebels like Frederick Barbarossa and Lenin were crushed. Invincible, secret beyond secret, the conspiracy at the heart of all conspiracies and secret orders, the Brotherhood went on. Just at the moment it took the form of the ARM and Buford Early, and demanded that certain individuals vanish in the dangerous, bandit-haunted wastes of the Jotuns. That, at least, was easily arranged, with willing tools who knew nothing of what purpose they served.

“Go.” He turned, nodding to the attendant who had caught the spilled wine. “See to your hurts.”

He kept his voice curt, but the man sensed the approval. When the time comes to silence Gruederman, I will send that one, Hiroshe decided. None of Gruederman’s band could be allowed to live, of course. They would be no loss to anyone.

“It’s a very tempting proposition, Herr Early-or should I say Herr General Early?-but I’m afraid it’s not what I had in mind at the present time,” Claude Montferrat-Palme said.

His current mistress Set a tray between the two men and withdrew; she was a spectacular blond in red tights and slashed tunic; and Early’s eyes followed her out of the lounge with appreciation. Low gravity could do some interesting things for the human figure, things only prosethics or special effects could accomplish on Earth. Belters were usually too spindly to take advantage.

They were meeting on Montferrat’s home ground, the manor-house of his grudgingly restored estate. Grudgingly, since his allegiance to the Resistance had been so late and politic, but the conversion had been spectacular when it came. Also he turned out to have used much of the graft that came the way of a collabo chief of police for Munchen to help refugees, most of whom had showed their gratitude in electorally solid ways… Rather surprising me, Montferrat chuckled inwardly. Sometimes I wish the world would not keep chipping away at my cynicism so. You needed the vigor of disillusioned youth to maintain a really black, bitter cynicism. In his seventh decade and settling into middle age, Claude felt a disconcerting mellowing effect.

Early leaned back, coffee cup in one hand and brandy snifter in the other. “Excellent,” he said after sipping at one and then the other. Continuing: “I’m surprised you’re not interested, Herrenmann. You struck me as an ambitious man.”

“Pleasant to meet someone who appreciates the finer things,” Montferrat said, swirling the amber liquid in his snifter and inhaling the scent. Most of the plutocrats who founded Wunderland had been German or Netherlander or Scandinavian; his Montferrat ancestors were a French exception, and they had worked long and hard to establish the true vines of Cognac on this property. Along with the coffee plantations, things were possible in Wunderland’s climate that were not on earth.

“And I am ambitious, Herr General,” he went on, setting it down and taking out his cigarette case.

Early accepted one of the cigarillos, and they both lit from the candle on the table. The big room was dimly lit, letting in moonlight and warm garden scents through the tall louvered windows on three sides. Blue smoke drifted up toward the molded plaster of the ceiling.

“Strange you should be willing to risk all this, then,” he said, waving an arm at the outer wall; taking in the mansion and estate beyond, in spirit.

“If you mean the inheritance of the Nineteen Families,” Montferrat said, blowing a smoke ring, “it’s already more-or-less lost. And in any case, what business is it of yours?”

“I’m merely advising General Markham, as liaison with the UN Space Navy,” Early said mildly.

“Advising him that his dreams of returning Wunderland to the pre-War status quo can be accomplished,” Montferrat said dryly. “Absurd. For a variety of reasons, good and bad, the Families were too closely involved in running the planet during the Occupation. Their rule is doomed, even if the Provisional Government’s Gendarmerie has stopped the rioting and looting against them.”

“You haven’t thrown in with the Democrats, either,” Early pointed out.

“No, because I recognize a certain fine Terrestrial hand behind them-you’ve been puppeting the new Radical Democrat party too-financing it, in fact.”

“You’ll never prove a word of that,” Early replied.

“Of course not; I’m not entirely sure what you and your masters are after, but you’re certainly no fool. There isn’t even enough evidence to convince Markham, and he’s a clinical paranoid, I wonder his autodoc doesn’t fix him. My best guess is that you want to use Markham to restore order, infiltrating our military in the process-then use him to discredit the aristocrats completely with his ham-handed repression. Thus leaving the field to the Radical Democrats, who want a constitution that’s a carbon copy of Earth’s-complete with a technological police. Which the experience of the UN shows is equivalent to handing the government over to the technological police, since to control technology in a modern society you have to control everything.”

For a moment the mask of affability slipped on Early’s face, and Montferrat felt a slight prickling along his spine. How much of that is genuine? he thought. The man is ancient, for Gott’s sake. At least three times older than himself… and he ought to be sitting wheezing in a computerized wheelchair in the Strudlebug’s Club back on Earth. Secrets of the ARM.

“You are ambitious,” Early said softly. “I’d hoped to talk you out of this party you’re promoting.”

“Many people are involved with the Centrists,” Montferrat corrected; Early waved his hand.

“Please, I know the signs of secret influence when I see them.” For some reason he grinned at that. “Separatism is not a viable alternative.”

“Independence is,” Montferrat said. “And Wunderland-the Alpha Centauri system-is going to be independent. Of the kzin, and of Earth and the UN.”

“You’d better be sure you’ve got ample bargaining power before you sit down to bargain with me,” Early warned.

“Oh, exactly, my dear General. Which is why, as you will have noticed, I’m not bargaining with you now.”

Unexpectedly, Early laughed; it was a deep rich sound, thick as chocolate. “You aren’t, are you?” He took another sip of the brandy. “Well, in that case-perhaps you could expand on the remark you made at dinner, about local performance techniques and classical Meddelhoffer?”