“They’re rejuvenating too,” Brun pointed out, over and over. “They’ll live just as long as your parents and grandparents—and they’re going to want power. We can’t stuff the rejuvenation tiger back into the box. It’s out, and it’s going to stay out. What we have to do is design a system people can live with, Rejuvenants and those who oppose rejuvenation alike. And right now, if you’ll work with me, we have the votes. There are still more unrejuvenated than rejuvenated members.”
The young Consellines, eager to profit from rejuvenation, were willing to consider how a long-lived society might work. Some religious groups opposed rejuvenation entirely; Brun listened to their objections and took them back to the pro-rejuvenation faction. “It has to work for everyone,” she said again, over and over.
Brun also talked to those Rejuvenants who would meet with her, emphasizing her conviction that multiple rejuvenations gave them special skills and responsibilities as well as privileges. “You can afford to take the very long view,” she said. “You can figure out for yourselves how to use that extra time productively, to contribute and not just hoard resources.” She began to wonder, after a few of these meetings, if they’d all had bad rejuv drugs somewhere down the line, because most seemed unable to grasp the need to change. They liked the life they had; they could not believe that change might come by force.
“Believe it,” Brun said. “When you’re outnumbered enough, it doesn’t matter what talents and skills you have. I learned that on Our Texas.”
It was the first “youth” vote in Council which convinced many of them. Months of hard work lay ahead, but if Fleet could buy them the time, Brun was now sure that they would cooperate in the end.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Commodore Admiral Minor Livadhi. Arash grimaced at his face in the mirror. He looked well enough—the same tall, trim figure, the same lean face . . . handsome, actually. The same red hair, only lightly silvered at the temples. Decades of service in the Regular Space Service . . . combat experience . . . decorations . . . a fine upstanding officer.
A fine upstanding fool. A fool whose folly was now on his heels, like a hound on the trail of a fox . . . like a hunter after his prey. He shook his head abruptly and glared at himself. Time to quit dithering, to quit making faces in the mirror and do something.
But to lose it all . . . it hurt. The years, the friendships, the trust.
The certainty of his fate if he didn’t do something.
It had gone already, gone before he’d realized it. It had gone the moment he went to Jules with his worries about Lepescu, gone irretrievably the first time he’d done Jules a favor that went over the line by so much as a hair.
He contemplated, as he had contemplated before, simply going off on his own. But with Fleet on a war footing, it was even less possible. Commodore Admiral Minor Livadhi, so well known, so distinctive in appearance, could not book a flight off this station without someone reporting it . . . he had to take that convoy out, knowing all the time that the hounds were on his trail, were closing in.
He had kept the contact code all these years, though he had never made contact himself. After the fiasco with the Crown Prince, he had never meant to . . . he had tried to forget. But now, in his need, his memory threw it up on his mind’s screen, as clear as the day he first saw it. Perhaps he was in truth what Jules had made him in law.
Or perhaps half his luck would be with him, and there would be no corresponding code on this station. Then he would have to be honorable, have to be the naive prey who does not hear the hounds until too late. He would have to endure the discovery, the disgrace, the ruin of a lifetime’s honest service for the sake of a youthful error. In a way, he wanted to be that innocent.
He called up the station’s database, looking for the number that he hoped would not be there.
But it was. And as it would have to be, the number’s owner was an unexceptionable business anyone might call or visit: Remembrances Gifts and Flowers. He placed the call, and spoke the words that would mean nothing without the knowledge in his head.
Then he had to wait for an answer, his nerves drawn tighter with every passing hour.
“I was afraid she’d faint,” Oblo said, holding out his mug for a refill. “Turned white as a sheet, she did.”
“You idiot, Oblo,” Meharry said. “She maybe hadn’t heard before—”
“She hadn’t, but I didn’t think of that. How’s I to know?” His tone of injured innocence sounded real, for once.
“You have a brain,” Meharry said shortly. “Wish I’d had time to talk to her.”
“What about?”
“Copper Mountain . . . I was wondering if she’d heard more than I have. I wish I could transfer over there. My brother—”
“Your brother is fine, Methlin. You heard that—”
“Mornin’ Oblo, Methlin,” Petris said. “What’s new about your brother?”
“Nothin’,” Oblo said. “Methlin just wants to go play big sister.”
“Transfer? I doubt they’d let you, right now.”
“I know.” Methlin bit into a sweet roll as if it were an enemy’s neck. “I did sort of ask. Got told no.”
“You’re not the only one,” Petris said. “I heard from the admiral’s clerk—Admiral Serrano’s, that is—that Commodore Livadhi asked if perhaps Heris’s old crew wouldn’t like to transfer, seeing as she’s so close. Relatively close.” He sipped his own mug of coffee.
“Wants to get rid of us, does he?” Oblo asked, scowling.
“I think it was courtesy,” Petris said. “He’s—sometimes he’s almost scrupulously polite. Working at it. The admiral said no, by the way.”
“She would,” Oblo said.
“Mind yourself,” Petris said, grinning. “She’s our Heris’s aunt, not just a mere admiral—”
“Mustang,” Meharry said, grinning back.
“So I am. With everything that implies. So, how are your sections shaping up for this next mission?”
“Better,” Meharry said. “It’s still not our—not what I’d’ve liked, all our own people. But the new ones aren’t bad, and that first cruise settled ’em.”
“Good. We may well see some trouble this time out, from what I hear.”
“Me, too,” said Oblo, who had sources known only to himself. “I heard some of the mutineers are trying to set up deals with free trader companies, and even the big consortia. Anyone who doesn’t sign up gets whacked on their next trip.”
“The commodore’s not bad,” Meharry said thoughtfully, stirring her coffee. “I hear he’s got good combat sense. Not up to Heris, of course, but—”
“We don’t know that, Methlin,” Petris said. “His record’s good. And Heris liked him, even when she didn’t completely trust him.”
“Came to our rescue that one time . . .” Oblo commented.
“Yeah . . . kind of odd he was there, but I don’t argue with good luck. Anyway, if it goes as smoothly as last time, we’ll be fine, as long as the crew does its job and nothing blindsides us.”
“Nothing’s going to blindside us with Koutsoudas up in scan,” Meharry said.
The convoy proceeded on its way, a string of transport and cargo vessels guarded by Vigilance and her gaggle of patrol and escort ships. The original plan, to have each convoy include two cruisers, had foundered on the shortage of cruisers. This made Rascal’s weapons upgrade particularly valuable, and Livadhi placed her at the tail of the line, where another cruiser would have been. They were held to the speed of the slowest ship, in this case two of the spherical hulls used by the Boros Consortium, loaded with ordnance for the border stations. Esmay’s relatively young crew had plenty of practice in adjusting jump point insertions and exits, in interpreting longscan. After the first two jump transitions, she began to feel less like a character playing a part and more like a real captain. Her crew was settling well; she could feel their confidence in her.