He was careful to let Austin make the decisions, and let him make some that were very poor without protest. Kea could have done a more exact job of stage-managing, but he knew just how sensitive and paranoiac the incompetent were. The last thing he needed was to be fired. Except, at his level, being canned would be phrased as "resigned to pursue exciting interests of a personal nature."
He also traveled extensively incognito. There were people he needed to meet and industries to research that had nothing to do with Bargeta Ltd. Sometimes he traveled under a false name, with false papers. One of his favorites was H. E. Raschid, in tribute to Burton and Scheherazade. Now and again people grinned—and Richards made a mental note of the person as worth cultivation.
His new contacts and friends extended far beyond the business world. Politicians. Some people who had interesting trades, some of them quite beyond the law. He spent money lavishly, but cannily. He was always willing to contribute to a pol's coffers, without regard to the man or woman's party. Eventually he controlled a significant number of Ganymede's traditionally available estates general. He also owned about a quarter of the moon itself. The estate he had constructed was more a small, ultra-secure industrial park than the sprawling demesne of a rich man.
Which is just what Kea was now. Not only was he lavishly paid by Bargeta, with his own keys to the vault with Project Suk, but his new friends offered tips and suggestions. Kea played the market in every legal and illegal manner possible, so long as it was fairly subtle. Eventually there might be an investigation and an accounting—but when or if that day came, he would either be dead, have disappeared, or have made himself beyond the law.
Then came the breakthrough, a few months into the new century. An expedition returned. Not from the stars—Kea had chanced gross amounts of Bargeta's capital to fund two stardrive expeditions—but from the Solar System's backyard. Just beyond Pluto, just beyond the shatter that had once been thought to be an eleventh planet of the system. A meteorite, almost a quarter kilometer in diameter, had been found, tested, and brought back. The ships' captain reported more drifting bodies out there that spectroed as being the same matter.
It was the X material. Nonreactive to anything that the Bargeta labs could come up with. Hard to work, but not impossible. It would not retain radiation or anything else it was bombarded with. It even failed to react to a small bit of laboratory-produced "conventional" anti-matter.
It had a melting point high enough on the Kelvin scale to be suitable for ship armor, but low enough to be workable in a high-tech foundry.
Sensing victory, and allowing himself a flash of arrogance, Richards named the X substance. Imperium X.
And he ordered a certain, very unusual ship to be moved from its parking orbit around Mars to the secret lab on Deimos. There it was given a plating from bow to stem, just a few molecules thick, of the new element. The ship was that old starship he'd seen drifting in a junkyard above Mars's polar regions years ago, which he'd purchased earlier and had modified in several ways, among them so one man and several computers could ran it. It was already fueled—a good segment of Project Suk's resources had gone just to power the ship. Now for the Alva Sector, the discontinuity, and the final test.
The company announced Richards was finally going to take some time off. Kea told Austin that he would be absent for a minimum of three Earth-months. He was going somewhere, somewhere he wouldn't even tell his best friend about. Just as Austin had told him to do, a year or so ago.
"I did?"
"You did. We were fairly gassed at the time. Remember? Hey, you're the one who forgets nothing, right?"
Austin didn't laugh. Lately he had been wondering about Kea. He seemed... sometimes... as if he were setting his own course. Or, at least, behaving as if Bargeta's knowledge of the dynasty weren't that important. Perhaps, he thought, he'd have to talk to Kea. He was his friend, of course. But Austin remembered Mars, and remembered his father's reminder that the lesson of proper place must be learned and relearned, taught and retaught. There was no such thing as an irreplaceable man at Bargeta Ltd. That applied even to family members—Austin had sacked a couple of cousins just this year. No one was that vital—except, of course, Austin himself.
Two days before his planned disappearance, Richards was working out—on his private, single-station, no-links computer— the erratic series of orbits he would take to the Alva Sector. He was buzzed. His receptionist—Kea quite deliberately hired men or women for their competency and, preferably, homeliness, in deliberate contrast to Austin's office harem—said he had a visitor. She refused to announce herself. What should the receptionist do?
As she spoke, appearing to be puzzled, she kicked a pickup under her desk in the outer chamber, and a screen lit up, as instructed. This would not be the first person who preferred not to give a name to arrive at the boss's sanctum. Kea stared at the image. He was quite proud that he took less than two seconds, by his count, before he said, in a clear, normal voice, "Ah yes. Show her in."
Tamara. Still lovely. She wore a business suit that appeared to be styled for a man—once again, androgyny was the in cycle—but with a silken-looking blouse underneath, a blouse whose colors shifted and changed as sunlight and shadow crossed it. Under the suit, she would have nothing on, Kea knew. She still had that look. You may take me, any way you wish. If you can. He swam weightless for an instant. But he did not show it. He would be damned if he did.
He was delighted to see her. Embraced Tamara like a long-fondly-thought-of friend. He refused to let his mind tell him he felt her erecting nipples under the coat against his chest. Hold all calls. A drink. He seated her on his office couch, and sat close to her. But not that close. He had dreamed of seeing her again, all these years, he said. What was she doing in town? Recovering, Tamara said, her voice still sending chills, chills to match the time she'd showed him what could be done with nothing more than a few ice cubes and a leather strap. Recovering from what?
"My husband and I... are no more." She shrugged. "He's obsessed with his racing, although he certainly hasn't won anything of late. Boys and their toys, and that. I guess he never grew, and I did."
Well. Sorry, and that.
"I've been thinking about you a lot. For a lot of years. And I thought..." She stopped, waiting for Kea to pick up on the signal.
Richards waited, his expression patient, interested. Perhaps this old, respected friend was about to present an entirely new idea? Tamara tried again.
"You know, there are a lot of things I remember very, very well. Fireplaces. Silk. Laughing a lot. A hard-to-explain wind-burn." She forced a giggle, and Kea frowned for a moment, then visibly "remembered" the circumstances. Tamara's brows furrowed for an instant. This was not going as she'd planned...
"But mostly, I remember mistakes. Especially one."
"Yes. I do, too."
"I think," Tamara said, her eyes now humbly down, on her hands clasped in her lap, "that all I can say is that I was a little shit in those days. And it took me a while to grow up. And that you'll never know how sorry I am, and how much I want to make it up to you."
She managed a tear. Kea found her a handkerchief. He shrugged. "Neither one of us," he said, "was exactly an adult in those days. One mistake balances another."
Tamara started to say something, then stopped. She puzzled, unsure of what Kea had meant by his last. Then she went on. "At least," she said, "Austin wasn't as stupid as I was. So it's not like you vanished, and it's not bke life only gives you...