"First let me say how pleased I am that your nest of hoodlums has been destroyed. And if you think I dislike you… I hate your master, Henry Morgan, with a passion you could never understand."
The pirate's gaze was mild, but it didn't soften Rees. "I got that," Drago said, hoping to get the meeting back on the subject. "And I suppose it's appropriate for you to hate him. And me. What do you think about the aliens?"
"I prefer them to you. They perform their atrocities against foreign life-forms. You perform yours against your own species."
Drago stood quietly, groping for a useful response, something that wouldn't torpedo his proposal. "Ah… Meanwhile the matter at hand is a reconnaissance of the alien armada. And I need your savant to make it work."
"You shall not have her, sir. First of all, you intend no reconnaissance. That is a cover, a sham. Your intention is to get hold of a savant for your own piratical purposes. And my savant is female-I'll wager you'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Drago's hands took them all by surprise. Quick as snakes they grabbed Llewellyn Rees by the shirt front and jerked him close, even as the seams split. The violence shattered the man, who began to babble. But to Drago the babbling made sense. "Do you remember the yacht Guinevere, Mister Pirate? Do you remember the officers and crew jettisoned out the trash lock? One of them was my younger brother! Murdered! Cold-bloodedly, without even being accused of anything! Our sister was Gomer Colwyn's niece, sent off in a lifeboat. It was she who told us what happened."
Rees was panting and trembling with repressed hysteria.
Drago stared and let him go. All he could say to the man was, "I'm sorry. I understand." To Ambassador Khai, he said "Let's go."
Two minutes later they were alone in her office. The emotional encounter had left her almost as shaken as Rees, but she'd remained oriented on Drago's mission. "You'll have your savant," she said. "I'll message Kunming, tell them I'm going to let you take Peng, and I'll take Lew's Lovisa to myself. I'm in charge here; I have the authority. And if they have misgivings, I'll refer them to Admiral Tischendorf."
She paused, looking at Drago, really seeing him for the first time. "Would you like a short drink before you return to your ship?"
"Yeah, I could stand a drink."
"I have several mild liqueurs… "
"Scotch and water if you have it."
She poured first for him, then for herself, and they sipped. "Lew really lost it this evening," she said.
"Ambassador Rees? Yes, he did."
"You handled it effectively."
Drago shrugged. "It's a good thing he didn't see the Minerva. My ship. She's the old Guinevere, renamed for the Roman goddess of martial prowess."
"Really!" She paused. "What is there to Llewellyn's story?"
He told her. He hadn't actually been there; as Morgan's principal captain, he'd been off with the other squadron, and heard the story after returning to Tagus. From the man who'd brought the Guinevere in as a prize.
"Morgan got back a month later," he went on. "The Morgan I knew, had known for years, was easy to get along with. The boss, but even-tempered. I'd seen him annoyed, but that was unusual. And I hadn't been able to reconcile the man I knew with the story I'd heard. So one evening over cognac I asked him about it."
Drago paused, pulling threads, retrieving memories. "And he told me. Things he'd never told anyone, he said, not even Connie. His father had been an abuser. Abused him sexually and generally. And the owner-master of the Guinevere-the ultimate in coincidence-was a cousin named Colwyn, maybe ten years older then Morgan." Drago fished for a moment and came up with the first name. "Gomer Colwyn. Morgan's dad had abused him, too, and Colwyn took it out on Morgan. They hadn't seen one another since Morgan ran away from home, barely in his teens. Made a living as a petty criminal, and worked up from there.
"Anyway Morgan recognized Colwyn, who tried to get the drop on him. The boss got the gun away from him, and things were said. In Welsh. Until Morgan totally lost control, and did what he did. Afterward, according to the crew, he locked himself in a cabin and stayed drunk for days."
Khai sighed gustily. "Gentle Buddha," she said, "the things people do to each other!" And wondered how Drago Dravec had wandered into piracy.
When they'd finished their drinks, her chauffeur took Drago back to the Minerva. She'd been tempted to invite him to spend the night. She was only forty-three, and her mirror told her she was still attractive. Drago Dravec was probably still short of forty, and the most vital man she'd seen since… ever, she decided. And she hadn't had a man in her bed since she'd left Terra. Her husband, the director of a major art museum, had refused to follow her off-world, and she'd never been seriously tempted to indulge herself in the opportunities on Hart's.
It's best not to this time, either, she'd told herself. It would complicate things.
She awoke to someone pounding on her bedroom door. A marine guard, a sergeant; she recognized the voice. "All right!" she called, "I'm awake! I'm awake!" Muttering, she swung her legs out of bed; dawnlight filtered through one-way windows. Slipping into her robe, she went to the door and opened it. "What is it?" she demanded.
"Ma'am, it's Ambassador Rees! He's been found bound and gagged in a closet, with a lump on his head! When he woke up, he made enough noise, thumping around, to wake up his orderly."
Her eyes widened, then narrowed. Dravec. It had to be Dravec.
"And, ma'am, his savant is gone! And her attendant!"
Good grief! she thought. And right under the noses of marine security. The Minerva would be gone, too, from Sky Harbor and probably from F-space. The Ministry would cry bloody murder, and look for someone to blame. Her.
She looked at the situation. If War House backed her, it might not turn out too badly. In these times, War House would outweigh the Ministry. And Osterdorf wasn't deputy minister for security anymore.
Security. She wondered if her marines had anything to do with this, then shook her head: surely not.
Chapter 10
Esau Wesley
The trees were tall for a heavyworld. Mostly their branches were strongly upsweeping, but remained subordinate to the strong central trunk.
This was old forest, the ground marked by fallen, "mossy" trunks of an older generation gradually converting to soil. Scattered patches of green shoots broke the sodden layer of last year's fallen leaves. Here and there were clusters of delicate pink-the first spring flowers.
Esau Wesley was adding his own dynamic to the ever-fluctuating system. He swung his ax again, and a chip flew from the steelwood tree. Then chop! and chop! and another flew. He continued, working his way around the tree without pause, cutting an unbroken ring through the hard bark and outermost layer of wood. Only then did he pause, removing his sweat-stained, lightweight leather hat and wiping his forehead on a homespun sleeve. It was early spring, and cool, but he was sweating. Steelwood was exceptionally dense and hard, even for New Jerusalem, but it favored the most fertile sites. And Esau was ambitious, and a bear for work.
He was also tall-five feet eight inches in his bare feet-and on Terra would have weighed a lean 227 pounds stripped. On the scale at the flour mill, however, he registered 322 pounds; gravity on New Jerusalem was 1.42 Terran-normal.
The years too were long. Esau was fourteen and a half by the calendar of New Jerusalem. On Terra he'd have been reckoned nearly nineteen. His frame was broad, his bones thick and dense, his heavy muscles powerful. And he was agile. Wrestling was a popular youth activity, and he was exceptionally good at it.