A Family Head was an absolute dictator. His followers' fortunes depended upon his competence. Succession was patrilineal. The existence of proctors only mildly ameliorated the medieval power structure.
The First Families were the five or six most powerful Families. Intelligence had never accurately determined their number. As a consortium they determined racial policy and insured their own preeminence among their species.
Very little was known of the Sangaree that the Sangaree did not want known.
"Oh, hey," Mouse enthused. "Don't even joke about getting out. Not now. Not when we've got an opportunity like this. This might be our biggest hit ever. It's worth any risk."
"That's subject to interpretation."
"It is worth anything, Doc."
"To you, maybe." Niven nursed his drink and tried to regain the mood he had had on arriving.
Mouse would not let be. "So tell me about your friend. Who is she? Where did you meet her? She good-looking? She give you any? What's she do?"
"I ain't telling you nothing. You birddog your own."
"Hey! Don't get that way. How long you known me?"
"Since Academy."
"I ever take your girl?"
"I never caught you." He mixed another drink.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Jupp did."
Mouse flashed him a black look. "Who?" He shook his head, indicated his ear. The room might be bugged. "Carlotta, you mean? She came after me, remember? And he didn't give a damn."
Jupp von Drachau had given a damn.
Their mutual acquaintance and Academy classmate had been crushed. He had hidden it from his wife and Mouse, though. Niven had been the receptacle into which he had poured all his pain.
Niven had never told Mouse that he was the reason that von Drachau had abandoned wife and son and had thrown himself into his work so wholeheartedly that he had been promoted ahead of men far senior. Navy was the one institution that von Drachau trusted implicitly.
He was not alone in that trust.
The Services were the Foreign Legion of the age. Their people shared a hardy camaraderie based on their conviction that they had to stand together against the rest of the universe. Service was a place to belong. For people like yon Drachau it became a cult.
Niven never would tell Mouse.
The evil had been done. Let the pain fade away.
It was not what Carlotta had done. Faithful, till-death-do-us-part marriage was an Archaicist fantasy. It was the way the hurt had been done. Carlotta had made a public execution of it, flaying Jupp with a dull emotional flensing knife, with clear intent to injure and humiliate.
She had paid the price in Coventry. She was still one of the social outcasts of Luna Command. Even her son hated her.
Niven still did not understand what had moved the woman. She had seemed, suddenly, to become psychotic, to collapse completely under the weight of her aristocratic resentment of her nouveau-riche husband.
Von Drachau, like Niven, was Old Earther. Even before the collapse of his marriage he had been climbing meteorically, surpassing his wife's old-line, fourth-generation Navy relatives. That seemed to have been what had cracked her.
"Well, don't get in too deep," Mouse warned, interrupting Niven's brooding. "We might not hang around long."
Later, as he drifted on the edge of sleep, trying to forget the trials of life in Luna Command, Niven wondered why Mouse had discussed their mission openly, yet had stifled any mention of von Drachau.
Protecting their second-level cover? Associates of the Starduster certainly should not be personal friends of a Navy Line Captain.
Or maybe Mouse knew something that Admiral Beckhart had not mentioned to his partner, Niven thought. The Old Man liked working that way.
The bastard.
"Probably both," he muttered.
"What?"
"Talking to myself. Go to sleep."
Beckhart always used him as the stalking horse. Or moving target. He blundered around, stirring things up for Mouse.
Or vice versa, as Mouse claimed.
He wondered if anybody had been listening. They had found only one bug in their sweeps. It had been inactive. It had been one of those things hotel managers used to keep track of towel thieves. But it was good tradecraft to assume that they had missed something live.
Niven was not in love with his profession.
It never allowed him a moment to relax. He did not perceive himself as being fast on his mental feet, so tended to overpress himself pre-plotting his situational reactions. He could not, like Mouse, just fly easy, rolling with the blows of fate like some samurai of destiny.
For him every venture out of Luna Command was an incursion into enemy territory. He wanted to go out thoroughly forewarned and forearmed.
Life had not been so complicated in his consular residency days. Back then friend and foe alike had known who and what he was, and there had been a complex set of rituals for playing the game. Seldom had anyone done anything more strenuous than watch to see who visited him and who else was watching. On St. Augustine he had worn his uniform.
There were different rules for scalp hunters. Beckhart's friends and enemies both played by the war rules. The blood rules.
And for reasons Niven did not understand, Beckhart's command was involved in a war to the death with the Sangaree.
Niven had had all the indoctrination. He had endured the uncountable hours of training and hypo-preparation. He even had the benefit of a brutal Old Earth childhood. But somehow his Academy years had infected him with a humanism that occasionally made his work painful.
A tendency to prolonged introspection did not help, he told himself wryly.
The campaign against the Sangaree could be justified. Stardust destroyed countless minds and lives. Sangaree raidships pirated billions and slaughtered hundreds. Through front men the Sangaree Families obtained control of legitimate business organizations and twisted them to Illegitimate purposes.
The humanoid aliens had become a deadly virus in the corpus of human civilization.
Yet the very viciousness of Navy's counterattacks caused Niven grave doubts. Where lies justice, he wanted to know, when we are more barbarous than our enemies?
Mouse was fond of telling him that he thought too much and felt too little. The issue was entirely emotional.
Morning brought an indifferent mood. A depression. He simply abdicated all responsibility to Mouse.
"What's the program today?" He knew his partner meant to break routine. Mouse had had Room Service send up real coffee. Niven nursed his cup. "How are you going to get this past the auditors?"
"My accounts go straight to the Old Man. He stamps the accepted."
"Must be nice to be the Number-One Boy."
"It has its moments. But most of them are bad. I want you to hit the Med Center again. Business as usual. But try to audit their offworld drug traffic if you can. There's got to be records of some kind even if they only give us a side view. I think most of it is going out of the Center labs, so it's got to leave some kind of paper trace. If we can't find the source, maybe we can pinpoint the ends of the pipes."
"What about you?"
"I'm going to spend some of the Old Man's money. For hidey holes. For tickets out. You know. The insurance. That new Resident will show up pretty soon. We've got to be ready when it hits the ventilation."
"Are you getting close?" Feelings warred within Niven. He wanted out of Angel City and the mission, but not right now. There was Marya to get to know.
"No. Like I said, just buying insurance. I've got the feeling this'll get tight fast when they have somebody to tell them what to do."
"What do you mean, get tight? It already is. I had sticktights all day yesterday. Some of them stayed so close we could have worn the same shoes."
"That's what they get for using local talent. But I think that's part of their camouflage. We'd figure a place this important would have a battalion of high-powered types baby-sitting it. If somebody hadn't gotten onto S'Plez, they might have rolled along forever."