"But your future?" she pressed quietly. "What of your future, Wilf? Am I any part of your dreams?"
"Should you be?" he asked. "You have not touched me for years."
She frowned. "How could I have touched you? Half a galaxy has separated us until today."
"One touches," Brim said gently, "and then one touches." He gently placed his hand on her arm.
"Margot," he continued, "addicts touch only their addictions, and you are clearly not addicted to me."
She closed her eyes for a moment. "Perhaps it seems that way, Wilf," she said, barely whispering, "but..."
At that moment, a tall Leaguer dressed in a Controller's severe black service uniform, peaked cap, and knee-length riding boots forced his way so close beside her that she nearly lost her balance. His gold shoulder straps bore two large diamond-shaped devices, indicating that he was a Galite'er, the equivalent of a Rear Admiral in the Imperial Fleet. "Is this person bothering you, Princess?" he asked with grandiose disdain.
"N-no, Galite'er Hoffman," she replied, "he is an old friend."
"A friend?" Hoffman said, narrowing his eyes and turning his head to peer disdainfully at Brim.
"How can that be? He is nothing but an Imperial."
Brim smiled and calmly looked up into the Leaguer's face. The blue cast of his skin and total lack of body hair identified him as a Varoldian from the Ta'am Region. "How badly is it you want trouble, mister?'' the Carescrian asked in a quiet voice. "With the kind of manners you've shown me so far, I can be very creative."
"Wilf, no!" Margot gasped in a frightened whisper. She took the Leaguer's arm. "Come, Galite'er Hoffman," she said. "I am ready to return to the ship.''
"An intelligent decision," Hoffman said, examining his spotless blue fingernails. "Your Imperial friend here is deeply in your debt. I should have enjoyed breaking him in half."
Brim gripped the back of a nearby chair, stayed from mayhem only by the look of panic in Margot's eyes. "Until we meet again, Princess," he said, bowing deeply from the waist.
Without acknowledging him in any way, she followed Hoffman into the colorful throng. Brim watched her reappear shortly afterward at the main entrance, where three more Varoldians conducted her into a black limousine waiting under the portico.
"What in the Universe was that all about?'' Saltash demanded, pushing his way to Brim's side with a look of concern on his face.
"I wish I knew," Brim answered, the shock of hearing Margot's voice just beginning to sink in.
"Well, what did you say to him?" Saltash asked.
"Who?" Brim answered distantly.
"Wilf—the Galite'er."
Brim chuckled, "Oh, the Galite'er? Don't pay any attention to him; he's only a guard."
"But why did he take the Princess away? What were the two of you talking about?"
"We had really only begun to talk," Brim replied with a frown. "Odd, that. In retrospect, it almost seems as if the bloody Leaguer had been waiting for something to happen."
"And that's all?"
"I'm afraid that's it, friend," Brim said, draining his goblet. "Damned strange evening, though. I haven't seen Margot for years, yet there she was, talking to me as if... well... as if we'd been apart only days. And then..." He stopped in the middle of his sentence as Rogan LaKarn hobbled painfully into the refreshment center. Once handsome, the man's face had become as twisted with hate and anger as his body. It would still be years until his spinal nerve trunks had regenerated to a point that they could be rebuilt by a healing machine.
"Ah, Brim," the Baron muttered, ignoring Saltash's presence completely, "I am told that my so-called wife is no better at staying away from you today than she was years ago." He laughed. "Well, you'll want to think twice before jumping into bed with her now that she's on TimeWeed. Let me guarantee that she needs it after a dose of love—physically must have it. And, as I am certain you are aware, the smoke she exhales will kill you, especially in the doses she now requires."
Brim looked grimly at the man's twisted body. "LaKarn," he growled, "if it would save that woman from the filth of TimeWeed, I'd break your spine again. Gladly. But since there is nothing I can do about Margot, I am simply going to leave." Turning to Saltash, he clapped the diplomat on his shoulder. "You can talk to him if you wish, my friend, but I am heading back to Starfury."
"Ah yes, Starfury, " LaKarn crowed as if he had heard nothing Brim uttered. "Then you will be most interested in the arrival tomorrow afternoon of an old acquaintance of yours." He laughed bitterly. "I am certain that you will be on hand to welcome Kirsh Valentin when he arrives in a preproduction model of the League's new Gorn-Hoff P.1065. I understand that you and that shameless space pirate Baxter Calhoun have spent considerable time assessing covert recordings of the prototype."
Brim stiffened as yet another shock from the past collided with his mind. Kirsh Valentin.
Handsome, intelligent, accomplished, and in too many ways as talented as himself, Valentin had been the Carescrian's arch enemy since the Leaguer egregiously tortured him as a helpless prisoner aboard a Leaguer patrol ship. Afterward, their paths continued to cross, in both war and the ensuing peace. And each time they did. Brim managed to frustrate Valentin's evil aspirations until the Leaguer's original disdain turned to cold and bitter hate. "I cannot imagine the meaning of your words concerning Baxter Calhoun," Brim lied calmly, "or recordings of some new Gorn-Hoff."
LaKarn's eyes filled with cold hate. "But you do remember Kirsh Valentin, don't you, Imperial gangster?"
Brim nodded, ignoring the insult from a man who could no longer defend himself. "How could I forget a man who has almost killed me three times?" he asked with a dour smile. Valentin had been responsible for at least three—and perhaps more—attempts at Brim's life in the fifteen Standard Years that had elapsed since their first encounter.
"Perhaps next time will prove the charm," LaKarn countered with a smile. "Or the time after that."
"I wouldn't hold my breath," Brim countered evenly, "Kirsh isn't really very good at it, you know."
"Practice makes perfect, Brim," LaKarn growled, then abruptly turned to Saltash. "My respects, Councillor," he said, awkwardly clicking his heels. Without a backward glance, he hobbled back into the crush of revelers.
During the ride home in Saltash's sleek limousine. Brim began to prepare himself for another "peacetime" encounter with his old enemy. He had neither seen nor spoken to the man since the Mitchell Trophy races, where he had been involved in an unsuccessful plot that would have blown Brim and his Sherrington M-6B into subatomic components. But even as he stepped onto Starfury's entry chamber, he found that Tissaurd had the ship at liftoff stations with orders to loose for space immediately, destination: Avalon....
Starfury raised Avalon in record time, mooring in the military complex near Grand Imperial Terminal on the sixth day out from Magor. Had anyone at the Admiralty been interested in those sorts of things, the crossing could have gone into the record books. But setting records in Starfury was almost too easy. And actually recording the event in an "official" manner required a lot of advance planning that simply wasn't possible with an active military ship.
Brim switched the propulsion controls to Strana' Zaftrak and got to his feet, idly watching a big government limousine draw to a halt at the foot of the brow in a cloud of powdery snow. Its sleek lines were somehow out of place among the angular dockyard vehicles parked nearby. Curious, he leaned his elbows on the coaming behind his recliner and watched while a liveried chauffeur hurried to open the passenger compartment door for a familiar-looking woman in mufti... Regula Collingswood— his skipper from I.F.S. Truculent.