"Our success will bring other ships, Mistress Leeman," Piet said. "Raids on the Federation Reaches have already increased twentyfold in the two years since, since we-"
He gripped Stephen's right hand, though he continued to look toward Alicia on his other side.
"— came back with more microchips than had been seen on Venus since the Collapse."
"It's not just the wealth for Venus," Stephen said. "It's the wealth that doesn't go to Earth to help President Pleyal strangle everyone but Pleyal."
There was no line on the starport side of the brothel. A lone Federation spacer glanced at us from the doorway. A pink-shaded lamp inside was lighted. I stepped into a pothole that the sky's afterglow hadn't shown me.
Alicia lifted her chin in a taut nod. "So you'll replace bums with pirates? That's your plan?" She paused. "Bums and whores!"
"We'll break the present system, mistress," Piet said, "because it can't be reformed. With the help of God we'll do that. Then there'll be room for men-from Earth, from Venus, from the Moon colony and Mars, perhaps-to expand in however many ways they find. Rather than as a tyrant demands, in a fashion that will come crashing down when the tyranny does-as it must! — in a second Collapse that would be forever."
The last words were a trumpet call, not a shout. Another man would have blazed them out with anger, but Piet's transfiguring vision was a joyous thing. Though even I'd seen how harsh the execution would be.
"I went to the Reaches to trade," Stephen said in the thin, lilting voice I'd heard him use before. "I wonder what would have happened if we'd been left to trade in peace, hey?"
He laughed. Alicia shut her eyes and missed a step. She squeezed against me instinctively.
"Maybe I'd sleep at night, do you think?" Stephen went on in the same terrible voice. Piet took his friend's hand again.
The slave pen was unlighted. Figures moved around a lantern at the Water Street end. It was about time for the prisoners to get their rations.
Floodlights gleamed on the Oriflamme. Half a dozen crewmen continued to work on the hull. "If I thought we had time," Piet said, "I'd grind off the repairs we made on Respite and reglaze from the original. I don't think the basalt bonded well, despite the surface crazing."
"There'll be time for that after we've taken the Montreal," Stephen said. "Or it won't matter."
Piet gave a nonchalant shrug. "We'll take her," he said. "And return home, with the help of God."
He looked at Alicia, smiled, and bowed slightly. "I think I'll go aboard and see how the repairs are coming," he said. "Mistress Leeman, I've appreciated your company."
"I'll go along with you, Piet," Stephen said. "Maybe I'll bunk in the ship tonight."
He gave me a wan smile. The two of them walked in step toward the Oriflamme, though I'm sure neither was attempting to match strides. They were as different as an oyster and its shell; and as much akin.
I opened the wicket into the Commandatura garden for Alicia.
"Captain Ricimer really believes in what you're doing," she said softly. Roses perfumed the air. There were lights in the far wing of the building, but the garden seemed to be empty. "But Mister Gregg doesn't."
"I think Stephen believes the same things as Piet does," I said. "I just don't think he cares very much."
"He frightens me," she said.
Stephen would never kill anyone by accident, I thought; but Alicia understood too much for that to sound reassuring to her. "He's a good friend to Commander Ricimer," I said. "Not a very good friend to himself, though."
I paused to twist off a rose. Its deep pink glowed like a diamond's heart with the last of the sunset. I broke the thorns off sideways with the tip of my thumb, then handed the flower to Alicia.
She giggled and put the stem behind her ear. Flying creatures as big as gulls swooped and climbed over the river. Their calls were surprisingly musical.
Alicia turned at her cottage's new door-a panel of raw wood that Molt workmen had fitted the evening before. "You're a very gentlemanly pirate, aren't you?" she said. "You could easily have forced me to-whatever you chose."
I shrugged. My skin was tingling. "I respect you too much for that," I said. I respect myself too much. Again, though I don't lie when I can avoid it, one chooses the particular truth he speaks aloud.
"A girl doesn't always want to be respected quite so much," Alicia said. My arms were around her by the middle of the sentence, and my lips muffled the final word.
Near morning, as I was starting to dress to be gone before dawn, Alicia told me about Secretary Duquesne's personal cache of chips in a pit beneath the floor of the garden shed.
TREHINGA
Day 114
"Here's the whores you wanted, Mister Moore," Lightbody said in a tone that could have been forged on an anvil. He gestured Patten and Vantine into the walled office I'd taken for this interview. Baer stood behind the women with a cutting bar.
Because the Federation soldiers wore trousers and had hired on to fight, Lightbody called them whores, thought of them as whores. He treated Alicia with the deference due a lady; and she was a lady, as surely as I was a gentleman, but the twists of Lightbody's mind disturbed me at a basic level nonetheless.
The Oriflamme fired a matched pair of attitude jets in the field outside. The hull repairs were complete. Piet and Guillermo were doing the final workup. We'd lift by evening, so it was time for me to act.
"You can take their hands loose, Lightbody," I said. The women were filthy. Facilities in the slave pen were limited to a trough, buckets, and mud. Twice so far we'd had rain before dawn, and the yellow adobe clay was everything I'd expected it to be.
Were conditions reversed, Secretary Duquesne would have us hanged out of hand-unless he directed Patten and Vantine to torture us to death instead. I didn't think of this pair as whores. More like vicious dogs, to be trusted only in their malice.
Lightbody looked doubtful, but he opened the knots on the women's wrists with the spike of his clasp knife. He held his shotgun out to the side where the prisoners couldn't easily grab it. "You'll want us to stay in here with you then, sir?" he suggested.
I shook my head. "No," I said, "I want to have a friendly talk in private. Close the door and wait outside."
The two sailors obeyed, but I could tell they didn't think much of the idea. To reassure them, I laid my cutting bar on top of the desk I was using, with its grip ready for my hand.
I'd chosen the office of the Clerk of Customs because the room was private and it had a large window. I wanted the light behind me for this interview. The clerk-the older of the pair who'd come out to the cutter initially-had decorated the walls with wood carvings. Molt workmanship, I supposed. The pieces were intricate, but I didn't find them attractive.
The women glared at me with caged fury. Their white tunics were sallow with dried mud, and their faces weren't much cleaner.
I waited for the next pair of jets to finish their screaming test, then said, "You can sit down." I gestured to the chairs against the wall behind the women.
"What do you want from us?" Vantine demanded in a voice which broke with anger.
"Help," I said. "For which I'm willing to pay."
They were making it easy for me, though I'd have carried through in any case. I'd seen this pair in action the morning we arrived. No amount of feigned contrition now would have changed the decision I'd made.