"If you think I'm good-looking," Paulo said bitterly, "you should have seen my mother. I never did-or not that I remember, anyway. She died when I was less than a year old. But my father's described her to me often enough. He had to describe her because he couldn't show me-Manpower doesn't let its slaves have pictures of each other."
Helen stared at him, and he stared back defiantly, almost hostilely.
"I didn't know," she said finally, softly.
"No reason you should've." He drew a deep breath and looked away, taut shoulders relaxing ever so slightly. "It's… not something I like to talk about. And," he looked back at her, "it's not as if I remember ever being a slave. Dad does, and sometimes it eats at him. And the fact that he and I-and my mother-were specifically designed to be attractive because that's what 'pleasure slaves' are supposed to be, that does eat at me sometimes. But he's never forgotten it was the Navy that intercepted the slaver we were on. My mother was killed in the process, but he never blamed the Navy, and neither did I. At least she died free , by God! That's why he took Captain d'Arezzo's name for our surname when he filed for citizenship. And why I joined the Navy."
"I can see that," she said, and deep inside she was kicking herself for not having recognized the signs. Surely someone who'd spent as much time with ex-slaves and the Anti-Slavery League as she had should have seen them. But why had he never dropped so much as a hint about it in her presence? He must have known Cathy Montaigne's adopted daughter would come as close to understanding as anyone who'd never been a slave could!
"Yeah," he said, almost as if he'd been reading her mind. "Yeah, I imagine you can see it, if anybody aboard the Kitty can. But it's not something I talk about. Not because I'm ashamed, really. But because… because talking about it takes away from me. It focuses on where I came from, the cold, sick 'businessmen' who built me and never even considered my parents or me human."
He looked out the dome, his mouth twisted.
"I guess you can also understand why I'm not quite so impressed with my 'good looks' as other people are," he said in a low, harsh voice. "Sometimes it goes a lot further than that. When you know a bunch of twisted bastards designed you to look good-to be a nice, attractive piece of meat when they put you on the block or rented you out-having people chase after you just because you look so goddamned good turns your stomach. It's not you they want. Not the you that lives inside you, the one that does things like this." He slapped the sketchpad's satchel. "It's this ." He touched his face again. "This… packaging ."
"I've known quite a few ex-slaves by now, Paulo," she said, keeping her voice normal, "and most of them have demons. Couldn't really be any other way, I guess. But whatever happened to them, whatever was done to them, and whatever those motherless bastards in Mesa may think about them, they're people, and the fact that someone else thought they were property doesn't make it true. It just means people who think they're fucking gods decided they were toys. And some toys, Paulo d'Arezzo, are very, very dangerous. In the end, that's what's going to finish Manpower off, you know. People like Jeremy X. And Web Du Havel. And you."
He looked at her suspiciously, as if he suspected she was shooting him a line, and she chuckled again, nastily.
"Paulo, for all intents and purposes, Cathy Montaigne's my mom, and you know all about Daddy. Do you think they don't have a pretty damned shrewd idea how many ex-slaves, and children of ex-slaves, have gone into the Star Kingdom's military? We get good marks for enforcing the Cherwell Convention. That attracts a lot of people-people like you-and the way we attract people like you is one reason we enforce the Cherwell Convention as well as we do. It's a reinforcing feedback loop. And then, of course, there's Torch."
"I know." He looked down, watching his right index finger draw circles on his kneecap. "That was something I really wanted to talk to you about-Torch, and your sister, I mean. But I- That is, it's been so long, and-"
"Paulo," she said, almost gently, "I've known a lot of ex-slaves, all right? Some of them are like Jeremy or Web. They wear where they came from right out on their sleeves and throw it into the galaxy's teeth. It defines who they are, and they're ready to rip Manpower's throat out with their bare teeth. Others just want to pretend it never happened. And then there's a whole bunch who don't want to pretend it didn't happen but who do want to get on with who they are. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want people to cut them extra slack, make exceptions for them out of some sort of misplaced, third-party guilt. And they don't want pity, or to be defined by those around them in terms of their victimhood. Obviously I haven't bothered to get to know you as well as I should've, or this wouldn't be coming as such a surprise to me. But I do know you well enough to know, especially now, that you're part of that hardheaded, stiff-necked, stubborn bunch that's determined to succeed without whining, without excuses, or special allowances. The kind who're too damned stubborn for their own good and too damned stupid to know it. Sort of like Gryphon Highlanders."
She grinned at him, and to his own obvious surprise, he smiled back.
"I guess maybe we are sort of alike," he said finally. "In a way."
"And who'd've thunk it?" she replied with that same toothy grin.
"It probably wouldn't have hurt to've had this discussion earlier," he added.
"Nope, not a bit," she agreed.
"Still, I suppose it's not too late to start over," he observed.
"Not as long as you don't expect me to stop being my usual stubborn, insufferable, basically shallow self," she said.
"I don't know if all of that self-putdown is entirely fair," he said thoughtfully. "I never really thought of you as stubborn."
"As soon as I get over my unaccustomed feeling of contrition for having misjudged the motivation for that nose-in-the-air, superior attitude of yours, you'll pay for that," she assured him.
"I look forward to it with fear and trembling."
"Smartest thing you've said all day," she told him ominously, and then they both laughed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
"And I suppose Aleksandra's going to say this isn't significant, either," Henri Krietzmann said sourly.
"Of course she is," Joachim Alquezar snorted.
The two of them sat on the seaside villa's terrace, gazing out across the ocean into the ashes of sunset. Stars had just begun to prick the cobalt vault above them, the remnants of a light supper lay on the table between them, a driftwood fire burned in a stone and brick outdoor fireplace with a copper hood, and Alquezar leaned back in a chaise lounge. An old-fashioned wooden match flared in the twilight, and smoke wreathed upward as he lit a cigar. Krietzmann sniffed appreciatively at the aromatic tendrils, then reached for his beer.
"I'm beginning to really, really dislike that woman," he said almost whimsically, and Alquezar chuckled.
"Even Bernardus dislikes her, whether he's willing to admit it or not," the San Miguelian said. "After all, what's not to dislike?"
It was Krietzmann's turn to snort in bitter amusement, but there was an unpalatable amount of truth in Alquezar's quip.
"I just don't understand the way her mind works," the Dresdener admitted after a moment. "Bad enough Nordbrandt and those 'Freedom Alliance' maniacs are blowing people up and shooting them almost at random on Kornati, but at least everyone realizes they're lunatics. Westman, though." He shook his head, scowling at the memory of the reports from Montana which had arrived only that morning. "Westman is Old Establishment. He's not a marginalized hyper-nationalist politician-he's a wealthy, propertied aristocrat , or what passes for one on Montana. And he's smarter than Nordbrandt. She started off with a massacre; he started with a joke. She followed up with assassinations and scattered bombings; he followed up by blowing up the headquarters of one of the most hated off-world organizations on his homeworld… and still did it without killing a single soul. He's like, like-"