I gave him time to compose himself, and assessed his shadow, Mr. Wethers. The man remained stony, not an iota of concern or sympathy on his bland corporate features. Of course, open pity for the boss was probably a good way to get fired, and that would be a bad idea indeed when your boss owned the very planet where you lived. But this man’s ability to hide empathy, if he felt any, was extreme—better than his ability to hide self-consciousness, since he colored and looked away in discomfort the second he registered me looking at him. I remembered that he’d acted pretty much the same way with Skye, Jelaine, and Dejah. He certainly had trouble tolerating the casual attention of women. I wondered who had hurt him in the past, and just how deep the scars ran.
Philip said, “Is there anything else?”
I gave Mr. Wethers some relief from the unwelcome heat of my gaze, resuming my interest in his master. “Mr. Bettelhine, what are your responsibilities for the corporation?”
“I command about two hundred ongoing research and development projects on behalf of my father, the company CEO.”
“You develop weapons.”
“I research new technologies.”
“Which,” I pointed out, “you most often use in the development of weapons.”
“By other divisions. I’m more interested in mapping the regions of undirected potential. It’s understood, at the corporate level, that at any given time, approximately seventy percent of the projects I command will turn out to be blind alleys. It’s with the remaining thirty percent that I justify my budget.”
“Still, the practical applications of your researches have the potential to kill vast numbers of human beings.”
He rolled his eyes, tired of the conversation. “Counselor, do you honestly believe that I’ve never had this debate with myself? I contribute to an industry that gives people the ability to affect their own destinies. How they manifest that power is up to them. What does this have to do with the situation we’re in?”
He was right. I could have debated the morality of Bettelhine Family business practices with him forever, and never reached a conclusion satisfactory to him or to myself. I returned to the central thread of my investigation. “I’m aware that a number of your divisions have been shut down or handed over to the control of Jason and Jelaine, and that this is extremely irregular given your long service and Jason’s uncertain personal history. I am certain that you have approached your father to ask him why this is happening. Has he given you any answer that makes sense?”
His answer was stony. “He’s only said that the corporation must retool for changing conditions, and that everything will be made clear to me in time.”
“You’ve also said that you had more than one relationship with your father, one as a son and one as a corporate officer. What you just said sounds like the answer he’d give a corporate officer. Forgive me for asking, as I know this must be painful, but has he given you any answers as father to son?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. It’s been more than a year since he gave me any answers as father to son. I haven’t even been in the same room with him for three months. That’s what I’m doing here. I changed my schedule, and the schedule of my associate here,” he indicated Wethers, “in hopes of catching up with him and maybe getting some answers. When Father canceled his trip at the last minute, I thought I’d at least spend some time with Jason and Jelaine and get some answers from them instead. But you know how that’s worked out.”
“Have you done anything to make your father angry?”
“I’ve asked him that.”
“And he says?”
He recited the pat answers without inflection. “That he loves me. That he’s my father and that he’s proud of me. That I shouldn’t be so sensitive. That I’ll understand when I find out what’s going on.”
“Those sound like father-to-son answers.”
“They do,” he said, not believing me. “Don’t they?”
I didn’t know. I’d never had the chance to relate to my own parents as an adult. I had no way of knowing what normal was, either in general or what it meant inside a dynasty like the Bettelhines, let alone what it meant for Hans Bettelhine in particular. Philip Bettelhine claimed to perceive a change, but had there really been a change? Was Hans really reassuring him, or just putting him off? How could I know, from this remove, when Philip could not after a lifetime of knowing all the people involved?
I decided to attack the problem from another angle. “Mr. Bettelhine, you mentioned a wife and daughter. How’s your family life?”
“My wife, Carole, took the kids and left me six months ago.”
“It must be unusual to divorce a Bettelhine on this planet.”
“Not for another Bettelhine. She’s a distant cousin from the Outer Family—many degrees removed, I assure you, but still a connected woman. And as it happens, we’re not divorced, just separated. Neither one of us wants to deny the children the opportunities for advancement that go along with my own superior connection to the Inner Family.”
“Would you mind telling me why your marriage failed?”
He turned stormy. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“I don’t know. Asking is how I find out.”
Philip squirmed for a moment and then gave it up. “Emotional incompatibility.”
“Who alleged that?”
“Carole did.”
“Did she give any reasons?”
“You want to know? I’d made a habit of sleeping around. It’s an awfully easy thing for Inner Family people to do. A night with a Bettelhine is considered a major plum, for those outside the bloodline. Sex of any kind you prefer is always available, and you don’t have to take no for an answer, if you’re enough of a bastard to use some of the options available to us.”
Now, that was an interesting moral construction. “Are you, sir?”
“That kind of a bastard?” He grimaced in self-disgust. “No. I’m just the everyday ordinary philandering kind of bastard. I don’t force anybody into anything. I just get offers and I think, why not?”
“I assume that your wife had an answer for that.”
“She’s a Bettelhine, and has her own pride to uphold. She gave me three warnings, which I disregarded three times, and then walked out on me.”
“You sound proud of yourself.”
“Thanks to my own stupidity, I was. I’m not anymore. And what does this have to do with anything that happened here tonight?”
“I’m wrapping up. So what you’ve told me is that in the last couple of years you’ve lost, by your reckoning, your brother, your sister, your wife, your life as family man, your relationship with your father, and much of your place in the family business?”
“Yes.”
“Would it be unfair to note that some people, pressed beyond all emotional endurance by such a series of blows, would look at all that loss and come to regard it as the result of a conspiracy against them?”
He was silent for a moment. And then the anger left him all at once, replaced with an earnestness that did not suit him nearly as well. “I don’t know what Jason and Jelaine are up to. I don’t know how it involves the Khaajiir, or my father, or you, or this Shapiro bitch. I don’t know why people are committing murders involving silly ancient weapons. It all escapes me, every bit of it. And if we are being quarantined or held hostage, as you believe, the reason escapes me even more. I don’t understand it, not any of it. I just want to know why I’ve been shut out and whether any of this is good or bad for the Family as a whole. I want that much security, at least. Will that finally answer your questions?”