Berry tilted her head slightly. "Well-named because of the forest, or the evil?"
"Both. The planet's gravity is slightly above Earth-normal. There aren't many oceans and those are small, so the climate is a lot worse. What they call 'continental.' Not unlivable, but the summers are bad and the winters are terrible."
"I thought you were rescued by a Beowulf warship."
"I was. But . . ." Hugh shrugged. "All things considered, I'm fond of my adopted homeworld, and Beowulf's probably—no, scratch that, definitely—the most ferocious star nation in the galaxy when it comes to enforcing the Cherwell Convention. Still, Beowulf has its faults. One of them, in my opinion, is that it pretends the Solarian League is really a functional nation, not just a batch of self-satisfied, overly prosperous, basically self-centered, piles of shared interests tied together in an association of convenience."
Berry raised her eyebrows, and Hugh chuckled. The sound was not remarkably cheerful.
"Sorry. The thing is, the ship that took out the slaver I was aboard happened to be operating in the territorial space of a fellow League star system. No one was ever able to prove anyone in that system had anything to do with the nasty slave traders, of course, but the local government insisted that the poor, liberated slaves be handed over to it so that it could personally see to their needs. The skipper of the cruiser—Captain Jeremiah—was a good sort, but he didn't have any choice but to go along with the demands of the local, legally constituted authorities. So we got handed over."
"And?" Berry prompted when he paused.
"And it's a good thing Captain Jeremiah was a good sort, because he put in a call to Beowulf's local trade representative. In the League, 'trade representatives' do a lot of the same things 'commercial attaches' do for relationships between independent star nations, so they've got more clout than the title might suggest. And the Beowulf representative made a point out of informing the local government that Beowulf felt responsible for the slaves it had liberated and would be expecting regular reports on their well-being. Which is probably the only thing that kept us all from getting 'disappeared.' Unfortunately, it didn't keep those oh-so-concerned local authorities from dumping us with the Office of Frontier Security when it found out it couldn't just make us all—poof, go away." He grimaced. "So, we all wound up stuck on Berstuk. It took quite a while for even Beowulf to get us unstuck. Once it did, though, we were fast tracked for citizenship." This time, he smiled. "The truth is, it's not that easy to get Beowulfan citizenship. The professional associations have a lot of clout on Beowulf—too much, my opinion—and getting citizenship can take a long time unless you've got highly desirable professional skills or money or something else they find especially valuable. It can be done, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through, and it takes a while. Except for liberated slaves. Whatever else I might think about Beowulf, it really and truly hates Manpower's guts. Which is one of the main reasons that liberated slaves get to jump the line over just about everybody else when it comes to getting citizenship."
"I knew some of that, thanks to Cathy and Daddy, even before Web and Jeremy got hold of me," Berry said. "So you got citizenship?"
"Yep. On the other hand, OFS isn't especially fond of Beowulf, either. It didn't exactly fall all over itself to cooperate with any expatriation requests. Even with the Anti-Slavery League pushing our case, Frontier Security was dragging its heels for all it was worth. Matter of fact, although Jeremy's never admitted it, I've always suspected that the mysterious demise of at least one Sector Commissioner had something to do with finally breaking that particular log jam." He shook his head. "Either way, though, it took six T-years to get it done, and I was already eleven, standard, before Beowulf managed to pry us back lose from Frontier Security."
"Oh. Why does that name, when you say it, seem to rhyme with Wicked Cesspool Demons of the Universe?"
Hugh smiled. "It's probably best to stay away from my opinion of the OFS. Or all the ice cream in this parlor might suddenly melt. Let's just say that growing up in an OFS relocation center—call it refugee camp, which is blunter but a lot more accurate—is not an ideal environment for a child. If Jeremy—excuse me, I meant to say if whoever my anonymous guardian angel was—hadn't been able to . . . expedite things in the end, I'm afraid to think what might have become of me."
The smile stayed on his face, but there wasn't much good humor left in it. "By the time I was eleven, I was a real thug. With an eleven-year-old's view of the world, but a body as big as that of most adult males. And I'm stronger than I look, too."
"Than you look?" Berry started to giggle, and covered her mouth with her hand. "Uh . . . Hugh. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but it's not actually an accident that my Amazons"—she nodded at the two ex-Scrags sitting at the next table—"call you either 'the gorilla' or 'the cave man.' "
"Well, yeah. That's been pretty much a constant my whole life. By now, I'm used to it. But to get back to the point, by the time Jeremy—personally—turned up to tell me Beowulf was finally going to haul us out of there, I had a bright career ahead of me as a criminal. I wasn't actually that happy to leave, to tell you the truth."
"I take it you changed your mind, eventually?"
Hugh laughed. "Took about three months. Trust me on this one, Berry. The surest and fastest way known to humanity I can think of to get gangster attitudes nipped in the bud is to have Jeremy X as a godfather. That man makes any gang boss or criminal mastermind in the universe look wishy-washy and sentimental, if he sets his mind to a project. Which, in my case, was what you might call 'the Reformation and Re-Education of Hugh Arai.' "
Berry laughed also. "I can believe that!" She reached across the table and gave Hugh's hand a squeeze. "I'm certainly glad he did."
Her voice got a little huskier, with that last sentence. And the touch of her hand—it was the first time they'd had any physical contact—sent a spike down his spine.
This is SUCH a bad idea. But he brushed aside that shrilling inner voice of caution much as a moose might brush aside slender spruce branches. In rutting season. He probably had a sappy grin on his face, too.
There was a little commotion at the door. Turning his head, Hugh saw that one of the Ballroom militants—ex-Ballroom, officially, although Hugh had his doubts—was trying to push his way into the parlor. He was having a tough time of it, but not because of any opposition being put up by Berry's Amazons.
Rather to the contrary. Lara rose from her seat, arms spread wide. "Saburo, honey! I wasn't expecting to see you until next week!"
No, the real problem was simply the population density in the outer and larger public room of the ice cream parlor. Every seat at every table was taken, and every square foot in between was jammed tight with people.
That had happened within five minutes of their arrival at the parlor. Hugh had commented on it, at the time. "You weren't kidding when you said this place was popular, were you?"
Berry had looked uncomfortable. At the next table, Yana had laughed and said: "It's popular, all right. But it's only thispopular when she comes in."
As a former security expert, Hugh was simultaneously pleased and appalled. On the one hand—what you might call, the strategic hand—the quite-evident immense public approval that Torch's queen enjoyed was her greatest protection. It was no accident, after all, that for a public figure to be unpopular was the single most important factor in assessing his or her risk of being assassinated.