“Really?” Gwendolyn Adair’s response dripped irony. “Do you know, Ozzie, I do believe I read something about that somewhere already!”
“I’m not the one joggling your elbow,” Morrow pointed out. “It’s Frampton. She’s getting impatient.”
Gwendolyn started to snap at him, then stopped. Angelique Frampton, Countess Frampton, was the granddaughter of a first shareholder whose son had improved upon his father’s originally fairly modest position through a lifetime of aggressive (some would have said unscrupulous) financial maneuvers. Over the course of his and Angelique’s lifetimes, the Framptons had moved into the uppermost ranks of the Star Kingdom’s wealthy, and as part of that climb, they’d acquired a huge portfolio of Sphinxian land options and leveraged it for all it was worth worth. At the moment, those land options were valued at “only” four or five hundred million dollars. Over the course of the next thirty to forty T-years, that value would at least triple, and the bankable value they already represented had been used as security for loans totaling just over a billion dollars. Those loans were critical to the Earldom of Frampton’s solvency, and their terms required full payment or refinancing within the next ten T-years. Repayment would be difficult or even impossible; refinancing would be a routine transaction…as long as the options’ value was maintained
That would have been cause enough for Angelique to seek proactive means of protecting their worth, yet that was hardly her only motivation. Nor was the sizable stash of options in Gwendolyn’s portfolio her only motivation. True, both she and the countess stood to lose heavily in purely financial terms if they were invalidated or even simply declined in market value, although Framption stood to lose far more. But the countess also possessed a vindictive streak at least a kilometer wide. Those were her land options. No stinking clutch of misbegotten, rat-like little aliens was going to take what was hers! She would probably survive financially if she lost the options, but her fortune would be brutally reduced…and she was just the sort of person to use what was left of it taking vengeance on whoever had allowed—or caused—that to happen.
On someone like Gwendolyn Adair, for example.
“I imagine she’s not the only one who’s feeling impatient,” Gwendolyn said after a moment, instead of biting Morrow’s head off, and he snorted.
“All of them are getting antsy, if that’s what you mean.” He shook his head. “For someone who’s only gotten off campus twice—aside from her visits to the Adair Foundation, anyway—Harrington and that little monster have attracted an awful lot of favorable press. Every time I think about that puff piece the Landing Observer did on her I want to throw up. Even Harvey’s in her corner now! He says she’s one of the best students he’s ever had, and the last time I talked to him, he went on forever about how smart her treecat is, too.”
“I know.” It was Gwendolyn’s turn to shake her head. “She’s more personable than I’d hoped, and she’s got those idiot friends of George’s eating out of her hand at the Foundation.”
Stephanie and Karl had visited the Adair Foundation five times now—three times to meet with the Foundation’s directors, who also happened to be its most generous donors. There wasn’t much doubt what sort of impression she’d made on them, unfortunately. Not that it had come as much of a surprise to Gwnedolyn.
“It was your idea to invite her,” Morrow pointed out.
“Yes, it was. And if I hadn’t thought of it, someone else would have—probably George himself.”
Gwendolyn’s tone was acid. Her cousin George Lebedyenko took his position as Earl of Adair Hollow—and CEO of the Adair Foundation—seriously. Usually, she found that more useful than not, but there were times (and this looked like one of them) when his personal interest could become more of a hindrance than a help.
“The treecats are exactly what the Foundation was set up to protect,” she continued. “That’s one reason Angelique sent you to me in the first place on this one, Ozzie. At least by issuing the invitation I was in a position to control how much contact young Stephanie actually had with them.”
“Granted.” Morrow shrugged. “But Frampton would be a lot happier if we could’ve at least managed to give the ‘oh-aren’t-treecats-cute’ lobby a bit of a black eye while we had them here on Manticore.”
“Oh, I haven’t given up on that,” Gwendolyn assured him. “In fact, I have good news for Stephanie and Karl. The management at the Charleston Arms has finally agreed to allow Lionheart not just on the premises, but into the private dining room.”
“What?!” Morrow stared at her across the table. “I thought we’d agreed that the last thing we wanted—”
“—was the Foundation’s membership getting a chance to meet the little monster personally and fall under his spell,” Gwendolyn finished for him, and waved one hand impatiently. “Of course we did. But I was in two minds about that from the beginning. And since George has decided he wants Lionheart admitted to the next Foundation meeting, I decided it would probably be less than desirable for him to find out I’ve been the one discreetly dragging my heels on that from the beginning. Especially when he’s actually going to be able to be present for the next meeting instead of delegating to his faithful proxy cousin.”
“Well, that’s the game,” Morrow said gloomily. Unlike Gwendolyn, he hadn’t personally met Lionheart, but he’d watched quite a bit of covertly obtained long-range imagery of the treecat, and he had met Stephanie. “Once they see the two of them together, they’re going to jump right on the treecat bandwagon.”
“Oh, grow up, Ozzie!” Gwendolyn looked at him irritably. “That was going to happen no matter what we did! What? You expected the Foundation to come down in favor of exterminating all treecats? And that doesn’t even count George! It’s been a given that they’d feel compelled to come to the little beasties’ rescue.”
“So you decided to get behind and push them in that direction? Is that it?”
“Exactly.” Gwendolyn smiled at Morrow’s expression. “The best we’re going to be able to do with them is get them to sign on for the reservation option, Ozzie. George will be inclined in the direction of ‘protecting them from human contact’ no matter what—it’s going to be an automatic reflex on his part—and the Foundation’s Board almost always follows his lead. You know that as well as I do. What we need to do is to steer George in the direction he’d take anyway…and do it in a way which will push the Board even more strongly into supporting him.”
“And giving them an opportunity to actually meet Lionheart is going to do that?” Morrow looked skeptical. “You’ve read Dr. Radzinsky’s reports, and we’ve both watched the vids of Lionheart scampering around the campus with her. They’re sentient, Gwen, and you know it. In fact, they’re probably even smarter than we were afraid they were! If the Board gets a chance to spend any time in Lionheart and Harrington’s presence, a lot of them—I’m thinking of Turner and Fitzpatrick, especially—are going to see this as some kind of healthy symbiotic relationship between two highly intelligent species. And it’ll be the first time humans have ever managed anything of the sort, too. If they decide that’s what’s going on on Sphinx, they’re almost certain to vote in favor of some act granting the treecats the legal status of full sentients!”