“What’re they doing here?”
“He’s top-level,” said Lee. “Who is on Freiland and not here for your party?”
Donal frowned again. He had almost managed to forget that it was in his honor these several hundred well-known people would be gathered here tonight. Oh—not that he would be expected to place himself on show. The social rules of the day and this particular world made lionizing impolite. Direct lionizing, that is. You honored a man by accepting his hospitality, that was the theory. And since Donal had little in the way of means to provide hospitality for the offering, the marshal had stepped into the breach. Nevertheless, this was the sort of occasion that went against Donal’s instinctive grain.
He put that matter aside and returned to that of William. If the man happened to be visiting Freiland it would be unthinkable that he should not be invited, and hardly thinkable that he should decline to come. It could be just that. Perhaps, thought Donal with a weariness beyond his years, I’m starting at shadows. But even as his mind framed the thought, he knew it was not true. It was that oddness in him, now more pronounced than ever since the psychic shaking-up of the Newtonian battle, with its multiple phase shifts. Things seen only dimly before were now beginning to take on shape and substance for him. A pattern was beginning to form, with William as its center, and Donal did not like what he saw of the pattern.
“Let me know what you can find out about William,” he said.
“Right,” replied Lee. “And the Newton man?”
“And the girl from the Exotics.” Donal finished dressing and took a back slipway down to the marshal’s office. Elvine was there, and with her and the marshal, as guests, were William and Anea.
“Come in, Donal!” called Galt, as Donal hesitated in the entrance. “You remember William and Anea, here!”
“I’d be unlikely to forget.” Donal came in and shook hands. William’s smile was warm, his handclasp firm; but the hand of Anea was cool and quickly withdrawn from Donal’s grasp, and her smile perfunctory. Donal caught Elvine watching them closely; and a faint finger of warning stirred the surface of Donal’s mind.
“I’ve looked forward to seeing you again,” said William. “I owe you an apology, Donal. Indeed I do. I’ve underestimated your genius considerably.”
“Not genius,” said Donal.
“Genius,” insisted William. “Modesty’s for little men.” He smiled frankly. “Surely you realize this affair with Newton’s made you the newest nova on our military horizon?”
“I’ll have to watch out your flattery doesn’t go to my head, Prince.” Donal could deal in double meaning, too. William’s first remark had put him almost at his ease. It was not the wolves among people who embarrassed and confused him; but the sheep dogs gone wrong. Those, in fact, who were equipped by nature and instinct to be one thing and through chance and wrongheadedness found themselves acting contrary to their own natures. Possibly, he had thought, that was the reason he found men so much easier to deal with than women—they were less prone to self-deception. Now, however, a small intake of breath drew his attention to Anea.
“You’re modest,” she said; but two touches of color high on the cheek-bones of her otherwise slightly pale face, and her unfriendly eyes, did not agree with her.
“Maybe,” he said, as lightly as he could, “that’s because I don’t really believe I’ve got anything to be modest about. Anyone could have done what I did above Newton—and, in fact, several hundred other men did. Those that were there with me.”
“Oh, but it was your idea,” put in Elvine.
Donal laughed.
“All right,” he said. “For the idea, I’ll take credit.”
“Please do,” said Anea.
“Well,” put in Galt, seeing that things were getting out of hand. “We were just about to go in and join the party, Donal. Will you come along?”
“I’m looking forward to it,” answered Donal, smoothly.
They proceeded, a small knot of people, out through the big doors of the office and into the main hall of the mansion. It was already full of guests interspersed with drifting floats laden with food and drinks. Into this larger body of people, their small group melted like one drop of coloring matter into a glass of water. Their individual members were recognized, captured and dispersed by other guests; and in a few seconds they were all separated—all but Donal and Elvine, who had taken his arm possessively, as they had come out of the office.
She pulled him into the privacy of a small alcove.
“So that’s what you’ve been mooning over!” she said fiercely. “It’s her!”
“Her?” he pulled his arm loose. “What’s wrong with you, Ev?”
“You know who I mean!” she snapped. “That Select girl. It’s her you’re after—though why, I don’t know. She’s certainly nothing special to look at. And she’s hardly even grown up yet.”
He chilled suddenly. And she—abruptly realizing that this time she had gone too far, took a sudden, frightened step back from him. He fought to control himself; but this was the authentic article, one of the real Dorsai rages that was his by inheritance. His limbs were cold, he saw everything with an unwonted clarity, and his mind ticked away like some detached machine in the far depths of his being. There was murder in him at the moment. He hung balanced on the knife edge of it.
“Good-by, Ev,” he said. She took another, stiff-legged step back from him, then another, and then she turned and fled. He turned about to see the shocked faces of those nearby upon him.
His glance went among them like a scythe, and they fell away before it. He walked forward through them and out of the hall as if he had been alone in the room.
He was pacing back and forth in the bare isolation of the marshal’s office, walking off the charge of adrenalin that had surged through him on the heels of his emotion, when the door opened. He turned like a wolf; but it was only Lee. “You need me?” asked Lee. The three words broke the spell. The tension in him snapped suddenly; and he burst out laughing. He laughed so long and loud that the Cobyman’s eyes became shadowed first with puzzlement, and then with a sort of fear.
“No ... no ... it’s all right,” he gasped at last. He had a fastidiousness about casually touching people; but now he clapped Lee on the shoulder to reassure him, so unhappy did the lean man look. “See if you can find me a drink—some Dorsai whisky.”
Lee turned and left the room. He was back in seconds with a tulip-shaped glass holding perhaps a deciliter of the bronze whisky. Donal drank it down, grateful for the burn in his throat.
“Learn anything about William?” He handed the glass back to Lee.
Lee shook his head.
“Not surprised,” murmured Donal. He frowned. “Have you seen ArDell Montor around—that Newtonian that came with William?”
Lee nodded.
“Can you show me where I can find him?”
Lee nodded again. He led Donal out onto the terrace, down a short distance, and in through an open wall to the library. There, in one of the little separate reading cubicles, he found ArDell alone with a bottle and some books.
“Thanks, Lee,” said Donal. Lee vanished. Donal came forward and sat down at the small table in the cubicle opposite ArDell and his bottle.
“Greetings,” said ArDell, looking up. He was not more than slightly drunk by his own standards. “Hoping to talk to you.”
“Why didn’t you come up to my room?” asked Donal.
“Not done,” ArDell refilled his glass, glanced about the table for another and saw only a vase with some small native variform lilies in it. He dumped these on the floor, filled the vase and passed it politely to Donal.
“No thanks,” said Donal.
“Hold it anyway,” ArDell said. “Makes me uncomfortable, drinking with a man who won’t drink. No, besides, better to just bump into each other.” He looked at Donal suddenly with one of his unexpected flashes of soberness and shrewdness. “He’s at it again.”
“William?”
“Who else?” ArDell drank. “But what would he be going with Project Blaine?” ArDell shook his head. “There’s a man. And a scientist. Make two of any of the rest of us. Can’t see him leading Blaine around by the nose—but still ...”
“Unfortunately,” said Donal, “we are all tied to the business end of our existence by the red tape in our contracts. And it’s in business William shines.”
“But he doesn’t make sense!” ArDell twisted the glass in his hands. “Take me. Why would he want to ruin me? But he does.” He chuckled suddenly. “I’ve got him scared now.”
“You have?” asked Donal. “How?”
ArDell tapped the bottle with one forefinger.
“This. He’s afraid I may kill myself. Evidently he doesn’t want that.”
“Will you?” asked Donal, bluntly.
ArDell shook his head.
“I don’t know. Could I come out of it, now? It’s been five years. I started it deliberately to spite him—didn’t even like the stuff, like you. Now, I wonder. I’ll tell you”—he leaned forward over the table—”they can cure me, of course. But would I be any good now, if they did? Math—it’s a beautiful thing. Beautiful like art. That’s the way I remember it; but I’m not sure. Not sure at all any more.” He shook his head again. “When the time comes to dump this,” he pointed again at the bottle, “you need something that means more to you. I don’t know if work does, any more.”
“How about William?” asked Donal.
“Yes,” said ArDell slowly, “there is him. That would do it. One of these days I’m going to find out why he did this to me. Then—”
“What does he seem to be after?” asked Donal. “I mean, in general?”
“Who knows?” ArDell threw up his hands. “Business. More business. Contracts—more contracts. Agreements with every government, a finger in every honey-pot. That’s our William.”
“Yes,” said Donal. He pushed back his float and stood up.
“Sit down,” said ArDell. “Stop and talk. You never sit still for more than a second or two. For the love of peace, you’re the only man between the stars I can talk to, and you won’t sit still.”
“I’m sorry,” Donal said. “But there’re things I have to do. A day’ll come, maybe, when we can sit down and talk.”
“I doubt it,” muttered ArDell. “I doubt it very much.”
Donal left him there, staring at his bottle.
He went in search of the marshal; but it was Anea he encountered first, standing upon a small balcony, deserted except for herself; and gazing out over the hall, directly below, with an expression at the same time so tired and so longing that he was suddenly and deeply moved by the sight of it.
He approached her, and she turned at the sound of his footsteps. At the sight of him, her expression changed.
“You again,” she said, in no particularly welcome tone.
“Yes,” said Donal, brusquely. “I meant to search you out later, but this is too good a chance to pass up.”
“Too good.”
“I mean you’re alone ... I mean I can talk to you privately,” said Donal, impatiently.
She shook her head.
“We’ve got nothing to talk about,” she said.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Donal. “Of course we have—unless you’ve given over your campaign against William.”
“Well!” The word leaped from her lips and her eyes flashed their green fire at him. “Who do you think you are!” she cried furiously. “Who ever gave you the right to have any say about what I do?”
“I’m part Maran through both my grandmothers,” he said. “Maybe that’s why I feel a sense of responsibility to you.”
“I don’t believe it!” she snapped. “About you being part Maran, that is. You couldn’t be part Maran, someone like you, a—” she checked, fumbling for words.
“Well?” He smiled a little grimly at her. “A what?”
“A ... mercenary!” she cried triumphantly, finding at last the word that would hurt him the most, in her misinterpretation of it.
He was hurt, and angered; but he managed to conceal it. This girl had the ability to get through his defenses on the most childish level, where a man like William could not.
“Never mind that,” he said. “My question was about you and William. I told you not to try intriguing against him the last time I saw you. Have you followed that advice?”
“Well, I certainly don’t have to answer that question,” she blazed directly at him. “And I won’t.”
“Then,” he said, finding suddenly an insight into her that was possibly a natural compensation for her unusual perceptiveness where he was concerned. “You have. I’m glad to know that.” He turned to go. “I’ll leave you now.”
“Wait a minute,” she cried. He turned back to her. “I didn’t do it because of you!”
“Didn’t you?”
Surprisingly, her eyes wavered and fell.
“All right!” she said. “It just happened your ideas coincided with mine.”
“Or, that what I said was common sense,” he retorted, “and being the person you are, you couldn’t help seeing it.”
She looked fiercely up at him again.
“So he just goes on ... and I’m chained to him for another ten years with options—”
“Leave that part to me,” said Donal.
Her mouth opened.
“You!” she said; and her astonishment was so great that the word came out in a tone of honest weakness.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“You!” she cried. And the word was entirely different this time. “You put yourself in opposition to a man like William—” she broke off suddenly, turning away. “Oh!” she said angrily, “I don’t know why I keep listening to you as if you were actually telling the truth—when I know what kind of person you are.”
“You don’t know anything at all about what kind of a person I am!” he snapped, nettled again. “I’ve done a few things since you first saw me.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, “you’ve had a man shot, and pretended to bomb a planet.”
“Good-by,” he said, wearily, turning away. He went out through the little balcony entrance, abruptly leaving her standing there; and unaware that he had left her, not filled with the glow of righteous indignation and triumph she had expected, but oddly disconcerted and dismayed.
He searched throughout the rest of the mansion and finally located the marshal back in his office, and alone.
“May I come in, sir?” he said from the doorway.
“Of course, of course—” Galt looked up from his desk. “Lock the door behind you. I’ve had nothing but people drifting in, thinking this was an extra lounge. Why’d they think I had it set up without any comfortable floats or cushions in the first place?”
Donal locked the door behind him and came across the wide floor to the desk.
“What is it, boy?” asked the marshal. He raised his heavy head and regarded Donal intently. “Something up?”
“A number of things,” agreed Donal. He took the bare float beside the desk that Galt motioned him into. “May I ask if William came here tonight with the intention of transacting any business with you?”
“You may ask,” answered Galt, putting both his massive forearms on the desk, “but I don’t know why I should answer you.”
“Of course you needn’t,” said Donal. “Assuming he did, however, I’d like to say that in my opinion it would be exceedingly unwise to do any business with Ceta at this time—and particularly William of Ceta.”
“And what causes this to be your opinion?” asked Galt, with a noticeable trace of irony. Donal hesitated.
“Sir,” he said, after a second. “I’d like to remind you that I was right on Harmony, and right about Newton; and that I may be right here, as well.”
It was a large pill of impertinence for the marshal to swallow; since, in effect, it pointed out that if Donal had twice been right, Galt had
been twice wrong—first about his assessment of Hugh Killien as a responsible officer, and second about his assessment of the reasons behind the Newtonian move on Oriente. But if he was Dorsai enough to be touchy about his pride, he was also Dorsai enough to be honest when he had to.
“All right,” he said. “William did come around with a proposition. He wants to take over a large number of our excess land forces, not for any specific campaign, but for re-leasing to other employers. They’d remain our troops. I was against it, on the grounds that we’d be competing against ourselves when it came to offering troops to outside markets, but he proved to me the guarantee he’s willing to pay would more than make up for any losses we might have. I also didn’t see how he intended to make his own profit out of it, but evidently he intends training the men to finer specializations than a single planet can afford to do, and maintain a balanced force. And God knows Ceta’s big enough to train all he wants, and that its slightly lower gravity doesn’t hurt either—for our troops, that is.”
He got his pipe out of a compartment in the desk and began to fill it.
“What’s your objection?” he asked.
“Can you be sure the troops won’t be leased to someone who might use them against you?” Donal asked.
Galt’s thick fingers ceased suddenly to fill his pipe. “We can insist on guarantees.”
“But how much good are guarantees in a case like that?” asked Donal. “The man who gives you the guarantee—William—isn’t the man who might move the troops against you. If Freilander leased troops were suddenly found attacking Freilander soil, you might gain the guarantee, but lose the soil.”
Galt frowned.
“I still don’t see,” he said, “how that could work out to William’s advantage.”
“It might,” said Donal, “in a situation where what he stood to gain by Freilander fighting Freilander was worth more than the guarantee.”
“How could that be?”
Donal hesitated on the verge of those private suspicions of his own. Then he decided that they were not yet solid enough to voice to the marshal; and might, indeed, even weaken his argument.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “However, I think it’d be wise not to take the chance.”