And eventually he might have tried that had she not been accidentally killed in a near-riot at one of the Imperial garrisons on Neeka.”
“I remember that!” Broohnin said. “Almost two years ago!”
“Right. That was Eric Boedekker's daughter. And now he has no heir. He's been trying for an exemption from the one person/one child rule ever since Liza ran off, but this is something his money and power can't buy him. And he can't go to the out-worlds and father a child because the child will then be considered an out-worlder and thus forbidden to own property in Sol System. Which leaves him only one avenue to save his pride.”
Eric Boedekker entered at the far end of the room. “And what avenue is that, may I ask?” he said.
“Revenge.”
Like most Earthies, Eric Boedekker was clean-shaven. Broohnin judged his age to be sixty or seventy standards, yet he moved like a much younger man. His attire and attitude were typical of anyone they had seen since their arrival from the out-worlds. Only his girth set him apart. The asteroid mining magnate's appetite for food apparently equaled his appetite for power and money. He took up fully half of an antique love seat when he sat down, and gestured to two other chairs before the cold fireplace.
“Neither of you appears to be a Flinter,” he said when Broohnin and LaNague were seated across from him.
“Neither of us is,” LaNague replied. “I happen to be a Tolivian and have been in contact with representatives from Flint.”
“May I assume that Flint has changed its mind in regard to my offer last year?”
“No.”
“Then we have nothing further to discuss.” He began to rise from the seat.
“You wanted the Outworld Imperium crushed and destroyed, did you not?” LaNague said quickly. “And you offered the inhabitants of Flint an astonishingly large sum if they would accomplish this for you, did you not?”
Boedekker sat down again, his expression concerned, anxious. “That was privileged information.”
“The Flinters brought the offer to a group with which I am connected,” LaNague said with a shrug. “And I'm bringing it back to you. I can do it for you, but I don't want your money. I only want to know if you still wish to see the Outworld Imperium in ruins.”
Boedekker nodded twice, slowly. “I do. More than anything I can think of. The Imperium robbed me of my only surviving child. Because of it, I have no heir, no way to continue my line and the work I've begun.”
“Is that all? You want to bring down a two-hundred-year-old government because of an accident?”
“Yes!”
“Why didn't you try to bring down the Earth government when your first child died?”
Boedekker's eyes narrowed. “I blamed my wife for that. And besides, no one will ever bring the Earth bureaucracy down…one would have to use a planetary bomb to unravel that knot.”
“There must be more to it than that. I'll have to know if I'm to risk my men and my own resources-a lot of my plan depends on you.”
“You wouldn't understand.”
“Try me.”
“Do you have any children?”
“One. A daughter.”
Boedekker's expression showed that he was as surprised as Broohnin. “I didn't think revolutionaries had families. But never mind…you should then be able to understand what it's like to groom a child all her life for a position and then have her run off to be a farmer on the edge of nowhere!”
“A daughter isn't a possession. You disowned her?”
“She didn't care! She kept saying.” His voice drifted off.
“She tried for a reconciliation?” Boedekker nodded. “She wanted me to come out and visit her as soon as they had a place of their own.” Tears began to well in his eyes. “I told her she'd be dead and buried out there before I ever came to visit.”
“I see,” LaNague said softly.
“I want to see that pompous ass, Metep, and his rotten Imperium dead and forgotten! Buried like my Liza!”
Broohnin watched and marveled at how LaNague had turned the conversation to his advantage. He was the guest of an extraordinarily powerful man, yet he was in complete control of the encounter.
“Then it shall be done,” LaNague replied with startling offhandedness. “But I'll need your cooperation if I'm to succeed. And I mean your full cooperation. It may cost you everything you own.”
It was Boedekker's turn to shrug. “I have no one I wish to leave anything to. When I die, my relations will war over Boedekker Industries, break it up and run home with whatever pieces they can carry. I'll be just as happy to leave them nothing at all. BI was to be my monument. It was to live long after I was gone. Now.”
“I'm offering you the downfall of the Imperium as your monument. Interested?”
“Possibly.” He scrutinized LaNague. “But I'll need more than grandiose promises before I start turning my holdings over to you. Much, much more.”
“I don't want your holdings. I don't want a single Solar credit from you. All you'll have to do is make certain adjustments in the nature of your assets, which need never leave your possession.”
“Intriguing. Just what kind of adjustments do you have in mind?”
“I'll be glad to discuss them in detail in private,” LaNague said with a glance at Broohnin. “I don't wish to be rude, but you haven't reached the point yet where you can be privy to this information.”
Broohnin shot to his feet. “In other words, you don't trust me!”
“If you wish,” LaNague replied in his maddeningly impassive voice.
It was all Broohnin could do to keep from reaching for the Tolivian's skinny throat and squeezing it until his eyes bulged out of their sockets. But he managed to turn and walk away. “I'll find my own way out!”
He didn't have to. An armed security woman was waiting on the other side of the door to the great hall. She showed him out to the grounds and left him to himself, although he knew he was constantly watched from the windows.
It was cold, windy, and clear outside the house, but Broohnin found his lungs laboring in the rarefied air. Yet he refused to go back inside. He had to think, and it was so hard to think through a haze of rage.
Walking as close to the edge as the meshed perimeter fence would allow, he looked out and down at the clouds around the skisland. Every once in a while he could catch a glimpse of the ocean below through a break. Far off toward the westering sun he could see a smudge that had to be land, where people like him were jammed so close together they had to go on periodic sprees of violence-short bursts of insanity that allowed them to act sane again for a while afterward. Broohnin understood. Understood perfectly.
He looked back at the mansion and its grounds, trying to imagine the incomprehensible wealth it represented. He hated the rich for having so much more than he did. Another glance in the direction of the megalopolis that had so recently endangered his life and he realized he hated the poor, too…because he had always found losers intolerable, had always felt an urge to put them out of their misery.
Most of all, he hated LaNague. He would kill that smug Tolivian on the way back. Only one of them would return to the out-worlds alive. When they made their first subspace jump he'd-
No, he wouldn't. The Flinters would be awaiting LaNague's return. He had no desire to try to explain the Tolivian's death at his hands to them.