It was bitterly cold outside: minus one hundred and ten degrees and still falling. Inside it was different. There, in the warm, insulating silence of the craft, DeVore pushed aside his work and sat back, considering that evenings events.
Preeminent in his thoughts was the news Auden had brought back from Callisto: the news of Jelka Tolonen’s arrival, three days hence. He had played down its importance at the time, yet he had understood its significance at once. This far out from Chung Kuo he had had few opportunities to hit back at his enemies these past few years, but this was perfect.
DeVore smiled, looking out at the darkness beyond the toughened glass. The thought of her here made his pulse quicken, not with love or desire, but with the sharp exhilaration of hatred. Hatred for Tolonen and all that he stood for.
How he loathed the old bastard. Loathed the pomposity, the bumbling, blustering certainty of the man. A liar and a hypocrite, that’s what Tolonen was. He portrayed himself as a solid pillar of society, a paragon of New Confucian virtue, yet behind the twin masks of “Benevolence” and “Propriety” he held up to the world was a seething, dribbling old man, twisted by envy and wracked by disappointment. As Major in the old T’ang’s service DeVore had been a regular guest at the Tolonen apartment; a close confidant and trusted “friend” of the old man. Why, he had even held Tolonen’s baby daughter in his arms. But that had been long ago, before he had broken with his T’ang. Now he was an outcast, an enemy of the Seven, and the child was a young woman of nineteen. A real beauty she was, tall and strong and elegant, the very image of her dead mother. Yet dangerous, too, if what he’d heard was true. Tolonen had tried to hush it up, but word had got out anyway: of how she had almost killed a young cadet officer in a fight at a graduation ball, and of her open defiance of her father when he had refused to contemplate a relationship between her and the young scientist, Ward. Which was why she was out there now. Why he, DeVore, would have his chance at her.
Tolonen was a fool. Yet he was right about one thing. Things were unstable on Mars at present. Much more than Schenck or his cronies knew. Things were happening, deep down, and the time was fast approaching when something would have to be done about that. But first this. DeVore closed his eyes, focusing on the problem. He could use this. There was no doubt of that. But how? How could he maximize this advantage fate had granted him?
“Master?”
He turned his head slightly, opening his eyes. His steward was standing in the aisle next to him, his head bowed, a folded message on the silver tray he held. Beyond him, on the couch opposite, Auden was sleeping, a light blanket pulled up over his chest.
“What is it?”
“It is from Tien Men K’ou, Master. It was marked urgent.” DeVore hesitated, then took the note. Unfolding it he read it quickly, then nodded to the steward. “Bring me a drink, will you? . . . Oh, and the Program. I think I’ll play for a while.”
The steward bowed and turned away.
DeVore pondered a moment, then looked across at Auden once more, studying his sleeping face. William Auden was a good man to have at one’s shoulder: strong, determined, and—thus far—loyal. Many times before tonight he had come through for DeVore, often, as this evening, unexpectedly. But in the days to come his loyalty would be tested—maybe to the limit. For a moment DeVore considered waking Auden and putting to him what he had decided, but the thought was fleeting. Let the man sleep. Either he would do as he was told or he wouldn’t. And if he didn’t? Well, at least he, DeVore, would know for sure where Auden stood on the question of his friend, Hans Ebert.
Before Ebert had been found out—before his tiny world had collapsed in upon itself—Auden had been his right-hand man, arranging things and clearing up after the young “Prince.” On more than one occasion Auden had got Ebert out of dreadful scrapes, the firefight at Hammerfest perhaps chief among them. Then, Auden had carried the badly wounded Ebert to safety on his back, not only saving his life but making his young “Master” a hero into the bargain. It was an act which had won him Ebert’s undying friendship, but DeVore had never been clear whether it had been done out of genuine friendship or—as Auden later claimed—from pure self-interest. All he could say was that when he had “triggered” Auden, Auden had responded immediately, without—it seemed—a thought for his old friend. Even so, the question remained, could he trust Auden—could he really trust him—when it came to Hans Ebert?
DeVore sat back, studying the note again. Before it had been handed to him, he had been of two minds. Should he have Jelka Tolonen assassinated or should he have her kidnapped? Kidnapping had seemed preferable, if only for the protracted suffering it would have caused the Marshal, yet such a course was fraught with dangers, chief among them the possibility that she might be recovered and reunited with her father. Better, perhaps, to be more direct—to have her killed, quickly and nastily, there in the public eye where all could see.
So he had thought, wavering between one course and the other. But the note had clarified things in an instant.
Until tonight Hans Ebert had kept his nose clean and his head down, accepting his diminished role in things with a humility and docility that had surprised DeVore. But this evening, less than an hour ago, in fact, all that had changed. Parry, DeVore’s man in Tien Men K’ou, had reported back that Ebert had got himself involved in an incident in a bar on the south side.
Odd, DeVore thought; very odd indeed, yet timely. For Ebert would be the key to all of this. Once they had taken her, he would have Ebert look after her. More than that, he would have him marry her. It was what the old man had wanted, after all.
DeVore laughed, delighted by the irony of it. Yes, he could see it now. He would tape the ceremony and send it to the old man. And the nuptials, too, perhaps . . .
“Master?”
He turned, realizing that the steward had been standing there for several moments.
“Thank you,” he said, accepting the chilled glass. He took a mouthful of the juice—crushed oranges, grown in his own greenhouses— then sat back, letting the steward clear the table and attach the flat black square of the Program board.
The Program was something he had had done more than a year before: an interactive wei chi “player” based upon the Suchow Championships of 2170. That had been a great tournament, momentous for the fact that it had been the last appearance of the famous Master, Tuan Ti Fo, who, having won the competition eight years running, had retired that year, undefeated. There were some who argued that Old Tuan had been the last of the truly great players and that with his departure something grand— something quintessential—had passed from the game. Personally he would not have gone quite so far, yet there was no denying the beauty, the elegance, and beneath both and in perfect balance with them, the strange, naked brutality of the old Master’s play. To pit oneself against him, even in this strange, illusory manner, was to face not so much a man as a force of nature.
As DeVore sat back, the figure formed across from him, the image strong and clear, the inner light-core of the hologram making it seem solid, almost real. Between them the board was now half filled by the patterns of black and white stones.
The old Han bowed deeply, greeting DeVore. “Good evening, Major. How are you?”
DeVorfe returned the bow, enjoying the illusion. “I am well, Master Tuan.
And you?”
The hologram shifted slightly in its seat, a small, plain white fan moving slowly in its left hand as it leaned forward to study the board. “I have been dreaming,” Old Tuan answered, not looking up. “Dreaming of childhood and better days.”