“Bates ...” He shuddered, seeing at once that Kano understood the significance of that name. “So what now?” “So now we get out of here. Back to the port. Before some of Bates’s friends put two and two together and come looking for us. I’ve spoken to your other friends, the merchants. It was a good deal you put together, Ikuro. A very good deal. But getting you off-planet is more important just now. We’ll have to leave things for another time.” “Leave things? Why?”
Kano leaned close, breathing the words into Ikuro’s face. “Because it’s all about to blow, that’s why. Time’s run out for Mars, little brother. Bates’s death may prove the spark that lights the whole tinderbox. Two hours from now this City will be waking. News of the incident will be going out, like a ripple in a pool. And when it does . . .” He made a small sound in his throat, like a charge going off, deep in the rock. “But Latimer . . . can’t we help him?”
Kano shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ikuro. If I could, I would. You know that. But we must save ourselves. We have a duty to the family. If we were to lose the ship ...”
Ikuro bowed, understanding, but inside he felt bad; inside he felt torn and unhappy. “Okay,” he said, after a moment. “But let me leave my friend a note. I would not have him think that I simply abandoned him.” Kano nodded. “Okay. But hurry now. There’s little time.”
“so how’s our friend?” DeVore asked, not looking at the young man. Rutherford came up beside him, looking past DeVore at the hologram model of Schenck’s planned new parliamentary building; at the broad dome and twin pinnacles, the grand atrium and marble walkways. “Schenck?” He laughed. “Oh, he’s spending other people’s money. As usual.”
“The new reservoir? You’re against that, Andreas?” Rutherford shook his head. “No. I can see the sense in that. It’s things like this that worry me. This absurd scheme for a building we don’t really need. Not yet, anyway. Schenck, and those that surround him, they’re such dreamers. They want to run before they can walk. Schenck has been talking about starting work on two new reservoirs and six new oxygen generators, and he has plans to reseed large areas of the planet—plans that include building not one but eight new Cities! I mean, if we were a rich planet I could understand, but we’re not, and it’s not even as if we’ve thrown off the yoke of Chung Kuo yet. Moreover, all of it has to be done in secret. In the past we were always cautious. We progressed slowly, one thing at a time, and covered our tracks carefully behind us. That was my father’s way. That’s how we’ve got to where we are now. But Schenck and his friends . . . they’ve abandoned all caution. They have big dreams for Mars, and their dreams could be the ruin of us all. I mean, the more that’s being done the more likely it is that word will get out. And when that happens, you can be sure they’ll send someone—someone like Karr, perhaps— to have a good close look at Mars.”
“And when they do, they’ll find out that Mars is much richer than they thought, neh? All those mineral deposits we’ve never told them about. All those underground factories, where no prying eyes can see. And a population fourteen times larger than that declared on the last census. It could be embarrassing, neh?” DeVore turned, facing the young businessman. “Is that why you’re here, Andreas, to try to put a brake on Governor Schenck’s ambitions? Or is there another reason?” Rutherford nodded. “It’s one reason, but not the only one. Mainly I wanted to see you. I’ve been meaning to for a long time now, but. . .” “But it was difficult, neh?” DeVore smiled and reached out to pat his arm. “I’m not, after all, a person to be seen in public with. Not since that business with the T’ang’s son, eh?”
Rutherford stared back at him, intently. “You were a good friend to my father, Howard, when you were Chief Security Officer here. I thought . . . well, I thought I could be a friend to you. It’s what my father would have wanted.”
“A friend?” DeVore’s smile hadn’t faded, not for a moment. “Why, you’ve always been my friend, Andreas. Since you were a boy of thirteen. Don’t you remember, that first time we met, at your house. How I came up to your room and talked to you.”
Rutherford nodded, his eyes looking back to that moment, fourteen years before. “Yes. I also remember that you gave me a gift that day. A first-meeting gift.”
“The ivory?” DeVore’s eyes widened. “You have that still?” The young man reached inside the neck of his pressure suit and withdrew the fine-linked golden chain. On the end of the chain a tiny ivory swayed: a perfect miniature of the planet Mars.
“You gave me a planet once, Howard. Now I’d like to give it back to you.”
DeVore laughed. “A planet? That’s a lot for one man to give another.”
Rutherford’s smile was youthful, enthusiastic, but his eyes were serious. “It’s not just me. There are others who think the same. Who’ve had enough of Schenck and his dreams. Who want someone stronger. Someone with the vision, the ability, the steel, to steer us through the troubled times to come.”
“And you think I’m that man?”
Rutherford nodded. “I’m sure of it. In fact, I’ve known it from the first moment I met you.”
when rutherford had gone, DeVore sat there, staring through the ghostly outlines of the hologram, considering what the young man had said. Did he really want what they were offering? Did he want to be King of Mars? The irony of it made him smile. Five years earlier his “copy”—the morph he had sent back to Chung Kuo to play himself—had made a similar offer to young Ebert. “King of the World,” he’d said. “That’s what you can be, Hans. T’ang of all Chung Kuo.” And the young man had succumbed. Had cast aside the reality of his inheritance to chase the dream. It hadn’t worked, of course. Not that it had been meant to. But that was not to say that, in different circumstances, it mightn’t work. After all, Mars was not Chung Kuo. And while the reach of the Seven was long, it was also weak. Mars was ripe for revolution. Ripe for independence. To have a King—a focus for all that ancient nationalistic feeling—made sense. Even so, it was not his way to be a figurehead. He had lived too long out of the glare of public life, had grown too used to secrecy, to change his ways.
Moreover, it was true what Rutherford had said. Schenck’s schemes—his dreams of Mars—were unreal, impractical; were the dreams of an impatient man. Oh, he might think that the common people wanted what he did, but he was wrong. They wanted independence, sure, but if Schenck increased taxes to the extent he proposed in the secret study document DeVore had seen, then there would be riots in all Nineteen Colonies. And where would they be then? Back to square one. Or worse.
So maybe Rutherford and his faction were right. Maybe they needed a
figurehead, a King. And if not him, then why not someone close to
him—someone he could control. Someone whose very existence depended on
him.
Someone like Ebert.
And not just a King, but a Queen, too, perhaps. Someone young and beautiful and aristocratic, like Jelka Tolonen. He laughed, delighted, seeing it clearly in his mind’s eye. How the Martians would love that pair! How they’d lap that up! Such a powerful image it would make. Such a strong focus for all that pent-up energy, that undirected fervor.