"I don't disagree," Magda replied. "I only said I have reservations about the way you've suggested making your tour. You need more security than your plan is allowing for, Tatiana."
"I'm not some Inner World machine politician!" Tatiana said hotly. "I don't need an entire posse of security people, armed to the teeth, between me and our own people!"
"Yes, you do." Magda's voice was so firm that Tatiana blinked at her.
"You're not back on Novaya Rodina," the commodore continued in that same no-nonsense tone. "These people don't know you the way people back home do. To them, you're still just as much an outsider as the Corporate World Marines who had their boots on the backs of their necks. Maybe-no, certainly-almost all of them think of you as a different kind of outsider, but they've been through a lot in the last couple of months. The best of them are going to be wary, and some of them are going to blame us for the deaths of family and loved ones. Yes, the bastards I've got in lockup are the ones who decided not to surrender, but we're the ones who decided to attack the planet. For that matter, in a population this size, there have to be Rump sympathizers. Maybe it's only a tiny percentage of the total population, but that's still a very large absolute number. And all it takes is one Rump loyalist, or one unstable person who's lost a husband, or a wife, or child and has access to a gun, for the Republic to need a new Vice President. And I," she finished in a tone of vast understatement, "wouldn't like that very much."
"Neither would I, when you put it that way," Tatiana admitted with a crooked smile. "And your solution is?"
"My solution is tighter security." Magda grimaced. "To be perfectly honest, what I'd like to suggest would be that you forget about it completely. Unfortunately, your political arguments are valid, and I know from personal experience just how stubborn you are. So my compromise solution is to assign you a bodyguard of Marines and lay on some fairly visible overhead security with armed skimmers prominently on display. If it will make you feel any better, I'll have the Jarheads drape the skimmers with some nice, festive bunting and pretend they're a parade in honor of your visit, but I want that security in place before I let you out on the street, young lady!"
"My, doesn't that sound like fun," Tatiana said with a grimace of her own that was only half-humorous. "I can just see myself now, marching along with some suspicious, hard-nosed Marine hanging over my shoulder like an anchor."
"Oh," Magda said with a lurking smile. "I think we can probably do a little better than that for you."
" . . . and that over there used to be the Weston Tower, Madame Vice President," Councilman Higgins said. He gestured at the huge structure, now little more than a charred shell, and his voice was heavy. "That one was particularly ugly, I'm afraid."
Tatiana glanced at him. He sat next to her in the open skimmer's middle row of seats, and his expression was as grim as his tone of voice. Selkirk's Landing was the heart of his constituency in the Cimmaron planetary legislature. That was what had won him the seat he occupied now . . . and, she was sure, explained his dark emotions.
She looked over her shoulder at the Marine captain sitting in the jump seat behind her. She'd been both delighted and more than a little irritated by Magda's choice of nursemaids. If she'd been permitted to make the choice herself, it would have been exactly the same one, but the slight, knowing smile Magda had bestowed upon her when she produced the newly promoted Captain Skjorning had been maddening. Not a surprise, really. Novaya Rodina was the sort of world where everyone knew exactly who everyone else was seeing. Just . . . maddening.
She was certain Stanislaus had been pleased to see her. The light in his blue eyes had given that much away, at least. But he wasn't the man she remembered from Novaya Rodina. That man was still inside there somewhere, and she saw occasional flashes of him, but only like brief sparkles of light behind the barred shutters of the grim, haunted eyes of the man he had become. Now his face was expressionless as a stone wall, and that very absence of expression on the face whose smiling gusto for life had implanted itself so deeply in her memory, was like the blow of a fist.
He wasn't even looking at her. For that matter, for the first time since they'd set out, he didn't seem to be watching their flanking armored Marines or the armed skimmers hovering above them at higher altitudes, either. He was staring at the building-the one Higgins had identified as the Weston Tower-and his jaw was clenched.
"I've seen a lot of ugly things since my arrival, Mr. Higgins," she said, turning back to the Cimmaron legislator. "A lot of tragic, heartbreaking things."
"I know you have, Madame Vice President." Higgins, too, was staring at the burned-out building, but he shook himself and met Tatiana's gaze. "But the holdouts turned that building into a strongpoint . . . without evacuating the school on its upper floors."
"Oh, my God," Tatiana whispered, and he nodded slowly.
"Wasn't your people's fault," he said heavily. "No way any of them could have known there was a school up there. Or that the lunatics shooting at them hadn't at least evacuated the children. But we lost two hundred. Two hundred kids, Madame Vice President. Not a one of them over the age of ten standard years."
A tear Tatiana knew was completely genuine sparkled at the corner of the man's eye, and he shook his head.
"Some of our people, the parents especially, are . . . pretty bitter over it," he said. "Who can blame them? Their children are dead, and the only people still alive for them to hate are your Marines. They'll get past that part of it, eventually-most of them, at any rate. They'll understand who was really responsible for it. But right now, the wound's still too fresh, the pain's still too sharp."
He sighed, watching the building as the skimmer moved steadily past it. Then he shook himself and managed a smile. It wasn't much of a smile, but at least he was trying.
"This next bit doesn't bother me anywhere nearly as much," he told her, pointing at the better part of an entire square block of burned-out buildings. "This whole block belonged to the Masaryk Corporation, out of New Detroit. They've been evading taxes and siphoning money out of the Selkirk's Landing economy for as long as I can remember. Rebuilding this block is going to be a pleasure!"
Tatiana nodded, smiling back at him, but she didn't even see what he was pointing out to her. Her attention was fixed on Stanislaus Skjorning's profile as the bearded Beaufort giant's eyes remained locked on the looming tombstone of the Weston Tower.
The sun had set, and the cool, early fall night was settling in over the balcony terrace of Tatiana's suite as she sat down to supper. It was the first time all day that she'd truly had any time to herself, and she looked across the table at her sole dinner guest.
He hadn't wanted to be there. If she hadn't seen the pain in his face, she would have been hurt by his efforts to avoid the invitation. But as Magda Petrovna had observed, Tatiana Illyushina had grown. She refused to allow him to evade her, and so he sat facing her across the snowy white tablecloth and glitter of crystal and china.
The food and the service were superb; she'd expected that. What she hadn't expected, despite the deep and obvious changes in Stanislaus, was that he would be virtually silent throughout the meal. That hurt, too, but she simply pretended not to notice, pretended to concentrate on her own excellent dinner, just as he was pretending to concentrate upon his.
Until the dessert dishes had been removed and they were left with only their wine glasses, at least.
He looked around, then, with the first obvious uneasiness she'd seen out of him. Well, she reflected, that was probably wise of him.