“Of course they would, but Katy’s about as interested in politics as she is in becoming a Sestian miner.” Casey understood now, perfectly. But he wanted to make Fralick tell him baldly what was going on that had brought him to this prison; so he sat still, and stared at his former captain, and pretended to struggle with the pieces of this already assembled puzzle.
“You’re a horrible liar even when all you’re trying to do is look innocent, Casey,” Fralick said, and he laughed without humor. “Right now Katy doesn’t think she’s interested, but she’s a Narsatian and she could get interested damned fast if something happened to motivate her. She’s also a fighter, and I’ll bet she’s been sitting there in that nice quiet little house just about long enough so that if something worth battling over came and called her name she wouldn’t take long to answer it. So the trick for us, for the people who know how important it is to keep the Rebs from coalescing into a real fighting force, is to make sure Katy can’t become their leader.”
“That sounds damned easy to me. You don’t want someone to be able to lead a fighting force? You kill that someone, and your worries are over.” Casey said it in a tone so even that he was almost mocking Fralick’s famous calm.
And he hit his target, torpedo dead on center. Fralick flushed. The diplomat said quietly, but with the mask down and with hate plain in the wintry gray of his eyes, “That’s where I can’t do my duty the way I ought to be doing it. You’re right, you goddamn Morthan mindfucker! If it were anyone but Katy, I’d have had her killed this morning instead of sending the only child I have left to stay with her. But she is Katy—whether you believe it or not, I still love her—and she is Madeleine’s mother, much as I wish she weren’t. So if she’s ordered to be killed, someone else is going to have to be giving the orders; and right now that happens to be my job.”
“And while you have me where you can do anything you want to me, you figure Katy will do what you tell her. Or at least not do what you tell her not to do. Have I got it right, George?” Casey rose from the bunk at last, and walked deliberately to the forcefield and stood as close to it as he could without causing it to shock him.
Golden eyes and gray ones locked, and after a long moment the human man nodded. “Exactly,” Fralick said. “If it wasn’t for Katy, there’s no way I’d have you where I’ve got you now and not do everything to you that I’ve ever imagined. The mindfucker who turned my wife against me after our boys were killed, safe and warm and well-fed in the brig—and with no idea of just how lucky that makes him!”
CHAPTER 8
“You’ve had your house in MinTar for a long time, Katy, but you haven’t really lived on Narsai since you were just turning eighteen.” Ivan Romanov was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat as the rented aircar headed back toward MinTar, with Katy at the controls and with young Maddy once again in the seat behind them. “And since you and Linc did move back, you haven’t had a lot to do with local people and I suspect you haven’t been paying much attention to Outworld politics. Not even the war rumors.”
“No, I haven’t,” Katy admitted, when her cousin paused as if he expected her to answer him. “I had enough of war rumors before we left Terra, and here on Narsai it’s not hard at all to just turn off the holo-casts and forget that the rest of the Commonwealth is there. Cab socializes with us even though she’s our doctor; I’ve known her since we were babies. She tells me how Mum and Dad are doing, and I talk to some of my other old friends from time to time. But mostly Linc and I both just record the occasional lecture for transmission back to the Academy, and work on our own projects, and spend time in the parklands.”
Romanova’s parents were well up into their nineties now, but on Narsai as on most technologically well-developed worlds that was not the enfeebled very old age that it once had been for human beings. Katy at sixty was regarded as no more than middle-aged. Her retirement had been premature; if not for the crisis in which all scramblers were expelled from the Service, she and Linc would probably have stayed put in their hard-earned power positions for at least an additional decade. Perhaps for longer than that, the Star Service had no mandatory age at which an officer must step down.
Cabanne Romanova, for whom Cab Barrett was named, was still heading up the Narsatian University’s main campus at MinTar; and her husband of eighty years, Trabe Kourdakov, was still chairing that university’s philosophy department. Katy, their only living child, had not seen either parent since she had divorced George Fralick and had come home to Narsai married to her adjutant and without her baby girl.
Ivan Romanov’s face softened as he looked over at his cousin. He said gently, “I know, Katy. Aunt Cabbie and Uncle Trabe just barely forgave you for not marrying me. They still can’t accept your divorce, can they?”
“It’s partly the divorce,” Katy responded quietly, and spared herself a moment to glance over her shoulder in Maddy’s direction. She was not certain she wanted her young daughter to be hearing this…but, she reminded herself firmly, at Maddy’s age she had been Johnnie’s lover. Besides, sending the child out of her sight right now was something she simply didn’t have the ability to do. They had to get back to MinTar, she had to know what had become of Linc.
Yet Johnnie was making her talk about subjects that he had to know were delicate ones. Why?
“It was partly your divorce, but it was mostly that you left your child on Kesra,” Johnnie said bluntly. “I’m sorry if you didn’t know that, Maddy, but it’s the way things are and there’s no sense trying to keep it secret from you now. Your mother’s parents think she should have stayed with you and your father until you grew up, no matter what.”
“My father thinks so, too,” Madeleine responded, in a tone that was such a precise echo of her much older male cousin that Katy wanted to laugh. “But my father’s not always right. Anyhow, what does that have to do with a war we may be going to have?”
“Your grandfather holds Senior Chair on the Narsai Council,” Ivan Romanov answered the girl, as Katy’s mouth tightened. That fit of insane amusement had ended as quickly as it had struck her, and she was blessing this strange child of hers for redirecting the conversation back to where it belonged.
She was also wondering whether she should have headed from the Farmstead directly to the nearest public teleport facility, the quicker to get back to MinTar. But no, although this way was slower it was less likely to arouse the suspicions of anyone who might be observing her movements. Admiral Romanova teleporting when she didn’t have to was a sight guaranteed to make anyone who knew her habits very suspicious indeed.
“I thought he was a professor,” Maddy said, frowning. “He and Granma both.”
“They are, but here on Narsai we don’t believe the government should be headed by professional politicians. The Council is a hereditary body, and its Senior Chair is often held by a scholar.” Johnnie Romanov might have spent his entire adult life running a farm, but he was not an ignorant man. He understood his society and how it functioned, and following politics by every remote means possible was his favorite way of amusing himself during long winters of physical isolation. “Your grandfather has held the Senior Chair for the past seven years, Maddy. Your grandmother held it before him, and I won’t be surprised if she holds it again when he’s ready to take a rest.”