"I wasn't expecting you," he said. Boy, he was repeating everything since he came to Greenwood.
Lucius shrugged. "I had a question that only you could answer," he said. "It wasn't one I thought I could entrust to anybody else to carry, so I-" He smiled, a tight expression to cover embarrassment with humor. "-took the excuse to visit you in your new environment."
They were at the back of the tavern, overlooking the river. From here the view was beautiful. If you got closer to the edge of the bluff, you could see the moraine of garbage and slaughterhouse waste. The recycling plant hadn't been delivered yet, and Mark hadn't figured quite how to deal with the accumulation from previous years either.
"I believe," Lucius said, fixing Mark with his eyes, "that the Alliance Protectorate Office is going to suggest a compromise: that all Hestia grants held by actual settlers be confirmed, but that Hestia grants in the hands of nonresident investors become void. I suspect that the Zenith syndicate will be smart enough to accept the offer." He grinned coldly. "Certainly I would advise them to accept it if they were my clients. I need to know what your feelings about the offer are, Mark."
Mark's face remained blank. The question didn't matter. What worried him was why his father had asked him. He couldn't imagine a reason.
"Ah," Mark said. There were two dirigibles and dozens of flyers in the sky, more than you'd usually see airborne at one time. Settlers were pouring toward the Spiker from distant tracts, either too late to join the defense or just interested in the spectacle of victory.
Mark met his father's gaze again. "Dad," he said, "I can't speak for Greenwood. I don't have any idea what the people want. There's probably as many notions as there are settlers. It's that sort of place."
He cleared his throat and added diffidently, "Besides, it's the investors who're really paying your costs, isn't it? Surely they wouldn't agree to that."
"If I wanted to know what the whole citizenry of Greenwood wished," Lucius said, each syllable snapping out like a trap shutting, "I suppose I'd hold a referendum. I cannot imagine bothering to do so, since they've put Yerby Bannock in charge. If they're wise, they'll do whatever he says and like it."
Mark stiffened to attention. "Father-" he said.
"As for the investors who may ethically be considered my clients, Mark," Lucius continued with the same cold passion, "I assure you that if it becomes impossible for me to meet both my personal and my professional obligations, I will resign the latter without a qualm. I was a man before I became a lawyer. Now-" His tone softened minutely. "-will you please answer the original question?"
"Yes, sir," Mark said. "Sir, I stand with Greenwood. With the planet, I mean. I hope with the people too, but I can't say about that."
He coughed and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. His skin smelled of the harsh soap with which he'd scrubbed off The Goo.
"Dad," Mark went en, "if the Zeniths win-and that's winning-they'll bring in preformed cities, hundreds of thousands of people. Settlers like that aren't really immigrants, they're people Earth governments have exiled to get them off the welfare rolls. They'll swamp the planet and turn it into a garbage dump. I don't want that."
Lucius' grin had a cruel edge. "Do you think Elector Daniels heads a syndicate of altruists, then?" he asked.
"No," said Mark. "No, they're the same sort of people as the Zeniths, I know that. But Biber and Finch own the Zenith government."
He slapped the wall of the Spiker. "The Greenwood Assembly's going to meet right here in ten days' time," he said. "That's everybody on the planet who wants to come. They're going to pass a minimum requirement of owning two thousand square miles for anybody who stays on the planet for more than thirty days!"
"Clever," Lucius said. "Did you come up with the idea?"
Mark grinned. "Yeah, I sort of did," he admitted. "Daniels' lot can't say a word about it."
Lucius nodded. "So far as the Alliance is concerned, Greenwood remains under Zenith administration," he said. "But you know that."
He chuckled. "And we can let the evil of the day be sufficient unto it," he added. "Well, Elector Daniels will be pleased, and I'm rather pleased to be able to continue taking his money in good conscience. That's all the business I had to transact here."
"Ah, Dad?" Mark said. "I guess you'll be here a few days."
Lucius nodded.
"Let me introduce you to some people, then," Mark said. "Even the ones you've met are a lot different here than when you saw them on Zenith."
"Except," Lucius said, "for Yerby Bannock, I suspect. Yes, I'd like that."
He linked his arm with Mark's. They walked through the tavern to the celebration on the other side.
24. Local Political Differences
The giant ribbonfish was at least a quarter of a mile long. It glittered beneath the slow billows like a bracelet made of millions of tiny jewels, each a separate living organism. Amy had been careful to keep the dirigible to the east of the creature so that their shadow wouldn't spook it. One of the high clouds moved across the afternoon sun. The whole huge assemblage dived slowly, following the microorganisms that were its food.
"I'm so glad we got to see that, Lucius," Amy said. "I hope it made the last day of your stay memorable."
Mark straightened; he'd been leaning over the deck railing. "You bring good luck, Dad," he said. "I hadn't seen a ribbonfish myself. Yerby'd mentioned them, is all."
"The luck was the sharp eyes of our hostess, I'd say," Lucius remarked. "Amy, I'm much obliged to you. Greenwood is indeed a lovely planet, and I couldn't have had a better pair of guides to it."
The men went into the cabin to join Amy at the controls. They'd followed the giant ribbonfish for nearly an hour, entranced by the shifting patterns of its structure, so it was probably time they headed home anyway. The Bannock compound was a good eighty miles away, so they wouldn't be reaching it till pretty close to nightfall.
"There's a village down there," Amy said, nodding to the right as she turned the rudder and four engine nacelles to full lock. The dirigible was the safest vehicle Mark could imagine for a planet as sparsely inhabited as Greenwood, but it was glacially slow to execute any change. "Where are we, Mark?"
Mark brought up a map display on his viewer. Lucius watched over his shoulder, hunching slightly to be able to see the air-formed holograms.
"I think…" he said. "OK, it must be Blind Cove. About ten houses?"
He peered out the side window. The community was several miles away, but its size seemed several times the figure in the atlas. The Spiker's database was out of date.
Several flyers were lifting from the houses. The sky was mostly sunny with sharply defined clouds. The locals would have no difficulty joining the dirigible in a few minutes.
"Blind Cove sounds familiar," Amy said. The slight breeze was still enough to make the dirigible handle like a barge in a millrace. As the bow came around, the whole vessel drifted downwind at better than a walking pace.
"A magistrate in Blind Cove issued the summonses in the ejectment suit," Lucius said. "Mark, are there any weapons aboard?"
Mark didn't know. He began to bang open the doors of the deck-level cabinets around the cabin. There were ropes and quite a lot of obvious trash, but nothing useful. The black patch on the royal blue fabric made the Bannock dirigible identifiable as far as anybody could see it.
Lucius checked the toolbox on the back of the cabin. "Some wrenches and screwdrivers," he announced. "Useful in a pinch, but I think we'll be better off not displaying them until we're quite sure of the others' intentions."
He not only sounded calm, he sounded as if this were the sort of thing that happened to him every day.