Deeth grinned. Rhafu was as sentimental as a Sangaree could be. "What should we do now, Rhafu?"
The old man grinned right back. "That's easy. We just reclaim the Family and its Homeworld power base."
"Really? That's going to take money and muscle, my friend. Do you have it?"
"No. Not enough. We'll have to liquidate here and use the cash to pick up a ship and some good men. We'll have to work Osiris till we're strong enough. We'll have to stay away from Homeworld but keep the Family informed so you don't get frozen out of your patrimony. Osiris will be our leverage. It'll bring them into line. Let's see. Maybe two years? Then at least another two to consolidate and fatten the Family on Osiris? Another five to settle with the Dharvon, defend ourselves in court and accommodate ourselves with any new enemies the feud stirs up, and to thoroughly develop the Osirian operation? Another year or two just for margin? Say plan on at least ten before we're solid, strong, and in any position to get down to the real work your father left us, the destruction of the animals who killed him and your mother."
"That's a lot of years, Rhafu."
"You had something else to do with them? Perhaps you went through all that business in that cave just so you could retire?"
The years rolled away into the dusty corners of time. Deeth and Rhafu made dream after dream come real. They recaptured the Homeworld Norbon. They went to Osiris. They built a Norbon Family as strong and feared as any among the Sangaree. By cunning and guile they devoured several small Houses whom the Dharvon, aware of their Family's complicity in the Prefactlas disaster, tried to frame with forged evidence. When the Norbon rapacity had been sated and they were ready to settle with the Dharvon for all time, Deeth had a friend bring in damning documents lifted directly from Prefactlas Corporation files.
Emily stayed one day after her appearance before the assembled Heads of the First Families. She had become a stunning woman. Deeth felt the yearnings of their earlier life together. As did she. But...
Her years with Boris Storm had chipped the rough edges off her. She was no longer Emily the fugitive pleasure girl. She had become a lady, and one even a Sangaree must respect. She was a completely different person. She merely shared a few memories with Norbon w'Deeth's little Emily.
And Deeth was no longer an orphan boy surviving in a shack in a slum on an enemy world.
They spent a quiet afternoon walking the perfectly landscaped gardens of the Norbon Family holding, remembering when and trying to get to know the people they had become.
It was a ritual of ending, a final emotional endorsement of the separation that had taken place while they were still those other people. In their respective ways they agreed that there were no debts between them now, no enmities, and no tomorrows.
Deeth shed a tear for her when she left him. And never saw her again.
But the children that she brought with her, the sons, would cross his path again and again.
Book Two—HANGMEN
Who springs the trap when the hangman dies?
Thirty-Five: 3052 AD
Some of the most unpleasant moments in life come when we have to face the fact that our parents are human and mortal. For me the revelations came in quick succession. They really rocked me, though I think I concealed my shock at the time.
I grew up believing my father a demigod. In an offhand way I knew he was mortal, but it simply never occurred to me that he could be killed. I suppose I should thank my uncle for removing those scales from my eyes.
I have only my father to thank, or blame, for making me realize that even the wise and noble Gneaus Julius Storm could be petty, arrogant, blind, unnecessarily cruel, and maybe even a little stupid. This latter revelation touched me far more deeply than did the other. After all, we all begin life under sentence of death. But nowhere is it written that our time on death row is to be spent compounding the idiocies and miseries of our fellow condemned.
Though I did not love him less afterward, I lost my awe of my father after witnessing his brush with my uncle. For a time just his presence made me suffer.
The loss of an illusion is a painful thing.
—Masato Igarashi Storm
Thirty-Six: 3031 AD
Gneaus Storm gradually drifted up into a universe of gnawing pain.
Where was he? What had happened?
His dying hand had reached the switch in time. Or the automatics had asserted themselves. Somehow, he had been enveloped by the escape balloon before vacuum could take a fatal bite.
He knew that he had not died. There was very little pain in a resurrection. When you died the docs gave you a complete overhaul before they brought you around again. You came out with the vivacity, spirit, and lack of internal pain characteristic of youth. If you did not die, and you came back by more mundane medical processes, you had to play it by Nature's old rules. You took the pain along with the repairs.
More than once Storm wished they had let him go. Or that Cassius had had the decency to return him to the Fortress for proper medical care.
Storm once returned to consciousness to find a worry-faced, exhausted Mouse hovering over his medicare cradle. "Mouse," he croaked, "what are you doing here?"
"Cassius told me to stay," the boy replied. "It's part of my training." He forced a smile.
"He begged me." Cassius's voice, through the additional filter of the intercom speaker, sounded doubly mechanical and remote.
"Son, you've got to go back to Academy," Storm insisted, forgetting that he had lost this argument once before.
"It's arranged," Cassius said.
Perhaps it was, Storm reflected. He was not remembering clearly. The past month was all a jumble. Maybe Cassius had used his clout with the War College.
He tried to laugh. His reward was a shot of excruciating pain. Vacuum had done a job on his lungs.
"He needed somebody to watch you and Michael," Mouse told him, unaware that his father did not quite realize what was going on. "That's not a one-man job even with Michael sedated."
Storm remembered some of it. He smiled. Michael really impressed Cassius. Dee was only a man. He had been bested as often as not. His greatest talent was that of weaver of his own legend.
"He survived too, eh?" He remembered most of it now.
"He came through in better shape than you did," Cassius said. "He took some elementary precautions."
"It was his boat that was off tune," Mouse added. "He jiggered it on purpose. A trick he learned from Hawksblood. Hawksblood sets all his drives so they're off tune with everything but each other."
"His first intelligence coup," Cassius droned. "Though anybody with computer time and a little inspiration could have figured it out. Give him credit for the inspiration."
Mouse reddened slightly.
"We're headed for the asteroid?" Storm asked.
Mouse nodded. Cassius replied, "Yes. There're still questions we might put to Michael and Fearchild." Then, "We won't be able to reach Michael by the usual methods. He's been conditioned to resist drugs and polygraphs. Primitive methods may prove more efficacious."
"Uhm." Storm doubted that they would, though Michael, for all his bravado and daring, was a coward at heart.
How had Dee obtained an immunization course against the subtler forms of truth research? The process was complicated, expensive, and highly secret. Confederation restricted it to its most favored and highly ranked operatives and leaders in the most sensitive positions. Mouse, if he could stay alive for forty years and achieve flag grade, was the only man he knew who had a hope of attaining that signal honor. "Curious, that," he murmured.