“Machinery?” Harold moved up beside her. She leaned into him with slow care. He winced at the thought of kzin claws raking down her side… maybe I've been a bit uncharitable about Jonah, he thought. The two of them came through the kzinti hunt alive, until Claude and I could pull her… them out. That took some doing. “They're not using machinery, Ingi. Bare hands and hand-tools.”
Her mouth made a small gesture of distaste. “Slave labor? Not what I'd have thought of Claude, however he's gone downhill.”
Harold laughed. “Flighters, sweetheart. Refugees. Kzinti've been taking up more and more land; they're settling in, not just a garrison anymore. It was this or the labor camps; those are slave labor, literally. And Claude grubstaked these people, as well as he could. It's where a lot of that graft he's been getting as Police Chief of München went.”
And the head of the capital city's human security force was in a very good position to rake it in. “I was surprised too. Claude's been giving a pretty good impression of having Helium II for blood, these past few years.”
A step behind them. “Slandering me in my absence, old friend?”
The servants set out brandy and fruits and withdrew. They were all middle-aged and singularly close-mouthed. Ingrid thought she had seen four parallel scars under the vest of one dark slant-eyed man who looked like he came from the Sulinesian Islands.
“There are Some Things We Were Not Meant to Know,” she said. Claude Montferrat-Palme was leaning forward to light a cheroot at a candle. He glanced up at her words and caught her slight grimace of distaste, and laid down the cheroot. He had been here a week, off and on, but that was scarcely time to drop a habit he must have been cultivating half his life.
“Correct on all accounts, my dear,” he said.
Claude always was perceptive.
“It's been wonderful talking over old times,” she said. With sincerity, and a slight malice aforethought.
They were considerably older times for the two men than for her. “And it's… extremely flattering that you two are still so fond of me.”
But a bit troubling, now that I think about it. Even if you can expect to live two centuries, carrying the torch for four decades is a bit much.
Claude smiled again. He had classic Herrenmann features, long and bony; in his case, combined with dark hair and eyes and an indefinable air of elegance, even in the lounging outfit he had thrown on when he shed the München Polizei uniform.
“Youth,” he said. And continued at her enquiring sound, “My dear, you were our youth. Hari and I were best friends; you were the… girl… young woman for which we conceived the first grand passion and bittersweet rivalry.” He shrugged. “Ordinarily, a man either marries her—a ghastly fate involving children and facing each other over the morning papaya—or loses her. In any case, life goes on.” His brooding gaze went to the high mullioned windows, out onto a world that had spent two generations under kzinti rule.
“You…” he said softly. “You vanished, and took the good times with you. Doesn't every man remember his twenties as the golden age? In our case, that was literally true. Since then, we've spent four decades fighting a rear-guard action and losing, watching everything we cared for slowly decay… including each other.”
“Why Claude, I didn't know you cared,” Harold said mockingly. Ingrid saw their eyes meet.
Surpassing the love of women, she thought dryly. And there was a certain glow about them both, now that they were committed to action again. Few humans enjoy living a life that makes them feel defeated, and these were proud men.
“Don't tell me we wasted forty years of what might have been a beautiful friendship.”
“Chronicles of Wasted Time is a title I've often considered for my autobiography, if I ever write it,” Claude said. “Egotism wars with sloth.”
Harold snorted. “Claude, if you were only a little less intelligent, you'd make a great neo-romantic Byronic Hero.”
“Childe Claude? At this rate she'll have nothing to do with either of us, Hari.”
The other man turned to Ingrid. “I'm a little surprised you didn't take Jonah,” he said.
Ingrid looked over to Claude, who stood by the huge rustic fireplace with a brandy snifter in his hand. The Herrenmann raised a brow and a slight, well-bred smile curved his asymmetric beard.
“Why?” she said. “Because he's younger, healthier, better educated? Because he's a war hero? Because he's intelligent, dashing and good looking?”
Harold blinked, and she felt a rush of affection.
“Something like that,” he said.
Claude laughed. “Women are a lot more sensible than men, ald kamerat. Also they mature faster. Correct?”
“Some of us do,” Ingrid said. “On the other hand, a lot of us actually prefer a man with a little of the boyish romantic in him. You know, the type of idealism that looks like it has turned into cynicism, but whose owner cherishes it secretly?” Claude's face fell. “On the other hand, your genuinely mature male is a different kettle of fish. Far too likely to be completely without illusions, and then how do you control him?”
She grinned and patted him on the cheek as she passed on the way to pour herself a glass of verguuz. “Don't worry, Claude, you aren't that way yourself, you just act like it.” She sipped, and continued: “Actually, it's ethnic.”
Harold made an enquiring grunt, and Claude pursed his lips. “He's a Belter. Sol-Belter at that.”
“My dear… you are a Belter,” Claude said, genuine surprise overriding his habitual air of bored knowingness.
Harold lit a cigarette, ignoring her glare. “Let me guess… he's too prissy?”
Ingrid sipped again at the minty liqueur. “Nooo, not really. I'm a Belter, but I'm… a bit of a throwback.” The other two nodded. Ingrid could have passed for a pure Caucasoid.
“Look, what happens to somebody in space who's not ultra-careful about everything? Someone who isn't a detail man, someone who doesn't think checking the gear the seventh time is more important than the big picture? Someone who isn't a low-affect in-control type every day of his life?”
“They die,” Harold said flatly. Claude nodded agreement.
“What happens when you put a group through four hundreds years of that type of selection? Plus the more adventurous types have been leaving the Sol-Belt for other systems, whenever they could, so Serpent Swarm Belters are more like the past of Sol-Belters.”
“Oh.” Claude nodded in time with Harold's grunt. “What about flatlanders?”
Ingrid shuddered and tossed back the rest of her drink. “Oh, they're like… like… they just have no sense of survival at all. Barely human. Wunderlanders strike a happy medium—” she glanced at them roguishly out of the corners of her eyes “—after which it comes down to individual merits.”
“So.” She shook herself, and felt the Lieutenant's persona settling down over her like a spacesuit, the tight skin-hugging permeable-membrane kind. “This has been a very pleasant holiday, but what do we do now?”
Claude poked at the burning logs with a fire-iron and chuckled. For a moment the smile on his face made her distinctly uneasy, and she remembered that he had survived and climbed to high office in the vicious politics of the collaborationist government. For his own purposes, not all of which were unworthy, but the means…