"Thank you, Mr... Johansen, isn't it?"
Johansen nodded again.
"Well, Mr. Johansen, I hope you haven't taken my somewhat strongly expressed opinion of your Star Kingdom personally. For all I know, you're a perfectly fine fellow, and I'm going to assume that's the case. However, I think it's important for me to get my message across to your superiors, and to Les' bosses, as well.
"Now, this morning's in the nature of a warmup exercise. Sort of a demonstration of capabilities, you might say. And because that's all it is, I'd just as soon no one get hurt. I trust that meets with your approval?"
"I think you can safely assume it does," Johansen told him when he paused.
"Good." Westman beamed at him, but then the Montanan's smile faded. "At the same time," he continued, his voice flatter, "if it comes to it, it's possible a whole lot of people're going to get hurt before this is over. I want you to tell your superiors that. This one is a free-well, almost free-warning. I'm not going to be issuing very many more of them. So tell your superiors that, too."
"I'll tell them exactly what you've said," Johansen assured him when he paused expectantly once more.
"Good," Westman repeated. "And now, Mr. Johansen, if you and all your men-and you, too, Alvin-would be so good as to strip to your skivvies."
"I beg your pardon?" Johansen looked at the Montanan, startled into asking the question, and Westman gave him an oddly sympathetic smile.
"I said that I'd appreciate it if you'd strip to your underwear," he said, then nodded towards the two women. "A true Montana gentlemen would never inflict that indignity upon a lady, which is why these two ladies have been excused. You gentlemen, however, are another case."
He smiled pleasantly, but there was absolutely no give in his expression, and his henchmen were obviously ready to enforce his demand if it proved necessary.
Johansen looked at him for another few moments, then turned to his subordinates.
"You heard the man," he said resignedly. "I don't think we have much choice, so we might as well get started."
Johansen's survey crew, aside from the two women, and all of their local colleagues stood barefoot in their briefs and watched their vehicles and all of their equipment heading off deeper into the mountains. Westman and two of his men waited beside the final air car. The leader watched the last of his other men depart, then turned back to his prisoners.
"Now," he said, "Les here knows the way to Bridgeman's Crossing. You gentlemen just head off that way. I'll be sending a message to your boss, Les, telling him you're coming, but it may take me a few hours to get it to him without giving him any hints about where to find us."
"Steve," Haven said very quietly and seriously, "you've made your statement. God only knows how much trouble you've gotten yourself into already. But we've known each other a long time, and I like to think we've been friends. And because we have, I'm telling you now. Give this up. Give it up before someone does get hurt."
"Can't do it, Les," Westman said with genuine regret. "And you'd best be remembering what I've said. We have been friends, and it would grieve me to shoot a friend. But if you keep helping these people steal my planet, I'll do it. You know I mean what I say, so I'd suggest you convince President Suttles that I do. I expect Trevor Bannister knows it already, but from what I've seen, keen intelligence isn't exactly Suttles' strong suit, so Trevor may need a mite of help getting through to him. And, Mr. Johansen, I'd suggest you convince your Baroness Medusa of the same thing."
He held their eyes a few more moments, and then he and his last followers climbed into the air car and it lifted off into the cool morning.
"I don't like what I'm hearing. I don't like it at all," Henri Krietzmann said harshly.
His tone and expression contrasted strongly with the deliciously cool breeze blowing across the penthouse terrace. The primary component of the distant binary system known as Spindle was a G0 star, but the planet Flax was thirteen light-minutes from it, and it was spring in the planet's northern hemisphere. Spectacular thunderheads-blinding white on top and ominous black across their anvil bottoms-drifted steadily in from the west across the Humboldt Ocean, but it would be hours before they arrived. For the moment, the three men on the terrace could enjoy the brilliant spring sunshine and the windborne perfume of spring blossoms from the terrace's bounteous planter boxes as they gazed out over the capital city of Thimble on the west coast of the improbably named continent of Gossypium.
It was a beautiful city, especially for a planet in the Verge. Its buildings were low, close to the ground, without the mountainous towers of modern counter-grav cities. That was because when most of Thimble was being built, the people doing the building hadn't had counter-grav. But if they'd been limited to primitive technologies, they'd obviously taken great pains when they designed their new capital. The huge central square, built around a lovingly landscaped park of flowering green and intricate water features, was clearly visible from the penthouse terrace. So were the main avenues, radiating out from the square like the spokes of a vast wheel. Most of the city buildings were constructed of native stone, a blue granite that glittered when the sun struck it, and more water features and green spaces had been carefully integrated into the city plan.
It wasn't until one got beyond the center of the city on the landward side, away from the ocean, that one began to encounter the ugly, crowded slums which were the legacy of poverty in almost any of the Verge systems.
"None of us particularly likes it, Henri," Bernardus Van Dort said mildly. Van Dort was fair-haired and blue-eyed. He stood well over a hundred and ninety-five centimeters in height, and he sat with the confidence of a man who was accustomed to succeeding. "But we can hardly pretend it was unexpected, now can we?"
"Of course it wasn't unexpected," the third man, Joachim Alquezar, put in, his lips twisting wryly. "After all, stupidity's endemic to the human condition."
Although very few people would ever have described Van Dort as short, Alquezar made him look that way. The red-haired native of the planet San Miguel was two hundred and three centimeters tall. San Miguel's gravity-only eighty-four percent of Terran Standard-tended to produce tall, slender people, and Alquezar was no exception.
"'Stupidity' isn't really fair, Joachim," Van Dort reproved. "Ignorant, yes. Unaccustomed to thinking, yes, again. And prone to react emotionally, certainly. But that isn't the same thing as irredeemably stupid."
"Forgive me, Bernardus, if I fail to discern a practical difference." Alquezar leaned back, cradling a snifter of brandy in his right hand and waving a cigar gently with his left. "The consequences are identical."
"The short term consequences are identical," Van Dort replied. "But while there's not a great deal that can be done about genuine stupidity, ignorance can be educated, and the habit of thought can be acquired."
"It always amazes me," Alquezar said with the smile of an old friend rehashing a familiar argument, "that a hardheaded, hard-hearted, money-gouging Rembrandt capitalist can be so revoltingly liberal in his view of humanity."
"Oh?" Van Dort's blue eyes glinted as he smiled back. "I happen to know that 'liberal' only became a dirty word for you after Tonkovic pinched it for herself."
"Thereby confirming my lifelong suspicion-previously unvoiced, perhaps, but deep seated-that anyone who actually believes someone who claims to be a liberal suffers from terminal softheadedness."
"I hope the two of you are enjoying yourselves." Krietzmann's tone hovered just short of biting. At thirty-six T-years, he was the youngest man present. He was also the shortest, at a brown-haired, gray-eyed, solidly muscled hundred and seventy centimeters. But despite the fact that he was twenty T-years younger than Alquezar, and over forty younger than Van Dort, he looked older than either of them, for he was a citizen of Dresden.
"We're not enjoying ourselves, Henri," Van Dort said, after a very brief pause. "And we're not taking the situation lightly. But I think it's important to remember that people who disagree with us aren't necessarily monsters of depravity."
"Treason's close enough to depravity for me," Krietzmann said grimly.
"Actually," Alquezar said, looking steadily at Krietzmann while the breeze ruffled the fringe of the umbrella over their table and sent the Spindle System flag atop the hotel popping and snapping, "I think it would be wiser if you didn't use words like 'treason' even with Bernardus and me, Henri."
"Why not?" Krietzmann shot back. "I believe in calling things by their proper names. Eighty percent of the Cluster's total population voted to join the Star Kingdom. To my mind, that makes anyone who's prepared to resort to extralegal means of resisting the annexation guilty of treason."