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Commander dear.
The formal notecard in hand, he straightened and let his steps take him
into the sunroom. From the wide windows, he looked downhill toward the empty
shuttle field.
She and Corson had taken the Graham back toward the Arm, back toward
Scandia and its tall conifers and rocky islands.
Scandia . . . the name even sounded like her.
He shook his head and turned away from the vista.
She had liked the view from the commandant's quarters. How many times
had she sat in the swing chair in the late afternoon, after she had gotten
home, Corson cradled in her left arm, just looking out?
"Destiny. . ." The single word seemed to cast a shadow on the sunlit
carpet.
Was he that driven? Was it so obvious that those who loved him turned
away? Or did they really love him at all? Were they just drawn to him for some
other reason?
He laid the notecard on the arm of the swing chair before he left the
sunroom, before he looked through the rest of the quarters for the two he
would not find, for any trace of the pilot, woman, and officer who had loved
him, and of his son, whom he had known so briefly.
The sunbeams played across the weave of the Scandian carpet he had
bought for her, illuminating the soft golds and browns in the silence.
XXIX
SENIOR WEAPONS TECHNICIAN Heimar scanned the list on the screen again.
Shipment fourùstandard heavy cruiser replacement packùwas listed as having
been picked up by the Bernadotte's tender.
Heimar checked the orbit schedule and frowned. According to New Glascow
orbit control, the Bernadotte had closed orbit less than four standard hours
ago. The pick up time had been more than ten hours earlier.
The technician compared the screen list to the hard copy receipt. Then
he called up the code section. The authentications were identical.
Finally he turned to the impatient major.
"Your shipment is listed as already having been picked up. It's not
here, either. That rules out screen error."
"How could it have been picked up?"
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"That's what we'd like to know."
Heimar tried not to show the shaking he felt inside. A standard weapons
pack for a heavy cruiser consisted of a dozen tacheads and four hellburners.
One pack was apparently missing, properly logged out, apparently
properly picked up by a cruiser tender with the right identifications, the
right codes, and loaded by Heimar's own crews.
The only problem was that the tender couldn't have belonged to the
Bernadotte.
Would the commander be upset? Would he? Heimar shuddered. Although it
had not happened in his watch, his men had obviously been the ones suckered,
and Heimar did not want to be the one to notify the commander.
He reached out and slapped the red stud on the console. Then he waited,
but only for a few seconds.
"Commander, this is Heimar, at off-load. The weapons officer of the
Bernadotte has some information that you should know."
Heimar stepped back and motioned the major to the screen.
He stared at the dome above, thinking about the murky atmosphere
outside, the nearly unbreathable air, wishing he were anywhere, even there,
besides on-duty and in reach of the commander. It had never happened before,
not that he knew. Sixteen nuclear warheads goneùdisappearing from a tightly
guarded Imperial system, disappearing without even an alarm being raised or
anyone being the wiser.
Heimar had heard the rumors about the great dozer theft of a half
century earlier, or whenever it had been, but that had happened in orbit, not
planetside.
But twelve tacheads, and four hellburners? He bit his lips. It wouldn't
be as bad for him as it would be for the commander, but that wouldn't make it
any easier.
"HEIMAR!"
He stepped back to the screen to explain what he had discovered.
XXX
THE MAN STEPPED inside the building's foyer. Although the wind whipped snow
with the force of needles along the broad expanse that would be a boulevard in
the short summer, he wore but a light gray jacket and black, calf-high boots.
Hatless, he showed blond hair, like the majority of Scandians. Unlike theirs,
his was short and tightcurled to his skull.
Once inside, he shook himself, and the light dusting of snow fell onto
the wide entry mat. Three steps took him to the directory block, where he
confirmed a suite number before taking the low stairs behind it two at a time
to the second story of the three-floored building.
The office he wanted was at the rear northern side, and, as he walked
through the open archway he could immediately see a panorama of the lake at
the base of the hill on which the building stood. Below swirled drifts, and
frozen white covered the lake. The windsculpted drifts ran from the stone
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wharves and the docks of the town on the right, and from the treed slopes of
the park on the left out into the indistinctness of the white north.
"May we help you?"
The young man who spoke was black-hairedùthe single dark one of the five
in the officeùand clean-shaven.
Before answering, the visitor studied the other four, two men and two
women. All five wore collarless tunics, trousers, and slippers. He glanced to
the rack at the side, where parkas and heavy trousers hung above thick boots.
"Looking for Mark Ingmarr."
"That's me," laughed the darker man, who stood more than a head taller
than the slender visitor. "You areù?"
"Corson . . . MacGregor Corson."
"You mean Gerswin?"
"Said Corson. Meant Corson."
The two women exchanged glances, but said nothing.
"If that's the way you want it. . ."
"That's the way I want it."
"You called earlier." The tall man's tone was flat.
"That's correct. You are an advocate . . . an attorney?"
"I told you that."
"Satisfactory. Need your professional ability."
"What if I don't want to give it?"
The visitor looked up at the heavily muscled young advocate. "You don't
have to. Find someone else. You would be better."
Ingmarr stared down at the other, found his eyes caught by the
hawk-yellow intensity of the smaller man's stare. For an instant, it seemed as
though he were trapped in blackness. He dropped his eyes, breaking the
contact.
"I'll talk about it," the attorney conceded.
He pointed to a console and two chairs in the far corner, half concealed
behind a bank of indoor plants.
The man in gray took the right-hand chair, the one farther from the
console.
"What do you want?" asked the advocate.
"A modest trust. Designed to receive funds from a blind account in the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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