Torch of Freedom Page 5

  He shook his head. "I didn't make myself clear. What I meant was that Manpower doesn't belong in the universe in the same way those plants don't belong in this garden. It just doesn't fit. There are too many things about that so-called 'corporation' that are out of place. It should be dying a natural death, like those plants below. Instead, it's thriving—growing more powerful even, judging from the evidence. Why? And how?"

  This wasn't the first time that Thandi had found her lover's mind was leaping ahead of hers. Or, it might be better to say, scampering off into the underbrush like a rabbit, leaving her straightforward predator's mind panting in pursuit.

  "Ah . . . I'm trying to figure out a dignified way to say 'huh?' What the hell are you talking about?"

  He smiled and placed a hand atop hers. "Sorry. I'm probably being a little opaque. What I'm saying is that there are too many ways—way too many ways—in which Manpower doesn't behave like the evil and soulless corporation it's supposed to be."

  "The hell it doesn't! If there's a single shred of human decency in that foul—"

  "I'm not arguing about the evil and soulless part, Thandi. It doesn't act like a corporation. Evil or not, soulless or not, Manpower is supposed to be a commercial enterprise. It's supposed to be driven by profit, and the profitability of slavery ought to be dying out—dying a natural death like those plants down there. Oh," he shrugged, "their 'pleasure slave' lines will always be profitable, given the way human nature's ugly side has a tendency to keep bobbing to the surface. And there'll always be specific instances—especially for transtellars who need work forces out in the Verge—where the laborer lines offer at least a marginal advantage over automated equipment. But the market should be shrinking, or at best holding steady, and that should mean Manpower ought to be losing steam. Its profit margin should be lower, and it should be producing less 'product,' and it's not."

  "Maybe it's just too set in its ways to adjust," Thandi suggested after a moment.

  "That sounds like an attractive hypothesis," he conceded, "but it doesn't fit any business model I've been able to put together. Not for a corporation which has been so obviously successful for so long. No one's ever had the chance to examine their books, of course, but they've got to be showing one hell of a profit margin to bankroll everything they get involved in—like their operation right here on 'Verdant Vista,' for example—and I just can't quite convince myself that slavery should be that profitable. Or still that profitable, I suppose I should say."

  "Then maybe what they were doing here was them starting to diversify?"

  "Ummm." He frowned for a moment, then shrugged again. "Could be, I suppose. It's just—"

  The chiming doorbell interrupted him, and Thandi made a face before she raised her voice.

  "Open," she commanded.

  The door slid smoothly aside and Anton Zilwicki came into the room, followed by Princess Ruth. In a shocking display of topsy-turvy royal protocol, Queen Berry tagged along behind them.

  "You can come out of hiding now, Victor," said Anton. "She's gone."

  Berry came to the center of the room and planted her hands on slender hips. "Well, I think you were rude, I don't care what Daddy says. Mom's a really curious person and it drives her nuts not to have her curiosity satisfied. She never stopped asking about you, the whole time she was here. And you never came out to meet her even once."

  "Curiosity may or may not have killed cats," replied Victor, "but it has certainly slaughtered lots of politicians. I was doing the lady a favor, Your Majesty, whether she wanted it or not and whether she appreciated it or not."

  "Don't call me that!" she snapped. "I hate it when my friends use that stupid title in private—and you know it!"

  Anton went over to sit in an armchair. "He just does it because for reasons I can't figure out—he's a twisty, gnarly, crooked sort of fellow—using flamboyantly royal titles in private scratches some kinky egalitarian itch he's got. But don't worry, girl. He doesn't mean it."

  "Actually," Victor said mildly, "Berry's the one monarch in creation I don't mind calling 'Your Majesty.' But I'll admit I do it mostly just to be contrary."

  He looked up at the young queen, whose expression was cross and who still had her hands on her hips. "Berry, the very last thing your mother needed was to leave herself open to the charge that she spent her time on Torch consorting with agents of an enemy power."

  Berry sneered. Tried to, rather. Sneers were just not an expression that came naturally to her. "Oh, nonsense! As opposed to leaving herself open to the charge that she spent her time on Torch consorting with murderous terrorists like Jeremy?"

  "Not the same thing at all," said Victor, shaking his head. "I don't doubt that her political enemies will level that charge against her, as soon as she gets home. It will get a rapt audience among those who already detest her, and produce a massive yawn on the part of everyone else. For pity's sake, girl, they've been accusing her of that for decades. No matter how murderous and maniacal people may think Jeremy X is, nobody thinks he's an enemy of the Star Kingdom. Whereas I most certainly am."

  He gave a mildly apologetic glance at Anton and Ruth. "Meaning no personal offense to anyone here." He looked back up at Berry. "Consorting with Jeremy simply leaves her open to the accusation of having bad judgment. Consorting with me leaves her open to the accusation of treason. That's a huge difference, when it comes to politics."

  Berry's expression was now mulish. Clearly enough, she was not persuaded by Victor's argument. But her father was nodding his head. Quite vigorously, in fact.

  "He's right, Berry. Of course, he's also now exposed as a piss-poor secret agent, because if he'd had any imagination or gumption at all he would have spent time visiting Cathy, while she was here. Lots and lots of time, to do what he could to make Manticore's politics even more poisonous than it is."

  Victor gave him a level gaze and a cool smile. "I thought about it, as a matter of fact. But . . ."

  He shrugged. "It's hard to know how that would all play out, in the end. There's a long, long history of secret agents being too clever for their own good. It could just as easily prove true, years from now, that Catherine Montaigne being in firm control of the Liberals—and with an unblemished reputation—would prove beneficial to Haven."

  Anton said nothing. But he gave Victor a very cool smile of his own.

  "And . . . fine," said Victor. "I also didn't do it because I'd have been uncomfortable doing so." His expression got as mulish as Berry's. "And that's all I'm going to say on the subject."

  Thandi had to fight, for a moment, not to grin. There were times when Victor Cachat's large and angular pile of political and moral principles amused her. Given that they were attached to a man who could also be as ruthless and cold-blooded as any human being who ever lived.

  God forbid Victor Cachat should just say openly that the Zilwicki family were people who'd become dear to him, Manticoran enemies or not, and he was no more capable of deliberately harming them than he would be of harming a child. It might be different if he thought the vital interests of Haven were at stake, true. But for the sake of a small and probably temporary tactical advantage? That was just not someplace he would go.

  She wouldn't tease him about it, though. Not even later, when they were in private again. By now, she knew Victor well enough to know that he'd simply retreat into obfuscation. He'd advance complex and subtle reasoning to the effect that retaining the personal trust of the Zilwickis would actually work to Haven's benefit, in the long run, and that it would be foolish to sacrifice that for the sake of petty maneuvering.

  And it might even be true. But it would still be an excuse. Even if Victor didn't think there'd be any long-range advantage for Haven, he'd behave the same way. And if that excuse failed of its purpose, he'd think up a different one.

  Judging from the Mona Lisa smile on Anton Zilwicki's face, Thandi was pretty sure he'd figured it out himself.

  Anton now cleared his throat, noisily enough to break Queen B
erry out of her hands-planted-on-hips disapproval. "That's not why we came here, however. Victor, there's something I need to raise with you."

  He nodded at Princess Ruth, who was perched on the arm of a chair across the room. "We need to raise with you, I should say. Ruth's actually the one who broached the issue with me."

  Ruth flashed Victor a nervous little smile and shifted her weight on the chair arm. As usual, Ruth was too fidgety when dealing with professional issues to be able to sit still. Thandi knew that Victor considered her a superb intelligence analyst—but he also thought she'd be a disaster as a field agent.

  Cachat glanced at Berry, who'd moved over to the divan next to Anton's chair and taken a seat there. "And why is the queen here? Meaning no disrespect, Your Majesty—"

  "I really, really hate it when he calls me that," Berry said to no one in particular, glaring at the wall opposite her.

  "—but you don't normally express a deep interest in the arcane complexities of intelligence work."

  Berry transferred the glare from the wall onto Cachat. "Because if they're right—and I'm not convinced!—then there's a lot more involved than the silly antics of spies."

  "All right," said Victor. He looked back at Anton. "So what's on your mind?"

  "Victor, there's something wrong with Manpower."

  "He doesn't mean wrong, like in 'they've got really bad morals,' " interjected Ruth. "He means—"

  "I know what he means," said Victor. Now he looked at Berry. "And I hate to tell you this, Your—ah, Berry—but your father's right. There really is something rotten in the state of Denmark."

  Berry and Thandi both frowned. "Where's Denmark?" demanded Thandi.

  "I know where it is," said Berry, "but I don't get it. Of course there's something rotten in the state of Denmark. It's that nasty cheese they make."

  Chapter Five

  January, 1920 PD

  "So," Zachariah McBryde asked, watching the head of foam rise on the stein he was filling with the precision of the scientist he was, "what do you think about the crap at Verdant Vista?"

  "Are you sure you want to ask me that question?" his brother Jack inquired.

  Both brothers were red-haired and blue-eyed, but of the two, Jack had the greater number of freckles and the more infectious smile. Zachariah, six T-years younger and three centimeters shorter than his brother, had always been the straight man when they were younger. Both of them had lively senses of humor, and Zachariah had probably been even more inventive than Jack when it came to devising elaborate practical jokes, but Jack had always been the extrovert of the pair.

  "I'm generally fairly confident that the question I ask is the one I meant to ask," Zachariah observed. He finished filling the beer stein, handed it across to Jack, and began filling a second one.

  "Well," Jack gave him a beady-eyed look. "I am a high muckety-muck in security, you know. I'd have to look very askance at anyone inquiring about classified information. Can't be too careful, you know."

  Zachariah snorted, although when he came down to it, there was more than an edge of truth in Jack's observation.

  It was odd, the way things worked out, Zachariah reflected, carefully topping off his own stein and settling back on the other side of the table in his comfortably furnished kitchen. When they'd been kids, he never would have believed Jack would be the one to go into the Mesan Alignment's security services. The McBryde genome was an alpha line, and it had been deep inside "the onion" for the last four or five generations. From the time they'd been upperclassmen in high school, they'd both known far more of the truth about their homeworld than the vast majority of their classmates, and it had been a foregone conclusion that they'd be going into the . . . family business one way or another. But Jack the joker, the raconteur of hilarious stories, the guy with the irresistible grin and the devastating ability to attract women, had been the absolute antithesis of anything which would have come to Zachariah's mind if someone mentioned the words "security" or "spy" to him.

  Which might explain why Jack had been so successful at his craft, he supposed.

  "I think you can safely assume, Sheriff, that this particular horse thief already knows about the classified information in question," he said out loud. "If you really need to, you can check with my boss about that, of course."

  "Well, under the circumstances, partner," Jack allowed with the drawl he'd carefully cultivated as a kid after their parents had introduced them to their father's passion for antique, pre-Diaspora "Westerns," "I reckon I can let it pass this time."

  "Why, thank you." Zachariah shoved a plate loaded with a thick ham and Swiss sandwich (with onion; they were the only ones present, so it was socially acceptable, even by their mother's rules), a substantial serving of potato salad, and an eleven centimeter-long pickle across the table to him. They grinned at each other, but then Zachariah's expression sobered.

  "Really, Jack," he said in a much more serious tone, "I'm curious. I know you see a lot more on the operational side than I do, but even what I'm hearing through the tech-weenie channels is a bit on the scary side."

  Jack regarded his brother thoughtfully for a moment, then picked up his sandwich, took a bite, and chewed reflectively.

  Zachariah probably had heard quite a bit from his fellow "tech-weenies," and it probably had been more than a little garbled. Under a strict interpretation of the Alignment's "need-to-know" policy, Jack really shouldn't be spilling any operational details to which he might be privy to someone who didn't have to have those details to do his own job. On the other hand, Zachariah was not only his brother, but one of Anastasia Chernevsky's key research directors. In some ways (though certainly not all), his clearance was even higher than Jack's.

  Both of them, Jack knew without false modesty, were definitely on the bright side, even for Mesan alpha lines, but Zachariah's talent as a synthesizer had come as something of a surprise. That could still happen, of course, even for someone whose genetic structure and talents had been as carefully designed as the McBryde genome's. However much the Long-Range Planning Board might dislike admitting it, the complex of abilities, skills, and talents tied up in the general concept of "intelligence" remained the least amenable to its manipulation. Oh, they could guarantee high general IQs, and Jack couldn't remember the last representative of one of the Alignment's alpha lines who wouldn't have tested well up into the ninety-ninth-plus percentile of the human race. But the LRPB's efforts to preprogram an individual's actual skill set was problematical at best. In fact, he was always a little amused by the LRPB's insistence that it was just about to break through that last, lingering barrier to its ability to fully uplift the species.

  Personally, Jack was more than a little relieved by the fact that the Board still couldn't design the human brain's software reliably and completely to order. It wasn't an opinion he was likely to discuss with his colleagues, but despite his complete devotion to the Detweiler vision and the Alignment's ultimate objectives, he didn't really like the thought of micromanaging human intelligence and mental abilities. He was entirely in favor of pushing the frontiers in both areas, but he figured there would always be room for serendipitous combinations of abilities. Besides, if he was going to be honest, he didn't really like the thought of his theoretical children or grandchildren becoming predesigned chips in the Alignment's grand machine.

  In that regard, he thought, he had a great deal in common with Leonard Detweiler and the rest of the Alignment's original founders. Leonard had always insisted that the ultimate function of genetically improving humanity was to permit individuals to truly achieve their maximum potential. Whatever temporary compromises he might have been willing to make in the name of tactics, his ultimate, unwavering objective had been to produce a species of individuals, ready and able to exercise freedom of choice in their own lives. All he'd wanted to do was to give them the very best tools he could. He certainly wouldn't have favored designing free citizens, fully realized members of the society for which he'd striven, the
way Manpower designed genetic slaves. The idea was to expand horizons, not limit them, after all.

  There were moments when Jack suspected the Long-Range Planning Board had lost sight of that. Hardly surprising if it had, he supposed. The Board was responsible not simply for overseeing the careful, continually ongoing development of the genomes under its care, but also for providing the Alignment with the tactical abilities its strategies and operations required. Under the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that it should continually strive for a greater degree of . . . quality control.

  And at least both the LRPB and the General Strategy Board recognized the need to make the best possible use out of any positive advantages the law of unintended consequences might throw up. Which explained why Zachariah's unique, almost instinctual ability to combine totally separate research concepts into unanticipated nuggets of development had been so carefully nourished once it was recognized. Which, in turn, explained how he had wound up as one of Chernevsky's right hands in the Alignment's naval R&D branch.

  Jack finished chewing, swallowed, and took a sip of his beer, then quirked an eyebrow at his brother.

  "What do you mean 'on the scary side,' Zack?"

  "Oh, I'm not talking about any hardware surprises, if that's what you're thinking," Zachariah assured him. "As far as I know, the Manties didn't trot out a single new gadget this time around. Which, much as I hate to admit it"—he smiled a bit sourly—"actually came as a pleasant surprise, for a change." He shook his head. "No, what bothers me is the fact that Manticore and Haven are cooperating on anything. The fact that they managed to get the League on board with them, too, doesn't make me any happier, of course. But if anybody on the other side figures out the truth about the Verdant Vista wormhole . . ."

  He let his voice trail off, then shrugged, and Jack nodded.