The Man-Kzin Wars 02

The musician shook his head. “The boss doesn't like me to play that one, Fra Raines,” he said. “It reminds him, well, you'd know.”

“I know, Sam. But this is bigger than any of us, and it means we can't let the past sleep in its grave. Call him, tell him we're waiting.”

“Mr. Yarthkin?” the voice asked.

He had been leaning a shoulder against one wall of the inner room, watching the roulette table. The smoke in here was even denser than by the front bar, and the ornamental fans made patterns and traceries through the blue mist. Walls were set for a space scene, a holo of Jupiter taken from near orbit on one side and Wunderland on the other. Beyond them the stars were hard glitters, pinpoints of colored light receding into infinity, infinitely out of reach. Yarthkin dropped his eyes to the table. The ventilation system was too good to carry the odor of the sweat that gleamed on the hungrily intent fitees…

Another escape, he thought. Like the religious revivals and the nostalgia craze, even the feverish corruption and pursuit of wealth was but a distraction.

“Herrenmann Yarthkin-Schotmann?” the voice asked again, and a hand touched his elbow.

He looked down, into a girl's face framed in a black kerchief. Repurified Mennonite, by the long drab dress. Well-to-do, by the excellent material; many of that sect were. Wunderland had never relied much on synthetic foods, and the Herrenmann estates had used the Amish extensively as subtenants. They had flourished, particularly since the kzin came and agricultural machinery grew still scarcer… That was ending now, of course.

“No 'Herrenmann,' sweetheart,” he said gently. She was obviously terrified, this would be a den of Satan by her folk's teaching. “Just Harold, or Mr. Yarthkin if you'd rather. What can I do for you?”

She clasped her gloved hands together, a frown on the delicately pretty features and a wisp of blond hair escaping from her scarf and bonnet. “Oh… I was wondering if you could give me some advice, please, Mr. Yarthkin, everyone says you know what goes on in Munchen.” He heard the horror in her voice as she named the city, probably from a lifetime of hearing it from the pulpit followed by “Whore of Babylon” or some such.

“Advice I provide free,” he said neutrally. Shut up, he added to his mind. There's thousands more in trouble just as bad as hers. None of your business.

“Wilhelm and I” she began, and then halted to search for words. Harold's eyes flickered up to a dark-clad young man with a tinge of beard around his face sitting at the roulette table. Sitting slumped, placing his chips with mechanical despair.

“Wilhelm and I, we lost the farm.” She put a hand to her eyes. “It wasn't his fault, we both worked so hard… but the kzin, they took the estate where we were tenants and…”

Yarthkin nodded. Kzin took a lot of feeding, and they would not willingly eat grain- fed meat, they wanted lean range beasts. More kzin estates meant less work for humans, and what there was, was in menial positions, not the big tenant holdings for mixed farming that the Herrenmann had preferred. Farmholders reduced to beggary, or to an outlaw existence that ended in a kzin hunt.

“Your church wouldn't help?” he said. The Amish were a close-knit breed.

“They found new positions for our workers, but the bishop, the bishop said Wilhelm… that there was no money to buy him a new tenancy, that he should humble himself and take work as a foreman and pray for forgiveness.” Repurified Mennonites thought that worldly failure was punishment for sin. “Wilhelm, Wilhelm is a good man, I told him to listen to the bishop but he cursed him to his face, and now we are shunned.” She paused. “Things, things are very bad there now. It is no place to live or raise children, with food so scarce and many families crowded together.”

“Sweetheart, this isn't a charitable institution,” Yarthkin said warily.

“No, Mr. Yarthkin.” She drew herself up and wrapped pride around herself like a cloak. “We had some money, we sold everything, the stock and tools. Swarm Agrobiotics offered Wilhelm and me a place, they are terraforming new farm-asteroids. With what they pay we could afford to buy a new tenancy after a few years.” He nodded. The Swarm's population was growing by leaps and bounds, and it was cheaper to grow than synthesize, but skilled dirt- farmers were rare. “But we must be there soon, and there are so many difficulties with the papers.”

Bribes, Yarthkin translated to himself.

“It takes so much more than we thought, and to live while we wait! Now we have not enough for the final clearance, and… and we know nothing but farming. The policeman told Wilhelm that we must have four thousand krona more, and we had less than a thousand. Nobody would lend more against his wages, not even the Sina moneylender, he just laughed and offered to— to sell me to—  and Wilhelm hit him, and we had to pay more to the police. Now he gambles, it is the only way we might get the money, but of course he loses.”

The house always wins, Yarthkin thought. The girl steeled herself and continued.

“The Herrenmann policeman—”

“Claude Montferrat-Palme?” Yarthkin inquired, nodding with his chin. The police chief was over at the baccarat tables with a glass of Verguuz at his elbow, playing his usual cautiously skillful game.

“Yes,” she whispered. “He told me that there was a way the papers could be approved.” A silence. “I said nothing to Wilhelm, he is… very young, younger than me in some ways.” The china-blue eyes turned to him. “Is this Herrenmann one who keeps his word?”

“Claude?” Yarthkin said. “Yes. A direct promise, yes; he'll keep the letter of it.”

She gripped her hands tighter. “I do not know what to do,” she said softly. “I must think.”

She nodded jerkily to herself and moved off. Yarthkin threw the butt of his cigarette down for the floor to absorb and moved over to the roulette table. A smile quirked the corner of his mouth, and he picked up a handful of hundred-krona chips from in front of the croupier. Stupid, he thought to himself. Oh, well, a man has to make a fool of himself occasionally.

The Amishman had dropped his last chip and was waiting to lose it; he gulped at the drink at his elbow and loosened the tight collar of his jacket. Probably seeing the Welfare Office ahead of him, Yarthkin thought. These days, that meant a labor camp where the room-and-board charges were twice the theoretical wages… They would find something else for his wife to do. Yarthkin dropped his counter beside the young farmers.

“I'm feeling lucky tonight, Toni,” he said to the croupier. “We'll play the black. Let's see it.”

She raised one thin eyebrow, shrugged her shoulders under the sequins and spun the wheel. “Place your bets, gentlefolk, please.” Impassively, she tossed the ball into the whirring circle of metal. “Number eight. Even, in the black.”

The Amishman blinked down in astonishment as the croupier's ladle pushed his doubled stake toward him. Yarthkin reached out and gripped his wrist as the young man made an automatic motion towards the plaques. It was thick and springy with muscle, the arm of a man who had worked with his hands all his life, but Yarthkin had no difficulty stopping the motion.

“Let it ride,” he said. “Play the black. I'll do the same.”

Another spin, but the croupier's lips were compressed into a thin line; she was a professional, and hated a break in routine. “Place your bets… Black wins again, gentlefolk.”

“Try twelve,” Yarthkin said, shifting his own chip. “No, all of it.”

“Place your bets… Twelve wins, gentlefolk.”

Glancing up, Yarthkin caught Montferrat's coldly furious eye, and grinned with an equal lack of warmth. At the next spin of the wheel he snapped his finger for the waiter and urged the younger man at his side to his feet, piling the chips on an emptied drink tray.

“That's five thousand,” Yarthkin said. “Why don't you cash them in and call it a night?”

Wilhelm paused, scrubbed his hands across his face, straightened his rumpled clothes. “Yes… yes, thank you, sir, perhaps I should.” He looked down at the pile of chips, and Yarthkin could see his lips whiten with shock as the impact hit home. “I…”

The girl came to meet him, and gave Yarthkin a single glance through tear-starred lashes before the two left, clinging to each other. The owner of Harold's shrugged and pushed his own counters back to the pile before the croupier.

“How are we doing tonight, Toni?” he asked.