The high spirits that evidently were normal to her sank back down. They must have been struggling against something stark. She raised her glass for a drink, gulp rather than swallow, and stared into the wine. 'My name means nothing to you, I gather,' she began, hardly louder than the music. 'I thought you would know. You have told how you are often in this system.'
'Not that often, and I never paid much attention to your politics. I've got a hunch that that's what this is about.' Her fingers strained together. 'Yah. Politics, a disease of our species. Maybe someday they'll develop a vaccine against it. Grind politicians up and centrifuge the brains. Though you'd need an awful lot of politicians per gram of brains.'
A smile spooked momentarily over her lips. 'But you must have heard a great deal lately. You are now in politics yourself.'
'And working free as fast as we can, which involves declining to get into arguments. Look, we came to Alpha Centauri originally because this is where the Interworld Space Commission keeps headquarters, with warehouses full of stuff we'd need for Professor Tregennis' expedition. We returned from there to here because Commissioner Markham had revealed himself to be a kzinti spy and we figured we should take that news first to the top. It plunked us into a monstrous kettle of hullaballoo. Seeing as how we couldn't leave before the investigations and depositions and what-God-help-us-not else were finished, we got the work on our ship done meanwhile at Tiamat. At last they've reluctantly agreed we didn't break any laws except justifiably, and given us leave to go. In between wading through that swamp of glue and all the mostly unwanted distractions that notoriety brought us, we kept hoping our brokers could arrange a cargo for whenever we'd be able to haul out. Understandably, no luck. We were pretty much resigned to returning empty to Sol, when you- Well, you can see why we discouraged anything, even conversation, that might possibly have gotten us mired deeper.'
'Yes.' She tensed. 'I shall explain. The Nordbos belonged to the Freuchen clan.'
'Hm? You mean you're of the Nineteen Families?'
'We were,' she said in a rush, overriding the pain he heard. 'Oh, of course today the special rights and obligations are mostly gone, the titles are mostly honorary, but the honor does remain. After the liberation, a court stripped his from my father and confiscated everything but his personal estate. He was not there to defend himself. The best we were able, my brother and I and a handful of loyal friends, that was to save our mother from being tried for treasonable collaboration. We resigned membership in the clan before it could meet to expel her.'
Saxtorph drew hard on his pipe. 'You believe your father was innocent?'
'I swear he was!' Her breath went ragged. 'At last I have evidence-no, a clue- A spaceship must go where he went and find the proof. Civilian hyperdrive craft are committed to their routes, and their governments control them in any case, except for yours. Our navy- My brother is an officer. He has made quiet inquiries. He actually got a naval astronomer to check that part of the sky, as a personal favor, not saying why. Nothing was found. He tells me the Navy would not dispatch a ship on the strength of a few notes that are partial at best.'
And that could well have been forged by a person crazy-desperate for vindication, Saxtorph thought. She admits the instrumental search drew a blank.
Tyra had won to a steely calm. 'Furthermore, thinking about it, I realized that if the Navy should go, it would be entirely in hopes of discovering something worthwhile. They would not care about the honor of Peter Nordbo, who was condemned as a traitor and is most likely long dead.'
'But you have your own reputation to rescue,' Saxtorph said gently.
The fair head shook. 'That doesn't matter. Neither Ib, my brother, nor I was accused of anything. In fact, at the liberation, he was among those who tried to storm the Ritterhaus where the kzinti were holding out, and was wounded. I told you, he has since become a naval officer. And I… helped the underground earlier, in a very small way, for I was very young then, and during the street fighting here I worked at a first aid station. Ach, the court said how they sympathized with us. We must have been one reason why they never formally charged my mother. That much justice got we, for she was innocent too. She could not help what happened. But except for those few real friends, only Ib and I ever again called on her, at that lonely house on Korsness.'
The musicomp man set his instrument to violin mode with orchestral backing and played a tune that Saxtorph recognized. Antique indeed, from Earth before space-flight, sugary sentimental, yet timeless, 'Du kannst nicht treu sein.' You can't be true.
Tyra's gaze met his. 'Yes, certainly we wish to rejoin the Freuchens, not as a favor but by birthright. And that would mean restoring us the holdings, or compensation for them; a modest fortune. But it doesn't matter, I say. What does is my father's good name, his honor. He was a wonderful man.' Her voice deepened. 'Or is? He could maybe be alive still, somewhere yonder, after all these years. Or if not, we could-maybe avenge him.'
The wings of her pageboy bob stirred. He realized that she had laid her ears back, like a wolf before a foe, and she was in truth of the old stock that conquered this planet for humankind.
'Easy, there,' he said hastily. 'Rover's civilian, remember. Unarmed.'
'She should carry weapons. Since you discovered the kzinti have the hyperdrive—'
'Yah. Agreed. I wanted some armament installed, during this overhaul. Permission was denied, flat. Against policy. Bad enough, a hyperdrive ship operating as a free enterprise at all. Besides, I was reminded, it's twenty years since the kzinti were driven from Alpha Centauri, ten years since the war ended, and they've learned their lesson and are good little kitties now, and it was nasty of us to smash their base on that planet and do in so many of them. If they threatened our lives, why, mightn't we have provoked them? In any event, the proper thing for us to have done was to file a complaint with the proper authorities—' Saxtorph broke off. 'Sorry. I feel kind of strongly about it.'
He avoided describing the new equipment that was aboard. Perfectly lawful, stuff for salvage work or prospecting or various other jobs that might come Rover's way. He hoped never to need it for anything else. But he and his shipmates had chosen it long-sightedly, and made certain modifications. Just in case. Moreover, a spacecraft by herself carried awesome destructive potentialities. The commissioners were right to worry about one falling into irresponsible hands. He simply felt that the historical record showed governments as being, on the whole, much less responsible than humans.
'Anyway,' he said, 'under no circumstances would we go looking for a fight. I've seen enough combat to last me for several incarnations.'
'But you are serious about going!' she cried.
He lifted a palm. 'Whoa, please. First describe the situation. Uh, your brother's in the Navy, you said, but may I ask what you do?' Her tone leveled. 'I write. When liberation came, I had started to study literature at the university here. Afterward I worked some years for a news service, but when I had sold a few things of my own, I became a free-lance.'
'What do you write? I'm afraid I don't recognize your byline.'
'That is natural. Hyperdrive and hyperwave have not been available so long that there goes much exchange of culture between systems, especially when the societies went separate ways while ships were limited by light speed. I make differing things. Books, articles, scripts. Travel stuff; I like to travel, the same as you, and this has gotten me to three other stars so far. Other nonfiction. Short stories and plays. Two novels. Four books for young children.'
'I want to read some… whatever happens.' Saxtorph forbore to ask how she proposed to pay him on a writer's income. He couldn't afford a wild gamble that she might regain the family lands. Let the question wait.
Pride spoke: 'Therefore you see, Captain, Ib and I are independent. My aim-his, if I can persuade him-is for our father's honor. Even about that, I admit, nothing is guaranteed. But we must try, must we not? We might become what the Nordbos used to be. Or we might become far more rich, because whatever it is out yonder is undoubtedly something strange and mighty. But such things, if they happen, will be incidental.'
Or we might come to grief, maybe permanently, Saxtorph thought. Nonetheless he intended to hear her out. 'Okay,' he said. 'Shall we stop maneuvering and get down to the bones of the matter?'
Her look sought past him, beyond this tavern and this night. Her muted monotone flowed on beneath the music. 'I give you the background first, for by themselves my father's notes that I have found are meaningless. Peter Nordbo was twelve years old, Earth reckoning, when the kzinti appeared. He was the only son of the house, by all accounts a bright and adventurous boy. Surely the conquest was a still crueler blow to him than to most dwellers on Wunderland.
'But folk were less touched by it, in that far-off northern district, than elsewhere. Travel restrictions, growing shortages of machines and supplies, everything forced them into themselves, their own resources. It became
