Torch of Freedom

deliberately enticed the original owner of Muckerjee's Treats into locating her emporium in Grendel. The parlor was certainly regarded as one of the city's hallmark and legendary attractions, at any rate, and rumor had it that the city government had extended the current owners several very attractive tax breaks to keep it right where it was. And with good reason, too. No ice cream anywhere in the inhabited galaxy was as good as that to be found in Muckerjee's Treats. Such, at least, was the firm opinion of Hugh Arai and every single member of Beowulf's Biological Survey Corps except the notoriously contrarian W.G. Zefat— and it was perhaps no coincidence that Captain Zefat had been sent off on what was expected to be the longest survey mission in the history of the Corps.

For that matter, the ice cream made in the parlor favored by the queen of Torch—J. Quesenberry's Ice Cream and Pastries, it was called—wasn't really as good as the ice cream made in a number of parlors in Manticore or any one of the inhabited planets in Sol system. Still, it was awfully good, and it had the great advantage over all other ice cream parlors in the galaxy of being the only one currently inhabited by Berry Zilwicki.

After about one hour of conversation in the parlor, an idle remark made by Berry reminded Hugh that when he'd first met the queen he hadn't taken much notice of her appearance. Healthy-looking, not otherwise striking, had pretty much summed it up.

That seemed like the memories of early childhood, now. Vague, half-forgotten—most of all, amusingly childish. In the way these things happen, Hugh's fascination with the young woman had completely transformed her appearance. His view of it, at least, and what else did he care about?

This is still a really bad idea. He repeated that mantra for perhaps the twentieth time. With no more effect than the first nineteen self-reminders.

'Jeremy more-or-less raised you, then?'

Hugh shook his head. 'No such luck, I'm afraid. And given his lifestyle at the time—wanted by just about every police force in the galaxy—there was no way he could have even if he'd wanted to. No, I spent the first few years after my rescue in a relocation camp on Aldib's second planet, Berstuk.'

'I never heard of Berstuk. Or Aldib, for that matter.'

'Aldib's a G9 star, whose official monicker is Delta Draconis. Despite being in the same constellation as Beowulf's star, it's not really that close. It's about seventy-five light years from Sol. As for Berstuk . . .'

Hugh's expression grew bleak. 'It's named after the Wendish god of the forest. Who was a pretty evil character, apparently. Which I can well believe.'

Berry tilted her head slightly. 'Well-named because of the forest, or the evil?'

'Both. The planet's gravity is slightly above Earth-normal. There aren't many oceans and those are small, so the climate is a lot worse. What they call 'continental.' Not unlivable, but the summers are bad and the winters are terrible.'

'I thought you were rescued by a Beowulf warship.'

'I was. But . . .' Hugh shrugged. 'All things considered, I'm fond of my adopted homeworld, and Beowulf's probably—no, scratch that, definitely—the most ferocious star nation in the galaxy when it comes to enforcing the Cherwell Convention. Still, Beowulf has its faults. One of them, in my opinion, is that it pretends the Solarian League is really a functional nation, not just a batch of self-satisfied, overly prosperous, basically self-centered, piles of shared interests tied together in an association of convenience.'

Berry raised her eyebrows, and Hugh chuckled. The sound was not remarkably cheerful.

'Sorry. The thing is, the ship that took out the slaver I was aboard happened to be operating in the territorial space of a fellow League star system. No one was ever able to prove anyone in that system had anything to do with the nasty slave traders, of course, but the local government insisted that the poor, liberated slaves be handed over to it so that it could personally see to their needs. The skipper of the cruiser—Captain Jeremiah—was a good sort, but he didn't have any choice but to go along with the demands of the local, legally constituted authorities. So we got handed over.'

'And?' Berry prompted when he paused.

'And it's a good thing Captain Jeremiah was a good sort, because he put in a call to Beowulf's local trade representative. In the League, 'trade representatives' do a lot of the same things 'commercial attaches' do for relationships between independent star nations, so they've got more clout than the title might suggest. And the Beowulf representative made a point out of informing the local government that Beowulf felt responsible for the slaves it had liberated and would be expecting regular reports on their well-being. Which is probably the only thing that kept us all from getting 'disappeared.' Unfortunately, it didn't keep those oh- so-concerned local authorities from dumping us with the Office of Frontier Security when it found out it couldn't just make us all—poof, go away.' He grimaced. 'So, we all wound up stuck on Berstuk. It took quite a while for even Beowulf to get us unstuck. Once it did, though, we were fast tracked for citizenship.' This time, he smiled. 'The truth is, it's not that easy to get Beowulfan citizenship. The professional associations have a lot of clout on Beowulf—too much, my opinion—and getting citizenship can take a long time unless you've got highly desirable professional skills or money or something else they find especially valuable. It can be done, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through, and it takes a while. Except for liberated slaves. Whatever else I might think about Beowulf, it really and truly hates Manpower's guts. Which is one of the main reasons that liberated slaves get to jump the line over just about everybody else when it comes to getting citizenship.'

'I knew some of that, thanks to Cathy and Daddy, even before Web and Jeremy got hold of me,' Berry said. 'So you got citizenship?'

'Yep. On the other hand, OFS isn't especially fond of Beowulf, either. It didn't exactly fall all over itself to cooperate with any expatriation requests. Even with the Anti-Slavery League pushing our case, Frontier Security was dragging its heels for all it was worth. Matter of fact, although Jeremy's never admitted it, I've always suspected that the mysterious demise of at least one Sector Commissioner had something to do with finally breaking that particular log jam.' He shook his head. 'Either way, though, it took six T-years to get it done, and I was already eleven, standard, before Beowulf managed to pry us back lose from Frontier Security.'

'Oh. Why does that name, when you say it, seem to rhyme with Wicked Cesspool Demons of the Universe?'

Hugh smiled. 'It's probably best to stay away from my opinion of the OFS. Or all the ice cream in this parlor might suddenly melt. Let's just say that growing up in an OFS relocation center—call it refugee camp, which is blunter but a lot more accurate—is not an ideal environment for a child. If Jeremy—excuse me, I meant to say if whoever my anonymous guardian angel was—hadn't been able to . . . expedite things in the end, I'm afraid to think what might have become of me.'

The smile stayed on his face, but there wasn't much good humor left in it. 'By the time I was eleven, I was a real thug. With an eleven-year-old's view of the world, but a body as big as that of most adult males. And I'm stronger than I look, too.'

'Than you look?' Berry started to giggle, and covered her mouth with her hand. 'Uh . . . Hugh. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but it's not actually an accident that my Amazons'—she nodded at the two ex-Scrags sitting at the next table—'call you either 'the gorilla' or 'the cave man.' '

'Well, yeah. That's been pretty much a constant my whole life. By now, I'm used to it. But to get back to the point, by the time Jeremy—personally—turned up to tell me Beowulf was finally going to haul us out of there, I had a bright career ahead of me as a criminal. I wasn't actually that happy to leave, to tell you the truth.'

'I take it you changed your mind, eventually?'

Hugh laughed. 'Took about three months. Trust me on this one, Berry. The surest and fastest way known to humanity I can think of to get gangster attitudes nipped in the bud is to have Jeremy X as a godfather. That man makes any gang boss or criminal mastermind in the universe look wishy-washy and sentimental, if he sets his mind to a project. Which, in my case, was what you might call 'the Reformation and Re-Education of Hugh Arai.' '

Berry laughed also. 'I can believe that!' She reached across the table and gave Hugh's hand a squeeze. 'I'm certainly glad he did.'

Her voice got a little huskier, with that last sentence. And the touch of her hand—it was the first time they'd had any physical contact—sent a spike down his spine.

This is SUCH a bad idea. But he brushed aside that shrilling inner voice of caution much as a moose might brush aside slender spruce branches. In rutting season. He probably had a sappy grin on his face, too.