government of a country, planet, whatever, is whoever defends it. The way you find them is make them come to you. Just march in, say you’re taking over, and wait to see who appears. If nobody does, then you know who the government is anyway. It’s you.”
Nobody was prepared to argue. But at the same time, it was clear to everyone except Rhinde that nothing that drastic was a candidate for the time being. Ever the able and resourceful organization man, Brose tabled the proposal for further consideration and appointed someone to form a subcommittee to look into it.
After the meeting adjourned, Duggan approached Brose privately in his office at the Executive Suites end of the Planetary Department. “I’d like approval to roam around freely down there, without escorts,” he said. “There isn’t any threat, and the presence of weapons inhibits the Tharleans. It’s a barrier to further progress in getting through to them.”
“You really think it’s likely to make much difference?” Brose queried. His conviction seemed distinctly far short of total. “I mean, what progress at all is there to take further? Have_you, for instance, met anyone who looks even remotely capable of being gotten through to?”
“I think so, maybe. Yes.”
“Hm.” Brose sniffed. “And what if we have to scrape you up out of an alley one morning, and it gets back that I waived regulations. How would I be supposed to explain it?”
“Well, we’d better come up with something before Rhinde gets his way and ends up starting a war,” Duggan said. “Would you rather have to explain that?”
Duggan got his request approved—on signing a disclaimer that it was at his own instigation, and against the advice of his superior. “I’m doing it to give you a chance to rack up some points for promotion to subsection supervisor when we get back,” Brose murmured confidentially as he signed the paper. “I think you’d be more suited to it, Paul.” Duggan had little doubt that Brose was saying similar things to Stell too, who was also a candidate for the slot. Fostering a healthy competitive spirit between rivals was encouraged as part of the Department’s management style. It was considered the astute way to develop human resources. They were what at one time had been called “people.”
“I’ll be coming back down tomorrow,” Duggan told Tawna when he called her a half hour later. “No guards to get in the way this time, so we can have that talk. Tell me a good place to meet.”
The bronzed, orangey-haired face on the screen looked genuinely pleased. “That’s wonderful! Then you can tell me all about Earth.” She must have caught a hint of a reaction in his face. “And talk about other things too, naturally. What did you want to do down here?”
Duggan frowned, realizing that he had been unprepared. He thought rapidly. “I want to find out who lives in the biggest houses,” he told her.
They met and had breakfast in a cafe by the river, on a terrace at the rear, overlooking the water. It was a fair, sunny day, and there were a lot of small boats about—some sporty and powered, others curvy and delicate with strange-shaped sails, reminiscent in ways of Arab dhows. It was the same incongruous blend of ancient and new existing happily side-by-side that Duggan had been noticing everywhere. A large blimp passed overhead, heading south, maybe following the coast. Tawna explained that on days when the weather permitted, those who could afford it often preferred them to regular jets. By this time, Duggan was surprised to hear that for once the price of something should actually reflect how it was valued. It turned out that what Tawna meant was those who could afford the time.
As he listened, Duggan found himself being captivated by her openness. She played none of the mind games that he was accustomed to in this kind of situation, no jockeying for one-up points to decide who had a controlling advantage. And in a way that he realized was a new concept to him, her absence of deviousness absolved him from any need to reciprocate. He could actually be himself and say what he thought, without having to calculate implications and consequences. It felt liberating and refreshing. Yes, there had been a man that she’d lived with for a while when she moved to Ferrydock. His name had been Lukki. But in the end it hadn’t worked out. No, there was no one in particular at present.
The people they were going to meet were called Jazeb and Maybel Wintey, and kept what Tawna described as a “huge” house in a foothill region of the mountains northeast of Ferrydock. She didn’t know them personally but had known of them for a long time, and contacted them through an agent in town who provided their domestic staff. Hardly surprisingly, a mention that somebody from the Earth ship wanted to meet them was all it had taken. In her non-questioning, accepting way, Tawna hadn’t asked Duggan why he wanted to know who lived in the big houses. When Duggan inquired casually what Wintey did, Tawna replied in an uncharacteristically vague kind of way, that he “collected things.” It didn’t sound much like what Duggan had been hoping for. But he could hardly change his mind now.
Back outside the front of the cafe, Tawna stopped to run her eye over the assortment of vehicles in the parking area. Tharlean ground autos were generally simpler and less ostentatious than Terran designs, though with the same proclivity for curviness that was evident in the architecture and the boats; a couple looked almost like Aladdin slippers on wheels. She led the way across to a pale blue, middle-of-the-range model, unpretentious but comfortably roomy for two. As they got in, Duggan commented that he’d thought she wasn’t sure which car was hers. It wasn’t hers, he discovered, but belonged to a common pool that anyone could use, rather like a public comlink booth back home. She started it by inserting a plastic tag that seemed to combine the functions of pay card and driver’s license. People who needed to owned their own, but most didn’t bother, Tawna said—adding that it was the kind of thing Jazeb Wintey would do. She seemed to find it humorous. Duggan wasn’t sure why.
They drove out of the town to an airport that Duggan knew of from
Tawna hadn’t been exaggerating when she described the Wintey house as “huge.” It would have qualified as a mansion by Terran standards, with a healthy profusion of Tharlean towers and turrets, and stood amid an estate of outbuildings and grounds enclosed by high walls and wire fences. The flymo landed on a gravel courtyard in front of the house and was met by a retinue of household staff who conducted Duggan and Tawna to the portico-framed entrance. Duggan noticed as they crossed the court that the main gate and the fence were protected by armed guards.
His first impression as they threaded their way through the hall inside between barricades of furniture was of being in a cross between a museum and a home goods warehouse. Enormous, glass-fronted cabinets standing from floor to ceiling, jammed with porcelains, chinaware, glassware, and figurines, lined the walls, while the ceiling was all but invisible behind rows of hanging buckets, pots, pans, basins, metalware, and jugs. The room beyond had tiers of shelves carrying all manner of ornaments, decorated boxes, and bric-a-brac, and furnishings wedged, sometimes inaccessibly, between pedestals laden with pottery and vases, ponderous columns and other carvings, and padlocked cubicles of indeterminate nature. Jazeb Wintey received them in an inner redoubt at the center of more wooden and upholstered fortifications overlooked by walls tiled with pictures and prints. He was small and gnomish, with a ruddy bald head, cantankerous expression, and a fringe of whiskers girding his chin like a sunflower. His dress of frock coat and gaitered britches was impossibly stuffy and formal for a Tharlean, and would have been eccentrically antiquated even on Earth. He shook Tawna’s hand stiffly and rapidly as if it were a pump handle and repeated the process with Duggan, the sternness of his features remaining unchanged.
“From Earth! About time! It took you long enough! Maybe we’ll see some sense and sanity restored to this place then, before much longer.”
So much for social pleasantries. If plunging straight in was the way here, Duggan would follow suit. “Why? What’s wrong with things here?” he asked.
Wintey looked at him as if he might have just woken up after a thousand-year sleep. “Pah! No ethics, no standards. Things like that all got lost after the colonists stopped building space-goers. Everything’s degenerated. Why do you think we have to live walled up in a fortress like this? Envy and malice all around. It’s because I’m the only one around here who’s got a notion of business.” He cast an arm about to indicate the surroundings. For the first time, a hint of a satisfied smile crossed the berrylike countenance. “See what I mean?” He tapped his temple meaningfully. “Takes acumen to accumulate that kind of worth, young fella. Brains and acumen. People here
