A Grand Tour

powerful fingers. 'Yes, all right, tomorrow,' he called to Nessler and Mincio. Ms. deKyper was already in the air car, sizzling in fury at the Melungeon sacrilege.

* * *

The next pylon was almost half a kilometer away, sufficient distance to free their party from the Melungeons' presence. Nessler landed, downwind as before, though sand spurting from beneath the air car wouldn't do any significant harm to the crystal shaft.

Mincio got her breath. She found she was more angry, not less, now that her conscious mind had processed the information to which she'd reacted instinctively on first receipt.

'Nessler,' she said, breaking into deKyper's litany of displeasure, 'under no circumstances should you play cards with that man. The deck he brought out is fixed. The cards broadcast their values. Orloff picks up the signals in clicks through the stem of his pipe.'

Nessler raised an eyebrow as he got out of the air car. 'Cheating at cards would be in keeping with the rest of the man's character, wouldn't it? I, ah… I'm glad you recognized the paraphernalia. I wouldn't have done so.'

Mincio tried to stand. She failed because her muscles were trembling. She covered her face with her hands.

Nessler helped deKyper from the vehicle. The two of them spoke for a moment in low voices; then deKyper said, 'I'll be on the other side of the pylon,' and her feet crunched away.

Nessler cleared his throat. 'Ah, Mincio?' he said.

Mincio lowered her hands. Without meeting Nessler's eyes she said, 'I never talked about my father. He was a professional gambler. My earliest memories are playing cards with my father. He punished me when I made a mistake. I was three years old, maybe not even that, and he whipped me for drawing to an inside straight.'

'I'm sorry that this matter arose,' Nessler said quietly. 'We needn't go anywhere near the Melungeons tomorrow. Perhaps Rovald can get some imagery.'

'It doesn't bother me to see people play,' Mincio said. She smiled wanly in the direction of the far horizon. 'Really what it does is excite me. My father taught me very well, but I haven't touched a deck of cards since the day he died.'

She stood and looked directly at her friend and employer. She smiled again, though the corner of her lips wobbled. 'He was shot dead when I was sixteen. It wasn't a duel — merely a murder, a contract killing. Given that several of the victims he cheated had committed suicide, I suppose justice was done.'

Nessler shook his head slowly. 'I'm sorry about your father's death, Mincio,' he said. 'Also about the way he chose to live his life. But that wasn't your choice. I'm honored to have been your pupil in the study of the Alphane culture, and I remain in awe of your learning.'

'I hope you're not so great a fool to be awed by mere knowledge,' Mincio said tartly. 'Any more than I am by mere wealth. Let's take a look at this pylon, shall we? I want to see whether all six are the same molecular composition.'

* * *

They'd dropped deKyper off at the pair of storage sheds in which she lived on the edge of Kuepersburg. Nessler brought the borrowed air car down in Singh's courtyard. Generator-powered electric lights were on all over the complex of buildings, and dozens of people had to crowd out of the way to permit the vehicle to land.

'Sir!' Beresford said as soon as Nessler shut off the turbines. 'There's a Jathan freighter in orbit that's brought in a pinnace from a Manticoran navy ship that a Peep cruiser blasted in the Air System. They're hoping that, you know, you being a gentleman—'

Nessler rose with a subtly changed expression. 'A gentleman I hope,' he said, 'and a reserve naval officer beyond question. May I ask who's in charge of this party?'

Singh stood at his front door but didn't interfere in what he hoped was no longer his business. Mincio moved from the car to a corner where she'd be out of the way while she observed what was happening.

The people who nearly filled the courtyard wore either utility uniforms of the Royal Manticoran Navy or loose, locally-made garments which must have been provided by the consular agent. Some of the castaways had been injured; most had sallow, hollow-eyed expressions which were more than a trick of the low-voltage lights that illuminated them. From the looks of them, they must have been forced to subsist on the life support capability of their pinnace/lifeboat to avoid overloading the limited capacity of the hyper-capable freighter which had picked them up.

'Sir!' said a powerfully-built woman who planted herself in front of Nessler and threw a crisp salute. 'Leona Harpe, Bosun, late of Her Majesty's destroyer L'Imperieuse. There's thirty-seven of us, everybody who survived.'

'Stand easy, Harpe,' Nessler said in a tone of calm authority very different from that of his normal discourse, and different even from his dealings with servants like Beresford. 'Now, what are your primary needs?'

'Mr. Singh fed us right after we landed in the pinnace,' Harpe said. She rubbed her eyes. 'He doesn't have tents for shelter, and I don't know how long we're going to be stuck here.'

'We need a way to get to a Navy ship big enough to serve out the Peep bastards who whacked us!' somebody called from a rear rank.

'Belt up, Dismore!' Harpe snapped without turning her head. 'Though I'm looking forward to that too, Sir. They hit us without warning in League territorial space — we didn't even know there was a war on… if there is! All we knew was that someone started jamming us, then opened fire. We did our best — I think we may even've got a lick or two in — but the Peeps had a heavy cruiser.' She shook her head. 'The old Imp was like a puppy up against a hexapuma, Sir.'

She paused for a moment, then inhaled sharply. 'After a hit sent the fusion bottle climbing toward failure, all the survivors got off in the two cutters and the pinnace… and that's when the bastards opened up all over again. They lasered the blue cutter under Mr. Gedrosian, the XO. Ms. Arlemont, she was Engineering Officer, tried to ram them with the red cutter. They lasered them too.'

Harpe swallowed. 'The Captain got us clear before he died,' she said. 'I couldn't have evaded the bastards myself. He'd lost his legs from the hit on the bridge but I don't think it was that what killed him. He just gave up.' She swallowed again.

'We knew the Peeps were on Air, so we couldn't go back there. It was just luck the Jerobahm was bound out-system and her skipper was willing to let us ride her hull. We'd be dead for sure otherwise, Sir. Those bastards don't want any witnesses left.'

'Yes, all right,' Nessler said. 'Wait here for a moment while I consult with Mr. Singh.'

Nessler stepped toward Singh on the porch. The shipwrecked spacers parted with mechanical precision. They'd lost everything but the clothes they stood in — and clothes as well in some cases — but their discipline held. Mincio had always considered herself a scholar and above petty concerns of nationality, but in this moment she was proud to be a citizen of the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

'Excellent!' Nessler said after a brief conversation. Mr. Singh disappeared into the house, calling half-heard orders.

'Bosun Harpe,' Nessler continued, still on the porch which put him a head higher than the spacers he was addressing. 'You and your people will be billeted in a warehouse and provided with rations during the period you're on Hope. I'll defray Mr. Singh's expenses and be repaid on my return to Manticore. Mr. Singh is summoning a guide right now.'

Mincio doubted that Nessler would even request reimbursement for an amount that was vanishingly small in comparison to his annual revenues. Government paperwork was a morass, and she suspected that the Navy was worse even than the Star Kingdom's civilian bureaucracy. The comment was his way of not seeming to boast about his wealth.

'We really do want to get back for another crack at those Peeps, Sir,' Harpe said. 'They took us down, that's war. But the lifeboats…'

'We'll deal with that, Bosun,' Nessler said sharply, 'but first things first.' Nodding toward the servant who'd appeared at the door behind him he continued, 'You're to report to your new quarters until seven hundred hours tomorrow. A delegation of petty officers will wait on me here at that time. Dismissed!'

'Hip-hip—' called a rear-rank spacer.