'Indeed they may, Sir,' the servant said in a chastened voice. He bobbed his head. 'I beg your pardon.'
'I can't believe that someone would try to move one of the pylons,' Mincio murmured. 'And to Tellico, of all places.'
'Not exactly a galactic center of scholarship, is it?' Nessler said in a tone of quiet disapproval. 'The Melungeon nobility is given to whims, I'm told. It's perhaps rather unfortunate that Lord Orloff seems to have a whim for Alphane artifacts.'
He wouldn't stand for his servant calling a fellow nobleman a thick-headed barbarian, but Mincio suspected that he privately agreed with Beresford's assessment of someone trying to move one of the largest and finest surviving Alphane structures. Certainly Mincio agreed.
They'd reached the outskirts of Kuepersburg. Up close the buildings were more substantial than they looked at a distance. They were built of sandy loam stabilized with a cellulose-based plasticizer, a material as permanent as lime concrete and a great deal easier to shape before it set. Many of the locals had brightened the natural dun color with dyes or exterior paint.
Children played in the street among the pigs, chickens, and garbage. They came crowding around with excited cries as soon as they saw that the travelers were well-dressed strangers. The heavily-laden Melungeons and Rovald were far to the rear.
'Half a Solarian credit to the child who leads Sir Hakon to Merchant Singh's!' Beresford called, holding high a plastic coin with a coppery diffraction grating at its core. 'Hop it, now! Sir Hakon's too important a person to wait.'
Nessler met Mincio's eyes with a wince. He didn't call Beresford down since the boast was already spoken. Mincio shrugged and chuckled.
The children screamed and leaped for the coin like so many starving rats desperate for a tidbit—though in fact none of them looked undernourished. Beresford chose a tall girl with an exceptional willingness to elbow clear the space about her. With the guide strutting in the lead and Beresford obsequiously in the rear, the party turned right on a cross-street nearly as wide as the track from the landing field.
The girl halted in front of a compound. Windblown dirt dimmed the wall's white paint and several patches had flaked away, but somebody'd recently cleaned the surface with a dry broom.
The gate was open, but a husky servant sat across it polishing scale off a screen of nickel filigree. He rose when he saw the mob of children and strangers coming toward him.
'Here's the Singhs!' the girl caroled. 'Give me the money! Give me the money!'
A middle-aged man stepped out the front door of the largest of the three buildings within the compound. He had a full beard and wore a dark velvet frock coat of the type that was almost a uniform for respectable small businesspeople in the League's hinterlands.
'Yes?' he called in a resonant voice. Two women, one his own age and the second a twenty-year old of exceptional beauty, looked out the door behind him.
'I'll handle this, Beresford,' Nessler said with quiet authority. 'Mr. Singh? I'm Sir Hakon Nessler, traveling with a party of three from Manticore to view Alphane sites. I was given to understand that you might be able to help us to accommodations and supplies here on Hope?'
The gatekeeper immediately lifted his bench from the passage. He watched his master out of the corner of his eye to be sure that he wasn't misinterpreting his duty.
He wasn't. Singh strode forward and clasped hands with Nessler. 'Yes, please,' he said. 'I am consular agent for Manticore on Hope.' Singh grinned. 'Also for a dozen other worlds. The duties don't take much time away from my own export business, you understand, and I take pleasure in the company of travelers from more settled regions. I like to believe that I am able to smooth their path on occasions. You will stay with me and my family, I trust?'
'We would be honored, but you must permit me to pay all the household expenses during the time we're imposing on you,' Nessler said. 'In particular—'
He glanced down the street to call attention to the arriving baggage carriers.
'—I've promised these persons that I'd feed them in exchange for carrying our traps. I'd like to fulfil that promise as soon as possible.'
'Morey,' Singh said to the gatekeeper, 'go to Larrup's and tell her to ready . . .' He glanced out the gate to check the count. The gray-clad spacers halted, standing as silently as so many beasts of burden; which indeed they were. '. . . twelve dinners on my account. The parties will be along as soon as they have brought Sir Hakon's goods into the house.'
'I'll direct them, dear,' the older woman said. In a tone of crisp command she went on, 'Come along, Ms. Royston. I'll show you where to put the parcels and then you can go to Larrup's for a meal.'
She went inside. Beresford trotted in also. The servant began introducing himself to the woman of the house in terms that indicated he'd decided the Singhs were gentry to be flattered instead of common folk he could badger on the strength of his connection to Nessler. Mincio sighed. Sir Hakon's father and grandfather had never forgotten that they were Nesslers of Greatgap, and their wealth and Conservative Association political connections had let them enjoy—and project—an old-fashioned aristocratic arrogance which had long since become passe for most Manticorans. Sir Hakon himself held rather different views, much to the disgust of Baron High Ridge and the other Conservative party elders, but neither he nor Beresford were immune to the conditions under which they had been raised. Mincio knew the servant's insistence on his master's primacy in all things often irritated Sir Hakon, but she also knew the little man wouldn't have been nearly as useful a servant here in the back of beyond if he'd been less pushy.
'Are they really from the Melungeon Navy?' she asked Singh in a low voice as the last of the spacers disappeared into the house.
'Yes, indeed,' Singh agreed. He gave a faintly rueful shrug. 'Maxwell, Lord Orloff, arrived in a warship three weeks ago. He and his cronies as well as most of his crew are at the Six Pylons twenty-five kilometers from here. You've seen the pylons, no doubt?'
'From a distance,' Nessler said. 'We hope to visit the site ourselves tomorrow, if transport can be arranged. But why doesn't his crew have food?'
Singh shrugged again. 'You'd have to take that up with Lord Orloff, I'm afraid,' he said. 'I've had very little contact with him. He pays quite well for the needs of his immediate entourage, but the common spacers appear to be destitute. Kuepersburg isn't a wealthy metropolis—' He and the two Manticorans exchanged tight smiles. '—but we can't very well let fellow human beings starve. We've been providing basic requirements to the poor fellows, and they sometimes find a taker for a bit of their vessel's equipment.'
'They're stripping their own ship to buy food?' Mincio said in surprise. 'Surely that costs Melungeon more than it would to pay their crews properly—or at least to provide rations?'
'Sometimes what officials think are pragmatic decisions seem remarkably short-sighted to others,' Singh said. 'That was as surely true when I was home on Krishnaputra as it appears to be among the Melungeons. And certainly—'
Before continuing he glanced both ways down the street, empty except for the playing children again.
'Certainly it is true of the way the League deals with all the worlds of this region, particularly in the choice of officials the League sends here.'
'There's also the matter that the cost of the policy is generally borne by a department other than the one which makes that policy,' Nessler said drily. 'The phenomenon isn't unique to the Melungeon Navy.'
His eyes narrowed. Mincio had found her pupil to be a generally cheerful youth, but he had the serious side to be expected in a responsible heir to a great fortune. 'Though I must say,' Nessler added, 'I might wish that we had the Melungeon Navy to fight rather than that of the People's Republic of Haven.'
The Melungeon spacers filed from the house, moving more briskly than Mincio had seen them do previously. Royston was in the lead; she held a chit written on a piece of coarse paper. Singh's wife shepherded them out with a proprietary expression.
The younger woman remained beside the doorway. She gave Mincio a shy smile when their eyes met. She was clearly Singh's daughter, though the greater delicacy of her similar features made her strikingly attractive.
'From what the Manticorian captains on Klipspringer and Delight told us,' Mincio said, 'the ships of the Expansion Navy of the People's Republic aren't a great deal better.'
