“No. Why should it?”
“Never mind.” She shook her head—but her hazel eyes, they still worried. “I forget you’re not part of the gossip underground. It should be fine.” She shrugged. “So, it’s a date. I’ll leave you to your studies, and we’ll talk later.”
Alek might have left it at that. His brain was already working the problem, after all. He could have checked it out quietly. But the thought was only half-formed when he caught Gabriella turning away to leave, and he blurted out the question: “Who else asked you?” But he knew, he knew.
Gabriella flashed a glance at the ground. “Elias Luvon.”
And then she shrugged it off, leaving him standing in the snow beneath the tall evergreen, reminding himself over and over again the value of enduring.
• • •
Michael Steiner was far less sanguine, especially after hearing about it through staff gossip and not from Alek directly. The summons came as an invite to join Michael for lunch—not an order, but with Alek it carried the same weight.
He did not have so many friends on Tharkad that he could afford to refuse them casually.
So he sat on a stool in Michael’s research library, feet tucked back, watching his friend pace the narrow aisle running between bookshelves and workstation. A forgotten manual lay open on Michael’s glass-topped desk, its pages weighed down by a unique assortment of data crystals developed by the university in cooperation with a Lyran Commonwealth corporation—going to replace disk wafers across the entire Inner Sphere, Michael claimed. The crystals were lined up on both pages by color and, presumably, content.
All forgotten now, as the Archon’s brother speared Alek with an un-blinking stare.
“Do you like drinking your food through a straw?” he asked, a flush showing through his meticulous beard.
Alek rubbed at his jaw, massaging the dark yellow bruise he’d picked up this morning. He had seen the cyclist coming, but not the elbow. “I was careless.”
“Ja. I would say you were.” Michael plucked at his starched cuffs, tugging them out of his suit jacket sleeves. “Careless even to talk with Gabriella Bailey.”
“I don’t think this is so bad.”
“Worse, Alek. Elias Luvon asked her to the reception, and she spurned him. If you think this will sit well with any Nagelring cadet once Luvon is through, you are sadly mistaken. For a history and PoliSci student, you can be remarkably short-sighted. Have you ever noticed that?”
“‘How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid?’” Alek asked back. He looked at the studying professor, grinned. “‘It must be education that does it.’”
Michael froze, his face tightening down until his gray eyes disappeared behind narrow slits. Then he could not contain it anymore. A smile split through his beard, and a tight chuckle rolled out into a real laugh. “English lords and now French authors. Alek, you will mar your reputation if you keep this up.”
“Do not worry. I’m not finished with dead Russians.”
Stepping over to Alek, Michael placed a hand on his shoulder. “Just see that you do not become one. All right?” Alek nodded, and Michael took that as a guarantee. “So, your parents make planetfall yet?”
He smiled. “Tomorrow. And I have three more prelims to get through before they arrive.” Alek checked his watch. “Including the third part of Kleppinger’s four-day miniseries. I should go.”
“It’s forty minutes until Gerald starts his…ah. All right. Liebeskrank, ja? You hope to find an empty seat next to your date for the reception.” He exhaled a short, sharp sigh. “Very well. Go on with you. Just remember to duck now and then, and if Gabriella is wearing anything nice today, don’t forget to say something about her shoes.”
“Her shoes?”
With a shove, Michael propelled him from the stool and toward the door. “I’m beginning to side with Colonel Baumgarten. Maybe we are teaching you the wrong things. Or at least, not enough of the right things.”
Alek shuffled toward the door, grabbing up his carry-all pack from a small end table. “There’s nothing for me to learn from Baumgarten.”
“If you really believe that, then you are most certainly right. ‘A closed mind never errs, nor learns.’ Tracial Steiner.”
“Family’s not fair,” Alek called back, then pushed out into the corridor. He let Michael have that one. The prerogative of being part of a ruling House, you did get to win once in awhile.
And the truth was always hard to refute.
The thought hung at the back of Alek’s mind for his brisk walk over to the social sciences wing, haunting him, dredging up the ghosts of Colonel Baumgarten’s offer and his father’s commentaries, which had been delivered while the two of them explored Terra’s violent past at museums and battlefield memorials. Was he being close-minded with regard to Baumgarten’s offer? Perhaps. But then he had never been one to put muscle (or metal) over mind.
Those most capable of wielding power were those least likely to desire it. To Alek, this was a self-evident truth. An article of faith. And faith was the force by which people lived.
At the same time, also according to Tolstoi, the sole meaning of life was to serve humanity. Did that mean Alek had to serve it in the most self-sacrificing method available? Or simply that he should always hold in mind his debt to the greater good? He sighed. The mills of philosophy could grind exceedingly fine.
“But safe from the worm, my spirit will survive.”
At least through Kepplinger’s Political Science class. Or so Alek thought at the time.
The lecture hall was only half-full, with most early arrivals doing some last minute cramming from books, noteputers, or ‘corders. The room smelled of flavored coffees, mulled cider, and nervous sweat. Styluses danced over paper, over screens, as timelines and tables were practiced again, and again, and again. This kind of
