Neither man spoke for several minutes, and Van did enjoy the pringhorn, a taste similar to veal, but delicately smokier, with hints of scores of other flavors, perhaps because of the marinade.
“What do you know of Director Desoll?” asked Marti.
“He looks like, acts like, and admits that he was a former Coalition commander. He has kept his word scrupulously in any dealing I’ve observed, and that has been reinforced by observations, records, and by the statements of dozens of others.”
“His honesty is unquestioned. He is also an excellent pilot, perhaps better than any living pilot in the Arm.”
“That is saying a great deal,” Van pointed out.
“It is.” Marti frowned. “His honesty troubles me greatly—that is, the degree of his honesty. Only saints or madmen are so honest, and I cannot believe he is a saint. That is perhaps because there have been a number of unexplained disappearances of Revenant vessels, almost always when his ship has been in that quadrant.” The general shrugged. “Sheer coincidence, I must say.”
“What else could one say?” Van agreed. “But he certainly doesn’t act like a madman.”
“Such ones do not.” Marti paused. “There is another problem. The Coalition retirement records go back over a century—those that are open to the public. There is no record of a Trystin Desoll. Yet he is clearly a military pilot. One cannot mistake it.”
Van could see where Marti was going. “So…if he is telling the truth, he wasn’t a Coalition pilot, or he was a pilot more than a hundred years ago? Or he’s not telling the truth?”
“I fear he is telling the truth.”
“You think he’s one of the handful of immortals?” Van had always thought that tales of such individuals were rumors, or wild speculation.
“Who knows?” Marti shrugged, then laughed. “If I said that, who would believe it? Besides, you must make your own judgments, and you, my friend, have very good judgment.”
Van wasn’t so sure of that.
“You must try the flan. There is nothing like it anywhere else.”
Van did try the flan, and it was excellent. He wasn’t sure it was that unique.
Marti offered more witty sayings, good wishes, and observations about Neuquen, but nothing more about Trystin Desoll or IIS. Or the RSF.
After leaving the general outside The View, as Van walked back to the maintenance lock that held the Joyau, Van had the definite impression that the general had conveyed what he had intended. What Van didn’t know was why. Marti had not seemed to think that Desoll posed a threat to the Argenti, and his actions seemed to convey a tacit support for IIS.
Still, Van would ask Eri to double-check the shield generators once again—and everything around them. And he had to write a report for Trystin on everything he’d observed in the various systems. He wouldn’t mention what happened—just the Revenant presence and military and economic actions.
Chapter 55
The Elsin was waiting beyond the orbit of Dhannar—the eighth planet of the Kush system—when the Joyau flashed out of jump. It was a good hour later before the two locked together, and Trystin joined Van in the commander’s stateroom of the Joyau.
Recalling Marti’s speculations, Van couldn’t help but study the older man closely as he seated himself in the armchair. Trystin looked perhaps ten years older than Van, certainly not forty or fifty years older, and his carriage was that of a young man.
“I’m here.” Trystin smiled. “Knowing you, you wouldn’t have asked for the meeting unless you were very concerned.”
“I am. It started on Korvel. Sherren Myller…she’d requested a visit.”
“I recall. I handed that off to you.”
“She was worried about a unique problem, and one she didn’t want to spell out in a message that anyone else could read. There was a tremendous influx of credits…” Van went on to detail what he had found and done in Korvel, Islyn, and Beldora systems. “…I wrote up what we observed, but not what we did.” He extended the datacard. “It’s all there.”
Taking the datacard, Trystin nodded slowly, as if he had expected what Van had told him.
“You’re not that surprised,” Van said.
“I am, and I’m not. I’d like to hear what you think, first.”
Van looked at Trystin. “I can see what’s happening. It’s painfully obvious. The Revs have forsaken outright military conquest in favor of a sort of borderline military action. To begin with, they weaken a system—one way or another—then flood the local economy with credit and set up new businesses or take over old ones. They often take huge losses to gain market share. They begin an effort to undermine the local political structure. I’d guess, but I don’t know, that they use their church as an example of a pillar of stability, and they probably do all sorts of good and humanitarian works…and appeal to people’s need for simplicity in an unsettled time—even when they’re creating the unsettling…”
“That’s a fairly accurate analysis,” Trystin conceded. “They’ve been operating that way for years.”
“And you’re trying to use IIS to slow or stop them?”
“IIS wasn’t created as a quasi-military force to oppose the Revenants.”
“Not military, but isn’t opposing them a large part of what we’re doing? We’re trying to strengthen the local multis competing against the Rev-backed takeovers.”
“IIS was designed to use economics, information, and systems expertise to strengthen local economic institutions and to guide them into patterns for long-term success.” Trystin shifted his weight in the chair. “Long-term is a vital part of what we do. Human beings are still genetically programmed or patterned to look at life in economic terms. Everything we do has economic overtones, and yet most people still want to deny that. I’m oversimplifying enormously, but there are essentially two economic outlooks, again dating from our ancient roots. One is the ‘big kill’ view, and the other is the ‘gatherer’ view. The big kill literally comes from that kind of hunting outlook. You kill the
