The Shadow of Saganami

you out-having people chase after you just because you look so goddamned good turns your stomach. It's not you they want. Not the you that lives inside you, the one that does things like this.' He slapped the sketchpad's satchel. 'It's this .' He touched his face again. 'This... packaging .'

'I've known quite a few ex-slaves by now, Paulo,' she said, keeping her voice normal, 'and most of them have demons. Couldn't really be any other way, I guess. But whatever happened to them, whatever was done to them, and whatever those motherless bastards in Mesa may think about them, they're people, and the fact that someone else thought they were property doesn't make it true. It just means people who think they're fucking gods decided they were toys. And some toys, Paulo d'Arezzo, are very, very dangerous. In the end, that's what's going to finish Manpower off, you know. People like Jeremy X. And Web Du Havel. And you.'

He looked at her suspiciously, as if he suspected she was shooting him a line, and she chuckled again, nastily.

'Paulo, for all intents and purposes, Cathy Montaigne's my mom, and you know all about Daddy. Do you think they don't have a pretty damned shrewd idea how many ex-slaves, and children of ex-slaves, have gone into the Star Kingdom's military? We get good marks for enforcing the Cherwell Convention. That attracts a lot of people-people like you-and the way we attract people like you is one reason we enforce the Cherwell Convention as well as we do. It's a reinforcing feedback loop. And then, of course, there's Torch.'

'I know.' He looked down, watching his right index finger draw circles on his kneecap. 'That was something I really wanted to talk to you about-Torch, and your sister, I mean. But I— That is, it's been so long, and-'

'Paulo,' she said, almost gently, 'I've known a lot of ex-slaves, all right? Some of them are like Jeremy or Web. They wear where they came from right out on their sleeves and throw it into the galaxy's teeth. It defines who they are, and they're ready to rip Manpower's throat out with their bare teeth. Others just want to pretend it never happened. And then there's a whole bunch who don't want to pretend it didn't happen but who do want to get on with who they are. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want people to cut them extra slack, make exceptions for them out of some sort of misplaced, third- party guilt. And they don't want pity, or to be defined by those around them in terms of their victimhood. Obviously I haven't bothered to get to know you as well as I should've, or this wouldn't be coming as such a surprise to me. But I do know you well enough to know, especially now, that you're part of that hardheaded, stiff-necked, stubborn bunch that's determined to succeed without whining, without excuses, or special allowances. The kind who're too damned stubborn for their own good and too damned stupid to know it. Sort of like Gryphon Highlanders.'

She grinned at him, and to his own obvious surprise, he smiled back.

'I guess maybe we are sort of alike,' he said finally. 'In a way.'

'And who'd've thunk it?' she replied with that same toothy grin.

'It probably wouldn't have hurt to've had this discussion earlier,' he added.

'Nope, not a bit,' she agreed.

'Still, I suppose it's not too late to start over,' he observed.

'Not as long as you don't expect me to stop being my usual stubborn, insufferable, basically shallow self,' she said.

'I don't know if all of that self-putdown is entirely fair,' he said thoughtfully. 'I never really thought of you as stubborn.'

'As soon as I get over my unaccustomed feeling of contrition for having misjudged the motivation for that nose-in-the-air, superior attitude of yours, you'll pay for that,' she assured him.

'I look forward to it with fear and trembling.'

'Smartest thing you've said all day,' she told him ominously, and then they both laughed.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

'And I suppose Aleksandra's going to say this isn't significant, either,' Henri Krietzmann said sourly.

'Of course she is,' Joachim Alquezar snorted.

The two of them sat on the seaside villa's terrace, gazing out across the ocean into the ashes of sunset. Stars had just begun to prick the cobalt vault above them, the remnants of a light supper lay on the table between them, a driftwood fire burned in a stone and brick outdoor fireplace with a copper hood, and Alquezar leaned back in a chaise lounge. An old-fashioned wooden match flared in the twilight, and smoke wreathed upward as he lit a cigar. Krietzmann sniffed appreciatively at the aromatic tendrils, then reached for his beer.

'I'm beginning to really, really dislike that woman,' he said almost whimsically, and Alquezar chuckled.

'Even Bernardus dislikes her, whether he's willing to admit it or not,' the San Miguelian said. 'After all, what's not to dislike?'

It was Krietzmann's turn to snort in bitter amusement, but there was an unpalatable amount of truth in Alquezar's quip.

'I just don't understand the way her mind works,' the Dresdener admitted after a moment. 'Bad enough Nordbrandt and those 'Freedom Alliance' maniacs are blowing people up and shooting them almost at random on Kornati, but at least everyone realizes they're lunatics. Westman, though.' He shook his head, scowling at the memory of the reports from Montana which had arrived only that morning. 'Westman is Old Establishment. He's not a marginalized hyper-nationalist politician-he's a wealthy, propertied aristocrat , or what passes for one on Montana. And he's smarter than Nordbrandt. She started off with a massacre; he started with a joke. She followed up with assassinations and scattered bombings; he followed up by blowing up the headquarters of one of the most hated off-world organizations on his homeworld... and still did it without killing a single soul. He's like, like-'

'Like that ante-diaspora fictional character Bernardus was talking about?'

'Yes, exactly!' Krietzmann nodded vigorously. 'What was his name... the Crimson-No! The Scarlet Pimpernel, that was it!'

'Maybe so,' Alquezar said. 'But I hope you won't think me shallow for pointing out that I, and the other RTU shareholders and directors, aren't exactly amused by his choice of targets. However much debonair style and elegance he may display as he goes about his nefarious business.'

'Of course not. But,' Krietzmann gazed at him levelly in the light of the oil lamps burning on the table as darkness settled fully in, 'I hope you don't expect me to shed a lot of tears over your losses, either.'

Alquezar looked at him sharply, eyebrows lowered for just a moment, then snorted and shook his head.

'No,' he said softly, and paused to draw upon his cigar. The tip glowed like a small, red planet, and he launched an almost perfect smoke ring onto the evening breeze. 'No, Henri. I don't. And I shouldn't. But the fact that I feel that way, and that other people on San Miguel and Rembrandt-like Ineka Vaandrager-are going to have even stronger feelings about it, is only another proof of Westman's shrewdness. He found a target guaranteed to polarize feelings on both sides of his particular political divide, and that takes brains. You say you have trouble understanding Aleksandra's take on this? Well, I just wish I understood how someone who's obviously as bright as Westman is could have bought into something like this in the first place. He ought to be getting behind us and pushing, not blowing us up!'

'Bright isn't the same thing as well-informed or open-minded,' Krietzmann pointed out. 'And everything I've been able to piece together suggests that Westman takes the Montanan fetish for stubborn individuality to previously uncharted heights-especially where Rembrandt and the RTU is concerned. Not to put too fine a point on it, he hates your guts. He doesn't really care why you people were so busy sewing up the Cluster's shipping. All he knows-or wants to know-is that you were doing it, that you were about as ruthless about it as you could possibly have been, and that his world's one of several which feels it was royally screwed by your so-called 'negotiating technique.''