Visions of Liberty (27 page)

Duggan frowned, realizing that he had been unprepared. He thought rapidly. "I want to find out who lives in the biggest houses," he told her.

They met and had breakfast in a cafe by the river, on a terrace at the rear, overlooking the water. It was a fair, sunny day, and there were a lot of small boats about—some sporty and powered, others curvy and delicate with strange-shaped sails, reminiscent in ways of Arab dhows. It was the same incongruous blend of ancient and new existing happily side-by-side that Duggan had been noticing everywhere. A large blimp passed overhead, heading south, maybe following the coast. Tawna explained that on days when the weather permitted, those who could afford it often preferred them to regular jets. By this time, Duggan was surprised to hear that for once the price of something should actually reflect how it was valued. It turned out that what Tawna meant was those who could afford the time.

As he listened, Duggan found himself being captivated by her openness. She played none of the mind games that he was accustomed to in this kind of situation, no jockeying for one-up points to decide who had a controlling advantage. And in a way that he realized was a new concept to him, her absence of deviousness absolved him from any need to reciprocate. He could actually be himself and say what he thought, without having to calculate implications and consequences. It felt liberating and refreshing. Yes, there had been a man that she'd lived with for a while when she moved to Ferrydock. His name had been Lukki. But in the end it hadn't worked out. No, there was no one in particular at present.

The people they were going to meet were called Jazeb and Maybel Wintey, and kept what Tawna described as a "huge" house in a foothill region of the mountains northeast of Ferrydock. She didn't know them personally but had known of them for a long time, and contacted them through an agent in town who provided their domestic staff. Hardly surprisingly, a mention that somebody from the Earth ship wanted to meet them was all it had taken. In her non-questioning, accepting way, Tawna hadn't asked Duggan why he wanted to know who lived in the big houses. When Duggan inquired casually what Wintey did, Tawna replied in an uncharacteristically vague kind of way, that he "collected things." It didn't sound much like what Duggan had been hoping for. But he could hardly change his mind now.

Back outside the front of the cafe, Tawna stopped to run her eye over the assortment of vehicles in the parking area. Tharlean ground autos were generally simpler and less ostentatious than Terran designs, though with the same proclivity for curviness that was evident in the architecture and the boats; a couple looked almost like Aladdin slippers on wheels. She led the way across to a pale blue, middle-of-the-range model, unpretentious but comfortably roomy for two. As they got in, Duggan commented that he'd thought she wasn't sure which car was hers. It wasn't hers, he discovered, but belonged to a common pool that anyone could use, rather like a public comlink booth back home. She started it by inserting a plastic tag that seemed to combine the functions of pay card and driver's license. People who needed to owned their own, but most didn't bother, Tawna said—adding that it was the kind of thing Jazeb Wintey would do. She seemed to find it humorous. Duggan wasn't sure why.

They drove out of the town to an airport that Duggan knew of from the
Barnet
's reconnaissance views, where large commercial planes came and went from all over, and parked outside a building serving an area to one side used by smaller craft. Tawna just took her card from the slot in the car's dash panel and walked away. Inside the building, they rented a personal six-seat flymobile that she had reserved, and soon, with the vehicle practically flying itself, were skimming low along the river valley, toward the mountains outlined in the distant purplish haze.

Tawna hadn't been exaggerating when she described the Wintey house as "huge." It would have qualified as a mansion by Terran standards, with a healthy profusion of Tharlean towers and turrets, and stood amid an estate of outbuildings and grounds enclosed by high walls and wire fences. The flymo landed on a gravel courtyard in front of the house and was met by a retinue of household staff who conducted Duggan and Tawna to the portico-framed entrance. Duggan noticed as they crossed the court that the main gate and the fence were protected by armed guards.

His first impression as they threaded their way through the hall inside between barricades of furniture was of being in a cross between a museum and a home goods warehouse. Enormous, glass-fronted cabinets standing from floor to ceiling, jammed with porcelains, chinaware, glassware, and figurines, lined the walls, while the ceiling was all but invisible behind rows of hanging buckets, pots, pans, basins, metalware, and jugs. The room beyond had tiers of shelves carrying all manner of ornaments, decorated boxes, and bric-a-brac, and furnishings wedged, sometimes inaccessibly, between pedestals laden with pottery and vases, ponderous columns and other carvings, and padlocked cubicles of indeterminate nature. Jazeb Wintey received them in an inner redoubt at the center of more wooden and upholstered fortifications overlooked by walls tiled with pictures and prints. He was small and gnomish, with a ruddy bald head, cantankerous expression, and a fringe of whiskers girding his chin like a sunflower. His dress of frock coat and gaitered britches was impossibly stuffy and formal for a Tharlean, and would have been eccentrically antiquated even on Earth. He shook Tawna's hand stiffly and rapidly as if it were a pump handle and repeated the process with Duggan, the sternness of his features remaining unchanged.

"From Earth! About time! It took you long enough! Maybe we'll see some sense and sanity restored to this place then, before much longer."

So much for social pleasantries. If plunging straight in was the way here, Duggan would follow suit. "Why? What's wrong with things here?" he asked.

Wintey looked at him as if he might have just woken up after a thousand-year sleep. "Pah! No ethics, no standards. Things like that all got lost after the colonists stopped building space-goers. Everything's degenerated. Why do you think we have to live walled up in a fortress like this? Envy and malice all around. It's because I'm the only one around here who's got a notion of business." He cast an arm about to indicate the surroundings. For the first time, a hint of a satisfied smile crossed the berrylike countenance. "See what I mean?" He tapped his temple meaningfully. "Takes acumen to accumulate that kind of worth, young fella. Brains and acumen. People here wouldn't even know what that means."

As Wintey stumped his way ahead of them, between display cases filled with silverware, gold plate, and jewelry, Tawna caught Duggan's eye and sent him an apologetic shrug that seemed to say, well, it was what he'd wanted.

"They don't like us, you know," Wintey went on, as if Tawna were not present. "Try to conspire to drag me down. Outside, among themselves, they do each other favors. But no staff willing to work for reasonable pay ever get sent here. They send me all the beggars and ne'er-do-wells. . . . Thieves, too, if they had half the chance, I'd be bound. Can't even find reliable guards."

They met Maybel Wintey in a sitting area off the dining room draped with silks, cushions, and rugs like movie depictions of a sultan's bridal chamber. One corner constituted a bar, stocked high with racks and shelves of bottles that no longer came as a surprise. Jazeb introduced his wife perfunctorily. She was withered and austere, but glittering with jewels from fingers and chest to a filigreed tiara, worn with a pale green gown suggesting, with a mild touch of absurdity, the robe of a classical goddess.

"What do they want?" she asked frostily, when Jazeb let up on his harangue long enough for a steward to take orders for drinks. "Everyone who comes here wants something."

"Mr. Duggan is from Earth," Jazeb reminded her. "Perhaps we'll see things being put back in order now."

"Well, that's something. At least we won't have to be buying people off to get some peace."

Lunch was a lavish affair, naturally, over which Jazeb continued in much the same vein. Finding peers to develop a satisfying social life with wasn't easy. Tharleans who had something to show for themselves, the ones you'd think would qualify, inevitably proved to be fools when it came to trade, and annoyed him—but he wasn't going to turn them down if they insisted on being gypped. The ones who knew how to bargain were from the bottom of the pile, and fraternizing with them would be out of the question too, of course—which was a shame because if they'd only learn to do something with what they had, Jazeb admitted, he could have had some time for them. It was all beyond him. He only hoped that the administration Earth was presumably going to set up would get things straightened out soon.

Afterward, they toured an entertainments room that reminded Duggan of the command deck aboard the
Barnet
, a gymnasium that could have kept a regiment of space assault troops in good shape, a games room, and a workshop equipped with every form of gadget, widget, and power tool imaginable, none of which showed much sign of having been used. And sure enough, as Tawna had guessed jokingly, there was a shed at the rear housing a collection of polished and gleaming ground autos, along with several flyers. Throughout it all, the domestic staff remained easygoing and cheerful, despite Jazeb and Maybel's constant grumbles and criticisms. Duggan found himself harboring the uneasy suspicion of watching inmates of an asylum being humored. When he and Tawna finally left, the thought of getting back among the people of Ferrydock seemed like a breath of sanity and fresh air.

"I warned you it would be a bit strange, but it was what you asked for," Tawna said as they flew back above the valley's deepening shadows. She waited a few seconds, then looked across the cabin when Duggan didn't answer. "What's up?"

Duggan returned from his realm of distant brooding. "Those two back there. It was just going through my mind . . . Back where I come from, that would be close to most people's ideal. That's how they want to be."

Tawna paused long enough to be polite. "Yes," she said hesitantly. "I thought it might be something like that."

Duggan could have added that now, perhaps, he thought he knew why the Tharleans had looked askance at the guards who had accompanied him around Ferrydock. He decided he didn't want to go into it.

Zeebron Stell had come down from the mother ship when Duggan got back to Base 1 late that evening. They had coffee in the mess room at the back of the gate guard hut, and then Stell suggested a walk in the night air around the perimeter fence. He waited until they were out of earshot of anybody, then switched from casual chat to a lowered, conspiratorial tone.

"Dug, these people are clueless here. They're set up to be taken. Ask 'em for anything you want; they hand over. Tell 'em what you want done; they do it. If you were ever looking for the place to make out like you never imagined, man, this has to be it.

Duggan paused to look out through the wire at the colored lights over Ferrydock's center. The blimp—or another—was making the return trip, lit up like a Christmas tree gliding silently through the night. "I'm not sure I know what you mean," he said.

Stell edged a pace closer. "Think about it. . . ." he breathed. "Wealth and power: that's what it's all about, eh? What else do we bust our asses year in, year out for, thinking we're gonna get a bigger share of—and put up with jerks like Brose? Well, here you're not talking about waiting years and then maybe watching some operator steal it all from under you anyway. It's already made, right now. All you gotta do is have the balls to take it."

"Take what? How?" Duggan asked guardedly.

"All of it."

"Zeeb, what, exactly, are you proposing?"

"This is were we stay and get rich; get a chance to
be
somebodies."

"You mean jump ship? Stay behind when the mission leaves. Is that it?"

"Why not, Dug? I'm starting to believe what we've been seeing here—or not seeing. There's nobody to stop you." Stell gestured to indicate both of them. "You and me—" The amused look on Duggan's face checked him. "Hey, all that was another time and place, okay? We can leave it behind. There's a planet full of enough of everything to keep both of us happy."

"Well, that's an abrupt change of tune for you, Zeeb," Duggan said. "I thought you were going for the sub-supervisor slot when we get back. Brose seems to think so. He'll be disappointed. Who will he have to play carrot and stick games with now and boost himself up the ladder?"

Stell snorted. "Oh, don't tell me you're not as tired of all that crap as I am. . . . Look, I'll let you in on a secret. I've rented a place in town to use as a kind of startup base, and already in one afternoon I've got enough stuff in there to fit out a penthouse. I'm telling you it's a steal, man. But you need someone of your own kind too, know what I mean? We could live like a couple of kings. What do you say, huh?"

"I'm not sure. Have you really figured it through as to how things are here?"

"What's there to figure, Dug? I'm telling you, you don't hit on a deal like this more than once in a lifetime." Stell's eyes were insistent in the light from the town, his expression intense. He clearly wasn't prepared to accept no as an answer.

"Okay, I'll think about it," Duggan promised.

Several days passed by, during which more expeditions returned unsuccessful from different parts of Tharle. A flurry of impatient demands for reports on progress, and replies that the situation was more complicated than expected sizzled back and forth between the
Barnet
's
higher echelons and the supervisory directorate on Earth. Duggan filed a report on his visit to the Winteys, which was absorbed into Pearson Brose's growing collection without significant reaction or comment. Duggan took this to mean that those who knew best were too preoccupied with affairs more befitting of their rank and calling to be distracted by lower-echelon menials and their trivia. Being a conscientious department man, he did his best to help by staying out of their way and making the most of the opportunity that Brose's dispensation had opened up for him to follow up informally on possible local leads. Since Tawna had already shown herself to be a willing and capable guide, this coincidentally meant their spending more time with each other.