Seas of Venus(7)

The Senator blinked. "Who said—"

"Everybody! Everydamnbody!"

Dan raised his right hand and snapped his fingers dismissively. The Senator flinched; Johnnie edged back, wishing that he was anywhere else in the world.

"You joined the Blackhorse when I did," Dan continued. "but you didn't have the balls to stick with it. You—"

"If you think courage is just shooting—"

"You didn't have the balls to make your marriage work!" the mercenary snarled. "You didn't have the balls to be a father to your son! And I kept saying, 'Yeah, but he's putting his whole life into a dream, so the other things don't matter to him.'"

The Senator's face was blank and as pale as unpainted marble.

"Only now," Dan concluded, "it turns out that you don't have the balls to save your dream either. So they're right, you don't—"

"Get out of here," the Senator said. "Get out of Wenceslas Dome within an hour. Get out of—"

"Right, Senator," Dan said in a ham-fistedly ironic tone. "Right, you can dismiss me. But remember: when I go, so does the last real chance of uniting Venus before somebody decides it's better to use atomics than lose—"

He gestured with his thumb toward the glowing ball that hung above the Common, the reminder of Man's first home and its glowing death.

"—and Venus joins the Earth."

Johnnie sucked in his first breath for . . . he wasn't sure how long. "Senator," he said, "I'm an adult. If Uncle Dan wants—"

"John," said the mercenary in a voice as hard as the click of a cannon's breech rotating home, "sit down."

"But—" Johnnie said in amazement.

"Is this a foreign language?" his uncle demanded. "Listen, boy, I could find a dozen officers who have your skills. I needed you because I need somebody I can trust implicitly—but if you think you can argue about orders, then you're no good to me and your father, and you're no good to any fleet!"

Johnnie backed to his chair, then stumbled into it over the right arm. It wouldn't have done him any good to look where he was going, because his eyes were glazed with shock.

"I think perhaps we'd all better sit down," said Senator Gordon. His expression had returned to normal: cold, distant; and, beneath the soft flesh, as hard as that of his former brother-in-law.

He sat calmly, then touched a switch. A pump whirred as it sucked fluid from the cushion beneath the Senator, dropping his eye level to that of the men across the desk from him. "Precisely what is it that you think my son can achieve for you, Daniel?" he asked.

"I can't tell you that, Arthur," Dan said.

His voice caught and he cleared his throat before he went on, "That's partly because I'm going to have to play the situation as it develops . . . and partly because it's not something that you need to know about. You have the political side to deal with. That's enough for any one man."

The Senator watched Dan without speaking.

"Arthur," the mercenary said, "I can tell you this: I'll be risking everything I have to save your plan of confederation."

"Your life, you mean," the Senator amplified.

"I've been risking my life for twenty-five years now, Senator," Dan said with the edge returning to his voice momentarily. "That's just my job. What I'm talking about is the chance—the certainty if I fail—of being cashiered from the Blackhorse and banned by all the other fleets."

"I see," said the Senator.

He looked at Johnnie, watching his son without speaking for seconds that seemed minutes. At last he said, "John, I won't claim to have been a good father . . . but you are my son, and you're important to me. Is this something you want to do—not to spite me, not to please your uncle?"

Johnnie licked his lips. "Yes, father," he said.

"I want to be very clear about this, John," the Senator continued. "You aren't simply being asked to join a fleet. You're being requested to take part in an enterprise which—whatever the details—is far more dangerous than ordinary mercenary service."

He glanced at Uncle Dan. "That is correct, is it not, Commander?"

Dan nodded, still-faced. "That is correct. And the danger is increased by the fact that Johnnie won't have time to go through the ordinary training procedures."

"Father, I want to go," Johnnie said.

The Senator rose. "Then may God be with you, John," he said. "And may God be with us all."





4


Yes, the Large Birds o' Prey

They will carry us away,

And you'll never see your soldiers any more!

—Rudyard Kipling