The Gripping Hand Read online

  Cunningham shrugged. "Lord Blaine has asked that he be informed. Surely he would have no objections? I understand you have known him for many years."

  "More than twenty-five years, Captain," Bury said; and he felt a cold chill in his stomach.

  It was standard practice to interview intelligence officers one at a time no matter how closely they might work together. They'd been polite enough to bring Renner and Bury in by separate entrances. Renner glimpsed Bury's travel chair as it wheeled into the reception room. Then he was ushered into Cunningham's office.

  Cunningham stood. "Greetings, Captain. Trust you're well."

  "Fine." Kevin looked wryly at his expensive civilian clothes. "Didn't know the rank showed."

  Cunningham frowned a question.

  "Forget it." Renner sat in the visitor's chair and took out a pipe.

  "Mind?"

  "No, go ahead." Cunningham glanced at the ceiling. "Georgio, exhaust fans if you please." He tapped keys below a screen that faced away from Renner. "Georgia" set a brisk breeze moving. "Now, Captain, if you could just clear up a couple of points about Maxroy's Purchase..."

  "...I'm sure aren't worth worrying about," Renner concluded. "My formal opinion's on record. Governor Jackson not only can handle the situation, he'll have New Utah voluntarily in the Empire in ten years without anyone firing a shot."

  Cunningham scratched at the computer entry pad with his stylus. "Thank you. Excellent report of a very creditable job. I can tell you privately that the Admiral's pretty well decided to endorse your report."

  "That ought to make Jackson happy."

  Cunningham nodded. "Now. What can you tell us about this latest scheme of Bury's?"

  Renner spread his hands. "My fault. I came staggering home at one in the morning, dead drunk and covered with blood, shook the old man awake and told him, ‘The gripping hand!' Dammit, the whole planet was talking like they've got three arms! Time I finished talking, we were both convinced the Moties were in Purchase system."

  "But they weren't."

  "No. But they might be somewhere else. I'm with Bury. I want to know the blockade works."

  "It works."

  "You can't verify that."

  "Captain-"

  "When did you last visit the blockade? Spend long enough to be sure it's puncture proof? Who was minding the store while you were there? Have you seen clips of the Motie Warriors?" Renner waved it away with a slicing gesture. "Never mind, Captain. The point is, Bury's determined. I haven't even tried to talk him out of it. I don't want to."

  "In other words, he'll go whether we like it or not?"

  "Let's say he's determined. Besides, what harm can it do? There aren't many secrets he doesn't know, and of all people he's unlikely to give the Moties anything. For that matter, if the blockade personnel ever needed a pep talk, you wouldn't find anyone better than me and Horace Bury ....mm ....ith a tranquilizer drip, maybe."

  "I take it you intend to go along, then?" Cunningham glanced at the readout screen inlaid on his desk. "You've three times requested retirement and then changed your mind. God knows nothing's stopping you."

  Renner chuckled. "What would I retire for? I like what I'm doing, and this way someone else pays the bills. Sure I'll go. I'd like to go back to the Mote."

  "Nobody's planning that!"

  "Not now, maybe, but you'll have to one day."

  "You've been with him a long time. Is he-all right?"

  "He's death on Moties. He can smell the money currents between the stars. Your office never made a better deal."

  "I mean loyal.'

  "I know what you meant," Renner said. "And the answer is yes. He wasn't always, maybe, but he is now. And why shouldn't he be? He's put this much of his life into making the Empire stronger. Why throw it away?'

  "Okay." Cunningham looked up. "Georgio. Call Admiral Ogarkov, please."

  After a few moments a voice boomed.

  "As we agreed, sir," Cunningham said. "Bury clearance to visit the Blockade Fleet. He may solve the Mei-Ling Trujillo problem for us, and he and Sir Kevin may pep up the Crazy Eddie Squadron. It can't hurt to let him try."

  "All right. Talk to Blaine."

  "Admiral-"

  "He won't bite. Thanks. Good-bye." Cunningham made a face.

  "You don't get along with the Captain?" Renner asked.

  "Earl. Don't have that much to do with him," Cunningham said. "He's not Navy. Was once, I know, but he hasn't been for a long time. Georgio, polite mode. I'd like to speak with Lord Blaine. The Earl, not the Marquis. At his earliest convenience. I think he's expecting the call."

  Bury had hooked up his diagnostic sleeve as soon as he left Cunningham's office. Cunningham's secretary was trying not to stare. He wanted to tell her that he wasn't upset-that he only expected to be upset.

  Would Blaine say no?

  He practiced deep breathing until his pulse was steady, then fingered the control ball.

  "Alysia Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo. Present age twenty-seven Standard years. Feature columnist Imperial Post-Tribune Syndicate, special features reporter, Hochsweiler Broadcasting Network. Highly rated.

  "Born New Singapore. Parents Ito Wang Mem-Ling and Regina Trujillo. One older brother. Ito Wang Mei-Ling is the founder of Mei-Ling Silicon Works, New Singapore, publicly traded, current price thirty-one and one-eighth."

  Bury fingered in two questions.

  "Six million shares, of which he retains forty-five percent. Adding the mother's name is not customary on New Singapore.

  "Alysia Joyce attended Hamilton Prep on Xanadu and graduated cum laude in journalism from the Cornish School on Churchill. When she arrived on Sparta, her account in the local branch of the Bank of New Singapore was opened with a letter of credit for three hundred thousand crowns. She worked as a volunteer research assistant to Andrea Lundquist of Hochsweiler at a nominal salary of fifty crowns per week until her news analysis series was sponsored by Wang Factoring."

  Bury nodded as he listened. New money. Oriental princess out to save the Empire with her father's money and her mother's name.

  Bury glanced down at the telltales. Blood pressure, heartbeat, adrenaline level: all acceptable. Why not? Mei-Ling was an investigative reporter, no different from any other. She thought her wealth protected her, and surely did not think that it also made her vulnerable. Her family was worth a hundred million crowns. Only a hundred million crowns.

  What was she doing that the Navy feared? No time to read everything now, that would have to wait, but he could begin on the summaries.

  "Digest: Series filed from New Caledonia by Alysia Joyce MelLing Trujillo. Series title: ‘The Wall of Gold.'

  Bury listened intently, but there was little to surprise him. Markups on maintenance and repair. Luxury supplies sent to the blockade squadron, most obtained without competitive bids. Imperial Autonetics coffeepots, heh heh.

  Graft... she'd already gotten four men arrested. And several fired from the Navy shipworks on Fomor.

  On Levant, bureaucrats were expected to support themselves by bribes and extortion and favors. It was a different system, a mere matter of viewpoint, and not the black-versus-white ethical situation perceived by the Imperial Navy.

  This kind of thing wouldn't destroy the blockade... not if it were being run by Levantines. Bury's people had a sense of proportion.

  Then again, too much graft could bleed any military effort white. Then any kind of enemy could charge through the tissue-thin corpse. According to Trujillo, the grafters were interfering with supplies to the Blockade Fleet! Freeze-dried food stocks, blackbox replacements. One David Grant, high in the Planetary Governor's office, had taken half a billion crowns to replate the blockade ships with Motie superconductor. The scheme existed only in spurious computer memory, praise Allah. There was no superconductor plating in the blockade-and shouldn't be on ships that must regularly descend into a red supergiant star! But what might that stolen money have bought to strengthen the fleet?

  What if
she was right?

  He had to speak to Trujillo. He'd go to New Scotland no matter what Earl Blaine said; and then perhaps there would be a way into the blockade. He should learn that anyway, to probe for ways out. So search for a handle on Mei-Ling Trujillo. Two hundred million crowns would buy control of her father's company. Who owned the outstanding stock? Bury tapped keys. Might as well find out.

  The computer scrolled... and here:

  "Ito Wang Mei-Ling has retained the services of Reuben Weston Associates."

  Hah. Most people had never heard of Reuben Weston, but those who had knew his group as one of the most effective-and expensive-public relations firms in the Empire. They specialized in building contacts at Court. A New Singapore electronics company wouldn't need that kind of service; a provincial mini-tycoon with ambitions to increase his rank most certainly would.

  And Bury might help the man ... but not until he knew how Mei-Ling Trujillo felt about her father. And he could do nothing while marooned in this anteroom. What was taking Renner so long?

  Cunningham hung up. "Blaine won't have it," he said.

  "Damn," Renner said.

  "Yeah. What is it? They were together on the Mote Prime expedition-"

  "No. Something from before. Rumors-" Renner stopped.

  "Something I should know?"

  "Evidently not. Well, Bury's going to be disappointed, and what happens after that ... I don't know." But he sure won't give up easily..."

  5 Passengers

  For he possessed the happy gift

  Of unaffected conversation;

  To skim one topic here, one there,

  Keep silent with an expert's air

  In too exacting disputation.

  Alexander Pushkin

  Watching news broadcasts over many years had taught Kevin Renner this much: styles mutated like crazy on Sparta. He knew his clothes didn't look funny because Cunningham's secretary had steered him to Cunningham's tailor. His problem was in identifying a maitre d'. A maitre d' should stand out.

  He watched the other customers.

  She was a lovely statuesque blonde wearing a pantsuit with shoulder frills, but the tour young men ahead of Renner weren't ogling her, just waiting to catch her eye. None of the other women in his view wore shoulder frills. She walked briskly to a small waist-high desk. The space above the desk was a faint rainbow blur from where Renner was standing, but from her viewpoint it would be a data display with a mug shot for identification.

  She led the four away, then came back for Renner. "Good morning. Table, sir?'

  "A table sounds useful. Kevin Renner, and I'll be joined by a Bruno Cziller."

  She didn't have to tap keys; she just looked. The computer was programmed to pick up names. "Welcome to the Three Seasons, Sir Kevin. I'm very sorry, we don't have your table just yet. Admiral Cziller hasn't arrived. Would you care to wait in the lounge?"

  "I'll wait here, thank you." He could see empty tables. He watched her lead another couple past him. Higher rank? But they didn't walk that way. They were trying to keep up and still watch faces without being caught. Celebrity hunters.

  "Kevin?"

  "Captain!"

  Cziller wrung his hand. He looked old, softening in the face, but his hand was still a vise. His voice had turned husky. "Call me Bruno. I've never seen you in civvies. My, you do like colors!"

  "Is it-"

  "No, you look fine. Hey, I studied your report on Mote Prime, the one with the funny title. Did you ever think you'd be playing tourist with another species?"

  "Never did. I owe it all to you."

  The statuesque maitre d' led them to a table next to a floor-to-ceiling window, with a terrific view out over the harbor. Renner waited until she was gone, then said, "She gave away some tables before she let us have one. I wondered why."

  "Rank."

  "Well, that's what I thought, but-"

  "Serves you right for getting a knighthood. You had to have a window. Wouldn't do to have you sitting with the misters. Sparta's very rank conscious, Kevin."

  "Uh-huh. The computer says you married."

  "I'd have brought Jennifer, but... her sense of humor isn't...mmm"

  "Isn't there?"

  "Right."

  "Okay, and I'd have brought one Ruth Cohen, but she's taking a quickie training course at where she works. How are you holding up otherwise?"

  "I get the impression I'll last awhile, but-no, never mind."

  "You sick, Bruno?"

  "Not sick. But the last time I went off planet, my doctor gave me pure hell, and so did Jennifer, of course. Wasn't the gravity, that was fine, but the longer day had me exhausted half to death. I came back with walking pneumonia. I can't travel anymore. I'm getting cabin fever. It's a small world, Kevin."

  "Mmm. You could be in a worse place. You get all the news that's fit to broadcast, and all the museums worth visiting-"

  "Not all. Tell me about the museum on Mote Prime."

  "That was different. They took us there in big limousines they made just for us. The other cars were all teeny, and they collapsed flat. Even the limousine could fold smaller. The museum was all enclosed. One big building. Artificial environments inside. In one room it was raining buckets. Moties wanted to lead us in anyway."

  Cziller laughed.

  "We saw too much to take it all in. There was stuff we should have noticed. There was a wild Porter. Tame Porters are like two-fifty centimeters tall, with two arms, and they carry things. This thing had three arms, and tusks and claws. It was a little smaller."

  A tubby robot wheeled up, took a drink order, and produced whiskey screwdrivers. A live waiter followed. A local seabeast was on the menu, and Renner ordered that. The other offerings were Earth life, uninteresting.

  He said, "One whole floor was a mockup of a ruined city. There were big five-limbed rats and a camouflaged predator and a lot of other stuff, a whole ecology evolved to live in ruined cities. We didn't see the implications right away. We may not know them all yet... . No telling what they've been learning at the Institute, of course. But Horowitz swore that the city rats are related to the Warriors. We haven't ever seen a live Warrior yet, but we had the Time Machine sculpture and a silhouette of the Warrior aboard the colony ship they sent to New Cal-"

  "War. Continual war."

  "Yeah. With their population problem it's hardly surprising. Bruno, do you suppose it's possible to find the man who invented the condom? He deserves a statue somewhere."

  Bruno laughed a long, throaty laugh. "I've missed you, Kevin."

  Food arrived. Kevin listened while they ate, a habit so old that he'd have had to concentrate not to listen. At the next table some lordling was complaining bitterly about... what? Fishing rights up in the upper Python River. His family had had exclusive rights, and they'd been rescinded. Something about the salmon breeding cycle: some lowborn bureaucrat had decided that the Dinsmark family wasn't keeping the upstream route sufficiently open.

  His companion was insufficiently sympathetic. Kurt Dinsmark wouldn't have had fishing rights anyway, he was a younger son...

  And on the gripping hand, Renner thought, they're talking privileges instead of duties. How common is that? "We pay the nobles one hell of a stiff fee for running civilization," he said.

  "I rarely hear it put that way. So?"

  "Oh, I like to keep track of whether they're doing their job. In fact, it's part of my job, which is nice, because I was doing it anyway. But what I'm hearing about is privileges."

  "Give ‘em a break. They're off duty. There was another museum."

  Renner nodded slightly. "Yeah. That one's hearsay, and from Moties at that. The Moties killed the midshipmen who stumbled onto it. This one wasn't your ordinary museum. The idea was to help the survivors rebuild civilization."

  "Heh." Cziller drained his glass. "If I hadn't got stuck trying to rebuild New Chicago..."

  Renner made sympathetic noises. "Understand you did a pretty good job, though. Hey, I just had a th
ought. I'm on duty myself in a couple of hours, but... do you get nostalgic for spaceports? And spacecraft?"

  "Sure. The new port is in the old crater where the Halfway Dome blew up, and sometimes I go out there just to- What's your thought?"

  Renner put down his fork, fished out his comcard. "Get me Horace Bury."

  He set the comcard on the table while he finished his meal. It took a while, but presently the card said, "What is it, Renner?"

  "I had a thought, Excellency."

  "Praise Allah, my training has not been for nothing."

  "We're taking Buckman and Mercer up for dinner tonight. Would you consider another guest? It's Bruno Cziller, retired as admiral. He was my captain before he handed me to Blaine. Turned MacArthur over to Blaine, too. The Earl's first ship. I've been trying to tell Bruno about Mote Prime, but hey, why not let him listen while you and I and Buckman reminisce? An appreciative audience can be a good thing."

  Momentary pause. Bury too was rank conscious. "Good. Put him on, please."

  Renner passed the comcard across. Bruno Cziller said, "Excellency?"

  "Admiral, we'd be delighted if you could join us for dinner tonight aboard Sinbad. The next Viceroy of Trans-Coal Sack will be present. Jacob Buckman is the astronomer who traveled with us to the Mote. We became friends on that trip. You'll hear as much about the Mote system as you can learn outside the Institute."

  "Capital. Thank you, Excellency."

  "Will you be accompanied?"

  "Thank you, no, Excellency. Mrs. Cziller has appointments for the evening."

  "Admiral, I'm handing you over to the computer to order your dinner. We'll want a chance to put food stores aboard."

  Cziller's eyebrows went up. Rennet said, "Bury's got a good chef. Test him out."

  Cziller nodded, and did. Presently he passed the comcard back. "Kevin, you never used to be subtle."

  "I may have picked up something in a quarter century with Bury. Mercer will be happier if a higher rank is there. And Bury might tell you how he spent his time on Mote Prime. He's never told me."

  "Oh?"

  "Moties scare him. He'd rather not remember. It's worth a try. Besides, I've got to get to the spaceport early to get the shuttle ready. Why don't-"