“To the future!” a beaming Tauber toasted.
Keith quickly downed his glass of whiskey, but his mood remained sour. He drank not in celebration but in a desperate hope that the liquor’s fire could blot out the chill that ran through him whenever he thought about his last meeting with Rayna. Picturing her lying in that hospital bed, he raged first at the monster who put her there and then at himself.
It should have been me, he thought. I’m supposed to be the one taking the risks.
“How about another one?” Tauber suggested, holding out the Spacefarer’s bottle. “Things are looking good.... Oh, I see how it is. You’re still worried about your girlfriend.”
Keith looked at Tauber, then slid his glass across the table for a refill. With a curt nod, he gulped the second drink as quickly as he had the first.
“She’ll be all right, Daniels. Didn’t the doctors tell you that?”
Keith stared into his empty glass. “That’s what they said,” he agreed.
“Well, then.... Help me celebrate! I don’t know how that rumor about the Nitinol being destroyed got started, but I wish I could claim the credit. I’ve never seen people so mad!”
Keith glared. “You mean like the creep who went after Althea Milgrom and tried to clobber Rayna?”
“Oh, come on, Daniels! You know I didn’t want that to happen. Hell, if anything happened to Milgrom now, we’d have to find a new goat. We need her as a lightning rod—at least for a while.” Keith’s stomach rose as he recognized the sinister glint in Tauber’s eye. Just what was he up to now? “But thanks to your girlfriend, nothing did happen. So stop worrying!”
Keith took a deep breath. Maybe Tauber was right. Maybe Tauber was right about a lot of things. Maybe....
He shook his head suddenly.
“What’s the matter? Let’s have it, Daniels. I feel too good right now to let you—or anybody else—spoil things.”
“What’s there to feel good about?”
Tauber grinned. “Just about everything, I’d say. It’s all going just the way I planned. Except for this rumor about blowing up the Nitinol.” A shadow of concern darkened the ex-merchanter’s face but disappeared almost as soon as Keith noticed it.
“I have to admit, things sure have changed over the past few months.”
“Damn right,” said Tauber , “and they’ll change a lot more before I’m through!”
Keith shook his head doubtfully. “Listen, Hank, I know you’re a bright guy. But it takes more than one man with brains to pull off what you say you’ve pulled off. You’d need an awful lot of people on your side—people in important places.”
Tauber’s smug laugh took Keith by surprise, and he shifted about uneasily under the long, silent gaze that followed.
“You mean you—”
“I mean we have allies, Daniels—lots of them. People in positions you’d never guess. Did you think all I had to work with was the likes of Wraggon and Barnard?”
“Well....”
Tauber grunted derisively. “Listen, pal, I’m not the only guy the Merchant Fleet screwed. There’s a whole lot of us who worked the Asteroid Belt and got kicked in the ass for our troubles.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I—we—have friends out there who think like we do. Friends with power. Friends who have important jobs outside the Fleet but who remember enough about what it was like to want a change. And to know what it takes to make that change happen.” Tauber rested a friendly hand on Keith’s shoulder. “Hell, Daniels, you’re one of our allies yourself. Not a merchanter with a grudge, of course, but something just as good. You’re a lawyer representing merchanters with a grudge. You have any idea what those lawsuits you set in motion are doing to the court system?”
Keith smiled uncomfortably. In the past two months, he’d initiated legal actions on behalf of five merchanters, in addition to laying the groundwork for a massive class-action suit against the Merchant Fleet and the colonies. These would be precedent-setting cases—cases that would encourage additional suits and burden the Fleet and the legal system with enormous paperwork, even if the cases all were ultimately dismissed. He wasn’t proud of himself. Although one or two of the individual cases had some merit, most were merely nuisances. But Tauber loved it all.
“We’ll string ’em up by their bureaucratic peckers,” he told Keith happily. “They’ll be so busy in court they won’t even notice what else is going on.” He gave Keith’s shoulder a friendly pat, letting his hand linger for a moment. As Keith’s eyes met his, Tauber’s face grew pale, and he snatched his hand away as if he’d been scorched.
For all practical purposes, Keith was now the legal adviser to Operation Strong Man. More than that, Tauber seemed to regard the attorney as his personal confidant.
Rayna knew little of this. Keith had told her only about gaining Tauber’s confidence. The lawsuits hadn’t progressed far enough to be reported by any of the news watch services yet, though it was just a matter of time before that happened. Keith’s throat grew dry as he thought again about Rayna. Sitting here in Tauber’s apartment, toasting the success of Tauber’s plans with Tauber’s whiskey, Keith felt acutely disloyal to the woman in that hospital bed. Yet, when he was with Rayna, he couldn’t help feeling a pang of disloyalty to Tauber. He clenched his jaw and rubbed the back of his neck.
This isn’t the way it was supposed to be. I was just going to get friendly with Tauber, and.... And what? And expose the wrongdoers, just like the heroes in those old holotapes I used to watch when I was a kid? Well, I guess it’s about time I learned that real life isn’t a holotape. In the holotapes, the heroes never got confused about which side they were on.
“You have any cherry licorice?” he asked.
Tauber laughed. “When you gonna give up that stuff?” he responded. “You know, you’re a big boy now, and—”
Tauber’s discourse was cut off by the doorbell. He rose grudgingly and cued the viewer to reveal his guest, then stared at the image as the bell rang again, a sense of urgency somehow coming through in the measured, computer-simulated tones.
“Jesus, Ethan, what are you doing here?” Tauber finally said as he opened the door and pulled a wary-looking Ethan Rensselaer into the apartment. Dressed in nondescript civilian clothes, the Merchant Fleet admiral obviously didn’t want to be recognized.
“What am I doing here?” Rensselaer repeated, looking like a bomb about to explode. “What are you doing here, Hank? I thought you had things under control!”
“What are you talking about?”
Rensselaer lit an Astobac cigarette and began pacing the room, his limp more pronounced than Keith had ever observed in the admiral’s HV appearances. Rensselaer! I suspected something, but I never figured Tauber’s connections went this far!
“I’m talking about the fact that one of your people tried to attack Althea Milgrom right in front of me,” the admiral growled.
“Wait a minute, Ethan. That wasn’t—”
“I’m talking about the fact that I had to use my security cuff to restrain the guy or else he would have brained her. He would have turned the most beatable Senate opponent I could possibly have into some kind of martyr!”
Tauber began to object, but Rensselaer didn’t even slow down.
“I’m talking about the fact that he was so out of control, he might have brained me by accident. But mostly, Hank, I’m talking about the fact that the Nitinol shipment was destroyed! It’s one thing to tell the masses that, but to really—”
“Hold it,” Tauber commanded. “What’s that about the Nitinol?”
“You heard me. Look Tauber, it’s one thing to say the Nitinol’s been destroyed, to start a rumor, but it’s something else again to really do it! You know we’re going to need that stuff ourselves!”
Keith could feel the pulse throbbing in his own throat as he watched the other two men. Tauber’s face was a pasty white, and his narrowed eyes dared Rensselaer to challenge his authority.
“What makes you think the Nitinol’s really gone?” Tauber wanted to know.
The admiral reached into his tunic and withdrew some folded papers from an inside pocket. “Take a look at these.” He handed the papers to Tauber. “Printouts from the environmental control system your people set up to monitor the storage facility on that asteroid in Z-7.”
As Tauber studied the papers, the veins in his temples began to throb.
“After the debate, I got worried,” Rensselaer said. “I decided to check on the Nitinol, just in case. So I used our special security codes to get a readout.” He jerked his head in the direction of the papers. That’s what I found!”
“Damn!” Tauber erupted. “It’s that rustbrain Wraggon! I’m sure of it!”
Tauber handed the papers back to Rensselaer, spun around and crossed the room, his every move followed in silence by two pairs of eyes. When at last he turned to face the others, he was once more the composed, unflappable Tauber that Keith had come to know and—despite himself—respect.
The former Fleet lieutenant smiled bitterly. “Wraggon hinted that he did something extra to the robots he sent back to R-4 Sector.”
“I don’t care an Astie’s tit what he did to the robots,” said Rensselaer. “I want to know what happened to the Nitinol!”
“But that’s the point,” Tauber continued, his voice becoming progressively deeper and quieter. “He instructed the robots to install a remote destruct device in the storage dome.”
He waited for the significance to sink in. “Then, when the bastard decided the time was right, he used his own private access code to trigger an explosion!”
Watching Rensselaer and Tauber exchange ominous glances, Keith felt his skin go cold and his knees become weak.
“Maybe it was a mistake,” he found himself blurting out. “You can’t really be sure of all that just from a few printouts, can you? I mean, maybe you should talk to him, and—”
A stern look from Tauber cut him off in mid-sentence. “Ethan,” Tauber said a moment later, “I’m afraid I’ve been very rude. You two haven’t met, have you? This is Keith Daniels. Our lawyer. He’s the one I told you about. The one who’s handling the lawsuits.”
Rensselaer ran his fingers through his hair and stroked his mustache before extending his hand—more out of forced politeness than interest, Keith thought.
“Good to meet you, Daniels.... Now what about the Nitinol, Hank? And what about this Wraggon idiot? I’m out there on the firing line. I don’t want any more surprises.”
Tauber gave Rensselaer a steady look that seemed to last forever. “Don’t worry about Wraggon,” he told the admiral. “Charlie won’t be causing us any more problems. As for the Nitinol.... Well, give me a little time. If things went too easy, it wouldn’t be worth the struggle, now would it?”
“Easy’s just fine with me,” Rensselaer grumbled.
Tauber smiled tightly. “Like I said, Ethan, don’t worry. Every disaster’s really an opportunity just waiting to happen. Isn’t that what they say in Fleet?”
Rensselaer grimaced. “That’s what the desk pilots tell the boys with their asses on the line, but let me tell you, I’ve been there, and it still adds up to a bum leg as far as I’m concerned. Don’t go pulling crap like that on me. I didn’t decide to work with you just so I could listen to a new bunch of bromide pushers.”
Tauber patted the admiral congenially on the shoulder. “I know that, Ethan. You joined forces with me because you figured I could make you President. And you were right.” His expression suddenly turned hard, and his fingers dug into the flesh near the older man’s neck. “Now just go about your business as planned until you hear from me again. And make sure you destroy those printouts the usual way.”
Rensselaer nodded silently, and Tauber released him. Rubbing his neck and shoulder, the admiral turned to leave. “Keep up the good work with the lawsuits, Daniels,” he said. Though there was no overt act of deference, Keith could sense the salute in Rensselaer’s manner toward his former junior officer.
***
“Astie turds!” Tauber said as the apartment door slid shut behind Rensselaer.
“Uh, maybe I’d better—”
“No, no, Daniels,” Tauber said, fixing Keith with an odd look. “Stick around for a while. You’re the one guy I can talk to, and—” Tauber suddenly snapped his mouth shut and stiffened into a military posture. “I’ll only be a minute.” He indicated the firm cushion of his dingy, brown couch, “Sit down.”
Keith swallowed and reluctantly took the offered seat. He didn’t like it when Tauber started getting too friendly. It made him ill at ease—and all the more conscious of his conflicting loyalties.
“Sounds as if there’s some trouble,” Keith commented as Tauber darted back and forth, inserting a disk into a free-standing, off-line computer on the other side of the room.
“Yeah,” Tauber droned, “but it’s nothing I can’t handle. Just need to make some notes here, and I’ll take care of the rest later. Got to tell some people to revise their plans. Got to take care of Wraggon, too.”
Keith shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Maybe Wraggon had a good reason for doing what he did. Maybe you should talk to him before you do anything else.”
Tauber stopped tapping the keyboard and turned to Keith. “You’re beginning to remind me of an old friend of mine, Daniels.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Merchanter pal name of Derek Marsden. Used to be my best friend—till he had an accident out in Beta Colony and went soft on me.”
Keith pressed his lips together and lifted an intricately carved chess piece from the board on the block-like table next to the couch. The set reminded him of a finely crafted army of toy soldiers. Each one was complete and unique and finished down to the smallest detail.
“You play?” Tauber asked as, temporarily finished with his other business, he pulled up a chair and seated himself on the other side of the chess table. “Most people these days use holographic sets,” he said without waiting for Keith’s response, “but I like a chessman I can feel.”
He picked up a king. “This set’s made of zero-gee tempered creatinum. Got it on my last trip to the colonies,” he said. “Snuck it aboard ship.” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial hush. “Not supposed to carry any ‘extraneous material’ on board, you know.” He winked.
“It’s a beautiful set,” Keith agreed. “I used to play a little. Haven’t for a long time, though. I was never very good, I’m afraid. Never could think enough moves ahead to do very well.”
Tauber’s mouth curved into what, for most men, would have been a friendly smile. On Tauber, it was more of a sneer. “Chess is more than a game, Daniels. It’s life. You know?”
Keith looked at him questioningly.
“Take Operation Strong Man. We have our kings and queens and knights and bishops and rooks. And pawns.” He smiled again. “We have lots of pawns.”
“And what are you, Hank?”
“Me? Hell, Daniels, I’m nobody’s chessman. I’m the guy who moves the pieces!”