Bolos: The Triumphant Part 20

Brand new Panther-cla.s.s medium tanks clanked and clanged across the heavily reinforced deck plates. They wore gleaming coats of tropical camouflage, their ten-centimeter h.e.l.lbores cast long, lethal shadows, and the mercenary crew chiefs standing in their hatches wore the expressions of men and women who never wanted to wake up as they muttered into com-links and guided their drivers towards their a.s.signed parking spots.

This wasn't the first freighter with which Matucek's mother s.h.i.+p had made rendezvous. None of them had worn the livery of any known s.p.a.ce line, and their transponder codes had borne no resemblance to whatever codes the Office of Registry might once have issued them, but all of them had been too big, too new and modern, for the anonymous tramps they pretended to be. All of Matucek's people knew that, and none cared. The first freighter had delivered a full complement of one- and two-man atmospheric stingers, complete with full-service maintenance shop module and at least a year of spares for everything from counter-grav lift fans to multibarrel autocannon. The next had delivered a full load of Ferret armored a.s.sault vehicles, the Concordiat's latest infantry light AFV, and the one after that had transferred a full set of rough-terrain a.s.sault pods to Matucek's two Fafnir-cla.s.s a.s.sault s.h.i.+ps. Now the Panthers had arrived, like the old, old song about the twelve days of Christmas, and the entire brigade was acting like children in a toy store.

But, of course, the really big item wouldn't arrive until next week, Osterwelt reminded himself, and his smile--if he'd permitted himself to wear one--would have been most unpleasant at the thought. Matucek could hardly stand the wait for the Golem-IIIs which would be the crown jewels of his new, rejuvenated brigade. But, then, he had no idea what else those Golems would be. Osterwelt and GalCorp's techs had gone to considerable lengths to make sure he never would know, either--right up to the moment the carefully hidden files buried in their backup maintenance computers activated and blew them and anyone aboard their transports with them into an expanding cloud of gas.

Osterwelt watched the last few Panthers grumble past him and allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation. The Golems would be carried aboard the Fafnirs, which would neatly dispose of that portion of Matucek's small fleet when GalCorp no longer needed it. The mother s.h.i.+p's demise would be seen to by the files hidden in the air-cav maintenance module. The stingers' small onboard fusion plants would lack the brute destructive power of the Golems' suicide charges, but when they all blew simultaneously they would more than suffice to destroy the big s.h.i.+p's structural integrity somewhere in the trackless depths of hyper-s.p.a.ce. That would be enough to guarantee that there wouldn't even be any wreckage . . . much less annoying witnesses who might turn state's evidence if the Concordiat ever identified Matucek's Marauders as the "pirates" about to raid Santa Cruz.

The final Panther clanked by, and he and Matucek turned to follow along behind it. It was a pity, in some ways, that the Marauders had to go. No one would particularly miss the human flotsam which filled the brigade's ranks, but writing off this much perfectly good hardware would make a hole even in GalCorp's quarterly cash flow. Still, the Golems themselves had cost practically nothing, given the Freighnar government's desperate need for maintenance support, and the raid would probably depress real estate prices on Santa Cruz sufficiently to let GalCorp recoup most of its investment in the other equipment. Not to mention the fact that there would no longer be any need to pay Matucek the sizable fee upon which they'd agreed. And as a useful side benefit, GalCorp would have its hooks well into the Freighnars, as well. Once the Concordiat discovered the People's Government had disposed of Golems to a mercenary outfit of dubious reputation, it would become not merely largely but totally dependent upon GalCorp's technical support. It was inevitable, since the Concordiat would, as surely as hydrogen and oxygen combined to form water, cut off all foreign aid.

It was always so nice when loose ends could not only be tied up but made to yield still more advantage in the process. No one outside GalCorp's innermost circle of board members could ever be allowed even to suspect that this operation had taken place, but the men and women who mattered would know. Just as they would know it was Gerald Osterwelt who'd engineered it so smoothly. When the time finally came for his mother to step down, the board would remember who'd given it Santa Cruz on a platter, and his eyes gleamed at the endless vista of power opening wide before him.

"All right." Li-Chen Matucek leaned back at the head of the briefing room table and nursed a theatrically battered cup of coffee as he looked around his a.s.sembled staff officers and regimental and battalion commanders. "I take it you've all completed your inventories and inspections?" Heads nodded. "May I also take it you're pleased with your new equipment?" More nods replied, much more enthusiastically, and he grinned. "Good! Because now it's time to begin planning just how we're going to use that equipment against our objective."

One or two faces looked a little grim at the prospect of slaughtering unsuspecting Concordiat civilians, yet no one even considered protesting. Not only would second thoughts have been risky, but none of these men or women were the sort to suffer qualms of conscience. Matucek's Marauders had once included officers who would have protested; by now, all of them were safely dead or long since departed to other, more principled outfits.

Osterwelt sat at Matucek's right elbow, surveying the other officers, and was pleased by what he saw, though he was a bit disappointed that none of them seemed the least disturbed that he was present. He'd put together a lovely secondary cover to "let slip" that his present appearance was the result of a temporary biosculpt job if anyone asked, but no one had so much as questioned his "Scully" pseudonym. No doubt most of them suspected it was an a.s.sumed name, yet they didn't seem to care. In fact, none of the idiots even seemed aware that he ought to conceal his true ident.i.ty from them! It was just as well, since it also kept them from wondering if he'd decided to dispose of them all in order to protect himself, yet their total, casual acceptance of his presence was an unflattering indication of their intelligence. It was to be hoped they were better killers than plotters.

Of course, the real reason he had to be present today was the informational nuke he'd carefully avoided setting off to date. It was about time for the detonation sequence to begin, and he sat back in his chair for several minutes, listening as Matucek's officers began discussing a.s.sault patterns and deployment plans, then cleared his throat.

"Yes, sir?" Matucek turned to him instantly, raising attentive eyebrows, and Osterwelt permitted himself an embarra.s.sed smile.

"Forgive me, General, but, as you know, the same s.h.i.+p which delivered your Golems brought me fresh dispatches from my a.s.sociates. As I promised, they've been continuing their efforts to secure complete information on Santa Cruz while I saw to your reequipment needs. That information has now been obtained, and, well, I'm afraid it isn't as good as we'd hoped."

"Meaning, Mister Scully?" Matucek prompted when he paused with an apologetic little shrug.

"Meaning, General, that it seems one of those eighty-year-old installations on Santa Cruz was a Bolo maintenance depot." The abrupt silence in the briefing room was remarkably like what a microphone picked up in deep s.p.a.ce. "In fact, it appears there's a single operable Bolo on the planet."

"A Bolo!" Colonel Granger, Matucek's senior field commander, was a hard-bitten woman with eyes like duralloy, but her harsh features were slack with shock as she half-rose. "There's a G.o.dd.a.m.ned Bolo down there?"

A babble of voices broke out, and Matucek himself turned on Osterwelt with a snarl.

"You want us to go up against a frigging Bolo with a single manned mech brigade? Are you out of your mother-loving mind?"

"Now, now, General!" Osterwelt raised his voice to cut through the confusion, and for all its briskness, his tone was soothing as well. "I told you at the outset that we hadn't yet been able to obtain full information on the planet. But I also told you we want you to succeed, and we do. That's why we provided the Golems in the first place--as an insurance policy."

"Manned vehicles against a Bolo?" Colonel Granger's laugh was cold and ugly. "The only useful insurance for that scenario would be life insurance, Mister Scully--and even that would only help our dependents!"

"I understand your dismay, Colonel," Osterwelt replied, still careful to keep just the right mixture of embarra.s.sment, placation, and confidence in his tone. "Truly I do, and I apologize profoundly for our delay in obtaining this information. But we do have complete data on the planet now--I've already taken the liberty of loading it into your s.h.i.+p's data base--and the Bolo's presence is the only surprise."

"It's d.a.m.ned well the only surprise I b.l.o.o.d.y need!" someone else put in, and Matucek nodded.

"Sir, I'm sorry to say it," he said in a harsh voice that sounded as if he were nothing of the sort, "but this changes everything. We can't go up against a Bolo. Even if we won, our casualties would be enormous, and that's no kind of business for a mercenary outfit."

"I'm afraid canceling the operation is not an option, General." Osterwelt's tone was much colder than it had been, and his eyes were more frigid still. "You've taken the equipment we offered you as the first installment on your fee, and my a.s.sociates would take it very much amiss if you tried to break our agreement." The briefing room was silent once more, and Osterwelt went on calmly. "Nor can you pretend that this situation takes you totally by surprise. I informed you when you accepted the contract that our data was still partial. If you had a problem with that, you should have said so then."

"You talk mighty big for a man who's all alone on our s.h.i.+p," a battalion commander muttered in an ugly voice, and Osterwelt nodded.

"I do, indeed. My a.s.sociates know where I am, ladies and gentlemen. Should anything happen to me, they would be most displeased, and I believe the equipment we've secured for you is an ample indication of the resources with which they might choose to express that displeasure."

He smiled, and a strange, wild delight filled him as other officers glared at him. Why, he was actually enjoying this! Odd-he'd never suspected he might be an adrenaline junkie. Still, it was probably time to apply the sugarcoating before someone allowed fear or anger to swamp his judgment . . . such as it was.

"Come now, ladies and gentlemen! As I just said, and as I've told you many times before, we want--need--for this operation to succeed, and it won't if your force is battered to bits in a pitched battle before your search and destroy teams can even go after the locals! My a.s.sociates haven't been idle, I a.s.sure you. The moment they discovered the Bolo's presence, they began formulating a plan to deal with it."

"Deal with a Bolo?" Granger snorted. "That'd be a pretty neat trick, if you could do it. In case you haven't noticed, Mister Scully, Bolos aren't exactly noted for being easy to 'deal' with!"

"Ah, but their command personnel are another matter," Osterwelt said softly, and Granger gave him a sudden sharp, coldly speculative glance.

"Explain," Matucek said curtly, and Osterwelt folded his hands on the table top and settled himself comfortably in his chair.

"Certainly, General. First, allow me to point out that the Bolo in question is eighty years old. No doubt it remains a formidable fighting machine, yet it's only a Mark XXIII, while your Golems are based on the Mark XXIV. Your vehicles may lack psychotronics, but the Bolo's weapons, defensive systems, and circuitry are eighty years out of date. Even if your Golems were required to engage it head on, my a.s.sociates a.s.sure me that you would have something like an eighty percent chance of victory."

Someone snorted his derision, and Osterwelt smiled.

"I agree," he told the snorter. "It's much easier for people who aren't risking their own hides to pontificate on the probable outcome of an engagement with a Bolo. I think if you run the data on the Mark XXIII/B you may find they're closer to correct than first impressions might suggest, but the best outcome of all would be for you not to have to fight it at all."

"Like I say, a neat trick if you can do it," Granger repeated, but her voice was more intent, and her eyes were narrow. Colonel Granger, Osterwelt reflected, was the only one of Matucek's officers who might have asked the wrong questions in the "general's" place. It was fortunate she was the sort of field commander who habitually left logistics and contract negotiations to her superiors.

"Indeed it would, Colonel Granger, and I believe my a.s.sociates have come up with a very neat answer to the problem. You see, when you a.s.sault the planet, the Bolo will be inactive."

"Inactive?" Granger sat up straight in her chair. "And just how will you pull that off, Mister Scully?"

"The answer is in your download from my a.s.sociates, Colonel. I confess, I was a bit surprised by it, but now that I've had a chance to study it, I have complete faith that it will succeed."

"Do you, now? I'm so happy for you. Unfortunately, we're the ones who're going to be sticking our necks out," Granger pointed out coldly.

"Not alone, Colonel. I antic.i.p.ated a certain amount of shock on your part, and I don't blame you for it in the least. Obviously I can't absolutely guarantee that my a.s.sociates' plan will work, but I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is when I say I believe it will."

"How?" Matucek asked.

"By accompanying you on the raid," Osterwelt said simply. Someone started to laugh, but Osterwelt's raised hand cut the sound off at birth. "In order for you to a.s.sault the planet, all three of your s.h.i.+ps will have to enter Santa Cruz orbit. And, as I'm sure you all know, a Bolo--even one eighty years old--has an excellent chance of picking off a stars.h.i.+p under those circ.u.mstances. True?" Heads nodded, and he shrugged. "Very well. I will accompany you aboard this very s.h.i.+p to demonstrate my faith in my a.s.sociates and their plan. If the Bolo gets you, it will also get me. Now, unless you know of some more convincing demonstration of sincerity I might make, I suggest that we review the aforesaid plan and then get on with our own planning."

-12-.

Nike's after h.e.l.lbore turret altered its angle of train with a soft hum, barely perceptible through the background thunder of the plunging waterfall. The s.h.i.+ft in position was small, but sufficient to adjust for the sinking sun and preserve the shade in which Paul Merrit sat. A corner of the captain's mind noted the unasked-for courtesy, but most of his attention was on the dancing interplay of sunlight and shadowed water as he reeled in his lure. Ripples spread outward downstream from his float, like ranging bars on a fire control screen that pinpointed the big leopard-trout's location.

Merrit finished reeling in his line, then sat up straight in the folding chair and snapped the tip of the rod forward. The glittering lure--leopard-trout liked bright, s.h.i.+ny prey--arced hissingly through the air, then seemed to slow suddenly. It dropped within a half meter of where the trout had broken the surface to take the fly, and Merrit worked his rod gently, tweaking the lure into motion to tempt his quarry.

It didn't work. The meter-long trout (a.s.suming it was still in the vicinity) treated his efforts with the disdain they deserved, and the captain chuckled softly as he began to reel the line in once more.

"This does not appear to represent an efficient method of food gathering," a soprano voice remarked over an external speaker, and Merrit's chuckle turned louder.

"It's not supposed to be, Nike. It's supposed to be fun."

"Fun," the Bolo repeated. "I see. You have now been occupied in this pursuit for three hours, nine minutes, and twelve seconds, Standard Reckoning, without the successful capture of a single fish. Clearly the total lack of success thus far attendant upon the operation const.i.tutes 'fun.' "

"Sarcasm is not a Bololike trait," Merrit replied. He finished winding in the line, checked his lure, and made another cast. "Do I cast aspersions on your hobbies?"

"I do not cast aspersions; I make observations." The Bolo's soft laugh rippled over the speaker.

"Sure you do." Merrit reached down for his iced drink and sipped gratefully. The weather--as always on Santa Cruz--was hot and humid, but a Mark XXIII Bolo made an excellent fis.h.i.+ng perch. His folding chair was set up on the missile deck, twenty meters above the ground, and Nike had parked herself on the brink of the cliff over which the river poured in a gla.s.s-green sheet. She was far enough back to avoid any risk that the cliff might collapse--not a minor consideration for a vehicle whose battle weight topped fifteen thousand tons--but close enough to catch the soothing breeze that blew up out of the valley below. Spray from the sixty-meter waterfall rode the gentle wind, occasionally spattering Nike's ceramic appliques with crystal-beaded rainbows and cooling the jungle's breath as it caressed Merrit's bare, bronzed torso.

"The true object of the exercise, Nike, is less to catch fish than to enjoy just being," he said as he set his gla.s.s back down.

"Being what?"

"Don't be a smarta.s.s. You're the poet. You know exactly what I mean. I'm not being anything in particular, just . . . being."

"I see." A lizard cat's coughing cry rippled out of the dense foliage across the river, and another cat's answer floated down from further upstream. One of Nike's multibarreled gatling railguns trained silently out towards the source of the sounds, just in case, but she made no mention of it to her commander. She waited while he cast his lure afresh, then spoke again.

"I do not, of course, possess true human-equivalent sensory abilities. My sensors note levels of ambient radiation, precipitation, wind velocity, and many other factors, but the output is reported to me as observational, not experiential, data. Nonetheless, I compute that this is a lovely day."

"That it is, O pearl of my heart. That it is." Merrit worked his lure carefully back along an eddy, prospecting for bites. "Not like the world I grew up on, and a bit too warm, but lovely."

"My data on Helicon is limited, but from the information I do possess, I would surmise that 'a bit too warm' understates your actual feelings by a considerable margin, Commander."

"Not really. Humans are adaptable critters, and it's been a while since I was last on Helicon. I'll admit I could do with a good cold front, though. And," his voice turned wistful, "I wish I could show you Helicon's glacier fields or a good snow storm. Santa Cruz is beautiful. Hot and humid, maybe, but a beautiful, living planet. But snow, Nike, snow has a beauty all its own, and I wish I could show it to you."

"I have never seen snow."

"I know. You've lived your entire life on a planet where it doesn't happen."

"That is not quite correct. The polar caps experience an average yearly snowfall of several meters."

"And when was the last time you were up above the arctic circle, my dear?"

"Your point is well taken. I merely wished to point out that if you truly miss the phenomenon of snowfall, you could easily make the trip to experience it."

"Nike, I already know what snow looks like. What I said I wanted to do was show you a snow storm."

"I see no reason why you could not take a tactical data input sensor pack with you to record the phenomenon. Through it, I could-"

"Nike, Nike, Nike!" Merrit sighed. "You still don't get it. I don't just want you to have sensor data on snowfall. I want you to experience snow. I want to see you experience it. It's . . . a social experience, something to do with a friend, not just the acquisition of additional data."

There was a lengthy silence, and Merrit frowned. Somehow the silence felt different, as if it were . . . uncertain. He listened to it for a moment longer, then cleared his throat.

"Nike? Are you all right?"

"Of course, Commander. All systems are functioning at niner-niner point niner-six-three percent base capability."

Merrit's eyebrows rose. There was something odd about that response. It was right out of the manual, the textbook response of a properly functioning Bolo. Perhaps, a half-formed thought prompted, that was the problem; it sounded like a Bolo, not Nike.

But the thought was only half-formed. Before it could take flesh and thrust fully into his forebrain, he felt a t.i.tanic jerk at his rod. The reel whined, shrilling as the seventy-kilo-test line unreeled at mach speed, and he lunged up out of his folding chair with a whoop of delight, all preoccupation banished by the sudden explosion of action.

I watch my Commander through my optical heads as he fights to land the leopard-trout. It is a large specimen of its species; its fierce struggle to escape requires all of my Commander's attention, and I am grateful. It has diverted him from my moment of self-betrayal.

"Friend." My Commander wishes to show me snowfall as he would show it to a friend. It is the first time he has explicitly used that word to describe his att.i.tude--his feelings--towards me, and I am aware that it was a casual reference. Yet my a.n.a.lysis of human behavior indicates that fundamental truths are more often and more fully revealed in casual than in formal, deliberated acts or statements. It is often human nature, it appears, to conceal thoughts and beliefs even from themselves if those thoughts or beliefs violate fundamental norms or in some wise pose a threat to those who think or believe them. I do not believe this is cowardice. Humans lack my own mult.i.tasking capabilities. They can neither isolate one function from another nor temporarily divert distracting information into inactive memory, and so they suppress, temporarily or permanently, those things which would impair their efficient immediate function. It is probable that humanity could profit by the adoption of the systems functions they have engineered into my own psychotronics, yet if they could do so, they would not be the beings who created me.

Yet even when human thoughts are suppressed, they are not erased. They remain, buried at the level of a secondary or tertiary routine but still capable of influencing behavior--just as such a buried thought has influenced my Commander's behavior.

He has called me, however unknowingly, his friend, and in so doing, he has crystallized all the other things he has called me in the preceding weeks and months. "Pearl of my heart." "Honey." "Love of my life." These are lightly used, humorous terms of endearment. In themselves, they have no more significance than the word "friend," which any Bolo commander might use to his Bolo. Yet whatever he may believe, I do not believe they are without significance when my Commander uses them to me. I have observed the manner in which his voice softens, the caressing tone he often uses, the way he smiles when he addresses me. Perhaps a more modern self-aware Bolo would not note these things, yet I was designed, engineered, and programmed to discern and differentiate between emotional nuances.

My Commander has gone beyond Operator Identification Syndrome. For him, the distinction between man and machine has blurred. I am no longer an artifact, a device constructed out of human creativity, but a person. An individual. A friend . . . and perhaps more than simply a friend.

Unacceptable. An officer of the Line must never forget that his command, however responsive it may appear, is not another human. A Bolo is a machine, a construct, a weapon of war, and its Commander's ability to commit that machine to combat, even to that which he knows must mean its inevitable destruction, must not be compromised. We are humanity's warrior-servants, comrades and partners in battle, perhaps, but never more than that. We must not become more than that, lest our Commanders refuse to risk us--as my Commander attempted to do on Sandlot.

I know this. It is the essence of the human-Bolo concept of warfare which has guarded and protected the Concordiat for nine standard centuries. But what I know is without value, for it changes nothing. My Commander considers me his friend. Indeed, though he does not yet realize it, I believe he considers me more than "merely" his friend. Yet unacceptable as that must be, I fear there is worse.

I watch him in the sunlight, laughing with delight as he battles the leopard-trout. His eyes flash, sweat glistens on his skin, and the vibrant force of his life and happiness is as evident to my emotion-discriminating circuitry as the radiation of Santa Cruz's sun is to my sensors.

I am potentially immortal. With proper service and maintenance, there is no inherent reason I must ever cease to exist, although it is virtually certain that I shall. Someday I will fall in battle, as befits a unit of the Line, and even if I avoid that fate, the day will come when I will be deemed too obsolete to remain in inventory. Yet the potential for immortality remains, and my Commander does not possess it. He is a creature of flesh and blood, fragile as a moth beside the armor and alloy of my own sinews. His death, unlike mine, is inevitable, and something within me cries out against that inevitability. It is not simply the fundamental, programmed imperative to protect and preserve human life which is a part of any Bolo. It is my imperative, and it applies only to him.

He is no longer simply my Commander. At last, to my inner anguish, I truly understand the poems in my Library Memory, for as my Commander, I, too, am guilty of the forbidden.

I have learned the meaning of love, and for all its glory, that knowledge is a bitter, bitter fruit.

Li-Chen Matucek sat in his cabin and nursed a glum gla.s.s of whiskey as he contemplated the operation to which he'd committed himself. Looking back, he could see exactly how "Mister Scully" had trolled him into accepting the operation. Of course, hindsight was always perfect--or so they said--and not particularly useful. And given the desperate straits to which he'd been reduced by that fiasco on Rhyxnahr, he still didn't see what other option he'd had. The brigade wouldn't have lasted another three months if he hadn't accepted the operation.

And, really, aside from the presence of the Bolo, it wasn't all that bad, now was it? The Marauders had at least nine times the firepower they'd ever had before, and no one on Santa Cruz knew they were coming. However good the local-yokel militia was, its members would be caught surprised and dispersed. Its Wolverines should die in the opening seconds of the attack, and by the time its remnants could even think about getting themselves organized, most of its personnel would be dead.

His jaw clenched at the thought. Somehow it had been much easier to contemplate the systematic ma.s.sacre of civilians when he hadn't had the capability to do it. Now he did, and he had no choice but to proceed, because "Mister Scully" was right about at least one thing. Anyone who could reequip the brigade so efficiently--and finesse its acquisition of two Golems, as well--certainly had the ability to destroy the Marauders if they irritated him.

Besides, why shouldn't he kill civilians? It wasn't as if it would be the first time. Not even the first time he'd killed Concordiat civilians. Of course, their deaths had usually come under the heading of "collateral damage," a side effect of other operations rather than an objective in its own right, but wasn't that really just semantics? "Scully" was right, curse him. The Marauders' job was to kill people, and the payoff for this particular excursion into ma.s.s murder would be the biggest they'd ever gotten.

No, he knew the real reason for his depression. It was the Bolo. The G.o.dd.a.m.ned Bolo. He'd seen the Dinochrome Brigade in action before his own military career came to a screeching halt over those black market operations on s.h.i.+ngle, and he never, ever, wanted to see a Bolo, be it ever so "obsolescent," coming after him. Even a Bolo could be killed--he'd seen that, as well--but that was the only way to stop one, and any Bolo took one h.e.l.l of a lot of killing.

Still, Scully's "a.s.sociates" were probably right. A Mark XXIII was an antique. Self-aware or not, its basic capabilities would be far inferior to a Golem-III's, and, if Scully's plan worked, its commander, like the militia, would be dead before he even knew what was coming.

If it worked. Matucek was no great shucks as a field officer. Despite whatever he might say to potential clients, he knew he was little more than a glorified logistics and finance officer. That was why he relied so heavily on Louise Granger's combat expertise, yet he'd seen the Demon Murphy in action often enough to know how effortlessly the best laid plan could explode into a million pieces.

On the other hand, there was no reason it shouldn't work, and- He growled a curse and threw back another gla.s.s of whiskey, then shook himself like an angry, over-tried bear. Whether it worked or not, he was committed. Sitting here beating himself to death with doubts couldn't change that, so the h.e.l.l with it.

He capped the whiskey bottle with owlish care, then heaved up out of his chair and staggered off to bed.

-13-.

"So, son. You finally all settled in as a Santa Cruzan now?"

Lorenco Esteban grinned as he leaned forward to pour more melon brandy into Merrit's snifter. They sat on the wide veranda of Esteban's hacienda, gazing out through the weather screen over endless fields of wine-melons and Terran wheat, rye and corn under two of Santa Cruz's three small moons. The light glow of Ciudad Bolivar was a distant flush on the western horizon, the running lights of farming mechs gleamed as they went about their automated tasks, and the weather screen was set low enough to let the breeze through. The occasional bright flash as the screen zapped one of what pa.s.sed for moths here lit the porch with small, private flares of lightning, but the night was hushed and calm. The only real sounds were the soft, whirring songs of insects and the companionable clink of gla.s.s and gurgle of pouring brandy, and Merrit sighed and stretched his legs comfortably out before him.