S. Stirling - Conquistador

“Can I think about it?” he said, with small beads of sweat on the dark brown skin of his forehead. “Sir.”

“By all means, Mr. Villers. By all means. Take as much time as you wish. Your father-in-law will need you to run his establishment for a time, in any case.”

I wonder what that means? Tom thought.

“And shall I find a reward for you, Mr. Christiansen?” John Rolfe said, after the others had kissed his hand and left.

“You know better, sir,” Tom said, and helped Adrienne to her feet. What a pair of wrecks we are! “I’ve found my own.”

“Excellent, young man. And now if you will excuse me? There are a few things I must attend to. One or two, before the baptism.”

He laughed at Adrienne’s expression; Tom had to admit that it was sort of raccoon-like, with the rings of dark bruise around her eyes.

“You thought I wouldn’t know? Reckless of you to begin so soon, but then we Rolfes never were much for caution.”

They bowed over his hand. “Baciamo le mani,” Tom murmured.

“Scary,” he said when they were outside, and winced a little as his foot caught on a rug.

Adrienne’s hand closed on his arm. “Do you want to stay over?” she said. “It’s a bit of a drive back to Seven Oaks, in this weather.”

“Weather?” he said, looking down at her and grinning. “You Californians call a bit of rain weather? Why, back in North Dakota we’d call this a balmy spring evening.”

“Yah, you betcha,” she said. “And you walked through blizzards to get to school every day, with a rope tied to your waist and a St. Bernard following along behind.”

“Skis,” Tom said. “That’s all we Norski need. Skis, and an axe to beat off the wolves.” He looked up; Tully was waiting, standing behind Sandra’s chair. “Heck, Roy can drive. Roy! You want to crash at our place?”

“Hell, yes, Kemosabe,” the smaller man said. “We can talk about what we’ll build out on our place… where we’re really out in the country.”

“Sounds good,” Tom said. “Let’s go. I want to get home.” He caught Adrienne’s eye and laughed softly. “Nice-sounding word, after all the goddamned adventures, isn’t it?”

“You said it.”

Sergei Lermontov was sweating slightly, despite the fact that the temperature inside the great metal room was barely fifty degrees. The wreckage had long since been cleared away and the damaged structures removed, but the echoing emptiness of what had been a bustling nexus for so long was a reproach in itself.

Although not so much so as the armed guards, he thought. And the sentence of death with conditional stay of execution.

Beside him, Ralph Barnes made a final adjustment to the control console. A stroke of luck there, that he was the one to interrogate me and take my offer of a new Gate to the Rolfe. Like most Americans, Barnes was sentimental about persons he’d come to know as persons.

A metal framework outlined the area where the Gate had stood for so long; control cables ran to it, and to a cat’s cradle of leads all around it.

“You must understand, sir,” he said. “The wave form—”

“Mr. Lermontov,” John Rolfe VI said softly.

He sat at his ease in a padded chair, comfortable in his alpaca greatcoat and ascot. The armed men behind him somehow looked entirely at one with his conservative elegance.

“I find myself growing less patient as I grow older,” he said. “I’m also content to let you experts handle these matters. Leaders motivate their subordinates, and the subordinates act. A division of labor.”

“Blackmailer,” Ralph Barnes growled, shooting him a glance from under shaggy brown brows.

John Rolfe arched one of his. “Why, Mr. Barnes, you wrong me,” he said, with a slight sardonic smile. “Didn’t I shower you with rewards and praise? You are here entirely as a volunteer this time.”

“And you said you’d shoot Sergei if he couldn’t give you back your toy,” Ralph said. “What’m I supposed to do, let you kill him? Besides, Sergei could do it alone. It would just take longer, and maybe something would go wrong and everyone would get hurt.”

“He helped break my toy,” Rolfe pointed out reasonably. “It’s only just that if he is to live where others died, he make some recompense. And I do wish a Christmas present for my grandchildren and prospective great-grandchildren. The Commonwealth can survive without the Gate, but regaining it would be a major boon.”

Sergei prayed to a God in whom he’d never believed, and touched the screen.

CRACK!

He winced, then looked up and let himself slump forward in relief, his palms resting on the console and breath shuddering in and out in great gasps. Rolfe might have killed him without rancor, as the price of a sporting wager…

But if I died, it would be in earnest, he thought, and waved the probe forward.

A long boom swung through the gate, with sensors on its end. And a television pickup; it was keyed to a large flatscreen placed where they could all look at it.

The screen flickered, then settled to a clear image. It was raining there, too; as well it might, in midwinter along the Californian coast.

“But where is the Gate complex on FirstSide?” he asked himself; all he could see was long grass….

Rolfe began to laugh; coughed, recovered, laughed again.

Because in the grass was a dead animal, huge and shaggy, almost certainly a giant sloth. Paws braced on it, the saber-tooth bared its foot-long fangs and screamed, flattening its ears and bristling its orange-and-black-striped fur.

Rolfe

Domain: Napa, Lake County

Motto: “Carpe Diem et Omnia Mundi.”

Sigil: Red lion rampant on black background

Fitzmorton (twice)

Alan Fitzmorton—Domain: south Oakland to San Leandro

Rob Fitzmorton—Domain: Sonoma Valley

O’Brien

Domain: Marin County

Motto: “O’Brien Go Braugh!”

Sigil: winged harp

Colletta

Domain: Santa Clara Valley

Motto: “Silence.”

Sigil: Winged Thompson gun

Hughes

Domain: Healdsburg area

Pearlmutter

Domain: San Francisco peninsula to Palo Alto—“New Brooklyn”

Motto: “The Best You Can.”

Throckham

Domain: Petaluma

Filmer

Domain: Concord, Contra Costa

Tuke

Domain: Livermore-Amador, Contra Costa

Cooke

Domain: Orange County

Peyton

Domain: lower Santa Ynez valley

Hammon

Domain: Pleasanton, Contra Costa

Hottywood

Domain: southern Santa Clara valley

Ludwins

Domain: western Santa Maria valley

Carons

Domain: Central Santa Clara (between Collettas, Rob Fitzmortons)

Von Traupitz

Domain: Suisun Valley

Chumley

Domain: western Yolo county

Motto: “Who dares, wins!”

Versfeld

Domain: Santa Monica, east along Santa Monica foothills

Motto: “Look before you trek!”

Bauer

Domain: Carmel, Carmel Valley

Motto: “Death Holds No Repose.”

Stanislaus

Domain: southern Oxnard valley