David Drake - Patriots

"All we're asking in return," Holperin said, bending forward slightly on a wooden captain's chair which Mark knew from experience was just less uncomfortable than a torture rack, "is that you act as our agent here. Continue what you did today, that's all. If one large-scale immigrant community is built on Greenwood, let alone a dozen of them, you and your friends will be swamped and helpless. The time to act is now."

"We think a slightly more formal basis would be useful," Macey said. "Form a planetary militia. It's important that you act in accordance with legal forms. Now-"

"Legally, Greenwood is administered by the Protector of Zenith," Mark interrupted. "Are you asking Mr. Bannock to start an armed insurrection against the Paris authorities?"

"Not at all!" Elector Daniels said. By his title, he was one of the officials elected by the citizens of Quelhagen instead of being appointed from Earth. Given the state of relations between the Council of Electors and the Protector, the Atlantic Alliance authorities would dearly love a chance to arrest Daniels for fomenting rebellion.

"Zenith's claim is not certain," Holperin said. "We don't mean anyone should take arms against the Alliance, Mr. Maxwell. Zenith representatives attempting to grab land by force, however, can properly be resisted by a militia organized among the citizens of the threatened community."

"They're asking you to hold an election and have your friends proclaim you militia commander," Mark translated. He turned to Daniels and continued, "If Mr. Bannock were willing to take on that dangerous burden, there would still be the question of compensation."

"Pay?" said Yerby. "Say, don't worry about that, lad. I wonder if I'd need a uniform, do you think?"

"I had more in mind a proposal that would benefit the planet as well as you, Mr. Bannock," Mark said. He noticed how formal he sounded, but that was the part of his mind that he needed to carry on a negotiation like this.

"I don't need to be paid to do my duty, boy!" Yerby said in a near growl.

"Yerby!" Amy snapped. She stepped to her brother and shook her finger under his nose. "Be quiet and speak when Mark tells you to speak! Do you understand?"

Yerby backed a step and cleared his throat. "Sorry, Amy," he muttered toward a corner of the room.

Mark cleared his throat also. "A reasonable recompense for Mr. Bannock's best efforts on your mutual behalf," he said, "would be a plant to process stockyard waste at the Spiker. Blaney's Tavern, that is. Assuming an arrangement can be worked out with Mr. Blaney."

He cocked an eyebrow at Yerby in question.

"To do what?" Yerby asked.

"Allow us to place a ten-by-thirty-foot unit with solar collectors in the stockyard," Mark explained. "It'll take the manure as well as the slaughteryard waste and convert it into bricks of fertilizer and animal food."

"There's a market for processed organics for food on immigrant ships as well," Ms. Macey said. She frowned. "But the plants are expensive, especially since Paris has embargoed industrial production on Quelhagen."

"Sure, Blaney'd let me do that," Yerby said. "He's been complaining about the stink when the wind's the wrong way for as long as I've known him. Not that he was going to do anything about it."

They'd need a formal contract with Blaney, but that could come later. The handshake agreement Yerby visualized might not hold when Blaney realized how much profit was involved.

"A deal on those terms, then, madame and sirs?" Mark said. His palms were sweating and the hair along his arms prickled upright, but his voice was steady. He was dealing with some of the richest people on Quelhagen, and they were dealing!

"Wait a minute," Elector Daniels said. "You're asking us to go to considerable up-front expense against what? Whatever Mr. Bannock says now, how do we know he won't change his mind the day after we deliver the plant?"

Yerby started forward. Mark stepped sideways to put himself between the two men. Amy shouted, "Yerby! Please!" this time in fear rather than anger. She knew even better than Mark did what her brother was likely to do to someone he decided had insulted him.

Daniels must have been able to guess, because his face went white and he babbled, "I'm most sorry, most sincerely sorry!"

Mark took a deep breath. He said, "Elector, you'll have Mr. Bannock's word, which is all you'd ever have at this distance from Quelhagen. That's why you need an agent here, remember. Also, I think your syndicate might be allowed five percent of the plant's net profits. It should be quite a little moneymaker as well as being of environmental benefit."

The investors looked at one another. Mark didn't see the signals they exchanged, but Daniels nodded to him, then to Yerby, and said, "Done on those terms."

Mark felt as though his tendons had all been cut. He was as wrung out as he'd been immediately after the fight in the caravansary.

Amy touched his shoulder to steady him. The camera was in her other hand. Mark had been so focused on the negotiation that he hadn't noticed she was recording the whole affair.

"Despite the embargo, I think it's possible to get a plant shipped from someplace cheaper than Earth," Mr. Holperin said to his colleagues. "There are ways and ways."

"Let's all have a drink!" said Yerby Bannock.

The slopes on three sides of the Spiker were colorful with the patterned wings of flyers and the fabric casings of dirigibles, but the area between the tavern and the spaceport had been kept clear for people to stand. Mark sat on the courtyard wall at the base of a speakers' platform cantilevered out from it. There must be close to a thousand Greenwoods staring up at him and the platform where Yerby stood with the Quelhagen investors.

"A quarter of the whole planet's here," Amy said in her version of the same thought. "More than that, really, even though the people who've settled on Zenith grants wouldn't have come."

"Can you boys hear me?" Yerby Bannock bellowed. During the week of preparation for the assembly, the crew of the investors' ship had installed a public-address system. It wasn't really powerful enough to reach the whole murmuring crowd, but it was better than the people in the back could have expected.

Those folk could have moved forward if they wanted to hear the proceedings. They were men and women of the careful sort who were afraid not to attend an assembly called to discuss the future of Greenwood, but who were unwilling to be seen actually taking part in it. By keeping back on the fringes, they hoped to avoid all responsibility.

"The business at Dagmar's focused attention about as well as a threat of hanging would," Mark said. "And I guess most of the settlers live pretty close to here or to the Doodle, which isn't that far away. Most of Greenwood 's still unclaimed."

He raised his eyes to the Quelhagens on the platform. "Except by them."

The crowd was rumbling a general agreement to Yerby's question. A dozen uniformed Quelhagen attendants stood just below the courtyard wall with handheld microphones, but most of the crowd couldn't comment except by shouting yes or no. The settlers at the base of the wall were those whose neighbors granted them status as speakers by allowing them to move to where they could reach a mike.

"Then I'm going to turn this over to Elector Daniels," Yerby said. "He'll explain what's going on and what we need to do about it."

He handed off the mike to the Quelhagen official. Daniels didn't have as powerful a voice as the frontiersman, but he was a polished speaker and better used to using a PA system to a large audience. He gestured in broad, rhetorical flourishes as he explained the history that led to Zenith surveyors arriving at Dagmar's.