David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

"Possibly. Maybe even probably. But I submit that whatever you do here on Montana, you won't stop the other systems represented at the Convention from voting out a Constitution if they decide to do it. If a Constitution is voted out, and if the Montanan legislature votes to ratify it, and if the Star Kingdom's Parliament votes to accept it, then-if your principles leave you no other choice-you can always start shooting again. But do you really have to push things to the point that people get killed, and no one in your organization-not just you, but no one- can ever step back from the brink, before you even know a viable Constitution's going to be put into place?"

"Listen to the man, Steve," Bannister said quietly. "He makes sense. Don't make my boys and girls and your people kill each other when there may never even be any need for it."

"I won't say yes or no to the possibility of a cease-fire," Westman said bluntly. "Not here, not without a chance to think about it and talk it over with my people. But," he hesitated, looking back and forth between Van Dort and Bannister, then gave a short, jerky nod. "But I will think about it, and I will discuss it with my people." He smiled tightly at the Rembrandter. "You got at least that much of what you wanted, Mr. Van Dort."

Helen followed Captain Terekhov and Van Dort back towards the air car. Bannister and Westman walked a little apart from the other two, talking quietly. From their expressions, Helen suspected they were discussing personal matters, and she wondered what it must feel like to find close friends suddenly enemies over something like this.

The Captain and Van Dort reached the air car and climbed aboard. Helen waited politely for Bannister to do the same, and the Chief Marshal shook Westman's hand and did. She started to step past the guerrilla leader to follow the others, but Westman raised a hand.

"Just a minute, please, Ms… Zilwicki, was it?"

"Helen Zilwicki," she said a bit stiffly, glancing towards the air car and wishing fervently that at least one of her superiors was in earshot.

"I won't keep you," he said courteously, "but there's something I'd like to ask you, if I may."

"Of course, Sir," she agreed, although it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

"You remind me of someone," he said quietly, his eyes on her face. "You remind me of her a lot. Did Mr. Van Dort ever mention Suzanne Bannister to you?"

"Suzanne Bannister?" Helen repeated, trying to keep her eyes from widening at the surname. She shook her head. "No, he hasn't."

"Ah." Westman seemed to consider that for a moment, then nodded. "I wondered," he said, and inhaled deeply.

"Economic warfare isn't the only thing that lies between Rembrandt and Montana, Ms. Zilwicki," he said softly, then he nodded to her again, politely, and walked briskly away.

She gazed after him for several seconds, wondering what he meant. Then she shook herself and turned back towards the air car.

Bernardus Van Dort and Trevor Bannister sat side by side, watching her, and she suddenly wondered how she'd managed to miss the pain on both their faces whenever they looked at her.

The stars outside the armorplast dome were dominated by the huge cloud-swirled blue marble of the planet called Montana. There were fewer ships and orbital constructs circling it than there would have been back home, but Helen had grown accustomed to the sparser traffic here in the Verge. Now she lay sprawled across one comfortable chair, staring at the huge storm system dominating the planet's eastern hemisphere. One of the things spacers missed was the feel and smell of weather, and for someone from Gryphon, where it was always lively (to say the very least), the sense of deprivation sometimes hit hard.

But it wasn't really weather that was bothering her, and she knew it.

The hatch opened with its familiar silent speed, and she looked up quickly, then relaxed.

"How'd it go?" Paulo d'Arezzo asked.

Helen gazed at him thoughtfully, reflecting on how much their relationship had changed over the past month. It was sometimes hard to remember how standoffish she'd thought he was… until she saw him with the other middies. It wasn't the nose-in-the-air sense of superiority she'd once thought it was, but Paulo was an intensely private person. She wondered, sometimes, if anyone else aboard Hexapuma had the least idea about his background and the demons he carried quietly around with him. Even now, she wasn't prepared to ask him, but she thought she knew the answer.

"Better than I expected, in some ways," she said after a moment in response to his question.

"Can you talk about it?"

"They didn't tell me not to, but they didn't tell me I could, either. Under the circumstances, I'd just as soon not, if you don't mind."

"Fine," he said, and she smiled at him. That was something she'd come to appreciate about Paulo. He could ask a question like that without giving the impression he was trying to entice her into telling him something she shouldn't. He was simply asking if she could talk about it, and he was perfectly prepared to talk about something else entirely if she told him she couldn't. Even Aikawa would have looked disappointed if she'd told him no; Paulo didn't.

He dropped into the other chair, propped his heels on the edge of the com console, and dug out his sketch pad. He began to work, and she watched him from her comfortable drape across her own chair.

"Is this the only place on board where you sketch?" she asked several minutes later, into the quiet, companionable sound of soft pencil lead kissing sharp-toothed paper.

"Pretty much," he said, eyes on the pad and his gracefully moving pencil. He paused and glanced up at her with an off-center smile. "It's kind of a private thing for me. I started doing it as much for a sort of therapy as anything else. Now-" He shrugged. "I guess it's kind of like Leo's poetry."

"Leo writes poetry ?" Helen felt both eyebrows rise, and he shook his head with a chuckle.

"You didn't know?"

"No, I certainly didn't!" She looked at him suspiciously. "You're not just pulling my leg to see if it'll come off in your hand, are you?"

"Me? Never!" He chuckled again. "Besides, I understand you're a very dangerous person. Wouldn't be very safe to try pulling your leg, now would it?"

"So how come you know about his poetry and I don't?"

"Far be it from me to suggest that you can sometimes be a bit unobservant," he said, his pencil moving across the paper again. "On the other hand, I sometimes have to wonder where all of your father's sneaky, all-seeing, spymaster genes went, because you sure didn't get any of them!"

"Ha ha, very funny," she said with a grimace. "You aren't going to tell me how you found out, are you?"

"Nope."

He looked up with another smile, then returned his attention to his artwork, and she glowered at the top of his head. For somebody who didn't mingle worth a damn, he seemed to do an extraordinarily good job of picking up information. In fact, he seemed to do quite a number of things extraordinarily well in his quiet loner's kind of way.

"Paulo?"

"Yes?" he looked back up, his expression intent, as if some odd note in her voice had alerted him.

"I need some advice."

"I'm not exactly the best person to ask, if it's a social question," he cautioned, with something almost like panic in his eyes.

"You're going to have to get over that rabbit-in-the-headlights reaction to mingling with other people, you know. A successful naval officer doesn't have to be a howling extrovert, I suppose. But a hermit's going to experience a certain difficulty in building sound professional relationships."