“I’m not going to wait; I’m going to assume that you can do it. Jake, I’m going to get things rolling and get out of this crazy job — if you won’t have me in the corps I can always be an ordnanceman.”
“Come on down this evening. I’ll enlist you — then I’ll order you to detached duty, right where you are.”
Thorby’s chin dropped. “Jake! You wouldn’t do that to me!”
“I would if you were silly enough to place yourself under my orders, Rudbek.”
“But –” Thorby shut up. There was no use arguing; there was too much work to be done.
“Smith” added, “Anything else?”
“I guess not.”
“I’ll have a first check on de la Croix by tomorrow. See you.”
Thorby switched off, feeling glummer than ever. It was not the Wing Marshal’s half-whimsical threat, nor even his troubled conscience over spending large amounts of other people’s money on a project that stood little chance of success; it was simply that he was swamped by a job more complex than he had believed possible.
He picked up the top item again, put it down, pressed the key that sealed him through to Rudbek estate. Leda was summoned to the screen. “I’ll be late again. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll delay dinner. They’re enjoying themselves and I had the kitchen make the canapes substantial”
Thorby shook his head. “Take the head of the table. I’ll eat here. I may sleep here.”
She sighed. “If you sleep. Look, my stupid dear, be in bed by midnight and up not before six. Promise?”
“Okay. If possible.”
“It had better be possible, or you will have trouble with me. See you.”
He didn’t even pick up the top item this time; he simply sat in thought. Good girl, Leda . . . she had even tried to help in the business — until it had become clear that business was not her forte. But she was one bright spot in the gloom; she always bucked him up. If it wasn’t patently unfair for a Guardsman to marry — But he couldn’t be that unfair to Leda and he had no reason to think she would be willing anyhow. It was unfair enough for him to duck out of a big dinner party at the last minute. Other things. He would have to try to treat her better.
It had all seemed so self-evident: just take over, fumigate that sector facing the Sargony, then pick somebody else to run it. But the more he dug, the more there was to do. Taxes . . . the tax situation was incredibly snarled; it always was. That expansion program the Vegan group was pushing — how could he judge unless he went there and looked? And would he know if he did? And how could he find time?
Funny, but a man who owned a thousand starships automatically never had time to ride in even one of them. Maybe in a year or two —
No, those confounded wills wouldn’t even be settled in that time! — two years now and the courts were still chewing it. Why couldn’t death be handled decently and simply the way the People did it?
In the meantime he wasn’t free to go on with Pop’s work.
True, he had accomplished a little. By letting “X” Corps have access to Rudbek’s files some of the picture had filled in — Jake had told him that a raid which had wiped out one slaver pesthole had resulted directly from stuff the home office knew and hadn’t known that it knew.
Or had somebody known? Some days he thought Weemsby and Bruder had had guilty knowledge, some days not — for all that the files showed was legitimate business . . . sometimes with wrong people. But who knew that they were the wrong people?
He opened a drawer, got out a folder with no “URGENT” flag on it simply because it never left his hands. It was, he felt, the most urgent thing in Rudbek, perhaps in the Galaxy — certainly more urgent than Project Porcupine because this matter was certain to cripple, or at least hamper, the slave trade, while Porcupine was a long chance. But his progress had been slow — too much else to do.