“I’m Bandmaster of the Third Naharese Regiment,” he said, now. “My regiment likes me. The local people don’t class me with the rest of you, generally—“ he smiled a little sadly, again, “except that I don’t get challenged to duels.”
“I see,” I said.
“Yes.” He looked over at me now. “So, while the army is still technically obedient to the Conde, as its Commander-in-Chief, actually just about everything’s come to a halt. That’s why I had trouble getting transportation from the vehicle pool to pick you up.”
“I see—“ I repeated. I had been about to ask him some more; but just then the door to the control compartment opened behind us and Amanda stepped in.
“Well, Corunna,” she said, “how about giving me a chance to talk with Michael?”
She smiled past me at him; and he smiled back. I did not think he had been strongly taken by her— whatever was hidden in him was a barrier to anything like that. But her very presence, with all it implied of home, was plainly warming to him.
“Go ahead,” I said, getting up. “I’ll go say a word or two to the Outbond.”
“He’s worth talking to,” Amanda spoke after me as I went.
I stepped out, closed the door behind me, and rejoined Padma in the lounge area. He was looking out the window beside him and down at the plains area that lay between the town and the small mountain from which Gebel Nahar took its name. The city we had just left was on a small rise west of that mountain, with suburban and planted areas in between. Around and beyond that mountain—for the fort-like residence that was Gebel Nahar faced east—the actual, open grazing land of the cattle plains began. Our bus was one of those vehicles designed to fly ordinarily at about tree-top level, though of course it could go right up to the limits of the atmosphere in a pinch, but right now we were about three hundred meters up. As I stepped out of the control compartment, Padma took his attention from the window and looked back at me.
“Your Amanda’s amazing,” he said, as I sat down facing him, “for someone so young.”
“She said something like that about you,” I told him. “But in her case, she’s not quite as young as she looks.”
“I know,” Padma smiled. “I was speaking from the viewpoint of my own age. To me, even you seem young.”
I laughed. What I had had of youth had been far back, some years before Baunpore. But it was true that in terms of years I was not even middle-aged.
“Michael’s been telling me that a revolution seems to be brewing here in Nahar,” I said to him.
“Yes.” He sobered.
“That wouldn’t be what brings someone like you to Gebel Nahar?”
His hazel eyes were suddenly amused.
“I thought Amanda was the one with the questions,” he said.
“Are you surprised I ask?” I said. “This is an out of the way location for the Outbond to a full planet.”
“True.” He shook his head. “But the reasons that bring me here are Exotic ones. Which means, I’m afraid, that I’m not free to discuss them.”
“But you know about the local movement toward a revolution?”
“Oh, yes.” He sat in perfectly relaxed stillness, his hands loosely together in the lap of his robe, light brown against the dark blue. His face was calm and unreadable. “It’s part of the overall pattern of events on this world.”
“Just this world?”
He smiled back at me.
“Of course,” he said gently, “our Exotic science of ontogenetics deals with the interaction of all known human and natural forces, on all the inhabited worlds. But the situation here in Nahar, and specifically the situation at Gebel Nahar, is primarily a result of local, Cetan forces.”
“International planetary politics.”
“Yes,” he said. “Nahar is surrounded by five other principalities, none of which have cattle-raising land like this. They’d all like to have a part or all of this Colony in their control.”
“Which ones are backing the revolutionaries?”
He gazed out the window for a moment without
speaking. It was a presumptuous thought on my part to imagine that my strange geas, that made people want to tell me private things, would work on an Exotic. But for a moment I had had the familiar feeling that he was about to open up to me.
“My apologies,” he said at last. “It may be that in my old age I’m falling into the habit of treating everyone else like—children.”
“How old are you, then?”
He smiled.
“Old—and getting older.”
“In any case,” I said, “you don’t have to apologize to me. It’ll be an unusual situation when bordering countries don’t take sides in a neighbor’s revolution.”
“Of course,” he said. “Actually, all of the five think they have a hand in it on the side of the revolutionaries. Bad as Nahar is, now, it would be a shambles after a successful revolution, with everybody fighting everybody else for different goals. The other principalities all look for a situation in which they can move in and gain. But you’re quite right. International politics is always at work, and it’s never simple.”
“What’s fueling this situation, then?”
“William,” Padma looked directly at me and for the first time I felt the remarkable effect of his hazel eyes. His face held such a calmness that all his expression seemed to be concentrated in those eyes.
“William?” I asked.
“William of Ceta.”
“That’s right,” I said, remembering. “He owns this world, doesn’t he?”
“It’s not really correct to say he owns it,” Padma said. “He controls most of it—and a great many parts
of other worlds. Our present-day version of a merchant prince, in many ways. But he doesn’t control everything, even here on Ceta. For example, the Naharese ranchers have always banded together tightly to deal with him; and his best efforts to split them apart and gain a direct authority in Nahar, haven’t worked. He controls after a fashion, but only by manipulating the outside conditions that the ranchers have to deal with.”
“So he’s the one behind the revolution?”
“Yes.”
It was plain enough to me that it was William’s involvement here that had brought Padma to this backwater section of the planet. The Exotic science of ontogenetics, which was essentially a study of how humans interacted, both as individuals and societies, was something they took very seriously; and William, as one of the movers and shakers of our time would always have his machinations closely watched by them.
“Well, it’s nothing to do with us, at any rate,” I said, “except as it affects the Graeme’s contract.”
“Not entirely,” he said. “William, like most gifted individuals, knows the advantage of killing two, or even fifty, birds with one stone. He hires a good many mercenaries, directly and indirectly. It would benefit him if events here could lower the Dorsai reputation and the market value of its military individuals.”
“I see—“ I began; and broke off as the hull of the bus rang suddenly—as if to a sharp blow.
“Down!” I said, pulling Padma to the floor of the vehicle and away from the window beside which we had been sitting. One good thing about Exotics—they
trust you to know your own line of work. He obeyed me instantly and without protest. We waited . . . but there was no repetition of the sound.
“What was it?” he asked, after a moment, but without moving from where I had brought him.
“Solid projectile slug. Probably from a heavy hand weapon,” I told him. “We’ve been shot at. Stay down, if you please, Outbond.”
I got up myself, staying low and to the center of the bus, and went through the door into the control compartment. Amanda and Michael both looked around at me as I entered, their faces alert.
“Who’s out to get us?” I asked Michael.
He shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Here in Nahar, it could be anything or anybody. It could be the revolutionaries or simply someone who doesn’t like the Dorsai; or someone who doesn’t like Exotics—or even someone who doesn’t like me. Finally, it could be someone drunk, drugged, or just in a macho mood.”
“—who also has a military hand weapon.”
“There’s that,” Michael said. “But everyone in Nahar is armed; and most of them, legitimately or not, own military weapons.”
He nodded at the windscreen.
“Anyway, we’re almost down,” he said.
I looked out. The interlocked mass of buildings that was the government seat called” Gebel Nahar was sprawled halfway down from the top of the small mountain, just below us. In the tropical sunlight, it looked like a resort hotel, built on terraces that descended the steep slope. The only difference was that each terrace terminated in a wall, and the lowest of the
walls were ramparts of solid fortifications, with heavy weapons emplaced along them. Gebel Nahar, properly garrisoned, should have been able to dominate the countryside against surface troops all the way out to the horizon, at least on this side of the mountain.