“Rigo?” A soft voice from the door.
He turned his self-hatred on her. “Eugenie! What are you doing here?” Ridiculously, for a moment he had thought it was Marjorie.
“I thought you might need some help. With Marjorie gone—“
“I have a valet, Eugenie.” Behind him the man prudently left the room. “Marjorie doesn’t dress me.”
She fluttered her hands and changed the subject. “Have you had any news about Stella?”
“I haven’t heard anything about any of them. And you don’t belong here in my bedroom. You know that.”
“I know.” A tear crept down her cheek. “I don’t feel like I belong anyplace.”
“Go to Commons,” he told her. “Take a room at the Port Hotel. Amuse yourself. For God’s sake, Eugenie, I don’t have time for you now.”
She caught her breath. Her face went white and she turned away. Something in that turn, the curve of the neck. Like Marjorie. Now he had insulted them both! God. what kind of man was he?
Full of angry self-loathing, he went out to the gravel court where the aircar waited, then stood about impatiently while Sebastian arranged for the other car to take Eugenie to Commons if she wanted to go. Women. Damned women. With no other driver available, Asmir would have to stay to take Eugenie into town.
“Grass can be very boring for women,” Persun Pollut remarked.
“My mother has often mentioned that.” Persun stood with his hands linked behind him, his long, lugubrious face turned toward the garden.
“From what you have said, your mother keeps very busy,” Rigo commented, his voice still full of edgy hostility.
“Oh, I don’t mean life is boring in Commons, Your Excellency. I mean out here. Out here can be death for women. From boredom. From the Hunt. From so many things….”
Rigo did not want to think about women. He did not understand women, obviously. He was no good with women. Marjorie. No good with her. Who would have expected her to take the initiative this way, go running off to involve Green Brothers, dragging Tony and Father Sandoval along. She had never been like that. On Terra she’d contented herself with being mother or horsewoman. There’d been that little charitable thing that took too much of her time, Lady Bountiful carrying cast-off clothing to the illegals. But then, what had she had to do with herself otherwise? She wasn’t like Eugenie, to spend half a day at the loveliness shops. Or like Espinoza’s wife, that time, getting hauled in by the population police because she’d been mixed up in illicit abortions to save some ignorant little cunts from getting executed. Poor ‘Spino hadn’t been able to face his friends. No, whatever Marjorie had done on Terra, she’d kept it insignificant, she hadn’t encroached on Rigo’s responsibilities….
There was some kind of mental trap there. He avoided it by returning to his earlier thoughts about weapons. Why were there no weapons on Grass? Surely the order officers at Commons must have some kind of tanglefoots or freeze batons. Such items were ubiquitous wherever there were ports and taverns and the need to knock down unruly men. Why didn’t the people at the estancias have them? Characteristically, preferring actual ignorance to the appearance of it, he did not ask Persun, who could have told him.
He got into the car at Sebastian’s summons. They flew in silence. The bon Laupmon estancia was about an hour distant, farther east than the bon Damfels’ place. Rigo was considering how he might approach Obermun Lancel bon Laupmon. What he might say to Eric bon Haunser, or Obermun Jerril bon Haunser. Both of them had been helpful and diplomatic when the Yrariers had arrived upon Grass. Still, they were hunters, and hunters did not seem to act logically. There was no point in talking to Gerold bon Laupmon, Lancel’s brother. According to Persun, the man’s comprehension was exceedingly limited. Lancel was a widower. There was a son. Taronce, related somehow to the bon Damfels, but Rigo had not met him. Perhaps there had been other children. Perhaps they had vanished, and bon Laupmon had ignored that fact, just as Stavenger had. As he continued to do.