“How is he?” Elke said.
The doctor looked up and frowned. “The leg doesn’t look too bad. Now. He’d have lost it in another twenty hours.”
Protégés held out trays. Gerta grabbed at a ceramic tumbler and drank, long and carefully. It was orange juice, slightly salted. She shut her eyes for an instant of pure bliss.
A man cleared his throat. She opened her eyes and snapped to attention with the other members of her team; all but Ektar, who was out with a syringe of morphine in his arm.
The man was elderly, bald, stringy-muscular. He had colonel’s pips on the shoulders of his summer-weight uniform, and a smile like Death in a good mood on his wrinkled, bony face. She was acutely conscious of the ring on the third finger of his left hand, an intertwined circlet of iron and gold. The Chosen ring.
“Gerta Hosten, Heinrich Hosten, Johan Kloster, Elke Tirnwitz, Etkar Summeldorf. The ceremony will come later, of course, but it is my honor to inform you that each of you has achieved at least the minimum necessary score in the Test of Life. Accordingly, at the age of eighteen years and six months, you will be enrolled among the Chosen of the Land. Congratulations.”
One of the others whooped. Gerta couldn’t tell which; she was too busy keeping herself erect. Six months of examinations, tests, psychological tests, tests of nerve, tests of intelligence, tests of ability to endure stress; all topped off with seven hellish days in the Kopenrung jungles—and it was over.
I’m not going to be a Washout. She’d decided long ago to kill herself rather than endure that; a large proportion of Washouts did. Born in a Protégé cottage, and I’m Chosen of the Land.
She snapped off a salute, arm outstretched and fist clenched. A blood-boil burst and left red running down her mouth as she grinned; the pain was a sharp stab, but she didn’t give a damn.
* * *
“You are a very wealthy young man,” the River Electric Company executive said, looking down at the statement in surprise.
“I had some seed money from my stepfather,” John explained. “The rest of it comes from commodities deals, mainly.” Courtesy of Center’s analysis; that made things childishly easy. “And investment in Western Petroleum.”
His formal neckcloth felt a little tight; he suppressed an impulse to fiddle with it. The room was on the seventh story of one of the new office buildings between the Eastern Highway and the river, with an overhead fan and shuttered windows that made it cool even on the hot summer’s day. The River Electric exec had very little on the broad ebony expanse of his desk, just a blotter and a telephone with a sea-ivory handset. And the plans John had sent in.
“This . . .”
“Mercury-arc rectifier,” John supplied helpfully.
“Rectifier, yes, seems to be very ingenious,” the executive said.
He was a plump little man with bifocals, wearing a rather dandified cream-colored jacket and blue neckcloth. There was a parrots feather in the band of his trilby where it hung on the rack by the door.
“However,” he went on, “at present the River Electric Company is engaged in an extensive, a very extensive, investment program in primary generating capacity. Why should we undertake a risky new venture which will require tying up capital in new manufacturing plant?”
John leaned forward. “That’s just it, Mr. Henforth. The rectifier will save capital by reducing transmission losses. The expense of installing them will be considerably less than the savings in raw generating capacity. And the construction can be subcontracted. There are a lot of firms here in the capital, or anywhere in the Eastern Provinces—Tonsville, say, or Ensburg—who could handle this. River Electric’s primary focus on hydraulic turbines and turbogenerators wouldn’t be affected.”
Henforth steepled his fingers and waited.
“And,” John went on after the silence stretched, “I’d be willing to buy say, five hundred thousand shares of River Electric at par. Also licensing fees from the patent would be assigned.”
“It’s definitely an interesting proposition,” Henforth said, smiling. “Come, we’ll go up to the executive lounge on the roof and discuss this further with some of our technical people.” He shook his head. “A young man of your capacities is wasted in the diplomatic service, Mr. Hosten. Wasted.”