“Vendetta? Is that what you think I’m doing?”
Drawing in a deep, deliberate breath, St. Clair said more reasonably, “Lars, it is finished. The conference at Selene will put an end to this fighting.”
“Conference?” Fuchs blinked with surprise. “What conference?”
St. Clair’s brows rose. “You don’t know? At Selene. Humphries and Astro are meeting to discuss a settlement of their differences. A peace conference.”
“At Selene?”
“Of course. Stavenger himself arranged it. The world government has sent Willi Dieterling. Your own wife will be there, one of the representatives from Ceres.”
Fuchs felt an electric shock stagger him. “Amanda’s going to Selene?”
“She is on her way, with Big George and Dr. Cardenas. Didn’t you know?”
Amanda’s going to Selene, thundered in Fuchs’s mind. To Selene. To Humphries.
It took him several moments to focus his attention again on St. Clair, still standing in the galley with him, a bemused little smile on his lips.
“You didn’t know?” St. Clair asked again. “She didn’t tell you?”
His voice venomously low, Fuchs said, “I’m going to take the fuel I need. You can call for a tanker after I’ve left the area.”
“You will steal it from me?”
“Yes,” said Fuchs. “That way you can make a claim to your insurance carrier. You’re insured for theft, aren’t you?”
DOSSIER: JOYCE TAKAMINE
Joyce was quite content living on the Moon. She lived alone, not celibate, certainly, but not attached to anyone, either. She had achieved most of what she had dreamed of, all those long hard years of her youth.
She was a mature woman now, lean and stringy, hardened by years of physical labor and cold calculation, inured to clambering up the ladder of life by grabbing for any rung she could reach. Now that she was at Selene, with a well-paying job and a secure career path, she felt that she could relax and enjoy life for the first time.
Except—she soon felt bored.
Life became too predictable, too routine. Too safe, she finally realized. There’s no challenge to this. I can run my office blindfolded. I see the same people socially every time I go out. Selene’s just a small town. Safe. Comfortable. Boring.
So she transferred to the Humphries operation on Ceres, much to her supervisor’s shock, and rode out to the Belt.
Ceres was even smaller than Selene, dirty, crowded, sometimes dangerous. Joyce loved it. New people were arriving and departing all the time. The Pub was rowdy, raucous. She saw Lars Fuchs kill a man there, just jam a power drill into the guy’s chest like an old-fashioned knight’s spear. The guy had admitted to killing Niles Ripley, and he tried to shoot Fuchs right there at the bar.
She served on the jury that acquitted Fuchs and, when the people of Ceres finally started to pull together a ragtag kind of government, Joyce Takamine was one of those selected by lottery to serve on the community’s first governing council. It was the first time she had won anything.
CHAPTER 49
Humphries gave a party in his mansion for the delegates to the peace conference. Not a large, sumptuous party; just an intimate gathering of the handful of men and women who would meet the next morning in a discreet conference room in Selene’s office tower, up in the Grand Plaza. Pancho Lane was the first guest to arrive. Humphries greeted her in the sprawling living room of his home, with Diane Verwoerd at his side. Diane wore a glittering floor-length sheath of silver, its neckline plunging almost to her waist. Pancho was in a lavender cocktail dress accented with big copper bangle earrings and hoops of copper at her wrists and throat.
Humphries, wearing a collarless burgundy jacket over a space-black turtleneck shirt and charcoal slacks, smirked to himself. Pancho had learned a lot in her years on the Astro board, but she was still gawky enough to show up at the party precisely on time, rather than fashionably late.
Soon enough the other guests began to arrive, and Humphries’s servants showed them into the lavishly furnished living room. Willi Dieterling came in with two younger men flanking him; his nephews, he told Humphries as they exchanged introductions.