Fred’s eyes were wide with fear, and he made no attempt to struggle.
“I own you right now, kuzzi.” I practically spit his favorite insult back in his face. “Whether you live to see the sun set today depends on my mood. Understand?”
Fred understood. The odor of fear emanated from him. But he apparently wasn’t going to just fold. “My friends won’t let this go,” he said. “They’ll come after you.”
And he was right. This was something I’d worried about, but had hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with. If he didn’t capitulate in some manner, I might actually end up having to kill him. Could I do that in cold blood? If he just dug in his heels and called my bluff, I’d have to either follow through or lose any credibility.
On the other hand, if I’d come with Donald, Fred would already be dead.
It was so tempting. But even after being embedded in Deltan civilization for all these years, I still had a 21st century human squeamishness about taking life.
“What’s your problem, Fred? Can’t hunt on your own? Can’t figure out which end of the spear to use? Or are you just lazy?”
Fred’s ears went flat and his lips curled back from his teeth in a reaction that, for a Deltan, was an expression of rage. “It’s so easy for you, isn’t it? Sit there with all the resources and yap about how everyone else isn’t living up to your standards? I’m not answerable to you.”
“Well, right now you kind of are.” I pushed the blade harder against his throat to make the point.
But Fred was angry now. His reaction, his unexpected rage, surprised me. I’d mishandled this somehow, and now there was no way he was going to back down. Interesting food for thought, but right now it left me between a rock and a hard place.
With a flash of inspiration, I directed a spy drone to make some suspicious noises, in order to draw over some of the locals. Within moments, Fred and I could both hear his friends approaching and calling for him. He grinned at me in triumph. If his friends found a corpse, the whole village would be after me.
That was fine. Let him think that. I put my face up close to his. “Just remember that I can find you whenever I want. Next time I won’t discuss it, won’t even let you know I’m there. Maybe you should start hanging around with your friends all the time.”
With that, I gave him the usual quick jab in the breadbasket, and grabbed his spear as he folded. I vanished into the forest just before his friends came into sight.
Well, that hadn’t gone quite according to plan. I made my way back to Camelot, still trying to convince myself that I could kill him if I had to.
*
I told Archimedes the story over dinner. He took Fred’s spear and examined it while I talked.
“Donald would have just killed him,” he said. “Me, not so much. It’s hard to kill people, unless they’re attacking you.”
Archimedes maneuvered the spear around until he was looking at the tip. “This is really terrible work. Someone just shattered a nodule, and tied the sharpest shard onto the shaft.” He shook his head. “It’s as likely to fall off as penetrate the target. If this is what they have, I’m not surprised they’re having to steal food from our hunters.”
I raised my eyebrows. Okay, the android actually pointed its ears forward and down, but it felt to me like the equivalent human expression.
If the Caerleon citizens were having less hunting success because of equipment failure… Could it be that easy? Perceived inequities like that had started more than one war on Earth. I liked to think Deltans were a little more sensible than humans in general, but not by that much.
I sat back against the boulder behind me and stared into space, considering the options.
Looming Storm
Howard
May 2220
Vulcan
I stood outside the courtroom, taking deep breaths. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to drop a rock on the building. I’d expected nastiness. Ms. Benning had warned me that the children’s strategy would be based on attacks.
Knowing it and being subjected to it were two different things, though. To listen to their lawyer, I was some weird cross between Rasputin, Svengali, Machiavelli, and Lucifer. They hadn’t quite accused me of drugging and brainwashing Bridget, but they’d sure been trying to imply it.
Ms. Benning came to stand beside me. “There will be more of the same after recess. Just remember that he’s trying to get a rise out of you, to get you to make a mistake.”
I smiled slightly. “I have some advantages in that area.” Indeed. During cross-exam, I had enabled the endocrine control system. Funny that the cloning process, even with all the different generations of Heaven vessels, still included that subsystem. With the control on, I was only mildly concerned about Mr. Kistler’s accusations and innuendo.
And a good thing. Right now, I would happily reach over and crush his throat with one hand.
Dr. Onagi came over to stand with us. I looked at him. “Is it appropriate for us to speak?”
He looked at Ms. Benning, who smiled in response. “Not a problem. The hospital is named in their suit as well, so we’re on the same side. What’s on your mind, Dr. Onagi?”
“I don’t trust them.”
“Erm, this is news?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“No, no, I mean beyond the obvious adversarial situation. In particular, the eldest daughter just seems like a real piece of work. I wonder, if they lose the case, if she’ll take it gracefully.”
Ms. Benning’s eyebrows rose. “You mean, as in sabotage of some kind?”
Dr. Onagi nodded.
Oh, wow. I couldn’t actually feel the blood drain from my face—no blood, after all—but the elevator-dropping feeling was definitely there. “We could win, and still lose.”
“This bears some careful thought,” Ms. Benning said. “Being found in contempt of a court order could prejudice your case, so don’t do anything precipitous. Just the same…”
We settled into an uncomfortable silence as we each stared into space.
Armageddon
Bill
June 2223
82 Eridani
I was going over some plans with Garfield when I received an emergency call from Captain Richards. I popped up the video window. “What’s up, captain?”
“Bill, we were doing so well with clearing the busters from orbit that I decided I could spare a dozen or so killers to reconnoiter the Lagrange points. To see what Medeiros is up to, you understand?”
I nodded, not liking the implication.
Richards popped up a grainy, long-distance image. “We picked this up.”
The frame rate and resolution were low, but I could make out that Medeiros was working around the metal ingots used as raw materials for the autofactories.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
“We ran some image interpolations. It looks like he’s attaching busters to an ingot with cables.”
“Oh, hell.” A poor man’s asteroid mover. The ingots weren’t huge, but they were metal, and would survive re-entry almost unscathed. One of those could certainly create a new Barringer crater. More than enough to wipe out a colony, anyway.