The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven [188]
“Don’t we?” she asked uncertainly. “Because if we don’t, the whole human race is in big trouble.”
“I remember thinking I did,” Rod said. Now this was faintly ridiculous. There had to be a long list of subjects to discuss with the only girl in ten parsecs before it got to political theory. “You look nice. How do you do it? You must have lost everything.”
“No, I had my travel kit. Clothes I took to the Mote, remember?” Then she couldn’t help herself and laughed. “Rod, have you any idea of just how silly you look in Captain Mikhailov’s uniform? You two aren’t the same size in any dimension. Whoa! Stop it! You will not begin brooding again, Rod Blaine.” She made a face.
It took a moment, but she’d won. She knew it when Rod glanced down at the huge pleats he’d tucked in the tunic so that it wouldn’t be quite so much like a tent. Slowly he grinned. “I don’t suppose I’ll be nominated for the Times’s list of best-dressed men at Court, will I?”
“No.” They sat in silence as she tried to think of something else to say. Now blast it, why is it hard to talk to him? Uncle Ben says I talk too much anyway, and here I can’t think of a thing to say. “What was it Mr. Renner said?”
“He reminded me of my duties. I’d forgotten I still had some. But I guess he’s right, life goes on, even for a captain who’s lost his ship.” There was more silence, and the air seemed thick and heavy again.
Now what do I say? “You—you’d been with MacArthur a long time, hadn’t you?”
“Three years. Two as exec and a year as skipper. And now she’s gone— I better not get started on that. What have you been doing with yourself?”
“You asked me, remember. I’ve been studying the data from Mote Prime, and the reports on the gift ship—and thinking of what I can say that will convince the Admiral that we have to take the Motie ambassadors back with us. And we must convince him, Rod, we’ve just got to. I wish there were something else we could talk about, and there will be lots of time after we leave the Motie system.” And we’ll have a lot of it together, too, now that MacArthur’s gone. I wonder. Honestly, am I a little glad my rival’s dead? Boy, I better never let him think I even suspect that about myself. “Right now, though, Rod, there’s so little time, and I haven’t any ideas at all—”
Blaine fingered the knot on his nose. About time you stopped being the Man of Sorrows and started acting like the future Twelfth Marquis, isn’t it? “All right, Sally. Let’s see what we can come up with. Provided that you let Kelley serve us dinner here.”
She smiled broadly. “My lord, you have got yourself a deal.”
43 Trader’s Lament
Horace Bury was not a happy man.
If MacArthur’s crew had been difficult to deal with, Lenin’s was an order of magnitude worse. They were Ekaterinas, Imperial fanatics, and this was a picked crew under an admiral and a captain from their home world. Even the Spartan Brotherhoods would have been easier to influence.
Bury knew all this in advance, but there was this damnable urge to dominate and control his environment under all circumstances; and he had almost nothing to work with.
His status aboard was more ambiguous than before. Captain Mikhailov and the Admiral knew that he was to remain under Blaine’s personal control, not charged with any crime, but not allowed freedom either. Mikhailov had solved the problem by assigning Bury Marine servants and putting Blaine’s man Kelley in charge of the Marines. Thus, whenever he left his cabin, Bury was followed through the ship.
He tried to talk to Lenin’s crewmen. Few would listen. Perhaps they had heard rumors of what he could offer, and were afraid that MacArthur’s Marines would report them. Perhaps they suspected him of treason and hated him.
A Trader needs patience, and Bury had more than most. Even so, it was hard to control himself when he could control nothing else; when there was nothing to do but sit and wait, his hair-trigger temper would flare into screaming rages and smashed furniture, but never in public. Outside his cabin Bury was calm, relaxed, a skilled conversationalist,