Страница 115 из 186
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The unarmed air car approached the agreed upon meeting site at exactly the agreed upon time.
Stephen Westman stood leaning against a tree, arms folded across his chest, and watched it come. It had taken two full days of cautious contacts and secret negotiation to arrange this meeting, and there was a certain fitting irony, though he'd be unable to share it with his "guests," to the location he'd chosen. The last off-worlder he'd met here had been the man called "Firebrand," whose objectives had been somewhat different from these off-worlders'. He wondered if Van Dort and the Manties in the air car would find the scenery as spectacular as Firebrand had.
The air car circled the site once, then settled to a neat landing the better part of seventy meters from Westman. The turbines whined as they spooled down, and Westman straightened, letting his arms fall to his side. Luis Palacios had wanted to be here, but Westman had turned him down. Although the MIM leader had complete faith in Chief Marshal Ba
The passenger side hatch opened, and Trevor Ba
"Afternoon, Trevor," Westman said.
"Steve." Ba
"Seemed appropriate."
The two men looked at one another for a moment, then Westman smiled.
"Don't see any desperate ambushers?"
"Didn't expect to." Ba
"Point taken." Westman nodded. "All the same, a dishonest man can trust an honest man to stay honest. Doesn't necessarily work the other way 'round."
"Reckon there's something in that," Ba
Westman watched them disembark. Van Dort was easy to recognize, even at this distance, thanks to his height. Besides, Westman had met the Rembrandter personally. The thought was like an under-ripe persimmon, and his mouth twisted briefly before his eyes moved on to the other new arrivals.
The bearded man beside Van Dort also had blond hair and blue eyes. In fact, Westman thought with a certain i
His concentration on the two men had held his attention until they were almost up to him. He looked past them then, at the final person to climb out of the air car, and the last flicker of amusement disappeared. He'd been told Van Dort and Captain Terekhov would be accompanied by a single aide, a Manticoran midshipwoman. Some sort of very junior lieutenant, Ba
The Chief Marshal looked back at him, once again expressionless as a sphinx, and Westman winced mentally. It must have been like a punch in the belly when he saw that dark-haired, dark-eyed, solidly muscled young woman. Especially when he saw her standing with Bernardus Van Dort.
"Steve," Ba
"Welcome," Westman said, shaking aside his own reaction to the young woman. "Wish I could say it's a pleasure to see you gentlemen, but I never was much good at polite lies. Nothing personal, but seeing you two on Montanan soil under any circumstances doesn't exactly make me want to do handsprings of delight."
"Chief Marshal Ba
"Hope you won't take this wrongly," Westman said, "but that's not the only thing you've been accused of. Especially not here on Montana."
"I'm sure it isn't," the Rembrandter conceded. "As a matter of fact, if I were a Montanan, I'd probably harbor quite a bit of-ill-will, shall we say?-where Rembrandt and the Trade Union were concerned."
One of Westman's eyebrows quirked at the admission. Of course, he reminded himself, words cost nothing. And even if Van Dort's statement was completely accurate, it didn't mean a thing about the Rembrandter's ultimate objectives.
"As I'm sure you've noticed," he said, "I've had my people put up a tent over there, under the trees. It's quite a nice tent, -actually-used to belong to some Manticoran surveyors, I believe-and it's air-conditioned. I thought we might all like to get out of the sun and sit down someplace cool for this little talk you gentlemen wanted."
Helen was confused. There was something going on between Westman, Van Dort, and-of all people-Chief Marshal Ba
She followed the four men to the waiting tent. Its side still carried the rampant manticore of the Star Kingdom's coat of arms, and she felt a flicker of amused respect for Westman's audacity. He was making a none-too-subtle point by flaunting his trophy, but it also provided a comfortable place for the representatives of the various sides to sit down and talk.
All four men found seats around the camp table inside the tent. There was a fifth chair, but Helen chose to stand, hands clasped loosely behind her, at Van Dort's shoulder. She felt Westman's eyes flicker over her again, once more with that odd expression of almost-recognition. He looked as if he were about to insist that she sit down, which would have been in keeping with the elaborate Montanan social code. But he glanced at Van Dort and Ba
"All right," he said after a moment. "This meeting was your idea, I understand, Mr. Van Dort. That being the case, I reckon it's only fair to give you the floor first."
"Thank you," Van Dort said, but he didn't seem in any great hurry. He sat for a moment, his hands lightly folded on the camp table while he gazed out through the window-configured tent wall across the magnificent sweep of the New Missouri River Gorge. He sat that way for several seconds before he brought his gaze back inside and focused on Westman.
"I'm here," he said, "not as a representative of Rembrandt, but as the personal representative of Baroness Medusa, Queen Elizabeth's Provisional Governor for the Talbott Cluster. I don't expect you to forget I'm a Rembrandter. Nor do I expect you to forget all the reasons you have for disliking me personally, or for distrusting and detesting Rembrandt and the Trade Union. If you wish to discuss our past policies and how we went about implementing them, I'm quite prepared to do so. However, I'd like to request that you allow me to speak as Baroness Medusa's envoy first. I suspect," he allowed himself a crooked smile, "that if we get into debating Montana-Rembrandt relations, we'll be here for the next several days. At least."
Westman's mouth twitched. It looked, Helen thought, as if the Montanan had felt a sudden urge to smile back at Van Dort. If he had, he managed to suppress it quite handily, though.
"Speaking as Baroness Medusa's representative, then," Van Dort continued, "I've been instructed to ask you to set forth your exact objections to the a
"I see," Westman said after frowning for several seconds. Then he shook his head-not in rejection, but to indicate a certain dubiousness, Helen thought.
"That all sounds very reasonable," the guerrilla leader went on. "But I'm just a mite skeptical. And, truth be told, it's a mite difficult for me to forget who you are. You just mentioned freely voted upon requests, but everybody in the Cluster knows the entire a
"I don't blame you," Van Dort said calmly. "As I said, I'd prefer not to debate all of the past strains and tensions between Montana and the RTU. I will acknowledge freely, however, that the RTU's policies were part of a carefully pla