Undaunted

29

Kris was strapped in tight to her seat across from a still-angry Marine captain the next noon as the shuttle dropped away from the Wasp and started its flight to the industrialists’ principal city of Denver.

Jack had demanded that Kris put off her visit to Denver until a message came back from King Ray.

“That will take three or four days,” she pointed out.

“So.”

“We’ve got a cowpoke in our brig.”

“You think you can settle this thing in half a week. Good Lord, Kris, these folks have been at each other’s throats for eighty years! Even you can’t pull a miracle out of a rabbit’s hat that fast.”

“I sure can’t pull out a miracle if I’m sitting on my hands up here!” She then pointed out that the shuttles were ferrying crew, Marines, and boffins down to the ski lodge. They would be staying here for quite some time. “Besides, I’m not going anywhere near cowboy country. I’ll be in Denver, Jack. They don’t carry guns. They have nice civilized judges and courts. No blood feuds.”

Still unhappy, Jack doubled her guard. All were in dress red and blues except for a pair of snipers.

And he demanded she wear her bulletproof spider-silk underwear.

She reached in the collar of her undress whites and slipped a finger under her spider-silk bodysuit to prove it was there.

Even then, it was a rough ride down.

The Denver airport was very different from the one they’d used last night. The runway was paved and fully instrumented. There were warehouses bulging with boxes of goods and two beat-up shuttles ready to be loaded and sent up to any passing cargo ship.

From the age of the burn marks on the runway, it had been a while since anyone had launched to orbit.

Three black cars pulled up to the shuttle as soon as it rolled to a stop. One of them was stretched enough to qualify as a limo. A short fellow in a blue suit was quickly out of that car, his hand extended.

“I’m Tad Kordoka, mayor of Denver. I fill our seat in the House of Dukes, but if any Denver mayor ever styled himself a duke, we’d clap him in a loony bin.”

“Then maybe I’d better present myself as Lieutenant Kris Longknife, special envoy from Wardhaven,” Kris said without missing a beat.

“Smart woman. Didn’t I tell you, Ivan, those Longknifes are a bunch of smart people. Kris, this is Ivan Bogada, the president of our business counsel. He represents the interests of the people who count on Texarkana.”

Kris shook another hand. Like Tad, Ivan looked intent, driven, and expectant. Just the kind of people Kris would not buy a used car from. Kris doubted it would be long before they told her what they wanted done.

In no uncertain terms.

Hopefully, they’d learn quickly that Longknifes were not only smart but also stubborn.

Jack joined Kris in the limo, but the two businessmen ignored him. With Marines riding shotgun in the limo’s front seat and filling up the other two cars, Jack didn’t seem to mind, but concentrated on leaving nothing involving Kris’s safety to chance.

Meanwhile, Kris got a rapidly delivered tour of all the points of interest and pride around Denver. Considering they’d built all of it from scratch in only eighty years, Kris would allow that they had the right to be proud of their accomplishments and wasted no time saying so.

They preened as if they’d done it all by themselves, just the two of them.

Kris wasn’t long in finding out who really had done it.

They didn’t go to city hall, but rather to a new business park, full of gleaming buildings of glass and concrete. Tall offices reached for the blue sky. Squat factory buildings spread out to make “just about anything someone could ask for,” or to store it.

“How do the cowboys types take to your miracle of production?”

“They buy it up from us plenty fast,” Ivan answered. “But we have to send the peddlers out to their ranches and small towns. They hate the very sight of our cities. Invite them to a play, or a show. Woman, we’ve got an opera company and playhouse that draws the best singers in human space. Art galleries and a ballet company, too.

“As far as those hicks are concerned, we might as well be talking about the weather. Ma’am, they pay more attention to the chances of rain out in their great desert than they do to the cultural opportunities we offer them.”

“If you talk to them long enough,” Ted put in, “they’ll start waxing poetic about a cattle sale like it was more to their taste than a play just off Broadway from Earth.”

“I know what you mean,” Kris said. “I had a friend in college from Texarkana. We used to tease her about things like that. But after her boyfriend took her to a few plays, she saw things in a different light. Maybe you ought to let Bob DuVale do the talking for you.”

Things got quiet after that.

The cars came to a stop in front of one of those gleaming towers. It would have fit right in on Wardhaven, though its fifty floors made it a bit short for Kris’s hometown. They entered a wide, marbled foyer that centered on a fountain. The sculptured fish were either of a local kind that had made its peace with humanity, or the artist was postmodern. A wide bank of escalators moved people up to the second level, but Kris was led away from them to where a dozen elevators waited to whisk her and her escort up to the fiftieth floor.

There she was taken to a luxurious conference room, pan eled in half a dozen different woods, where it wasn’t wall-papered in blue and gold. The carpet was a Berber that felt a good three inches thick.

Kris glanced around, half-expecting to see Grampa Al holding forth, but no, the denizens of this wealth were just the local leaders.

Jack needed just one glance to take the place in. Quickly, he posted his Marines as if this was a prison and he in charge of keeping those in, in and those out, out.

As in the car, the local businessmen paid no more attention to Kris’s Marine escort than they would have to ghosts. She wondered what would happen if a Marine got in the way of one of the business honchos, but it didn’t happen, so there was no attempt by two people to occupy the same space rather than admit the existence of the other.

The first hand Kris shook was Louis DuVale’s. He spent a long minute shaking hers, studying Kris’s face as if he might, by looking at it long enough, change her mind. When there was no evidence of that, he took her elbow and guided her around to meet manufacturers, mining interests, energy brokers, bankers, financiers, and “everybody who is anybody on Texarkana,” he said as he finished.

As soon as she was finally seated at Louis’s right hand, he posed the question “How does King Raymond propose to correct the political and fiscal imbalance on this planet?”

“I don’t know,” was not the answer the expectant eyes around the table were prepared to accept. Kris let the question hang while she examined her options for the forty-eleventh time.

“You can’t let this state of affairs continue,” Louis went on when Kris didn’t come forward with an instant answer. “I understand you’ve rented Old Austin’s ski lodge for a week so your ship’s crew don’t atrophy in orbit. We should have had a space station fifty years ago. And we would have, except for those damn cowboys. The lack of that station is throttling our business. No captain in his right mind brings his ship here. Do you know that most ships these days don’t even have drop ships?”

“Yes, my grampa Al mentioned that last Christmas dinner,” Kris admitted. She hadn’t been there, but Honovi had noted it in a later message to Kris.

“We bought two used shuttles, cheap, just so we could service a ship, but big ships don’t want to risk traffic messing around in their space, and small ships can’t earn enough for their lines shuttling from one tiny market to another. Every planet around us has a station. We’ve got to change,” DuVale finished, almost shouting.

“I’m here to observe,” Kris said.

So for the next hour, Kris got to observe a long list of grievances, dating back to the first landings during the Iteeche War. It was not pretty.

It also didn’t help.

“So Denver, Duluth, and Detroit are your only dukedoms,” Kris said when their anger finally ran down like an unwound clock.

“And lovely cities they are. They offer everything you could ask for—culture, parks, gracious living. We are not uncouth barbarians here,” Louis said.

“And the cowboys provide the food and fibers off their ranches and farms.”

“We more than pay for them with the goods and services we provide, even at the outrageous exchange rate they force upon us.”

Kris began to see the full outline of the problem through all the dust and chaff thrown up by their anger. “With so little off-world trade, you can’t challenge that exchange rate.”

“Because they won’t build a space station. Because they won’t let us build a station! We’re stuck with them as our only market. We’re stuck paying for their low-value raw products with our high-value-added production goods.”

“Point well taken. Ah, Mr. DuVale, do you ski? Hunt? Do anything outdoors?” There had to be someplace where these two isolated worlds met.

“Of course I do.”

“At Duke Austin’s lodge?”

“I try to avoid him. Some of the barons up in the mountains run decent establishments that cater to finer tastes.”

“How do they vote?” Kris asked.

“Sometimes with us, but there are never enough right-thinking people. Every time we think we might get something done, those old founding dukes patch up their differences and vote us down.”

“Nelly, I hate talking geography without a map.” A map was conspicuous by its absence from this conference room. “Would you display a map of this continent, please.”

The polished wooden table before them was suddenly covered by the requested map. Nelly displayed the rivers and mountains of the main occupied landmass of Texarkana. The great plain that was the center of human occupation was bordered on the east side by a huge mountain range and on the west by a mighty river that drained not only the mountains but a major portion of uninhabited land farther to the west.

“Nelly, let’s see some cities, towns, and major ranches.” Denver popped into existence. Well to the north of it was Detroit. Out on the plain, where rivers from the two met, Duluth sat, more a trading center than industrial. Small towns lay scattered across the great plains, usually where much smaller streams crossed.

“Now show me the boundaries of the dukedoms.” Rigid straight lines of men crisscrossed themselves over the random meandering of rivers and mountains.

Kris sighed as the bitter problem reduced itself to simple black and white. There were thirty dukedoms, but only three of them had cities in them. Those held eight million people. The other twenty-seven held less than three million.

Under the usual exchange rate . . . some might say honest rate . . . the wealth would be just as unequal. The fact that it was balanced said beef and potatoes were either way too expensive or power packs, stoves, and air conditioners were way too cheap.

Kris could relate to the anger that such a rigged deck raised in these fellows. Still, the rules of this game had been agreed upon long before any of the movers and shakers in this room were born.

Thank you, Grampa, for this wonderful problem you dropped me in. I hope you’re having as much fun talking to all your old war buddies about the nice Iteeche.

Then again, this game wasn’t rigged at all. Couldn’t the businessmen looking at this map see the obvious answer to their problem?

And if they couldn’t, how could Kris open their eyes?

Or as the famous Billy Longknife was sometimes heard to mutter under his breath, “There are none so blind as those who have their eyes wide open but can’t see a damn thing.”

Concentrating on her problem, Kris ignored the soft sound of the door opening . . . until a familiar voice said. “Dad, you didn’t tell me we were getting a visit from Kris Longknife today.”

“Bobby,” Kris shouted, her problem only too happily tossed for the moment as she stood to get and give a hug to her old school bud.

“It’s Mr. Robert DuVale here, and I hear it’s Princess Kris these days.”

“Strange thing, that. It’ll teach me to turn my back on my own kin,” Kris said, trying to make a credible grumble through her grin for her old friend.

“Isn’t it always your own kin?” Bobby whispered in Kris’s ear as he finished the hug.

“So, what are you doing in my town?” he demanded of her.

“Listening to your old man gripe,” Kris said, and got several soft snickers from around the room, which were quickly swallowed as Mr. DuVale met them with a glare. “Listen, Bobby, maybe you can help me out.”

“If I hadn’t helped you out, you would have flunked several business courses.”

“Only ’cause my grampa Al signed me up for them against my will. And I was doing my best to flunk them.”

“You didn’t have a chance. Not with Julie as your study partner.” Now both of them smiled at the shared memory of one schoolmate that wasn’t here.

Mr. DuVale’s glare deepened into full glower.

“About these dukedoms,” Kris said, tapping her map on some of the new cowpoke dukes. “Are there some kinds of local minimums you have to meet before you can officially get a baron recognized or a duke seated in the House of Dukes? On Wardhaven, we won’t let a new county have a representative in parliament until it has fifty thousand people living in it.”

“It’s kind of the same here,” Bobby said. “You have to have at least ten thousand people and fifty thousand head of cattle before you’re officially a duke. And it has to be in the boundaries officially set out for a dukedom.”

“Fifty. Thousand. Cows?” Kris said.

“And ten thousand people,” Bobby added.

“Can you believe these people!” Mr. DuVale snapped.

“Denver once fell below the fifty-thousand-head requirement, and they tried to disestablish us. My father had to pay through the nose to buy a hundred cows real quick from Austin.”

No question, the ill will here had good cause . . . and a long history. But if Kris let them turn the conversation back to their gripes, they’d never see what was sitting right in front of their noses.

“Just ten thousand people,” Kris echoed.

“And fifty thousand cows,” Bobby repeated.

She let that hang in the air between them until Bobby shook his head.

“Sorry, Kris, but what you have to understand is that the people of Denver and Detroit are very proud of their cities and the culture we attract to these centers of human endeavor.”

“I’ve been listening to a lot about those cultural achievements,” Kris admitted, trying not to let it out too dry.

“And nobody around here would want to move out to dusty little towns where a square dance on Saturday night is the top of the social calendar,” Bobby finished, staring tight-lipped at his father.

“But for that girl, you’d move out to a hog farm,” the older man exploded. “My father worked himself into an early grave making Denver into the type of city that we could be proud of. That could draw stars from half of human space to our opera house, our theaters, our ballet.”

“And you’ll work yourself into an early grave trying to keep it that way,” Bobby snapped.

“Ah, folk,” Kris said. “I’ve been there, done that, cussed my elders, and stomped out. You don’t have to rerun this little tizzy just for me.”

The two DuVales continued to glare at each other. The others around the table looked like they’d rather have a dentist drilling than be here.

“So,” Kris said slowly, “there’s a reason why eight million people are crammed into just three dukedoms.”

“We will not,” Mr. DuVale said, hand raised to heaven, “scatter our seed in the dust. My grandchildren will not be raised to be uncouth hicks.”

“Keep this up, and you won’t have any grandchildren,” his son said in a harsh whisper.

“Okay, okay, folks, let’s nobody have a heart attack. Bobby, I’m having a hard time understanding things. I can’t seem to get from A to B to C, just like in college.”

“Kris,” he said, starting to breathe almost normally, “you were never dumb. Blind to the human condition, maybe. Unwilling to admit people weren’t all that eager to submit to your idealism. But never dumb.”

“You may be right. I’ve had a painful time lately, growing up.” Here Jack made his presence known with a loud snicker.

“No comments from the guilty bystanders,” Kris said. “Bobby, if you can see that you need more dukedoms and you want to get out of Denver, why are you still here?”

“Because I can’t borrow a nickel to start up Ft. Louis on the confluence of the Platt River and the Big Muddy, down here,” he said, stabbing the map at a point far to the west.

“That an empty dukedom?”

“Totally vacant.”

“Could you get anyone to move there with you and Julie?”

“If I got five minutes on the six o’clock news tonight, I’d have ten thousand volunteers by this time tomorrow.”

“And money is all that’s keeping you here?” Kris said. “What about cows?”

“Julie says there are plenty of ranch kids that would love to move a hundred head of cattle out east and set up on their own. Hard to believe that I’m not the only one whose old man doesn’t want me to have the same chances he had.”

“It’s too risky,” his father snapped. “No one would lend them a dime.” Mr. DuVale glanced away just long enough to fix his glower on three of the men who’d been introduced as bankers. They nodded in agreement with the middle-aged plant owner.

“Everything’s too risky for your bankers, Dad. But that’s because everything has to be done just the way it is done,” Bob said to his father, then turned to face Kris.

“When you were in cowpoke country last night, did you happen to see the jerry-built rigs those cowboys drive around in?”

“I couldn’t miss them. Your limo was a delightful surprise today.”

“Here in Denver, we produce cars. Cars, mind you, and large eighteen-wheelers that require the fine roads we have here. No pickup trucks. No four-by-fours.”

“But all I saw last night among the ranchers . . .” Kris said slowly.

“Were truck wrecks,” Bobby finished. “Every once in a great while, one of the ranchers will buy a car from us and drive it straight to one of their repair and customization shops. First thing they do is cut the back end off with a welding torch. Maybe they patch together a couple of seats, then build up a truck bed. You saw a lot of those.”

“Yes,” Kris said, “and they all looked like they’d been beat up and crashed and glued back together, or something.”

“Mainly, it’s the something. You want to ask the guy who runs Page Automotive why he doesn’t produce trucks?”

“Not really, but I suspect I ought to.” Kris glanced around the table, spotted one fellow who looked like he’d rather be under it than sitting at it, and asked, “On Wardhaven, we make all kind of vehicles, from small off-road gadabouts to eighteen-wheelers. Why don’t you?”

“There is no demand,” the fellow whispered to the table.

“I didn’t quite get that,” Kris said. “Could you repeat it?”

“There is no demand,” came out with a squeak.

“There is no demand,” Louis DuVale shouted at the same time, defiance in every word.

“You mean, you don’t want to meet the demand that exists,” Kris corrected.

“Why should we bother doing what they want us to do?”

“But you want me to somehow make them do what you want them to do. Is that what you want from me?” Kris shot back.

“Why not? You should. They’re crazy with the power they have over us.”

Kris glanced at Bobby. “He really thinks that?”

“I haven’t been able to change his mind. I wouldn’t bet that you can.”

“I wouldn’t take that bet.”

“Smart woman.”

Kris turned to the tableful of movers and shakers, who at the moment were shaking in their shoes. “You have a market, but to spite it, you don’t meet it. There is a simple and easy way for you to resolve the local power issue in your favor, but you won’t make a move to grab it. Are you guys crazy?”

“Do not insult us, young woman,” Louis DuVale snapped.

“I’m not insulting you. I’m asking you a question. Bobby, if you had the money, what would you do?”

“Julie and I would homestead Ft. Louis in two weeks.”

“Nelly, what does it take to establish a bank in this nuthouse?”

“Money, of course, but the actual chartering of a bank is easily enough done. I’ve already drawn up the necessary papers. All I need is names for the president and the six members of the board of directors.”

“Bobby?”

“Mary Hogg has about had it at her old man’s bank. She got her MBA from the University of Geneva in the Helvetican Confederacy.”

“I hear they train the best bankers in human space,” Kris said.

“I’ll drop Mary a message,” Bobby said.

“My daughter would never leave her place in our bank,” one of the younger men at the table said, half standing.

“Don’t wait dinner on her,” Bobby said. “She’ll meet us for coffee, Kris.”

Kris considered her options . . . for about five seconds. She could stay here and listen to Texarkana’s power types cry in their beer, or she could get going on the solution that had been staring them in the face. Talk about not being able to see the future on account of the past!

“Let’s go, Bobby.”

The two of them headed for the door. Jack was caught by surprise but quickly got the Marines following in her tracks.

The doors of an elevator were wide open as a woman exited it; Kris and Bobby had to run to get it. Kris found herself grinning widely at Jack as the doors closed on his scowling face. Finally, she’d put one over on him!

By the time the bell rang on the bottom floor, Kris had the First Bank of Ft. Louis chartered and funded by half a billion Wardhaven dollars. She and Bobby were fast walking for the cars out front when an elevator opened and a squad of Marines hustled out.

Kris glanced over her shoulder, delighted for the first time in months to be a step ahead of Jack.

“Bomb,” Nelly shouted even as BoMB echoed in Kris’s head.

“Where?”

“Above us. Duck, Kris!” Nelly yelled.

Kris did, taking Bobby down beneath her.

The last thing she thought was, I’m not going to let Bobby take my bomb, followed by, Jack’s never going to let me forget this.

The last thing she heard was a roar in her ears before the darkness took her.