Conquistador

EPILOGUE

“Cigarette?” Lieutenant Mordechai Pearlmutter said. He was a slender beak-nosed swarthy young man of medium height. “Blindfold?”

“Get it over with!” Dimitri Batyushkov said; the only other sound beyond the gulls and the distant sea was the muttered prayers of the black-bearded, black-robed priest off near the entrance.

The adobe courtyard was plain whitewash, but the wall behind him had a row of pockmarks across it at chest height, all new, and some splashes. The Prime drew himself up as the row of Pearlmutter militiamen filed in with their rifles sloped; he had asked only one thing, that he not be bound to the post.

The officer—Batyushkov wearily thought a curse at the unseen sardonic face of the old man who had picked a damned Yid for this!—drew his .45 as he walked back to where the squad would stand; he would administer the coup with the pistol, one final shot behind the ear, if it was necessary. A noncom walked down the row of young men, most of them pale-faced and grim, one or two nervously excited. He took each rifle and loaded it with one cartridge, his back turned to the soldier so that none could see which held the one blank.

“Ready!” the young Pearlmutter collateral said. The weapons came up to the present.

“Aim!” And they went level, all but one or two steady. It would probably be quick.

The air was sweet; he was not afraid, but it was a hard thing to leave a world so beautiful. Why was I not content with it? he asked himself. There was no answer.

“Fire!”

Giovanni Colletta sat behind his desk, looking at the surveillance screens. The soldiers outside on this bright cool fall day had many shoulder flashes: the Rolfe lion, the Pearlmutter Seal of Solomon, even the Von Traupiz eagle. None wore his… and he suspected it would be a long time before the tommy gun appeared on an armed man’s shoulder flash.

The door swung open. Well, I was wrong, the Colletta thought mordantly.

“Major Mattei,” he said.

The soldier saluted and then bowed. “Sir,” he said. “I have been ordered to bring you the decision of the Chairman.”

“As if I didn’t know it,” the Colletta said; he could feel the eyes boring into his back, from the portrait above.

Mattei silently drew the pistol at his side and laid it on the desk before his overlord. “Chairman Rolfe says that he allows this—and the survival of the Colletta domain—as a favor to his old friend, your father.”

Giovanni felt the hot flush of anger on his cheeks. “He would spare my son anyway! There is nothing to tie him to my actions. Why should I make his political life easier?”

Mattei sighed. “Sir, I am afraid that Chairman Emeritus Rolfe predicted that would be your answer.”

Giovanni snorted, turning half away from the man who had commanded the domain’s troops. Mattei took up the pistol, and the Colletta had a brief moment of utter surprise as he saw it leveled.

“Which is why he allowed me two rounds,” Mattei murmured, looking at the body sprawled back in the rich leather of the chair. Was that a glint of amusement in the painted eyes in the portrait on the wall above?

“Two rounds, so that I could perform this last service for you, sir. And for your House.”

He raised the pistol to his own temple, then shook his head. Better to be safe, even if it was inelegant; if he had a private horror, it was to be a human vegetable hooked to machines. He sat at the feet of the chair—of the man he had followed for so long. Better that he be found so, to make it plain the Colletta had taken his own life, and his faithful retainer had followed him.

The metal of the automatic tasted bitter and oily in his mouth, but not for long.

“Most pleasures fade with age,” John Rolfe said quietly, obviously savoring the smoke of the cigarillo. “One of the few exceptions is power—not least because it enables one to punish one’s enemies and reward one’s friends.”

Outside the elegant octagonal office, the rains of winter streaked down on the glass of the windows; a fire crackled merrily in the hearth, and a cat curled asleep on the rug before it. There was a hint of the pleasant odor of burning oak mingled with fine tobacco and the scent of a snifter of brandy nearby.

And all ends well, Tom Christiansen thought, shifting his weight to spare the right leg. And just how ironic am I being, there?

John Rolfe waved him to a seat. “I insist,” he said, then grinned, a charmingly wicked expression in the ancient seamed face. “Pains in the leg are something I’m thoroughly familiar with…. Mr. Christiansen, do you know what my favorite part of a Shakespearian drama always was?”

“No, sir.”

“The end, where the duke or prince comes out and plays deus ex machina.”

Adrienne chuckled slightly beside Tom on the sofa. “And I’m the raccoon in the background, Grandfather?” she said.

Well, you won’t be looking like a raccoon much longer, Tom thought stoutly. The reconstructive surgery was over, and the bruises that covered most of her face would fade. Her hand stole into his, and he gripped it gently. Her grandfather went on:

“Now… Mr. Tully, I assume you and this young woman intend to marry?”

“Yes, sir,” Tully said, taking Sandra Margolin’s hand as she sat nervously in her wheelchair; one leg was still in a cast, waiting for the last in a series of ceramic-and-titanium implants to bond with the bone.

“The young heal quickly,” John Rolfe said. “In heart not least. And your marital intentions are very convenient. So much so that I would have had to insist….”

The ancient eagle eyes turned on Salvatore Colletta II: “Young Salvo, we’re tying up loose ends right now, and this young lady is—albeit on the wrong side of the blanket—a cousin of yours. I presume you’re not going to be tiresome about a DNA test?”

“No, sir,” the Colletta said. “Of course, I will have her enrolled among the collaterals of my House at once.”

Since you’re on long-term probation and escaped execution only by virtue of your father’s extremely convenient suicide and extremely detailed documentation proving you were entirely in the dark, Tom thought mordantly. I am somehow not surprised.

“Just so,” John Rolfe VI nodded. “It will do the Commonwealth good to have that group… diversified. And that will make you, Mr. Tully, a member of the Thirty. Hmmm. Of course, you and your bride will also be eligible for an estate of your own in the Colletta domain. I think the Colletta, all things considered, would find the Owens Valley and its attached silver mine a suitable endowment. Especially in view of the long delay in regularizing Ms. Margolin’s status.”

“Of course, sir,” the second Salvatore said. He surprised them all with a smile. “It doesn’t have very positive associations for me, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, sir.”

Rolfe smiled, a sly expression this time. “And the Tully family will have an Indian princess at its genealogical root, just like the Rolfes.”

He trickled smoke through his nostrils. “Now, let me think…. I’ve given the Batyushkov domain to young Siegfried von Traupitz; it would be embarrassing for him to inherit from his father, after killing the man. Let his younger brother take the original domain and committee seat, when he reaches his majority.”

“That was a good idea. And you should do something for Jim Simmons, Grandfather,” Adrienne Rolfe said.

“Seeing as he’s dead and has no immediate family, what can I do besides a posthumous medal?”

“Something for Kolomusnim’s family. Jim’s tracker. He’d want that.”

“Ah.” The elder Rolfe closed his eyes, then sighed. “Very well. I’ll arrange for citizenship for the tracker’s children, and scholarships, and I’ll enjoin Charles to keep an eye on them in matters of patronage, according to their abilities…. I suppose you will too? Excellent. Loyalty must run both ways. And for you, Mr. Villers? What would you have of me? My House is in your debt, as well. Although I doubt, to be frank, your underlying devotion to its cause.”

The black man met the leaf green eyes levelly. “Well, you gave Good Star a whole country down in Sonora,” he said. “You going to promote me to the Families as well?”

The old man grinned like a shark. “I suspect that you wish me to do so, Mr. Villers, only in order that you may throw it back in my face.”

Henry Villers’s own face fell a little. Tom smiled to himself; there were no flies on John Rolfe VI, even if he was slowing down a bit.

I suspect this will be his last hurrah, though, after he’s tied up the ends, he thought. John Rolfe VI was enjoying himself, but he did look pretty tired. A fitting conclusion.

“Well, Mr. Villers, what would you say to a job?” Villers looked startled. “You were a soldier, and a detective, and a very good one, I understand. You ferreted out our secret, after all. Now, what would you say to… mmm, shall we say a captain’s commission? Gate Security must be rebuilt, after all….”

Tom nodded sympathetically as he saw temptation warring with impulse on the other man’s face. That wouldn’t only make Villers an important man; it would guarantee his children’s positions in the Commonwealth, too. Nepotism was an established mode of operation here. He’d have the power to push their careers forward as well, and he’d have a set of powerful patrons backing him while he did it.

“Can I think about it?” he said, with small beads of sweat on the dark brown skin of his forehead. “Sir.”

“By all means, Mr. Villers. By all means. Take as much time as you wish. Your father-in-law will need you to run his establishment for a time, in any case.”

I wonder what that means? Tom thought.

“And shall I find a reward for you, Mr. Christiansen?” John Rolfe said, after the others had kissed his hand and left.

“You know better, sir,” Tom said, and helped Adrienne to her feet. What a pair of wrecks we are! “I’ve found my own.”

“Excellent, young man. And now if you will excuse me? There are a few things I must attend to. One or two, before the baptism.”

He laughed at Adrienne’s expression; Tom had to admit that it was sort of raccoon-like, with the rings of dark bruise around her eyes.

“You thought I wouldn’t know? Reckless of you to begin so soon, but then we Rolfes never were much for caution.”

They bowed over his hand. “Baciamo le mani,” Tom murmured.

“Scary,” he said when they were outside, and winced a little as his foot caught on a rug.

Adrienne’s hand closed on his arm. “Do you want to stay over?” she said. “It’s a bit of a drive back to Seven Oaks, in this weather.”

“Weather?” he said, looking down at her and grinning. “You Californians call a bit of rain weather? Why, back in North Dakota we’d call this a balmy spring evening.”

“Yah, you betcha,” she said. “And you walked through blizzards to get to school every day, with a rope tied to your waist and a St. Bernard following along behind.”

“Skis,” Tom said. “That’s all we Norski need. Skis, and an axe to beat off the wolves.” He looked up; Tully was waiting, standing behind Sandra’s chair. “Heck, Roy can drive. Roy! You want to crash at our place?”

“Hell, yes, Kemosabe,” the smaller man said. “We can talk about what we’ll build out on our place… where we’re really out in the country.”

“Sounds good,” Tom said. “Let’s go. I want to get home.” He caught Adrienne’s eye and laughed softly. “Nice-sounding word, after all the goddamned adventures, isn’t it?”

“You said it.”

Sergei Lermontov was sweating slightly, despite the fact that the temperature inside the great metal room was barely fifty degrees. The wreckage had long since been cleared away and the damaged structures removed, but the echoing emptiness of what had been a bustling nexus for so long was a reproach in itself.

Although not so much so as the armed guards, he thought. And the sentence of death with conditional stay of execution.

Beside him, Ralph Barnes made a final adjustment to the control console. A stroke of luck there, that he was the one to interrogate me and take my offer of a new Gate to the Rolfe. Like most Americans, Barnes was sentimental about persons he’d come to know as persons.

A metal framework outlined the area where the Gate had stood for so long; control cables ran to it, and to a cat’s cradle of leads all around it.

“You must understand, sir,” he said. “The wave form—”

“Mr. Lermontov,” John Rolfe VI said softly.

He sat at his ease in a padded chair, comfortable in his alpaca greatcoat and ascot. The armed men behind him somehow looked entirely at one with his conservative elegance.

“I find myself growing less patient as I grow older,” he said. “I’m also content to let you experts handle these matters. Leaders motivate their subordinates, and the subordinates act. A division of labor.”

“Blackmailer,” Ralph Barnes growled, shooting him a glance from under shaggy brown brows.

John Rolfe arched one of his. “Why, Mr. Barnes, you wrong me,” he said, with a slight sardonic smile. “Didn’t I shower you with rewards and praise? You are here entirely as a volunteer this time.”

“And you said you’d shoot Sergei if he couldn’t give you back your toy,” Ralph said. “What’m I supposed to do, let you kill him? Besides, Sergei could do it alone. It would just take longer, and maybe something would go wrong and everyone would get hurt.”

“He helped break my toy,” Rolfe pointed out reasonably. “It’s only just that if he is to live where others died, he make some recompense. And I do wish a Christmas present for my grandchildren and prospective great-grandchildren. The Commonwealth can survive without the Gate, but regaining it would be a major boon.”

Sergei prayed to a God in whom he’d never believed, and touched the screen.

CRACK!

He winced, then looked up and let himself slump forward in relief, his palms resting on the console and breath shuddering in and out in great gasps. Rolfe might have killed him without rancor, as the price of a sporting wager…

But if I died, it would be in earnest, he thought, and waved the probe forward.

A long boom swung through the gate, with sensors on its end. And a television pickup; it was keyed to a large flatscreen placed where they could all look at it.

The screen flickered, then settled to a clear image. It was raining there, too; as well it might, in midwinter along the Californian coast.

“But where is the Gate complex on FirstSide?” he asked himself; all he could see was long grass….

Rolfe began to laugh; coughed, recovered, laughed again.

Because in the grass was a dead animal, huge and shaggy, almost certainly a giant sloth. Paws braced on it, the saber-tooth bared its foot-long fangs and screamed, flattening its ears and bristling its orange-and-black-striped fur.