"I can't invalidate my own grants," Giscard said, wringing his hands. "I just can't."

One of the military officers sneered and ostentatiously turned her back.

"Why, of course not," Lucius said. "This is clearly a case that a commission from the Protectorate Office has to decide. It seems to me that a responsible official in your position would freeze all proceedings in local courts and refer the question of validity back to Paris for determination. That's what a strong and responsible Protector of Zenith would do."

"That could take years," said the civilian aide, apparently Giscard's legal advisor. "That could take a decade."

Lucius smiled more broadly than he had before during this discussion. "Yes, it could well defer the question of enforcement until long after Protector Giscard has been appointed to some distant post."

"Yes, that's right," Giscard said. "Yes!" He bobbed his head three times as if shaking the point down into his consciousness. He looked at his legal advisor and said, "Candace, see what you can do, will you? And quickly, this has gone on long enough."

"As a matter of fact, Mr. Candace," Lucius said, "I happen to have a draft right here that you might like to look at."

He took a recording chip from his breast pocket and offered it to the advisor. Lucius' smile had the same authority Mark had seen on the face of Yerby Bannock as he surveyed the unconscious thugs on Dittersdorf.

The limousine Lucius had borrowed from Daniels purred softly at a thousand feet. The land below showed few marks of human involvement: a road, scattered farms; a village of thirty or forty houses. Before he visited Greenwood, Mark would have thought of this as wild country.

Before Greenwood…

"Dad," Mark said. He forced himself to look at his father as he spoke. If one or the other of them had been driving, there'd have been an excuse to avoid eye contact.

Lucius waggled a finger toward the ground. "I suppose you find this a change from Earth," he said. "And Greenwood, on the other end of the scale."

"I was thinking about Greenwood," Mark explained. "It's-Dad, what do you think would happen if the plaintiffs offered Mr. Bannock a bribe to, to see things their way?"

Lucius laughed wholeheartedly. Since most of his actions were muted by calculation, this loud amusement was like seeing the sun come out in the middle of a blizzard. "Oh, surely they wouldn't be that stupid, would they?" he said at last.

Mark felt an enormous sense of relief. "You think he'd turn them down even if he sounded tempted?" he said.

"No, no," his father said with a dismissive sweep of his hand. "That kind, the Yerby Bannocks-they'll never turn down a franc, a drink, or a woman. But he'll weasel-word his promise and then he'll go right ahead and do exactly what he intended to do from the first."

"Ah-h-h," Mark said as the light dawned. He thought for a moment and went on, "So Yerby's a type, then? I've never met…"

"Yerby Bannock's a type in the same sense that the Mars Diamond is a type," Lucius said. He studied Mark with an intensity Mark didn't understand. "There are many other diamonds, but the rest aren't flawless and don't weigh thirty-seven pounds."

Lucius looked at the ground out his side of the clear compartment. After a moment he turned back to Mark and said, "Ah… sometimes there might be a situation where soldiers were required to destroy an enemy automatic weapon."

Mark looked blank. He didn't have any idea of why his father had changed the subject. For the first time in Mark's memory, he thought he saw embarrassment beneath the normal cool expression.

"Generally, almost always, there's a better way to deal with the gun than charging straight at it," Lucius continued, holding eye contact. "But every once in a while there's a case where you really do have to go in head-on. Then it's useful to have a Yerby Bannock around."

"Ah!" said Mark. He was glad to have a context, though he knew there had to be more in the explanation than he was seeing at the moment.

"The odd thing is," Lucius continued, "the Bannocks survive that sort of activity more often than you'd imagine. But it's not a good idea to stand very close to them. Unless you have to."

"I see," said Mark. And now he did.

18. Plotting Against the Enemy

The Ishandlwana Suite was slightly less hideous with daylight streaming through the west windows. Mark still didn't envy Dagmar Wately, seated in a chair around which a fake python coiled with its jaws open to engulf her head.

Yerby stumbled out of the bedroom, holding his temples. He was the last to join the gathering of defendants, investors, and attorneys, even though they were meeting in his suite as arranged.

"Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior," he muttered, holding his head with both hands. "I think there was something wrong with the booze I got last night at…"

His voice trailed off. Mark figured the reason was that Yerby couldn't possibly remember the names of all the places he'd been drinking the past night and this morning.

"I believe we're all present," Lucius said. He stood with his legs spread slightly and his hands crossed behind his back. "Elector Daniels, would you care to proceed?"

"Go on, Maxwell," Daniels said. He'd been noticeably more deferential toward Mark's father since they returned with the Protector's order taking jurisdiction away from the Zenith courts. "You've brought us to this point, after all."

Lucius eyed the room. The Greenwoods looked either cowed or hungover, though nobody else appeared to have tied one on quite as tightly as Yerby had. Amy, seated primly in a corner, had been staring at her brother with smoldering anger. When Daniels spoke she raised her camera to record the meeting.

"Simply put, mesdames and gentlemen," Lucius said, "the question of your grants' validity has been referred to the Paris bureaucracy. I'll be traveling to Earth to put your side-our side-to the authorities there. I'm an attorney, not a fortuneteller, but I believe your claims will receive a fairer hearing there than here on Zenith."

Dagmar snorted. "You mean they'll give us blindfolds before they shoot us?" she said.

"Perhaps a little better than that," Lucius replied. His smile was like the sun reflecting from a glacier.

"This doesn't mean that you can let your guard down on Greenwood," Ms. Macey said. "Finch and the others know that their best chance of success would be to seize possession before the Alliance commission has time to act. The risk of an actual invasion is even greater than it was before."

"But that wouldn't be legal, would it?" Amy asked from behind her camera. She looked at Lucius. "If Protector Giscard's ruled in our favor?"

"He hasn't ruled in anyone's favor, Ms. Bannock," Lucius said. "And Ms. Macey is quite correct. Possession isn't nine points of the law, but it certainly tends to be nine-tenths of any political decision. Politics, not laws, are the matter at issue in the case from now on."

"Don't worry about us keeping up our end," Yerby said. He was still wearing his fancy jacket. Mark saw rusty stains on the right cuff and lapel. Blood, he thought, but not surprisingly it didn't seem to be Yerby's blood.

"I don't believe there's anything more to say," Lucius said. "I've booked passage to Paris for later in the week. As Ms. Macey suggested, it might be desirable for those of you who are defendants to return to your homes as soon as possible."

He smiled, nodded to Yerby, and added, "To make sure that they remain your homes. Despite the attractions of urban entertainments."

"If I never take another drink, it'll be too soon," muttered Buck Koslovsky. "There's some green stuff, absinthe, in the bar and I figure, one of these sweet liqueurs. I tell you, a bottle of that and I didn't know what hit me."