She flashed her visitor a jittery grin. “You’ll have to pardon my language. I know I curse too much. Can’t help it. Comes from being forced through snooty private schools when I was a youngster. Maybe that’s why I’m such a rebellious creature.” She pranced back to her chair and flung herself into it. “That’s what my parents’ psychologists said, anyway. Personally, I think they’re full of shit.”
Anton
Watching and listening to her, Anton was struck by how closely Lady Catherine’s speech resembled her movements. Quick and explosive, with scant respect for grammatical elbow room. Her wide mouth and expressive blue eyes added to the effect, as did the great mane of curly blond hair. The only part of the woman’s face which seemed subdued was her snub nose, as if it were the deaf mute in a lively village. And despite the title, and the Tor fortune which lay behind it, Lady Catherine’s face was that of a villager, not a countess. She even had some sunburned skin peeling off of her nose. With her extremely fair complexion, of course, that was not surprising. But most Manticoran noblewomen would have been too mortified by the prospect to have taken the risk of getting a sunburn in the first place. Lady Catherine, Anton suspected, suffered that small indignity with great frequency and a complete lack of concern.
Oddly enough, the naval officer found the ensemble thoroughly charming. He had come here reluctantly, driven by nothing more than sheer and pressing need, and with the full expectation that he would dislike the countess. Like all Gryphon highlanders, Anton Zilwicki detested the aristocracy in general—and the left wing members of it with a particular passion. No one in the Manticoran aristocracy was further to the left than Lady Catherine Montaigne. Even hardcore Progressives like Lady Descroix considered her “utopian and irresponsible.” Countess New Kiev, the ultra-doctrinaire leader of the Liberal party, had once denounced her on the floor of the House of Lords as a “dangerous demagogue.”
Perhaps, he mused whimsically, that was because his own personality was attracted to opposites, when it came to women. His dead wife had not resembled Lady Catherine in the least, physically. Helen had been short, dark-complected, and on the buxom side. True, there was a closer ideological correlation. Helen, somewhat unusually for a naval officer, had generally followed the Progressives—but only up to a point, and always on the very right edge. And when it came to naval affairs, she was as pure a Centrist as you could ask for. She had certainly never been accused—as Lady Catherine had, innumerable times—of consorting with dangerous and violent radicals. But, like Lady Catherine, Helen had exuded rambunctious energy. And, though she had rarely lapsed into profanity, Helen had had the same way of expressing her opinions directly and forcefully.
Quite unlike Anton himself, who always tried—and almost always succeeded—in maintaining a tight and focused control over his thoughts and actions. Old Stone Face was the nickname his wife had bestowed upon him. Even his daughter, who was the one person to whom Anton unbent, teased him about it. Daddy Dour, she sometimes called him. Or just Popsicle.
On the rare occasions when he thought much on the subject, Anton ascribed his personality to the stark upbringing of the Gryphon highlands. The Navy’s psychologists, in their periodic evaluations, had an infinitely more complex way of explaining the matter. Anton could never follow their reasoning, partly because it was always presented in that fearsome jargon so beloved by psychologists, but mostly—
Because I think they’re full of shit.
But he didn’t speak the words. He simply gave Lady Catherine a friendly smile. “I don’t mind, ma’am. Curse all you want.”
He planted his hands on his knees. His hands, like his face and body, were square and blunt. “But I’m telling you, the ambassador and the admiral—and Admiral Young’s whole little flock of armchair intelligence advisers—”
He couldn’t resist: “—are full of shit.”
All traces of humor vanished. “My daughter was not kidnapped by the Peeps. Or, if she was, it’s some kind of black operation being done completely outside the Havenite command chain. By amateurs, to boot.”
Lady Catherine frowned. “How can you be so certain of that? The demands they are making upon you, in exchange for keeping your daughter unharmed—”
Anton flicked the fingers of his hands, without removing the hands themselves from his knees. In its own way, the gesture was also explosive.
“Doesn’t make sense. For at least three reasons. First of all, the demands were left in my apartment. Written, if you can believe it, on a sheet of paper.”
Seeing the frown on the Countess’ face, Anton realized that he had to elaborate.
“Ma’am, no field agent in his right mind would leave that kind of physical evidence on the scene of a crime. They would have communicated with me electronically, in some form or other. Leaving aside the fact that a physical note is legal evidence, it’s almost impossible to keep some traces of yourself off of it. Modern forensic equipment—and the stuff the Solarians have is every bit as good as what the Manticoran police use—is damned near magical, the way it can squeeze information out of any kind of physical object a person has been in touch with.”
He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small, flat package. “As it happens, although the Chicago police are not officially involved, I do have some personal contacts. One of them saw to it that the ransom note was given the full treatment. As well as the evidence which I, ah, uncovered elsewhere. The results are on this disk.”
He tapped the package against his knee. “But I’ll get to that in a moment. First, let me finish my train of thought.”
With his left hand, he held up a finger. “So that’s point number one. The people who abducted my daughter were not professional Havenite agents, nor were they following orders from one. Or, if he was one, he was a desk pilot rather than a field man.”
He flicked up his middle finger to join the first. “Point two. The action itself—kidnapping, for God’s sake—is completely out of whack with the supposed result. I’m an officer in naval intelligence, true, but my specialty is technical evaluation. My background’s in naval construction. I was a yard dog before my wife was killed. After that—”
He paused for a moment, forcing his emotions under. “After that, I transferred into the Office of Naval Intelligence.” Another pause. “I guess I wanted to do something that would strike the Peeps directly. Unlike Helen, however, I was never good enough at naval tactics to have much hope of climbing to a command position in the fleet. So intelligence seemed like the best bet.”
Lady Catherine cocked her head. There was something faintly inquisitive about the gesture. Anton thought he understood it, and, if so, was a bit astonished at her perspicacity.
He smiled ruefully, running his fingers through his coarse mat of hair. “Yeah, I know. ‘And how many barrels of oil will thy vengeance fetch thee in Nantucket market, Captain Ahab?’ ”
She returned the smile with a great, gleaming one of her own. Her eyes crinkled with pleasure. “Good for you!” she exclaimed. “A rock-hard Gryphon highlander who can quote the ancient classics. I’ll bet you learned to do it just so you could show up the Manticore nobility.”
For all the gravity of his purpose, and his own tightly controlled terror for his daughter, Anton found it impossible not to laugh. Chuckle, at least. “Only at first, Lady Catherine! After a while, I started enjoying them in their own right.”
But the humor faded. Here, too, there was old heartbreak. It had been his wife Helen—a Manticoran herself, and from “good stock” if not the nobility—who had first introduced Anton to Moby Dick. Not, in truth, because Helen had been a devotee of classic literature, but simply because she had shared the passion for any kind of naval fiction which was common to many officers in the Manticoran navy. Among whose ranks was firmly held the opinion that Joseph Conrad was the greatest author of all time, except for a vocal minority which held forth for Patrick O’Brian.