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The Duke Nicholas Romanov leaned against a parapet of the landing control tower outside Mat E'trov. The night's first moon, like a coin minted from the finest Whiyonovian silver, hung well above the southern horizon. Beneath it, the jagged cliffs of the Barrier Wall shone like parched icing through a dust haze. To his left, the lights of Mat E'trov shone like parched icing through a dust haze. To his left, the lights of Mat E'trov glowed in that haze---yellow---white---blue.
He thought the notices posted now above his signature all through the populous places of the planet. "Our Sublime Pbjetibi Sultan has charged me to take possession of this planet and end all dispute."
He shook his head to drive away the angry thoughts, glanced back at the field where five of his own battleships were posted around the rim like monolithic sentries.
Better a cautious delay than....
The lieutenant was a good one, he reminded himself. A man marked for advancement, completely loyal.
"Our sublime Pbejitibi Sultan...."
If the people of this decadent garrison could only see the Sultan's private note to his "Noble Duke"---the disdainful allusions to veiled men and women. "...but what else is one to expect of barbarians whose dearest dream is to live beyond the ordered security of the kuznetsovches?"
The Duke felt in this movement that his own dearest dream was to end all class distinctions and never again to think of deadly order. He looked up and out of the dust at the unwinking stars, thought: Around one of those lights circles Eser....but I'll never see my home planet again. The longing for Eser was a sudden pain in his heart. He felt that it did not come from within himself, but that it reached out to him from Eser. He could not bring himself to call this dry wasteland of Dyuna his home, and he doubted he ever would.
He decided he would mask his feelings, for the boy's sake. If Alexei was ever to have a home, Dyuna would have to be it. He might think of Dyuna as a hell he'd reached before death, but he must find here that which would inspire Alexei. There must be something.
A wave of self-pity, immediately despised and rejected, swept through him, and for some reason he found himself recalling two lines from a poem Gustav Vasa often repeated....
"My lungs taste the air of Time146Please respect copyright.PENANAsolEkFNAki
Blown past falling sands...."
Blown past falling sands...."
Gustav would find falling sands aplenty here, the Duke thought. The central wastelands beyond those moon-frosted cliffs were desert---barren rock, dunes, and blowing dust, an unexplored dry wilderness with here and there along its rim and maybe scattered through it, knots of Szganys. If anything could buy a future for the Romanov bloodline, the Szganys just might do it.
If, that is, the Seppanens hadn't managed to infect even the Szganys with their poisonous schemes.
They had tried to take the life of the Duke's son!
A scraping metal racked vibrated through the tower, shook the parapet beneath his arms. Blast shutters dropped down in front of him, obscuring the view.
Shuttle's coming in, he thought. It is now time to go down and go to work. He turned to the stairs behind him, headed down to his assembly room, trying to stay calm as he descended, to ready his face for the coming encounter.
They had tried to take the life of the Duke's son!
The men were already going in from the field when he reached the yellow-domed room. They carried their spacebags over their shoulders, shouting and roistering like students returning from a long school break.
"Hey! Feel that under your hooves? That's gravity, man!" "How many Gs does this place pull? Feels heavy." "Nine tenths of a G by the book."
The crossfire of thrown words filled the big room.
"Did you get a good look at this hole on the way down? Where's all the lot this place's supposed to have?" "The Seppanens took it with 'em!" "I'm for a hot shower and a soft bed!" "Haven't you heard, stupid? Now showers down here. You scrub your ass with sand!" "Hey! Shut up! The Duke!"
The Duke stepped out of the stair entry into a suddenly quiet room.
Gustav Vasa strode along at the point of the crowd, his bag slung over one shoulder, the neck of his ten-string ostriolkusk clutched in the other hand. They were long-fingered hands with big thumbs, full of tiny movements that drew such delicate music from the ostriolkusk.
The Duke watched Vasa, admiring the ugly lump of a man, noting the glass-splinter eyes with their gleam of savage understanding. Now here was a man who lived outside the kuznetsovches while obeying their every precept. What was it Alexei had called him? "Gustav the valorous."
Vasa's wispy blond hair trailed across barren sots on his head. His wide mouth was twisted into a pleasant sneer, and the scar of the inkvine whip slashed across his jawline seemed to move with a life all its own. His whole air was of casual, shoulder-set capability. He came up to the Duke and bowed.
"Gustav?" Nicholas asked.
"Milord." He gestured with the ostriolkusk towards the men in the room. "This is the last of them. I'd have preferred coming in with the first wave, but..."
"There are still some Seppanens for you," the Duke said. "Step aside with me, Gustav, where we may talk."
"I am yours to command, Milord."
They moved into an alcove beside a coil-slot water machine while the men stirred restlessly in the big room. Vasa dropped his bag into a corner, kept his grip on the ostriolkusk.
"How many men can you let Botkin have?" the Duke asked.
"Is Eugene in trouble, Sire?"
"He's only lost two agents, but his advance men gave us an excellent line on the whole Seppanen setup here. If we move fast, we might gain a measure of security, the breathing space we need. He wants as many men as you can spare...men who won't balk at a little knife work."
"I can lend him three hundred of my best," Vasa said. "Where shall I send them?"
"To the main gate. Botkin has an agent there waiting to take them."
"Shall I get about it at once, Sire?"
"In just a moment. We've got another problem. The field commander will hold the shuttle here until dawn on a pretext. The Guild Ayliner that brought us is going about its business, and the shuttle's supposed to make contact with a cargo ship taking up a load of spice."
"Our spice, Milord?"
"Our spice. But the shuttle will also carry some of the spice hunters from the old regime. They've opted to leave with the change of fief and the Judge of the Change has given them his blessing. There are good workers, Gustav, about 800 of them. Before the shuttle departs, you must persuade some of those men to sign on with us."
"How persuasive should I be, Sire?"
"I want their willing cooperation, Gustav. Those men have experience and skills we need. The fact that they're leaving suggests they're not part of the Seppanen machine. Botkin thinks there could be some bad ones planted in the group, but then, he is known for seeing assassins behind every door."
"Eugene has found some very productive shadows in his time, Milord."
"And there are some he hasn't found, unfortunately. But I think planting sleepers in this outgoing crowd would show too much imagination for the Seppanens."
"Possibly, Sire. Where are these men?"
"Down on the lower level, in a waiting room. I suggest you go down there and play a tune or two to soften their minds, then turn on the pressure. You may offer positions of authority to those who qualify. Offer 20% higher wages than they got under the Seppanens."
"No more than that, Sire? I know the Seppanen pay scales. And to men with their termination pay in their wallets and the wanderlust upon them....well, Sire, 20% would barely seem proper inducement to stay."
Nicholas spoke up impatiently. "Then use your own judgement in particular cases. Just remember that the treasury is not bottomless. Hold it to 20% when you have a choice. We especially need spice drivers, weather scanners, sand specialists---any with open sand experience."
"Understood, Sire. 'They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up as the east wind blows, and they shall gather the captivity of the sand.'"
"A very moving quotation, that," the Duke said. "Turn your crew over to a lieutenant. Have him give a short drill on water discipline, then bed the men down for the night in the dormitories adjoining the field. Field personnel will direct them. And you mustn't neglect the men for Botkin."
"300 of the best, Sire." He took up his spacebag. "Where shall I report to you when I've completed my chores?"
"I've taken over a council room topside here. We'll hold our staff meetings there. I want to arrange a new planetary dispersal order with armored squads going out first."
Vasa stopped in the act of turning away, caught Nicholas's eye. "Do you anticipate that kind of trouble, Sire? Did you not previously say there was a Judge of Change here?"
"It's both open battle and secret," the Duke said. "There'll be blood aplenty spilled here before we're through."
" 'And the water which thou takest out of the river shall become as blood upon the barren earth,'" Vasa quoted.
The Duke sighed. "Hurry back, Gustav."
"Very good, Milord." The whipscar rippled to his grin. "'Behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work.'" He turned, strode to the middle of the room, paused to relay his orders, hurried on through the men.
Nicholas shook his head at the retreating back. Vasa was a continual amazement....a head full of songs, quotations, and flowery phrases....and the heart of an assassin when it came to inflicting death on the Seppanens.
Presently, Nicholas took a leisurely diagonal course across to the lift, acknowledging salutes with a casual hand wave. He recognized a propaganda corpsman, stopped to give him a message that could be relayed to the men through channels: those who had brought their women would want to know that the women were safe and where they could be found. The others would want to know that the population here appeared to boast more men than women.
The Duke slapped the propaganda tech on the arm, a signal that the message had top priority to be put out right away, then continued across the room. He nodded to the men, smiled, traded pleasantries with a subaltern.
Command must always look confident, he thought. All that faith riding on your shoulders while you sit in the crucial seat and never show it.146Please respect copyright.PENANAUIfGiBx7cx
He breathed a sigh of relief when the lift swallowed him, allowing him to turn and face the impersonal doors.
They had tried to take the life of the Duke's son!
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