"Holy Sant!" he whispered, spinning away. "It can't be." He looked again. Rhafu's weathered face seemed to swell till it occupied his whole field of vision. The breeding master had aged terribly, but Deeth did not doubt his ident.i.ty for an instant.

The old man did not seem to notice one curious boy. Back-country kids came in to stare at the wondrous port all the time.

It took all Deeth's will power not to run and hug Rhafu, to seize this one sc.r.a.p that had survived a devastated past.

He fled instead, his mind a riot. The possibilities!

Rhafu's very existence set off the alarm bells. Was he a human agent, either human himself or someone who had made an accommodation to the animals? Someone had betrayed Prefactlas. The perfect timing of the attack on the Norbon station reflected possession of solid inside information.

If Rhafu were guilty why was he now a laborer, mildewing on the a.s.s of the social scale? The humans would have killed their traitor the instant he was no longer useful. Or would have rewarded him better.

Deeth locked himself into the crude shack where he and Emily lived. Where he lived. Emily was no longer a part of his poverty. He would never see her again. He wrestled with his fears and suspicions.

Someone knocked. He had few acquaintances. Police? Emily?

Expecting a blow from the hammer of fate, he opened the door.

Rhafu pushed through, seized his left wrist, glared at the tattoo still visible there. The stony hardness left his face. He slammed the door, enveloped Deeth in a ferocious hug. "Sant be praised, Sant be praised," he murmured.

Deeth wriggled free and stepped back. There were tears in the old man's eyes.

"Deeth. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw you at the pits. Thought my mind was playing tricks. I gave up years ago. Lad, what's been keeping you? Where've you been?"

Deeth babbled his own questions.

They hugged again.

The past had come home. He was Norbon w'Deeth again. He was Sangaree. He was a Head...Of a one-man Family?

"Hold it. Hold it," Rhafu said. "Let's get organized. You tell me your story, then I'll tell you mine."

"You make me green with antic.i.p.ation," Deeth complained.

"And compel you to be brief if you want your questions answered," Rhafu countered.

Deeth wasted few words. When he mentioned finding the remains of the Dharvon heir, Rhafu chuckled but withheld comment.

"The girl," he asked when Deeth finished. "You're sure you can trust her? We can reach her."

"She'll keep her mouth shut." He saw murder in Rhafu's eyes.

"It's wisest to take no chances."

"She won't say anything."

"You're the Norbon." Rhafu shrugged as if to say he was acceding to Deeth against his better judgment.

"Tell me your d.a.m.ned story, you old scoundrel. How the h.e.l.l did you manage to live through the raid?"

"Your father's orders. He had second thoughts about sending you off alone. Said he wanted you to have a bodyguard and adviser during the hard times after the raid."

"How you survived is what stumps me."

"It was grim. By then the Marines were dropping their perimeter. We killed all the breeders and field hands who knew me. I dressed up as a wild one. The first Marines in found me leading an attack on one of the guest cottages, howling and screaming and throwing spears around like a rabid caveman."

Deeth frowned.

"It was the Dharvon cottage, Deeth. By then your father had determined that they were behind the raid. They were supposed to get ten points in the Prefactlas Corporation, and all the Norbon holdings. They thought they could get Osiris that way. The animals might have gone through with the deal, too. Boris Storm is an honorable man. I suppose I saved him a lot of soul-searching by killing his Sangaree partners."

"All this because my father couldn't bring himself to share Osiris."

"Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind. Your father was too jealous of his wealth, in hand or in prospect. Though he did judge the Dharvon correctly when he foresaw that a Wholar would be wasted on them."

"Where do we stand? As a Family."

"In vendetta with the Dharvon. I've resumed communication with your House on Homeworld. The Dharvon have recovered under a cadet line. The Norbon remain a House divided. There is a dwindling Deeth faction still hoping you'll return and lead them to Osiris. The other faction, naturally getting stronger by the month, want a new Head declared so they can control what the House has now. The human and Ulantonid spheres will collide before long. They want to develop a strong raid force and cash in."

"I see." As he remembered talk overheard during childhood, it sounded like typical in-House politics. Neither faction would be overjoyed by his reappearance. "But back to your escape. It couldn't have been that simple. These animals aren't fools."

"It did take some doing. They tried to double check every captive to make sure none of us got away by hiding with the slaves. I mostly outran them. I had a hard few years, then I got settled in here. Except for the occasional agent from off planet, you're the first of our people I've seen in nine years."

"We're the only survivors?" Prefactlas was irrevocably lost, then.

He had known that for a long time. The planet had been lost the moment a Dharvon had approached a human. He had been ducking the final admission. The denial was one brick in the wall he had raised to hide himself from the charge his father had set upon him. "How have you been keeping yourself, Rhafu? And do we have anything to build on?" His duty could be shirked no more.

Rhafu smiled. "I haven't been remiss. Once a field man, always a field man. Don't let my job fool you. I've become a very rich man. Being the only one of our people here has certain advantages. I've become the underworld here. I control it all. Without bragging, I can say the only man on Prefactlas with more power is Boris Storm. n.o.body knows who I am, but everybody has heard of me."

"The Serpent?"

"In the scaly flesh."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned." Deeth laughed uncontrollably. "Why didn't we run into each other sooner? Years have gone to waste, Rhafu." The laughter evaporated. Rhafu had an empire of his own now. He might consider old obligations a liability.

"Were that true," Rhafu replied to Deeth's indirect question, "I wouldn't be here today. I would've gotten off Prefactlas as soon as I had the machinery running smooth. I'd have gone somewhere safe and collected my cut and shown my strength just often enough to keep the would-be independents in line. No. I stayed because I still haven't fulfilled my contract with the Norbon."

Deeth grinned. Rhafu was as sentimental as a Sangaree could be. "What should we do now, Rhafu?"

The old man grinned right back. "That's easy. We just reclaim the Family and its Homeworld power base."

"Really? That's going to take money and muscle, my friend. Do you have it?"

"No. Not enough. We'll have to liquidate here and use the cash to pick up a ship and some good men. We'll have to work Osiris till we're strong enough. We'll have to stay away from Homeworld but keep the Family informed so you don't get frozen out of your patrimony. Osiris will be our leverage. It'll bring them into line. Let's see. Maybe two years? Then at least another two to consolidate and fatten the Family on Osiris? Another five to settle with the Dharvon, defend ourselves in court and accommodate ourselves with any new enemies the feud stirs up, and to thoroughly develop the Osirian operation? Another year or two just for margin? Say plan on at least ten before we're solid, strong, and in any position to get down to the real work your father left us, the destruction of the animals who killed him and your mother."

"That's a lot of years, Rhafu."

"You had something else to do with them? Perhaps you went through all that business in that cave just so you could retire?"

The years rolled away into the dusty corners of time. Deeth and Rhafu made dream after dream come real. They recaptured the Homeworld Norbon. They went to Osiris. They built a Norbon Family as strong and feared as any among the Sangaree. By cunning and guile they devoured several small Houses whom the Dharvon, aware of their Family's complicity in the Prefactlas disaster, tried to frame with forged evidence. When the Norbon rapacity had been sated and they were ready to settle with the Dharvon for all time, Deeth had a friend bring in d.a.m.ning doc.u.ments lifted directly from Prefactlas Corporation files.

Emily stayed one day after her appearance before the a.s.sembled Heads of the First Families. She had become a stunning woman. Deeth felt the yearnings of their earlier life together. As did she. But...

Her years with Boris Storm had chipped the rough edges off her. She was no longer Emily the fugitive pleasure girl. She had become a lady, and one even a Sangaree must respect. She was a completely different person. She merely shared a few memories with Norbon w'Deeth's little Emily.

And Deeth was no longer an orphan boy surviving in a shack in a slum on an enemy world.

They spent a quiet afternoon walking the perfectly landscaped gardens of the Norbon Family holding, remembering when and trying to get to know the people they had become.

It was a ritual of ending, a final emotional endors.e.m.e.nt of the separation that had taken place while they were still those other people. In their respective ways they agreed that there were no debts between them now, no enmities, and no tomorrows.

Deeth shed a tear for her when she left him. And never saw her again.

But the children that she brought with her, the sons, would cross his path again and again.

Book Two

HANGMEN

Who springs the trap when the hangman dies?

Thirty-Five: 3052 AD

Some of the most unpleasant moments in life come when we have to face the fact that our parents are human and mortal. For me the revelations came in quick succession. They really rocked me, though I think I concealed my shock at the time.

I grew up believing my father a demiG.o.d. In an offhand way I knew he was mortal, but it simply never occurred to me that he could be killed. I suppose I should thank my uncle for removing those scales from my eyes.

I have only my father to thank, or blame, for making me realize that even the wise and n.o.ble Gneaus Julius Storm could be petty, arrogant, blind, unnecessarily cruel, and maybe even a little stupid. This latter revelation touched me far more deeply than did the other. After all, we all begin life under sentence of death. But nowhere is it written that our time on death row is to be spent compounding the idiocies and miseries of our fellow condemned.

Though I did not love him less afterward, I lost my awe of my father after witnessing his brush with my uncle. For a time just his presence made me suffer.

The loss of an illusion is a painful thing.

-Masato Igarashi Storm

Thirty-Six: 3031 AD

Gneaus Storm gradually drifted up into a universe of gnawing pain.

Where was he? What had happened?

His dying hand had reached the switch in time. Or the automatics had a.s.serted themselves. Somehow, he had been enveloped by the escape balloon before vacuum could take a fatal bite.

He knew that he had not died. There was very little pain in a resurrection. When you died the docs gave you a complete overhaul before they brought you around again. You came out with the vivacity, spirit, and lack of internal pain characteristic of youth. If you did not die, and you came back by more mundane medical processes, you had to play it by Nature's old rules. You took the pain along with the repairs.

More than once Storm wished they had let him go. Or that Ca.s.sius had had the decency to return him to the Fortress for proper medical care.

Storm once returned to consciousness to find a worry-faced, exhausted Mouse hovering over his medicare cradle. "Mouse," he croaked, "what are you doing here?"

"Ca.s.sius told me to stay," the boy replied. "It's part of my training." He forced a smile.

"He begged me." Ca.s.sius's voice, through the additional filter of the intercom speaker, sounded doubly mechanical and remote.

"Son, you've got to go back to Academy," Storm insisted, forgetting that he had lost this argument once before.

"It's arranged," Ca.s.sius said.

Perhaps it was, Storm reflected. He was not remembering clearly. The past month was all a jumble. Maybe Ca.s.sius had used his clout with the War College.

He tried to laugh. His reward was a shot of excruciating pain. Vacuum had done a job on his lungs.

"He needed somebody to watch you and Michael," Mouse told him, unaware that his father did not quite realize what was going on. "That's not a one-man job even with Michael sedated."

Storm remembered some of it. He smiled. Michael really impressed Ca.s.sius. Dee was only a man. He had been bested as often as not. His greatest talent was that of weaver of his own legend.

"He survived too, eh?" He remembered most of it now.

"He came through in better shape than you did," Ca.s.sius said. "He took some elementary precautions."

"It was his boat that was off tune," Mouse added. "He jiggered it on purpose. A trick he learned from Hawksblood. Hawksblood sets all his drives so they're off tune with everything but each other."

"His first intelligence coup," Ca.s.sius droned. "Though anybody with computer time and a little inspiration could have figured it out. Give him credit for the inspiration."

Mouse reddened slightly.

"We're headed for the asteroid?" Storm asked.

Mouse nodded. Ca.s.sius replied, "Yes. There're still questions we might put to Michael and Fearchild." Then, "We won't be able to reach Michael by the usual methods. He's been conditioned to resist drugs and polygraphs. Primitive methods may prove more efficacious."