Pohlstars Read online

  Except this time. I had guarded the wrong member of the family.

  Even if there had been an explosion within a few meters of jeff, he should have survived. But he was within the explosion. He was inside a mass of mixed hydrogen and air, and the same mixture was inside his lungs. When the explosion came, it exploded outside him and in. He lived an hour. The whole time he kept trying to scream in agony, but he hadn't lung enough left to scream with anymore.

  The only damage to the oaty-boat was some scorched paint and a few fittings. That didn't matter to May. She didn't want to live on it anymore. Jimmy Rex needed a good school, she said, and so she was taking him and herself off to live in Florida. What it was that May needed I only guessed. Did not want to guess. Could not helping guessing when, a few months later, she phoned me and said, "I have news for you, Uncle Jay.

  That sweet, sad face on the phone, it melted my heart. All I said was, "Who's the lucky man?

  Pause. "Please don't say anything against him when I tell you, promise?

  My mouth was dry and my heart was pounding, but I managed to smile. "It's Dougic d'Agasto, right? And you've made up your mind?

  "I have, dear Jay. He's a nicer man than you think he is.

  "I hope so.

  "Oh, Jay, please! Try to see it my way. I married one husband because Ben insisted, and another hecause I needed his help. This one's for me, Jay. Please say it's all right!

  "May, I said to my lifelong love, "whatever you do is all right with me, always. Twice a widow at her age-- could I blame her?

  No. It was easier to blame myself. And bastard Ben had been right. He said she would marry a rich boy and a sensible boy and a handsome boy. He never said they would all be the same man.

  Consort the first was slow to learn. Consort the second was quick to burn. The higher her worth, the meaner her fall, And consort the third was the worst of them all. Sweet Truth despises and high Honor reviles The last man to king the queen of the isles.

  They made their home in Miami. Miami! I could not imagine how my May could be happy among land people, especially those land people, but her letters were cheerful enough. They were short, yes, and infrequent. But the only news they ever contained was good. Dougie, she wanted me to know, had buckled down and was studying ocean-thermal engineering! It was too bad that it kept him away from home so much, but he was very clever at learning it. May herself was swimming, golfing, riding- always busy. And Jimmy Rex was happy to be back in his school. There was no word of whether the school was happy to have him. So there was some kind of a bright side for me. If I didn't have May, at least I didn't have Jimmy Rex, either.

  So owner's country was all mine, and I rattled around in it lonesomely. I was in no mood for parties, and if Betsy wanted to be invited, she had the good sense not to tell me so. I kept busy. We were in a dozen big industries by then. We were selling liquid gases-oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen; solid C02 ammonia, methanol, chlorine, caustic soda; small quantities of argon and helium, too, when we could find anyone to buy them. I was toying with the idea of microwaving energy to a low satellite and beaming it back to, say. Australia or Japan. Betsy's steel industry wasn't going anywhere, but I'd taken a tip from what Captain Havrila had said about the ships comming in in ballast: I had ours syphon sand up from the port bottoms for ballast, and then we used the sand to make a slurry to scour out the fouling organisms in our deep intake pipes-no need to try to recover it! Of course, I wasn't the owner of the Fleet, and everything I did I had to ask permission of May for. But she gave it, every time. Because I had plenty to do, I should have been happy- or as happy as I could be expected to be, with my May married to a rodent that walked like a man. If I wasn't happy, part of the reason was that I got the letter I had been expecting for weeks. No return address. No name. Just the message:

  The Commodore's orders are still in effect. I didn't know whether it was time for me to carry them out or not, so I flipped a coin. You won this time.

  I almost wished the coin had come up the other way- better, I wished that my unknown pen pal would come and talk to me about it. If he decided to kill me afterward, well-I didn't want him to, but there were some bad nights when it seemed like a way out of a place where I didn't want to be. But God knew I needed advice-even from my assassin.

  And then May's weekly letter said, "Please come and visit us, and enclosed with it was one from Dougie d'Agasto:

  We have some important business to talk over, Jason. You'll come out of it rich. Besides, it's what May wants.

  Even when the man was trying to be ingratiating he raised the hackles on the back of my neck. I had not forgotten the last deal he had offered me! I did not for one second think that he wouldn't have made the same offer again-except that he'd found a better one for himself. You don't have to steal the child when you can capture the mother.

  I certainly did not want to talk over anything with Dougie d'Agasto, no matter how rich he proposed to make me. But it was May who'd asked me to come.

  It is not a long flight from Papeete to Miami, but it uses up a whole night-you cross over five time zones. And so I arrived at ten in the morning with no more than an hour's sleep and my disposition cranky. I took a taxi from the airport to the address Dougie had given me. What I wound up in looked like a warehouse district and smelled like the city dump. A couple of gasoline-burner cars, half dismantled, rusted along the curb. We were only a block or two from Biscayne Bay-that accounted for part of the smell. At least two of the low-rise buildings on the block had been burned out and boarded up. An elderly black woman was throwing a bucket of hot, soapy water on the sidewalk in front of a little grocery store and attacking it with a broom. I walked up to her, carrying my overnight case. "Excuse me, I'm looking for Douglas d'Agasto, I said.

  She straightened up. "Round back, she said. I thought there was some hostility in the way she looked at me, but she added, "You want me to help you with that bag?

  "Thank you, no. But it's kind of you to offer: I gestured at the soapy sidewalk. "I didn't really expect to see anybody doing that around here.

  "I ain't from around here, she said, dismissing me. At least there seemed to be one decent person in the neighborhood to keep May company, I thought-but could d'Agasto really have May living in this wretched slum? Well, of course he could, if it suited his purpose-but not himself!

  Of course, I had made a wrong assumption. Neither of them lived there. It was an office, not a home, and once you got to the inner courtyard, obviuusly a luxurious one. A slim black man appeared from a vined trellis and circled a marble fountain to ask what my business was. When I gave my name, he passed me on through a door- there was a very thick frame around it; weapons detectors, I realized- and into a handsome, huge waiting room. There a handsome small woman with rose-red hair conducted me to the very office of Douglas d'Agasto himself.

  I've seen pictures of a bigger office. It belonged to that old dictator, Mussolini. "Uncle Jason, d'Agasto cried welcomingly, rising to wait for me to cover the fifteen meters to his desk before he stretched out his hand. "Glad you could come! Sorry to make you come to my office first, but I figured we might as well get the business out of the way so you could relax when we get to the house.

  I let him shake my hand. "What's the business we're talking about?

  He nodded approval of my directness. He was just as direct. "May wants to own the Fleet free and clear. No more trustee. No other owners. So we want you to turn the trust over to her and sell her your stock. We'll pay you fifty million dollars for it, Uncle Jason.

  He had not invited me to sit down, but I sat down anyway. "I'm not your uncle, I said, "and my stock's not worth that much. Fifteen or twenty at most. It doesn't matter, though, because I don't want to sell.

  "May really wants you to-

  "What May wants me to do, May will tell me to do herself.

  The look he threw me was instant anger on top. That didn't bother me a hit. Underneath was a cocky confidence, though, and that did. "In that case, he sai
d, spreading the dimples on the sun-tanned face with a wide smile, "we better just get our asses out to the house so she can do that little thing. I think you're going to like our place.

  If what Dougie meant was that I would think it very luxurious, I knew that sight unseen. I had been signing the fund transfers into May's account to pay for it. The luxury started long before we got there. We were only a block or two from Dougie's boat dock on the bay, but there was a chauffeured car waiting in the courtyard to take us there. As we pulled out into the street, I saw the old black woman pause in shining her cracked store window to glare at us over her shoulder. I appreciated that; at least now I knew who the hostility belonged to. We got in a hydrofoil with a three-man crew and screamed down the waterway, under causeway bridges, past small islands, until we came to a large one. We coasted along it for a while. There were lavish estates along the shore; then there were none, just mangroves and cypress, until we came to a dock that could have handled an oaty-boat. Well, not really. I exaggerate. But the dock was an exaggeration, too. There was no vessel he might want to own that would need that much space.

  The house was as grand as I could have expected, but the grandest part was May running down the green, green lawn to meet me. She hugged me twice as tightly as I had expected, then leaned back to look at me. And I at her. It was my veritable sweet May, as ever was, the clean, clear face, the thoughtful, wide-set eyes, the silky hair- "You look tired, I said. I hadn't meant to, but it was true. It was not polite, so I added, "Too much golf, I suppose.

  The smile flickered, but it came back fast. "It's more like too much not seeing you, Jay. Come on in! Oh, Jason-I've missed you so much!

  If consulted by the tribunal when it is time to decide how long Dougie d'Agasto should roast in hell, I will say on his behalf that at least he let us alone to talk. He excused himself at once. He went up to his "study for an hour, came down for lunch, and immediately took off in the stiltboat for most of the afternoon-it was for his tutoring in thermal engineering, he said. So I had May to myself. I saw the house. I heard how Jimmy Rex was doing. May told me that the secessionist mobs were pretty worrying when they rioted, but maybe they were right and this part of Florida should anschluss with Cuba. She wanted to know if I'd seen much of the big new Chinese boats that were being launched, or any more dead fish. I even had time for a nap before dinner; and not once did she bring up the trust, or I.

  Dinner wasn't grand-just very good, with all the things in it that May had known I liked all her life. When the coffee was on the table, Dougie chased the servants out of the dining hall and leaned back.

  "So tell him, honey, he said with that smile that was on the very verge of curdling into a smirk.

  May looked reluctant, but she didn't put it off. She put her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, and she gazed at me. "You've been as good a father to me as my father ever was, Jason.

  Those were not the words I most wanted to hear from her, but under the circumstances they were about the best I could expect. I reached across and patted her hand.

  "So don't think I'm not grateful to you, dear, because I am. I always will be. But I'm not a child anymore. I'm a grown woman, married- Three times married, I thought, and she was thinking the same because she hesitated- married, with a child. As much of an adult as I'm ever going to be, Jason. So I'm asking you to dissolve the trust. Dougie pursed his lips and nodded judiciously, as though he had just heard the idea for the first time and thought that by and large it might be sound. He didn't say anything. That was just as well, for I might have said something in return that could never be unsaid. "You don't have to sell your own stock if you don't want to, Jay, she went on. "Dougie thought that might be a good idea for you, but it's up to you. But, please, will you do the other'?

  I didn't look at Dougie again. I didn't have to, for I could feel the temperature of his smile.., and I could feel it drop to zero as I said, "If I do that, May, I will be killed. It's your father's orders. And I spread before them the nineteen letters I had received from my unknown assassin. And I told them what the Commodore had said to me.

  Dougie slammed his fist down on the table. It was thick teak, but it shook. I didn't look at him, and he didn't say a word. May, with tears in her voice, said, "You mean my father paid someone to have you killed? But that's horrible!

  I touched her hand again. "No, love, it's not. He was right to make sure of me. If I'd failed you, it would be fair punishment. And wished I were more sure that I hadn't failed her already.

  May was crying openly now. It was her husband's place to comfort her. but her husband was studying the nineteen letters, their envelopes, their postmarks. I got up and went around the table, knelt beside her, and put my arms around her. No one said anything for a while. I would not have minded if that while had gone on indefinitely, with May warm and unresisting in my arms, hut at last Dougie had finished his chain of thought. He swept the letters in a fan across the table and sat back. "I guess you're not lying, he stated.

  In my arms May stirred and detached herself. "Jason doesn't lie to me, she told him, "ever!

  "I don't think he could have cooked up all these letters, he said, "so let's say you're right. What about it, Jay'? Don't you have any idea who this person is?

  I hesitated, but it was too late to do the person any harm. "I thought for a while it might be Captain Havrila, I admitted, "but he died six months ago, and I've had letters since.

  "Never tried to find out? See where they were mailed from? Find the people who mailed them?

  "How could I? For that matter, why would I want to? I had accepted the situation as just when the Commodore had laid it on me.

  He nodded. He wasn't agreeing, he was only recognizing the fact that I didn't have the guts or the determination to do anything about the situation. "What we can do, he proposed, "is get you the best damn guards you ever saw in your life. Twenty-four hours, round the clock. As long as you live. And forget about fifty million, I'll go to-

  "Dougie, stop it! cried May. He blinked at her, but she stared him down. Then she turned to me. "What you've said changes everything, of course. So that's out. We'll go on the way we are for the present.

  And I expected an explosion from Dougie. I didn't get one. I was slow to learn that the only safe expectation about Dougie d'Agasto was that he would never do what I expected him to do, but always something worse. He nodded, and picked up the letters and stuffed them in a pocket and gave us both a sunny smile.

  "In that case, he said, "anyone for a game of billiards?

  If Dougie d'Agasto did not get what he wanted out of our meeting, he got quite a lot in other ways. He got the right to tell me what to do. Every one of his letters of instruction was countersigned by May herself, but there was no doubt who had written them.

  His instructions were not all that wicked or dumb, to be honest-perhaps there had been worse ones that May refused to sign. Cancel the plans for another ore pumper-well, the manganese nodules were a drug on the market these days, with so many boats fishing for them. Kill the iceberg project and sell off the tugs-it had become a running sore in our cash-flow accounts anyway. He never attempted to keep me from spending any sum on keeping the Fleet seaworthy and comfortable for its crews, but he did veto almost every plan for expansion. He was hoarding capital, it seemed. No doubt there was a plan, and no doubt I would find out about it sooner or later.

  Meanwhile I followed his orders, and life was not all that bad. The officers and crews liked me, I think. Not just on the flagship. When I flew to Dubai to sign the sale papers on the sailing tugs and pay off the crews, they took me out for a night on the town. I could not have expected that from forty men and women I had just fired, and they weren't angling for other places in the Fleet-they were all fine sailors, and there were plenty of jobs. They were simply saying good-by to a friend, and I was touched. I was also very, very drunk, and when at last I got back to the flagship I was still parched and headachy, but not unhappy-at least not until I saw th
at Betsy's private VTO was parked on the landing deck.

  "I thought, she said, "it was time I paid you a visit, since you don't ever come to see me.

  She was not a person I wanted for a friend, but I didn't particularly want to offend her. "You are always welcome on May's fleet, I told her, with a great deal of politeness and not nearly as much truth, and I called the housekeepers' section chief to tell them that they were to prepare suitable accommodations. Of course, they were way ahead of me. They had put fresh flowers in the vases and ice in the bowls in the suite that sheikhs and sovereigns occupied when they were our guests. For a wonder, Betsy didn't pout when I told her I had to work for a bit- "I've been away quite a while, I said, "and I really need to- And she put her finger against my lips, with a smile that under any other circumstances I would have called flirtatious.

  "May I try your pool out, Jay? she asked, quite politely, and she occupied herself with swimming and lazing around the big waterfall that sheeted down the glass of the owners' suite and into the pool, while I did what I had to do. Which was only partly business. Mostly it was sucking oxygen out of a bottle and swallowing aspirin, because if I had Betsy for a guest I wanted a clear head.

  She had asked that dinner be served out in the garden, and when I came out to see her, she was wearing something long and filmy and white, with white hibiscus tucked into a diamond tiara on her hair. "How very nice you look, I said, as required. She smiled dreamily, watching the butler pour the wine.

  "To us, she said, and then, when we had each taken a sip, "How fresh and clean the air is here, Jay.

  "I hope it stays that way, I said, because there had been rumors of Betsy's next plan for expansion and diversification. She gave me a thoughtful look, but she was too busy being sweet to follow it up. All through the meal she was all sweet prattle and gossip about rich friends and reckless doings. It was quite a meal. The chef had had time to do his best, and so it was mahimahi and rack of lamb from our own flock, and a compote of mostly ugly-fruit for dessert with enough kirsch in it so that I didn't require an after-dinner brandy. Or, after the previous few days in Dubai, at all want one. Betsy had no such restraint. She ate every scrap and drank all that was poured, and when it was done she sighed, "I wish I had your cook, Jay! I guess I can tell you that I've tried to hire him away.