Free The Reaches by David Drake Page B

meal, and war makes for damned bad trade, in-system as well as out. Let them have it if they want it so bad. They'll still need manufactures from Venus, and it'll be Venerian ships that dare our atmosphere nine times in ten."
    Ricimer nodded with his lips pursed, not agreeing but rather choosing his words. The skin was stretched as tightly over the spacer's cheeks as it had been when he warned Gregg to shoot on Virginia.
    "The Southerns will do nothing, sir, as they've always done nothing with their opportunities," he said. "The Feds, now . . . the Feds will continue to strip the caches of microchips they find in the Reaches. They'll try to run the few factories they find still operable, but they won't do the work themselves, they'll put Molts to it. And the Molts will do only what their ancestors were taught to do a thousand years ago."
    The Factor opened his mouth to speak. Ricimer forestalled him with, "What they do get from the Reaches, they'll use to strengthen themselves on Earth. They've been fighting the rebels on their own west coast for a generation. Perhaps the wealth they bring from the Reaches will permit them to finally succeed. And they'll fight Europe, conquer Europe I shouldn't doubt, because the Europeans can never conquer them and President Pleyal won't stop while he has a single rival on Earth."
    "Venus can't be conquered," the Factor said, leaping a step ahead in the argument and denying it harshly.
    "Perhaps not," the spacer agreed. "But all mankind can stagnate while President Pleyal forges an empire as rigid and brittle as the one that shattered in the Collapse. And if we fall back from the stars again . . . I don't believe the Lord will give us a third chance."
    The two fierce-eyed men stared at one another for a long moment. The Factor shuddered and said in a surprisingly gentle tone, "Stephen? What's your opinion of all this?"
    Gregg touched his lips with his tongue. He smiled wryly and seated himself as he'd wanted to do for some while. "I'm not a religious man, Uncle," he said, kneading his fingers together on the edge of the desk and staring at them. "I don't like transit, and I don't like"—he looked up—"some of the ways trade's carried on beyond Pluto." The starkness of his own voice startled him. "But I think I could learn to like standing under an open sky. And I'm sure I'm going to do that again."
    His lips quirked. "God willing," he added, half in mockery. Gregg's expression lost even the hint of humor. "Someone will ship me, Uncle Ben. It doesn't have to be an expedition in which Gregg Trading has invested."
    The Factor glared at him. "Your father, boy," he said, "was as stubborn as any man God put on Venus."
    Gregg nodded. "He used to say the same of you, Uncle Ben," he said.
    Gregg of Weyston burst out laughing and reached across the desk with both hands, clasping his nephew's. "Then I suppose it runs in the family, lad. Go to your damned meeting, then—I'll call ahead. And when you come back, we'll discuss what you in your business judgment recommend for Gregg Trading."
    Piet Ricimer stood formally, with his heels near together and his wrists crossed behind his back. There was the slightest of smiles on his lips.
     

13
Venus
    Gregg hadn't met Councilor Duneen before—he'd never expected to meet the head of the Bureau of External Relations—but there Duneen was at the side of Alexi Mostert, nodding affably and extending his hand. Siddons, by two years the elder Mostert brother, didn't appear to be present.
    "So . . ." Duneen said. He was short and a trifle pudgy, but there was nothing soft about his eyes. "You'd be Gregg of Eryx, then?"
    Gregg shook the councilor's hand. Duneen was only forty or so, younger than Gregg had expected in a man whom many said was Governor Halys' chief advisor. "That would be my brother, sir," he said.
    "Mr. Gregg's here representing his uncle, Gregg of Weyston," Mostert put in quickly. "A major investor in the voyage just returned, and we hope