The Final Planet by Andrew M. Greeley

Author:Andrew M. Greeley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

11

O’Neill pounded his fist with rage on the map table. “Damn!” The maps fell on the floor. Wearily he picked them up and rearranged them. Spread out before him was the map of Zylong with detailed drawings of the fort and its location. Hyperion was the perfect place to stay until the Iona crowd either landed themselves or gave him the signal to return. The food was good, quarters were comfortable, the garrison friendly; he saw Marjetta every day. What could be better?

The fort was at the end of a spit that jutted into the ocean at the very bottom of the continent. The ground inside was covered with a green, grasslike growth immune to the action of salt water and air. On one ocean side, large greenhouses enclosed flowering plants and acres of jarndt. A desalinating plant kept the fort and its produce well supplied with water. Hyperion could get along without the rest of Zylong very well.

Beyond the fort, on the opposite side, were the metal mines that Hyperion was supposed to protect, staffed, O’Neill was told, mostly by some hordi.

“Slave labor,” he had muttered.

“Who isn’t in this sick world,” his woman, standing very close to him now, replied.

“’Tis a powerful place you have here,” O’Neill had commented to the fort’s Commander after his tour of the settlement.

“We may have to survive for a time on our own.” Quars, the genial Commander, a handsome man in his middle forties with a big chest and a trim waist, waved his hands in a gesture of indifference. “As a man of your cultivation and experience must have perceived, the City is on the edge of anarchy.”

“Indeed,” Seamus murmured. Quars was a lot like Carmody, playing the bluff-soldier role, but shrewd and well educated.

“Whoever wins up there, and I hope it is someone more competent than the superannuated ninnies who are now in charge, will need this post. Our minerals are essential. They will, if it comes to it, have to deal with us on our terms.”

“So that’s why a man of your experience and intelligence accepted assignment here at this distant command?” If it came to flattery, Seamus was as good as the best of them.

“With relief. I did all I could to get it.” He filled Seamus’s la-ir goblet. “I had no desire to follow in Narth’s footsteps.”

“They would have thrown you out?” Seamus sipped the drink contentedly. A proper woman and a proper bottle, what more did a man want in the world? Especially when, for all practical purposes, the TPS Iona no longer existed.

“I wasn’t going to take the chance.” The man’s deep laughter boomed as he drained his goblet and refilled it. “Besides, I don’t want to be an emperor. It would be a very short life.”

“You may have to contend with him anyway.” Seamus drained his goblet too. No heathen would drink him under the table.

“Only if he could capture this post, which he could never do.” Quars waved his hands proudly. “No one could capture it.

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