Grace noticed that Jobe was going slow on his first pint and settled for a sip of her own. "With Government House in ashes, and the Governor and Legate dead, what are we doing for a government?"

she asked.

"The bureaucrats are back in business at a hotel down the street from the ruins. A bunch of big-town mayors are gathering tomorrow at the Guild Hall to see what they can make of matters," Angus said as the lamb stew arrived. "Mind you, small towns like Falkirk don't count with them, but no rule says who gets a say, either. Word is, they mean to elect a new Governor. Pro tem, or some such."

Grace put her beer down and attacked her stew. Angus could drown his troubles if he wanted. It looked as though tomorrow she and her friends would have work to do.

Allabad, Alkalurops 15 April 3134 The plaque on the Guild Hall's bell tower claimed that the thick adobe walls had stood for eight hundred years, keeping out tornadoes and torrential floods from upstream hurricanes. It did not say how often the roof tiles had been replaced. On this day roof and walls kept out the heat of the day. The latest attacks, unlike the old, had not shattered the stained-gla.s.s windows. The new louver system followed the sun, letting in enough light for business without overheating the hall. This morning's heat came from men and women talking, talking, and talking some more.

Grace, Chato, and Jobe arrived early, but not early enough to get seats around the tables that had been pushed together to make one long one. They scrounged up a table of their own and added it at one end, forcing other early arrivals to move. As more people filed in, more tables had to be added. Those already seated frowned as they had to keep making room, but they didn't muster a protest. In the end, the table was a big square, accommodating twice as many people as originally intended.

To Grace's left, the three mayors from Little London, Lothran and Banya-the three largest towns outside Allabad-looked none too happy. In the old days, before Devlin Stone required a planet to have one central seat of government headed by a Governor, Alkalurops had gotten along with a Council of Elders drawn from towns and major guilds. Now that the Governor was dead, it seemed that folks wanted to go back to the old ways, and even the mayors of the three largest cities did not dare go against them.

Garry McGuire, a short man with a confident air who was the mayor of Little London, applied a solid-looking gavel to a wooden plaque. This relic from the days of Elders and meetings had been momentarily removed from the display case that had held it for the last fifty years. The hall fell silent.

Dev Coughlin, dapper in Terran fashions six years out of date even before the HPG went down, and mayor of Lothran, rose to his feet from his seat between Grace and Garry. "I rise from among you to nominate Garry McGuire as Governor Pro Tem of our planet, until such time as The Republic appoints a replacement for the fondly remembered late Kristen LeSat."

The hall rumbled with talk. Garry McGuire gaveled them to order as the mayor of Banya half rose from the seat on his left to shout, "I second Garry McGuire's name and call for a vote."

"Guess we know what they were doing last night," Grace whispered to Chato, but Jobe was standing.

His deep ba.s.s voice carried easily through the babble. "I rise from among you to place in nomination the name of Grace O'Malley, mayor of Falkirk, for Governor."

Before Grace could react, Jobe was back in his seat, his face a wide grin of white teeth against ebony skin. Chato shot to his feet. "I second Grace O'Malley's name."

"He can't do that," Dev Coughlin shouted.

"Yes, he can," Grace shouted back. She was none too sure she wanted to be nominated, but Chato and Jobe were recognized heads of their respective areas-as empowered as any mayor to sit and act in this council.

"And I stand to nominate Billy O'Leary," came from down the table. That started a nomination frenzy that lasted the better part of half an hour and ended only when most everyone had either nominated someone, seconded someone, or been placed in nomination.

When there was no one left to nominate and the entire hall was chattering among themselves, Grace stood up. She'd never thought much of her flaming red hair, but it often drew people's attention. It did today as the hall fell moderately quiet.

"We seem to have no lack of nominees. What we do lack are procedures for electing a Governor, or Prime Elder, or whatever it is we intend to do. I ask one question. Do we allow a simple plurality to decide the vote, or should we require a majority?"

It took a few seconds for the full impact of her words to sink in. With so many candidates, someone with only five or six votes might have more than the rest. Those pushing for a quick vote shut up, and the hall fell silent.

"Will the fine lady-from Falkirk, is it?-yield the floor she has so admirably brought to silence?" Dev Coughlin asked.

"For a question only." Grace had once found a book on the rules of order for official meetings. It had been helpful-as something to pound on the table to quiet Falkirk town meetings even if she couldn't follow its rules. Maybe today she could.

"I recognize that everyone is important to our planet's economy," Dev said, "but how can the vote of a mayor from a small town like Falkirk have the same weight as that of someone representing a city a hundred times larger? Shouldn't we apportion votes on a one man, one-vote basis?" Dev smiled at his two friends, who nodded their agreement.

"No," Grace snapped. "Not even if you modify your proposal to be one man or woman, one vote." Dev had the good humor to flinch at his gaffe. Grace went on. "We have not had a full census in fifty years, since Stone decided we'd have the Governor he appointed. Without a certified census, we can't tell who represents how many. Does that answer your question?"

Dev's smile faded under her temper. "No, it does not. We have to represent the people who sent us.

We all know that I stand for two or three hundred times as many people as you do. We can't do a simple one mayor, one vote. It's not fair."

"That's not a question, Dev," someone shouted from halfway down the table. "Quit arguing with the woman or Gus and me'll throw you out." The murmur in the hall was going Grace's way-there were a lot more small towns than large ones. That had been one of the main problems of the old Council of Elders, according to what Grace's grandpa had told her. Stone resolved the problem before Alkalurops ever did.

"May I rise for a question, ma'am?"

This time the speaker was from down the table. A gray-haired man in a Terran business suit stood up.

"Sir, I don't know how to recognize you," Grace said, intent on not yielding the floor quite so quickly this time.

"I am Theobald Chizhenzki, Local Manager for Kimberly-Somtog Minerals and Metallurgy. My a.s.sociate here"-he indicated a thin, balding man beside him-"is Thomas Pennypage, General Manager for Howard-Kennicutt Extraction Operations. We were sent here by the Industrial Trade Group. The ITG employs over four percent of your planet's workforce, either full-time, contract or floating temps. A good estimate of people who live off the stones we pay in salary is twenty-five percent of everyone here.

Even you independent miners benefit from the spare parts we warehouse here because we want them when we need them. How large do you think the selection would be at your local 'Mech or truck dealership if we didn't buy half of what they import each year?"

"I hear a speech coming on," came from someone at the foot of the table. "If I don't hear a real question soon, I'm going to show you what us independent miners can do on our own."

"Let the man ask a question," Grace said. Like every independent miner, Grace had her own opinion about how much the majors helped or hindered the little guy. Still, Alkalurops was in enough trouble without alienating a big chunk of its economy.

"My question is this," Chizhenzki said. "Things have changed a lot since the last time Alkalurops set up its own government. I'm not against trying anything. G.o.d knows when we'll hear from The Republic again. But shouldn't businesses that employ more men and women than any ent.i.ty you represent also be included in this council?"

As he finished, the room broke into an uproar.

A short, round man in a waist-length jacket bearing the emblem of the Bakers' Guild was on his feet shouting along with half a dozen other Guild Masters, across the table from the mining reps. On the fifth try, Grace made out his words. "We represent Alkalurops businesspeople and workers, not-" Grace provided "someone off-planet." The new deposits opened up in the west had all ended up in the hands of conglomerates, which a lot of the old families attributed to having a Governor appointed from off-planet.

Then again, maybe the new deposits did need the concentrated extraction techniques available only to the big companies. That was a good argument for several cold winter nights.

Garry McGuire leaned past Dev to say, "You'll want to yield the floor just now, Gracie. Looks to me like we've got a long talk about who fits in this room and how we're going to do our business before we get back to voting."

Grace didn't want to establish any precedent, but at least on this one point, she was prepared to let Garry carry the fire. "You take it. But I want the floor back before we move to any boss-type votes around here."

"You'll get it," Garry said. Grace didn't like the look he gave Dev, but when Garry started hammering away with his gavel, the noise in the room did go down to a dull roar.

Garry stood, which brought the racket down a few more decibels. "The kind lady from up north has agreed to yield the floor while we get around to organizing ourselves. From the looks of things, we really don't know who should be included in our discussions and how we should operate. Kind of hard to put somebody in charge when we don't know what he's in charge of or supposed to do," he said, grinning at a couple of his a.s.sociates. They dutifully laughed as if he was a vid comic and that got the room laughing with him.

Grace didn't hear anything to laugh about for the rest of the day. The only relief came from the front of the hall, where a couple of the sidewalk hawkers from the square brought their food carts inside and set up shop. Grace was the only one in her trio with stones, so she went for drinks and found a lot of other folks doing the same.

"You did a real fine job there. What's your name again, young lady?" an elderly woman asked. Grace told her, and found herself sharing her thoughts with the woman. Then a couple of men joined in. In whispers they reached a fairly quick conclusion on how they'd run things. Grace delivered drinks to Jobe and Chato, filled them in on her conversations, and left them at the table to keep an eye on that circus while she circulated around the hall, feeling people out, taking her own reading of what these people wanted. The gathering wasn't that different from a town meeting, just bigger, noisier and under someone else's control. An hour's lunch lasted three. Grace had no complaint; she was one of the last back, just ahead of Garry, Dev, and the two mining managers. As the sun fell below the rim of the canyon, Garry gaveled the meeting into an early recess, and Grace found herself juggling multiple dinner meetings.

Over suppers, consensus built among the small towns that everyone should vote, even the representatives of off-planet corporations. But every member of the council had to have the same single vote, and decisions should be by at least seventy-five percent of the vote.

It was well past midnight before Grace got to sleep, but she felt good. Alkalurops had some mighty fine inhabitants.

The next morning Grace, Jobe and Chato were approaching the Guild Hall when the roar of a DropShip coming in shook the quiet day. Grace wasn't the only one who did a frantic Net check. The ship docking was the regular one the raider had pretended to be. It was late but real. At her elbow, Jobe frowned.

"You'd think the raiders would have stripped the port bare. Used landing radars and radios have to be easy to sell. Sloppy, if you ask me."

"Well, unless a lot of people rethought what we talked about last night, we ought to get a lot done today," Grace said, opening the Guild Hall door for the men.

But when enough people are gathered together, nothing comes quickly. Saying "everyone votes" didn't seem to cover all the possibilities. Hank Pintagras, mayor of Calgeron, was first on his feet that morning.

"Do the Guild representatives in Allabad speak forall the Guilds?" he asked in a high, shrill voice. "Or do we require the Guilds to establish an election process so each Guild can make sure the speaker represents them?"

Grace tried to suppress a groan. The master of Calgeron's 'Mech Sales and Service Guild was notorious for disagreeing with anyone and everyone at the drop of a welding torch. For the next hour the discussion rambled, with Allabad's Master Baker unwilling to grant anything at all to the "sticks." Grace leaned back and studied the ceiling.

"We can't let this bunch stampede in circles," Chato said. "I'll keep an eye on the table yammering.

Could you get me a cup of tea, Grace, and talk to folks? Patch up what we did last night." Grace went, but how often on the drive home from a meeting had she thought of a good reason not to vote the way she had.

She was buying a mug of tea for Chato while Jobe bought himself a cup of coffee, so they were in a good position to see the man who walked into the Guild Hall at ten sharp.

He was taller than most, and his expensive-looking dark suit accentuated the lines of his thin frame.

White hair combed straight back gave him a regal bearing, heightened by his aquiline nose. His feet didn't so much walk as move him smoothly along. Grace saw that she wasn't the only one whose eyes were drawn to the stranger as his head moved slowly from side to side, taking in everything, missing nothing, acknowledging no one.

"I think our schedule for today just changed," Grace whispered to Jobe.

"I don't like the looks of that man," he answered.

"Neither do I, but he looks like a player."

"But for whom? Whatever he wants, we will not be able to ignore him." Jobe followed Grace back to their seats.

The stranger walked straight to the mining company managers; they exchanged formal introductions. The hall had been floating on a bubble of talk that almost drowned out the person who had the floor. Now it settled slowly into silence as more and more heads turned toward the new arrival. The speaker who had been shouting to be heard suddenly realized he was bellowing into a silent hall. "That pretty much says it all," he muttered lamely, and sank into his chair.

Garry McGuire nodded, then turned to the standing man. "I don't think we know you."

"I suspected as much. However, I am prepared to correct that oversight." The stranger seemed to toy with words the way a cat might toy with a cornered mouse.

"Would you please introduce yourself?" Garry asked.

"It would be my pleasure. I would also like to present a solution to the problems that appear to plague you, if I may?" The words hardly sounded like a question, but Garry nodded and the man continued. "I am Alfred Santorini, at your service," he said with a tiny nod. "I see this planet also has been hit by raiders."

"Also?" Grace repeated, a comment echoed around the hall.

"Yes, you are not alone in these desperate times," Santorini went on. "Since The Republic of the Sphere has doubly failed in its duty to provide for common communications and the public defense, violent elements have risen up and moved against many planets. Some planets are lucky enough to have powerful patrons to protect them from these latter-day wolves. Others have been stripped down to the dirt by repeated b.l.o.o.d.y raids. From what I saw on my drive from the s.p.a.ceport, you got off relatively lightly. Was this your first experience with the new vandals?"

"Yes, it was," Garry answered. "Would it be too much for me to ask what brought you to Alkalurops?"

"No, not at all," Santorini said. "May I take a seat?" A woman sitting near him yielded her chair.

Santorini allowed her to position it before he settled on it with regal flair. Never having seen a king, Grace could only guess at the effect and note the goose b.u.mps that went up her spine. There was a sense of power about this man. What she could not decide was whether it was for good or ill.

"I am in the employ of Lenzo Computing Industries of Nusakan. I expect we are familiar to you. No doubt many of you use our hardware and software in your homes and businesses. With the growing unpleasantness wracking The Republic, my corporation is looking for a new home for its central office.

Such a move will impact several hundred thousand of our employees, and will provide jobs for millions more on the planet we choose for our headquarters." He smiled at Garry. Grace could almost hear the mayor of Little London calculating the incentives his town could offer Santorini and dreaming of a name change-Greater London!

Oh, c.r.a.p.

It took Grace about five seconds to do the math. Alkalurops was at just about full employment. Of course, full employment usually allowed for either parent to concentrate on raising the kids or for both parents to alternate work time and volunteer projects. You needed a lot less government and a lot fewer taxes when folks pitched in without being told. Pirate had dug many a kilometer of roadside drainage ditch or cleaned them out after a bad flood. Wilson had a grader that divided its time between the roads on his farm and the public ones.

The only way Alkalurops could absorb millions more workers was to either let in immigrants or dig them out of their own population. That meant two workers from each family, which would probably be necessary for a family to survive. What with all the new mouths to feed and house and provide cars for, the price of everything was going to skyrocket.

"Isn't progress a wonderful thing to observe in action?" Jobe said, rolling his eyes. Around her, Grace could see people working it out for themselves. Some saw profits and smiled. Others, like her, counted the cost and scowled.

Santorini paused for a moment to sip from a cup of water at his elbow. A perfect pause for all concerned. As he put the cup down, he cleared his throat. When he continued, his voice was pitched to fill every corner of the hall. Even the food hawkers fell silent.

"At the moment, however, I believe the matter most urgent for your attention is the special relationship between me-or rather my corporation-and a group of freedom fighters."

He let the words hang in the air for a moment. "Those with business connections on Skye know that its transfer from the Lyran Commonwealth to The Republic left many unsatisfied." That was news to Grace, and she did have business connections on Skye. She glanced at Gordon Frazier from Kilkenny and a few other friends. Their faces were pretty well frozen in neutral. Maybe a slight furrow of the brow hinted that this was not going down well.

"Into the silence of the HPG links, Landgrave Jasek Kelswa-Steiner has raised his flag to correct that wrong by The Republic. People from Skye and all over The Republic have flocked to his standard, that of the ancient Stormhammer, and Nusakan has provided him a base for his operations. Not by chance, his presence has given us the kind of shield that other, less guarded worlds have come to envy. If I choose Alkalurops as the new base for LCI, be a.s.sured that the Landgrave will fully protect you from further depredations."

"a.s.suming we don't get hit by whoever is trying to hit the Landgrave," Grace said into the silence.

"The Stormhammers are most competent at protecting their interests," Santorini snapped.

"Where have we heard that before?" came from somewhere down the table.

Grace had no intention of letting this get away from her. She stood and spoke. "And what is the price of this protection? Is the Landgrave willing to do this out of the kindness of his heart? Is this company you work for"-Grace emphasized this point, one that she felt Santorini had skimmed over-"so important to the Landgrave that he protects it purely for the natural benefits, or is there more to the relationship?"

The off-worlder dismissed her concern with a wave of his hand. "I'm sure something can be worked out to everyone's convenience."

"What will it cost to have the Stormhammers protect us?" Grace demanded. "In plain language, please."

Now Santorini stood up, unwinding himself from his chair like a man bothered by a gnat. "What has your own poor protection just cost you? Is there a single good 'Mech left on any lot in town?" As he shot his glance around the table, Grace heard the Sales and Service Guild master mumble a quick negative.

"How many of you lost IndustrialMechs off your fields, out of your businesses, your mines?" Many nods around the table. "Are they easily replaced?" The head-shakes were near frantic.

"Defense against the raiders and scavengers roaming s.p.a.ce is not cheap. The Stormhammers ask for a donation of thirty percent of your net off-world trade. For that, they give you the security that is essential if you are to have any trade at all."

"Thirty percent?!" came out in one breath around the table.

"You bought into the fairy tale that The Republic could keep you safe for a pittance: one Governor, one Legate, and a few trembling Constabulary jokes. What has it gotten you? Cleaned out, that's what. You want safety, but it is not free. Do you want to be alive and in business next year? The year after? Or do you want to be a pile of bones, picked clean by any roving band that happens by? The choice is yours.

Now, if you don't mind, I have business with the Industrial Trade Group."

Santorini and the mining company managers stood, nodded curtly to the room, and left, the heels of their shoes beating a confident cadence on the tiles.

"You certainly queered that deal, woman," Dev snapped. "Now he'll probably jack the price up to forty percent."

Garry hammered the gavel, and the room stayed quiet. "Grace O'Malley, are you prepared to speak for the small-holders and small towns?" the mayor of Little London demanded.

Grace glanced around the table. Some nodded, while others seemed less willing to let her talk for them.

No surprise there. "I'll start talking and see how long it is before someone sees the need to correct me."

At the top of their lungs, no doubt.

"You have a counterproposal to Mr. Santorini's offer?"