Old Grandmother was only 114 proof, Felix took a jolt of Demerara, downing it without a hitch.
“With stuff this strong,” he declared, “I usually take a chaser. How about a dollop of that Palo Cortado sherry?”
Things were getting off to a good start. Garvin noticed no frilly shower cap in the bathroom, no opulent mules, no sexy robe accidentally displayed to advertise that Felix was a man of the world. That the boy had not decided on Old Grandmother as a chaser for the 151 proof rum and, instead, joined the old man in getting acquainted with that stern and rugged sherry added to the Old Man’s favorable impression of his son. He’d have to tell Flora that as far as language was concerned, she was lucky that her only son had learned Americanese from a hitchhiking Dutch teenager and not from the Marine Corps.
“Lots of young fellows hate military service. How come you went out of your way to get in?”
“I get points for not pleading exemption because my birth as an American citizen was recorded at the embassy. With my papers, I can leave the country with no fooling around and being told the last minute that the bureaucrat in charge of getting exit papers cleared got AIDS while vacationing in Sardinia and is taking a sick leave till he is cured.”
“Sardine hunting in Sardinia is a hazardous sport,” the Old Man agreed. He did not raise any points such as heading for Indonesia the next time the young Dutch traveler paused on an outbound voyage; he likewise skipped the idea that after so much female supervision, any lad worth half an inflated pazor per pound would look for an escape hatch. For any boy more than ten or a dozen years old, his mother ceases being his best friend and becomes his most destructive enemy.
Since thought moves with nearly the velocity of light, only a second elapsed before Garvin added, “We cleaned house after the last war, but I’m still wondering if we’ll ever be liberated from our bureaucracy.”
There was a long pause. “How long are you going to be in town?” Felix asked abruptly.
“That depends on when the Semiramis shoves off for Savannah.”
“Spaceman, and not flying?”
Garvin reached for the bottle of Old Grandmother and poured for each of them. “There is all the glamour crap about capers such as the time your mother, hating space, flew all the way to Maritania to wish me bon voyage on what the fat boys had arranged to be for a one-way cruise. But I did circle Saturn, and homebound, as skipper, I performed the first wedding ceremony in space. Married my technical adviser, Admiral Courtney, to Lani, who became a princess after he died and then Empress of North America.
“I discovered, by pure blundering luck, an inhabited asteroid.”
Felix poured the Palo Cortado chaser and not the Demerara rum, as Garvin had been expecting. “Madame my mother told me about that till it bubbled out of my ears.”
“I was afraid of that! Well, aside from such high spots, there is nothing drearier than spacing through millions of kilometers of nothing and nowhere. I am here to review my acquaintance with E-A-R-T-H, Earth, till I get good and fed up with it and remember the unfinished business on Mars.”
“So it depends on the Semiramis?”
“It’s a goddamn long swim, and I’m not the athlete I used to be.” He raised his hand to check the forthcoming protest. “That was a sort of short answer. It’s this way. She is a tramp waiting for cargo till she’s down to her Plimsoll line. But if that’s done before I am ready to leave town, the skipper will hold the boat.”
“I be good-goddamned! This Governor-General business seems to give you a lot of pull!”
“Wait a minute! I am incognito, remember? I’m only a shirttail relative.”
Felix looked puzzled. After a moment of groping, he asked how a remote kinsman could make such an arrangement.
“Just a matter of paying demurrage,” Garvin explained, “the way you do when you keep a freight car longer than the free time for loading or unloading. With my salary, allowances, legitimate perks and presents, and nowhere to go to spend it—simple, isn’t it?”
Felix cogitated for a moment. “Excepting that pipsqueak of an Asteroid, there is nothing in the Solar System that needs governing once you get beyond Mars.”
“You mean opportunities for advancement are limited?”
Felix was too serious about it to realize that the Old Man was needling him as if he were a collegian with a brand new degree whining about the slow promotion when he found out that he could not start as one of the board of directors.
“Rod, the whole business sounds like tough shit! First you were a war hero, but before you got your Parliamentary Medal of Honor, they discovered you were a war criminal, and if the Imperator hadn’t flung in every bit of political pull he had, along with some he borrowed, you’d have been shot. Death sentence was commuted to exile, until things got so hot in the next war that to settle the risk of the Imperatrix being taken prisoner of war and held as a hostage, you came back on parole and convoyed her to Mars, where she’d be safe, and you became Governor-General, sort of her errand boy.”
“Sounds like making it the hard way?”
“Well, it’s this war criminal business.”
“From the original democratic republic, and all through the Democratic Parliamentary Republic, and well into the Empire of North America, ever since the middle nineteen-forties, swarms of American-born Liberals voted Marxist-loving politicos into office. There was a president who thought that Marxism was the greatest discovery of the century, which from then on made the nation a sort of vassal of the Slivovitz group of nations. Then there was a politico who discovered Americans holding high spots in the state department who were Slivovitz agents. He hounded them into the open, nailed their hides on the barn door, and eventually became president of the Republic. Then the Liberals caught him off base, and he ended by resigning to avoid being impeached.”
“Where do you come in?”
“During the Hitler war—since you’ve not gone to American schools, you may have had history, which was abolished as irrelevant in our country—we blasted German and Japanese cities, incinerated civilians by the thousands, and everyone applauded, but when we used napalm and similar grim stuff in southeast Asia, there was hell from coast to coast, student riots, all that muck. You must never be rough with a Marxist and never win a battle when you face Marxist troops. State religion, unofficial but working.
“I vaporized a division of Marxist armor invading Sinkiang. Hence the pyramids!”
Felix paused to digest that before going on to the next mystery. “The Empress you convoyed to Mars turned out to be a look-alike, and everyone still wonders what happened to the genuine one.”
“There is a mishmash of contradictory details. Some of the facts are still top secret, or so we hope. This much is declassified, and I am allowed to tell you what lots of people already have heard.
“The Imitation Empress died, and I kept my promise to take her home and have her buried beside Alexander I, your mother’s fifth cousin. She was a sincere woman, and I was a horse’s arse, keeping that promise. There already had been leaks in security.”
Felix leaned forward, all set, like a leopard about to pounce. Before the feline snarl slipped from between tightening lips, Garvin continued.
