It was autumn again, the second autumn since he had landed from the
_City of Asgard_ at Storisende and taken the _Countess Dorothy_ home
to Litchfield. Again the fields were bare and brown; all up and down
the Gordon Valley the melons were harvested, and the wine-pressing was
ready to start.
The house was crowded today. All top-level Litchfield seemed to have
turned out, and there were guests from Storisende, and even a few who
had made the trip from Koshchei to be there, Simon Macquarte, the
president of Koshchei Tech; Conn would always remember him in the
screen threatening a whole planet with devastation. Luther Chen-Wong,
the chief executive of Koshchei Colony. Clyde Nichols, the president
of Koshchei Airlines.
He almost bumped into Yves Jacquemont, coming in from the hall.
Jacquemont's beard had been trimmed down to a small imperial, and he
was wearing the uniform of Trisystem & Interstellar Spacelines,
nothing at all like a Federation Space Navy uniform. He was laughing
about something; he threw an arm over Conn's shoulder, and they went
into the front parlor together.
"Oh, Gehenna of a big crop!" he heard Klem Zareff's voice, chuckling
happily, above the babble in the room. "You wouldn't believe it. Why,
we had to build six new vats...."
The thin-faced, white-haired man in the chair beside him said
something. Mike Shanlee and Klem Zareff, old enemies, were now fast
friends. Shanlee had come in from Force Command with Conn that
morning. He had stayed on Poictesme as nominal head of Project Merlin,
and intended to remain there for the rest of his life.
"Oh, there aren't any more farm-tramps," Zareff replied. "Everybody's
getting factory jobs off-planet. I have an awful time getting help,
and what I can get won't work for less than ten sols a day. Why,
they're even organizing a union...."
There were feminine shrieks from across the room, and a stampede. The
housecleaning-robot had come in, running its vacuum-cleaning hose
around and brandishing its mops. He saw his mother break away from a
group of older ladies and shout:
"_Oscar!_"
The robot stopped dead. "Yash'm?" a voice came out of it,
Sheshan-accented.
"Go out!" his mother commanded. "Go to kitchen. Stay there."
"Yash'm." The robot floated out the door to the hall.
His mother rejoined her friends. Probably telling them, for the
thousandth time, that her boy Conn fixed up the sound receptors and
voice for Oscar. Or harping on how Conn had been telling everybody the
truth, all along, and people wouldn't believe him.
Sylvie came up to him and caught his arm. "Come on, Conn; they're
going to start the rehearsal," she said.
"They've been going to start it for an hour," her father told her.
"Well, they're really going to start it now."
"All right. You two run along," Yves Jacquemont said. "And you'd
better start rehearsing for your own wedding before long. The _Genji_
will be ready to hyper out in another month, and I don't want to be at
space when my only daughter gets married."
They pushed through the crowd, dragging Conn's mother with them toward
the big living room beyond. On the way, Mrs. Maxwell stopped to try to
drag Judge Ledue out of a chair.
"Judge, the rehearsal is starting; they can't do it without you."
Ledue clung to his chair. "They daren't do it with me, Mrs. Maxwell.
If I get into it, it won't be a rehearsal; they'll be really married,
and then there won't be any point in having a wedding tomorrow."
"Oh, Morgan!" Conn called across the room to Gatworth. "You've just
been appointed temporary judge for the wedding rehearsal!"
There was a big crowd around Wade Lucas, in the next room; he was
telling them about the voyage to Baldur, from which he had returned,
and the one to Irminsul, with a cargo of arms, machine tools and
contragravity vehicles, on which he and his bride would go for their
honeymoon. There was another crowd around Flora; she was telling them
about the new fashions on Baldur, which had been brought back on the
_Ouroboros II_.
"Where's your father?" his mother was asking him. "He has to rehearse
giving the bride away."
"Probably in his office. I'll go get him."
"You'll get into an argument with somebody and forget to come back,"
his mother said. "Sylvie, you go with him, and bring both of them
back."
"When'll we have our wedding, Sylvie?" he asked as they went off
together.
"Well, before Dad goes to Aditya with the _Genji_. That'll have to be
in a month."
"Two weeks? That ought to be plenty of time to get ready, and let
people recover from this one."
"Everybody's here now. Let's make it a double wedding tomorrow," she
suggested.
He hadn't been prepared for that. "Well, I hadn't expected.... Sure!
Good idea!" he agreed.
There was a crowd in Rodney Maxwell's little office--Fawzi and some
others, and some Storisende people. One of the latter was
vociferating:
"Jake Vyckhoven's no good, and he never was any good!"
"Well, you have to admit, if he hadn't ordered the banks and the Stock
Exchange closed that time, we'd have had a horrible panic--"
"Admit nothing of the kind! Jethro, you were there, you'll bear me
out. About a dozen of us were at Executive Palace for hours, bullying
him into that. Why, we almost had to twist one of his arms while he
was signing the order with the other. And now he has the gall to run
for re-election on the strength of his heroic actions at the time of
the Travis Hoax!"
"I know who we want for President!" another Storisende man exclaimed.
"He's right here in this room!"
"Yes!" Rodney Maxwell almost bellowed, before the other man could say
anything else. "Here he is!" He grabbed Kurt Fawzi by the arm and
yanked him to his feet. "Here's the man most responsible for finding
Merlin; the man who first suggested sending my son Conn to Terra to
school, the man who, more than anyone else, devoted his life to the
search for Merlin, the man whose inextinguishable faith and
indomitable courage kept that search alive through its darkest hours.
Everybody, get a drink; a toast to our next President, Kurt Fawzi!"