“I didn’t mean to spook you,” Lara said.
“I’m not spooked,” he said. He meant to follow it up with I’m married, but what came out was different. “I’m Laconian.”
Lara quirked a smile, and he thought there was regret in it. She took her handheld, her finger hovering just above the button to start the recording again. Her eyes were asking if he was certain, but he was himself again. Or no. He was Governor Rittenaur. That was better. She tapped the button, and the seconds began counting up again. Biryar put his hands on the back of his chair, pressing into it like it was a podium. He thought back to where the conversation had been.
“I’m really very happy to be here,” he said. “Auberon is a fascinating planet with a great future before it. I hope that my service here will help it come into its rightful place as one of humanity’s great centers of science and culture. And I know the High Consul has the same ambitions for it.”
He nodded sharply, more to himself than to her. That was the right answer. That was what he was supposed to say. Who he was supposed to be.
Lara tilted her head. “Do you want to sit down?”
* * *
The yacht was a small one, and the old man didn’t like it much. In all the time Agnete had been with him, he had only used it three or four times that she knew of. He’d grown up in a coastal city, but she didn’t have the impression there had been a lot of yachts involved. The fact that he was in it now meant he was running out of places to be that he was certain the local security forces weren’t watching.
He sat with his arms out at his sides. Two days of stubble competed with his thin mustache. The sun was overhead, the light glimmering off the water and his false arm. He was smoking a cigar as thick as his thumb and as long as his finger. The city rose up at the horizon like a mirage.
The woman sitting across from them had gone by KarKara when they’d first met her. It was Lara now, which suited her better.
“I swear to God, I had him.”
“We shouldn’t have rushed you,” the old man said.
“I didn’t rush. I had him. We had rapport. We had shared jokes. He was into me.”
“And then?”
Lara opened her hands. “Then the moment came, and he backpedaled. I don’t know. Clearly he and his wife have a monogamy agreement, and he’s taking it seriously. Maybe that’s a Laconian thing.”
“Did he say that?”
“No, it’s a guess,” Lara said. “He was babbling by the end. Lots of words, but none of them meant anything.”
“What do you think of him?”
She considered. Agnete could see from the way the woman held her hands that Lara almost liked the mark. There was nothing like being told no to make someone attractive.
“That man needs something,” Lara said, “and he needs it bad. But it’s not what I was offering.”
The old man blew out a cloud of white smoke and watched the wind shred it. “That’s what I think too. Is he maybe into guys?”
“That’s not it,” Lara said. “I’ve met maybe one person in twenty who claims to be monogamous and actually is. I think this guy is really into his wife.”
The old man muttered something obscene. Then, “I don’t get it. He’s not looking for money. He’s not looking for kink. What is it with this guy?”
Lara said, “I think he’s looking for a way out.”
“Of what?”
“His own skin.”
“Well I’m looking for a way not to take that literally, but this fucker does make it hard.” He looked out over the water. Something large and pale passed under them, but didn’t break the surface. The old man sighed. “Maybe we should just kill him.”
Agnete said, “Why were they fighting?”
He shifted his head to look at her. Agnete met his gaze without flinching. “He and his wife were fighting about something. And then they stopped. Maybe there’s something in that?”
The old man weighed the idea while he took another puff on his cigar. His eyes shifted up to the sky, but he wasn’t looking at anything. Or not anything that was there.
“He have any friends?”
Lara shook her head. “None that he ever talked about. He doesn’t do relationships with people. Just responsibilities to them.”
“So just the wife, then, as far as you know. Sex and friendship. That’s a tough knot to unwind.”
“I think he really loves her,” she said. Again the little twitch of regret. They were going to have to be careful how they used her, moving forward. She was going to talk herself into falling in love with Rittenaur if they took their eyes off her.
The old man made a deep, soft sound. Like satisfaction. The yacht bobbed on the waves. “I forget, you know? I just forget.”
“What, boss?”
“How complicated people are. How many kinds of hunger we’re working with.”
“Not following you.”
The old man shrugged, and the fake arm almost matched the real one. The movement was still just a little asymmetrical. It made him seem jaunty.
“There was a guy I knew back in Sol system used to say that money was like sex. You thought it would fix everything until you got a lot of it. Because that’s what we all reach for. Anything we need, anything we want, anything that’s grinding us down, we can get high or rich or laid and make it better. Only if that was true, people would eventually get enough drugs or money or sex and be happy.”
“We’d be out of jobs,” Agnete said.
“But Rittenaur…” The old man went on like she hadn’t spoken. “This guy lives his whole life in this culture where it’s about…”
“Duty,” Lara said.
“So,” Agnete said, “the way a normal person tries to get out of the hole by putting a needle in their arm or fucking a pretty body or working a hundred hours a week, he tries to get out by being a good man.” She said the words slowly to see if they sounded true.
“Only it doesn’t work for him any better than that other shit does for the rest of us,” the old man said. Then, a moment later, “Look at the wife. If he loves her as much as Lara thinks, she’s the weak spot.”
“What am I looking for?” Agnete asked.
“Whatever’s there. Every addict has to hit bottom,” the old man said. “Maybe we can help him with that.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Agnete said.
“I know it didn’t exactly work, but…” Lara hesitated, afraid to ask. “Our thing?”
She was asking about the debt her attempted seduction was going to pay off.
“How much did you owe us?” he asked.
“You know exactly how much,” Lara replied.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s off the books now,” the old man said. “But stay out of my casinos. You’re very bad at poker.”
Business concluded, they watched the sun speed across the sky and dive for the horizon. The water was turning golden as they angled back for shore. The old man made them all steaks on the little range, the meat decanted fresh from the growth disk.
When they got back to civilization, Agnete put her resources into the wife and Xi-Tamyan Agricultural Concern, where she had offices. She wasn’t looking for something in particular—an affair, an illegal drug habit, a second life. Anything.