TheGrus blinked accurately, contacted a new opposite, sent out to replace the lost Cassie Vandy, and an hour passed. Wal offered Eridani brandy, warmed his glass in his hand as Lex talked about the big planet somewhere far out past the extent of Empire and Wal asked questions about its people, its industry, its war potential. Lex told him about the Darlene, about the maneuverability of an airors, about Texas' need for metals. But it was government which caught Wal's attention for long minutes.
"A board of citizens appoints a President?" he asked, unbelievingly.
"No one really wants the job," Lex said. "But if he's chosen he serves."
"No one wants it?"
"Heck, no. Who'd want to spend his time pushing papers and talking with everyone who has an idea or a complaint when he could be on his own land, growing his own meacrs, or out hunting in the desert?"
"No Texican, then, seeks power for the sake of power?" Wal asked sarcastically.
"I can't speak for all of them," Lex said, "but when my father was appointed President he tried like hell to get out of it, and we almost had to hog-tie old Andy Gar to get him to serve."
Three brandies later Lex was talking wistfully about how he and ole Billy Bob went riding over the desert and how they shot low vectors at the hills and caught sanrabs with their bare hands and Wal found himself laughing. By this time he was convinced that Lex had no idea where Texas was located, except that it was well beyond Empire control areas and lonely in its big skies. And he was convinced, also, that Texicans were very atypical people. He had to admit that their ideas about keeping a planet livable were sensible. Overcrowding was a problem throughout the Empire and the drain of energies and goods and wealth to people unable to fend for themselves was a growing cancer. Instead of being angry with the young man, he was coming to like him. Lex's casual dismissal of his actions toward the ailing computer impressed him. The lad had not only thrown out every regulation in the book regarding destruction of fleet equipment, but he'd been right. And according to him every Texican who had attended a school would have recognized the necessity to disconnect the sick lobe. Wal envisioned a planet filled with men like Lex, intuitive tinkerers at home with machinery and electronics, able to mend and make do without the basic theory behind their actions.
As a military man, he was impressed by the Texicans' ability to destroy major Cassiopeian battle ships not only without fear of retaliation, but without detection. And he was inordinately interested in the double-blink technique which allowed a Texican ship to blink in and out of danger while others, like this new and impressive Vandy, had to sit and wait for recharging, taking the accumulated fire of a fleet while doing it, or use the last charging reserve and kill a ship to escape.
It was new data for his greedy mind. He fed the young Gunner brandy until he was satisfied that he'd picked all the available information and then he listened as Lex talked of his family with a loneliness which was touching. Sobered, Wal was reminded that both he and the Texican were dead men.
"I'm very sorry that you will never see them again," he said.
"But I will," Lex said. "Somehow I will." "When we get back to base we'll both be brought up on charges the second the Automatic Record is
monitored," Wal said. "Sir, I've been thinking about that. Why do we have to go back to base?" "Shall we sneak up and destroy the entire Empire as you destroyed the Cassie?" "We don't have to, sir. We can go to Texas." When it was said, Wal realized that he'd been waiting for the boy to say it. He mused silently for a
moment.
"With all respect, sir, you don't look like a man who would just lie down and let someone kill him for using common sense." "You used common sense," Wal said, realizing that the brandy was getting to him. "If I had known that it would get you in trouble too I might not have." "And you're not using it now," Wal said. "Even if we entertained the idea of defecting to your Texas—" "I know," Lex said. "I don't know where it is. But we're still trading with the Empire, aren't we? I had a
steak from Texas in a restaurant on Luyten not long ago. And if we're still trading, we can find the
rendezvous point and contact a Texican ship." "And if your escape from your punishment angers the Emperor to the point of stopping the trading, then-what? You'd be right back where you started."
"Well," Lex said, "it's different now. They weren't going to shoot me then. They were just going to hold me for a few years." "They'd take you back at the risk of losing all the metals they need?" "If I asked it, they would."
"Perhaps we could," Wal said, talking almost to himself, his voice soft. "But there's the crew." "I've thought about that, too," Lex said. "I think a few of them would go with us. Jak would. The others. Well, we could fake disablement, put them in lifeboats near an inhabited planet, or on a main blink line."
"Son, it takes three men to prepare for a blink." "We'd have at least three. Me, you and Jak." "What do you know about an Empire generator?" "Well, they're more or less the same all over, except yours, pardon me for saying so, sir, are a little more
primitive."
"I'll think on it," Wal said.
"Thank you, sir," Lex said. Sensing his dismissal, he rose, somewhat unsteady on his feet. "Good stuff," he said, grinning as he pointed at the half-emptied bottle.
"Take it with you," Wal said.
He shared the balance of the bottle with Jak and, when he felt the time was right, he talked about Texas.
Jak had always shown some curiosity about the planet and was especially intrigued by the idea of hunting sanrabs from a flashing airors with his bare hands.
"They taste good, huh?" Jak had asked back when Lex first told him about sanrabs.
"As good as meacr steak," Lex said.
"I've never eaten meacr steak. I had a steak from an Earth bovine once. Let's see, I think it was when I graduated from finishing school. I was, oh, sixteen years old, I guess. And it took my old man a week to find the steak. It was about half a pound and we split it five ways, my dad and my mother, me and my sister and brother."
"Meacr steak is better than cow steak," Lex told the Sub-Chief.
That night, over a bottle of the Captain's best brandy, Lex brought the subject up again, adding some tales about eating shellfish off the shell, roasted on a bed of coals beside the big seas of Texas.
"The Emperor's balls," Jak said, after listening to Lex talk food for fifteen minutes. He got up and
swallowed a bulk pill. "You're making me hungry."
"Jak," Lex said, "you've never told me about your family."
"Not much to tell," Jak shrugged. "They're all dead."
"I didn't know."
"Freighter brought in a new strain of bug from an outworld. Before they could find the cure half the city
was dead or dying. My folks were among the first. The old man worked at the port."
"And you never formed a permanent relationship with a woman?" Lex asked.
"Came close," Jak said. "Don't like to talk aboutthat ."
Lex held his tongue, although he wanted to know. "Well, Jak, it looks like you've got no real tie to
anything except the fleet."
"Mate, mother and bedfellow," Jak said, grinning. "But sometimes I wish this old tub had hot and cold running females aboard."
"Jak, what if I gave you a chance to eat a meacr teak so big you'd have to chew for two hours to get it down?"
"Who do I have to kill?"
"Let me ask one more question. You're a career man, right? What are you going to do when you've done your thirty?"
"I'll be fifty," Jak said. "I'll have forty or fifty more good years, barring some hairy-assed bug or accident. I'm going to take my savings and my pension and go out on the Deneb frontier and buy a place. They say there are planets there where a man can own as much as ten acres. I figure if prices don't go up too much I'll be able to buy at least five."
"Jak," Lex said, "my dad gave me a hundred thousand acres of good graze land when I was sixteen." "Shit," Jak said. "A man can run enough meacrs on five thousand acres to live good on Texas." "First you have to be on Texas," Jak said, a little miffed to have his dream of owning five acres of land to
call his own diminished by the Texican's bragging.