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trash Geis with the Passports, but it'd eat time; your cuz has lawyers the way
other people have freckles, and he can afford wizards
; grade one legal slicks with
minds like writ-grenades. Toss a few of those boys into the fray and they
could stall the Huhsz for decades; get them so entangled they won't be able to
take a piss without applying for a court order ...' Zefla hiccuped. 'Damn!'
She gulped. 'Excuse me; more sober juice.'
She drank deeply from the tall glass again. '. . . Shit,' she continued, 'even
if they got blanket discovery Geis could keep ahead of them just generating
new companies; dance their grubby little asses through the taxloop Labyrinth
of
No Return, shuffling liability, using anonymous proxies, cascading ownership .
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. . It would take them months to sort out what he's already got, never mind
what he could create if he wanted to put up a smokescreen. The point to
remember is, they've only got a year; with that sort of cast-iron limitation,
even Geis's public exposure won't suffer more than a - hic! shit - blip when
the shareholders realise it's just a glorified nuisance action that's going to
evaporate like a fart in a hurricane when the clock stops.'
Zefla drank again, then said, 'What are you grinning at?'
Sharrow had turned away from the view while Zefla had been talking. She stood,
smiling down at the other woman. 'I've missed you, Zef.'
'Thank you very much,' Zefla said, holding one long leg out in front of her
and looking at the bruise. 'Wish I could say the same for your car.'
Sharrow looked down and ran her finger round the top of her glass. 'So are you
saying I should just go to Geis?'
'Hell, no; I'm just saying that if you ever did have to especially as a last
resort after you've run the Huhsz round in circles for a few months and aren't
getting any closer to the Gun - you needn't worry about hurting him legally.'
'Even so,' Sharrow said, frowning at her drink. 'But just because of that . .
. maybe I should take him up on his offer now.'
'You - hic! - want to?' Zefla said, her eyebrows rising.
'No,' Sharrow admitted, glancing at her.
'Then,' said a deep, rumbling, reasonable voice from the other side of the
conservatory, 'don't.'
Sharrow looked at Dloan. He was even taller than Zefla, and much broader. He
had precise, short-cropped blond hair which merged smoothly into an equally
carefully trimmed blond beard; he lounged in a crumpled sweatsuit, exuding
fitness. He kept on tickling the sarflet, and looked up only momentarily at
Sharrow, smiling as though shyly, then looking away again.
'And let's not forget the law is just one way of the Huhsz getting what they
want,' Zefla told Sharrow. 'I'd guess what Geis would really have to worry
about if he sheltered you wouldn't be a legal manoeuvre, it'd be simple
betrayal. One disgruntled employee, one, spy, one Huhsz convert in the right
place, and all the law in the system wouldn't make any difference; they'd get
you and destroy Geis.'
Sharrow nodded. 'All right, but the alternative is to take to the trail again,
and ask you guys to come with me.'
'Shar, kid,' Zefla said. 'We never wanted to give it up.'
'But I feel I'm being selfish; especially if I could just run to Geis and
everything would be all right:'
Zefla sighed exasperatedly. 'Geis is a pain, Sharrow; the guy has a kind of
charming facade but basically he's a social inadequate whose real place in
life is out mugging pensioners and cheating and beating on his girlfriends,
and if he had three more names and been raised in a rookery in The Meg rather
than the nursery at house Tzant, that's exactly what he would be doing.
Instead he jumps out of the commercial equivalent of dark alleys, strips
companies and fucks their employees. He's got no idea how real people work so
he plays the market instead; he's a rich kid who thinks the banks and courts
and Corps are his construction set and he doesn't want anybody else to play.
He wants you the way he wants a sexy company, as a bauble, a scalp, something
to display.
Never get beholden to people like that, they'll piss on you and then charge
irrigation fees. You crawl under that scumball's skirts and I'll never talk to
you again.'
Sharrow grinned and sat on a small chair by the glass wall. 'So, do we go back
on the road?'
Zefla drank, nodded. 'Just point us to the on-ramp, girl.'
'You're sure?'
Zefla made a pained expression. 'Shar, I've been lecturing law at Capitaller
for the last five years; I've said all I'm ever going to say and I keep
hearing the same old fucking questions; a really smart student comes along now
and again, but it's getting harder and harder to wait during the fallow times
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in between; an exciting day is when a hunky student bends over or one of the
male staff starts growing a beard. My brain's atrophying. I need some
excitement.'
Sharrow looked at Dloan, who was sitting back in the gently swaying
hanging-chair and sipping at his drink, the sarflet snoring at his feet.
'Dloan?' she said.
Dloan sat looking at her for a while. Eventually he took a long deep breath,
and said, 'I was watching some screen a few days ago.' He cleared his throat.
'Some adventure series. The bad guys were firing bi-propellent HE rounds from
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