That ship they’d met at Tripoint continued to haunt him, and after the staff meeting—knowing he’d lose points in the strange non-game they played, but not as many as if he asked on a current situation—he snagged Madison to ask with no hints about it whether that encounter had been scheduled.

“No,” was Madison’s answer. “They’re watching, is all.”

“Watching us.”

“Watching for anything the Alliance is doing. Seeing what our next step is. Being sure—odd as it might sound—that we aren’t negotiating with the Fleet for a cease-fire and a deal with Mazian independent of them. Earth’s made some provocative moves.”

Mark that for a blind spot he should ponder at leisure. It wasn’t enough to know the honest truth about one’s own intentions toward the enemy: an ally still had to plan its security in secret and without entirely trusting anyone. One’s allies could take a small piece of information, foresee double-crosses and act, ruinously, if not reassured.

And, true, Earth was building more ships, launching new explorations in directions opposite to the Alliance base at Pell.

That Earth might someday make peace with the Fleet and amnesty them into its service again… that was, in his book, a very sensible fear for Union or Pell to have; but that they themselves, Finity , and Norway , would someday make peace with the Fleet? Not likely. Not with Edger in the ascendant among Mazian’s advisors. Damn sure Mallory wouldn’t. Union didn’t remotely know Mallory or Edger if they ever thought that

But then… Union hadn’t had experienced military leaders when the War started. They’d learned tactics and strategy from the study tapes on which Union’s education so heavily relied. But most of all they’d learned it from the Fleet they were fighting, as the whole human race hammered out the tactics and strategy of war at more than lightspeeds and with relativistic effects and no realtime communications at all. He’d learned Fleet tactics by apprenticeship to the Old Man and strategy from Mallory. The Fleet had developed uncanny skills and still did things Union pilots couldn’t match. Union, on the other hand, sometimes did things that surprised you simply because it wasn’t what one ought to do… if one had read the ancient Art of War , or if one had understood the Fleet.

Union was always hard to predict. Sometimes its actions were just, by traditional approaches, wrong. Union was now their ally.

“Where do you suspect Mazian is right now?” he asked Madison. The estimation could change by the hour. Like the market, only with more devastating local consequences.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Madison said. “The way I don’t know where Mallory is, either.”

On the fine scale of the universe, that was not an unusual situation. “Do you think she knows where Mazian is?”

There was a longer silence than he’d expected, Madison thinking that one over, or thinking over whether it was needful baseline information, or a truth a senior-junior ought to figure out for himself. “I think Mallory knows contingency plans she’ll never divulge. I think she knows a hell of a lot she’ll never divulge. I think they’re her safety, even from us. Loose talk could reach Union. I don’t think their amnesty is worth a damn in her case.”

“You think they’d go after her?”

“They’d be fools right now if they did. And I don’t think they’re fools. I think they’d like to know a lot more about her operations than they know. I think they lose a lot of sleep wondering whether someday we’ll turn tables, make an understanding with Earth, and go after them. Earth trying to get a foothold back in space, establishing new starstations… in other directions… they view that with great suspicion.”

“Do you think Earth might become a problem?”

“We don’t think so currently. But after the War, when we couldn’t get a peace to stick… you aren’t old enough to remember. But we spacefarers had been homogenous so long we flatly had forgotten how to deal with divergent views, contrary interests, traders that we are. One thing old Earth is good at: diplomacy.”

“Good at it!” He couldn’t restrain himself. “Their diplomacy started the War!”

“Not on their territory,” Madison said with a nasty smile. “The War never got to them, did it? When we and Union chased Mazian’s tail back to Sol space and we lost him, it looked as if we were going to square off with the Union carrier… Earth mediated that little matter. We frankly didn’t know what hit us. First thing we knew, we agreed, the Union commander agreed, each of us separately with Earth; then we had to agree with each other or Earth would have flung us at each other and watched the show from a distance. Learn from that. It’s all those governments, all those cultures on one world. They’re canny about settling differences. And we’d forgotten the knack. Four, five thousand years of planetary squabbles have to teach you something useful, I suppose.” Madison folded up his input board and tucked the handheld into his operations jacket, preparing to leave. “I don’t know if we could have made peace without Earth.”

“Would we have made war without them, sir? In your opinion.

“Far less likely, too. We’d have been an adjunct of what’s now at Union. But James Robert would have spit in their eye, still, when they tried to nationalize the merchanters. We’d have fought them. We’d have had every merchanter in space on our side. As we did. And we’d still have gained sovereignty on our own decks. As we did. Think about it. It’s all we merchanters ever really gained from all the fighting we ever did. I just don’t think we’d have blown Mariner doing it.”

A Union spy had sabotaged a station—this station. Mariner. Pell had lost a dock during the War. Mariner had depressurized all around the ring, and tens of thousands of people who hadn’t made it to sealed shelter had died. It was the worst human disaster that had happened outside of Earth. Ever.

And, we merchanters . It was the first time he’d ever heard anyone on Finity use that particular we . Or talk about a balance sheet, a profit-and-loss in the War. It was a sobering notion, that the War wasn’t just the War, immutable, always there. There’d been a before. Was it possible there would be an after—and that they wouldn’t have gained a damned thing by all they’d done, all the blood they’d shed?

Was it true, that even if you shoved at history and fought and struggled with its course, the universe still did what it was going to do anyway?

Hell if.

He couldn’t accept that.

Madison went on his way to the bridge, needed there, and he went his.

He hadn’t found his way past Madison’s reticence to ask what no one had yet told him… the reason they’d split from Mallory, which he began to think held all the other answers. No better informed than before he’d snagged the second captain, JR picked up his own handheld and clipped it to a belt that did little else but hold it—a great deal like the pistol he’d once worn, back in the bad old days when fifteen-year-olds had gone armed everywhere on the ship.

They’d stopped doing that when they’d gotten through the business with Earth and when it was sure they’d moved Mazian’s raiders out of the shipping lanes. What the likes of Africa and Europe had done when they boarded a merchanter didn’t bear telling their younger crew, but he’d grown up with a pistol on his hip and instructions how to use it in corridors where you had to worry about a pressure blowout.

At fifteen he’d been instructed to blow out the corridor where he was himself if his only other prospect had been capture by the Fleet.

Helluva way to grow up, he supposed. It was the only life he’d known. And when they’d gotten past the worst of the mop-up, and when they could go through a jump-point without being on high alert—then the Old Man had called the guns in, and arranged that they’d be in lockers here and there about the ship, with no latch on the cabinets (nothing on Finity was locked), but not to be carried again. He’d felt scared when they’d taken the guns away. It had taken him this long to get over being scared.